Trigger Point (23 page)

He marched back to the Oval Office. About five minutes after he sat down there was a knock on the door and his personal secretary came in. Oakley and General Hale, who had both been at the National Security Council meeting, were outside.

‘I just left them,’ said Knowles.

‘They say it’s urgent.’

‘How long have I got?’

‘Your next meeting’s not for another ten minutes, sir.’

‘Okay, send them in.’

Knowles waited. John Oakley and Mortlock Hale came in.

‘I thought we dealt with everything,’ said Knowles. ‘Is there something else you want to say?’

‘It’s not about that,’ said Oakley. ‘There’s some news from Uganda.’

Knowles smiled. ‘About time. We need something to knock this stuff off the front page.’

‘Actually, sir,’ said General Hale, ‘it’s not so good.’

32

THE HELICOPTERS HAD gone in at dusk in Uganda, 10am in Washington. An attack force of nine Apaches flew in low over the LRA base that had been identified in the jungle south of the Sudan border. What happened in the ensuing engagement was still confused and military debriefers were trying to put together the sequence of events. What was clear was that two of the Apaches were down and their four crew members were down with them.

‘This happened five hours ago?’ demanded Knowles incredulously. ‘Five hours and no one
told
me?’

‘I only just found out after the meeting, sir,’ said Oakley.

‘What the hell? What–’ The president stopped. He looked at Hale. ‘
When
did you find out, General?’

‘I’ve been aware since last night that the operation was imminent. This was the operation you authorized yesterday, Mr President.’

‘And were you aware that this had turned into this … I don’t know what you’d call it. This goddamn fuck-up! Is that what you’d call it?’

‘I think it’s a fair description, sir. We’ve been trying to recover our pilots.’

‘Can we find out what the situation is? Can we at least get that?’

Hale nodded. ‘I’ll get Admiral Pressler.’

They waited while Hale made some calls. Finally a call came back on the president’s phone.

‘Admiral,’ said Hale into the speakerphone, ‘I’m here with the president and Secretary Oakley.’

Pete Pressler was on the line from the command room of the
Abraham Lincoln
and there was a kind of low, whirring sound in the background.

‘Admiral,’ said Knowles, ‘can you tell me what’s going on?’

‘We have two Apaches down, sir.’ The admiral’s voice was terse. ‘The circumstances aren’t clear yet. We believe one of them hit the tree canopy and brought the other one down. On the plus side, we believe we killed upwards of fifty LRA fighters possibly including some of their senior leadership. From that perspective it was a high-impact mission but we have four men down. We believe one of them died on impact.’

‘Pete, do we know that for certain now?’ said Hale.

‘I believe we now have the body, sir.’

‘Do we have men on the ground?’ asked the president.

‘Yes, sir. We do. We’ve secured the downed Apaches but there’s no sight of our guys or any of their fighters. Just a bunch of LRA bodies in pieces. We didn’t have men on the ground at the time of the incident. It was a purely aerial assault in keeping with your wishes, sir.’

‘Admiral Pressler,’ said Oakley, ‘operational decisions are yours, as you know. The president doesn’t intervene.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pressler brusquely. ‘Anyway, I’ve got three of my guys still alive down there in enemy hands and right now that’s all I’m worried about. Hold on, please.’

They heard something being said in the background and the admiral replied sharply. Then he came back on the line.

‘Admiral,’ said Oakley, ‘how long after the incident did you get men on the ground?’

‘As soon as we could. We’re in darkness here now. We have drone surveillance in operation but at this point it’s all infrared and the jungle comes alive at night. There’s a lot of noise. We think we’re tracking a number of groups that headed out in different directions after the attack. Which of them have our men is impossible to say. There’s nothing I’d like to do more than take them out but if we go after them from the air we risk killing our own guys.’

There was silence. The whirring noise from the
Abraham Lincoln
filled the room.

‘Admiral,’ said the president, ‘what’s your plan?’

‘At this stage we’ll continue tracking them. At sunrise the guys on the ground will do a wider surveillance. With the drones, if we can get sight of the groups and if our guys aren’t with them, we’ll take them out. If we can locate our men I’ve got Chinooks ready to scramble out of Lodwar.’

‘Any chance of our men on the ground getting taken?’

‘There’s always a chance of some kind of firefight.’

‘We can’t have any more casualties,’ said the president.

‘‘I don’t want them any more than you do, sir. But we’ve taken this action, now we’ve got to clear it up. Our men may not be far off, especially if they’re injured. They may have been dumped.’

The president glanced at Hale and nodded.

‘Pete, anything else?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Okay. Thank you.’

The line went dead.

Tom Knowles threw himself down on one of the sofas in front of his desk.

‘So far,’ he said, ‘no one knows about this?’

Hale shook his head. ‘Not from our side, but the LRA can get to the outside world if it wants to. We know they can get messages onto the net. Taking out even one American soldier is going to be a victory for them. We should assume that right now they’re trying to get the message out. It’s only a matter of time.’

‘And we haven’t heard that they want anything for our guys?’

‘Not yet. Again, that might be a matter of time.’

John Oakley doubted it. ‘They’re not that kind of operation. They’re basically killers. They have no program.’

‘There must be something,’ said Knowles. ‘Prisoner swaps? Supplies?’

‘We’ve said our mission is to eliminate them. Look at it from their side. Unless we say that’s not the case any more, what’s the point of anything we could give them?’

‘Could be that some of them might see the end’s coming and might want to use our guys to cut a deal for themselves.’

Oakley looked at the general. ‘Any indication of that?’

‘No, sir. But it’s very early.’

‘Would we do it?’ said the president.

‘Cut a deal with them if they want to come in?’

The president nodded.

‘I’d rather kill ’em,’ said Oakley.

‘If we have to,’ said Knowles impatiently.

Oakley shrugged. ‘We’d have to say they’d have to stand trial. I guess we could guarantee they won’t get the death penalty. We could send them to the Hague. They don’t do the death penalty there.’

The president looked at Hale. ‘Are we going to need a negotiating team?’

‘We’re pulling one together in case we do. The longer we can keep this quiet, the better. Gives us the maximum freedom of action.’

‘You just said we have to assume the LRA’s going to publicize it.’

‘That’s true, Mr President. I’d assume they’ll do it as quick as they can. They’ll minimize their casualties and talk up our losses.’

‘I’m no press secretary,’ said Oakley, ‘but we don’t want to be chasing that story. We want to be in front.’

‘So we need to get some kind of a statement out?’ The president grimaced. ‘This is going to look bad. This is going to look like one hell of a fuck-up. This is like Clinton in Somalia.’

‘We’ve had a success here, Mr President. Let’s not forget that.’

‘Doesn’t sound like it.’

‘Fifty-plus enemy dead against four of our men.’

‘There shouldn’t have been
one
of our men, General. These guys are stone age.’

‘I’ll release a statement,’ said Oakley.

‘Do we acknowledge we’ve got a man dead and three men captured?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Hale. ‘Operationally the less we say about what’s going on there until this is over, the better. I’d like to say we’ve had a successful operation, fifty enemy dead, and we’ve got men on the ground in the area. That gets our facts out there. That establishes how many of the enemy got killed before they get their version out. Then let’s see what they come up with.’

Knowles frowned. ‘I need to talk to Ed and Dean about this. John, hold off with a statement until I do.’ He looked at Hale. ‘General, I want to know exactly what’s happening, whenever it happens. I don’t care what time of night it might be. We get any information on our men, I want to know.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The president stood. The others stood as well.

There was a knock on the door.

Dean Moss was standing there, ashen-faced.

‘Mr President, there’s a video on the net.’

THEY SAT AROUND the screen in the Oval Office. The president’s key aides had joined him. Moss pulled up a website plastered with anti-American slogans. He paused with his hand on the remote.

‘This is um …’ He took a deep breath. ‘If anyone’s squeamish, I’ve got to warn you, this is the time to leave.’

‘Run the clip,’ said the president quietly.

‘Yes, sir.’

It started with someone ranting incomprehensibly in the glare of a spotlight in a shack. The picture, which must have been uploaded via a satellite connection, faded in and out a couple of times. Then the camera and the light turned and there was an American airman surrounded by five men. His face was bloodied and one eye was badly puffed, and he stood hunched, in pain, held up by the men around him. They didn’t wear masks or make any effort to conceal their identities. One of them held up the dog tags they had ripped off their prisoner and shook them defiantly at the camera. One of them yelled at him. Then two of them pushed him to his knees.

Tom Knowles knew he didn’t want to see what was about to come next.

It started.

‘Oh, my …’ whispered Roberta Devlin, and she turned away.

‘That’s their style,’ said Hale. ‘They like to do it with clubs.’

Gary Rose got to his feet and stumbled out, hand pressed against his mouth.

The body of the airman lay on the ground now. Its legs twitched.

One of the men smashed the broken skull again, and again.

The president closed his eyes. His mind was numb.

33

TOM KNOWLES HAD never seen a man killed before, not for real, not by any method. What he knew of killing came from what he had seen in films.

He couldn’t get the images out of his head. Especially the legs, the twitching legs. They were still twitching at the end. Somehow that was almost worse than the bloody, pulped skull. The convulsive twitch of those legs, like the kicking of some animal.

Normally, the senior staff in the West Wing were a kind of surrogate family for the president. Ed Abrahams, Roberta Devlin and Gary Rose understood that on nights when the chief didn’t have any engagements the job often involved staying on and watching football with him in his study or a film in the White House cinema. It was semi-work as well. They talked about stuff and that often helped him come to decisions. Taking issues out of their usual context could help you see them in a different way.

But he didn’t feel like company tonight. He went up to the residence floor and ate dinner alone in his study. He looked over some papers he had taken up with him. He couldn’t concentrate. He turned on the TV but couldn’t find anything to watch. He left it on, surfing channels, watching the images moving on the screen. They couldn’t take away the images in his head.

He felt stunningly lonely. He truly felt there was no one who could share this burden. As commander in chief, he had sent that poor man to his terrible death. Jungle Peace was his and his alone. And he had wanted that raid, he had wanted it done quick. He thought of his own son, Steve, his only child. Steve and his wife and twin daughters were occasional visitors to the White House. He was hoping to see them in another couple of weeks for Thanksgiving. Last year the twins had stood alongside him as he pardoned the traditional Thanksgiving turkey in the Rose Garden until the bird turned its head and gobbled at them and the two little girls took off and ran like hell.

He smiled for a moment, thinking about it, then the smile faded off his lips.

He got up and went into the hall. He had given the room traditionally used as the president’s bedroom to Sarah, and used the west bedroom as his own. He knocked on her door and opened it. She wasn’t there. He looked in her study. Empty.

‘Tom,’ said Sarah.

He turned. She was in the hall behind him. He could see from her face that she had heard.

‘I’ve just got back,’ she said. ‘I had … It doesn’t matter. I had to give a speech.’

He nodded.

‘You okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘You want to talk?’

He smiled. He didn’t hear that from her very often.

‘Do you?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s okay.’

She took his hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. She took him into her study.

He followed, letting her lead him.

‘You want a drink?’

He nodded.

‘Bourbon?’

He nodded again.

She went out and got him one.

‘You’re not having anything?’ he said.

‘No.’ She shook her head and sat down on the sofa beside him. She was in a blue pant suit with a mauve shirt. Her hair was honey blonde. When he first met her it had been that color naturally. Now it needed a little help. She looked good. Sometimes he forgot what a good-looking woman she was.

She watched him.

He took a sip of the bourbon and closed his eyes.

‘You didn’t see that video, I hope,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Don’t watch it. It’s a horrible thing.’ He looked at her. ‘They’re evil, Sarah. I know it’s an old-fashioned word, but I don’t know another one for it. You don’t have to believe in God to know they’re going straight to hell.’ He sighed. ‘I’m only trying to do what’s right out there. I’ve got no other motive.’

‘It’s a good thing you’re doing there, Tom.’

‘I don’t know if that’s going to make much difference to that poor man’s family. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I speak to them.’

‘You’ll find the words.’

‘There aren’t any.’

‘You’ll find them, Tom.’

He took another sip of his bourbon. ‘Harley Gauss was his name. Twenty-six years old. Captain Harley Gauss.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘You know, there are some things that … Something like this changes everything.’

Sarah watched him.

He leaned back and shook his head. ‘You know, this presidency …’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Suddenly I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘Tom, an atrocity like this … it looms a lot bigger than it is. Right now it seems like the worst thing that’s ever happened.’

‘I know that. I realize that.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I was thinking before. It’s hardly more than a month since we launched Jungle Peace. You can’t believe it. You think back and …’ He stopped again, smiling disbelievingly. ‘It’s like a different age. We were launching a simple mission to root out a bunch of evil guys. The country backed me seventy per cent. The economy looked strong, the markets were sound. I was looking at a sixty-seat majority in the Senate and an unchallenged renomination. And now…’ He laughed bitterly. ‘God, Sarah, it’s like it’s all in ruins. In a month. One lousy month. I don’t know how the hell it happened.’

She watched him.

‘I’ve got no idea. And it’s not over. They’ve still got two of our guys. We could have two more videos. Or it could turn into some kind of drawn-out hostage situation.’

‘It won’t.’

‘Won’t it? Neither you nor I nor anyone knows that. I don’t think our people have the first idea about how to find them. And we’ve got men on the ground now. In the jungle. We could lose more. What happens then? Those damn military guys told me it was going to be done clean, from the air, and the first time I ask them to do something we’ve got two Apaches down and two dead and more missing. I can just see it getting dirtier and dirtier on the ground now. It was never meant to be like that.’

‘Tom, you’re imagining the worst scenario. It’ll come back under control. What’s to say the military don’t get them back and finish the job like they said they’d do?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ He worked at his temples with his fingertips. He took a deep breath and let it out slow. ‘Then there’s the markets and the banks and who knows what the Chinese are doing?’

Sarah looked at him uncomprehendingly. She didn’t know the truth about the rumored approach to Zhang that he had made the morning Fidelian failed.

‘Who knows what the hell to do? I’ve got Strickland and Opitz running around doing all kinds of things but I can’t say I really understand if it’s going to work and I don’t think they do either. Looks to me like they think up one thing after the next to deal with whatever happens to come up that particular day. You know, there hasn’t been a day until this last week when I wondered what I was doing here. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but when I won the election, I thought I was going to feel like an impostor. Like a fraud. When I first started, I mean. I thought I’d arrive at the White House after the inauguration and the next morning I’d sit down to work in the Oval Office and I’d be thinking, I shouldn’t be here. It should be Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan, not me.’

Sarah smiled.

‘But I didn’t, Sarah. What I’m saying is I didn’t feel like that. By the time I got here, after the transition, I felt fine. I felt like this was my place. And I’ve felt like it every single day until this last week. And now I’m not sure. I don’t know if I belong here. It sure doesn’t feel like it. Feels like the country deserves something better.’

‘Tom,’ said Sarah. She took his hand.

‘And now I’ve got the Veterans’ Day speech on Sunday. What a time for it, huh?’ He shook his head. ‘You know, George W Bush said some of the nights in this office are long and lonely. That was about the only thing I ever heard him say that I thought would be worth remembering. And after two years, I thought I knew what he meant. But actually I don’t think I did. Not until this week. I’ve had a few of those nights in the last week. I think tonight’s going to be another one. I think tonight’s going to be the worst one yet.’

He gazed at her. Sarah smiled. Whatever they had been through, whatever had become of their marriage, there was still an understanding, a certain deep familiarity that they shared that neither of them shared with anyone else. Sarah herself didn’t know why she was still with him. She shouldn’t have been, but she was. It wasn’t as simple as it looked to some people who presumed to comment from the outside.

She drew him to her. She held him for a moment, and then leaned back and looked him in the eyes.

‘You’re a good president, Tom Knowles.’

He shook his head. ‘The jury’s out on that.’

‘No, it’s not. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have doubts. You’re a good president. You’ll do the right things. You’ll get us through this. I believe it. The country believes it. Listen to me. You’re a good president.’

‘But not a good husband, huh?’

Sarah looked at him sadly. ‘Oh, Tom,’ she said.