Authors: Anthony Tata
Dagus ran his long fingers across his face.
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Played some hooky and went to the lake. Finals are all done, you know.”
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Fun.” She paused then said, “Can I just go ahead and finish that edit job?”
He smiled at her. “Well, you know where the editing room is, and you know where I’ll be when you’re done. How long do you think it will take you?”
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I don’t know. Couple of hours? You want to check it out when I’m done?”
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I’ll be free about six tonight. You can either leave it on my desk or meet me here, whichever you prefer.”
She pursed her lips, which was her thinking pose. “I’ll just call you.” She paused a second and then said, “By the way, do you mind if I don’t publish that poem about my dad?”
He stared at her a moment, rubbing his chin. “I think that’s a wise move, Amanda. I understood the emotion with which you wrote the piece, but think it makes eminent sense not to publish it in light of what has happened.”
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Thank you.”
He coughed into his hand and then replaced it on his knee. “You know, you’ve matured this past week in many ways. This is just one.”
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You have no idea.” Her words came out louder than she desired, but she was so satisfied that someone had noticed. Maybe she was even glad it was him. “Finally, someone is taking me seriously.” She noticed, not for the first time, his copper-colored eyes that remained fixed on her. They were . . . consoling.
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I’ve always taken you seriously, Amanda. What are you talking about?”
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You know, just teenager stuff.” She waved her hand dismissively. She needed to move quickly before she embarrassed herself.
She grabbed her backpack and walked into the adjoining room, filled with copy tables, computers, and printers. She shrugged her shoulders once and shook off whatever it was that had initially bothered her.
Suddenly she lifted her head and said to herself, “Rugsdale was in North Carolina?”
Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
Wednesday Morning (Hours of Darkness)
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You had no right, Matt,” Rampert said.
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Grow up, General. You’ve been using everyone your entire career. I’ve got your dossier. Don’t think I don’t know about your interrogation activities in the Persian Gulf or your shady dealings with Ballantine. You escaped all of that bullshit, I know, but you walk a fine line.”
Rampert stared at Matt for a moment, his gray crew cut looking like a wire brush.
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You don’t know shit, Garrett.”
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Either we’re on the same team or not. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what you’ve done in the past but we’ve got a few objectives here that we need to accomplish. I have no doubt that you believe every one of your ends justifies the means you use to accomplish them. So, first, get my brother back. Second, invade Pakistan. Third, kill Dubai and Yemen.”
They had begun calling the two Al Qaeda operatives by the names of the countries they were based in for simplicity.
Rampert’s cheap circular wall clock ticked away. Matt stared at the general, keeping his momentum. He had to keep moving. If he stopped, he would decelerate, which was never good.
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You know I’m in, you asshole, but I don’t like it. Pakistan is our domain and I don’t like giving up turf.”
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We’re going to put more boots on the ground in there than you could ever muster and we’ll be flushing bad guys like rabbits from the bush. So give me a good plan to get over top of these guys with the Predators and your special intelligence and let’s see what we can get.”
Rampert nodded.
Changing tack, Matt said, “I’ve got to call Amanda, Zach’s daughter.” Maps still decorated the walls of Rampert’s makeshift office like badly hung wallpaper, all different sizes with unique scales. Rampert sat down and crossed his feet so that they were resting on the tip of a steel-grey desk. With the apparent truce, Matt sat down and began running a toothpick through his teeth, leaning back into an uncomfortable wooden chair.
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There’s a brilliant idea. Give the plan away to a teenager who hates her dad.”
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Well, it’s the right thing to do, regardless of it being a good or bad idea.”
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We don’t know anything for certain, do we? If he’s dead or alive. We think we may have been following him, but we can’t be sure.”
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We’re sure.” Matt stopped with the toothpick and looked at Rampert with hollow eyes.
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Yeah, you’re right.” Rampert withdrew his feet from the desk and leaned forward, sighing. “But it could compromise our efforts to find him.”
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I know. I’m just thinking about that little girl. Well, she’s almost eighteen now. But she’s been through hell.”
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You mean the whole Ballantine thing?”
Matt scoffed. “Ballantine was amateur hour compared to the bullshit her mother and grandmother have put her through. Zach made me promise that if anything ever happened to him, that I’d take care of it.”
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She’s eighteen, not much you can do anymore.”
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I remember her standing there at Zach’s funeral. Unbeknownst to me at the time, we buried Winslow Boudreaux next to my mother on the farm while you had Zach down at Fort Bragg recuperating. You had officially listed him as killed in action.”
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We’ve been through this, Matt.”
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Amanda was at that funeral and later found out her father was alive. Zach was the only decent thing she had going for her, even if she refused to acknowledge it.”
The two men stared at one another. It was clear to Matt that Rampert accepted his responsibility in the matter. He had deceived the government and the families involved. It was the stuff of the “dark side.” Why not develop a truly covert operator? It was difficult to become more covert than to be presumed killed in action. And so Rampert had evacuated Zach Garrett from a Philippine jungle, switched identification tags with an operator who had been essentially vaporized by an enemy weapon, and reported Zach as killed in action.
All is forgivable if a happy ending is to be found, which of course it had been. Zach was used in a covert manner in the Ballantine mission, and the nation was spared the death and devastation of a nuclear attack by retrofitted unmanned aerial drones launched from a Chinese merchant ship. The post 9-11 world not only excused such excesses, it demanded them. Nonetheless, the hardened men who toiled at the sharpened edges of this global war separated themselves from their enemies by having a conscience. Morality was, after all, the fuel that burned the cleanest when you were driving a machine bent on destroying your enemies.
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How can I help?”
Matt looked at the floor, spinning the toothpick in his hands, and seemed to consider his shoelaces. “By finding her father.”
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You know I’m doing all I can. And when we put this Airborne division in there, it could help or it could hurt.”
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I’ve thought of that. You’re just pissed we’re bringing in conventional soldiers to do a special ops job,” Matt said.
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Not really. I’m glad we’re going into Pakistan. Been needing to do it for a long time. Like you say, it will flush some of the bad guys. Plus we’ve got Dubai and Yemen we’re still looking at.
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There’s that.”
They sat quietly.
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You gonna call her?”
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I think I’m going to call her and maybe just confuse her a little bit.”
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Don’t you think that’d be worse than just lying to her?”
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I’m trying to balance what we need to do to find Zach against her best interests. There’s a middle ground somewhere. She’s a smart girl, but she has been her mother’s spy and personal suicide bomber for the last half of her life. These madrassas in Pakistan have nothing on the brainwashing techniques of her mother and grandmother.”
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Sounds like a couple of real sweethearts. Now you know why I spend so much time over here fighting these bastards.”
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Why’s that?”
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It’s easier than fighting a woman with sharp fangs and poison in her veins. Remember what Rod Stewart said? ‘Next time I tell you I want to get married, just make me buy a house for a woman I hate and leave it at that.’ Something like that.”
Van Dreeves came barreling into the general’s office holding a piece of paper in his hand. “Sir, we’ve got something. We had a walk-in. Reliability undetermined, but he claims an American serviceman is being held in a house in Asadabad in Kunar Province.”
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Held?”
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Roger. A local family is protecting him. AQ has been negotiating to buy him back, but they refuse. This is Pashtun-Wali at its purest. The informant doesn’t know how long it will last.”
Pashtun-Wali was the code of honor and protection to which the Pashtun tribe adhered. Difficult for most Westerners to understand, the code was more powerful than law enforced by police and judges. Most of all, a Pashtun who is obligated with the protection of someone who has helped the tribe will defend him to the death.
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Let’s get some eyes on this place and get a plan together. I don’t want to miss this time.” Rampert’s orders were clear.
Van Dreeves moved quickly into the adjacent operations center to begin to steer the Predator to the location they had been provided. Matt wandered into the operations center, which was now buzzing with activity. Hobart was at the map plotting with a compass and pencil. Even Eversoll was repacking his rucksack, conducting pre-combat inspections of his gear.
Matt walked up to the large map that covered practically the entire wall. With his finger, he traced the Kunar River from the Pakistan border south where it wound its way to the populated town of Asadabad. They had been right. It was him.
Zach was alive.
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And here,” Van Dreeves said. “I found the group of enemy we fought on the raid to get Colonel Garrett.”
Matt and Rampert watched the Predator feed zoom in on a group of about twenty fighters, plus what looked like some locals with picks and shovels.
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They took the Thorium bait. That’s the exact location of the primary Thorium mine on the bogus map we planted on the flash drive.”
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They’re going into the mine,” Van Dreeves said.
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What do we have flying?”
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A B-1, two A-10s and the Predator.”
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Put a JDAM on the mouth of the mine once they’re all in there,” Matt said.
Rampert looked at him. “They’re some villagers in that crowd.”
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They know what they’re doing, General.”
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Last man is in the mine,” Van Dreeves called.
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Put the biggest thing you got on it, then drop whatever the A-10s have in there, put a hellfire from the Predator on top, and then have some troops go check it out to make sure.”
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You’re not messing around.”
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If Rahman thought there was Thorium in there, he would have sent his A-Team. It’s time to close the mine and attack into Pakistan.”
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Shit, I’m getting a woodie,” Van Dreeves said.
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Save it for the sheep, VD. Just order the strike,” Matt said. “General?”
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Do it.”
Five minutes later, the B-1 had repositioned and punched in the geo-location of the mine. He gave instructions as Matt had articulated.
A few minutes later, the front hillock that formed the mouth of the mine exploded, whiting out the screen until the dust settled and then the A-10s put 500 pound bombs a bit deeper into the mine.
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No need to waste the hellfire. Save it for squirters if there are any,” Matt said.
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Ain’t nothing squirting out of that,” Van Dreeves said.
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This is how we win,” Matt said and then walked out of the command center.
Spartanburg, SOUTH CAROLINA
Tuesday Evening (Eastern Time)
Having completed the layout for the magazine, Amanda had rushed from the high school back to her home. As she pulled into her driveway, she saw Brianna Simpson through the windshield of her car standing on her front porch talking, rather arguing, with her mother. Amanda lowered her window to listen, but she was still too far away.
As they noticed her pulling in, Brianna raced from the porch through the front yard. She did not acknowledge Amanda as she climbed into her mother’s old VW bug.
Amanda jumped from her seat, only to watch Brianna speed away. She stood there for a moment, looking over the top of her Mercedes at the empty front porch. She was pretty sure it was her mother, but it could have been Nina, who had been talking to Brianna. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. She wasn’t certain if her grandmother looked young or her mother looked old.
Determining that she would catch up with Brianna later, she refocused, feeling energized now. She had taken Harlan’s
Charlotte Observer
and now she glanced at the article trashing her father, sitting face up in the passenger seat. Somehow, it motivated her. She had begun to crack the puzzle.