"Well… get it back!"
"Sir, the ground team is equipped with tactical radio gear, but they don't have any long-range equipment. The only reason we can listen in and kibitz when necessary is we have Eagle Eye in the area to pick up their transmissions."
"So?"
"We don't know exactly where they are now, but we know they're moving. That's pretty rugged terrain back there, and their transmissions, if they're making any, are being blocked by the mountains."
"So how do we reestablish contact?"
"We wait, sir, and listen. And hope to hell we're close enough to pick them up when they come out from under cover."
"Suggestion, General?" Goldman said.
"What." It was a demand, not a question.
"Let them work it out themselves. They'll find a way to yell if they need us."
Childess scowled, but, after a moment's hesitation, nodded. "We can't help if we can't see them. But, damn it, the waiting is hell."
And the waiting was bad. Gordon found a chair and sat down after his boss had done the same. He was only now beginning to realize the enormity of what had happened, of what he had brought to pass.
At the moment, he was remembering a suggestion he'd made in his original report, that the ground team wouldn't need to pack ground-to-space communications equipment if an aircraft such as a Navy Hawkeye or Air Force AWACS was orbiting in the area, say, over Israel, or just off the coast. The possibility that part of the team might become cut off from the main body and fall out of communications with headquarters simply hadn't occurred to him… and apparently it hadn't occurred to anyone else.
Those men were cut off deep in hostile territory, and the responsibility, at least in part, was his.
Ten minutes later, the helicopters reported going feet wet — passing the beach five miles south of Tyre and flying west out over the Med. Twenty-five minutes after that, they reported their approach to the USS Nimitz, steaming slowly south with her battle group thirty miles off the coast.
But there was no further word from Alfa Platoon's First Squad, left behind in the Bekaa Valley.
He looked at his watch. Rebecca was going to be furious, but there was no way he could leave now. Not yet. Not until he knew the people he had put out there were safe.
It was just a half hour before sunrise, and the sky was already bright with the twilight, clear and crystal blue. Trailing a plume of dust, the truck descended the gray-brown bareness of the Jabal Lubnan, the Lebanon Mountains, approaching the coast on the winding road. To the west, the Mediterranean stretched to the horizon, mirror-smooth and ultramarine black, the "wine-dark sea" of Homer.
For the past two hours, they'd been racing along the mountain-twisted roads of southern Lebanon, moving south down the Bekaa Valley with the snowcapped bulk of Mt. Hermon, traditional site of Christ's transfiguration, looming huge against the stars on their left. They'd removed their LI gear, harnesses, and vests and used gasoline-soaked rags to wipe most of the camo blacking from their faces before donning the fragmentary uniforms and mismatched headgear they'd taken from the dead militiamen. Armed now with AK-47 assault rifles, they looked the part of a band of Hezbollah militia, patrolling the roads north of the Israeli frontier. They couldn't permit too close an examination, of course, not with face blacking playing the role of the ubiquitous Hezbollah mustaches and beards, but they looked convincing enough from a distance, and in the dark.
They'd hoped to cross into Israel at Metulla, but a large and heavily armed force had challenged them at Marj'Uyun. After a brief, sharp firefight at a roadblock, they'd been forced to swing right, heading west, then north along the spine of the Lebanon Mountains. Twice more they were challenged at roadblocks. The first time they managed to bluff their way through by waving their rifles above their heads and shouting Allah akbar … God is great. The second time they were stopped with gunshots, and smashed their way through by loosing their last LAW into the side of a Syrian BDRM. The Syrian Army, it seemed, was harder to bluff than the enthusiastic bands of half-trained militia roving like gangs across the dusty Lebanese landscape.
The Israelis were hard to bluff, too. Alerted, perhaps, by the gunfire, the artillery rounds had rumbled in from the south like incoming freight trains, detonating among the hills with earthquake thunders. That had been when Randall had decided that they would have to make for the sea.
Every SEAL is taught to think of the water as an asset, as a friend. Few enemies would pursue a man into the water, especially if that man's training rendered him deadly in the alien world of the sea. During BUD/S, the basic training all SEAL trainees underwent before winning their coveted Budweiser SEAL badges, they survived a series of ordeals casually referred to as "drownproofing," which included maneuvers in a deep swimming pool, with hands and feet tied.
The water was something to be used, an ally, a weapon, even.
And out there beyond that dark, western horizon lay an American aircraft carrier battle group, the Nimitz and eight or ten lesser vessels in support.
But first they would have to reach the sea, still ten miles away… and it was swiftly growing light. They would need to find a place to stay out of sight until after nightfall.
And there was the matter of communications. Starbase had been able to eavesdrop on Free Sanction's tactical radio broadcasts through the agency of the unseen reconnaissance aircraft circling above the Bekaa Valley. They didn't have a satellite uplink or dish antenna, and so their communications right now were limited to the line-of-sight range of their Motorolas. They all carried emergency homing beacons, of course, but the Syrians could home in on those as easily as could American rescue forces. Until an American aircraft flew overhead, they were totally and completely on their own.
Randall found he rather preferred it that way.
6
Frank Gordon pulled his Skylark to a stop in the driveway of his Lincolnia Park home, on the suburban outskirts of Alexandria just south of I-395. Though it was past sunup, the sky was still dark, mantled in a low ceiling of heavy, gray clouds promising rain. Early as it was, traffic sounds were picking up on the nearby highway, and the flashing headlights of early commuter traffic glimpsed through the trees were growing more numerous. Rush hour on a Saturday morning wasn't nearly so bad as during the week, but enough military and defense corporation employees worked on the weekend to make him glad he'd made it home before the traffic really picked up.
Letting himself in the front door quietly, he tiptoed into the front hall.
"Good morning."
Becca's voice was cold, and a trifle hard. She was curled up on the big, overstuffed chair in the living room at the end of the hall, wearing her blue nightgown, and with her legs tucked under a blanket. "I'm sorry, Becca," he said. "Something came up." She yawned as she uncurled from the chair. Rebecca Gordon was lovely, a bit pudgy since she'd turned forty, but still attractive and possessing a beauty that had more to do with grace and presence than weight. "It's funny," she said. "I thought the Pentagon was pretty damned high-tech. There's this new invention out, called the telephone."
"I'll have Appropriations look into that," he replied, trying to turn it into a jest.