Everyone noted that Buchanan had stopped tapping the pencil and had used the phrase “
“That sort of criticism is beside the point, Mr. Buchanan,” Turner responded, his voice terse, growing angry with the man he considered nothing more than a political predator. “Right now, we have to decide between a missile and a bombing run, and there’s not a minute to lose.”
Buchanan abruptly stood and buttoned his coat. “Very well. Then my decision is the
He gave a little bow to the woman from the State Department. “We have to go the diplomatic route now, ladies and gentlemen, and hope that State can pull the Pentagon’s nuts out of the fire.”
Shari’s last wall of reserve was cracking. She had to get back to her office before she broke into tears, and it would take every ounce of strength to make that short walk. But the professional side of her mind kept turning over her intuition. Something was not right. Buchanan had driven the point home hard that the military efforts had failed, but he had hardly mentioned the deaths of American Marines. There was no anger or sorrow.
Buchanan walked back to his office mentally chalking up a most beneficial outcome. He had put those military morons in their places again, particularly the crew-cut, spit-and-polish General Turner. The raid had not gone as planned, but the unexpected crash of the helicopters had resulted in a total, dreadful, and irreversible failure that would be shown in the starkest light all over every news program in the world within a few hours. The world’s most professional and powerful military establishment had failed. Shades of the mess in the desert of Iran back in 1979.
This could definitely help the privatization act. With his office door closed, Gerald Buchanan rocked back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. There was a broad smile on his face as he picked up his secure telephone to brief Gordon and Ruth Hazel that he had sidetracked the bombing run or any further rescue attempt. Those bodies would be coming home in flag-draped coffins. It would make great television.
CHAPTER 21
VICTOR LOGAN PRESSED HIS face hard against the cheek pad of a Russian-made Dragunov SVD sniper rifle to steady the four-power telescopic sight on the place where the helicopters had crashed. His partner, Jimbo Collins, scanned the rest of the area with night-vision goggles, looking for infrared heat emitters. Since kidnapping General Middleton, they had been waiting for the rescue attempt that was sure to come, ready to ambush the Marines, only to have it all go to hell right in front of them.
“Nothing but the wreckage,” said Collins as he put the goggles away. “The fire and the hot metal just kills this heat-sensitive imagery. All I can pick up are those damned ragheads running around.” He glanced at the brightening sky. “Think the Harriers will be back to burn it?” Collins had a shoulder-fired Stinger ground-to-air missile beside him. Other Stingers lay scattered in the other trenches.
“That’s the SOR Makes no sense to leave all that gear for the sand monkeys to pick over, but the Harriers seemed to be getting out of here in a hurry.” Vic Logan had been in too many emergencies, in too many places, too many times, to let shit like this bother him. “Let’s go see who’s what. Big fuckup, this.”
The American mercenaries moved from the sandbagged trench and walked around a large ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft weapon. The gunner had abandoned his position behind the ammunition feed trays immediately after the helos went down, leaving the powerful radar-guided gun useless in his run to get to whatever booty he might steal from the helicopters. The quad rack of 23 mm cannons was still locked into position, useless if the Harriers returned.
Logan and Collins walked easily, not bothering to keep distance between them, because they were in no danger. “Too damned bad, Vic,” said Collins. “This was a good ambush configuration.”
Logan’s big strides ate up the ground. His head was on a swivel and his hard eyes captured the tactical situation. The ragheads from the trench to the right, which would have supplied a cross-fire, were also out of their holes and heading toward the wreckage, along with women and children from the village. From soldiers and civilians to scavengers in the blink of an eye. A verse of Kipling came to him: “
Logan sort of hoped none of those jarheads were still alive, although the idea of killing Americans had not cost him a moment of sleep. It was a business deal, sweet payback for being screwed over by the navy, and Logan was determined to come out of all this rich. He had shopped his services around until he discovered that being part of a Shark Team paid better than any of the other private billets. He was pulling in ten thousand dollars U.S. a month, and complicated things like this brought more. For these big bucks, he didn’t give a fuck if he had to kill the pope.
The fact that the birds went down by themselves made no difference to Logan, because the result was the same. He got fifty thousand for snatching the general and now the rescue mission had failed, which meant still another fifty would flow into his bank account. He figured to retire when he topped two million.
He clicked his AK-47 to full automatic and fired an entire clip into the air while shouting in Arabic for the ragheads to clear out until he and Collins were done searching the area. Reluctantly, the crowd pulled back away from their looting and stood in sullen groups while the two American mercenaries got to work.
“Get the camera going,” Logan said as they approached the twisted wreckage. “I’ll look around the perimeter. You take pictures of every one of those Marines, get the dog tags, and read off the names loud enough to be recorded, clear enough to be understood. Any funny names, spell them out. I want a stone-cold positive ID on every one of those dudes.”
“Got it.” Collins stepped into the wreckage. It was a mess in there. He started photographing.
“And make sure all the arms and legs add up!” Logan called, then began a slow walk around the site, circling from the nose of one of the choppers out to about a hundred meters. That put the helicopter in the center of an imaginary clock, with the nose pointed to twelve o’clock, and Logan switched on a powerful flashlight as he worked back and forth in pie-shaped segments. One o’clock. Two o’clock. Raghead footprints and chunks of debris from the aircraft reached out in all directions. He would have missed the puddle of vomit near the seven o’clock position had he not smelled it before locating it with the bright beam of his flashlight. Nothing much more than some discolored yellow bile. A raghead sickened by the sights and smell of new death? Not likely, but possible. He walked on, and two slices of the clock later, almost obscured by the scuffed footprints of the scavengers, he found the unmistakable tire tracks of a motorcycle. He did not recall hearing any. How old was the track? Some civilian ride through yesterday? It led toward the road, east.
“Hey, Vic!” Collins hollered from the ruptured end of one of the helicopters. “Take a look.”
Logan was there in a couple of big strides. “What?”
Collins was squatting down and had the loose end of a big strap in one hand. He tugged on it to show that the other end was secured to the deck of the fuselage. “Three more of these straps. There, there… and there.”
All four ends had been sliced clean. Something had been secured here. Had the ragheads already stolen it? Something large? No, he would have noticed. Logan backed out of the wrecked bird and Collins followed, putting away his camera after photographing and identifying the final two bodies. They went to the fuselage of the other helicopter. A little Kawasaki dirt bike, badly damaged, was still lashed to the deck with straps like the ones that had been cut on the first helo.
Logan scratched his neck, came to a conclusion. He waved to the onlookers and they poured back into the wreckage like honeybees after a lump of sugar.
