“I told her that if I’m given the green light to talk to the press after the mission, she’d be first to know. She’s already sniffing about. I asked her not to push it — go public with anything — and in return I’d give her first dibs, if my talking to the press was okayed by the boss. But of course there’d be no classified technical information.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Eleanor said in a quietly serious and personal tone, which, apart from the general, only Salvini could hear. “Douglas, I have to be honest with you. Although the Joint Chiefs, your buddy Mikey included, have done everything to speed up your procurement requests and limit the number of personnel who need to know to a bare-bones minimum, their computer threat assessment analyses have unanimously classified Payback as OTC.”
“Officers Training Corps?” proffered Freeman jokingly.
“You know what I mean, an ‘Off the Chart’ mission — beyond the ‘Highly Dangerous’ classification. On a scale of one to ten, they concur that it’s a minus five.”
“That all?”
Well, at least he wasn’t lacking in confidence. But she knew it would take a lot more than that to pull it off. “Douglas…”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Godspeed.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At Macdill Air Force Base, Freeman strode into the office of a harried and surprisingly young quartermaster general. The quartermaster knew nothing about the mission, only that a long-haul aircraft was being requested, this time by a General Douglas Freeman, now listed on the “nonactive” roster. It couldn’t be very important. He jerked his thumb back impatiently toward a clump of three C-130s, each with four Rolls-Royce Allison turbo props, over 17,000 horses in all. The C-130 Herk had always been one of America’s heavy lifters. Powerful enough to haul five standard pallets or ninety-two troops into action, it could also be an ambulance for seventy-four litter patients and cruise at 33,000 feet with a payload of 40,000 pounds for 2,250 miles. All of which would have made it ideal for transporting what was vaguely designated by the general’s team as “the equipment,” as well as Freeman, Aussie, Choir, Salvini, Lieutenants Bone Brady, Lee, Gomez, Shark Mervyn, and Chief Petty Officer Tavos, both Gomez and Mervyn listed in SOCOM’s nonactive roster as “technician-specialist.” “One of those Herks,” said the quartermaster impatiently, “will haul all you need.”
“I want a C-5,” said Freeman.
“You want?” riposted the quartermaster, mistaking Freeman’s tone for arrogance rather than a measure of the concern Freeman felt for what he knew deep within would be a precarious mission.
“All right,” Freeman said agreeably. “I’d like to have a C-5.”
“I’d like to have Shania Twain,” answered the quartermaster. “You know how stretched we are for Galaxies? We’ve got a hundred and thirty of them. That might seem a lot to you, General, but in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re spread pretty thin these days around the Mid-East, in South Korea, Kazakhstan, to name a few. We haven’t even got enough of the beasts to meet our regular resupply here in the States.”
All right, Freeman thought, he’d toned down his demand to a request but he wasn’t inclined, nor was there time, to get on his belly and crawl to this Johnny-come-lately, a man who was probably still in diapers when General Douglas Freeman’s Third M1A1s had effected the great U-turn attack against the Siberian Sixth Armored and decimated it.
“Call this 202 number,” Freeman told the quartermaster, “and tell them I’d like a C5-Galaxy, and I want it now because it’s the fastest heavy lifter you’ve got.”
The quartermaster scribbled down the 202 area code and number. “Who the hell is this?”
Freeman knew he could have told the Air Force officer outright, but he had to obey his own strictly imposed no-leak policy. “Call the number,” he told the quartermaster as they moved outside to the runway. “If you don’t, I’ll take this to SOCOM HQ, rattle your cage!”
The Air Force officer whipped out his cell, as Freeman later told his team, “quicker’n Wyatt Earp,” the quartermaster’s officiousness deflated like a slashed balloon. “Yes, ma’am!” Freeman heard him say, the quartermaster coming to attention as he spoke. “Yes — no problem. Right away.”
The quartermaster coughed, moving to nonchalantly slide his cell away, but missed his pocket, the cell phone striking hard on the MacDill runway. Freeman bent down and picked it up for him. “Thanks,” responded the quartermaster, his voice markedly subdued. “Ah — a Galaxy or Starlifter — whatever you want.”
“I’ll take the big bastard,” Freeman said amicably.
“Right. Galaxy it is, then.”
“Good.”
“Ah, General Freeman…”
“Yes?”
“Ms. Prenty wishes you Godspeed.”
Freeman nodded. It was the second time Eleanor had said that. He extended his hand in friendship to the young quartermaster general and smiled. “Thanks. I’ll need it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Once airborne in the huge Galaxy, Freeman went over his attack plan, every single detail, three times en route to Hawaii with his eight-man team. Aussie, Choir, Sal, Bone Brady, Johnny Lee, and Tavos would do the actual break and entry of the warehouse. Gomez and Mervyn would stay with the insertion vehicle, while Freeman, to his chagrin, but in obeisance to his Commander-in-Chief’s express order, would remain at mission control.
Landing on Oahu at dusk, the men, including the general, who set the example, ate a meal heavily laced with kimchi, the fermented Korean mix of cabbage, garlic, hot red peppers, green onions, and shrimp-fish paste that Koreans had as a side dish with every meal and was so strong that Aussie said it should be classified as a WMD. “Know a coupla guys,” he said between mouthfuls, “who are on the ‘speed bump.’ ” It was the name that the six hundred Americans and South Koreans who manned the first line of defense along Korea’s DMZ gave to Camp Bonifas on the DMZ. They would therefore be responsible for evacuating all noncombatants at Panmunjom in the event of invasion by the North.
“What about ’em?” asked Salvini, his normally open, congenial Brooklyn smile contorted by the sour cabbage mash.
“Well,” answered Aussie, pausing to wash down the kimchi with a gulp of North Korean Dear Leader beer, “they say no matter how horny they get, they’d rather jerk off than try to bed someone with kimchi breath!”
Freeman was remembering his embarrassing moment with Margaret. Onions! Maybe that’s why he’d been obsessed with onions, an unconscious warning to him to make sure that his attack team would eat only Korean food before the attack, more than one American killed because of his North American smell on the wind.
“I believe it,” said Gomez. “I couldn’t go near a kimchi breath.”
“I’d rather screw Choir,” joshed Aussie.
“Nah,” said Sal, “he’s too tight!”
Chief Petty Officer Tavos shook his head. “You guys!”
“Okay, boys,” cut in the general. “Listen up. Our senior boat man, Mervyn here, is about to take us through a refresher of Zulu-Five Oscar techniques.”
“No need,” joked Aussie. “Just drop out of this big bird, run, and fart. North Koreans comin’ for you get a whiff of that kimchi burst and Mo du da ju got da—they’re dead.”
All of them had had to commit key Korean terms to memory, the ability to be “superfast studies,” superfast learners, especially of foreign languages, now being mandatory for all Spec War applicants, and not just Green Berets. It was an ability aided in no small degree by Lieutenant Johnny Lee’s expert knowledge of Mandarin, Cantonese, and five other languages, which included Korean — one of the reasons Freeman chose him — as well as Japanese, French, Russian, and a dialogue spoken by the Sakhalin Islanders who, as part of the Kuril Island chain north of Japan, had been occupied alternately by Japan and Russia during the last century.