Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (129 page)

Murray whistled as the argument took its full form. His mind had been racing for the past few hours in one direction. Now it had to race in another.

“Mrs. Foley, I—”

“Andrea,” Inspector O'Day said, “this isn't personal. Take a step back and think about it. If you had the resources of a nation-state, if you were patient, and if you had people who were really motivated, how would you do it?”

“How did they do Iraq?” Ed Foley took up the argument. “Would you have thought that was possible?”

The President looked around the room. Fabulous, now they're telling me not to trust the Secret Service.

“It all makes sense if you think like the other guy,” Mary Pat told them. “It's part of their tradition, remember?”

“Okay, but what do we do about it?” Andrea asked, her face openly stunned at the possibility.

“Pat, you have a new assignment,” Murray told his subordinate. “With the President's permission, that is.”

“Granted,” POTUS breathed.

“Rules?” O'Day wanted to know.

“None, none at all,” Price told him.

I
T WAS APPROACHING
noon over the United Islamic Republic. Maintenance was going well on the six heavy divisions based in the south-central part of the country. Nearly all the tracks on the mechanized fighting vehicles had been replaced. A healthy spirit of competition had developed between the former Iraqi divisions and those moved down from Iran. With their vehicles restored to full fighting order, the troopers drew ammunition to bring all of the T-80 tanks and BMP infantry carriers to full basic-loads.

The battalion commanders looked over the results of their training exercise with satisfaction. Their newly acquired GPS locators had been like magic, and now the Iraqis understood one of the reasons why the Americans had treated them so harshly in 1991. With GPS one didn't need roads at all. The Arabic culture had long termed the desert a sea, and now they could navigate on it like sailors, moving from point to point with a confidence they had never known before.

Corps and divisional staff officers knew why this was so important. They had just been issued new maps, and with them a new mission. They also learned that their three-corps mechanized force had a name, the Army of God. By tomorrow, sub-unit commanders would be briefed in on that, and many other things.

I
T TOOK AN
hour for them to get in. Admiral Jackson had been sleeping in his office, but Secretary Bretano had gone home after a marathon session of reviewing deployments within the country. The White House dress code had been relaxed, they saw. The President, also red-eyed, was wearing doctor clothes.

Dan Murray and Ed Foley repeated their brief.

Jackson took it well: “All right. Now we know what we're up against.”

Bretano did not: “This is an overt act of war.”

“But we're not the objective,” the DCI told him. “It's Saudi Arabia, and all the other Gulf states. It's the only thing that makes sense. He figures that if he takes over those states, we can't nuke him—it would turn off the oil for the whole world.” The DCI almost had it right, but not quite.

“And he has India and China in his pocket,” Robby Jackson went on. “They're just running interference, but it's good interference. Ike's in the wrong place. The Indians have their carriers blocking the Straits of Hormuz. We can't get the MPS ships in without air cover. Zap, he moved those three corps down. The Saudis'll fight, but they're outmanned. It's over in a week, maybe less. Not a bad operational concept,” the J-3 concluded.

“The bio-attack's pretty clever, too. I think they got more than they bargained for. Almost every base and unit we have is out of business at the moment,” SecDef observed, catching up fast on the operational side.

“Mr. President, when I was a boy in Mississippi, I remember the Klukkers used to say, when you see a mad dog, don't kill the poor thing—toss it in somebody's backyard. You know, some sheet-head actually did that to us once, 'cause my pap was real big on getting people registered to vote.”

“What did you do, Rob?”

“Pap blew it away with his Fox double,” Admiral Jackson replied. “And continued the mission. We have to move fast if we're going to move. Problem is, what with?”

“How long before the MPS ships get to Saudi?”

“Just under three days, but there's somebody in the way. C
IN
CL
ANT
's cut orders for that surface group to scoot down the Suez, and they can be at the strait in time, but we gotta get those tank-carriers past the Indians first. Those four boats are escorted by one cruiser, two 'cans, and two frigates, and if we lose them, nearest equipment re-supply's in Savannah, sir.”

“What do we have in storage in Saudi?” Ben Goodley asked.

“Enough for a heavy brigade. Same in Kuwait. The third brigade-set is afloat and standing in harm's way.”

“Kuwait's first in line,” the President said. “What can we get there?”

“If we're balls-to-the-wall, we can fly the 10th ACR out of Israel to mate up with the POMCUS site south of Kuwait City. That we can do in twenty-four hours. The Kuwaitis'll handle transport. They have a quiet understanding with Israel on that. We helped broker it,” Robby said. “The plan's called B
UFFALO
F
ORWARD
.”

“Anybody think that's a bad idea?” Jack asked.

“One armored cavalry regiment—I don't think it's enough to deter them, sir,” Goodley said.

“The man's right,” the J-3 agreed.

Ryan looked around the table. Knowing was one thing. Being able to act was something else. He could order a strategic nuclear attack on Iran. He had B-2A stealth bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base, and with the information he'd been given in the past two hours, getting C
INC
-S
TRIKE
to validate the order under the two-man rule would not be a problem. The “Spirits,” as the B-2s were called, could be there in less than eighteen hours, and turn that nation into a smoking, poisoned ruin.

But he couldn't do that. Even if he had to, he probably couldn't. Though American Presidents had long been faced with the necessity of telling the world that, yes, we will launch our missiles and bombers if we have to, it was a duty Ryan never expected to carry out. Even this attack on his country, the use of weapons of mass destruction— to America the equivalent of nuclear arms—had been the decision of one man, and carried out by a relative handful. Could he flatten whole cities in response, kill the innocent as Daryaei had done, because the other guy had done it first? And live with himself afterward? There had to be something better, some other option. Killing Daryaei was one.

“Ed?”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“Where are Clark and Chavez right now?”

“Khartoum, still, awaiting instructions.”

“Think they can get into Tehran again?”

“Won't be easy, sir.” He turned to his wife.

"The Russians have helped us in the past. I can ask.

What would their mission be?"

“Find out if they can get in first. We'll figure out the mission in a little while. Robby?”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“The 10th Regiment moves to Kuwait at once.”

Jackson took a deep and skeptical breath. “Aye aye, sir.”

T
HERE WAS THE
intermediary step of getting the approval of the Kuwaiti government. The Ambassador handled that. It did not prove to be hard. Major Sabah had kept his government informed of developments in their new neighbor to the north, and the satellite photos of the re-tracking of the UIR tanks turned the trick. With their own military fully activated, the Kuwait government telexed a formal request for America to commence an extended training exercise in the western part of their nation. This moved fast. The rulers of the small nation had fresh memories of earlier mistakes. Their only proviso was that the movement be made secretly, and America did not object. Within four hours, the plush, brand-new airliners of the national airline started lifting off, headed southwest over Saudi Arabia, and later turned north, up the Gulf of Aqaba.

The order was issued by Training and Doctrine Command, which administratively owned the 10th ACR, since it was technically a training establishment. Most other stateside units belonged to Forces Command, F
ORCE
C
OM
. The emergency-deployment order went by C
RITIC
-priority to Colonel Scan Magruder. He had roughly five thousand personnel to move, and that would require twenty jumbo flights. The roundabout routing made for a distance of 1,300 miles and three hours in each direction, with an hour's turnaround time at both ends. But it had all been thought through, and the diminution of international air travel had made more aircraft available than the plan had anticipated for B
UFFALO
F
ORWARD
. Even the Israelis cooperated. The pilots of the Kuwaiti jumbos had the singular experience of seeing F-15 fighters with blue Star of David markings flying escort as they came into the big Israeli air base in the Negev.

The first group out comprised senior officers and a security group to supplement the Kuwaiti guard force at the POMCUS site. The site was a group of warehouses containing the complete equipment set of a heavy brigade, which was exactly what the armored cavalry regiment was. The equipment was lovingly maintained by contractors, who were well paid by their Kuwaiti hosts.

The second aircraft had A-Troop, 1st of the 10th. Buses took them through the late-afternoon sun to their vehicles, which in every case started up at once, fully loaded with fuel and ammunition. A troop of the 1st “Guidon” Squadron rolled out under the watchful eyes of their squadron CO, Lieutenant Colonel Duke Masterman. He had family in the Philadelphia area, and he could add two and two together. Something very bad was happening in his country, and out of a clear sky B
UFFALO
F
ORWARD
had been activated. That was fine with him, he decided, and his troopers.

Magruder and his staff also watched. He'd even insisted that the command group bring the regimental standard. This was the Cav.

“F
OLEYEVA, IS IT
that bad?” Golovko asked, meaning the epidemic. They were speaking in Russian. Though his English was nearly perfect, the CIA official spoke his native language with a poetic elegance learned from her grandfather.

“We don't know, Sergey Nikolay'ch, and I have been looking at other things.”

“Ivan Emmetovich is bearing up?”

“What do you think? I know you saw the TV interview a few hours ago.”

“An interesting man, your President. So easy to underestimate. I did that once myself.”

“And Daryaei?”

“Formidable, but an uncultured barbarian.” Mary Pat could almost hear the man spit.

“Quite.”

“Tell Ivan Emmetovich to think the scenario through, Foleyeva,” Golovko suggested. “Yes, we will cooperate,” he added, answering a question not yet asked. “Fully.”

“Spasiba. I will be back to you.” Mary Pat looked over at her husband. “You have to love the guy.”

“I wish he was on our side,” the DCI observed.

“He is, Ed.”

T
HE DOG HAD
stopped barking, they noted in S
TORM
T
RACK
. The three corps they were trying to observe had stopped using their radios around noon. Zero. As sophisticated as their computer-aided E
LINT
equipment was, nothing was still nothing. It was an obvious sign, and just as often overlooked. The direct lines to Washington burned constantly now. More Saudi officers were coming in, demonstrating the increased-alert state of their own military, which was quietly deploying to the field around King Khalid Military City. That was some comfort to the intelligence people in the listening post, but not much. They were far closer to the mouth of the lion. Being spooks, they thought like spooks, and by consensus they decided that the events in America had somehow started here. Elsewhere, such thoughts engendered a feeling of helplessness; here they had a different effect. The rage was real, and they had a mission to fulfill, exposed position or not.

“O
KAY
,” J
ACKSON SAID
on the conference line, “who can we deploy?”

The answer was a brief silence. The Army was half the size it had been less than a decade before. There were two heavy divisions in Europe, V Corps, but they were quarantined by the Germans. The same was true of the two armored divisions at Fort Hood, Texas, and the 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Riley, Kansas. Parts of the 82nd at Fort Bragg and the 101st at Fort Campbell were deployed to support National Guard units, but the units that had been kept back at their bases had soldiers who'd tested positive for Ebola. The same was true of the two stateside Marine divisions, based at Lejeune in North Carolina and Pendleton in California.

“Look,” F
ORCE
C
OM
said. “We got the 11th ACR and a Guard brigade training up at the NTC. That base is totally clean, we can move them out as quick as you can whistle up the airplanes. The rest? Before we can move them, we have to sort everybody out. I don't dare move them before we've tested every soldier for this damned bug, and the kits ain't out everywhere yet.”

“He's right,” another voice said. Every head on the conference line nodded. The pharmaceutical companies were racing to produce them. Millions of test kits were needed, but only a few tens of thousands were available, and those were being used for targeted people, the ones who showed symptoms, relatives or close associates of known cases, truckers delivering food and medical supplies, and most of all, the medical personnel themselves, who were the most exposed to the virus. Worse still, one “clear” reading wasn't enough. Some people would have to be tested daily for three days or more, because although the test was reliable, the immune systems of potential victims were not. The antibodies could start showing up an hour after a negative test reading. Doctors and hospitals throughout the country were screaming for the kits, and in this case the Army was sucking hind tit.

The UIR is going to throw a war
, J-3 thought, and nobody's going to come. Robby wondered if some hippie from the sixties might find that amusing.

“How long on that?”