an old road that sloped down into a valley, edging onto a flat plateau. “Here,” he said. The trucks pulled up, nose to tailgate, and the team got out and stretched.
Foley walked up to join Ledford. “Why the grin? This place looks like the dark side of the moon.” The flood had laid waste high up the banks before receding.
“I think we can set up the camp here,” Ledford said. “Water is down quite a bit, and there is plenty of room to spread out. And look up at the other end of the valley, Dave. That big bridge is new; hell, they’re still working on it. Traffic, people, and supplies could feed over it and down to us without a problem. The valley is perfect for air resupply drops, too. Maybe the bridge people could lend us a bulldozer to carve an airstrip.”
Foley had a pair of binoculars. “There are big machines at work up there, but I see trucks, too. So maybe it is in operation. You’re right.”
They joined the others, who had spread some blankets under stunted trees and laid out a lunch. Having some time off from the misery of the camps was reinvigorating. Afterward, some of them stretched out in the shade for quick naps, while Ledford took a walk farther down the road, alone. Although the driver, who carried a pistol, was the only member of the team with a weapon, they felt safe; medical workers helping people in need, no matter what their politics, were usually immune from any severe threat.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said with a loud laugh. He had come across an old steel trestle bridge that had been taken out by the flood, and the eastern end was canted down into the water. It reminded him of home, of an almost identical bridge where he and his sister, Beth, once played. He found his cell phone, snapped a picture, added the text message REMEMBER THIS? and sent it to her.
The group was stirring again when he got back. “Come on, everybody. Let’s go for a walk and get a feel for the valley as our possible refugee camp site, then pay a visit to the big bridge at the other end. They will be our new neighbors, so we might as well pay our respects to whoever is in charge.” There was a path along the western side of the river, and they followed in line. The afternoon was sunny, and a wind pushing through the valley cut the heat. This could be a good place.
2
U.S. MARINE GUNNERY SERGEANT Kyle Swanson was in the Mixing Bowl, punching without much success through the clogged web of highways around Washington, D.C., getting away from the Pentagon parking lot, inch by inch, heading for a shootout in the Ghost House. The tinted windows of the gray Taurus rental were closed tight, and the air conditioner fought bravely against the thousands of exhaust pipes in the rush hour traffic and the stifling heat of late August. There was a reason that politicians and lobbyists abandoned Washington to the tourists and the nation to its fate in the teeth of the brutal summer, and he was happy to be leaving for a few days as the highways, monuments, and stone government buildings sucked up the hard rays of the burning sun and cooked. The TV weather people had showed their maps and grimly explained that it was unseasonably hot, as if it hadn’t happened every year since the government moved here from Philadelphia a couple of centuries ago. A taxi probably headed for Dulles swerved in front of a white SUV, which braked hard, causing a tailgating sedan to swerve into an adjoining lane, and traffic in two lanes died a temporary honking and swearing death. Swanson stopped, found a sports talk radio station on the Sirius, and waited for a report on the close of training camp for the New England Patriots or the pennant race for the Boston Red Sox. In three minutes everyone was lurching forward again.
He rode the I-395 southwest and gradually put the District of Columbia in his rearview mirrors. Across the Beltway, traffic thinned out around Springfield. Things weren’t as bad when the highway turned into I-95, and he was able to speed up, although he had plenty of time. His destination was Virginia Beach, where the Naval Special Warfare Development Group was headquartered, and the shoot with SEAL Team Six was scheduled for 0700 tomorrow morning. The only hitch was that Senior Chief Richard Sheridan had asked him to come down early for a private talk over a pitcher of beer. The Navy senior chief and the Marine gunnery sergeant had known each other for fifteen years and had worked together in some unfriendly places that had funny names. If Rockhead wanted to chat, that was cool.
Sheridan was waiting in a waterfront bar that specialized in serving military personnel. The whole Tidewater area was a huge sprawl of current and former military men and women and their families, from all branches of the service, but predominantly Navy. Kyle thought the squids could probably dig up a crew for a battleship just by posting a note at the nearest 7-Eleven. They sat at a table on the deck away from the crowd, beside a wooden rail that had been split by the sun and rain. A huge anchor jutted from the sand of a little garden, as if dropped off by a passing ship. Nets and old buoys and military memorabilia passed for decoration, and bare bulbs hanging overhead painted the place with light.
After trading insult greetings and catching up on old friends while the server brought beer for Rockhead and ice water with a slice of lime for Kyle, then took their orders for steaks, Rockhead got to the problem. “You still got security clearances all the way up to God, right?”
Kyle nodded. He was the key operator for the deep black unit known as Task Force Trident and answered directly to the president of the United States. “What’s up, Senior Chief?”
“I need your professional assessment on one of my guys. Not a damn thing wrong with his performances; in fact, he’s top of the heap in Team Six.”
Swanson raised an eyebrow. Six was the elite of the elite, the guys who finally nailed Osama bin Laden. Nobody got into that secretive, handpicked bunch without exceptional skills.
“Petty Officer First Class Ryan Powell is maybe the best shooter we’ve got. He can punch holes in the ten- ring with either hand, and even while holding a weapon upside down. We picked him for the Special Warfare Development Group a few years ago because of exceptional performance. He is still sort of young, twenty-seven, but is just the kind of pup we love to groom for better things. He’s got all the skills: powerful, can swim forever, and has the reflexes of a cat after a bug. His teammates call him Captain America.”
“Sounds like your typical Team Six Superman. What’s the problem?” Kyle sipped the water.
Rockhead ran a palm across the bristly hair on his tanned scalp as ropy muscles worked in his forearms. “My gut is the problem, Gunny. You know how Superman has problems with that kryptonite shit? Well, I’m looking past the fitness reports. There’s something missing with Powell, and I can’t put my finger on it. I want you to work out in the Ghost House with him tomorrow, get up close and personal, put him under pressure, and give me a personal reading.”
“What will I be looking for, Rock?”
“I’m thinking Superman has turned coward.”
Kyle let that comment sit undisturbed for a while, but it was if a small elephant had just taken the third chair at the table. Swanson considered SEALs to be among the best fighters on the planet, so the Rock worrying that one of his best boys might be cracking up came as a shock. Some electric country music filtered out to the deck from the bar inside. “So, why me?”
“I want an outsider’s unofficial viewpoint that can be kept between the two of us. If you think he’s fine, he stays. I don’t want to ruin his reputation and career and usefulness, but not everyone is cut out for this work, and I can’t put other lives in jeopardy because this guppy has lost his nerve.”
“So how do we go about this… unofficial… examination?”
“I’ve paired you up to go into the Ghost House with him tomorrow morning. Put him into some unexpected pressure situations that go beyond the fixed scenario and parameters. He will be expecting it just to be another training exercise that he can coast through on sheer physical ability. You make it something else. Force him. Press him hard.”
Swanson thought a bit, then nodded. “You can dial up any scenario you want in the Ghost House, right?”
Rockhead smiled. “Almost any exterior or interior except your sister’s bedroom, and they may have that, too.”
One thing that Kyle Swanson really enjoyed about training with SEAL Team Six was its seemingly limitless budget. The squids always got first crack at the experimental stuff that was way out on the edge of the combat curve, and they burned money faster than a Wall Street banker figuring his annual bonus. Trying to determine how best to fight tomorrow’s wars was what the Special Warfare Development Group was all about.
The Ghost House represented a quantum leap in close quarters battle training. Usually, CQB houses were
