“Getting his boots muddy and playing rifleman is more like. I want him back here in forty-eight hours at the latest, and no excuses Admiral.”
“I’ll see he gets the message, Mister President.”
Taking his seat he allowed Gee to open the brief on events in Europe.
“Mister President, in another thirty-six hours the convoy will begin arriving at the channel ports, and unloading its supplies and the four armoured divisions of 4th Corps.”
“We lose any?”
“Of merchantmen, not a one Mister President. Conrad Mann foxed the Sov’s. While they beat on his warships, thinking it was the whole convoy, the merchant ships and their skeleton screen reached the air umbrella.”
Good news seemed to be a rarity these days and a broad smile spread its way across the President’s face.
“Well hooray for us, it’s about damn time something went right!”
The faces around the table reflected his own lifted spirits, all except that of the admiral who was attempting to keep his face neutral. It wasn’t that he wanted to keep from smiling, quite the opposite in fact, because the captain of the USS Gallishere had been the only child of Zachary and Isabella Gee.
The admiral continued once the Presidents’ exuberance had dissipated.
“We took heavy losses amongst the warships during the main attacks, an Aegis cruiser, three destroyers and six frigates. Then we lost a second Aegis in the early hours; USS Anzio had been badly damaged in the main action and was later torpedoed during the night. The USS Gerald Ford was damaged in a collision with another of our ships and as result can only make fifteen knots due to damage to her bows. In addition to the carrier, we have a half dozen destroyers and frigates in need of repair before they can again put to sea. The Gerald Ford herself will require the services of a dry dock.” He pushed across the table a list, naming all the vessels lost or damaged, and the numbers of crewmen killed, wounded and missing.
The President’s brow furrowed as he read, but at last looked up questioningly.
“The missing crew, they number about three quarters of the total casualty list?”
The fact that a warship was seen by many eyes to blow up, was not sufficient in itself to list her ships complement as killed, they became numbered amongst the missing until absolute proof showed otherwise.
“Yes Mister President, the ships were under orders not to stop to pick up survivors… to do so would have been to invite disaster upon the remainder.”
The President looked at the number of those missing.
“Can we not mount a search and rescue mission?”
Any search and rescue attempt would be a shadow of that which could be mounted in peacetime and such was the nature of modern warfare that few vessels had been able to launch life rafts. Most of the men and women who had gone into the water did so in only what they were wearing at the time, and that water was damn cold. Without some means of staving off the ice cold of the Atlantic most would have survived for a half hour at the very most, but that was not what the President wanted to hear.
“Yes, Mister President.” Admiral Gee answered. “We can try.”
The President was tempted to ask for details, but part of him did not want to know the reality of what must be a limited effort.
“Okay, let’s move on to Germany, what is the current situation?”
The answers he received wiped away the elation of the convoy’s success, the Elbe line was holding, barely.
NATOs firebreak, the Dutch 2nd Armoured Brigade, US 4th Mechanised Brigade, 2 REP, the French Foreign Legion paratroopers, Britain’s 40 and 44 Commando and finally 3(UK) Mechanised Brigade, were in various stages of preparing defensive positions behind the main NATO line. It was the last line of any real substance between the Elbe and the channel, but manned by battered, war weary units, and those relatively fresh, well trained units, but ill equipped for the task expected of them.
SACEUR had taken a gamble on the convoy getting through intact as regards his remaining ammunition stocks. A more cautious commander would have begun rationing ammunition more stringently a week ago, particularly artillery and tank rounds.
The upshot was that the sooner fresh troops, equipment and supplies arrived, the better.
The admiral’s updates on Equalizer and Guillotine were not mentioned, those were for the ears of a very select, and trusted few, once the remainder of the staff was absent, but there were still other items to be gone over before the end of this session, and that happened.
An hour and a half later, Ben Dupre briefed the president on the event that had brought him from his temporary headquarters.
“Mister President, you will recall that you wanted to be kept informed about the investigation into the murder of Scott Tafler in Scotland, well I am here to inform you, and Terry of course, that the British police have picked up the trail of the culprits.”
He hadn’t had the chance to speak to Terry Jones before the meeting, and now the CIA Director sat upright. Scott Tafler had been one of his own, and the killing of one of its operatives was something the CIA never forgave, and never ever forgot.
“A day and a half after the murder of Scott, Major Bedonavich and the two British police officers, a break-in took place at a chemist shop… that’s a pharmacy to you and me. The pharmacy was at a place called Purley on the southern outskirts of London, some four hundred and fifty miles from the crime scene. There were a lot of footprints in the snow up in Scotland, and the British police got a match on one of them at the pharmacy. It seems someone wanted sterile dressings, painkillers, and antibiotics.”
“Well we knew the killers didn’t have everything their own way, at least two were wounded weren’t they?”
Ben nodded.
“Yes sir, two were killed at the safe house and the bodies abandoned. There were two separate blood trails, one of those turned up dead in a torched vehicle that they had used.”
The president let that sink in, before asking.
“So how strong is the lead, and is there anything we can do to help?”
“Well sir, a lot of the British police have exchanged their blue uniforms for green ones which is why it has taken so long for the link to be made. However, their SO15 people took over the Purley investigation, seized CCTV tapes from every shop camera around, got one of the guy leaving the pharmacy from a newsagents security camera across the street, and found another with the same guy filling up at a gas station a half hour before, so they got the cars plates. It’s a rental and hasn’t been returned yet” Terry Jones was leaning forward, focused completely on the FBI Directors words.
“London, well Central London to be exact, has a fairly unique system of logging all vehicles that enter, and it is not part of the law enforcement organisation.”
“That would be the traffic congestion set up they have.” Interjected an aide. “People having to pay an extra tax for the privilege of getting to work on time.”
The FBI Director shot the speaker a ‘thanks for the input, now shut up’ look, before continuing.
“The locals made enquiries and struck it lucky. In order to enter the congestion zone a vehicle has to be registered, and this car is indeed registered, unfortunately to a vacant lot in Cambridge… however, the car has entered and left the city on the same day each week for the last three.”
Terry would put money on the car driving past several locations significant only to the driver and some contact in the city, looking for signals, a chalk mark on a lamppost or something equally as innocuous to Joe Public. The signal would be to prompt another action, such as visiting a dead letter drop for further instructions. But Terry did not concern himself with the marks possible portent, something in Dupre’s voice told Terry Jones that the cars next expected visit was imminent.