Separation of Power (45 page)

Rapp knew he meant it. He took Gray’s hand, and over the roar of the big Chinooks engines coming to life, he thought about giving the colonel a message for Anna in case something went wrong. After a moment of hesitation he decided against it. He thanked the colonel and then headed off to grab the rest of his equipment.

K
ENNEDY WENT
S
TRAIGHT
from Capitol Hill to the White House. Her testimony had ended so abruptly that it had caught the media off guard. They’d settled in for the afternoon expecting hours of cantankerous questions and evasive testimony. When she’d left the
Hart Senate Office Building just thirty minutes after she’d arrived, the majority of the cameras out in front of the building were unmanned. There were still a number of photographers who tried to hold her up as she left the building, jumping in front of her bodyguards as they escorted her to the director’s limousine. The beefy security detail pushed the photographers aside like blockers on a kick return. Kennedy was safely tucked away in her limo twenty seconds after walking out on the committee.

When she arrived at the White House her blockers stayed outside with the vehicles, which was unfortunate because, between the entrance on West Executive Avenue and the Situation Room, she was practically tackled by Michelle Bernard, the president’s press secretary.

“Irene, would you mind telling me what in the hell that was all about?” Bernard had one of the most stressful jobs in Washington.

Kennedy sidestepped her and motioned for Bernard to follow. Kennedy liked her, and didn’t envy the position she was in. “What has the president told you?”

“Nothing,” she half snapped. “That’s the problem.” Bernard looked over both shoulders to make sure no one from the press was within earshot. “The jackals are all over me, and I look like an idiot. I can’t confirm or deny a thing. I look like I’m completely out of the loop.”

“That’s not such a bad spot to be in, Michelle.”

Bernard ignored the advice and asked, “How bad is it?”

As they rounded the corner, Kennedy waited for two White House staffers to pass and then said, “Get ready for a long night.”

“It’s that bad?”

“I didn’t say that, I just said it’s going to be a long night.”

Bernard gave her a wary glance, and then asked, “How the hell can you be so calm? I mean for Christ’s sake, Irene, they’re getting ready to burn you at the stake.”

Stopping at the outer door to the Situation Room, Kennedy punched her code into the cipher lock and said, “Don’t worry, no one’s going to be burned at the stake.” Kennedy pulled open the heavy door and said, “I promise I’ll be able to tell you something by tonight. And trust me, until then it’s better that you don’t know what’s going on.” Kennedy let the door close behind her and opened the first door on her left.

The secure conference room was packed. General Flood was there with four of his aides, Secretary of Defense Culbertson was present, Casey Byrne, the deputy secretary of state, was there as well as Michael Haik, the NSA. The president was at the head of the table in his usual spot. He looked over his shoulder to see who had entered the room. When he saw it was Kennedy he immediately stood.

“Irene, great job. You handled Jetland like a pro.”

“Thank you, sir. We’ve bought ourselves a little time, but I’m afraid not much. What’s the status on the operation?”

“Take a seat here.” The president grabbed a chair and wheeled it over to the corner of the table. They
both sat. Kennedy was seated between General Flood and the president. Flood had a phone in each hand, one to his left ear and the other poised to be held against his right.

The president pointed to one of three large screens on the wall. “That’s a live image from an AWACS patrolling over northern Saudi Arabia.” The screen showed most of Iraq, Kuwait, the northern part of the Persian Gulf and the northern and eastern part of Saudi Arabia. The image was being fed via satellite from an E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System. These were the air force’s big Boeing 707s with the large rotodomes mounted above the fuselage. “The advance element is on the ground.” Hayes pointed at the screen. “See the blue triangle just south of Baghdad?”

Kennedy squinted to make sense of the jumble of electronic markings on the screen. After a moment she located the site just west of the Tigris River. “Yes.”

“They arrived less than five minutes ago. They’ve secured the area, and we’ve given the green light for the assault team to go in.”

“That’s the assault team there?” Kennedy pointed to four blue triangles closely grouped about halfway between Baghdad and the Saudi border.

“Correct.”

“Have any of our allies called to ask what’s going on?”

“I just got off the phone with the British PM. I called him. I didn’t tell him about the nukes, but I said something serious was up. I’m going to call King
Fahd just before it starts, as well as the Russian president, then after that it’s a long list.”

“So no leaks so far?”

“No.” The president rapped his knuckles on the table twice.

The secrecy involving the operation had been amazing, thanks to two factors. The first was the short time period between receiving the information and launching the operation. The entire thing had been put together in just six days’ time, a true testament to the readiness of the military. The second factor was entirely unintended. Thanks to Congressman Rudin’s appearance on
Meet the Press,
Washington and much of the world was focused on the scandal. The president had cleared his schedule and spent the entire day in the Situation Room, an action that would normally set off warning bells in capitals all over the world. But today the foreign intelligence officers who normally paid attention to such things assumed President Hayes had dropped everything to try to salvage the Kennedy nomination.

Kennedy’s eyes drifted beyond the airspace around Baghdad and noticed the massive air armada that was forming up over northern Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. She knew the battle plan by heart. They’d gone over it from top to bottom this morning. The blue triangles that were massing on the Iraqi borders were U.S. jets that were suckling up to big KC-135 tankers and topping off their tanks. Closer to the border were formations of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters that would be led into battle by air force MH-53J Pave Lows. Air force JSTAR ground
surveillance radar planes had given them pinpoint locations of surface-to-air missile sites that the Iraqis had hidden throughout the desolate terrain south and west of Baghdad.

In the northern Persian Gulf the Independence Battle Group was on station twenty-five miles off the Kuwaiti coast. The carrier’s planes were in the air and were bolstered by two squadrons of Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets flying out of Kuwait. In the opening salvo of the operation the battle group’s surface ships would launch more than 100 cruise missiles. In addition, a flight of B-52s out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean were forty minutes away from being in position to launch a payload of eighty-four cruise missiles.

With so many planes in the air questions were bound to be asked, so in an effort to keep a lid on things, earlier in the day, U.S. military attachés in embassies around the Persian Gulf informed their host countries that the U.S. would be holding a surprise readiness exercise commencing at 1900 local time. The Pentagon ran readiness exercises like this several times a year to keep the troops sharp and to keep Saddam guessing.

General Flood hung up both phones and said, “Mr. President, the flight of F-111s are airborne, refueled, and can be over the target twenty minutes after you give the word.”

The military planners had decided that eight F-111s would create enough redundancy to ensure the destruction of the target. They were confident that they could achieve total destruction with just two planes and were hoping to use the remaining six
to visit some other targets that they had carefully chosen. The eight F-111s were all carrying a single Deep Throat, GBU-28/B superpenetrator bomb. If Rapp and the Delta Team failed, the hospital would be leveled.

The president didn’t want to think of that option right now. “What’s the status on the ground team?”

“Everything looks good so far. They’re proceeding without incident, and the advance element has reported the area secure.”

The president looked over at the center screen for a moment. “Give me the time frame again.”

“They should touch down in,” Flood looked at the screen, “approximately seven minutes. It takes them a minute or two to unload the cars, and then it’s almost a mile to the main gate of the facility. From there it’s three miles to reach Route 144, the main road between Karbala and Baghdad. After that it’s a straight shot, thirty-two and a half miles to the hospital. If they don’t run into any trouble, it’s supposed to take them twenty-six minutes to get to the hospital from the time they reach Route 144.”

“They should be at the hospital in about forty minutes,” Kennedy offered.

“And they want the bombs to start falling just after they get to the hospital?” asked a skeptical president.

“Yes. That’s Mitch’s idea.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but he said he can handle it either way, he’d just prefer if the bombs started falling about a minute after they’ve arrived.”

The president was having difficulty understanding the reasoning behind Rapp’s rationale. The entire thing was looking more and more complicated to him. He was sticking his neck out further than he’d ever intended. If Rapp and the Delta team failed, he was done. The combination of the Kennedy scandal and dead American troops would be his death knell.

Sensing his apprehension, Kennedy grabbed his arm and said with sincere confidence, “Don’t worry, sir. Mitch will not fail.”

Slowly the president nodded. “I hope you’re right.”

T
he four helicopters knifed their way through the cooling desert air like a snake slithering across the sand. They were not flying a straight route to Scorpion I, the designation for the abandoned chemical weapons factory outside of Baghdad. Instead, a predetermined course had been plugged into the Chinooks’ advanced navigation systems, allowing them to avoid all villages, major roads and Iraqi radar sites. Cruising at just 100 feet off the desert floor, with only 300 feet between each chopper, and flying at speeds of over 120 mph, there was almost no room for error.

In the cargo area of the second Chinook Rapp tried to think of none of this. When they were in the air it was all out of his control. From his seat he looked up at the two door gunners. They were both manning 7.62-mm miniguns capable of cutting a vehicle in half. When fired at night, the guns looked like they were spewing fire. Air rushed through the open hatches and down the fuselage creating a roar that battled the loud engines and thumping rotors. The Mercedes sedan was blocking his view of a third gunner at the rear ramp, but Rapp knew he was there wearing a safety harness and holding a sling
mounted M60 machine gun to further bolster the helicopter’s firepower. The car was secured to the floor of the chopper with four high-test tie-downs. One of the Delta operators was sitting behind the wheel ready to back it out as soon as they hit the ground. The three gunners were all wearing flight helmets, with night-vision goggles and comlinks so they could tell the pilots and navigator what they saw. The gunners literally flew with their heads outside the airframe.

The big helicopter bucked, banked and dove its way through the air. There was nothing smooth and steady about the ride. Most people could handle it for a few minutes, like a ride at an amusement park, but to suffer through it for an hour or more could be incapacitating, throwing one’s senses into such a jumble that the slightest touch or movement brought on nausea and vomiting. Rapp was used to it, as were the Delta operators.

One of the door gunners suddenly left his post and went to each man, grabbing their shoulder and holding up five fingers. They were almost there, and when they hit the ground, Rapp’s chief responsibility would be to stay out of the way and let the Delta boys do their thing. Rapp went down his mental checklist one more time. He visualized how everything would go once they got to the hospital. He knew exactly what to do to get the team in, and it had nothing to do with firepower.

A few minutes later Rapp felt the helicopter begin to slow. They were close. Suddenly, the big bird banked hard to port and flared out, dropping its ass
end toward the ground. The harsh maneuver didn’t worry Rapp. He couldn’t see out the window, but he knew what was going on. It had all been covered in the briefing. The air force STS team had prepped the landing strip in the parking lot of the abandoned factory and set up four equally spaced infrared strobe lights that could not be seen by the naked eye, but through night-vision goggles they were as bright as a lighthouse’s beacon. All four of the behemoths would touch down within seconds of each other directly on top of their strobes.

They hit with a thud and the Delta boys were instantly on their feet. The engine on the Mercedes purred to life, and the straps were snapped free. Less than five seconds after hitting the ground the car was backed down the ramp and clear of the helicopter. Rapp exited the chopper on the heels of the Delta boys and jumped into the front passenger seat.

The three cars sped away instantly into the pitch black night. Rapp didn’t hesitate to put on his seat belt. The car’s automatic headlights had been disabled and wouldn’t be turned on until they reached the main road. Rapp could barely make out the car in front of them. Fortunately, the sergeant driving the vehicle was wearing night-vision goggles.

The cars sped down the drive and forty-five seconds later they reached the main gate. As they motored through, Rapp glimpsed a man holding the gate open. He would be one of the air force guys sent to cut the lock and secure the perimeter. About a quarter mile down the road Major Berg’s voice came over their secure radios.