psych support.”
“Classic response,” Rodgers said. “They’re setting up for a siege.”
“That isn’t going to be an option,” Hood said. “The terrorists don’t want to negotiate, they don’t want anyone freed from prison. They want money. Doesn’t the UN have a special response unit?”
“Yes,” Rodgers said. “The UNS-Ops is a nine-person division of the security force. Established in 1977, trained by the NYPD in SWAT tactics and hostage situations, and never field-tested.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Rodgers said. “Why would anyone go after the United Nations? They’re harmless. We’ve got Darrell on another line. He says that NYPD policy is to contain and negotiate, to keep things from exploding. And if things do blow, to keep them localized. It sounds like the security team’s setting up to do that where you are.”
Hood felt like he’d been kicked in the gut.
“Darrell’s also in touch with a contact in the secretary-general’s office,” Rodgers went on. “Chatterjee is getting together with representatives of the affected nations.”
“To do what?” Hood asked.
“At the moment, nothing. There doesn’t appear to be any inclination to accommodate the terrorists’s demands. They’re still trying to figure out who these people are. They have the paper with the Swede’s script, but it was obviously dictated and written by the delegate. No help in tracing the terrorists.”
“So they just intend to sit this out.”
“For now,” Rodgers said. “That’s what the UN does.”
Hood’s sadness shaded to anger. He felt like going into the Security Council chamber himself and shooting the terrorists one after another. Instead, he turned and punched the bottom of his fist into the wall.
“Paul,” Rodgers said.
Hood had never felt so helpless in his life.
“Paul, I have Striker on yellow alert.”
Hood leaned the top of his head against the wall. “If you send them in here, the world — not just the federal government — the
“I have one word for you,” Rodgers said. “Entebbe. Publicly, the world condemned Israeli commandos for going into Uganda and rescuing those Air France hostages from Palistinian terrorists. But privately, every right- thinking individual slept a little prouder that night. Paul, I don’t give a damn what China or Albania or the secretary-general or even the president of the United States thinks of me. I want to get those kids out.”
Hood didn’t know what to say. The jump from yellow to red alert wasn’t even his decision to make, yet Rodgers wanted his approval. Something about that touched him deeply.
“I’m with you, Mike,” Hood said. “I’m with you, and God bless.”
“Go back to Sharon and sit tight,” Rodgers said. “I promise, we’ll get Harleigh out of there.”
Hood thanked him, shut the phone, and slipped it into his pocket. Mike’s gesture triggered tears he’d been fighting since this whole thing started. He stood there sobbing with his cheek pressed against the cold tile. After a minute, the bathroom door opened. Hood sniffed back his tears, stood, and unspooled some bathroom tissue. He wiped his eyes.
It was odd. Hood had told Sharon what she’d wanted to hear, that they’d save Harleigh, even though he didn’t entirely believe it. Yet when Mike said the same thing, Hood believed him. He wondered if all faith was so easily manipulated. A need to believe given a firm push.
He blew his nose and flushed the tissue down the toilet. There was one difference, he thought as he left the stall. Faith was faith, but Mike Rodgers was Mike Rodgers. And one of them had never let him down.
FOURTEEN
The Marine Corps base at Quantico is a sprawling, rustic facility that is the home to diverse military units. These range from the MarCorSysCom — Marine Corps Systems Command — to the secretive Commandant’s Warfighting Laboratory, a military think tank. Quantico is regarded as the intellectual crossroads of the Marine Corps, where teams of neologistic “warfighters” are able to devise and study tactics and then put them into operation in realistic combat simulations. Quantico also boasts some of the finest small-caliber weapons and grenade ranges, ground maneuver sites, light armor assault facilities, and physical challenge courses in the United States military.
Many of the base’s key functions actually take place at Camp Upshur, a training encampment located twenty-five miles northwest of the base inside Training Area 17. There, Delta Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Op-Center’s Striker division, and the Marine Reserve Support Units refine the techniques they learned when they were recruits. Comprised of twenty-one buildings that range from classrooms to Quonset hut-style squad bays, Camp Upshur can billet up to 500 troops.
Colonel Brett August liked Quantico, and he really liked Upshur. He spent his time equally between drilling his Striker squad and giving classroom lectures in military history, strategy, and theory. He also liked to put his people through rigorous sports competitions. To him, those were as much a psychological as a physiological workout. It was interesting. He had set it up so that the winners pulled extra duty. Garbage, kitchen, and latrine. Yet no one had ever tried to lose a basketball or football game, or even a weekend piggyback fight in the pool with their kids. Not once. In fact, August had never seen soldiers so happy to be doing drudge work. Liz Gordon was planning to write a paper on the phenomenon, which she’d dubbed “The Masochism of Victory.”
Right now, though, it was August who was suffering. Upon returning from action in Spain, promotions and long-in-the-works transfers had cost him some key Strikers. In the few days following the depletion, he’d been working hard with four new warfighters. They’d been concentrating on night targeting with 105mm Howitzers when the call came from General Rodgers to put the team on yellow alert. August had wanted to give the new members more time to integrate with the old, but it didn’t matter. August was satisfied that the new people were ready to see action if it became necessary. Marine Second Lieutenants John Friendly and Judy Quinn were as tough as August had ever seen, and Delta’s Privates First Class Tim Lucas and Moe Longwood were their new communications expert and hand-to-hand combat specialist. There was natural competitiveness between the two branches, but that was good. Under fire, the barriers vanished, and they were all on the same team. Skill-wise, the new people would fit in nicely with seasoned Strikers Sargeant Chick Grey, Corporal Pat Prementine — the boy- genius of infantry tactics — Private First Class Sondra DeVonne, burly Private Walter Pupshaw, Private Jason Scott, and Private Terrence Newmeyer.
A yellow alert meant gearing up and waiting in the ready room to see if the team was going to take the next step. The ready room consisted of a gunmetal desk by the door, which was manned round the clock by a desk sergeant; hard wooden chairs arranged classroom style — the brass didn’t want anyone getting too comfortable and going to sleep; an old blackboard; and a computer terminal on a table in front of the blackboard. In the event that they were needed, a Bell LongRanger fifteen-seat Model 205A-1 was being fired up on a nearby landing strip for the half-hour ride to Andrews Air Force Base. From there, the team would be flown by C-130 to the Marine Air Terminal at New York’s La Guardia Airport. Rodgers had said that Striker’s potential target was the United Nations building. The C-130 didn’t need a lot of runway, and La Guardia, though not a regular stop for military traffic, was the field closest to the United Nations.
The one thing the tall, lean, thin-faced colonel hated above all was waiting. A holdover from Vietnam, it gave him a sense of being out of control. When August was a prisoner of war, he had to wait for the next middle-of-the- night interrogation, the next beating, the next death of someone he served with. He had to wait for news, passed along in careful whispers, by new arrivals in the camp. But the worst wait of all came when August tried to escape. He had to turn back when his partner was wounded and needed medical care. He never got another chance to break out. His captors saw to that. He had to wait for the long-winded, heel-dragging, face-saving diplomats in Paris to negotiate his release. None of that taught him patience. It taught him that waiting was for people who had no other options. He’d once told Liz Gordon that waiting was the real definition of masochism.
