More Than Courage (17 page)

Once more he surveyed their surroundings. For as far as he could see there wasn't anything remotely resembling a concealed position that would accommodate the Hummer. Besides, with O'Hara of no use in his current state, Laporta wondered if he could even take the risk of sleeping himself, leaving them both unguarded. He had little doubt that once he laid his head down nothing short of a world war would wake him.

Heading back to the humvee Laporta looked through the open door at O'Hara, who was staring straight ahead with an expression as vacant as the desert. Then he looked over at the PRC-137F special mission radio wedged neatly between the two rear seats. With that SATCOM radio, he knew he could talk to the world. That would mean violating his orders governing the team's conduct while escaping and evading. Yet he saw that he had no choice. The contingency plan that no one had paid much attention to, had been written by someone who could never have envisioned the sort of fix Laporta now found himself in. As a Green Beret, he was expected to improvise, to use his judgment and exercise initiative in combat. Though he had no idea what the consequences would be for him and O'Hara if he violated the team's standing order and used the radio now, Laporta was fairly sure he understood what would become of them if he didn't.

Too exhausted to continue analyzing all the possibilities, complications, and consequences of his actions, he opened the rear door of the humvee, climbed in, and turned on the SATCOM

radio. Reaching over to the front, he grasped O'Hara's shoulder and gave it a vigorous shake. "Hey, Dennis. Wake up and get your butt in gear. We need to crank this sucker up."

Laporta was almost yelling as he shook O'Hara again with ever-increasing vigor in an effort to cut through O'Hara's mental MORE THAN COURAGE

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fog. His roughness with O'Hara was compounded by his fear of the consequences of his decision to use the SATCOM radio.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, O'Hara began to emerge from his deep stupor. Like a man waking from a deep sleep, he looked at his companion. Laporta managed to scare up his best toothy smile as he greeted his companion. "Well, amigo. We're either about to save our collective asses or buy a one-way ticket to hell.

Either way, I've decided the time has come to phone home."

11!

Arlington, Virginia

01:40 LOCAL (05:40 ZULU)

Delmont was madly banging away in the quiet of his small cubicle when the words and letters on his computer screen inexplicably began to jump about. Leaning back in his seat he blinked his tired eyes, making them so blurry he couldn't even see the characters.

When his vision finally cleared he scrolled back and reread the portion of the last couple of paragraphs of his document. What he saw appalled him. None of that made a lick of sense. Obviously he'd allowed himself to become so exhausted that he could no longer think or write straight. It was time, he concluded, to avail himself of that desperately needed break he had been putting off for better than an hour and take on a fresh supply of caffeine before attempting to finish the operations plan, or OPLAN.

With all the enthusiasm of a galley slave released after hours of incessant rowing, Delmont pushed his office chair away from the desk. The stiffness in his fingers and the amount of effort that'

standing up required reminded the Special Forces officer of just how fast he was losing his edge. Despite his demanding physical fitness regime he was no longer able to run as far or as fast as he used to. Of course he realized that he was getting older. The gray of his dark, close-cropped hair was a daily reminder of that.

While his wife was able to soften that blow by telling him the gray made him look noble and distinguished, nothing could hide the fact that time was slipping away from him. It was more than just aching muscles that didn't recover as quickly as they had when he had been a junior officer. He was finding he wasn't able to work through the night without a break the way he used to. Even his 134

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enthusiasm for a profession that had once been an all-consuming passion was beginning to wane as he caught himself wondering what life after the Army would be like. All of these little cues served as a warning to him that he was fast approaching a time when he'd no longer have the strength and stamina to return to doing what he loved most, being a soldier.

When he reached the break area where the section's personnel I1!

gathered during normal duty hours when they needed to escape from their mundane tasks, Delmont remembered that he had consumed the last cup of coffee from the community pot during his last break. The trace amount he had left in the glass decanter had long since dried out from the heat of the metal plate, leaving only charred residue behind.

His tired mind considered the alternatives, none appealing.

Coffee from the vending machine could easily be mistaken for bovine urine. To get the necessary caffeine he needed he'd have to drink a couple cans of soda, a solution that would eventually result in more interruptions in his work as he made frequent runs to the restroom. Thus he decided to commence on a coffee hunt.

Picking up an empty cup, he flipped the coffeemaker's switch to the off position as he should have done long ago and set out on his lonely nocturnal quest.

He knew that in some tiny obscure corner of the Pentagon's jij:

3.7 million square feet of office space there was a coffeepot filled I

with fresh-brewed coffee to keep folks like him awake and alert so 11|

they could tend to their nation's security. All he needed to do was i

to keep looking until he found it.

I;!!1

Like an old southern bloodhound seeking a raccoon, Del mont

sniffed the air for that telltale aroma of hot coffee as he prowled the long empty corridors. It was when he stepped into the main corridor that the idea of going to the Army War Room occurred to him. He would surely find coffee there, he told himself.

And while he was begging the staff of the War Room for coffee, he could get an update on RT Kilo's current situation. He didn't think much had changed since he'd last checked in with MORE THAN COURAGE

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the ops folks, but at least he would be able to report to Palmer in the morning that he had been monitoring the situation throughout the night. The general expected his people to stay updated on what was happening outside the five-sided squirrel cage in which they toiled.

To gain access to the Army War Room Delmont had to navigate numerous security checkpoints. Unlike his own workstation, this was a secured area. Practically every document and piece of paper in the room was classified, a fact that led the people who worked there to be rather casual when handling secret and top secret documents. By making the entire area secure they were relieved of "the need to close every work file on their computer or lock away every scrap of paper as Delmont and his co-workers did whenever they left their desk. Lining one wall of the War Room were shelves holding dozens of volumes of contingency plans, orders, and operational plans prepared in advance and designed to deal with any conceivable emergency that the Army might suddenly face. Highly classified information, most of it routine, as well as topographical and situation maps were displayed on monitors and overhead screens throughout the ops center. Each display was neatly and clearly marked with a date/time group that indicated the time of the most recent update.

While his duty description was plans officer, Delmont was no stranger here. His responsibilities often required him to be pres'

ent when plans he had drafted were being implemented as part of a training exercise or a real-world operation. So most of the people on this evening's graveyard shift were familiar with his face, if not his name. As he stood there with empty coffee cup in hand,

Delmont looked at a screen displaying the current situation in Southwest Asia, of which Syria was part. As expected, he saw that there'd been little change in the status and routine of the Army Units permanently assigned to the region. Everything was about

the same as it had been before an as-yet-undetermined number of

| -NT Kilo humvees had been destroyed, and team members killed, bounded, or MIA. Only the Navy and Air Force had significantly 136

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increased their activity. Delmont knew that because the Army War Room, like the Air Force and Navy ops centers monitored the status, location, and activities of all sister services as well as military units belonging to Coalition forces, host nations, and friendly powers throughout all theaters of operations and around the world. Even military personnel belonging to nations that were playing no active role in the current crisis were watching and tracking every move that the far-flung U.S. forces made. This was especially true of those nations that believed the very forces they were intently watching would one day be dispatched against them. Each of the elements being monitored was clearly identified by type, nationality, and size.

Delmont noted that the USS Ronald Reagan and its accompanying battle group had turned around and was making for the eastern Mediterranean again. Once past Cyprus the Reagan would join the Truman's battle group, which had just relieved it.

That would give the Joint Chiefs two carriers' worth of aircraft to play with should the Commander in Chief decide to take immediate action.

Delmont was aware of the consequences to the navy of this change in plans. The Reagan's delayed departure meant a postponement of its homecoming and well-earned rest for the crews of the carrier and its escorts. The change also meant that other carrier groups scattered throughout the world would be forced to amend their deployment schedules and activities. Scheduled training exercises were being put on hold in order to preserve the operational strength of all combat elements. Replenishment ships and tankers had been dispatched to the eastern Med to service those vessels in the Reagan's battle group that were running short of fuel, rations, and supplies.

All around the world falling dominos sent others tumbling over. Spare parts that had been held at homeport awaiting the Reagan's return and that were needed to repair aircraft and

machinery aboard the battle group's vessels had to be rushed to the region by the Air Force's Military Airlift command. With the MORE THAN COURAGE

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airlift command already overextended in meeting its commitment to support America's worldwide forces, these unanticipated airlift sorties forced the cancellation of previously scheduled airlift missions.

Priorities had to be reevaluated. Some missions would be scrubbed or handed off to Air National Guard units that were being called on to augment the airlift assets belonging to the Air Force's active component. Men and women who were expecting to awake in a few hours and pilot a commercial jet filled with harried businessmen from New York to Denver would instead find themselves hauling F-18 engines and cluster bombs out of Dover to forward bases and ports in the Med.

These ramifications were of little concern to Robert Delmont.

Only securing fresh coffee mattered to him. He found the coffeepot tucked away in a small break area off to one side of the Army War Room, and filled with fresh brew that he knew to be stronger than that found elsewhere. Dumping a packet of artificial sweetener into his cup, Delmont shoved it under the large stainless steel pot's spout, and opened the valve.

While he waited for his cup to fill, a member of the ops center's staff came up behind him. "Oh, Lordy. Someone let the special ops planner loose."

When his cup was full, Delmont turned around. He recognized the face but not the name of the lieutenant colonel who stood before him, only that he was part of the ops staff that worked the War Room's night shift. The two had crossed paths before when Delmont had hung around the ops center and monitored an operation that one of his OPLANs had put in motion.

Delmont waited until the ops officer was finished filling his own cup before replying. "Oh, you folks down here in the mushroom Patch have nothing to worry about. I'm just taking a survey on the home life and mating habits of officers assigned to the graveyard shift."

The ops officer smiled. "How can you measure something that is nonexistent? By the time I get home the wife is already on the Beltway stuck in traffic and the kids have been scarfed up by 138

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the school bus. I swear someone could kidnap my family and hold them for a week before I noticed something was amiss."

"And the downside is? ..."

"You'd be climbing the walls within a week. Not only docs working the third shift violate several laws of nature, it is a breach of the provision in the Constitution that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment."

Though enjoying the conversation, Delmont was too tired to come back with a snappy response. He still had a lot of work to do and was not interested in wasting time with idle chitchat. So he nodded and lifted his cup in a salute. "I hear you."

The two lieutenant colonels headed back to the War Room, but stopped when they saw a TV monitor tuned in to one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. It showed a gaggle of reporters and their attending cameramen milling about on the front lawn of a house that the news anchor's voiceover identified as belonging to the mother of a member of RT Kilo who was listed as missing.

Both officers watched in silence as a female reporter described the anguish she imagined the soldier's mother was feeling.

Delmont sighed. "How do you suppose they managed to ferret out the names of the personnel involved? To the best of my knowledge the Sec Def's prohibition against releasing any personal information about the servicemen involved is still in place."

"Oh, I suppose one of those nefarious unnamed sources leaked the names of the fourteen men," the ops officer replied in disgust. "It seems there's always someone with access who feels the American public has a right to know."

"Well, there is something to that. We are, after all, a democracy."

"What

about their rights?" the ops officer snapped, pointing at the TV. "What about the right of the family to be left alone, to deal with the shock of being told that their son or husband or brother is missing and may be dead? What about their right to common decency? No one has the right to treat those poor peo MORE THAN COURAGE