RW11 - Violence of Action (7 page)

“It’s about halfway up my ass, Dahlgren. Wanna see?”

“Maybe later. In the meantime hold what you got.”

“You do the same, Dahlgren.”

We both managed a laugh at that one as she guided me out of the building and to Danny’s car.

Teammates. You gotta love ’em.

The NSA chopper dropped us and our very quiet new friend at an isolated concrete pad I recognized on sight. I’d used it frequently during my last formal command that was based near Dulles Airport. At that time I’d been ordered by Vice Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, then deputy chief of naval operations for Plans and Policy (OP-06), to create Red Cell for the express
overt
purpose of evaluating the vulnerability of U.S. naval installations worldwide to terrorist attack. In reality, Red Cell was tasked with conducting
covert
counterterrorist missions. We were given the job of waging preemptive strikes against terrorists and their organizations
before
they could mount operations against the unsuspecting, the unprepared, and the innocent. This meant my operators would find ’em, fix ’em, and then kill ’em without warning or mercy.

Ace Lyons knew our allies in Israel and Great Britain had long practiced this form of covert warfare. International law states that terrorists are equal to criminals and therefore not subject to the same rules of engagement extended to the uniformed armies and even to recognized guerrilla militaries. By the mid-1980s America was just entering the business of taking out Tangos before Tangos took out targets. Red Cell was to specialize in the overseas infiltration, penetration, and elimination of identified terrorist cells. I selected fourteen balls-to-the-wall plank owners for Red Cell, three officers and eleven enlisted operators. Thirteen of these men came from SEAL Team SIX, that nasty bunch of motherfuckers I’d created in my own “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” image. The fourteenth came from the Marine Corps’ ultra-elite Marine Force Reconnaissance teams.

The chaotic, confusing area surrounding Dulles Airport had been the perfect place to headquarter Red Cell. You could hide half the regular Army in the sprawling maze of its terminals, storage areas, commercial warehouses, and runways. And from Dulles we could fly to anywhere in the world anytime, using specially prepared false passports and i.d. Our equipment, including weapons and explosives, was slipped into commercial airliners’ cargo holds by my operators posing as hardworking, underpaid, dumb-ass luggage handlers. And still we were within driving distance of the Nation’s capitol with easy access to everything that cesspool of bullshit and self-serving, power-hungry asswipes has to offer. (Yeah, I love D.C. as much as it loves me.) Red Cell soon became an integral part of the nation’s direct action counterterrorist arsenal. Like Shaft, we were
bad
motherfuckers!

It’s my personal opinion that if the Navy had left me and Red Cell alone, there very possibly would have been no Obie Wan bin Ladin alive to plot the attack on September 11, 2001. We’d have paid a housecall to him and his lieutenants early on, and then begun hunting down his cells here in the United States. But that’s another fucking story.

A black Ford Expedition was waiting for us at the landing pad. Not too much later we were in the bowels of the city, our driver winding his way through D.C.’s fucked up traffic circles and grids toward a fashionable business district about twenty minutes from the White House. The Expedition pulled over to drop us off in front of an austere, tidy six-story brick townhouse. Once a single-family residence, later converted to overpriced yuppie apartments, it was now the discreet headquarters for the recently formed OISA. Honeycombed throughout the building were ultra-secure briefing rooms constructed like the bug-proof bubble rooms, or Special Classified Intelligence Facilities (SCIFs), where I’d been briefed in the old days when secret shit really had to be kept secret.

Where somebody’s grandma used to hold her afternoon tea parties there were now specially constructed holding cells used to carry out private conversations with those found to be less than cooperative. We’d be dropping Blondie off in one of these cold little rooms for the time being. I had big plans for that little fuck. My balls started to feel better just thinking about it.

As we climbed out of the car, the driver said, “Fourth floor, Sir. They’ll meet you at the elevator.” With that, he pulled away from the curb and neatly folded the SUV back into downtown traffic.

There was no need to knock on the door or look for a doorbell. An invisible surveillance system had detected our presence on the stoop and the white-painted front door opened for us with a gentle buzzing sound. We entered an oval-shaped, marble-floored entrance hall dominated by a curving staircase which appeared to ascend to the second floor. In reality, I knew the graceful staircase was a beautiful fake, leading to a door that opened onto a bricked-up wall. To our left was an elevator whose oak doors perfectly matched the hall’s antique paneling. Again, there was no button to push—the doors simply slid open as we approached them. The interior of the elevator was out of another world, a more familiar one—the world of government security and no-frills functionality. I had no doubt the elevator cabin also served as a metal detector and x-ray machine. Every crevice of our bodies was probably being scrutinized during the swift ride upstairs. Hope they were enjoying the view.

The bright
ding
of the elevator’s bell announced our arrival on the fourth floor. The doors hissed open and we found ourselves in front of a ferret-faced little woman in a lumpy tweed suit. The gray-haired harpy nodded curtly and motioned we were to follow her. As we made our way toward a suite of offices I observed a battery of surveillance cameras aimed in our direction. More hot shit security monkeys with guns were monitoring us. I flipped a big Rogue bird at one of the cameras and smiled. Hi. Dick Marcinko has come back for a visit. How do you like me so far, asshole?

Our escort pointed a bony finger toward the end of the hall. Apparently I was expected in the far conference room. Without ever saying a word, she turned and slithered back to her office and shut the door behind her. Where Karen hired her day help was beyond me. Did Transylvania export office workers?

“Take Blondie up to the top floor,” I told Paul and Trace. “I’ll talk with the boss and link back up with you.”

“I got fucking rights, ya know! I wanna call my
fucking
lawyer!”

It was Blondie. I stepped in close and looked down on the little bastard. My nuts still hurt from the beating they’d taken. The Good Humor Man I was not. “Your name Miranda? No? Then you got no fucking rights, asshole. Look around. This look like a fucking police station to you?” I jerked my thumb upwards and spun on my heel. I’d be seeing Blondie again in a short-short. When I did, it would be under the worst of circumstances for him. We needed information and we needed it fast. If I heard anything like what I was expecting in the next few minutes, Blondie’s ass was toast.

I headed into the conference room and found Karen Fairfield already there waiting for me.

“Hello, Captain. Nice to see you again,” she said, standing up as I entered. We shook hands politely. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman, a fact that always half-surprised me, given the position of genuine power she held in the administration. My own prejudice no doubt, but part of me still expected a woman of Karen’s stature to look like the old crone who’d met us at the elevator.

“You too, Ms. Fairfield,” I replied. “Always a pleasure to serve you. In any way I can.” I tried not to lick my lips as I said that last part. When she didn’t reply, I decided to jump back to safe ground. “That coffee sure smells good.”

“Let me get you a cup. Black, yes?”

“Good memory.” I studied Karen as she slipped past me. She was wearing a well-cut black suit that hinted at an athletic but still full figure. I put her at 5’8” and 130 pounds. Chinese-American, her coal black hair was as long as mine. She wore it loose, like my morals. Her skin was a smooth, pale bronze. She moved with the deliberate ease and balance of a classically trained dancer. She was the product of Bryn Mawr College, Harvard’s School of International Relations, and a rocket-powered career at the State Department. We’d occasionally “seen” each other since I’d been hired by State and transferred over to OISA, which Karen headed up for the president himself. Coffee in hand, she turned and smiled. That smile reminded me how many moons had passed since we’d last screwed each other silly. Down, boy, I told myself. We’re here on business.

“Dick, there was another shooting…?”

I gratefully took the cup and gulped down the rich, hot brew. “Yes, an innocent bystander,” I said. “We’ve got the shooter upstairs. He’s definitely connected to Beckstein’s murder. He was keeping the house under surveillance and won’t say shit to explain himself. Danny Barrett is handling the paperwork.”

Karen nodded. Her hair fell across her face and she brushed it back with a practiced hand. She was an incredibly sexy piece of work. “Please have a seat. I’m afraid we’ve got very little time and a lot of ground to cover. The situation we’re facing right now is exactly the kind of worst-case scenario that caused the president to establish the Office of Internal Security Affairs. This is going to be OISA’s first real test. And therefore, mine.

“I’ll cut to the chase. Samuel Beckstein was one of the president’s most senior legal advisors and an internationally famous civil rights advocate. Whoever murdered him last night left a cassette tape next to his body with a message for the president, and by extension the entire nation and the world. On the tape, this person announces his intention to detonate a tactical nuclear device somewhere within our borders. Before you got here, it was confirmed a NEST team transporting such a device from Los Alamos to Southern California has been ambushed. No survivors. The device is missing.”

I took a long pull of coffee then set the cup down on the conference table. “Whoever can take out a NEST team and bag a nuke is a serious motherfucker.”

Karen was sitting directly across from me. Our eyes locked. When she spoke her voice was low, its tone unmistakably grave. “In about five minutes this room is going to fill up with some very important people, Dick. They all have their own agendas and will do everything possible to promote these, even in the face of a potential catastrophe like this one. How much do you know about suitcase nukes, Dick?”

“Long or short story?” I asked.

“I’m listening to whatever you have to say, Captain.”

I stood and walked to the far end of the table. If I played my cards right and Karen came out of this bullshit meeting looking good, I just might get laid (and save a couple hundred thousand innocent lives as a bonus). I’d make this good. “First off, suitcase nukes—technically, special atomic demolition munitions—or SADMs—aren’t anything new. We’ve had ’em since the late 50s. During the Cold War both the Russians and us used man-packed nukes as tactical rather than strategic weapons. A SADM can be precisely placed on the battlefield or behind the enemy’s front lines to do specific damage to a selected target or targets. The big rocket-launched cocksuckers that everybody thinks of as nuclear weapons do too much damage and turn the world to shit. No one wants to hold ground that glows in the dark!

“Given the huge advantage in conventional forces the Soviets had over NATO at the time, they were a major part of our war-fighting plan. We, meaning the good old U.S. of A., deployed SADMs courtesy of our Special Forces people. The nukies were placed at key points along the axis of advance that our intelligence geeks figured the Russians would most likely take if and when they decided to storm Western Europe. We knew we were too few and too weak to stop them on a conventional basis. However, we realized we could temporarily shut down their forces by detonating tactical nuclear weapons along their front, giving NATO a fighting chance to reinforce, regroup, and mount a counteroffensive.”

Karen nodded. “Just how small were these devices?”

“By the time I started training with them they were pretty compact. Each device weighed about 68 pounds. They were 28 inches in diameter and 30 inches tall. They could be outfitted with either a jump harness so we could parachute into the target area with them, or a flotation collar so we could deploy them from a submarine. Or you could be really bare-bones and just hump the fucker in by foot.”

“How powerful?”

I didn’t reply right away. Talking about man-packed nukes over coffee was something I don’t normally do. Those of us trained to take a SADM in and detonate it were carefully selected for the job. Our lives became closely monitored by counterintelligence spooks. Anyone who could jump, swim, or hump an atomic bomb to a selected target and kill 100,000+ enemy oxygen thieves by simply turning a few dials and throwing a switch is someone you want to keep tabs on. At least I fucking would if I were in charge.

“If you had a first generation tac-nuke, you could take outmost of downtown New York by placing it in one of the subway tunnels. You’d kill at least 100,000 people and probably twice that number considering the target concentration. I can’t even imagine the kind of panic that would occur once an atomic bomb was officially identified as the cause of such a disaster. Hard headline to put across without freaking out most of John Q. Public. Chaos would reign. There’d be no reliable communications. No effective emergency medical care available. No law. No order. The National Guard wouldn’t be able to do anything more than wring their hands. One device, one SADM, detonated in the heart of any major city in this country would fuck us over beyond anyone’s worst nightmare. These devices are the ultimate terrorist weapons. They exist, they work, and they are available for the taking, as we’ve apparently just found out.”

I poured myself another cup of coffee while Karen processed all this. I waited for her next question, pretty sure I knew what it would be. I was right.