Rogue Forces

did not waste time greeting the two officers already in the room.

Wilhelm took a bottle of water from a small refrigerator in the corner, then sat down in a chair in front of the windows overlooking the Tank. “So, General, tell me about this Scion Aviation International outfit you work for,” he said as they waited for the others to arrive and get ready.

“Not much to tell,” Patrick said. He got a bottle of water for Jon and himself but did not sit down. “Formed a little over a year ago by—”

“About the same time you retired because of the bum ticker?” Wilhelm asked. Patrick did not respond. “How are you doing with that?”

“Fine.”

“There was some scuttlebutt about President Gardner wanting to prosecute you for some of the things that happened in Iran.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Right. You knew I was going to get a secure satellite call from my headquarters ten thousand miles away, but you don’t know if you’re the target of a White House and Justice Department investigation.” Patrick said nothing. “And you wouldn’t know anything about the rumors that you were involved in the death of Leonid Zevitin, that it wasn’t a skiing accident?”

“I’m not here to respond to crazy rumors.”

“Of course not,” Wilhelm said wryly. “So. The money must be pretty good to keep you in the game traveling all over the world with a friggin’ heart condition. Most guys would be sitting by the pool in Florida collecting their pension money and hitting on divorcees.”

“The heart is fine as long as I’m not traveling in space.”

“Right. So, how is the money in this business of yours? I understand the mercenary business is booming.” Wilhelm put on a feigned panicked expression as if he was afraid he had insulted the retired three-star general. “Oh my, I’m sorry, General. Do you prefer to call it ‘private military company’ or ‘security consultant’ or what?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you want to call it, Colonel,” Patrick said. A few of the field-grade officers getting ready for their briefing glanced over at their boss—some with humor in their expressions, others with fear.

Wilhelm gave a slight smile, pleased that he’d gotten a rise out of his VIP visitor. “Or is it just another name for the ‘Night Stalkers’? That’s the name of the outfit you’re rumored to have been part of a few years back, right? I remember something about those Libyan raids, am I right? The first time you got tossed out of the Air Force?” Patrick didn’t respond, which elicited another smile from Wilhelm. “Well, I think ‘Scion’ sounds a lot better than ‘Night Stalkers’ myself. More like a real security consultant outfit rather than a goofy, kids’ TV cartoon superhero show.” No response. “So how is the money, General?”

“I believe you know exactly how much the contract is for, Colonel,” Patrick said. “It’s not classified.”

“Yeah, yeah”—Wilhelm mugged—“now I remember: one year, with an option for three more years, for a whopping ninety-four million dollars a year! I believe it’s the largest single contract in the theater unless your name is Kellogg, Brand and Root, Halliburton, or Blackwater. But what I meant was, General, what’s your slice? If I don’t get a star in the next couple years, I might pull the plug, and if the money’s right, maybe you can use a grunt like me in Scion Aviation International. How about it, General, sir?”

“I don’t know, Colonel,” Patrick said expressionlessly. “I mean, what is it you do around here other than act like a big fucking blow-hard?”

Wilhelm’s face turned into a mask of rage, and he shot to his feet, nearly popping the water bottle in his fist apart in anger. He stepped within inches of Patrick, face-to-face once again. When Patrick neither tried to push him nor backed away, Wilhelm’s expression changed from fury to a crocodile’s smile.

“Good one, General,” he said, nodding. He lowered his voice. “What I’ll be doing from here on out, General, is making sure you’re doing what you’re contracted to do—nothing more, nothing less. You slip up, just a red cunt hair’s worth, and I’ll see to it that your sweet rich-bitch contract is canceled. I have a feeling you won’t be around very long. And if you put any of my men in any danger, I’ll solve your little heart problem by ripping it out of your chest and stuffing it down your throat.” He half turned to the others in the room. “Is my damned briefing ready yet, Weatherly?”

“We’re ready, sir,” one of the officers responded immediately. Wilhelm gave Patrick another sneer, then stormed off to his seat in the front row. Several field and company-grade officers were lined up to one side, ready to speak. “Good afternoon, sirs. My name is Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Weatherly, and I’m the regimental executive officer. This briefing is classified Secret, NOFORN, sensitive sources and methods involved, and the room is secure. This briefing will cover the findings of the regimental staff’s study of the surveillance plan presented by Scion Aviation International for—”

“Yeah, yeah, Weatherly, we’re not getting any younger here,” Wilhelm interrupted. “The good general here doesn’t need the whole Air War College dog and pony routine. Let’s cut to the chase.”

“Yes, sir,” the operations officer said. He quickly called up the proper PowerPoint slide. “The finding, sir, is that we’re just not that familiar with the technology being employed by Scion to know how effective it’ll be.”

“They spelled it out clearly enough, didn’t they, Weatherly?”

“Yes, sir, but…frankly, sir, we don’t believe it,” Weatherly said, nervously glancing at McLanahan. “One aircraft to patrol over twelve thousand square miles of ground and over one hundred thousand cubic miles of airspace? It would take two Global Hawks to do it—and Global Hawks can’t scan the sky, at least not yet. And that’s at the widest-scale MTI surveillance mode. Scion is proposing to have half- meter image resolution available at all times over the entire patrol area…with one aircraft? It can’t be done.”

“General?” Wilhelm asked with a slight smirk on his face. “Care to respond?” Turning to his staff officers, he interrupted himself by saying, “Oh, sorry, ladies and gents, this is retired Lieutenant-General Patrick McLanahan, the veep of Scion Aviation. Maybe you’ve heard of him?” The dumbfounded expressions and dropping jaws of the others in the room showed that they certainly did. “He decided to surprise us with his august presence today. General, my operations staff. The floor is yours.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Patrick said, getting to his feet and giving Wilhelm an exasperated look. “I look forward to working with you on this project, guys. I could explain the technology that Dr. Jonathan Masters here has developed to improve the resolution and range of ground and air target surveillance sensors, but I think it would be better to show you. Clear the airspace for us tonight and we’ll show you what we can do.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, General, because of an op we just found out about for tonight.” Wilhelm turned to a very young, very nervous-looking captain. “Cotter?”

The captain took a furtive step forward. “Captain Kelvin Cotter, sir, director of air traffic management. We just learned about a planned Iraqi operation that they requested backup for, sir. They’re going to a village north of Zahuk to do a raid on a suspected Kurdish bomb-making and underground smuggling operation—supposedly a pretty big tunnel complex connecting several villages and running under the border. They’ve requested persistent surveillance support: a dedicated Global Hawk, Reapers, Predators, Strykers, the works, plus Air Force, Marine, and Army close air and artillery support. The spectrum is saturated. We…excuse me, sir, but we just don’t know how your sensors will interact with everyone else.”

“Then pull all the other UAVs out and let us do all the support,” Jon Masters said.

“What?” Wilhelm thundered.

“I said, don’t waste all that gas and flying time on all those UAVs and let us do all the surveillance support,” Jon said. “We’ve got three times the image resolution of Global Hawk, five times the electro-optical sensor resolution, and we can give you better and faster aerial command and control for the ground support guys. We can do communications relay, act as a local area network router for a thousand terminals—”

“A thousand terminals?” someone exclaimed.

“At over three times the speed of Link sixteen—which isn’t that hard to beat anyway,” Jon said. “Listen, guys, I hate to break it to you, but you’ve been using last-generation stuff out here almost from day one. Block Ten Global Hawks? Some of you probably weren’t even in the military when they started using those dinosaurs! Predator? You’re still using low-light TV? Who uses LLTV anymore…Fred Flintstone?”

“How do you propose to tie in all those different aircraft into your communications network and the Tank…by tonight?” Wilhelm asked. “It takes days to link and verify an asset.”