More Than Courage (23 page)

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quickly added, "keep the engine running and in gear until I tell you otherwise."

Understanding the purpose of this last directive, Funk eased the humvee across the road, cut the wheel to the left, and came to a stop in front of the building. Having come this far, Ramirez was faced with having to decide if it would be best simply to sit in the humvee and let the Jordanians make the next move or press on with his strategy of bluster and bluff by hopping out, walking up to the open door, and sauntering in as any wayward tourist would do.

When he saw no movement inside the darkened doorway, Ramirez guessed that it was again up to him to take the next step.

Although his imagination conjured up all sorts of images of a roomful of Jordanians soldiers armed to the teeth and waiting just beyond the shadows, the Hispanic NCO reached deep down inside and drew upon the last bit of courage he had. Throwing open the door of the humvee, he stepped out, then stood up and stretched as if he did this sort of thing every day. He purposely left his rifle behind. He figured if they were waiting for him in there, he'd never get a shot off, so intimidation was no longer an option. Much better, he thought, to go with his gut feeling and play up the friendly-but-hopelessly-lost-American angle.

Back inside the humvee Funk grasped the steering wheel with both hands as he watched Ramirez move toward the open door.

Like Ramirez, he considered reaching for his weapon. But he also dismissed that idea as being both foolish and provocative. He figured that if things suddenly did go south, his best chance of survival would lie in putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Jordanians inside.

In a blinding flash of clarity it suddenly dawned upon the Special Forces medic that what he was planning to do now was exactly what he had done that night back in Syria. He had been behind the wheel that night. As the driver he had really been in control of the situation and could have, if he had wanted to, stayed where they were until the lieutenant and Amer had returned. But he MORE THAN COURAGE

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hadn't. When the firing had started that night he had bolted, just as he was getting ready to do that very minute. He was preparing himself to turn his back on Ramirez and run yet again. In truth, he, and not Ramirez, had been the coward.

As he accepted this awful truth, Funk closed his eyes, let his hands drop to his side, and tilted his head back. In a hushed, almost plaintive tone he called out to his God, "What have I done?" Though no answer came, Funk quickly decided what he would do if the Jordanians did begin to fire. He would stay, fighting if he had a chance, or dying where he stood. But whatever happened, he was determined that he wasn't going to abandon Ramirez as he had the others. He would bring his shameful flight, as well as his dishonor, to an end. <

Opening his eyes, the medic caught sight of Ramirez as he began to ascend the first of three steps that led into the building.

Having settled upon his grim resolve, Funk now found himself egging on the Jordanians. "Come on, you fucking rag-heads," he muttered as he watched and waited. "Give us your best shot."

Arlington, Virginia

03:05 LOCAL (07:05 ZULU)

When you're a member of the armed forces it makes no difference whether you are on duty or at home. Nine times out of ten, a ringing phone between the hours of midnight and 0600

hours is the harbinger of ill tidings. That's why in most military families, it is the unofficial duty of the spouse to answer the phone before midnight and that of the military side of the household to do so in the wee hours.

With the response of a punch-drunk fighter and pretty much the same mental clarity, Robert Delmont rolled over toward the

'Ughtstand, snatched the phone from its cradle before it finished tts second ring, placed it next to his ear, and croaked, "Colonel Delmont."

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"Colonel, pack up your class A's, climb into businessman mufti, and get yourself down to Andrews ASAP."

Startled by hearing General Palmer's voice, Delmont instinctively bolted upright in the bed and spat out a crisp "Yes, sir."

"There'll be orders waiting for you at flight operations,"

Palmer went on. "The embassy in Amman will have a car waiting for you at the airport."

In the beginning Delmont had managed to keep up with what he was hearing. The mention of Amman and the embassy, however, threw him completely. Without thinking, he stuttered,

"Amman? As in Jordan?"

Peeved at being interrupted, Palmer snapped back. "Do you know of another Amman, ColonelV

"Well, no, sir. It's just that--"

"A couple of our favorite alumni from the University of Arkansas have managed to run afoul of the local authorities there," Palmer explained, passing on the particulars of a highly classified military operation as best he could over a phone line that was not secure. Though still not fully awake, Delmont was finally able to sort out that Palmer was using the name of the school as a means of alluding to its mascot, the razorback. "The Jordanians are fit to be tied. It seems they are worried about what their neighbors might do after that three-ringed circus we staged yesterday in their backyard. It seems they are demanding that the till'

government in Amman hand our people over to the neighbors."

"The neighbors," as Delmont was well aware, meant Syria.

"What are the chances of that happening, sir?"

There was a pause, which was Palmer's way of saying that he wasn't sure. When he spoke, his tone betrayed a desperate, almost worried aspect to it. "The Jordanians are cooperating for the moment. They've let our military attache in to speak with the pair, but he knows nothing about their affairs or the deal we're working on at the moment."

Delmont needed a moment to sort out this last bit out.

"Affairs," he reasoned, must be the general's way of referring to 1

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Razorback and RT Kilo's original mission. But "the deal" could mean several different things, not the least of which was the OPLAN he was working on to go after the members of RT Kilo who were being held by the Syrians.

"I want you to go straight to wherever they're holding them,"

Palmer continued, "and do your best to find a place where you can speak to them without any fear of being overheard. If you do manage that, grill them. Find out for sure just how many other team members are still alive and were taken."

"And if I'm not able to gain access to them?"

The sharpness in Palmer's voice came back. "You're a fucking colonel, Colonel. You figure that out to make it happen. Now get going. Your flight is waiting."

* .

Damascus

11:20 LOCAL (07:20 ZULU)

For the first time since arriving at the prison, Ken Aveno had been beaten. Even more surprising was the fact that the Syrian guards hadn't even bothered to take him out of his cell and down to the interrogation room where his men had been brutalized before his very eyes. Instead, four guards had simply thrown open his cell door and set upon him like a pack of wild dogs, coming at him from every direction, kicking and pummeling him with their feet and clenched fists. The Special Forces officer had no clear idea how long this assault went on. The passage of time, already difficult to measure with any degree of certainty, lost all meaning during the course of this unexpected and thoroughly horrific thrashing.

Also lost during this beating was a sense of invulnerability that he'd imagined he had from such treatment. While it was wrong to d° so, Aveno had come to the conclusion that as long as his men

^ere able to endure the physical punishment that was being dieted out to them, the Syrians would not touch him. He thought he had understood what the Syrians had in mind.

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Now, however, it was clear that they had a better grasp of American military psychology than he had of theirs. Their sudden change in tactics, this unexpected attack upon him, confused the acting commanding officer of RT Kilo. Was this impromptu beating simply a taste of things to come? Would more beatings such as this follow? He hoped not. He prayed that this was little more than an aberration, a spur-of-the-moment decision by a group of ill-disciplined guards hell-bent on beating an American officer for the sheer pleasure of it. If that were so, Aveno expected that there would be hell to pay for doing what they did. Doing his best not to move lest he aggravate his bruised and battered body, he imagined that an unauthorized beating like the one he had just suffered through had the potential of spoiling the little game their officers were playing. It could steel his resolve to hold out, to endure the agony of seeing his own men beaten before his very eyes.

Only slowly did it begin to dawn upon Aveno that he really hadn't been exposed to the sort of agony that his men had already been subjected to. As vicious as it had been for him, the impromptu beating he had suffered had been but his first. Kannen, Mendez, and Davis had been beaten countless times, almost ceaselessly. What he had just experienced was nothing compared to what they had endured.

Yet this really didn't seem to matter. He'd been hurt. As shameful and selfish as it might be for an American officer to entertain such thoughts, Aveno found himself hoping that the Syrians would see the error of their ways and return to the old routine. If they did not, he didn't know what he'd do. In the silence of his cell, Aveno slowly came to the conclusion that he wouldn't last very long. He wasn't that strong. Psychologically he wasn't as tough as he had once been. Whatever confidence he once had enjoyed was gone, snatched away from him just like RI Kilo had been that night. He was helpless and forlorn, shorn of his ability to control his own fate. Both the Syrians and his estranged wife had seen to that. In her own way Elizabeth had laid the groundwork for what the Syrians were now doing to him 1

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She had managed to strip him of everything he had once loved and had believed in. Through her actions and his inability to see things as they really were, she had broken him, leaving little behind but an emotionally bankrupt shell, a shell that the Syrians were determined to crack.

Rolling over onto his back, Aveno looked up at the ceiling, wondering what he would do when that happened. Talk? Would telling them whatever they wanted save him? Was that his key to survival? Then, from somewhere in his troubled mind, an image of his wife came to the fore. It brought neither comfort nor joy.

"Survive," he muttered, not caring for the first time if the Syrian guards posted outside the door of his cell heard him. "Yeah, right.

Big fucking hairy deal. So I survive, tor what?" It was a question that, like all the others, he had no answer for.

New York, New York

22:50 LOCAL (02:50 ZULU)

Standing outside the bedroom door of their small one-room apartment, Karen Green listened for the longest time, hoping she'd hear Elizabeth stirring. Any sound would have been welcome.

A squeak, a sob, anything that would give her an excuse to enter the room and comfort the woman she so dearly loved. But Karen heard nothing, not even the sound of Elizabeth tossing or

turning on the bed. Just silence.

Frustrated, Karen turned away and made her way back into the living room where, dejected, she plopped down onto the sofa and wondered what to do next as she waited for Elizabeth to abandon her self-exile from the world.

Sitting around quietly waiting for things to happen did not come easily to Karen Green. By necessity she was a doer, a self motivated go-getter who could be as brazen and assertive as the most seasoned male broker on Wall Street. Not only did her job demand that she cultivate such qualities, as a native of Manhattan that sort of persona came with the turf. Living her life on what she considered to be her terms, Karen made no effort to hide her ambitions to be the CEO

of her brokerage firm before her fortieth

birthday.

Yet she could also be quite astute when it came to dealing With people. Karen had no problems with modulating her behavior and temperament to fit the situation and the company she was keeping. Some of her less gifted co-workers chided her for being manipulative and conniving. Many of the female brokers in the firm would have nothing to do with her, branding her a heretic and

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throwback to the bad old prefeminist days. But her clients loved her, as much for the manner in which she treated them as for the advice that she gave them, sound advice that was seldom far from the mark. Besides a genetic heritage that endowed Karen with a classic figure and amble bosom, her mother had managed to instill in her the notion that good manners and a little charm are always in style. To this mantra Karen had added the corollary that they are also sound tactics when it came to closing a deal or ingratiating herself with the boss. While no one would dare deny that she had the intelligence and savvy needed to make it on Wall Street without relying on such methods, none could blame her for using them to gain an edge in a profession that was as unforgiving as a great white shark at its dinnertime.

Karen's ability to read a situation and modify her behavior to fit the situation was not restricted to her business dealings. At an early age, she had come to the conclusion that there was no such thing as an equitable partnership when it came to relationships.

At best, there might be what one could term a senior partner and a junior partner, but the idea that two people could live in perfect harmony as true equals was a notion that was as insane and self destructive as the old feminist idea that a woman could have it all.

So Karen Green felt perfectly at ease letting Elizabeth Stanton play the Alpha. The domestic tranquility and harmony this arrangement brought to their modest if pricey Upper East Side apartment was worth the effort, for it provided the pair a refuge free of the pressures and demands that their chosen careers placed upon them.

There were times, however, when outside forces conspired to invade their modest sanctuary and deny them the serenity each required after slaying corporate dragons and fending off fierce competition. The events of the past few days had resurrected the twin demons that stalked Elizabeth, her failed marriage with an Army officer and her chosen lifestyle. Unleashed by the events in Syria, they exposed both women to the unwelcome glare of the MORE THAN COURAGE