Middleton leaned back against the seat. “Not the way I’d do it, Gunny.”
“I know. It’s hard to stay still when the natural inclination is to haul ass, but this is how to best exfiltrate enemy territory and get out of here alive. Right now, they don’t know where we are, and probably will conclude that we are heading straight for Israel. So we have to do something else, and going north to Lebanon isn’t an option.”
The countryside rolled by as the sky lightened to a warm gray, and as the very edge of the fiery sun showed above the horizon and into his eyes, he found the road and turned right. The Syrians would try to cordon off all of the escape possibilities. Swanson felt exposed and vulnerable with morning coming on so rapidly, the sun seeming to point at him, giving away their position. There was nowhere to hide.
CHAPTER 48
HELLO, RALPH. AREN’T YOU supposed to be on the other side of the world?” General Hank Turner returned Colonel Ralph Sims’s salute and shook his hand. Turner introduced Sims to a three-star air force general with short silver hair who sat behind a huge desk in a spacious office where pictures of airplanes covered the walls.
Lieutenant General Peter Brady, commander of the 11th Air Force, also shook Sims’s hand, and his dark eyes examined the disheveled appearance of the commander of the 33rd Marine Expeditionary Unit. “You look a little worse for wear, Colonel. Have a chair. Coffee?”
“Thank you, sir, I will. I just came in on a meteor, that NASA X43-D scramjet.” Sims was wearing a borrowed air force jacket over his short-sleeved summer uniform. What was appropriate wear in the warmth of the Med offered little comfort at Elmendorf Air Force Base outside Anchorage, Alaska. Only a few hours earlier, his uniform had been crisp and starched, and now it was a mass of deep wrinkles.
General Brady’s eyes narrowed. “Colonel, there is no such aircraft, but I would like to know how the hell you were riding in it.”
“Yes, sir, I understand. I’ve never heard of such a plane either, and I’m not quite sure how I ended up in the back seat. The pilot told me to get in, and I did.” He sat down, wrapping his palms around a warm mug. “Forgive my appearance. I barely had time to change out of the flight suit before your command sergeant major hustled me over here.”
General Turner refilled his own cup. “I heard you were on the way with something special, so I sat here while my plane kept being repaired over and over. I heard that the Sergeants’ Network has been busy, so a lot of pretty smart people must think your news is important enough to hold the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on the ground. I am curious.” He sat in a big leather chair and crossed his legs. “Let’s have it, Ralph.”
Sims took a long drink of coffee and felt the warmth go all the way to his stomach. “No disrespect to General Brady, sir, but I believe you should have this on an ‘ears only’ basis.”
Turner waved his hand. “Pete Brady and I go back more than twenty years. I value his counsel. He can listen to whatever you have. Proceed.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll give you the short version, then answer any questions that I can.” He handed the plastic-enclosed envelope and note to Turner and stood by silently while the two generals passed the order between them.
“This was delivered personally to Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson by the senior military aide of National Security Advisor Buchanan,” the colonel told them. “It was to be destroyed as per instructions from Buchanan, but the Gunny managed to sneak a copy, which was what the aide unknowingly burned. This is the original,” Sims explained. “Then Swanson went in with the Force Recon team on the Middleton mission as scheduled, but did not plan to obey the order. When the choppers crashed and it was assumed Swanson was dead, my Top brought that letter to me. Swanson had planned to bring General Middleton out of there safely.”
Brady slid the letter back into its envelope. “So you flew halfway around the world to hand-deliver this to Hank?”
“Yes, sir. It was too hot for a messenger and I intentionally bypassed a couple of layers in the chain of command. This is way above my pay grade, General, but I think it has to be illegal for a civilian bureaucrat who has never been elected to anything to use the clout of the White House to order the assassination of a kidnapped American general.”
Turner had uncapped an elegant old-style fountain pen and made some notes in a little book. “Bet your ass it is. Does Buchanan know that you were coming to see me?”
“I don’t see how, sir,” said Sims, taking another sip of coffee. “The only people who knew about the letter, other than Buchanan and his aide, were Swanson, Top Dawkins, and me. Now Swanson is dead. Since Buchanan believes the letter was destroyed, he would see no loose ends.”
General Pete Brady glanced out of the window. It was dark outside. Rain scratched at the glass. “He figured it out, Colonel.”
“Sir?” Sims asked.
“About an hour ago, Homeland Security jacked the terrorist warning level all the way up to Red, and an attack in Washington killed the Jordanian ambassador.” He handed Sims a news story downloaded from the Internet. “Not that we have much to worry about up here in Alaska, but it certainly got our attention.”
“I received a separate message, ultra-encrypted, from the National Command Center, authorized by none other than Gerald Buchanan,” said General Turner, beginning to pace around the office. “You are to be arrested on sight, on a charge of treason, no less. You are to be held here until Homeland Security personnel can pick you up for questioning. There’s a cheery thought. How do you reckon he knew to send that message about you, who are supposed to be in the Med, to me, who is stuck up here in Alaska?”
Ralph Sims bit his lip. Arrested?
General Brady reread the order. “We couldn’t figure why he would want you in custody so bad. Now we know. The alert level should have nothing to do with you being tagged as a bad guy, nor with the strange message direct to Hank, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Our question now becomes whether Buchanan is acting on his own.” Turner moved to a wall map. “The President was on the campaign trail tonight out in San Diego, one of those thousand-bucks-a-plate things. He was glad-handing the faithful when he got word of the attack in Washington and authorized raising the alert level. He skipped the speech and got back aboard Air Force One. They’re already in the air.” He tapped the map. “We’re up here outside of Anchorage, and before the sergeants intervened, I was en route to Beijing for a meeting that has been six months in the planning. Naturally, I’ve cancelled the China trip. Instead, I’m going to rendezvous with Air Force One when it lands at Andrews. You’re coming with me, Ralph.”
“I just left there,” Sims said with a groan.
“Quit whining, Colonel. I hate air force weenies to see a Special Ops CO whimper like a little girl. Anyway, you can sleep on the way back, and I’ve got some good news for you. Seems that your Gunny Swanson lived through the crash after all, and that General Middleton has gone missing from his captives in Syria. Swanson apparently busted him free and has been raising holy hell in the town where he was held. They’re on the run, with the Syrians hot on their tails. Things are getting interestinger and interestinger.”
Brady turned to his computer terminal and called up a program to show the weather. “This rain squall is just passing through, and the sergeants have assured me that all of our aircraft are suddenly ready to fly again. They’re warming up my Gulfstream II/SP even as we speak. I say let’s go meet the Boss.” The 11th Air Force commander went to a closet, took out a flight suit, stripped to his underwear, and pulled it on.
“We’ll go back with Pete aboard his Gulfstream,” said Turner. “I could use my own big-ass plane that was going to haul me over the Pole to China, but Pete’s toy is a lot more comfortable,” Turner said. He looked at a big clock on the wall. “Matter of fact, the big bird will be taking off in a few minutes. Bet we beat them to Washington.”
“Am I under arrest?” asked Sims.
“Oh, hell, no,” snapped Turner. “We don’t take orders from that overblown asshole. Buchanan’s up to no good, it has something to do with our Marines getting killed, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
Sims read the news report about the terrorist attack in Washington while the two generals finished getting ready. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed.
“What ‘Oh, shit’?” asked Turner.
