Kill Zone

Aboard the Wasp, the speakers crackled in the quiet commo room. “Henhouse, this is Rooster One. They’re down and burning,” a pilot reported.

“Survivors?” Sims asked. The radioman relayed the question.

“Negative. No sign of life or movement at the scene, but there are bad guys coming out from the target zone. Request permission to engage.”

Sims wanted to say, “Hell, yes,” but could not. An attack run by the Harriers would probably result in casualties among Syrian civilians, which would make a bad situation a lot worse. It was time to call it a day. “Negative,” he barked, and turned to the commander of the ship’s Marine Air Wing. “Get those planes back home.”

The Tactical Air Center sent the order. “Egress! Egress! Egress!”

The pilot hesitated. “Henhouse, Rooster One. What about a bombing run on the wreckage? I can torch the scene.”

“Negative,” came the immediate reply from Colonel Sims. He needed higher authority for that, and didn’t have time to get it. He would message Washington for permission to send in a Cruise missile for that demolition job. “Repeat. Negative. Return to base.”

“Rooster One. Roger that. I copy egress, return to base.” The Rooster Flight headed home.

He heard his wingman come on the air. “Rooster Two to Rooster One, push to Rooster freak.” Both pilots switched to another frequency so they could talk without being overheard.

“Go ahead, Two, this is Rooster One.”

“Boss, did I copy that last right? We really leaving these guys behind?”

“You heard the same thing I did.”

“I know, but what about ‘Marines don’t leave their own’?”

The flight leader’s temper was simmering. He felt the same way, but because he was in command, he could not agree with his friend over an open radio channel. “One to Two. You saw it as good as I did. They’re all dead!”

“Well, if they weren’t then, they are now. Or worse.”

“That’s enough, Rooster Two. Follow your orders. Rooster One out.”

The Harriers hugged the ground as they dashed back to Israeli airspace, where they would climb high for the rest of the return flight to the Wasp. The pilots remained silent, lost in thought about a rescue raid that had flipped into total disaster. Rooster One knew that by flying away, they were erasing any chance American survivors might escape captivity, torture, or death. “Please, God, don’t let me see one of those kids show up on Al Jazeera,” he said in a soft prayer, words that would never leave his cockpit.

Aboard the Wasp, Colonel Ralph Sims sent the message about the cruise missile to Washington, then walked rigidly out of the command center, seeking fresh air and a moment of privacy. He lit a cigarette and thought about his Marines lying entombed in the helicopters in Syria. There would be a lot of investigations, and people, including him, would probably lose their jobs. At the moment, he didn’t really care, for he had a bigger worry, one that was much more personal. What the hell am I supposed to tell their families?

The sky was losing its blackness, and the first rays of the new day crawled across the Middle East.

CHAPTER 20

ROOSTER ONE. ROGER THAT. I copy egress, return to base.”

The Harrier flight leader sounded calm and professional as he was heard in real time over a satellite linkup straight into the Situation Room of the White House. Members of the National Security Council had been there for an hour, monitoring the Middleton rescue raid. Now they were immobilized in shock.

Lieutenant Commander Shari Towne brought both hands to her mouth, fighting not to cry out in anguish at what she heard. Both helicopters down. No signs of life. Unknown people moving in fast. KYLE! NO!

National Security Advisor Gerald Buchanan was at the head of the long table in his big chair, tapping a yellow pencil against a legal pad as he listened to the disembodied voice. This was something he had not counted on, and he was busy weighing the up sides and the down sides. He looked around at the military people and detected an advantage. Make it their fault.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Turner, was chewing a knuckle, and lines of thought creased his forehead. He was, after all, a Marine, although he represented all of the military services. He had previously been the Marine Corps commandant, so those were his men who had lost their lives. He was emotionally involved.

A definite advantage! Grab it! Buchanan, however, spoke quietly. “Your Marines failed, General, so we now have a situation.”

Turner had to agree. He had watched the crash via the satellite feed and had heard what the pilots had to say. “Yes, sir. It does appear the mission was unsuccessful.”

Buchanan did not follow up his first jab. He stared at the satellite picture of a glowing hot spot in the Syrian desert. He could remain the consummate professional. “A tragedy, but we must move ahead. I need to hear options. Right now.”

An admiral joined the conversation. “It’s too late for an emergency rescue extraction. A team of Special Forces would not be enough at this point, with the Syrian military obviously going on alert. I would expect the Syrians to be controlling the scene within hours. We would have to insert nothing less than an airborne battalion, and that probably would not be enough. They would soon be surrounded and chopped up without massive air cover, and that would really up the stakes.” He paused. Looked directly at General Turner, then Buchanan. “No further troop deployment is advisable.”

“You can’t just leave them there!” Shari Towne exclaimed, and all eyes in the room were drawn to her. She was the lowest-ranking officer present, in charge of nothing.

“Stay out of this, Lieutenant Commander,” the admiral, her immediate boss, growled impatiently.

Shari caught the warning and flipped the pages of a red three-ring binder. “Yes, sir.” She stopped at a page. “I was referring to the protocol in the operations manual.”

Nice recovery, girl, the admiral thought. He knew of her personal relationship with Kyle Swanson and that Swanson was on the mission, but he wanted her to shut up before she went too far. The admiral liked them both and believed that their personal life was no business of anyone else at the table.

“What would that be, Lieutenant Commander” asked Buchanan. Had he caught some distress in her voice? More than normal? Why?

“Standard operating procedures instruct the incineration of wreckage, just as the pilot suggested.”

“And how would that be accomplished?”

The air force general at the long table answered. “We can get some fast movers in there, either from the carrier in the Med or up out of Iraq, sterilize the area with napalm before the Syrians can plant ground-to-air missile batteries around it. We would have to move pronto.”

The admiral interrupted. “No use putting more of our people in jeopardy. We can spin up a Tomahawk on a ship in the Med and get it in there even faster, and the missile would have a bigger clout. That’s what the Marine mission commander recommends. He’s waiting for a decision.”

Buchanan kept tapping his pencil like a little metronome of menace, seconds ticking away in a crisis. “Why do we need to do that? What is the benefit?” he asked.

“There is a lot of sophisticated equipment and material aboard those helicopters, sir. Everything from secret commo gear to night-vision goggles. Crypto. Maps. Weapons. Even avionics. Maybe some classified papers. We have no way of knowing if it all was destroyed,” Hank Turner replied. “The Syrians will strip them bare, and we cannot take the chance of all that material falling into their hands.”

“So you people are telling me that now that rescuing General Middleton is beyond your reach, that disaster may be compounded by still yet a bigger disaster? Jesus Christ.”