The Scorpion's Gate (15 page)

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Authors: Richard A. Clarke

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BOOK: The Scorpion's Gate
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Sensing the tension in the room, the CinC interrupted. “Let me just say this about that, ah, episode: Admiral Adams’s team did an outstanding job stopping this attack, outstanding. Those SEALs and Marines... and, ah, of course, the Coasties who died, Captain Barlow, where is he?” The CinC looked around in the dark for the Coast Guard liaison officer. “Tremendous job. Thousands of lives saved. This is how to do force protection. Admiral,” he said, looking down the row of seats to where Adams sat with an Egyptian navy officer on his left, “you should be proud of how you trained your forces, drilled them, planned, so that you could get that sort of outcome without you even being there. Well done.”
Adams swallowed. “Thank you, sir.” As the director of operations, the J-3, an Army two-star general walked to the podium to begin the Bright Star Exercise briefing, the officer on Adams’s right slipped a folded note under the Fifth Fleet commander’s briefing book. Unfolding it, Adams read, “Was that a compliment or a reprimand?” The author, Marine Major General Bobby Doyle, was the new director of policy and plans, the J-5. He had also gone to the National War College with Adams five years earlier, where the two had competed for the class tennis trophy. Doyle had won.
“As you know, sir, the Bright Star series of U.S.-Egyptian exercises began in the early 1980s. . . .” The J-3 was proudly showing a short documentary film of the early exercises. He finally moved on to the plans for the upcoming operation. “Largest ever, incorporating amphibious and airborne insertions of multiple brigade-size American units, supported by bombers from CONUS and tacair from the carriers,” he said, pointing to symbols that were appearing on the large map of the Red Sea on center screen, “marrying up with Egyptian armor divisions and moving inland....”
Adams had scribbled on Doyle’s note and passed it back: “And the horse you rode in on.”
Reading the reply, Doyle peeled another page off the CENTCOM notepad on his desk and scribbled for what Adams thought was a long time. The J-3’s briefing was now diving down into details no one needed to hear: “ . . . sustained desert operations...two hundred and forty thousand tons...”
Finally, Adams discreetly opened Doyle’s second volley, “U/me, Dinner, 2100, Colombia restaurant, Ybor City, already made resev. Civvies. Meet there.” Adams chuckled, thinking what the night would be like and whether his liver was up to it.
“. . . Stryker armored vehicles, which will be offloaded from rollon/roll-off ships...” the J-3 droned on.
A shaft of light stabbed into the theater command center as a door was opened from the basement corridor in the rear of the complex. Adams craned his neck to see who had shown up late, because whoever that was would certainly get the CinC’s wrath now or later. “Right this way, Mr. Secretary...” a young woman from Protocol was saying. A civilian picked his way down the row to an empty seat at the CinC’s left. No one stood, and the briefing was not interrupted, until the CinC realized that his guest had shown up. “Ah, Mr. Secretary, ah, let me introduce you to Marshal Fahmi here, who . . .” The J-3 halted while the VIPs in the room chatted.
Adams turned to Doyle and mouthed the words, “Why is he here?”
Doyle responded with a quick note reading, “Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Kashigian = Dr. Evil.”
“Okay, okay,” the CinC said, hitting the microphone in front of his seat with his index finger, “let’s resume. General, you were saying that that fuel . . .” Adams felt an overwhelming wave of jet-lag fatigue and wondered how he would make it until a nine o’clock liquid dinner with Doyle. To stay awake, he stabbed his left palm with a pencil with the CENTCOM logo on it.
Colombia Restaurant
Ybor City, Tampa
C
limbing out of the taxi on 21st Street a little before nine o’clock, the commander of the Fifth Fleet could have been a vice president for sales, in town for a convention downtown. He was alone and in a polo shirt that revealed a paunch. Usually he traveled with aides and bodyguards. Back in the States and in civilian clothes, he could be just like anyone else, not a three-star admiral.
In the lobby, the maître d’ spotted Adams as soon as he came through the door. “Admiral, thank you for joining us. Right this way. General Doyle is already here in the Patio Room.”
Adams was trying to figure out how he had been identified by someone who had never seen him before, but the host gave him no opening to ask. “Not busy this early in the week, so some of the rooms are closed, but you’ll have a very private table just behind the Dolphin.” They entered a bright Spanish-styled courtyard with a skylight roof as he continued, “A copy of a fountain found in the ruins of Pompeii. If you’ve never had it here before, I highly recommend our paella Valencia . . .” Adams spotted Doyle seated, chomping on a cigar.
“I think you’re in violation of the smoking regulations, Dr. Evil,
is it?” Adams kidded the trim Marine and gave him a fake punch as he sat down.
“You kiddin’ me, boy? Ybor City is the home of cigars. They used to make a quarter billion a year here. Billion. Rolled on the thighs of virgins,” Doyle said, producing a Cohiba from a leather cigar holder for Adams. “For after dinner. Smuggled from behind the lines in Cuba. You know last time we really invaded Cuba, this was where the U.S. Army massed. Rough Riders and all, here in Ybor City, where the rail line from the north stopped.”
“Illegal cigars. Now I really will have to put you on report,” Adams replied, taking the cigar. “Shall we try the paella? I hear it’s good here.”
Forty minutes later, Adams was feeling full, but the wine had given him a second wind. Suddenly, there was music, and flamenco dancers came in through three of the four doors into the Patio Room. Doyle moved his chair around to sit next to Adams, apparently so he could watch the dancers, but as the music covered their conversation, the Marine asked, “You see anything odd about this Bright Star?”
“Well, I gather it’s blowing the entire CENTCOM exercise budget for the year, plus some extra money from the Joint Chiefs,” Adams replied, watching the lead dancer. “Why?”
“Why? ’Cuz it’s like my cock, it’s real goddamn big, that’s why.” Doyle chuckled. “No, really. This exercise is too big, too unnecessary, too real.”
Adams took his eyes off the dancer for a moment and glanced at the Marine, who continued, “While you were snoozing during the briefing today, swabbie, General Ballsucker was ticking off some very interesting data. They’re bringing enough shit with them to conduct two weeks of sustained combat operations. Why the hell they doin’ that shit? You know how much it will cost to lift all of that out there?”
Adams stopped looking at the dancer altogether. “You tell me.” “I got the questions, boyo,” Doyle said, leaning in closer to Adams. “Why do we and the Gypoes need to do a combined op? We expecting Libya to come across the Sahara to steal the fuckin’ Sphinx? “Why on the double-secret-handshake map of the exercise I saw yesterday is your battle group not gonna be in the Red Sea at all and instead is fanned out like a picket line in the Indian Ocean, huh, buddy?
“Why is Dr. Evil down here for this exercise-planning conference this week instead of up in D.C. polishing the SECDEF’s shoes, or whatever he usually strokes for him? I’ll tell yah: because Dr. Evil and his friends from these think tanks believe the U.S. military are just a bunch of chess pieces that they can move around to implement their globaloney theories. They don’t understand that we chess pieces bleed, while they’re yukking it up on some bullshit Fox talk show.
“And get this: why are my friends in SEAL Team Six playing the role of the reconnaissance force in the exercise and why does the team chief have detailed maps of the coast around Jeddah and Yanbu in his room at the BOQ? Got it now, Einstein?”
Adams was trying to find his way through General Doyle’s logic. “SEAL Team Six is a national asset. It shouldn’t be in some regional exercise like this.” The admiral squinted at his old friend. “Jeddah and Yanbu are in the Red Sea, but that’s the wrong side of the Red Sea, that’s . . .” Now he realized what the Marine was saying. The flamenco dancers ended their number with a flourish. “Oh my God!” Adams let loose, just as the music ended.
“Jes, jes. Dey are bedy good,” a waiter replied.
After paying the check, the two flag officers walked down 7th Avenue, in civilian clothes, smoking their Cohibas. “You really think they’re going to invade Saudi Arabia? Home of the Two Holy Mosques?” Adams asked. “The Islamic world will go nuts!”
“I do. I think Secretary Conrad really thinks we can reinstall the House of Saud. They’ve had us going over the Lessons Learned from the Iraqi Occupation. Why? So we don’t make them again when we occupy Islamyah?” General Doyle asked, chomping on the cigar.
“Bobby, the Iraq occupation almost ruined the Army and Marines. It stretched them thin and it totally busted the National Guard and Reserves. Recruitment has never come back. We got seven thousand kids who are now veterans without legs or with missing eyes and we got nothin’ for it,” Adams said, feeling the anger rising in him. “I served there. So did you. I had buddies killed, and for what? Because we had a SECDEF then who didn’t think it out, had no plan, put in too few troops. You think the American people are going to stand for that again? No way.”
Doyle stepped off the sidewalk, into the doorway of a store that had closed. “Why do you think they’re doin’ it this way? You think if Conrad or the President went to the Congress and said let’s invade and occupy another Arab country, they’d get one vote for it? Shit, they’d more likely be impeached.” The Marine spat out a piece of the cigar. “That’s why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. We will just happen to have an invasion force off the Saudi coast when, hell, I dunno, somethin’ gonna happen. Maybe the Gypoes are in on it, too. Maybe they’re comin’ with us like in ’90, got me?
“But I do know this. I went into Fallujah with my brigade in ’04 and I saw what we did. You know the three-star Marine in charge of all of us jarheads in Iraq recommended against assaulting the city, ju’ know that? They didn’t have no WMD there. They weren’t hiding Saddam or Osama. When we went inta Fallujah the second time, we fuckin’ leveled the place. City a quarter million people, gone-ski. Did we fuckin’ think that would make us popular? No wonder you got Iraqis still trying to blow up your headquarters in Bahrain.
“You know, we were gonna pay for that whole little escapade by getting some deal for their oil. Wha’d they do? Blew up their own pipelines, storage tanks, the whole infrastructure. We go into Saudi, they’ll self-immolate, too. Then no one will have any fuckin’ oil. Move to Florida, that’s what I say. It’s nice here, in the winter.”
Doyle moved close to Adams and placed a finger on the admiral’s chest. “I still remember Dorian Dale, my G-3. His mom worked herself almost to death putting that man through Howard, her and ROTC. He coulda been the next Colin Powell, ’cept he got his head blown right off his shoulders in Fallujah, right off. Blood squirted all over. Why? Because some set of lunatics from a think tank escaped and took over the Pentagon, that’s fuckin’ why.” Doyle exhaled. “We can’t let that happen again. We gotta stop this shit, Adams. It’s our duty. It’s our duty to our troops. It’s our duty to our country as military men.”
Adams looked away, then back at his friend. “Bobby, all my life since I was seventeen I have saluted and followed orders, including some pretty stupid fucking orders. At this point in my life, if I tried to step out of line I would probably seize up,” he whispered. “We have a system in this country. The military is under civilian control. Maybe they make mistakes sometimes, but they get paid for looking at the big picture and some of them get elected. Nobody elected us.
“The President, Secretary Conrad, these are smart guys who see a lot more info than we do. Having a big exercise of Islamyah right now to scare them into not messing with us, that makes sense to me.
“Besides, Bobby, what you’re talking about sounds like doing something, I don’t know what, but something that violates the UCMJ. That’s not just giving up the next promotion, it’s giving up everything, not just for us but for our wives, family. I got both kids into Penn because of the legacy thing. That’s a hundred thousand a year worth of scholarships and loans.”
They stepped back out onto the sidewalk. Adams talked with his head down as they moved down 7th. He sensed Doyle was feeling let down. “Okay, Bobby, supposing you’re right about this invasion?” The admiral spoke carefully. “Does the CinC know? What could we do to stop it if you wanted to? You can’t even prove they’re gonna do it.”
“The CinC? Nathan Bedford Moore?” Doyle said sarcastically. “I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t know. But his number-one priority is number one. He sees Secretary Conrad making him the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He ain’t gonna buck the tide. Hell, he’s invited Conrad out to see the so-called exercise, be on the USS
George H. W. Bush
bobbing up and down in the Red Sea with the troops.
“I don’t know what to do, Adams. I plumb don’t know,” the Marine said, looking up at the admiral. “That’s why I had to talk to you: because you’re the only one I can trust about this, and I thought you’d know what to do.”
The admiral stared at Doyle without knowing what to say. Then he pulled out his half-finished Cohiba and threw it onto the brick street and ground it under his heel. He looked back at Doyle. “There was a motto over the gate at college. I think it was from Hannibal, the general with the elephants who almost beat the Romans. It said ‘Inveniemus Viam aut Faciemus.’ We will find a way, or we will make one.”
Doyle put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Well, buddy, you faciemus better.”

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