Foreign Enemies and Traitors (10 page)

“Best coffee I’ve tasted in years,” continued the doctor.  “Sure beats the hell out of that damn chicory.  I’d almost forgotten how much I love real coffee.  You don’t remember how you happened to come by it?  Sometimes tastes and smells can trigger memories.”

“No, I don’t remember.  I just remember waking up in a pile of wreckage, and walking out.”

“Just waking up, and walking out?”  The doctor looked skeptical.

“That’s right.”

“Well then, okay.  Now, let me take a look at your cut.”  The doctor approached to within a yard and leaned forward.  “Hmm, not too bad.  It’s going to be a beauty of a scar, but it’s not infected.  If you let your hair grow, it should cover it up.  I’ll give you a little antibacterial ointment, that’s the best I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“Any headaches?  Blurry vision, double vision, ringing in the ears?”

“I’ve had a headache.  It comes and goes.  None of the other things you said.  Doctor, how long do I have to stay here?”

“All of your blood tests were negative—normal.  Usually that means you’d be able to leave in two weeks, if you don’t have any reactions to the shots they gave you yesterday.  That is, medically you’d be able to leave.  But you’re a tricky case.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You’ve got no ID.  I don’t think they’ll let you go until they find out who you are.  You can’t just go walking around without an ID badge.  You need it to prove you’ve had all the vaccinations.”

“I don’t see you wearing a badge, doctor.”

“Military personnel in uniform don’t have to wear them.  Our uniforms are our badge,” he stated a bit pompously.  “Everybody else has to wear the badges at all times when on public property.”

“I…see.  But what if I don’t remember?  What’ll I use for ID?”

“Maybe they’ll get a hit on your fingerprints.”

“What if they don’t?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s hope your memory returns.  It usually does.”

“So, doctor, let’s just say I do remember, what then?”

“Well, you might be able to go home, if you remember where that is.  After they check out your story.  But if they charge you with traveling without identification, with being in a prohibited zone…they might sentence you to labor.  To be honest, that’s probably the most likely outcome in any case.”

“Labor?”

“Sure, a labor battalion.  Reconstruction, or maybe agriculture.  That’d be my guess.”

“What do you mean, ‘labor battalion’?”

“If you don’t already have a critical skill or an approved job, they’ll assign you one.  Reconstruction, cleanup, or farming.  Depends on your age and your physical condition.  If you have a skill they need, they’ll assign you.  Mechanic, electrician, things like that.”

“Whether I want a job or not, I’ll get assigned to one?”

“That’s right.” 

“Doc, Mississippi is still in America, isn’t it?”

“Don’t get testy—I don’t make the rules.  It’s martial law, what can I say?  Nobody gets a free ride.  But since you’re a John Doe, you’ll stay here—at least for a while.  I never heard of the tribunal charging an amnesiac, but you never know.  Like I said, you’re an unusual case.”

“Well, thanks, Doc…I guess.”

“No problem.  Odds are your memory will come back; it usually does.  No doubt you’ve had a concussion, and probably some post-traumatic stress as well.  I’ll check back on you in a few days.”

“Thanks.”

“You know, I’m 65, and you’re probably close to my age.  If you earned jump wings in the Army, then you were probably in the service about the same time I was.  Do you remember going to Vietnam?”

Carson hesitated.  “No.”

“Well, I sure do.  I was a door gunner on a Huey.  In the 101st Airborne Division.”

Carson let the references to Vietnam pass; it was too early for that discussion.  “Doctor, if you’re 65, what are you still doing in the Army?”

Foley laughed and rubbed his head, combing blunt fingers through his gray hair.  “Great question.  I was drafted last year…for the second time.  Considerably older this time around!  That’s one more problem with being an MD, I guess.  When Uncle Sam needs you, he finds you.  You might say he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”  The doctor gave a shrug of resignation.  “So now I’m doing my patriotic duty…whether I want to or not.  Just like everybody else.”

****

Bob Bullard hadn’t forgotten Colonel Jibek. 
He hadn’t forgotten his outright refusal to conduct raids outside of Clark County, while his men were playing goat polo and chasing American girls.  Well, if Jibek didn’t understand the chain of command, there was every reason to think that his second-in-command would, if an appropriate lesson was administered.  There was growing pressure from above to finish the pacification and evacuation of western Tennessee, and the Kazaks were supposed to be taking the lead, not taking time off.  Sidney Krantz, the president’s special adviser, was breathing down his neck to get the job finished.  Krantz had been responsible for Bullard being picked to head the rural pacification program, and had let him know that he could also fire him.

                A dozen foreign contract battalions in Tennessee and Kentucky provided the fist behind rural pacification when nothing else would work.  The holdouts were beginning to understand that overt resistance would result in several hundred Kazaks sweeping in to conduct massive cordonand-search operations.  The horse-mounted Kazaks were particularly impresssive, galloping across the countryside on raids.  The Mexicans and the other lesser troops in the North American Legion provided the manpower at the checkpoints and performed routine occupational missions. 

The foreign troops on the ground were a vital part of the force equation, the visible face of rural pacification, but the real incentive for cooperation came from the sky.  When it came to instilling fear, nothing provided more bang for the buck than the UAVs.  Unmanned aircraft—from airplane-sized Reapers and Predators to drones no bigger than model airplanes—kept a watchful eye above Tennessee around the clock.  In the areas slated for complete evacuation, the holdouts could be located by the UAVs and targeted for special action as needed, county by county.

While the foreign troops worked on the ground in the problematic regions, the UAVs, helicopters and fixed-wing assets were strictly an American-run show.  Bob Bullard enjoyed visiting the UAV operations center in the middle of Fort Campbell.  The center was only minutes away from his current residence, a four-bedroom senior officer’s house near the base’s golf course.  In the UAV center, up to sixty flight technicians at any given time were busy monitoring screens, remotely flying twenty to thirty drones and keeping a watchful eye on their assigned regions.  All of these flight technicians were federal agents, assigned to the task of rural pacification in Tennessee and Kentucky.

The UAVs were the tool that had broken the back of the incipient rebellion in these two states.  On an hour-by-hour basis, the drones were much more expensive to keep aloft than patrolling with police cars.  But while police cars and military vehicles were subject to the constant risk of ambush by snipers and roadside bombs, the silent, invisible UAVs were virtually invulnerable to ground attack.  Just as important, they were not hindered by the downed bridges and impassable roads resulting from the earthquakes. 

Each drone was controlled by a two-man crew, sitting side by side behind their screens and consoles.  The pilots and flight technicians monitored their screens in the main room of UAV flight operations, aligned in rows like a low-budget version of NASA’s Mission Control.  Bullard walked quickly through the area, the gym of a converted Army physical fitness center.  He passed through several interior rooms and halls and finally approached an unmarked locked door.  The door was covered with a plate of thick steel and was scanned by several video cameras.  The cover name for this office was Surveillance Oversight, but not even that innocuous name was written anywhere near the entrance.  Bullard punched in a number code, the door buzzed open, and he went inside.  Two of his black-clad bodyguards remained just outside, while two others, who also performed staff duty, entered with him. 

Inside this smaller room (formerly a coaching office) were four senior UAV crew sitting at flight monitors and two managers at desks, behind their own computers.  These six men, as well as those on the other shifts, had all been picked by Bullard, chosen because of their personal loyalty and their understanding of the difficult but crucial nature of their mission. 

“Good morning, Director Bullard,” the bearded senior technician greeted him.  He was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt and jeans.  The men in this room were all dressed casually, in slacks or jeans and long-sleeve shirts, without ties or jackets.  Each wore a laminated security badge pinned to his shirt.

“Good morning, Harry.  Anything interesting since yesterday?” 

“Oh, we had a few good shoots.  Popped an A.I. and nailed a few curfew violators.”

A.I.s were armed insurgents, curfew violators and boundary jumpers observed carrying weapons.  “Let’s see the video,” said Bullard as he was handed a cup of coffee by one of his entourage, whose duty it was to fetch a cup immediately upon entering any office with a coffee maker.  Offices with genuine coffee were rare, but the inner sanctum of UAV flight operations was one such place.

Bullard sat in the senior technician’s padded swivel seat as the video was cued up on the monitor.  He sipped his coffee and watched.  In the first video clip, the infrared image of a man was clearly seen flitting in and out of the brush along a tree line.  The man, hotter than his surroundings, was seen as a white figure walking against a dark background of trees and bushes.  The scene appeared to have been filmed from only a hundred yards away, even though the slant range from the UAV was several miles.

This night creeper was clearly a curfew violator, with no legitimate reason to be out after midnight.  The image of a crosshair appeared on him, and a few moments later the crosshair was surrounded by a flashing box.  The flashing box meant that the target was being painted by coded pulses of invisible laser energy.  Within a few seconds there was a silent explosion of white light.  When the picture was reacquired, the man was gone, replaced by scattered white hotspots on the ground.

The senior tech said, “Night shift dropped one of the new thirty millimeters on him.”

He had seen the prototype 30mm rockets.  They were not much thicker than a rake handle, and only a yard long.  Smaller even than the baseball bat–sized Viper missiles, with their four-pound charges.  Being dropped from altitude, they didn’t need much propellant.  Once a target was designated, GPS guidance would send the missiles into the correct area, usually to within twenty meters.  The UAV operator kept the crosshair on the target, painting it with the laser target designator.  When a missile was coming down its seeker head locked on that reflected laser energy, and its fins steered it to the exact impact point.  Now the 30mm rockets were entering active service, saving the government money by conserving the larger and much more expensive missiles.  “They follow the laser just like the old model Hellfires, right?” asked Bullard. 

“Every damn time.  Only a pound of explosive.  Cuts ’em in half.  Much better than the Hellfires or Vipers on exposed insurgents.  We can use the thirties a lot closer to structures and friendlies.  We used a thirty millimeter on this guy because he was over the line.”

“Over which line?”

“Northern Mississippi, but inside the buffer zone.  Practically on the state line, actually.”

“Aren’t you supposed to run that by my office?  We don’t want to get General Mirabeau in an uproar.  We need his cooperation down there.”

“There wasn’t time.  It was take the shot or let him go.  The UAV was almost out of fuel, and nothing else was close enough to pick up the coverage.  He was in the buffer zone anyway.”

“Fine, just use your discretion.  Look, let’s skip the rest of the review.  Everybody else, why don’t you go out for a break?  Smokes, whatever.  Take ten, okay?”  When the room was clear except for Bullard and the senior UAV tech, he said, “Harry, I’ve got a special mission for you today.  Here are the coordinates.”  Bullard handed him a scrap of paper with the GPS numbers recorded on his visit to Colonel Jibek’s estate a day earlier. 

Harry sat at an adjoining monitor and entered the digits on his keyboard.  “Clark County.  Let’s see what we’ve got up that’s nearby.  Okay, we’ve got an armed Predator.  The easiest way would be to just drop a thirty on him.”

“Listen, I don’t want to drop a missile on this target, not even a thirty millimeter.  Do you have a SniperHawk available?”  Bullard already knew that one was available.  He’d personally been down to the “bird farm” a mile away, where the UAVs were launched and recovered, and had ordered one sent up.  The small and stealthy SniperHawk had to be used together with a Predator, using the bigger drone as its data link and main visual reference provider.

“Oh, going for plausible deniability, are we?”  Harry raised a conspiratorial eyebrow and winked.  Harry had worked with Bullard on special projects in the past.

“Something like that.”  If the Kazaks blamed an insurgent firing a long-range sniper rifle for the death of their commander, their hatred for the locals would intensify, which was a good thing.  On the other hand, a missile dropping down from the sky and taking out Colonel Jibek would lead their suspicions elsewhere.

“You’re in luck—we’ve got a SniperHawk just a few minutes away.  Sounds like you’ve already got a target in mind, am I right?”

Bullard handed him a photograph of Colonel Yerzhan Jibek, a portrait from the chest up, wearing a Russian-style uniform tunic with medals.  “This guy.  He’s not working out quite as well as we’d like.”

“Oh, I see—we’re going to have a kinetic change-of-command ceremony.  Got it.  Any idea where we’re going to find him?”  Jibek’s confiscated equestrian estate came into view on the flat-screen video monitor, in full color and rich detail, as the Predator UAV steered itself over to Bullard’s coordinates.