Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (83 page)

           
"Find him,” the President
ordered bitterly. "I don’t care if you have to send every fighter in the
force to do it. Find him. No more sneak attacks.” The President glanced again
at Goff, then at Terrill Samson, "General, you can help me get in contact
with McLanahan.”

           
"Sir?”

 
          
"That
subcutaneous transceiver system you use at Dreamland.” the President said,
pointing to his left shoulder with a jabbing motion. "That works almost
anywhere in the world, doesn’t it?”

 
          
"Yes,
sir. But I’ve attempted to contact General McLanahan and other members of his
team several times. No response.”

           
"He thinks you betrayed him.”

           
Samson looked frozen for a moment,
then shrugged. "I don’t know what he—” He stopped when he saw Thom’s
knowing glance, then nodded. "Yes, he does, sir.”

 
          
"He
thinks I betrayed him. too,” the President said. "He thinks I'm selling
the
United States
down the river.”

 
          
"Sir,
it shouldn’t matter what McLanahan thinks,” Samson said emphatically.
"He’s a soldier. He was ... I mean, he is supposed to follow orders.”

 
          
"You
know where he is, don’t you. General?”

 
          
Samson
swallowed hard. "Sir?”

           
“McLanahan may not be answering you,
but those implants allow you to track and monitor anyone wearing them,” the
President said. “You said so yourself. You know exactly where he is, but you
haven’t told General Venti or Secretary Goff. Why?”

 
          
“What
in hell is this, Samson?” Joint Chiefs Chairman Venti exclaimed. “You’ve been
keeping this information from us the whole time?”

 
          
“No
one ever ordered me to locate McLanahan, sir,” Samson said.

 
          
“You're
busted. General,” Venti thundered. “That kind of insubordinate bullshit just
landed you in hock.”

 
          
“Permission
to speak freely, sir?”

 
          
“
Denied
/”
Venti shouted.

 
          
“Hold
on, General.” the President interrupted. “Go ahead. General Samson.”

 
          
Samson
paused, but only for a moment He gave the President a firm look. “Sir. I don’t
like what McLanahan’s doing— but only because he’s doing my job.”

 
          
“Your
job?”

 
          
“My
job is to track down wack-jobs like Kazakov and his stealth fighter-bomber and
knock it out of the sky, not try to knock down one of our own.” Samson said.
“Sir. you’re not prepared or not willing to get involved in this matter, that’s
fine. You’re the President and my commander-in-chief, and your decision is the
final word. But when honest fighting men like Patrick McLanahan do decide to
act, they shouldn’t be persecuted by their own government.”

 
          
Samson
looked at Venti, then General Hayes, the others in the Oval Office, and then
President Thom. “If you order me to find McLanahan and bring him in, sir. I’ll
do it. I’ll use every means at my disposal to do it.”

 
          
“Fine.
I’ll give you a direct order, General Samson,” the President said. He paused
for a moment, then said: “General, I want you to install one of those
subcutaneous transceivers in me. Today. Right now.”

 
          
"Sir?"

           
“You heard me. Make the call, get
one out here immediately.”

           
“But... but what about McLanahan?”
Busick retorted. “How is that going to stop him?”

 
          
“I’m
going to talk with him. I want to hear his voice,” Thom said. “If he's turning
into some kind of high-tech terrorist or supervigilante. I need to find out for
myself. If I determine he or the ones that fly with him are unstable. I'll send
every last jet and every last infantryman out to nail his ass.”

Tirane
,
Republic
of
Albania

Two nights later

           
For the second night in a row, the
crowds had gathered in front of the four-story office building across from the
German embassy in the Albanian capital of Tirane, the headquarters of the
United Nations Protection Force, composed mostly of Russian and German troops,
assigned to patrol the southern Albania-Macedonia border. Since the stories had
broken in the world media about the deal between Pavel Kazakov and members of
the Russian government, massive protests had broken out all over the Balkans,
but none larger or louder than in
Tirane
. The German government, considered Russian
collaborators, became equal targets for the protesters.

 
          
Tonight’s
protests were the worst. Albanian troops were called in early, which only
angered the protesters even more. Albanian labor unions, upset because Kazakov
had not used union labor to build his pipeline, led the protests, and the army
and police were not anxious to confront the unions. The crowd was unruly,
surging back and forth between the United Nations headquarters and the German
embassy. Shouting quickly turned to pushing, and the police and army had
trouble controlling the massive crowds. Pushing turned to fighting, fighting
turned to rock and bottle throwing, and rocks and bottles turned into Molotov
cocktails.

 
          
Virtually
unheard and unnoticed in all the confusion and grow ing panic in the streets
was the wail of an extraordinarily loud siren, but not a police or fire
siren—it was an air raid warning siren. Moments later, the lights on all
Albanian government buildings automatically started to extinguish—another automatic
response to an attack warning dating back to the German blitzkriegs of World
War II. The sudden darkness, combined with the lights of emergency vehicles and
fires on the streets, sent some protesters into flights of sheer panic.

 
          
The
police had just started to deploy riot-control vehicles with water and tear gas
cannons when hell broke loose. There w as an impossibly bright flash of light,
a huge ball of fire, and a deafening explosion that engulfed an entire city
block, centered precisely on the German embassy. When the smoke and fire
cleared, the
Germany
embassy was nothing more than a smoking hole and a pile of rubble.
Everyone within a block of the embassy—protesters, police, army, embassy
workers, and curious onlookers—were either dead or dying, and fires had broken
out for several blocks around the blast.

The President’s study, The White House,
Washington
, D.C,

A short time later

 
          
“The
devastation is enormous, sir,” Director of Central Intelligence Douglas Morgan
reported, reading from the initial reports on the incident. “The entire
Germany
embassy is gone—nothing but a pile of
concrete. Police and news media estimated a crowd of perhaps five thousand was
outside the embassy involved in the protest, with another five to ten thousand
police, news media, and onlookers within the blast radius. The joint United
Nations-NATO headquarters across the street was severely damaged—casualty
estimates there could top three hundred dead or injured.”

 
          
President
Thomas Thom sat quietly in his study next to the Oval Office. He was dressed in
a casual shirt and slacks and wearing only a pair of sandals, having been
awakened shortly after going to bed with news of the terrible blast in Tirane.
His bank of television monitors w ere tuned to various world news channels, but
he had the sound muted on all of them and was listening to his Cabinet
officials feeding him reports as they came in, staring not at the televisions
but at a spot on the wall, staring intently as if he could see for himself the
horror unfolding thousands of miles away.

 
          
“Sir,
the situation is getting worse by the minute,” Morgan said urgently. “The
German government has ordered troops bivouacked in three Albanian port cities
to move eastward toward the capital—the number of troops deploying into the
capital
Tirane
is estimated so far to top three thousand.
An estimated five thousand Russian troops are moving from outlying camps in
Serbia
and
Macedonia
into the cities and are setting up
so-called security checkpoints—it looks like an occupation.”

 
          
“They're
overreacting.” Thom said in a low voice. Secretary of Defense Robert Goff
looked at the President with a surprised look on his face, as if Thom had just
grown donkey’s ears. Was that a trace of hesitation, maybe even
doubt
.
in Thom’s voice? “I need facts, Doug, not speculation or newspaper hyperbole.
If it’s an invasion force, tell me so. If it’s a redeployment of troops in
response to a major terrorist incident, tell me that.”

 
          
“It’s
a major redeployment of troops, obviously in a defensive response to the
explosion in
Tirane
, that can easily escalate into an invasion force.” Morgan narrowed his
eyes to emphasize his last point: “And that’s not some newspaper’s assessment,
sir. that's
mine."

 
          
“Thank
you. Doug,” the President said, not seeming to notice Morgan’s emphatic
response but with a touch of apology in his voice nonetheless. “Any more
details about this air raid warning that was issued moments before the blast?”

 
          
“No
information about that, sir,” Morgan said. “The Albanian Ministry of Defense
claims the Interior Ministry ordered them to blow the horn to try to disperse
the protesters. There is no word from the Transportation Ministry on whether or
not there was an unidentified aircraft over the capital. Russian or German
radar stations claim they were not tracking any unidentified aircraft.”

 
          
“So
there could have been an unidentified aircraft—only no one is admitting that
one got by them,” Secretary of Defense Robert Goff observed.

 
          
“What
other forces are mobilizing?” the President asked.

           
“German forces in
Albania
; Russian forces in
Serbia
and
Macedonia
. Any troops on the move in
Russia
? In the Commonwealth states? Any Russian
naval forces moving? Any Russian or German tactical air forces?”

 
          
Morgan
shook his head, glanced quickly at his briefing notes to double-check, then
shook his head. “No, sir. Only tactical airlift and sealift units, and they
look like routine support missions.”

 
          
“I
would think that an ‘occupation’ force would need a lot of support units set in
motion fairly quickly for an occupation of an entire capital city to be
successful,” the President observed. “And few successful occupation forces leap
into action from a standing start. I don’t see an invasion happening yet.”

 
          
“Not
that we could do anything about it if it
was
happening!” Goff commented.

 
          
“Perhaps
not,” the President said, with only a hint of annoyance in his voice.

 
          
“I
can’t believe we are going to sit here and do nothing!” Goff said. “Shouldn’t
we be calling the German chancellor and the Russian president, warning them
that their actions resemble an occupation force and that we object to such a
move? Shouldn’t we be calling the Italians or the Bosnians or our NATO allies,
reassuring them that we’re at least monitoring the situation and perhaps
discussing some options?”