Major General Eric Nichols was so relieved he scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry, and he rarely had been seen to do either. Actually, his feeling was more one of surprise. For once something was going right. After diddling and dabbling for almost ten hours, the Pentagon-Fort Fuck-up-had actually made a decision. It was so unprecedented it might even merit a place in the annals of military history. Such rare moments were to be savored.
Maybe they had gotten tired of running computer "risk analyses." Or maybe their damned computer had broken down. Whatever the reason, however, the exalted pay grades upstairs had decided to get off dead center and just let him assault the damned island. The op was a go.
The civilian assholes had been headed off at the pass, which meant one less thing to worry about. Now all that remained was to figure how to get the boys in safely and take down the place. And at last he knew there were nukes. Great communication system the Army had, making sure everybody had been briefed and was totally up to speed. Christ!
He sat still a moment after setting down the phone, breathing a short prayer. Although appearances would not suggest it, he was in fact a religious man at the core. He had been close enough to death enough times to conclude that there were indeed no atheists in foxholes, and he figured what was good enough for foxholes was good enough for the rest of the time. Besides, what harm did it do?
"All right." He turned and glanced at Max Austin. "I guess the computer has got everything planned. Looks like we can go in after all. How's that for efficiency? Just as it gets bright enough for my guys to be risking their asses, we get the green light. I'd say that's just about perfect timing."
Austin nodded slowly, then rose to check the teletype machine to see if the orders had really come through. This op was going to be by the book or not at all. If it turned into a nuclear incident, there were going to be inquiries up the wazoo.
"Looks like it's really going down," Austin said, yanking off a sheet. "So I'll cut the orders and get us mobilized here. How long before you can get your boys in the air?"
"Well, since this is going to have to be a daylight op, we might as well use the Apaches and not fuck around. We'll just hit the bastards with enough firepower to take out the command-control radars up on the hill. That ought to shut down any chance they could get anything launched. Then we've just got a hostage situation to deal with, and if we have to, we can just starve them out. It'll only be a matter of time. Maybe, God willing, we can keep the friendly casualties to a minimum."
Austin did not like the image of the headlines Nichols's assault plan suddenly conjured up. Any heavy property damage and there was going to be hell to pay.
"I don't like it, Eric," he said. "The word I get is that we're not to damage the infrastructure any more than is absolutely essential. Which means no first strikes on command-and-control. This isn't Iraq, for godsake; this is American property."
"You're saying my main orders are to save the infrastructure?" Nichols's tone was deliberately wry.
"You've got it. I want you to get in there fast, take down the hostiles, and get this situation the hell over with. That's the best way to put this problem behind us and fast. The last thing this man's army needs is a month's worth of gory headlines. Some quick casualties can look unavoidable and be over with in a day. A long-drawn-out situation can make us all look like jerks."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this."
"You didn't hear a damned thing, at least not from me. But if you know what's good for the Army, and for the country, you'll get in there and take down the place in a morning, neutralize the hostiles with extreme prejudice, and let the Army write the headlines with a press release."
Nichols knew what he was hearing: the groundwork for "deniability." And he despised it. This kind of "cover your ass" bullshit was one of the things that gave him such contempt for desk jockeys.
"All right," he said smoothly, covering his disgust, "if you want to play it that way, then we can sure as hell do it. I don't suppose my opinion in the matter is of a hell of a lot of interest to the Pentagon."
"Truthfully, no."
"Okay." He leaned back. "Doing it the Pentagon's way, there would be two points we need to assault. There's the computer control center, and then there's the launch facility. There're probably terrorists at both, so we've got to take down both locations simultaneously. And both, unfortunately, are underground, which also means we've got to figure out how to get in, get down there, and do it fast."
"What would be your insertion strategy, given what we've just discussed?"
"Well, I've already got the alternatives rehearsed. Right now I think we should stage a diversionary landing on the coast by a SEAL team, then use the confusion to let the main assault team insert from choppers. My main worry is not the hostages, but getting my own boys shot up going in. It's going to be a cluster-fuck if some of those bastards can get a bead on the task force that's arriving by chopper. Could mean a lot of casualties. Let something go wrong and I don't even want to think about how many of my men could get chewed up. But we've been rehearsing that assault option and I think we can get twenty men on the ground in about ninety seconds."
The difference, he was thinking, was that he had been planning to do it under cover of darkness. To suddenly have to revise the entire strategy and try and take down the place in broad daylight was calling every assumption into question. But there was no time to try and devise yet another assault. Shit. All because Washington kept changing its signals, and when it did get them straight, somebody came up with this bullshit about minimizing property damage. It was a goddamn outrage. But that's what you had to expect when REMFs got mixed up in planning an op. Shit.
"Well, twenty men should do it," Austin said. "And there'll always be backup from the SEAL team that's providing the coastal diversion. They'll be there, in-theater so to speak."
"Right." You don't know fuck-all about how an op like this goes down, Nichols was thinking, and you have the balls to sit there and tell me how to deploy my resources.
On the other hand, it sounds easy. Too easy. That's what's wrong with it. The place would appear to be a crackerbox. But these bastards are pros, so they must already have thought through everything we have. Time to plan ahead of them.
"All right," Nichols concluded, rising. "I'll have everybody airborne in fifteen minutes."