The commandant of the Marine Corps, General Rolfing, gave the marines in Okinawa the mission to be on their vessels in less than twelve hours, steaming south to a position to be determined. The key was to get them moving. And they would be soon. While Stone also approved this order, Rolfing would have done it anyway. The Marines always marched to the sound of the guns.
The chief of Naval Operations made the critical decision to halt the movement of the supply ship that was a day’s steaming time from Subic Bay. If he let it continue, the soldiers might be able to use it for a way out, but it would also be too lucrative a target. It was doubtful, if the insurgents now controlled the small Philippine navy, that the ship could get in unescorted as was initially planned. At Stone’s direction, he also put the Fifth Fleet on alert.
The men sat in the “tank,” a secret briefing room near the chairman’s office in the Pentagon. Available to them was every type of sophisticated communications and monitoring system in the world: secure telephones, secure radios, secure satellite radios, huge television screens that monitored CNN and could pick up foreign stations, and satellite downlinks. The chairman sat in the middle of one of the long sides of the mahogany table. The chiefs of staff surrounded him on either side. Seated across from him was Stone, who spoke first.
“Gentlemen, we have a serious situation on our hands. It is a situation that has gotten out of hand very rapidly. We must get a handle on it ASAP, develop a strategy to recommend to the president, then be able effectively to execute it better than we — well never mind. We need to fix it. I’m pretty sure we don’t have a plan for this, so let’s figure out how to extract ourselves from it and drive on,” Stone said somewhat incoherently.
Chairman Sewell, Stone’s military counterpart, leaned forward and laid out the situation as he saw it. He was an Army four-star general who had risen through the ranks from private. He had attended the University of North Carolina on a ROTC scholarship, where he played right tackle on the football team and had earned the Hughes award for the top ROTC candidate of his year. He had large arms that strained the material of his uniform, look-ing somewhat awkward. He had gone completely bald, with only gray stubble on each side to remind him that he had ever possessed hair. His face was round, and his jowls hung low like a bulldog’s. He had diagonal eyebrows that converged near the bridge of his nose, giving him a sinister look.
He believed strongly in protecting his war fighters and wanted some quick, decisive action to get his young troops out of harm’s way. But he knew it would not be that easy.
“The first thing we have to keep in mind is that we have a few personnel that we know of in captivity, Secretary Rathburn, Matt Garrett, and the pilot. Anything we do must be tempered with the realization that it might backfire against them—”
“As far as I’m concerned, that’s a primary consideration, but again, it can’t be a massive operation,” Stone interrupted. Could Keith Richards really be a hostage?
“Right,” Sewell continued, cutting an annoyed glance at the SecDef. “We’ve got an A team on Mindanao that’s probably about out of gas. They were supposed to be picked up near the City of Cateel yesterday, 1600 Philippine time.” As he talked, a lieutenant colonel pointed to a huge map of the Philippines, showing the town of Cateel.
“We’ve also got a light infantry rifle company at Subic Bay. We think the commander has moved. It was probably a smart idea; we’ll see. So basically, we’ve got three groups of people we have to get, and we don’t have any real idea where any of them are. My first inclination is to let Special Ops prepare for the extraction of the hostages. We should be able to get a fix on their location in a couple of days—”
“Couple of days?” Stone questioned.
“Sir, we cannot go get people if we don’t know where they are. It’s that simple,” Sewell shot back, looking Stone directly in his eyes. Stone looked away. All part of the act.
“Fred, how soon can you have an expeditionary brigade under way from Okinawa?” he asked General Fred Rolfing, the first black commandant of the Marine Corps. Rolfing looked like a Marine. His hair was cropped tightly to his dark skin. He had a thick, square jaw that sported an eight-centimeter scar he had received in hand-to-hand combat in Vietnam.
“Twelve hours,” he said, without flinching. A Marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) included an air attack team, a regimental landing group, and its own organic service support group. It was a completely self-sufficient battle group capable of conducting sustained operations. The Marine aircraft group of the MEB included twenty AV-8B Harrier fighter aircraft, twenty-four F/A-18 fighter aircraft, and over seventy cargo helicopters. The ground element consisted of seventeen tanks and three infantry battalions. The entire MEB nearly had the firepower equivalent of an Army infantry division. “But it will take away from our Iraq prep. Those guys are getting under way for the Middle East.”
Stone thought that was a good comment. Iraq prep. It was all about Iraq prep, wasn’t it?
He looked at Dick Diamond and Saul Fox. With every mention of this unit or that unit being possibly diverted away from “Iraq prep,” both Diamond and Fox appeared visibly to take a body blow, like a fastball to the stomach.
To avoiding protesting too much, Stone let Sewell take the lead.
“So our first move is to get people ready. Tad, you’ve got the Rangers ready go right now, correct?” Sewell asked. General Tad Murphy was the new Special Operations commander. He had been in the position for less than a year and had established himself well. But he knew a simple Ranger mission would not get the job done. Nor would a Marine expeditionary brigade. They needed some good intelligence and they needed to be able to talk to someone in authority, whoever it might be.
“Yes, sir. But let me say something,” Murphy said. The others looked at him. It was nearly 0300 hours, and everyone was tired. No one was in the mood for any pontificating.
“Sir,” he said looking at Stone, “I have to say that this looks like the next front in the GWOT. This Iraq thing will take hundreds of thousands of soldiers to do it right, so we will have to determine what the main effort is,” Murphy continued.
Fox coughed, “That’s preposterous, General.”
Stone rubbed his face. Hmm, how to play this one? Side with my deputy or encourage the counterplan? Stone was reveling in the discourse and determined he should remain consistent.
“Let me make one thing clear, everyone. Iraq is a go. So we have to plan around it. Anyone who can’t live with that can go find another job,” Stone said.
Two Oscars in one day, Stone thought. Iraq is a go! Genius. By so strongly arguing for the affirmative, a simple debating technique, he was certain that someone would begin to harden their position against going to Iraq, the counterplan. If that failed, well, Wood and Watts, the bass and lead guitarists, would certainly come to the rescue.
And the real problem, Stone thought, was that the best way to kill a venomous snake was to cut off its head. By shifting focus to Iraq, Stone believed America’s hand was releasing the viselike grip on the neck of the viper and sliding along the scaly abdomen, opening the possibility for another fanged attack.
But thankfully, the Rolling Stones had a solution for this little problem, and it hadn’t cost the American taxpayer a dime.
Better than Iran-Contra!
Chapter 50
Karen Garrett, Matt’s and Zachary’s sister, had been calling the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and her congressman for the last twenty-four hours, but only ran into the usual bureaucratic nightmare. Nobody could tell her the location of either of her brothers. Not only because they did not know, but also because everything was “classified.”