Return to Honor (16 page)

Vandervoos looked to Lieutenant Colonel Krandel.

Krandel moved forward and spoke up. “JATOs: Jet Assisted Take-Offs. While the Rapid Deployment Force is pulling off the rescue, the air crews will be refueling from the fuel bladder on the second TAV and strapping JATO units onto each craft. The JATOs we’re bringing should get enough airspeed for the scramjets to start up.” He paused and grinned wryly. “Or at least that’s what your flight engineers at Edwards say.”

Vandervoos nodded and looked around the room. “Next?”

A marine stood. “General, how was Air Force One taken over? Was there anything that might have tipped us off?”

Vandervoos shrugged. “Son, you tell me and we’ll both know. It could have been anything from an on-board plant to a stowaway. Personally, I think it was an inside job, as Air Force One is protected tighter than a vestal virgin. This seems to go with our one lead: The regular stewards for these trips were in an accident, and their backups were used for the first time. But that’s a moot point. The fact is that security broke down, and the President is in imminent danger. We’re double-checking the backgrounds of the stewards and any others on board just to make sure, but it won’t help us now. Any more?”

Another hand went up, this time more slowly. Another flyboy from the back. “Sir, can we be
sure
the President is still at Do’brai? What if this is some kind of elaborate hoax?”

General Vandervoos’ eyes widened. He studied his nails before speaking and seemed to count to himself. “Young man, I couldn’t begin to tell you about all the verification procedures our sensors are using. We’re employing everything from laser phase-conjugated echo ranging to seismic sensors deployed by BIGEYE. With something as important as this, we’re pulling out all the stops in the intelligence community.
Trust us!

“Any other questions?” He waited for a moment, then grunted. “The air force will launch four pre-attack containers from Vandenberg immediately before the TAVs ignite, for IPB—the Intelligent Preparation of the Battlefield. They containers will arrive at Do’brai five minutes before the TAVs land. The canisters house the standard command sensor, biodegradation agent, runway clearer, and sleeping gas that can be carried on a Peacekeeper missile instead of the warhead. If there are no other questions, I’ll leave you with Colonel Krandel. I’ve assigned him operational control of the mission, and on-sight commander. He’ll fill you in on the details.

“Good luck, men, and Godspeed. Our prayers are with you.”

Everyone in the room stood as Vandervoos strode out the door.

Once the general left, Krandel rapped for attention and motioned for the men to take seats. Facing the room of fifty marines, he swept his eyes down the rows. “If anyone in the RDF is not a volunteer for this mission, you may go to the back of the room and exit now. This will not be reflected any way in your records.” After waiting a moment, and with no one moving, Krandel let his shoulders sag. “Good. I expected no less.”

He straightened a stack of papers on the podium and looked
around the room. “The general alluded to the fact that
only two squads, twenty-four men, could go on the mission. General Vandervoos has authorized me to make the selection. I wish that all of you could go—it would certainly make me feel better if you could. However, with the limited space on the TAVs, I had to choose those with special skills. For some of you, the ability to speak Arabic was the deciding factor.”

He glanced down the list of names he held and drew in a breath. “The following personnel will report through the door to your right; the rest of you are ordered to remain in this room until the backup squads for the third and fourth TAV are announced. No contact with anyone outside this room is authorized; we can’t afford to have news of this operation leak out.

“Platoon Gunnery Sergeant Balcalski.” A stocky, somber-faced marine rose and strode out the door.

“Corporal Morales.

“Corporal Henderson.

“Private Havisad …”

Ojo-1

“Motherhen, this is Ojo-1. All the chicks are loaded and ready to roll.”

“Roger that, Ojo-1. Please give the pax your stewardess briefing while we’re rotating. We’ll be airborne shortly.”

“Copy, Motherhen.” Gould switched off the intercom with the 747 below him. The marines didn’t take more than ten minutes to load, and they’d been on the ground for less than fifteen. Once they were airborne, he’d find out where they were going. He briefly thought about prying open the hatch that separated him from the marines in back and asking them if they knew, but he dismissed the idea.

The few contacts he’d had with the “jarheads” he’d flown had not been too encouraging. For some reason they took themselves far too seriously, and didn’t socialize at all. In the marines, the boundary between and an officer and an enlisted troop was very wide and distinct; it didn’t work with Gould’s own style.

In his mind, if Gould treated the air force enlisted folk the way the marine officers treated their men, Gould would have died
years
ago. He remembered the story about an air force wing commander at one of the fighter bases. The colonel had jumped all over some airman’s butt for something completely unreasonable—the airman had his hands in his pockets, or something critical like that. After getting his rear chewed by the colonel, the airman proceeded to throw a wrench in the colonel’s engine the next time the colonel tried to fly his fighter. The wing commander was lucky to have made it out of the plane alive.

You just don’t mess with enlisted men—Gould had learned the lesson well. But applying that adage to jarheads was another matter.

He had tried to be friendly once with one of the marine sergeants, and much to his surprise he was snubbed in a courteous but pointed way. He couldn’t figure those marines out. To have another air force officer jump on him for fraternization was one thing, but when the
enlisted
marines did it—well, Gould just decided it was best to leave well enough alone.

So the notion of asking the marines if they knew what was going on quickly passed.

Gould clicked on the intercom and instructed the marines in the back to fasten all their straps, no smoking any time on board, and he’d warn them before they rocketed, thank you.

The TAV swayed slightly as the 747 lumbered down the runway. He could hear the engines whine as the giant plane picked up speed. A minute passed, and the takeoff was so smooth at first he couldn’t tell if the 747 was in the air.

Once airborne, Gould kept an eye out for his orders to appear on the screen.

Within minutes the screen started bleeping and blinking, the spy icon flashing in the lower left corner of the screen. When the secure link was established, Colonel Mathin’s voice came over the speaker. The orders were explained in detail, and Gould was completely immersed in the plan. He had two questions for the FTC commander once the colonel had stopped speaking.

Gould asked, “The JATO units should get us out of there without any trouble, sir, but who’s piloting Ojo-2 with the fuel bladder?”

“Major Beckman was the TAV pilot on the list after you, Major Gould. She’s just taking off from Edwards and will land at Do’brai about five minutes after you get there.”

“Sir, you
can’t
send Beckman! She’s only been checked out for three months now—”

“And if I recall, you’re the one who certified her, Major. She’s the second-best stick we’ve got. So unless there are any other reasons why she shouldn’t go, besides the fact that you may have a problem with women flying just as good or better than men, I need to know it now.…”

Several moments passed. Gould finally answered, expelling his breath. “No, sir. There’s no reason I can think of.”

“Good. Now what was your second question?”

It took Gould a while to clear his mind from the previous answer. “What does Ojo mean, Colonel?”

“It means ‘God’s eye.’ Ojo is a New Mexican good-luck charm, chosen for obvious reasons. You’ll need it, son. So don’t step on it.”

“No, sir, I won’t. Uh, tell Major Beckman good luck, too, sir.”

“I will. And remember, this is your final transmission. You’re authorized to break radio silence with Ojo-2 only in case of an emergency.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Do’brai

They took the hood off his head, and he could finally breathe without gasping. The heat was almost unbearable and stale cigarette smoke filled the room.

Montoya blinked in the light and squinted, trying to make out several shapes that hovered just beyond the edge of the glare. A large lamp—it almost seemed to be a spotlight—pointed directly at him. Montoya felt naked, as if under a microscope.

A voice cut through the smoky haze. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. President. Feel free to stretch out in your chair.” It was the same person who had met the steward on board Air Force One and driven him to this place. Was it General
Kamil
that the steward had called the man?

Montoya held up a hand and peered through the glare. “Who are you?”

“Who I am is not important. I trust you have been thinking about what to say when we present you before the news media?”

“You’re damned right I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to say. Now who the hell are you, and what have you done with my plane?”

“Shortly, Mr. President, you will be moved to another location and meet several representatives from Al Jazerra and your news services. At that time you will make a short apology for the crimes your nation has committed against the people who support the ALH. Peace-loving people who, because of your nation’s policy in arming aggressive states such as Israel, are now suffering.”

“What are you talking about? We—”

Montoya was interrupted; the speaker’s voice rose in volume. “There are too many starving and homeless people your nation has neglected for you to protest. There would be no suffering, no dying, if it was not for your nation meddling in our affairs. You have done our people a disservice, and for the world to know that we are serious about turning these affairs around, you must make a public apology for your nation’s crimes.”

Montoya thought fast, but felt despair. The general had already tried and convicted him; it appeared that no amount of logic or arguing would turn his point of view. Montoya played for time. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Make the apology.” Then the voice hesitated. “I am aware that your American word of honor is not dependable; you would lie, as you have done in the past, to make things turn out the way you want. So I must be assured that you will truly apologize.”

“No. You misunderstand me. I’ll apologize; I’ll be sincere.” Montoya felt sick to his stomach. He couldn’t bluff his way out.

“I do not believe you, Mr. President. But we have a solution for that, a way to
remind
you that when you apologize before the news media, it will come from the bottom of your heart.” The voice spat a guttural language.

Two men came from behind the light and grabbed him. They jerked his hands behind his back and lashed his arms together with coarse strands of twine. They tightened the rope until Montoya’s elbows met. Montoya bit his lip to keep from crying out. Pulling him up from his chair, they looped the rope around his elbows, then threw the line up over a crossbeam.

One man knelt and tore off Montoya’s shoes and socks. Once he was barefoot, the voice behind the spotlight spoke again. “We have a short speech for you to memorize, Mr. President. We only have a few hours to practice, but you should have plenty of time to get it right.” He spoke again in the foreign tongue.

As he finished Montoya was jerked in the air, suspended by his elbows. The pain tore through his back; his arms and shoulders felt like they were ripped out of their sockets. He felt faint, and his breathing came in short, painful gasps.

A hand grabbed his right foot.

“An interesting technique to remind you to do what we want—and a way that doesn’t leave any visible scars when you give your speech—is to slowly remove your toenails. We will practice your speech, Mr. President, and for every mistake you make, a toenail on your foot will be ripped back and slowly peeled off.

“Oh—and just repeating the speech is not good enough. As you yourself said, you have to be sincere.” Kamil clicked his fingers. “Repeat carefully after me.”

Montoya felt a burning sensation in his feet. He cried out, but the pain wouldn’t go away. It was an effort just to concentrate on what was being said.

Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

Five of the air force’s half-dozen launch pads were operational. Construction personnel swarmed over the sixth in the sweltering heat, fixing decades of damage due to corrosive salt water and burns from rocket launches that ranged from small NASA probes to giant National Reconnaissance Office satellites.

To the southeast—over the ubiquitous golden-brown hills, and out of sight of the Western Launch Complex—a dozen missile silos were buried in the ground. These silos did not contain any of the old Peacekeeper missiles; at least not those armed with the nuclear warheads that had made the Peacekeeper a Cold War deterrent. Rather, the missile silos now defined the eastern edge of the Western Test Range. Top missile crews came from their U.S. bases to test-fire missiles, to test both the active inventory and the crews’ skills.

Now only one of the silos was loaded with a “hot” missile, but it remained dormant for a different purpose.

In a command bunker buried next to the “hot” silo, First Lieutenant Marvin Chiu studied a text in macroeconomics. The only reason he didn’t prop his feet up was that the console was too high. But the readings from the Western State master’s program—something practically required of every launch officer while serving time in the hole—tended to put Lieutenant Chiu to sleep. In fact, the course was duller than an imitation Swiss knife.

Chiu’s head bobbed off his chest when the intercom squawked above the console. “Bravo, Tango, Echo, Alpha, Sierra, six. Authentication: Charlie, Zulu, Xray, niner. This is not a test. I repeat, this is not a test. Targeting information to follow in five parts. Stand by, one.”