More Than Courage (15 page)

As was his habit, Harris refused to let his commanding officer 116

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escape without receiving the salute that he deserved. Standing up, the battalion's command sergeant major lifted his glass. "Gentlemen, I give you Colonel Harry Shaddock, the man who is the heart and soul of this battalion."

Jumping to their feet every man present hoisted his drink and roared as one, "To the colonel!"

Having shown his gratitude to the men who had made his tour of command a successful one, exchanged salutes with them, and now suffering from the effects of one too many beers, Shaddock decided it was time to excuse himself and make his way back to his quarters. The training evaluation that his battalion had been subjected to at the Army's joint training center as well as the train-up that preceded it had been grueling. While he hated to admit it, he wasn't getting any younger. The fourteen-hour days that he had been able to take in stride when he was younger were finally beginning to take their toll. For all the technology that had become the mainstay of the armed forces, the profession of arms was still a young man's game, especially for those who wore the coveted Ranger tab.

As he was preparing to leave Shaddock saw an officer standing in the doorway to the officer club's dining room, obviously on duty because he was wearing a beret with his battalion's crest and a web belt sporting a holster. It was also clear from his expression that he was here on business.

From across the table Sergeant Major Harris noticed that something was distracting his colonel. Glancing over his shoulder he caught sight of the armed officer. "I see Lieutenant Ehrlick's found us."

The battalion's duty officer seemed unsure how best to proceed, so Shaddock took the initiative and went to him. Fearing the matter might involve one of his enlisted men, Harris followed.

The executive officer, Major Castalane, watched for a second before he too decided to join his commanding officer and the battalion's senior NCO.

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As he approached, Shaddock called out, "What brings you here this evening, Lieutenant?"

Ehrlick's response was crisp and cryptic. "Sir, you need to make a call on a secure line. Here's the phone number."

"All right, Lieutenant."

The duty officer saluted, pivoted, and left the officers club.

Turning to Harris and Castalane, Shaddock grunted. "Best have the lads cease and desist. I might need some of them very soon."

Having expected that Shaddock would not be returning that evening and wanting to begin preparing for their imminent departure, the battalion's signal platoon . had descended upon the temporary headquarters Shaddock had used while training at Chaffee, and begun the process of pulling out phones, computers, and radios. So there was some surprise and not a little embarrassment when Shaddock showed up demanding to know what had become of his secure phone. After scrambling about and reinstalling the device, the overeager communications specialists disappeared while their colonel punched in the number he had been given by the duty officer.

Shaddock was still on the phone when Sergeant Major Harris and Major Castalane arrived at the partially dismantled headquarters.

Seeing that the door to their colonel's private office was closed and not knowing how long he would be, the two men took seats, Harris on a folding chair and Castalane on a vacant desk. "I don't suppose," Harris said, "this has anything to do with the flap in Syria."

Castalane shook his head. "Not our turf, Sergeant Major.

There isn't a man in the entire battalion that speaks Arabic. Pollsh, Russian, Hungarian, Rumanian, German, Norwegian, Czech, Danish, and Finnish, yes. We even have a couple of guys who can babble in Swedish. But Arabic? Not a one."

"Something personal?"

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"I don't think so. It's something else, sensitive enough that the colonel has to use a secure line."

The pair were still speculating over the sudden call when the door opened and Shaddock called them in. As they entered the small office, barren of furniture except for a small, well-used desk and a couple of chairs, they were struck by Shaddock's silence.

Even after he had closed the door he said nothing as the sergeant major and battalion XO watched their commanding officer walk around in a small circle with his head bowed low. Harris's eyes met Castalane's. They both felt the same unease.

Shaddock finally stopped pacing and turned toward them.

"Ben, assemble the staff. Within the hour we will be receiving new orders. Sergeant Major, have the duty officer put the word out that all personnel are to be prepared to depart by oh-two-hundred hours local. While he's doing that I want you to go to each company and talk to the first sergeants. They are to submit the name of any man with a medical profile that makes him nondeployable to you by midnight along with a fully updated morning report.

Thinking there'd be additional information, Harris and Castalane stood their ground and waited in silence. Lost in thought, it was a few moments before Shaddock realized that both men were still there. "Gentlemen," he said apologetically, "I wish I could tell you more. But I cannot."

"Yes, of course sir," Harris replied.

It bothered Shaddock that he was unable to share anything with his most trusted subordinates. But he knew how Brigadier General James Palmer was. When he gave an order, he expected it to be followed precisely. Shaddock sighed. "Gentlemen, that will be all. Thank you."

Syria

09:40 LOCAL (5:40 ZULU)

After turning their backs on the team's rally point and continuing their flight, barely a word was exchanged between the two men in Kilo Three. Staff Sergeant Angel Ramirez and Sergeant Glenn Funk simply stared straight ahead *at the vacant desert before them as they tried to let the roar of the Hummer's engine drown out their troubled thoughts. When one of them did speak, his comments were abrupt and brief, his tone gruff to the point of being rude and hostile.

There was more to this than the usual psychological trauma that many soldiers experience after combat or the physical exhaustion magnified by the stresses their current plight created. Both were struggling to overcome an almost paralyzing disbelief that things had gone as badly as they had and that they were probably the only survivors. After receiving Aveno's order to move to the rally point they'd heard nothing from anyone. To some extent that was to be expected, since the standing orders dictated that radio silence was to be strictly enforced if any or all of the team Were forced to escape and evade to Jordan.

That particular order had been meant to protect the survivors of any disaster that might befall the team. In an age of sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities that could ferret out confidential communications regardless of safeguards, and an intrusive media that seemed to have "unnamed sources" in every nook and cranny of the Pentagon, even the most secure means of communication were less than secure. This was not much of a departure from the manner in which the recon teams normally operated.

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Except for targeting information exchanged between the air force liaison teams and airborne controllers coordinating air strikes, almost all communications with the recon teams were one-way.

The highly trained members of the recon teams assigned to Razorback were expected to exercise their initiative and experience in any situation that came their way, especially in a crisis.

Lacking any guidance to the contrary, and as the senior surviving member of RT Kilo, Staff Sergeant Angel Ramirez saw no reason not to follow that particular order to a T.

That decision had turned out to be the easiest one he made.

All of his years in service had done little to prepare him for the confusion both he and Funk had suffered during the last few hours, or might experience in the ordeal that lay ahead. None of their previous experiences offered either of them a basis from which they could draw as they struggled to deal with a blow that was as devastating and cataclysmic as the one that had consumed RT Kilo. Compounding this shock was the realization that neither of them had done a thing to help their comrades at a time when they needed them the most. Although they believed they were under attack by the Syrian BRDM that Kilo Two had engaged, their response was not simply to move out of the line of fire from the constant 20-mm rounds. They had fled. Instead of taking a second to assess the situation and respond in a well measured and meaningful manner, both Ramirez and Funk had given in to panic and run. And even though the Team's XO

eventually gave them an order to continue their retreat to the rally point, each man knew the truth of the matter They had acted as cowards and had turned their backs on their fellow team members without a second thought, without protest.

So while the pair of NCOs remained outwardly silent, their personal struggle to come to terms with their cowardliness in the ¦J!i|| | face of the enemy raged on without pause. In the course of reach ing

this bitter conclusion, both Ramirez and Funk seized upon the same self-serving rationale to justify their actions: their cowardly flight had been the other's fault.

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These and other dark thoughts were only beginning to bubble up in their exhausted minds when Funk called out over Kilo Three's steady drone without bothering to look over at Ramirez, who was driving. "We gotta stop."

Surprised by this, Ramirez pulled his foot off the accelerator and shifted it over to the brake pedal as he began a quick, nervous search for the unseen danger that he assumed triggered Funk's unexpected command. When he saw nothing ahead but barren desert, Ramirez looked over at Funk. "What's wrong?"

"Just stop the fucking humvee."

Angered by the medic's churlish response, Ramirez stomped on the brake, bringing Kilo Three to an abrupt halt. Since he was prepared for the sudden stop and

Unable to contain an anger he did not yet understand, Ramirez threw open the door on his side, climbed out of the humvee and stalked away before Funk could recover from being tossed about. He was some ten paces away before the medic managed to catch his breath and compose himself. Rage over what Ramirez had done trumped any regret Funk might have had for snapping at him.

Payback, however, would have to wait. At the moment, there Were more important matters that needed tending to. Shaking off the effects of his collision with the windsheild, Funk dismounted, Walked a few meters away from the humvee, spread his feet, Unbuttoned his fly, and took care of the urgent business that had Witiated his sudden call for a halt. Midway through relieving himself he gazed at the distant horizon, wondering how far had they come. Neither had cared enough about their journey to use their

^iS to plot their current location or check their direction of travel. Consumed by their own personal struggles, they'd navigated by simply driving straight and keeping the rising sun at their 122

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back. That approach had gotten them this far, but in truth, it was little more than a continuation of their precipitous flight. It was time, Sergeant Funk concluded as he did up the buttons on his trousers, for both of them to start behaving like professional soldiers.

Whatever personal problems each had over what had happened and how the other man had behaved would have to wait.

Ready or not, Staff Sergeant Ramirez, his senior NCO, would need to start thinking things through. He would have to plan their route of march to the designated crossing point and begin to think through how he was going to deal with potential problems when it came time to cross the Jordanian border. Maintaining their simpleminded flight from both the Syrians and their responsibilities was no longer an option.

Slowly, as Funk began to make his way back toward the humvee, he began to think through how he would address Ramirez and put forth his thoughts. Fuel, water, and rations would be no problem. Since Lieutenant Aveno had been responsible for overseeing logistics for the team and Kilo Three had been his personal humvee, it had become a rolling supply dump. In terms of supplies, getting to Jordan would not be a problem, provided they didn't stumble upon any Syrians along the way. Until they crossed the Jordanian border, the operation would be a straight-up military affair. Escape and evade.

Upon reaching the humvee Funk reached through the open door and fished a map out from between the radio and the passenger seat where he had shoved it during the night. Unfolding it, he held it at arm's length as he began to scan it until he found the section that he was looking for. Crossing into Jordan, in a purely geographical sense, would not be a problem because the border was only a line on the map drawn by old men gathered in Versailles in 1919 to divide the postwar world among the victors. The potential difficulties would begin after they had entered Jordan

and had to deal with the Jordanian border guards, who might not be expecting them. Funk hoped that someone in Washington was already greasing the diplomatic wheels in preparation for their MORE THAN COURAGE

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arrival in Jordan. But like so much of what they were doing, he realized that they could not count on it.

While it was true that he was only an E-5 medic, like the other members of RT Kilo he had been briefed on the geopolitical realities of the region in which they were operating. Jordan was a nation in a precarious position, politically and religiously. It was a country the size of Indiana, ruled by a constitutional monarch who held a pro-Western stance. Unfortunately, the Jordanian king too often found himself politically and militarily squeezed by Israel on one side, and all the surrounding Muslim countries on the other side, most of which were culturally and religiously fundamentalist, and almost unanimously anti-Western. Even the