“I wanted to apologize,” began Freeman, “for being a little—”
“Rude!”
“Ah, yes, well, I suppose that’s a fair description, but I don’t like that Air Force whiz kid.”
“Oh, I would never have guessed.”
“It’s a character flaw.”
“Yours or his?” she snapped.
“Mine,” he said sheepishly.
But she knew that in his own brusque way the general had “covered their collective ass” in the Oval Office. As he’d pointed out, should something go awry, the CIA should rightly take some of the fallout. But why was he calling her at 3:00 A.M.? “You having second thoughts?” she asked.
“Hell, no!”
She’d been careful not to mention anything specific on the phone, knowing that even the National Security Advisor’s phone could be tapped — but she knew the general knew she’d meant second thoughts about the in-out “snatch and grab” mission. “Ah,” she said, her tone lighter now, appreciating his apology. “So you’ve been so guilt-ridden by your response to Michael, you couldn’t sleep, is that it?”
She heard a snort of derision from the other end. “I want to call you at fourteen hundred tomorrow. I know how busy you are, so I wanted to reserve a straight-through call, on scrambler, no matter whether you’re in conference or whatever.”
Eleanor shook her head — the man was impossible. An apology, immediately followed by a demand to have her office cleared for a call at 2:00 P.M. tomorrow: “No matter whether you’re in conference or whatever.” The nerve of the man, thought Eleanor. He wasn’t even on the active list, a man who’d been put out to pasture, really, and now this demand to drop whatever she was doing at the White House tomorrow the minute he called. Cradling the cordless between her left cheek and shoulder as she reached over to open the fridge door, she took out a jug of orange juice then turned to reach up and take a glass from the cupboard.
“Douglas, do you remember Paul’s letter to the Corinthians?”
“Which one?” he asked. “There are two.”
My God, he can be annoying, she thought.
“First Corinthians, eight, one,” she said. “ ‘Knowledge puffeth up.’ ”
In response, he quoted Frederick the Great’s L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace. “I’ll call you at fourteen hundred hours tomorrow,” he said.
Light-headed with fatigue and hunger, despite the hit of the orange juice, Eleanor was feeling faintly hysterical.
“General, what do you call a Scotsman with three hundred girlfriends?”
“Don’t know.”
“A shepherd,” she said, giggling.
“That, Ms. Prenty,” the general replied with mock gravitas, “is politically incorrect.”
“Oh,” she responded. “Then why does a Scotsman wear a kilt?”
“Why?”
“Because a zipper would frighten the sheep.” She howled with laughter. “Are you still there, General?”
“Combat fatigue,” he joshed. “You get tired enough, you get silly. Major problem with flyers.”
She was so tired, she thought for a moment he meant junk mail flyers.
“I’m not in combat!” She yawned.
“Yes, you are,” he said, his tone suddenly changing. “We’re all in this war, civilian and enlisted.” It was a chilling comment, which sidelined her Scotsmen jokes, and she thought immediately of Jennifer…and then Tom, whom she and Jennifer saw only occasionally when he drove in from his Georgetown think tank. “I guess you’re right, Douglas.”
“Good night.”
Too tired to shower and change into her nightgown, she lay down on the tan velour love seat in the living room, the phone beside her, and tried to sleep. She couldn’t. Douglas Freeman’s comment about the flyers made her wonder why he’d mentioned them — perhaps because he’d been given carte blanche by the President he might be thinking of sending his team in on a HALO — high-altitude, low-opening — jump from one of the big Hercules transports. Even as she pursued sleep, she knew that there were dozens of U.S. flyers aloft in the darkness on combat patrol for America, some of their missions so long that their fighters and bombers had to be refueled two or three times during flight. One such long-haul Air Force transport would carry Freeman and his team of SpecFor warriors into harm’s way in — how soon did Douglas say? — six weeks at the earliest. The only way such crews were able to stay awake, Eleanor knew, was because of an open secret that armed forces public relations officers were forbidden to discuss when it came to long-haul “insertion” of a SpecOps team, namely that crews were popping five- to ten-milligram Dexedrine “go pills.”
CHAPTER TEN
Insertion to target was one thing, extraction from target was another kind of beast altogether. This was especially true if things, in Choir Williams’s understated phrase, got a “bit sticky.” It was a phrase that came up as the general briefed his assembled team about the “macro,” or 3-D computer map, he’d selected for SOCOM’s Direct Action Mission 134, against the out-of-town Kosong launcher/missile warehouse. Freeman’s laser pointer moved south on the three-dimensional map from Kosong down along the North Korean coastline to the DMZ eleven miles away and back again to the location of the warehouse, a rectangular building that lay north-south between the two arms of a Y-shaped path that led up from a crescent-shaped beach. “Gentlemen,” he addressed the eight-man team, pausing to say, “that doesn’t mean you, Aussie.” There was a loud guffaw from Salvini who, with Choir Williams, was delighted with the general’s friendly jab at Aussie Lewis.
“Oh, very amusing,” said Aussie wryly, the give-and-take familiarity between the general and his team surprising Gomez and Eddie “Shark” Mervyn, two of the five SEALs Freeman had drawn from the nonactive list. The other three “nonactives” were “Bone” Brady, a six-foot-six African-American ex — college basketball star; Lieutenant Johnny Lee, a multilinguist; and a burly chief petty officer, Samuel Tavos.
Like most Special Forces, the five SEALs Freeman had chosen to join himself, Aussie, Choir, and Sal were used to the informal camaraderie of Special Forces, but it was obvious to them that Freeman had established a remarkably close bond with his former comrades.
“What we’ve got here,” explained Freeman, “is a quarter-mile-wide north-south fishhook-shaped harbor on North Korea’s rugged east coast. I emphasize rugged, gentlemen, and Aussie.” Salvini grinned, elbowing Aussie in the ribs.
“Harbor entrance is narrow,” continued Freeman, “less than a quarter-mile wide. Coastline along the southwest aspect of the harbor continues out seaward for a half mile, forming the shank of a fishhook shape, and ends up with an “up yours” finger of land jutting northward into the Sea of Japan, which all Koreans insist on calling the East Sea. The North and South Koreans are at one another’s throats, but they all hate Japan. I don’t want to excite you too much, but we’ll be entering the most dangerous space in the world. The crescent beach we’ll use as the point of insertion is a half-mile-long curve.”
Aussie Lewis glanced at the five “retired” volunteer SEAL combat swimmers. If you saw a Jimmy leg, a nervous up-and-down knee motion, it was a sure sign that the owner was anxious. There was no movement, however, among the five “Sheilas,” as Aussie had cheekily but good-naturedly dubbed them. In fact, if anything, the Sheilas looked bored, impatient for more details.