Major General Eric Nichols was so relieved he scarcely knew whether to
laugh or cry, and he rarely had been seen to do either. Actually, his
feeling was more one of surprise. For once something was going right.
After diddling and dabbling for almost ten hours, the Pentagon--Fort
Fuck-up--had actually made a decision. It was so unprecedented it might
even merit a place in the annals of military history. Such rare moments
were to be savored.
Maybe they had gotten tired of running computer "risk analyses." Or
maybe their damned computer had broken down. Whatever the reason,
however, the exalted pay grades upstairs had decided to get off dead
center and just let him assault the damned island. The op was a go.
The civilian assholes had been headed off at the pass, which meant one
less thing to worry about. Now all that remained was to figure how to
get the boys in safely and take down the place. And at last he knew
there were nukes. Great communication system the Army had, making sure
everybody had been briefed and was totally up to speed. Christ!
He sat still a moment after setting down the phone, breathing a short
prayer. Although appearances would not suggest it, he was in fact a
religious man at the core. He had been close enough to death enough
times to conclude that there were indeed no atheists in foxholes, and
he figured what was good enough for foxholes was good enough for the
rest of the time. Besides, what harm did it do?
"All right." He turned and glanced at Max Austin. "I guess the computer
has got everything planned. Looks like we can go in after all. How's
that for efficiency? Just as it gets bright enough for my guys to be
risking their asses, we get the green light. I'd say that's just about
perfect timing."
Austin nodded slowly, then rose to check the teletype machine to see if
the orders had really come through. This op was going to be by the book
or not at all. If it turned into a nuclear incident, there were going
to be inquiries up the wazoo.
"Looks like it's really going down," Austin said, yanking off a sheet.
"So I'll cut the orders and get us mobilized here. How long before you
can get your boys in the air?"
"Well, since this is going to have to be a daylight op, we might as
well use the Apaches and not fuck around. We'll just hit the bastards
with enough firepower to take out the command-control radars up on the
hill. That ought to shut down any chance they could get anything
launched. Then we've just got a hostage situation to deal with, and if
we have to, we can just starve them out. It'll only be a matter of
time. Maybe, God willing, we can keep the friendly casualties to a
minimum."
Austin did not like the image of the headlines Nichols's assault plan
suddenly conjured up. Any heavy property damage and there was going to
be hell to pay.
"I don't like it, Eric," he said. "The word I get is that we're not to
damage the infrastructure any more than is absolutely essential. Which
means no first strikes on command-and-control. This isn't Iraq, for
godsake; this is American property."
"You're saying my main orders are to save the infrastructure?"
Nichols's tone was deliberately wry.
"You've got it. I want you to get in there fast, take down the
hostiles, and get this situation the hell over with. That's the best
way to put this problem behind us and fast. The last thing this man's
army needs is a month's worth of gory headlines. Some quick casualties
can look unavoidable and be over with in a day. A long-drawn-out
situation can make us all look like jerks."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this."
"You didn't hear a damned thing, at least not from me. But if you know
what's good for the Army, and for the country, you'll get in there and
take down the place in a morning, neutralize the hostiles with extreme
prejudice, and let the Army write the headlines with a press release."
Nichols knew what he was hearing: the groundwork for "deniability." And
he despised it. This kind of "cover your ass" bullshit was one of the
things that gave him such contempt for desk jockeys.
"All right," he said smoothly, covering his disgust, "if you want to
play it that way, then we can sure as hell do it. I don't suppose my
opinion in the matter is of a hell of a lot of interest to the
Pentagon."
"Truthfully, no."
"Okay." He leaned back. "Doing it the Pentagon's way,
there would be two points we need to assault. There's the computer
control center, and then there's the launch facility. There're probably
terrorists at both, so we've got to take down both locations
simultaneously. And both, unfortunately, are underground, which also
means we've got to figure out how to get in, get down there, and do it
fast."
"What would be your insertion strategy, given what we've just
discussed?"
"Well, I've already got the alternatives rehearsed. Right now I think
we should stage a diversionary landing on the coast by a SEAL team,
then use the confusion to let the main assault team insert from
choppers. My main worry is not the hostages, but getting my own boys
shot up going in. It's going to be a cluster-fuck if some of those
bastards can get a bead on the task force that's arriving by chopper.
Could mean a lot of casualties. Let something go wrong and I don't even
want to think about how many of my men could get chewed up. But we've
been rehearsing that assault option and I think we can get twenty men
on the ground in about ninety seconds."
The difference, he was thinking, was that he had been planning to do it
under cover of darkness. To suddenly have to revise the entire strategy
and try and take down the place in broad daylight was calling every
assumption into question. But there was no time to try and devise yet
another assault. Shit. All because Washington kept changing its
signals, and when it did get them straight, somebody came up with this
bullshit about minimizing property damage. It was a goddamn outrage.
But that's what you had to expect when REMFs got mixed up in planning
an op. Shit.
"Well, twenty men should do it," Austin said. "And there'll always be
backup from the SEAL team that's providing the coastal diversion.
They'll be there, in-theater so to speak."
"Right." You don't know fuck-all about how an op like this goes down,
Nichols was thinking, and you have the balls to sit there and tell me
how to deploy my resources.
On the other hand, it sounds easy. Too easy. That's what's wrong with
it. The place would appear to be a crackerbox. But these bastards are
pros, so they must already have thought through everything we have.
Time to plan ahead of them.
"All right," Nichols concluded, rising. "I'll have everybody airborne
in fifteen minutes."