More Than Courage (11 page)

The Air Force Chief of Staff straightened up as he took up the challenge being hurled at Worton and his briefing officer. "You know very well that the minimum operational altitude is fifteen thousand feet."

The Army Chief's response irritated every Air Force officer in the room. "So, in your usual fashion your people responded to my people's call for assistance by zipping in at five hundred miles an hour and buzzing about for a couple of minutes at fifteen MORE THAN COURAGE

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thousand feet before fluttering away without doing a dammed thing."

The Air Force Chief snorted angrily. "Two of those men belong to me."

"And twelve are mine!" the. Army Chief countered.

At the head of the table a hand slapped the smooth surface, causing all eyes turned to the Sec Def. "I hope I do not need to remind anyone in this room," he stated calmly but firmly, "that every one of those people, on the ground and in the air, are my responsibility. When I go to the pressroom tonight it's my head the American media will be calling for. So, if you gentlemen don't mind, let us proceed with this briefing so I can at least create the illusion that I know what I'm talking about when I have to face the members of the fourth estate."

The Sec Def turned back to the briefing officer. "Unless you have anything of relevance to add, Colonel, you are dismissed."

The Air Force colonel left the briefing room as quickly as decorum permitted. For the better part of a minute the Sec Def scanned the solemn people lining both sides of the long conference table before speaking. "Can anyone tell me what went wrong? How is it that this mission went south after all previous operations were managed without a hitch? Anyone?"

The silence that followed was oppressive, especially for those Wearing Army green. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked at the Army Chief of Staff, who looked at the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations, who in turn looked at Brigadier General James Palmer, head of the Army's Directorate of Special Operations. Realizing this nonverbal passWg of the buck stopped with him, Palmer spoke. "Although we cannot be sure what transpired on the ground, Mr. Secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Delmont, the special project officer charged With overseeing Razorback, can provide us with his assessment."

Palmer turned to Delmont. "Colonel?"

With all the grace of a man upon whom a ten-ton weight had 86

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just fallen, Delmont stood up and walked to the spot where the Air Force briefing officer had stood, collecting and organizing his thoughts as he did so. After a pause during which he cleared his throat, he launched into his impromptu briefing. "For some time now the Syrians have been employing a form of ambush designed to deal with our airborne incursions into their air space. Popularly known as SAMbushes, this tactic involves the concealment of surface-to-air missile batteries near locations that are technically immune from attack due to their proximity to sensitive nonmilitary targets such as schools, mosques, and civilian medical facilities.

To draw our aircraft into these well-laid ambushes the Syrians set up dummy facilities such as chemical warfare labs that they knew our national intelligence assets were looking for. One of the primary reasons the recon teams such as RT Kilo were organized and deployed under the operational plan known as Raz^rback was to make up for our lack of human intelligence sources on the ground. We needed to ferret out which facilities were real and which were decoys."

Delmont paused in order to give the Secretary of Defense the opportunity to ask questions and respond to any challenges.

When he saw that neither were forthcoming, he continued with a bit more confidence.

"Razorback has been largely successful. RT Kilo, the eleventh Special Forces recon team to be dispatched, was searching for an approximately located and previously unidentified Syrian battery that was deployed in an area where there were no known targets of value. The conclusion that the CIA and DIA reached was that the battery was protecting a chemical warfare lab that had once been part of the Iraqi program. While we cannot yet be sure what went wrong, we can make some assumptions as to why today's mission did not go off as planned. Either the security detachment assigned to protect the missile battery and/or lab from ground attack detected RT Kilo as they were approaching the site or RT

Kilo drove into a successfully executed ambush intentionally laid for them. After we obtain and analyze the information being col MORE THAN COURAGE

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lected by the CIA and the Air Force my office should be better able to determine what actually happened."

With his improvised presentation succeeding, Delmont went on to describe RT Kilo's basic operational procedures even though he couldn't be sure if Kilo was still adhering to them.

General Palmer, deciding that Delmont's discussion of tactics contributed nothing to what the Secretary of Defense needed to know so as to manage the crisis, let Delmont know that he needed to wrap up as quickly and gracefully as possible by employing his usual nonverbal cues.

Glad to be off the hook, Delmont swiftly finished a point he had been belaboring. Then, rather than concluding with a comment that closed all discussion on this aspect of the issue, he made the mistake of asking, "Are there any questions?"

The Commandant of the Marine Corps brought up something that had been bothering him about Razorback for months.

"Colonel, what role do you think fatigue played in this incident?"

To the Secretary of Defense and most people seated about the table, the question sounded simple and practical. But a few, including Palmer and Delmont understood its significance. The Marine general who posed the question had never been in favor of Razorback from its inception. That he was using this forum to continue this debate angered Palmer and everyone who had pushed it. In the twinkling of an eye Delmont realized that his asking for questions been a mistake on a grand scale.

Even before Operation Razorback had actually begun there Were those who knew that it could not be properly supported.

Manpower shortages and overcommitment of Army Special Ops Units around the world were already creating problems. The dearth of available units and personnel could only be made up by extending the duration of each recon team's in-country time to

six weeks or more, and not the two weeks originally envisioned.

After the first couple of long rotations demonstrated that this was simply too much for the recon teams, the Army had informally asked the Marine Corps if it'd be willing to help by contributing 88

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some marine force recon teams or fleet antiterrorists security teams, better known as FASTs. The addition of marine teams to the rotation would allow all of Razorback's army recon units to maintain a more practical schedule even though their deployment time would still be greater than two weeks. In his response to the Marine Commandant Delmont's Marine counterpart thought that Operation Razorback was basically a sound plan dealing with an important mission. Unfortunately, he continued, the Marines had the same problem as the Army did in terms of manpower.

Their special operations forces were already overcommitted.

Adding some of the Marines' teams to Operation Razorback would help the Army, but only worsen the problem the Corps was already having to deal with elsewhere. And even if Marine special ops teams had been available, the Marine special operations plans officer stated that the extended missions in Syria by both Army and Marine units would be detrimental to their operational efficiency, a state of affairs that could lead to a decline in both the effectiveness of the units and their ability to carry out their assigned missions.

"Protracted exposure to the stress of an operation of this nature, coupled with the corrosive effects of the desert environment in which the teams operate will result in a deterioration of the mental and physical health of individuals assigned to these recon teams. If these teams are not rotated before this occurs, a situation that has become routine in Syria, this deterioration will continue to a point where the ability of a team's personnel to function properly or execute their assigned tasks will be significantly compromised, increasing the risk they face to a level that is unacceptable." Between this conclusion and the fact of special ops team scarcity, the Commandant of the Marine Corps had declined to commit any of his forces to Razorback.

The reason the Commandant was posing his question at this time was clear to Delmont and Palmer. Eventually it would be learned that Palmer had authorized the routine extension of each MORE THAN COURAGE

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recon teams' tours of duty in Syria. This revelation would raise the same concern that the Marine special ops officer had described in his report to the Commandant after studying the Razorback operation. By reminding Palmer of this in front of the Secretary of Defense the Commandant was .putting the Army on notice that if they dared try to blame the Corps for any Razorback-related problems, he would respond by publicizing the warning that he had conveyed to the Army several months ago.

Aware that Delmont was uncertain about how to deal with the live grenade that had been tossed in his lap, Palmer answered the question himself. "As Mr. Writt of the CIA and others have pointed out, we have no way of knowing for sure what happened on the ground. Mr. Secretary, until we have more information and have an opportunity to confirm and verify it, I don't think there's any value in continuing speculation about what happened today. The media, I'm sure, will do enough of that on their own."

Sensing that General Palmer wasn't ready to reveal sensitive information the Army already had and needing time to prepare a report that would protect the Army's operations and interests, the Army Chief of Staff backed up Palmer's conclusion. "I agree with General Palmer's point. Until we know for sure what went down out there we should concentrate on collecting information and intelligence. Speculation on what might have happened is a waste oftime."

The Secretary of Defense sighed. He now saw that he would have to deal effectively with a potentially explosive issue with nothing more than incomplete information. Turning to the Pentagon spokesman, the Sec Def instructed him to draft a short statement based upon what they did know for sure and have it ready for his review in fifteen minutes so he'd have something to release to the press that would keep them at bay for a few more hours. The Secretary of Defense concluded the meeting by saying he needed to call the President and fill him in. Thanking them for 90

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their input, he stood up and left a conference room full of senior officers who commanded the most powerful military force on the face of the earth but were, at the moment, completely powerless to do anything to help the surviving members of RT Kilo.

I

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

14:20 LOCAL (18:20 ZULU)

Diana Burman thought nothing of the strange new sound that roused her from her nap. The slow, rhythmic kerr-plunk, kerrplunk, kerr-plunk, didn't cause her to immediately spring forth from the recliner she had nestled in and seek out the source of the noise. As with so many other problems that plagued the three bedroom government quarters Diana would ignore the sound until the post preventive maintenance folks finally got around to coming by or her husband returned from overseas. With her pregnancy fast approaching its ninth month, Diana could barely keep up with her headstrong two-year-old, let alone a house that should have been condemned years ago. If it weren't for his afternoon naps which allowed her to do the same, she was sure she'd have completely lost it by now.

It wasn't until the steady splashing of water stopped that her suspicions were piqued enough to cause her to pay attention.

When she heard the pitter-patter of sock-clad feet as they emerged from the hall bathroom and- scurried down the bare tile floor to one of the back bedrooms she realized that her midday break was over. Still not fully awake, she waited and listened as the same little feet made the return trip up the short hallway to the bathroom. When the slow, rhythmic kerr-plunk, kerr-plunk, kerrplunk resumed she knew her son was into something she wasn't going to like.

Alex?" The splashing sound ceased but the young boy didn't answer. Again she called out. "Alex? Are you in the bathroom?"

A small boy appeared around the corner that led from the liv 92

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ing room and into the hall. Wide-eyed and pensive, Alex Burman said nothing as he stood there sans training pants, nervously twirling a little plastic Fisher-Price figure in his tiny fingers.

"Alex!"

Flashing a smile that could be endearing or a prelude to mischief, the young boy disappeared around the corner. Diana knew

that she had no hope of matching her son's speed. She therefore resorted to a mother's standard threat. "Alex Scott Burman!

Don't you dare!"

One final kerr-plunk issued forth from the bathroom before she heard Alex beat a hasty retreat to the illusionary safety of his bedroom.

Like a beached whale trying to make its way back to the sea, Diana squirmed and wiggled in an effort to return the recliner to its upright position. It took her several tries before she managed to plant her feet firmly on the floor. All of this commotion was not appreciated by the tiny life she carried. Angered at being awakened, a miniature limb stomped on its nearest neighbor, Diana's bladder, forcing out a spurt of urine. Rubbing her distended stomach and trying to calm her next son, Diana spoke to her unborn child as she often did these days. "Keep that up and 1

swear I'll ship you off to your father."

Whether it was Diana's words or her soothing touch, the unborn child calmed down, allowing her to finish rising up out of the recliner. Waddling to the entrance of the hall, Diana decided to investigate the scene of the crime before confronting Alex and deciding the appropriate punishment for Alex's latest adventure.

She didn't like playing the heavy with her young son, but in Erik's absence she had to do what was necessary.