After the events of the past few days, the White House correspondent was physically and emotionally spent, bone tired and desperately missing his wife and twin girls. He had actually just crawled into bed and turned out the lights several hours earlier—just after nine o’clock Colorado time—when the president’s National Security Advisor called him with the scoop.
Then came the urgent page from White House Press Secretary Chuck Murray. Followed by a brief call from the president’s personal physician. Followed by a fax from the White House Situation Room. Followed by a call from a high-ranking source at CIA—a top aide to Mitchell—arranged by Kirkpatrick, giving him deep background on the administration’s latest thinking on Iraq’s apparent involvement in the attacks.
Jackson finally found his glasses and silenced his pager. It wasn’t New York. It was Murray—“911.” He fumbled for the light switch, then stumbled into the bathroom where his two cell phones were turned off and recharging. He grabbed one, powered it up and speed-dialed Murray’s personal cell phone. Murray picked up instantly.
“Chuck, it’s Marcus,” Jackson said mechanically, his body, mind, and soul still essentially asleep.
“Gambit’s moving—you’ve got ten minutes.”
“What? Why? Where we going?” asked Jackson, suddenly alert with a burst of adrenaline.
“Can’t say. Just get packed and get to the lobby—ASAP.”
“Why? What’s the rush?”
“I can’t, Marcus. Not now. Meet the press pool out front. Bus leaves in ten minutes. Air Force One leaves in fifteen. No exceptions.”
Officially, they didn’t exist.
For nearly six years, this crack team had trained for this exact moment. Along the way they’d been code-named “GhostCom.” If they made the slightest mistake, that would actually be true. Thus the nickname, “Ghost Commandos,” given to them by the prime minister himself.
Phase One of the special forces mission was now complete. “Operation Ghost Lightning” was a smashing success. The Iraqi Scud missile operators were neutralized and the missile—the “snow cone,” as it was called—had been “iced,” carefully secured and delivered back to the top-secret Israeli military base known affectionately as the “Carnival.”
Now Phase Two—“Operation Ghost Buster”—was about to begin, and its success was far from assured. An elite team of twenty-seven Israeli missile designers, bomb squad specialists, nuclear scientists, and chemical and biological weapons experts huddled nervously in a specially designed “operating room” several hundred feet under the Negev desert. They had one mission, and ten more minutes to complete it. Then the prime minister would call, and all hell would break loose.
General Azziz struggled not to hyperventilate.
Things weren’t going as planned and he needed hard, accurate intelligence immediately. It was almost eleven in the morning in Baghdad. An entire night and most of the morning were gone and Saddam Hussein expected to hear of a successful attack on Tel Aviv by now.
Moreover, he was demanding the personal presence of General Azziz to explain what was going wrong. There was just one problem. Azziz had no idea what was going wrong. Nor was he entirely sure something had gone wrong.
True, as of yet, no attack on Israeli had transpired. True, Kamal and his men had not checked in. But Azziz was loath to phone his team—Q17—or send planes or helicopters out to find them. Not yet. It was too big a risk. What if they were just having some technical problems with the rocket, easily and quickly fixed? What if they were hiding from a Jordanian or Israeli or U.S. recon scouting expedition? What if the tractor-trailer had broken down and they were in the midst of repairing it? Many things could have gone wrong and many things could still go right. This mission was too valuable—too decisive—to screw up or pull the plug now.
Azziz knew he had more rockets, including his “crown jewel.” But how quickly should he deploy them? It was daylight. The strategic element of surprise was lost for another ten hours or so. Worse, it might have been lost forever. Tel Aviv was supposed to be reeling. The world was supposed to be gasping. The Israelis and Americans were supposed to be thinking twice about retaliating. Now what?
His real problem, however, was far more immediate. For Azziz knew that neither an Israeli nor an American attack was the most immediate threat to his own personal survival. Saddam Hussein was. He needed solutions—and he needed them fast.
It was cold and wet and nasty.
The gleaming green-and-white Marine One helicopter, illuminated by floodlights, was ready to go on one of three pads outside the tunnel from Cheyenne Mountain. Two other Marine transport choppers were ready and waiting, as six Apaches circled and F-16s streaked by overhead. Air Force MPs in full battle gear created a perimeter around the helipads and nearby parking lot, and Agent Sanchez radioed each of her team members for one final check. All systems go.
“All clear, Mr. President,” shouted Sanchez above the deafening roar of the choppers. “You ready, sir?”
“I am. You, Football, Jon, Erin, and Deek come with me,” the president shouted back from the confines of his wheelchair. “Put my medical team and the rest of your guys in Choppers Two and Three.”
“You got it, sir,” Sanchez responded. “Let’s do it.”
Sanchez and her agents moved the president first, carefully lifting him off the ground, locking his wheelchair where his usual seat had been removed, and rapidly closing the bulletproof side door. With Gambit secure and Sanchez sitting in the seat behind him, another agent came back and quickly led Bennett, McCoy and the military aide nicknamed Football—the one carrying the briefcase with the nuclear launch codes—to the other side door, where they all quickly piled in.
Bob Corsetti and Secretary Iverson had already left for Peterson on another chopper a few minutes earlier. No sooner had the door closed than they were off the ground.
Neither Bennett nor McCoy had ever been in Marine One, nor had Black for that matter, and it was far more cramped than they’d expected. But it would all be over in a moment. It was just a quick hop to the tarmac at Peterson AFB where Air Force One, two C-130 transports filled with the remains of the presidential motorcade, and six F-16s armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles were revved up and ready to rock.
But what struck Bennett most looking out the window as they came in low and hovered briefly was the sheer number of soldiers and security personnel standing guard. He could see Secret Service sharpshooters on the roofs of the nearby hangars, Secret Service SWAT teams ringing the president’s plane, and tanks, Humvees, and armored personnel carriers lining the runway.
None of the men and women down there knew what the future held. None of them knew if another attack was imminent, nor what form it might take.
Had any of them really signed up for this? Were they really prepared to lay down their lives? Why? Why was it worth it to them when these smart, strong, savvy Americans could be doing anything else, anything they wanted?
They clearly were part of something important, something they loved and believed in very deeply. They were willing to die, if necessary, to protect the President of the United States and the principles he and their country represented, even if they hadn’t voted for him or even liked him.
Bennett honestly didn’t understand any of it. Not really. He’d been raised in a family that despised guns and distrusted anyone with one. He wasn’t exactly a pacifist but he was sympathetic to those who were. He believed a lot of money and a good stiff drink could solve most problems. And he was terrified of dying. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t think much about it either. He just couldn’t fathom what motivated a person to be willing to die for a stranger or a colleague, much less a country or a cause.
Yet, for the first time in his life, he found himself humbled and grateful and moved by the simple patriotism of these soldiers and Secret Service agents, patriotism he had often thought trite and unsophisticated. In high school and college he remembered feeling superior to buddies who’d gone
off to wallow in the mud and “play war.” After all, he was going to become a Wall Street big shot and make the big bucks. He was a going to become a Harvard globe-trotter, jetting from London and Davos to Hong Kong and Tokyo. Sitting around watching NASCAR and eating hot dogs (which he called “fat sticks”) and chugging beer and singing Lee Greenwood’s “I’m Proud To Be An American” had all seemed so hokey and blue collar to him. He’d never wanted any of it.
He always wanted to get his MBA, work on the Street, pick up a copy of the Journal and the Times every morning, and smell the reassuring leather of his briefcase as he stepped on the elevator and rode up a tower of steel and glass and stepped out on the top of the world. And he’d done just that.
He believed a “new world order” was possible. He believed in a twenty-first-century global financial architecture,” about which he’d waxed so eloquent to colleagues around the world. He truly believed that fiber optic networks and digital capital were making nation states obsolete. Why not one giant global free trade zone, rather than all these trade barriers and complications? Why not do away with all these exchange rates and friction and all these currency speculators making fortunes and wreaking havoc and causing ulcers?
Now Bennett didn’t know what to believe. The men and women on the ground below him had something he didn’t, and though he didn’t dare admit it to anyone, it was something attractive. So did the president, come to think of it. So did McCoy. He didn’t quite know what it was. Not yet anyway. But as Marine One touched down on this military base at war, he knew he needed to find out.
The world was changing so fast. The constants in his life suddenly didn’t seem so constant anymore. Here he was, sitting next to the most powerful man in the world. Yet never had Bennett felt so powerless.
Ten minutes later, Air Force One—flanked by fighter jets—roared down the runway and headed for Washington.
Air Force One and its flying armada now leveled out at 45,000 feet.
They were far above the clouds, far above any visual reference points that would allow anyone inside—anyone without classified information—to figure out where they were going.
The president and his family were in their personal quarters with an Air Force medical team.
The reporters in the traveling pool were in the back of the plane, confined to their seats and prevented from making or taking any phone calls. As journalists, they were eager to know what was going on. But as corralled sheep in a safe and comfortable pen—and assured by Chuck Murray that they weren’t going to get any information for several hours at best—most of them were just as eager to get some sleep. They had no idea what lay ahead. Why not be rested?
Corsetti came back to the senior staff seats and pointed at Bennett, McCoy, and Black.
“You three, get your butts up to the conference room.”
“What’s up?” asked Bennett.
“The president’s getting the NSC back together by videoconference.”
“What about me?” asked Murray.
“Chuck, you get some sleep,” counseled Corsetti.
“I need to be there, Bob,” insisted Murray.
“No, really, Chuck, you need your beauty sleep.”
Corsetti smiled. Murray didn’t.
“What’s going on, Bob?” Murray whispered.
“You don’t want to know.”
Nine stood on the left end, nine stood on the right.
The eighteen young, rugged, clean-shaven, unarmed but elite warriors—Q18 and Q19—wore green fatigues and black berets, and stood ramrod straight, hands at their sides, in the sparse, barren, concrete block barracks behind the Presidential Palace.
Decked out in his full military dress uniform, General Azziz sat in a large, ornate and magnificently painted chair—more of a throne, really—along the far center wall. Beside him stood his four heavily armed personal guards. The moment Azziz stood, all eighteen commandos dropped to their knees and bowed their heads down to the dusty cement floor. Azziz observed the worship, then barked a command in Arabic and the men were again instantly on their feet, ramrod straight.
“O mighty warriors of our Savior and Lord, the King Most High, the Redeemer of our blessed people,” Azziz shouted. “O mighty warriors of the One True Hope of our people, the President and direct descendant of the Great King Nebuchadnezzar who ruled our Land with an iron fist and a heart of gold. O mighty warriors of His Excellency Saddam Hussein.”
“Praise His Excellency,” shouted all the men in perfect unison, including the general’s personal security detail. “Praise His Most Excellent Name.”
“Mighty warriors, you have been chosen by our Redeemer, our Protector, for the most glorious of missions—and you shall not fail His Excellency.”
“We shall never fail His Excellency,” the young commandos shouted. “We shall never fail His Excellency.”
“Mighty warriors, those who have gone before you have failed. They have failed and been destroyed by the filthy, wicked Zionists, the Infidels who desecrate and pollute and poison the Earth and all that belongs within it.”
The men said nothing, but as Azziz glanced to his right, he could see the eyes of his men widen and their hands stiffen.
“Such men swore to me, to Allah, and to His Excellency, that they would never fail. Yet they did. And their payment to the Most High has only yet begun.”
The barracks were silent, but for the booming, echoing voice of the general.
“Such weak, filthy men are dead. My only regret is not to have killed them myself. Now their women shall die. Now their children shall die. Now their parents shall die. Now their cousins and uncles and grandparents shall die, die at the hands of the terrible swift sword of the Executioner—the defender of His Excellency.”
“Praise His Excellency,” all the men shouted in one accord.
“Colonel Shastak,” the general shouted.
“Yes, sir.”
“Present yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Shastak, commander of Q18, rushed forward to the center of the room and bowed low before the general.
“Stand.”
The commander stood, stiff, straight, and proud. The general was calling upon him. The general was showing him the honor of leading new forces into the ultimate battle against the Zionists. He would not fail as those filthy men who had gone before him, the filthy men he had called comrades and friends just twenty-four hours before. He would do his country proud. He would do his beautiful wife and four young daughters proud. And he would not fail.
Actually, he would never have the chance. The general drew his .45 caliber gold-plated side arm—a gift just a year ago from His Excellency—and aimed it at Colonel Shastak’s face, no more than four feet in front of him. The man’s eyes widened—then exploded in a cloud of blood and smoke.
“Mighty warriors, let this be a lesson to each one of you,” said the general, as each man saw their lifeless comrade slump to the ground in a quickly growing pool of his own blood. “Let Colonel Shastak’s death be an inspiration for your life. You shall not fail. Am I understood?”
“Mr. President, we’ve got the whole team here,” said the vice president.
Bennett, McCoy, Black, and the official White House photographer sat on one side of the oak table. Corsetti and Iverson sat on the other. The president sat in his wheelchair at the head of the table. Agent Sanchez stood just behind him. But all eyes were on the video screens at the far end of the small airborne conference room.
“Good, let’s begin. Jack, anything new?”
“Afraid so, sir,” replied Mitchell. “Couple things. First, I just took an urgent call from Chaim Modine, Israeli Defense Minister.”
“What’s Chaim got?”
“It’s not good, sir.”
“Let me have it.”
“We were right. The Israelis sent a strike force into Western Iraq a few hours ago. Attacked a Scud B team and captured the missile—well, the warhead, actually. They blew up the rocket
itself. Chaim even uplinked some footage.”
“Really?” asked the president, taken aback. “All right. Let’s see it.”
Corsetti dimmed the lights with a remote control on the conference table. What unfolded on Screen Two before him chilled Bennett to his bones, both for its imagery and the incredible technology that made it possible. Eerie green-and-black night-vision thermal photography from the lead Israeli Apache showed the entire strike unfolding, including the brutal death of Ali Kamal, though no one in the U.S., of course, actually knew his name.
“Well, Chaim Modine isn’t in the habit of showing us videotape of his commando missions,” said the president. “What’s he got, Jack, and what’s he want?”
Bennett could see Jack Mitchell shift uncomfortably on the video screen in front of him. It wasn’t like the CIA Director to hold back.
“Sir, they’ve examined the warhead,” Mitchell began carefully.
“Please tell me it’s conventional.”
Mitchell shook his head.
“Chemical?”
Mitchell shook his head again.
“Biological?”
Mitchell shook his head a third time.
The room quietly but collectively gasped. Out of the corner of his eye, Bennett caught a glimpse of Sanchez’s hand moving to her mouth in horror. The president seemed unwilling to speak, as though by not saying the word it would somehow not be true. But it was, and he knew it. They all knew it.
“The Iraqis have developed nuclear warheads,” the president said finally.
“Sir, the Israelis are faxing all the data their team has developed on the warhead. They’re sending photos and Geiger counter readings—anything we need. They’re even willing to let our ambassador and defense attaché see it if we want them too. But we’d have to move fast.”