The Fourth War (24 page)

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.

—Ronald Reagan at Omaha Beach,
Normandy, France (1984)

The White House
Washington, D.C.

The President of the United States sat alone at his desk in the Oval Office. The evening was quiet and very few of his staff were around, the word having spread through the White House to leave the president alone. He waited in the growing darkness, staring at the clock on the mantel, his eyes unfocused as he lost himself in his thoughts.

The national security advisor stood unnoticed for a moment in the doorway, then knocked quietly against the dark frame. The president turned to face her. He already knew from her face, from the minutes that had already slipped by, that something had gone desperately wrong. “What do you have?” he demanded, a worried edge in his voice.

“A little problem with the B-2,” she answered simply.

“The second aircraft?” he stammered, an unbelieving look on his face.

“Yes, sir. It should have been over the target twenty minutes ago.”

“And you haven't picked up any sign of detonations?”

“Nothing, sir. If the bombs had been dropped, our detectors on the border would have known instantly.”

The president swore silently, then eyed his advisor. “The warheads are still in the mountain?” he asked.

“No sir. I'm afraid they are not. Ground troops are swarming into the area, moving up the road to the cave. The enemy has found the warheads. It's time we moved to worst-case.”

Wing Command Center
Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri

Col. Dick “Tracy” Kier wearily rubbed his tired eyes. He felt cranky and mean and his mind had slowed down. He sipped at his Coke, which was warm and flat, and swirled it between his teeth to wash out his mouth. He had been awake now for going on forty hours, since he had been called in for the five o'clock briefing on the morning before. He glanced at his watch; it was 1632 local time. Just over twenty-two hours since the Stealth had taken off. Four hours, seven minutes since the last communications from the crew.

The Stealth should have hit the target almost thirty minutes before.

Kier turned to the master sergeant manning the communications console. “Local time in the Gulf?” he asked again.

“It's 0032, sir.”

Kier paced four steps, then stared again at his watch. His stomach rolled and he swallowed to push the acid down. He walked to the command console at the back of the room that had been his main desk, his home base, for the past thirty hours, and studied the notes in the command-center log.

D. T. read the log for the eighth or ninth time. Bottom line—the Stealth crew had elected to continue the mission, but the target had not been destroyed. In fact, no U.S. weapons had been deployed in the area. That was confirmed beyond a doubt from the seismic listening post located in Turkey. There were no explosions, nuclear or otherwise, anywhere in Central Asia.

No explosions. No communications. The aircraft had simply disappeared. Invisible to radar or any other means of detection, half a world away from its home base or any aerial support, flying over a region almost entirely uninhabited by man, the aircraft had taken off, slipped away, then vanished into the night.

Kier pulled on his chin, then took a deep breath, a darkness settling over him. Try as he might to deny it, he knew in his heart that the bomber was down. Yet, it didn't make any sense. Bradley was the single most talented pilot Kier had ever flown with in his life, and he considered it more likely the sun would turn cold and fall from the sky than Col. Shane “Clipper” Bradley would make a fatal mistake. And Captain Lei was Bradley's equal, a younger version of him.

So where was the aircraft? And where were his friends?

CIA Operations Center
Langley, Virginia

Dr. Thomas B. Washington eyed his military liaison. He was too drained to curse. Too drained and too sick. “How long now?” he asked.

“The aircraft is overdue by almost thirty minutes, Dr. Washington.”

Thomas took a deep breath, then eyed the thin, balding man. “Is the director en route?”

“He is. He will meet you at the White House. He is meeting with POTUS at twenty-three hundred. He wants you to brief him in the Situation Room before the meeting takes place. You will only have five or ten minutes. You've got to leave now.”

Washington pushed away wearily from his desk. He put on his hat and wide-lapelled overcoat. It was raining outside, coming down hard. He headed for the door, hearing the chopper as it landed outside, the sound of the rotors thumping the glass of his third-floor office. Outside, he walked toward the helipad with drooping shoulders and heavy legs. An aide tried to cover him with his umbrella, but he walked away, letting the rain patter off his shoulders and run down the brim of his hat.

Shin Bet Auxiliary Outpost
Twelve Miles South of Tel Aviv

The deputy commander of Shin Bet turned to his boss. “The B-2 is down, sir,” he began to explain, then quickly told the commander everything he had learned from his officers in the field.

Petate listened and frowned. “No survivors?” he demanded in an unbelieving tone.

“No, sir, no survivors, at least as far as we know.”

Petate thought a moment, his face turning sour. “Not good,” he muttered in a bitter tone.

“No, sir,” the deputy answered simply. It was an understatement at best.

“It wasn't my intention to kill the American crew.”

“We knew it was a possibility, sir.”

“Do they have search and rescues assets in place?” Petate asked.

“Not much, General. They didn't have enough time. We've been listening, but all we've picked up are some broadcasts from a ground unit in the area.”

Petate pressed his lips. “Keep snooping,” he instructed.

“Yes, sir. We will.”

Petate nodded slowly, then the two stared at each other in silence. The room seemed to grow cold and it was utterly quiet, the soundproof walls and thick steel door insolating the sounds of the busy office outside. “So it's finished,” Petate finally concluded with relief in his voice.

“Yes sir,” his deputy confirmed. “Our Pumas have landed on their naval ships off the Pakistani coast. We are moving the
Rabin
and
Yafa
to escort the
Bethlehem
home. We still have to decide whether we dare bring our ships through the Suez Canal or do we take them around the Horn of Africa and through the Mediterranean Sea, and none of us will sleep soundly until the
Bethlehem
is safely in port. But sir, that aside, this is an incredible success. Few men will ever know, and fewer still understand, but you and I know what a victory we have accomplished this day.”

Petate nodded grimly. “The battle isn't over, but we have bought ourselves time.”

“The battle will not end in our lifetime or the lifetimes of our children. But that sad fact aside, this is still a step toward bringing us peace.”

Petate nodded as he lit a cigarette, scratching the wooden match on the corner of his desk. He pulled in a drag, holding the smoke in his lungs, then let it drift from his nose in a light veil of white. “Good things are about to happen, you can mark my words. Watch what takes place over the next couple days. Watch what takes place over the next six months or so. Write down my predictions and see that I'm right. Beautiful things are going to happen, I promise you that.”

Camp Cowboy
Northern Afghanistan

The morning after the runner met Angra in Peshawar, the rains started coming down in bitter sheets, heavy, and wet, and bone-chillingly cold. The sun was up there somewhere, somewhere above the rain clouds there was warmth, but Peter couldn't even picture it from where he sat in the soaking, cold rain. Down here in the deep shadows of mountains, in the cold and the mud where the sun didn't shine, the clouds were so dark and bloated they had completely swallowed the dawn, and Peter almost needed a flashlight to see along the steep trail. Despite his best gear, he was soaked to the bone and he couldn't have been wetter if he had jumped in a lake. So he kept his head low, tucking his neck against his shoulders, and waited while breathing lightly in order to hear, his warm breath forming vapors as he stared through the rain.

He heard the barest movement behind him, nothing louder than a rabbit moving slowly through the brush, and waited for the touch on his shoulder and the sound in his ear. He felt it before he heard it, the warm breath on his neck, then the sergeant's voice.

“You see them?” the sergeant whispered.

Peter nodded yes.

“You've got a bead on all three?”

Peter lifted his hand slowly, pointing to his left, then to his right and in front.

The sergeant nodded and rested back on his feet.

The two men were hunkered in the brush three kilometers to the south of their camp. Below them, the ground fell away quickly and the forest was thick. Both of the Americans were fully camouflaged, their faces and hands, even the lids of their eyes, had been smeared black, gray, and green to blend in with the brush. Their camouflaged ponchos fell to their feet when they squatted and they wore wide-brimmed, floppy hats to keep the rain off their necks.

Peter waited, then turned and whispered over his shoulder. “Are the snipers in place?”

The sergeant nudged his shoulder and Peter followed where he pointed until he saw it, dull gun-metal blue sticking out from the brush forty meters off his left. “Garcia?” he asked.

The sergeant nodded.

“And Armstrong?”

“Higher up, twenty meters. Find the gray rock then look four or five meters left.”

Peter began to search and it took him almost thirty seconds to see the muzzle of the weapon move, then the whites of the second sniper's fingernails. He grunted and turned back to descending terrain.

“Who are they?” the sergeant muttered quietly in his ear.

Peter shook his head. He didn't know.

“Do we take them?”

“No. Not yet. Let's see what they do.”

“There might be more of them. A patrol. We should take the scouts while we can.”

“Wait,” Peter shot back.

The three Afghanis moved forward another fifteen paces and Peter lifted his arm. Pointing to the man in the center he said, “I think…yes, I know him. I've seen him at General Lashkar Gah's camp. He's one of his runners.”

The two soldiers studied the runner as he moved slowly through the brush. He wore mountain green fatigues and black leather gloves. As they watched, the runner suddenly crouched, holding his Soviet machine gun in his right hand, then turned quickly and motioned to his comrades, telling them to get down. Pointing to the mountain, gesturing toward where Peter and the sergeant were hidden; but Peter knew he didn't see him and shifted his weight uncomfortably to his sore knees. The Afghani moved his eyes up and down the trail, squinting through the heavy rains, then, standing from his crouch, he placed his weapon on the ground.

“He knows the rules,” the sergeant whispered in Peter's ear. “He shouldn't be here, so close to our camp. This is a kill zone! Is he some kind of fool?”

Peter didn't answer, but watched the runner intently.

The Afghani turned in a full circle, always looking around, then pulled out a black rag and stuffed it in his front pocket, leaving two or three inches of the cloth hanging from the front of his pants. Laying his weapon on the ground, he began walking very slowly up the trail, holding his hands above him while clasping his fingers behind his neck.

Peter watched, then stood up. “He has a message,” he said.

The sergeant remained squatting. He had seen the signal but he still wasn't sure, and his lips curved nervously in a frown. The men were too close! They shouldn't have come so near their camp. And they seemed to know where they were going, which meant that they knew far too much. “I'll keep the snipers on them,” he said as Peter pushed himself up.

“Rog,” Peter replied as he grabbed his own weapon and began to move down the trail.

The two men met thirty paces below the sergeant's position. The trees were heavy and drooping around them and the raindrops filtered through the trees to form huge, soaking drops that pattered on their heads and shoulders. Thunder rolled in the distance and the clouds draped the mountains in a blanket of gray. Peter came to a stop on the trail and the young Afghani approached. The two men stared at each other. “Come no closer,” Peter said.

The dark man stopped and then gestured with his shoulders and Peter nodded his head. Slowly, the stranger lowered his hands to his side. “Lashkar Gah sent me,” he said.

“He told you to come here?”

“He said it would be okay.”

“He almost got you shot, do you know that? We've been tracking the three of you since you left the river.”