“Roger on the
“Aye, aye, sir.” Chief Petty Officer Dwight Marshall made the personnel arrangements. When Garvey was gone, he switched to a private internal net.
A wall telephone rang deep in the stern of the ship. “Yes?” answered a deep voice.
“Double-Oh. We just picked up traffic from your boy Gunny Swanson. He’s coming out with a package. I think you need to be in on this. I’ll pass the word for a five-man protective detail to bring you up to meet with the MEU XO.” Marshall clicked off, found a Marine, and passed along the instructions. A team saddled up in full combat gear, locked and loaded, and headed down the ladders to escort Dawkins to the CCC. The executive officer of the Marine Expeditionary United would want his top hand in on planning whatever happened next, and no NCIS civilian investigators would be allowed to interfere.
Dawkins pulled on his boots. He had been comfortably whiling away the hours in a secluded area carved out deep belowdecks by creative sailors. It had a locked door, a television set with a lot of interesting videos, access to a nearby head with a toilet and a shower, a comfortable bunk, a tattered easy chair, a bunch of books and magazines ranging from
CHAPTER 53
JACK SHEPHERD OF CNN WAS having an early pint of beer in a Fleet Street pub with a leggy intern from the London office of the Cable News Network. Chrissie Rogers was blond and busty, a twenty- two-year-old journalism school graduate from Nebraska, and she was enchanted with every word the rugged, veteran foreign correspondent bestowed on her in the privacy of a small booth. He was wondering whether to get her in bed before or after an expense-account dinner. The cell phone clipped to his belt chimed and vibrated. He reluctantly answered: “Shepherd.”
“Ah, my friend Jack Shepherd of CNN. This is your friend from Basra.” The unmistakable voice of the Rebel Sheikh was smooth. Jack slid out of the booth and walked outside for privacy.
“Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?” No use wasting time with idle chatter. If the Rebel Sheikh called, it was for a reason.
“I am sorry to interrupt your afternoon, but I have something for you.” There was a pause. “This is on deep background, of course. My name and position cannot be used.”
“No problem, sir, and you’re not interrupting. I’m always on duty. What are we talking about?”
A gentle laugh. “Impatient Americans. Well, the kidnapped General Middleton of the Marine Corps has escaped his captors, with the assistance of a Marine sniper who survived the crash of the helicopters, a man named Kyle Swanson. The Syrian Army and intelligence forces have launched a wide search to find both of them.”
“Can I go with this, sir?”
“Oh, absolutely, Jack, providing you leave me out of your report. I just received a briefing from Syria. The manhunt is going on even as we are speaking, so you should hurry and get this on the air. Come see me again sometime, Jack.” The Rebel Sheikh gave that little laugh again. “And I really do apologize for interrupting your meeting with the lovely Ms. Rogers.”
By using Chrissie’s name, the Rebel Sheikh was telling the correspondent that he was being watched. Jack Shepherd didn’t care. He wasn’t in the television news business to be invisible. He returned to the table, tossed down the rest of his pint, and laid down some money for the drinks. “Come on, Chrissie. Back to the office. Time to do some work.”
A woman in Amman, Jordan, was calling a similar alert to the al Jazeera correspondent in his hotel room office.
It took the networks about an hour to prepare the story in their home offices, Atlanta for CNN and Doha for al Jazeera. Both slammed
The tent outside of Sa’ahn was an oven, and steamy mirages wiggled in the distance. Al-Shoum was sweaty, tired, and irritable from having been up all night. A folding cot was set up in one corner, and he lay down to catch a nap, with strict orders to be awakened if anything happened. He was not the one out there doing the searching, and his staff was running the map and radios, so there was nothing else he could do but wait. He could do that while sleeping. He checked for Logan and saw all three of the mercenaries lounging in the open bay of the helicopter, listening to music. Logan was smoking a cigarette. They were men bred for battle, dogs of war relaxing without a care while waiting to be unleashed. He looked at his wristwatch. Two o’clock. He would sleep no more than two hours.
General Hank Turner and Colonel Ralph Sims were asleep in the comfortable cabin of the little Gulfstream II-SP as it swept above the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains on its long flight from Alaska. Turner was dreaming of the moment when his big Boeing disappeared in a blast of flame. General Pete Brady turned the Gulfstream’s controls over to his copilot and made his way down the aisle.
“Wake up, boys,” he said, standing straight and stretching. “Shit’s hitting the fan.” He plopped down across from them as the two Marines blinked themselves awake and straightened in their seats.
Turner was instantly awake, but gave a shake of the head to clear it.
“Nope. Pentagon just relayed a call to you. Gunny Swanson contacted your
“What do we have out there that can be deployed in a hurry, Ralph?” Turner stared hard at the MEU colonel. Sims had seen that battle stare from Hank Turner before. The man was getting ready for a fight.
“The Force Recon TRAP team is off the board because of the accident in the desert, but we wouldn’t want to be stealthy this time anyway. I recommend sending in two full platoons, aboard several helicopters, with Cobra attack helicopters on guard and appropriate cover by fast-movers up top. Lay a secure box all around Middleton and the gunny, with nothing going in or out except us.”
“How long would it take?”
Sims recalled the pre-mission briefing and did some silent calculations. “Depending on where the ships are, sir, they should be able to launch within an hour of getting the green light, since they know the coordinates. Less than an hour flying time in, no more than fifteen minutes on the ground, and then get back home.”
Turner took out his fountain pen again and scribbled a note. He turned to Pete Brady. “Is Air Force One back in Washington yet?”
“No, sir. I just checked. They are over Arkansas.”
“Okay. I need to talk to the President directly and divert Air Force One back toward us. Find me a secure air force base where they can put down with tight security and we can meet them as soon as possible.”
“Got it,” said Brady. “What else?”
Turner handed him the note he had written. “Transmit this to the Fleet and the MEU, with a confidential copy to the President, encrypted and for his eyes only. Launch the rescue immediately!”
Brady whistled. “Wow. Hank, you’re taking a big chance here. You need some big-league paperwork to do this.”
“Fuck it. We don’t have the time. I’m sending the team in VOCO, on the Verbal Orders of the Commander. This comes straight from me, damn it. After you send it, have my staff alert the other chiefs.”
Colonel Sims waited for Brady to step into the Gulfstream’s communications suite. “Good on ya, sir.”
“Tired of all this fucking around, Ralph. I’m not going to lose those two brave men. When you wear four stars,
