Gritti stared at the transceiver. He had heard wrong. He must have heard wrong, because not even the Navy could be that fucked up. “Warlord, for clarification, I repeat, we are defensive.” Gritti heard the rage building in his voice, and he didn’t care. He was losing marines while this idiotic conversation took place. “We are surrounded, and the enemy has armor and artillery. We need close air support, and I mean very fucking close. Do you copy that?”
Another silence. Gritti could visualize the scene in CIC. Vitale explaining the situation to Fletcher. Fletcher covering his ass, waiting for a decision from up the chain. Babcock, the thumb-up-his-ass civilian, presiding over the gathering like Lord Nelson.
While Gritti waited, he heard a burst of automatic fire not more than thirty yards away. It was the distinctive hollow crackle of a Kalashnikov. If the cavalry was ever to come charging to the rescue, he thought, this would be a hell of a good time.
“Sorry, Boomer,” he heard Vitale say over the command channel. “The rules of engagement stand.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GEOPOLITICS
With his courtly manner and his avuncular voice, Langhorne Fletcher was a public affairs officer’s dream. He was a tall man — six feet two — with a craggy, aristocratic nose and a full mane of prematurely white hair. A southerner by breeding and instinct, Fletcher could trace his roots back to Virginia plantation owners. His ancestors had signed the Declaration of Independence, served under Washington, distinguished themselves as commanders in Lee’s Army of Virginia. Since 1874 an unbroken lineage of Fletchers had been officers in the U.S. Navy. Seven had risen to flag rank, including Langhorne Fletcher.
Fletcher’s greatest asset, beyond his imposing looks and sonorous voice, was his ability to please his superiors. He knew how to make his bosses — civilian or military — look good, a precious talent that had propelled him upward through the hierarchy of the Navy. All the way to command of a carrier battle group.
Except, at this moment, he didn’t feel in command. Fletcher felt like he was standing in quicksand. Thirty years in the Navy, waiting for a major fleet command. Now this. Disaster.
In the two years that he had served under Whitney Babcock, starting with the job as senior staff officer when Babcock was still the Undersecretary of the Navy, he had been unfailingly tactful.
Tactful to a fault, he thought. Perhaps it was time to be blunt.
He gazed around, making sure they were alone in the flag compartment. “What do you mean, Mr. Babcock? I’ve got a team in serious jeopardy on the ground, and you’re telling me I can’t use all the force available to me. How am I supposed to explain that to the other officers in my command?”
“This is not the time to panic,” said Babcock. “The situation is not as bad as it seems.”
“If I lose the recovery team on the ground, I’ll be blamed for the biggest debacle since Somalia.”
“You won’t lose them. It’s a communication problem. I’ve been on the line with our people in San‘a, and they tell me that Al-Fasr is standing down.”
“He’ll be more inclined to stand down if I put an air strike on his camp.”
“No!” The abrupt answer took Fletcher by surprise. “No bombing. No overt attacks, do you understand? That would compromise the negotiations that are going on at this moment.”
“What negotiations? I have twelve hundred marines aboard the Saipan and enough aircraft and bombs to eradicate Al-Fasr. Why do we have to negotiate?”
“To avoid putting us at war with Yemen. Every peasant in those mountains is a potential guerilla. Is that what you want, Admiral?”
Fletcher hesitated. The truth was, he didn’t know what he wanted. At the moment he wanted nothing except for someone else to take responsibility for the debacle in Yemen. “We have to do something,” he said. “The media will know soon enough that we’ve got people on the ground in Yemen. We have to get them out of there.”
“Not if it means sending more troops in. This has to be a mediated settlement, Admiral.” He gave Fletcher one of his patronizing smiles. “Look at this as an opportunity. There is much more to be gained here than the immediate safety of a few marines and pilots.”
Fletcher felt the quicksand deepening. “What, may I ask, is to be gained?”
The smile again. “The security of our allies in the Middle East. The vast oil wealth of the Saudi peninsula. But you shouldn’t concern yourself with geopolitics, Admiral. Your job is to command the carrier battle group in what is nothing more than a routine military operation. Leave the bigger issues to the strategists.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’m due for a conference call with the Secretary of State and our ambassador in San‘a. I’ll brief you later on the status of the negotiations.”
Fletcher was left standing in the flag intel space as Babcock strode back to his own private quarters. Babcock’s words still rang in his ears. Leave the bigger issues to the strategists.
It was an insult, but he had become accustomed to such insults. It went with the job.
Twenty thousand feet above the battle, Maxwell could see the unmistakable black smoke billowing into the morning sky. Helicopters were burning.
He and his strikers were on their own tactical frequency, so he couldn’t hear the communications between the TRAP team leader and the Battle Group Commander. The situation was going to hell on the ground.
CAG Boyce’s voice came over the strike frequency. “Runner One-one, Battle-Ax.”
“Go, Battle-Ax.”
“Showtime. Boomer needs your services. You’re cleared to expend ordnance. The TARCAP is in place and the picture is clear. Forward air control will come from Boomer on button four.”
About time, thought Maxwell. “Runner One-one copies. Are we cleared all the way down, Battle-Ax?”
After a second’s pause, Boyce replied. “Negative, Runner. Rules of engagement. Observe the specified altitude.”
Maxwell could hear the disgust in Boyce’s voice. Boyce despised the rules just as much as he did.
He called the other three pilots in his division. “Runner flight, check switches. We’re in hot.”
Hozer Miller, on his left wing, acknowledged. Leroi Jones and Flash Gordon, flying in combat spread to the right, also acknowledged. Master armament switches hot, bombs ready to release.
He could see dirty brown puffs erupting in the clearing. Mortars or light artillery. How the hell were they going to pick out the gunners from here? They needed a real forward air controller and a reference —
“Runner lead, do you read Yankee Two?”
The voice was weak and distant, breaking up as it reached his headset.
“Is that you, Yankee Two? Where’ve you been?”
“The taxpayers get a refund on this radio. It quit, and now it’s back again, but I don’t know for how long.”
She sounded tired, Maxwell thought. Or scared. “What’s your status? The recovery team is looking for you.”
“I’m five hundred yards from them, but the Sherji are closing in. They’ve already knocked down the helos. They’ve got some kind of small missile — might be an SA- 16 — and they’re bringing up track-mounted guns.”
“How about you? Are you in a secure spot?”
“For the moment. Brick, I think Al-Fasr has been monitoring the SAR frequency on a captured radio. He knows everything we’re doing.”
Maxwell digested this news for a second. It explained how Al-Fasr knew when the recovery team was landing. Why did they keep underestimating the sonofabitch?