More Than Courage (39 page)

for a moment. "When?" was all he asked.

Delmont didn't bother to turn around as he answered. "Word came in while you were in the after-action. I saw no need to disrupt you then with this news."

Shaddock nodded in grim agreement as he continued across the room to join the two officers before the poster. "That leaves us how many?"

"According to DIA, five," Delmont muttered. "And if what the CIA says is true, four."

"What do you make of that information, Delmont?"

Delmont's hesitation in answering Shaddock was caused not by the disagreement between the two intelligence agencies but rather by something Palmer had passed on to him earlier that evening.

Glancing up, he looked at the adjutant, then Shaddock, before walking into the latter's office without saying a word. Taking the hint, the battalion commander instructed his adjutant that 302

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he was not to be disturbed, before following the special ops plans officer into his own office and closing the door behind him.

After the two lieutenant colonels had taken their seats, several minutes passed before either spoke. It was Delmont who broke the silence by articulating a concern that both men had but which neither had yet dared share with anyone else. "There is an opinion being expressed by some," the special ops plans officer stated hesitantly,

"that we may have reached the point of diminishing returns."

Just to be sure he understood what Delmont was saying, Shaddock restating this concept in his own words. "The people back in Washington are concerned that the losses incurred in a rescue attempt can no longer be justified."

"That's about the size of it," Delmont muttered.

"What do you think?"

The special ops plans officer looked up at the man who would have to lead the ground force into Syria. He could no longer answer such a question with any degree of honesty. Somewhere along the line he had lost all sense of objectivity. He didn't know when he had crossed that line. Nor did he know what part of this whole screwed-up affair had shoved him over it. All he knew for certain was that he could no longer render anything resembling an unbiased opinion. Somewhere between the unreasonable sense of guilt he felt for sending RT Kilo on mission after mission and the prideful desire to succeed that all plans officers possess when it comes time to see one of their creations given life through to its

execution, he had lost anything resembling objectivity.

Sensing that he wasn't going to get an answer to his last question, Shaddock dropped it and turned to the issue at hand.

"Despite the results of tonight's training exercise, I believe that this battalion is about as ready as it's going to get." With a gesture that spoke of his frustrations as well as mental weariness Shaddock threw his hands out. "I'm not sure if we will ever be fully prepared to execute this thing. There are simply too many imponderables, too many loose ends. Perhaps the whole thing has MORE THAN COURAGE

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become too complex. Instead of being a carefully crafted military operation, it's become something more akin to a crap shoot that no one seems to be willing to take. What I do know," he stated as he struggled to regain a firm, confident air, "is that within the next few days, we are going to reach our own point of diminishing returns."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, Colonel," Shaddock explained, "that I can only keep my men holding in the starting blocks for just so long. They watch the news and listen to talk radio. They can count just as well as we can. At some point they're going to begin asking themselves if we are serious about this or if we're simply jerking them around just to make it look like the army is serious about doing something. One by one, each and every man out there, officer and enlisted alike, will find himself coming to the conclusion that we're not going. Whether they're right doesn't matter. Once enough of them decide that this has all been one big bluff, one big media scam they're going to start slacking off. The edge that we have been working so hard to put on this unit will begin to dull. Once that happens, nothing I nor anyone else says will be able to turn it around."

"What is it you expect from me?"

Having regained his poise and the fire that he used to drive himself and his men to achieve the near impossible, Shaddock leaned forward and peered into Delmont's eyes. "You're the liaison between this battalion and the decision makers in Washington.

I want you to go back to whoever it is you need to see and tell them that the time has come to make a decision. We either go and go soon, or ..."

"Or what?" Delmont demanded. "We abandon our fellow soldiers to their fate?"

"Better that," Shaddock countered, "than send more to join them."

"And if those people back in Washington give us a resounding

'Wait, out,' what then?"

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Slumping back into his seat, Shaddock folded his hands in his lap and looked down at them. "I am a soldier. I follow orders. I do not believe it is proper for a subordinate commander to issue an ultimatum to his superior or tell him when it's time to shit or get off the pot. But in this case I do believe the time is drawing near when I will have no choice but to go back to my superiors and lay before them the same thing I just explained to you." After a slight pause, Shaddock glanced up at Delmont. "I do not deny that we have a responsibility to those men in Damascus. But as the commanding officer of this battalion I owe my men the same consideration. Sending these people to fight a battle they are no longer psychologically prepared to fight is worse than foolish. It's criminal."

Of the two lieutenant colonels assigned to deal with the problem, only one would be held accountable for the end result. The man who generates the plan, no matter how brilliant it may be, is seldom remembered. Whether he deserves it or not, it is the commanding officer who receives the laurels if successful, or eternal shame and damnation if not. Delmont appreciated this brutal fact of military life and found that he had no choice. "When do you want an answer?"

"Forty-eight hours," Shaddock stated without hesitation. "If I don't have a definitive H-hour by then, I will stand this battalion down."

Delmont rose to his feet, nodding in agreement as he did so.

"Fair enough. You'll have your answer by then or my endorsement that Fanfare is no longer a viable option."

Arlington, Virginia

13:05 LOCAL (17:05 ZULU)

Within the military, liaison is defined as that contact or intercommunications that is maintained between military forces to

ensure mutual understanding and unity of purpose and action.

Liaison is most often conducted between combat units operating MORE THAN COURAGE

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side by side, a support unit attached to a command it has been assigned to provide services to or, as with Robert Delmont, between a higher headquarters and a subordinate command.

Without exception the liaison officer leaves his organization with the mandate of compelling compliance with the plans, goals, or doctrine of the parent organization that dispatched him. If the duration of this liaison mission is short-lived, executing these duties are not very difficult. If, however, the liaison officer is required to remain with the subordinate or sister unit for a protracted period, something strange happens. While the liaison officer never forgets whom he is working for on an intellectual level, living with the new unit begins to have unintended consequences.

At the subconscious level the experience of sharing the physical hardships and tribulations of the host unit, dealing with its personnel twenty-four/seven, and even sharing its food creates a bond of kinship between the liaison officer and the unit. In time, rather than being an outside enforcer tasked with imposing his commander's agenda, a liaison officer can find himself becoming an advocate within his own command for the unit he was detached to.

This is not all bad, particularly when the parent headquarters is far removed from the reality in which the subordinate unit is operating. Just how great this chasm can become is startling to someone who makes the leap from one world to the next in the span of a few hours. Robert Delmont left Fort Irwin just before dawn for the commercial airport in Ontario, California. From there he flew on to D.C. Once back in Virginia he went straight to the Pentagon.

In the Mojave Desert the dominant attitude had been one of nervous anticipation. The officers and enlisted men of the 3rd of the 75th Ranger Battalion knew what they were preparing for and were doing everything possible to make sure they were ready for it. Whatever reservations their commanding officer entertained about their ability to pull that mission off were not shared with anyone other than Delmont. A good commander guards against 306

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allowing his sort of negative views to show through. Nor does he share his opinions with his subordinates on the wisdom of what they are doing, lest those opinions sow the poisonous seeds of doubt in the minds of those he must send into battle.

The stoic demeanor that Lieutenant Colonel Shaddock had adopted did not prevail in the Pentagon. Even before he reached his office Delmont was struck by the funereal pall that prevailed throughout the corridors. While smiles were rare enough in a place like the Pentagon, the total dearth of them on this day was most telling. When someone did manage to lift his gaze off the floor and make eye contact with him, the universal expression he wore was what Delmont referred to as the my-dog-died look.

If the general populace of the Pentagon came across as being despondent, then his co-workers in the Special Ops Section were downright wretched. No one greeted him as he made his way to his cubbyhole. Nor did anyone make any effort to acknowledge him or find out how things were going at Fort Irwin. Even when Delmont took the initiative, the universal response was a grunt or a simple, "Oh, hi," issued with a total dearth of enthusiasm and any interest whatsoever in engaging in conversation.

This gloom did nothing to lighten the burden that Delmont had carried upon his shoulders from the high desert of California to the banks of the Potomac. Plopping down in his seat, the special ops plans officer leaned back as far as he dared, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared at the ceiling above as he took a moment to collect his thoughts and review the situation before him for the umpteenth time.

During his tenure in the Pentagon Robert Delmont had drafted plans for many operations that had placed American soldiers in harm's way. As part of Razorback alone, he had overseen the deployment of eleven teams, and monitored their day-today operations for his general. Intellectually he knew that his actions were exposing men like the general to danger. He also appreciated that actions initiated in accordance with orders he had drafted resulted in the death of Syrians. In theory Fanfare should MORE THAN COURAGE

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have been no different. His superior had handed him a task, he had developed a viable operational plan, and taken those actions necessary to translate concept into action.

Unfortunately, Fanfare had not turned out to be that simple or straightforward. Step by step Delmont had become more involved in this operation than any of his other creations.

Through his direct contacts with the 3rd of the 75th Rangers he now could associate faces and personalities to the various units that made up the troop list for Fanfare. His assessment of whether or not the operation would succeed was no longer based solely upon sterile computer simulations and calculations offeree ratios.

Having seen the various companies of the 3rd of the 75th rehearse their assigned roles, Delmont's fertile imagination conjured up scenario after scenario involving numerous what-if situations that the Rangers might encounter once they were on the ground. Even now, as he sat in the rarefied air of the Pentagon he imagined that he could still taste the desert as he licked his dry lips. The feeling of fine grit thrown about by the desert wind that covers everything still clogged his pores. Where, he found himself asking as he pondered his dilemma, did he belong? Here where his duty had placed him or back there in the desert where his heart was?

As troubling as all of this was, the idea that his opinion could very well play a pivotal role in determining if Fanfare would go forward or not proved to be nothing less than terrifying. If the powers above did opt for the military solution, men belonging to the 3rd of the 75th would die. Given what the Rangers would encounter on the ground in Syria, that grim fact was a mathematical certainty.

Picking up where he had left off with Shaddock, Delmont found himself weighing over and over again the wisdom of promoting an operation in which the rescuing force would sustain losses that would far exceed the number of personnel it would recover. If pure logic were used to decide the issue, the choice would be a nobrainer.

Both he and his superiors would simply apply the old Russian military axiom that states that one does not reinforce failure.

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While logic was a major element that would be used in determining which course of action would be followed, other imponderables that could not be measured with any sort of accuracy would have a bearing on the final decision. Within the political realm the consequences of doing nothing while a third-rate power butchered American soldiers with impunity was already having serious repercussions for a president who had made creating a strong military and waging war on terrorism something of a crusade. Day in and day out political pundits from his own party bludgeoned the president for failing to take immediate action. On the international scene, despite their calls for the American president to let diplomacy have a fair chance, responsible leaders within NATO found themselves wondering just what sort of ally the United States was. The French president was rumored to have mused that if the Americans were unwilling to come to the aid of their own in their time of greatest peril, what hope did a European have?

This very same sentiment was also being openly expressed within the armed forces. Throughout the ranks the prevailing attitude favored swift and immediate action. To most soldiers it was an article of faith that no one would be left behind, that no matter what the cost every effort would be made to bring their fellow soldiers home. And even if a full-bore military operation proved to be costly, there was the consolation that no matter how bad American casualties were, the losses and damage inflicted on the Syrians during the course of the rescue attempt would be hideously disproportionate and well deserved.