'A' for Argonaut (9 page)

“No one outside of the direct order of command is aware of this TF’s existence. Plausible deniability. Part of the Special Action Warfare Command, sir. Not a regular Army unit. Special Access Program, SAP, Decibel 20-Top Echelon, the highest secrecy level in the United States government. They are authorized to employ private military companies, known as PMCs. Mercenaries. Task Force 9909 was one of those, a phantom unit, stitched together from a quilt of native South African, Angolan, and Congolese soldiers of fortune.”

“In the black?”

“That’s correct, sir. Non-existent. Known only to Brigadier General Luster, a few members of his staff, and General Baltimore’s Counterterrorism group at the Office of Plans and Operations in the Pentagon.” If the title of the group sounded innocuous, it was a deception. Its name was changed from the “Forty Committee” after a movie of Robert Ludlum’s novel “The Bourne Identity” featured a renegade from that group, making its title sound too sinister.

Rojas approached the bench and submitted a bound document.

Fahnestock read it and passed it to his colleagues.

“
Homeland Security Presidential Directive: Memorandum No. SPO 2012-001.
The Special Action Warfighter Command is hereby authorized, under the direction of Brigadier General Hank Luster, commanding officer of the unit at Fort Bragg, to enter the sovereign territory of Angola in the area 25 miles southeast of the exclave of Cabinda to achieve the rescue and release of an unknown number of American hostages understood to have been taken and imprisoned under the direction of illegal criminal elements of the terrorist organization known in the region as the Progressive Front for the Liberation of the Exclave of Cabinda a/k/a PFLEC.”

Rojas continued. “As you know, the Office of Plans and Operations was established in 2011 under a Presidential Directive charging it with collecting, vetting, and acting operationally on intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. Such intel, according to the President’s directive, is not to be shared with anyone outside the OPO, including the Director of Central Intelligence and the Director of National Intelligence. Major General Baltimore is Director of the National Counterterrorism Center’s Action Division there.”

“Continue with your questioning, Major Rojas,” Fahnestock said.

The prosecutor turned back to Maran. “In your own words, Colonel Maran, what you were doing in Cabinda, Angola, between the 20th and the 22nd of April?” Rojas asked.

Other than his attorney, Maran sat alone in the courtroom.

“Sir, I had been called for Temporary Duty to lead Task Force 9909 in its covert hostage recovery, code-named Taxi Home.”

“You are airborne- and Ranger-qualified, Delta, Special Action Teams?”

“Correct, sir. Qualified Airborne-Ranger; served with the ‘75’ Ranger Regiment prior to joining Special Forces. From there, I was recruited into 1st SFOD-D Delta‌—‌then Special Action with SAWC.”

“You have had training in languages, correct, sir?”

Is this question a joke?

Maran was conversant in a number of languages. It was clear, however, that his basic skill set was that of a killer, someone trained to track down and kill terrorists like the Animal of Angola.

Rojas stepped up to the table and handed Fahnestock pages from Maran’s Military Personnel Records highlighting his foreign origins.

“As a result of my overseas background‌—‌”

“And what was that, Colonel?” Rojas cut Maran off.

“…Helped, I suppose, that I was born half Nigerian, in Lagos, already learned at least the rudiments of several languages, including Yoruba, from my father and Swahili from an uncle in Uganda.”

Rojas raised his hand to cut in again, sneered dismissively.

Maran continued. “The Army sent me to Stanford for a Master’s in international relations, African affairs, and I put in a year in at the Army’s Monterey language school, learning Lingala and Portuguese.”

Fahnestock stepped in. “Colonel Maran, give us a brief on the physical expectations riding on a SAWC officer.”

“Sir, they are simple. Basically, you have to be a U.S. citizen, at least a Captain with a one-year command behind you, a volunteer male with a secret clearance, and the ability to do 55 pushups in two minutes, 62 sit-ups in the same period of time, and make a two-mile run in 15 minutes in full gear.”

“And what does full gear weigh?” Fahnestock asked.

“Sir. Sixty-five pounds, including fifteen pounds of ammunition.”

Inside, Maran felt better with Fahnestock’s questions.

“Since you are an elite Army officer with sophisticated training, we can assume you know the gravity of disobeying an order in combat. What else can you tell us about your training with SAWC that you believe would warrant your actions?” Fahnestock finished.

“That information is included in a Special Action Program and I cannot discuss it. I will swear that I am not guilty of these charges or any other violations of the United States Military Code of Justice.”

Maran lived by his
word and he wasn’t about to dishonor himself by breaking his SAWC oath. He knew it would only come down to his word against those of his accusers. No one else could testify to the facts on his behalf.

They were all dead.

“How do you plead to these charges?” General Fahnestock asked.

“Not guilty on all charges, sir. My guys never saw the hidden enemy force. They had been warned of our location in advance. They were waiting for us over the hill in front and on our left flank. We were doomed coming or going. But we had an obligation to those U.S. hostages. And we were prepared for anything but an ambush. Sir, when I left on this mission, Brigadier General Luster was in command. I have the utmost respect for him as a soldier and as a man. I don’t know what happened. The terrorist force had been tipped off. They knew our position. They knew our plan. They were armed with American weapons. We went in after my recon patrol saw that the rebel camp was under-defended.”

“That decision wasn’t yours to make, soldier,” Fahnestock said.

“Sir, we were charged‌—‌ambushed‌—‌by American tanks and armored personnel carriers; it was like Custer’s Last Stand.”

“Did you or did you not disobey a direct order?”

A sharp pain hit Maran in the chest. His muscles tightened like cable on a winch. The room spun. His hands clamped the rail. He reached deep inside to hold onto the frayed ends of his resolve. A pause hung over the room. Maran toppled over the rim. Two MPs leaped the rail to catch him just in time before his head hit the floor.

It took Maran two glasses of water and fifteen minutes to regain his composure. The incident impressed on him the wisdom of the doctor’s suggestion that he take some medication to alleviate the condition.

He hated drugs.

When they resumed the prosecutor opened.

“You have entered a plea of not guilty. You deny the charges?”

“No, sir. The charges themselves are true.” Maran’s voice shook.

“Then‌—‌on what grounds do you plead ‘not guilty?’”

Maran struggled.

“No evidence. Just logic. We were about to free those hostages; then we received the order to pull out. It made no sense. The time was past for that. We had committed to the assault. We were betrayed.”

The prosecution called Major General Randy Baltimore, Director of Counter-Terrorist Action for the entire United States military, provided with access to SCI, Sensitive Compartmented Information, and selected SAPs. His security clearance was TS/SSBI, TOP SECRET/SINGLE SCOPE BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION.

Baltimore addressed the tribunal
.

Maran glared at him. His stomach turned as he listened.

Baltimore, fair-skinned, about fifty, looked to him like a cross between a clean-cut quarterback and a public television pundit. Like Maran, he wore dress blues. Except for the eyeglasses, he looked like a poster boy for the recruitment highway billboards sprinkled through the poorer communities throughout the South, plugging the Army as a way up and out of poverty, which, in Maran’s experience, it was. The eyeglasses were not thick; they were just set in heavy, square, black frames. His blond hair was cut high and tight.

He spoke.

“Though I have the highest regard for Colonel Maran’s record as a combat veteran, based on our SatIntel, Colonel Maran’s mission was doomed to failure. That’s why he was directed to pull back to a designated landing zone, two clicks from the Congo River. Right here. Above these hills south of Landana, there,” Baltimore said, using a laser stick to point to the thin blue ribbon that meandered, snakelike, on the wall map set up at the front of the room. The ribbon flowed down from a large blue belly, the lake-like bulge just at Kinshasa, where the river muscled through the wild region at its widest point.

Maran’s jaw tightened. The remembrance shook him.

Sandbagged, like a green recruit, a Cub Scout.

Recall flashed through his damaged brain. It threatened to ignite a new blast of memory. He gritted his teeth, refused to relive the horror. Rage boiled in his stomach, rose to the spitting point.

“You lie. It’s all lies!” he leaped from his chair, shouted, beyond self-control. This insubordination tore at the core of his psyche, trained to a fine point in the order of discipline at the heart of an effective military culture. He knew the words Baltimore uttered were accurate. It was truth they lacked.

Two MPs grabbed him. He fell back on his chair with their rough handling.

The prosecution closed and Maran’s attorney called his key character witness, Brigadier General Bull Luster. Maran’s respect for this consummate soldier had grown from the first day under his command in Grenada and Panama. Relief swept over him when he heard Luster would be called to testify. He was certain of Luster’s pride in having trained him earlier in Israeli
Kapap
and Thai Army
Muay Thai
, lethal hand-to-hand combat techniques from the U.S. Army Field Manual, FM 3-25.150, at the Army Combatives School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He remembered it like it was yesterday. Luster made the rough-and-ready guys Maran grew up with in Southie’s projects seem like choirboys. He could not believe it when the scar-faced Luster had clamped down on his wrist, sending the wooden simulated field knife flying off in the air and breaking the wrist‌—‌accidentally. That hadn’t stopped Maran. He’d come back from the hospital with a flexible cast which allowed him to complete his training, even while being taunted about the bird-like yelp he let out when he heard his wrist fracture at the radius. Later, Maran basked in the glory of being the only trainee to graduate from Luster’s program in a sling.

He also knew that in spite of that humiliation the battle-hardened Luster referred to him as his “clean-up batter.” It had been his job to be the enforcer who could eliminate the bad guys quickly and effectively and still cover his tracks. In the prevailing political environment, there was always the risk posed by lawyers from Human Rights Watch who might step in heroically to prosecute violators of the rules of engagement designed to prevent men like Maran from “the unnecessary use of deadly force.”

Of course, no one knew what that meant.

Bull Luster was sixty,
built like a refrigerator, thick, and hard. His body would take a deuce-and-a-half ton truck to move if he resisted, Maran thought. The face looked like it had been run over by a half-track, full of ruts and channels with a jaw that shot out over his chest like a cleft hoof. The brown and yellow flecks darkening his lips were testimony to the cigarette and chewing tobacco abuse they had endured since he was a kid recruit. Rojas had called him in as a character witness at Maran’s request.

Luster stepped up to the witness box with deliberation, exuding confidence, sure of himself, dressed in his starched BDUs. Rojas asked him to explain why Maran had been ordered to turn back. Luster told them the decision had been based on classified satellite intelligence from the Army’s National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Since that agency denied access to their battle space signals intelligence, the judicial panel had no options open. The origin of Maran’s order remained obscure.

Pleased at his success, Maran’s defense lawyer turned his question-ing to Luster’s estimation of Maran’s record as a soldier.

Inside, Maran smiled.

“This’ difficult for me,” Luster testified. “First, you have to understand, Colonel Maran has an exemplary combat record. Sharp soldier, a true leader, admired by superiors, by the men in his command. I myself would follow him into combat. All his training in Special Ops’d marked him for dedication to the mission. Trained to advance. Destroy the enemy. Win the position. ‘
Victoriae
!’ achieve victory,” Luster stressed. “It’s all‌—‌all they know.
Victoriae
!” It was the team’s motto, his motto. He’d coined it himself after he left Delta Force at Fort Bragg to develop SAWC.

“So I could feel his passion the moment he felt he’d been ordered to abandon the hostages. I have to add, however, that Colonel Maran did the wrong thing. I know Colonel Maran, he’s a victim of his own confidence. Thought he’d overcome all odds‌—‌prevail. That’s what he was trained for.”

Rojas saw his chance. He took it.

“So you agree to the extent of his guilt?”

“Yes.”

No, not you too!
Maran thought, annihilated.

Bull Luster’s testimony hit
Maran like a bayonet in the heart.

He wasn’t prepared for this turn. Maran wasn’t sure he could take another betrayal. It was all he could do not to scream. He gripped the edge of the chair for support. His knuckles whitened. Luster had been his one hope. He’d expected more help from him.

At the end, he took the stand himself. He surveyed the room, devoid of emotion. He hunched his knotted shoulders, took a deep breath, and stood, all six-four inches of him. Flagpole straight, facing the tribunal.

“I have a question for Major General Baltimore,” Maran said as he turned to the Major.

“Sir, why did you order me to scrap my mission?”

Baltimore rose. He squinted at Maran with piercing gray eyes. He turned, faced the bench.