Senator Ruth Hazel Reed kept two framed photographs on the long polished credenza behind the desk in her office in the Russell Senate Office Building off of C Street. One was of her handsome young army Warrant Officer Chuck Reed, lounging against a helicopter in Vietnam, the black-and-white picture taken four weeks before he was killed in action. The other was a family photo of ten-year-old Ruth Hazel snuggled between her smiling mother and father during a vacation to SeaWorld in San Diego. All of them were gone now. The Viet Cong had killed Chuck, cancer had taken her mom, and Ruth Hazel had murdered her father. Ancient history.
She never told anyone about the shooting; not her mother, not her husband, not even her hairdresser. The cops did a brief investigation and decided it was a robbery by some Mexicans coming up from the border, although the savagery of the attack, the clear rage, made them suspect a family member had done it. But they had alibis, sitting at home watching TV and eating popcorn together. Had to be Mexicans.
Ruth Hazel had absorbed the lesson that her rapes had not been about sex as much as about her father exerting power over her until she became more powerful than he. Since then, the search for power was her fuel in everything from sex to academics to business to politics. She might allow a man equality, as she had with Chuck, but she would yield to no one, ever again.
That included Gordon Gates and Gerald Buchanan. When she became President of the United States, she would be the most powerful person not only in New America, but in the world. Privatizing the military would give her off- the-books strength that no other President had ever possessed because she would not have to bring politics into play to assassinate a foreign dictator or sink a ship bringing in drugs or make some terrorists disappear. Just a phone call to Gordon would do the job. Under her reign, New America would be secure.
Now discomforting news had come from Syria, and the three powerful people were alone in a long black limousine parked near the Lincoln Memorial. Gates had told his chauffeur to come back when he called on the cell phone.
“Is our plan in trouble, Gerald?” asked Ruth Hazel. “You said it was foolproof.” Idiot.
“No, Ruth Hazel, the plan is not in trouble. The Marine rescue fiasco actually plays into our hands,” Buchanan responded in a smooth tone, holding his tongue so as not to respond with an insult. “I’ve been riding the Pentagon and intel services hard. There won’t be another rescue attempt, and the Syrian government is in an uproar.”
“Middleton is still alive, Gerald. He was supposed to be killed in the rescue attempt. You even sent in that sniper as a backup. But they are all dead, and yet the general lives. Hardly a success so far.”
“Easy, Senator,” said Gates. “I also think it may turn out to be fortunate for us that the Marines screwed up on their own and did not have to be ambushed.” He took a folded piece of paper from his briefcase and handed it to Buchanan. “Look at this. My Shark Team over there just sent this list of all of the Marines who were killed in the crash, verified by their dog tags. I expect to have pictures soon to help with the identifications.”
“So what am I missing here, Gordon?” Senator Reed asked.
“Look, Ruth Hazel. We wanted to show your committee and anyone else we could get to listen that while the U.S. Marines created a disaster, two special operators from Gates Global had infiltrated the village so deeply that they were able to go in and get these identifications and even make contact with the French guide. We can now say that if the Pentagon had not intervened and screwed up, my people would already have brought General Middleton out of there, safe and sound.”
“Not really.”
“Of course not. The only difference is that instead of the ideal of having the Marine sniper shoot him while we take pictures, or having our Shark Team finish the job, we let the jihadists kill him.”
“I don’t care who shoots him or if he steps on a scorpion. I just do not want him coming back to testify before my committee next week.” She pushed back in the soft seat and folded her arms.
Buchanan finished reading the list and handed it to the senator. It didn’t add up. “Somebody got out?”
“Apparently,” Gates responded with a slight wave. “Some kid who is only a radio operator took off on a dirt bike that was on one of the helicopters. I know that country, and he won’t get far. The Syrians will pick him up before he can reach the border, and I predict that we will be seeing him on television soon. We can exploit that when it happens. Not really a bad thing, when you think of it, because his comments will show even further how fucked up the mission was.”
Buchanan nodded in approval, pleased that Rambo Reed had been slow to understand how any situation such as this was fluid and one had to adapt to change. “So the senator and I can use the identifications as additional proof of how efficient private contractors can be, and how we can accomplish missions better than rote-memory military teams that court an international incident every time they get involved.”
Ruth Hazel read the list without changing her expression and handed it back to Gates. “I don’t like it when plans fall apart, but I agree that this problem can be turned to our favor.”
Gates switched on his cold voice, totally unemotional. “Good. We’re back on the same page. If you two approve, I’ll fire off a signal to the sheikh in Basra to have his men execute the general in some interesting and public manner as soon as possible.”
“And your team on the ground?” Buchanan raised an eyebrow.
“They will not be seen, nor will they interfere. They will simply hand Middleton over to the sheikh’s people and get out. So I expect Middleton will be dead within a few hours, and we can get on with Operation Premier.”
CHAPTER 25
HE AWOKE WITH A START. THE tinny recorded voice of a muezzin was being broadcast from a loudspeaker attached to the minaret of the little town’s mosque, the summons to morning prayer. Gritty crumbs of sand had fallen into his mouth, and every one of the over two hundred bones in his body felt broken. The fear of falling completely asleep had kept Kyle hovering near the surface until he heard the familiar call: “Hasten to prayer!” Over and over and over, broadcast five times every day. It reminded him of Somalia, where he occasionally would shoot the broadcasting loudspeakers in revenge for the annoyance.
He looked at his watch and cursed. He had been out for almost an hour, much too long, and wondered what he had missed. There was no way to recover anything that might have happened during that time.
Swanson fumbled for a packet of MRE crackers, popped all eight out of the vacuum-packed seal, lumped peanut butter on them, and started chewing. Tasteless, but it would keep the digestive tract well plugged during the coming hours. Dessert was two Motrin tablets for his aches and pains, and some water, and then he exercised with some isometric stretches and told his body to stop bitching about being so thrashed. Swanson never liked that macho line about pain being a friend. He hurt like hell, but nothing was broken, and he would make time to moan later, with a pretty nurse in attendance. Right now, he had to get back to work.
He pulled out the powerful spotting scope that had been on his gear list, only to find it had broken in the crash and was useless. But the Steiner binos had survived, and their 10x32 viewing field would serve him almost as well. At five hundred meters, objects would appear about twenty times their normal size. He removed the lens caps, gave the glasses a quick wipe, rolled onto his stomach, and slowly raised his eyes above the edge of the hide.
He had no specific plan other than to observe for a while and, after that, play things by ear, with the big advantage of the enemy not knowing he was in their backyard. First he would conduct the basic recon to determine the security posted by the bad guys, what kind of patterns the guards had, and determine the weakest point and how to exploit it. After that, he would be able to make realistic, systematic decisions to set conditions of battle in his favor. What he saw through the binos made him smile.
People were going about their business. Shops were opening, goats were in the streets, women were cleaning around their homes, farmers moved to the fields, some dude was selling bread from a cart, and other men were settling down for some early-morning smoking and coffee. It was the normal tempo of a village. The big four- barreled Zeus still sat brooding beside the road, but there was no gunner in the seat. The fighting holes and trench lines were empty, and the guys with the guns were gone, except for two lazy guards sitting on the ground in a patch of shade beside the Zeus.
There was nothing Swanson could do until dark other than gather information, so he took out his logbook and started a detailed sketch of the village. He started with the building to his far left, where a woman swept her front stoop with an old broom, and slowly examined the small house with a left-to-right, up-and-down grid. Then he checked the surrounding streets and pathways.
