Fires of War (15 page)

“What’s goin’ on?” asked Guns from below.

“They’re putting out the fire,” Ferg told him. He slid back down. “You got the gamma meter and the laptop?”

“Left it in the car, Ferg. I’m sorry. I got everything else.”

Almost on cue, a fireball rose from the vehicle. The laptop had self-destructed.

“Sorry,” said Guns.

“It’s all right. Wouldn’t have been a good idea to go back and get them anyway. Most of those guys were carrying submachine guns instead of fire extinguishers.”

~ * ~

23

OFF THE COAST OF NORTH KOREA

Thirty minutes after leaving the emergency supplies, the pilot of Bird One homed in on a small blot of black in the center of his green night-vision goggles. The blot was an uninhabited atoll eight miles east of North Korea’s Taehaw Island, itself a dozen miles off the mainland. During the early spring and summer, North Korea’s small fishing fleet regularly plied these waters, but in late fall the fishing was terrible, and the potential for ferocious storms kept the area nearly empty.

“We’re sixty seconds from go/no go,” the pilot told Rankin.

Rankin switched his radio onto the command frequency, linking with Van Buren.

“Bird One ready,” Rankin told Van Buren.

“You’re good to go,” said Van Buren. “Be advised there are two fishing vessels approximately three miles southeast of your target.”

“What are they fishing for at one o’clock in the morning?”

“Thinking here is that they’re smugglers, bringing goods back from China,” said the colonel.

“Thirty seconds from go/no go,” said the pilot.

“Roger. Team is committed,” said Rankin. He switched into the shared frequency, talking to the other three helicopters that made up the emergency extraction force. They’d all rendezvoused en route after dropping off their caches. “We’re committed. Two minutes to target.”

An officer might have said something like, “Make it look good,” but Rankin left it at that. The bullshit pep talks always bugged him when he’d been a member of Special Forces.

Technically, he still was a member of Special Forces, and, in point of fact, several of the men on the mission with him outranked him. But joining the First Team had put him into his own special category, not only in terms of rank—there was no question Rankin was in charge of the extraction team—but also in terms of the government bureaucracy. Officially, he was assigned as a special aide to someone at the Pentagon whom he’d never met. Unofficially, he worked for Ferguson and the CIA. They took their orders, to the extent Ferguson took orders, from Corrine Alston and maybe—Rankin wasn’t entirely clear because he didn’t get involved in that end of things—from the head of the CIA.

The First Team gig was the sweetest assignment Rankin had ever had, a grab bag of action that never got dull. Working with Ferguson was the only downside. The CIA officer was extremely clever and could handle SpecOps as well as the fooling-people spy stuff, but Rankin didn’t appreciate his wisecracks and know-it-all attitude. Without the CIA agent around, though, things were good.

“Beach is clear, sir,” said the pilot.

“Let’s get in,” said Rankin.

The helicopter zoomed over the rock-strewn beach and turned toward a small knot of trees. Rankin leapt out as it touched down, racing through the copse to make sure no one had managed to hide themselves here. The two Special Forces soldiers who’d been in the back of the chopper fanned out, making absolutely sure the spies in the sky hadn’t missed anything.

The small island was barely two and a half acres, so it didn’t take that long to search.

“Landing area is clear. Chopper Two, come on in,” Rankin said over the radio when the reecee turned up nothing beyond a few pieces of driftwood. Then he went to help the pilot get the camo net on Bird One, just in case the smugglers decided to bury their loot here.

~ * ~

24

WEST REDDING, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Corrine Alston tried to look nonchalant as she was ushered into the back of of the elementary school auditorium by one of the president’s traveling staffers. Three or four hundred kids sat at the edge of their seats, quizzing President Jonathon McCarthy about the presidency.

“What’s the best thing?” asked a gap-toothed third-grader in the fifth row.

“The best thing about being president is that no one can give me time-outs,” said McCarthy.

The kids thought that was pretty good and began to clap.

“Plus, I get to have ice cream at any time of day I want, and no one can tell me no.”

The applause deepened.

“And, if I want to stay up past my bedtime, I just go right ahead.”

There were loud cheers of approval. McCarthy segued into a story about a frog he had brought to school in his pocket when he was in second grade; the amphibian had gotten loose.

“Not that you should follow my example,” added McCarthy at regular intervals, relating the havoc the creature caused as it worked its way through gym class and into the principal’s office, where it cornered the principal for fifteen minutes before he rescued her.

“Now there’s an important moral to the story,” said the president, wrapping up, “which many people do not realize. And that is this . . .”

He paused for effect. The kids and their teachers were practically breathless, waiting for some pearl of unexpected wisdom.

“Never bring a frog to school,” mimed Corrine, edging toward the door as the auditorium erupted with laughter.

Fred Greenberg, the president’s chief of staff, was standing just inside, a cell phone pressed to his ear. One of the Secret Service people opened the door, and Corrine slipped into what turned out to be a cafeteria.

“He’s running late,” said Jess Northrup, McCarthy’s schedule keeper. “You’re going to have to talk to him in the car.”

“Here we go,” said someone else, and Corrine heard the auditorium erupt in one last thunderous round of applause. The small group of aides began filing toward the rear; McCarthy was suddenly alongside her, joking with one of the local congressmen about how he had to be careful not to give students too accurate a picture of his childhood, lest he be accused of leading them “down the crooked path.”

“Hello, Counselor, glad you could make it all the way up heah from Washington,” said McCarthy, tapping her arm. “You know Mark Caren, don’t you?”

“Congressman.”

“Josh Franklin is outside, and Senator Tewilliger,” said McCarthy. “Come ride with us to the hospital.”

Tewilliger? Corrine wanted to ask what he was doing here; New Hampshire was a good distance from Indiana.

Unless, of course, you were planning on running for the presidency in three years . . . against McCarthy.

Corrine put on her courtroom face as she walked to the limo and SUVs. Secret Service agents flanked the procession, aides scurried to the vehicles, and the national press corps sauntered toward their bus, trying to pretend they didn’t like looking important in front of their local brethren.

Corrine couldn’t talk in front of the others, so she simply followed along as they walked to the limo. Franklin and Tewilliger seemed to have just finished sharing a private joke and were smirking like schoolboys as they got in. Congressman Caren gave the president a pitch for more funding in a highway appropriations bill, mentioning that the road they were to take was one of those that would be improved.

“And there are plenty of potholes in it,” said Caren. “I have to warn you.”

The president winked at Corrine as he got into the limo.

Though in theory there were six passenger seats in the back, three facing front and three facing rear, the president generally sat without anyone next to him. Corrine found herself sandwiched between Tewilliger and Congressman Caren, her arms folded.

“Senator, I was surprised to see you in New Hampshire,” said Corrine.

“My Senate subcommittee is holding a hearing on the coast guard,” said Tewilliger smoothly. “This afternoon as a matter of fact. I made my plans before I knew the president was coming.”

“The Senator joined me at the state party dinner last night,” said McCarthy, grinning. “It was quite a night.”

“They put on a good party,” said Caren, oblivious to the president’s irony

Tewilliger, of course, had arranged to be in New Hampshire specifically to attend the dinner, where many of the state’s top politicos could be glad-handed at the same time. It was hardly an accident that he’d shown up when the president did, nor was it likely that he had made his plans before the president. Everyone in the car knew it, though general political etiquette kept them from contradicting him.

“Are we making progress on Korea?” asked Tewilliger as the sedan began moving toward the president’s next appointment.

“I think we are,” said McCarthy.

“The Undersecretary seems to think North Korea is holding out,” said Tewilliger, turning to Franklin, “if I’m reading him correctly.”

“I just think it’s a possibility, not necessarily a fact,” said Franklin.

“What do you mean?” asked Caren.

“I think it’s very possible that they have nukes we don’t know about.”

As a general rule, First Team missions were kept secret from the cabinet, and neither Franklin nor his boss had been informed of this one. The president gave nothing away now, his manner still pleasantly accommodating. Talking to children always charged him up; he had dozens of schoolboy stories and loved to tell each one. Chatting with the kids, even from an auditorium stage, made him feel as if he were breaking out of the bubble that surrounded the presidency.

“If the international organizations do their jobs, we won’t have to trust North Korea,” Caren said.

“Assuming the North Koreans cooperate,” said Tewilliger.

“A difficult thing to assume,” said Franklin.

Corrine had not realized that Franklin was so skeptical. Defense Secretary Larry Stich was a proponent of the agreement, partly because he believed the North Korean regime was on its last legs and the agreement would not only freeze developments but also avoid the possibility of the weapons disappearing if a successor took over. But Franklin clearly had a different opinion; he began speaking about increases in the size of the North Korean army recently, mentioning improvements in the forces around the capital and the pending purchase of new Russian equipment. Details rolled off his tongue. There was a program to replace the type 63 light tank and another to update the North Korean version of the Russian type 85 armored personnel carrier, equipping it with better armor and fire-and-forget missiles.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to monopolize the conversation,” said Franklin, suddenly cutting himself off midsentence. He turned to Corrine. “Ms. Alston, what do you think about the Koreans? Can we trust them?”

“I don’t really have much of an opinion on trust,” she said. “And in any event, my opinion would be the same as my client’s.”

McCarthy started to laugh.

“What brings you to New Hampshire, Ms. Alston?” asked Congressman Caren.

“I have a few things to go over with the president,” she said, “and since he couldn’t come to me, I came to him.”

Caren nodded. He suppressed a smile, as if he were afraid his oval egg of a face would crack.

“I haven’t been to your state in a long time,” added Corrine. “It’s beautiful in the fall.”

“You should have seen the trees a few weeks ago. It is pretty, though. But chilly, very chilly.”