Mission Compromised (21 page)

“Sandy, I know what you said about Pete and me still being together, but I'm not so sure that this marriage ought to continue.” Rachel's moment of sadness had passed. She now had a determined set to her jaw.

Rachel continued. “I wish there was a way for me to understand his work and why we have to pick up and move nearly every other year. It's impossible for me to put down roots. I've almost lost track of how many times we've moved. But even if I don't have to go, one day he would just come home and say, ‘I'm being deployed.' And if I asked
him when, he'd say, ‘In two days.' And if I asked where, he'd say something like, ‘I can't say' And I'm supposed to get used to that uncertainty—gone for a month, six months, or a year, and I don't always know where he goes or what he does. It's just an absolutely impossible life for me.”

Sandy nodded sympathetically. “Have you talked with some of the other military wives?” she asked.

“Yes. Some of them are just as frazzled over this as I am. But some of them are just so focused on serving their husbands that they don't care—they need to get a life, is what I think.”

Rachel began to empty the coffee grounds from the pots in the galley and dump the remaining coffee down the drain. As she stowed them in their compartments prior to their landing at Dulles, she decided to confide in Sandy, to get her input on something that was troubling her.

“Sandy,” she said quietly, “I need your advice. I haven't shared this with anyone, but I really could use your input.”

Sandy nodded and moved closer so Rachel could share her comments in privacy.

“Pete has just taken a new assignment. He says he can't tell me anything about it, and it's for at least two years. The good news is we won't have to move for two years. The bad news is that I don't have a clue where he will be during those two years.

“I'm really getting so sick of this that I'm ready to end this marriage,” she said.

Sandy took her friend's arm and said, “Oh no—don't give up yet.”

“I'm not kidding. In fact, I've made an appointment with a lawyer to discuss a divorce as soon as I get back from the London assignment on Friday. I'm really fed up.”

“I know, Rachel, but …”

“Remember when Peter's brother was killed last year? He went up to his folks' house to break the news to them and didn't even make any attempt to get hold of me and let me go with him. He said it was a family affair, for heaven's sake! I was so angry at him after that happened that I would have divorced him that very week. But I couldn't go through with it. I mean, with his brother dead and his parents so hurt—if I'd have served him papers then …”

“You guys need to get away and talk these things through. Before you and I met and got to know each other, Tom and I were having problems and went to a Marriage Encounter weekend. Neither one of us wanted to go, but we each felt that we had so much invested in our marriage that we couldn't throw it away without at least trying to understand our problems and see if we could fix them,” Sandy said.

“And …”

“Well, it worked great for us. We're still together, as you know. We still have some bumpy rides, but each of us knows that we aren't going to walk out on the marriage, and that helps us work things out. I think you need some kind of a structured setting like that to get you on track.”

“I don't know … we've got so much emotional baggage. P. J. would deny it—he'd say that I'm the emotional one and he's the logical one and that he doesn't have any emotion at all. But I've seen how he reacts when I hurt him—I know he has feelings.”

“Listen, Rachel,” Sandy suggested, “when we get home, let me give you some stuff to look at from our Marriage Encounter weekend and their 800 number. You should at least check it out. Please tell me you'll do that instead of filing divorce papers.”

Rachel smiled appreciatively. “Thanks for your concern. I promise to hold off on serving them, but I think it's time to look at all the options. I'll look at your stuff. But I'm also going to meet with the lawyer and explore the divorce options too.”

 

Area 35

________________________________________

Andrews Air Force Base

Friday, 2 December 1994

1700 Hours, Local

 

Newman was alone with Joshua Weiskopf as the young Delta Force captain packed up his gear for the quick trip out to the runway to board the C-130 that would take him and the ISEG back to Fort Bragg. Weiskopf jammed a rolled-up pair of jeans, a dark-blue flannel shirt, a black Gore-Tex parka, a small notebook, and his 9mm Beretta pistol into the parachute bag that served as his “flyaway kit.” Everyone in this line of work kept such a bag, always packed, full of the gear they would need to sustain them for several days. Newman certainly knew; he'd lived like this for sixteen years.

The last item into the bag was the EncryptionLok-3 that Newman had given him that morning. “This is quite a piece of gear, Colonel,” said Weiskopf, holding the device and smiling at the Marine.

“Yes, it is, Josh—and speaking of code-breaking, I'm still trying to figure out how you all got the word on my promotion before I got back here yesterday.”

 

 

When Newman had arrived at the Area 35 restricted compound on Thursday morning, the whole group had stood and applauded when he walked into the small mess hall where they were having breakfast. And in spite of it being just 6:30 in the morning, the five team leaders
insisted on a traditional celebration. Someone produced a bottle of brandy and added a dollop to everyone's coffee cup and raised a toast. They then proceeded to sing several ribald verses of an old barracks ballad having to do with the honoree's dubious lineage.

As he thanked them, Newman wondered how they had learned what had yet to be announced officially even within the Marine Corps. McDade, Robertson, and Coombs, who had heard Harrod the night before, denied telling anyone. But Sergeant Major Dan Gabbard, the only other Marine and the senior enlisted man in the ISEG unit, knew before Newman that he'd been selected for promotion. He had heard the scuttlebutt from the “sergeant major's network” at HQMC and had passed the word to Weiskopf and the rest of the unit. Gabbard had also taken it upon himself to inform the group about all he knew of their “White House boss.”

After Newman, Coombs, McDade, and Robertson had departed Andrews to get back to the White House for their Wednesday night meeting with Harrod, Gabbard had sensed that the troops had questions about the man who would be sending them into harm's way. After dinner in the mess hall that evening, the sergeant major had assembled all thirty-eight men in the ready room to cover some administrative matters: how their pay, life insurance, next-of-kin notifications, and the like would be handled in this international unit. He used the occasion to tell them that he and Newman had served together off and on ever since Third Battalion, Eighth Marines back in '79 and '80. For more than an hour, he regaled them with accounts from Newman's extraordinary career as a recon Marine, about his exploits in Central America, Beirut, Panama, and especially how he won the Navy Cross at Khafji during Desert Storm—knowing that Newman would never tell these stories himself. Even these hard-bitten
veterans of covert combat had been impressed and had a new sense of confidence in their leader.

 

 

Weiskopf finished packing and slung the parachute bag over his shoulder. “It's been a good three days. We all got a lot out of the briefings and the surveillance drills that the CIA put us through, and the intelligence briefings were top-notch. I'd feel better if we had more, but that's always the way it is. Do you still think that our first target is going to be Aidid?”

“It sure looks that way to me. Most of the intel that they've fed us is oriented on him.”

“Yeah,” said Weiskopf, “but they've also given us a big pile of stuff on Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, and a whole bunch of those thugs in Yugoslavia, or whatever it's called today. All I'm saying is that we've got a lot to get ready for and not much time to get it all done.”

“Josh, all I can tell you is that I'll give you the best info I get and give you as much advance notice as I can.”

“I know you will,” said the Army captain, holding out his hand. Newman shook it, clapped the bearded Delta officer on the shoulder, and the two men walked out of the building together into the darkness.

Weiskopf had come to respect and admire the newly brevetted Marine lieutenant colonel in the three days since he had first met him. It was clear to all the members of the unit, Delta, SEALs, and SAS, that Newman was deserving of one of the greatest compliments they could offer: “He knows his stuff.”

For his part, Newman quickly realized that the small task force at his disposal was perhaps the most skilled and experienced group of military men in the world. Few of his well-trained recon Marines possessed
the language skills, foreign experience, and maturity of the men in the ISEG. Every one of these men knew what it was like to be shot at. Some of them, like Newman, knew what it was like to be shot at and hit. All of them knew what it was like to kill other human beings in moments of extraordinary violence. All of them knew the terrible rush of adrenaline in the gut when you realize that some other human being is trying to kill you. And all of them knew the awful frustration of having those who were closer than brothers die beside them.

Newman knew that these qualities made these men a remarkable collection of individuals. Now it was Joshua Weiskopf's job—with the support of Newman and his small team at the White House—to turn these individuals into an effective team and to do it in thirty days.

The task was so daunting that Newman had simply decided to stay at Andrews and save himself the time of the commute to and from Falls Church. After the Wednesday night meeting with Harrod and WHCA's installation of equipment in the Special Projects Office, Newman had returned home to his empty house, grabbed his own “flyaway kit,” and headed back to Andrews.

It was after midnight when he arrived at the Air Force base main gate, and this time he drove his own car all the way around the base, up to the chain-link fence in the woods bearing the white sign with black letters:
AREA 35 - RESTRICTED.
He moved into the spartan room next to Weiskopf's in the one-story brick billet and had just laid down on the steel military cot to catch a few hours sleep when he remembered that he had forgotten to leave a note for his wife.

He got up, grabbed the mobile phone out of his kit, and called home to leave a message on their home answering machine. After telling the machine where he was and of his plans to stay at Andrews until Friday, he also left his new office telephone number in
Washington at the OEOB. Then surprisingly, even to him, Newman concluded his message with a change of tone in his voice, from the businesslike update on his plans to a softer, more intimate voice. “Hey, babe … I miss you. I'm really looking forward to seeing you soon. I love you, 'bye.”

Each evening he'd check in with Harrod and his teammates at his office in the White House. In less than forty-eight hours, Coombs had built a detailed, thirty-day training plan that had the unit practicing everything from High Altitude-High Opening (HA-HO) parachute jumps over the forests of North Carolina and West Virginia, to rubber boat drills in the frigid waters of Onslow Beach at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. But his training schedule had one gaping hole in it. He had reserved the final week of the month-long program for getting the unit acclimated to wherever they would be conducting their first operation. And until the UN made up its collective mind about who their first target would be, he didn't know whether to book the unit for its final week of training at the NATO cold-weather site in Narvik, Norway; the Royal Marines Jungle Warfare Training Center in Malaysia; or the British SAS Desert Warfare Operations site in Oman. Just in case, he also informed the Naval Undersea Warfare Center on Coronado Island off the coast of San Diego that they might have thirty-eight unexpected guests for the last week of December through the first week of January.