He opened his mouth to shout the warning a second before the first aircraft blew up.
The 105mm shells rained down from the AC-130, patrolling unseen in a tight circle two thousand feet above them. The colonel ran across the grass and grabbed the radio operator. He pointed to the carnage, then to the sky, shouting his order above the din of explosions. The operator understood, frantically working every frequency to raise the crew of the Spectre, but without success.
The colonel ran towards the group of Rangers across the airfield. He found a soldier, stump bleeding from an amputated leg, dragging himself across the concrete to cover. Above the boy’s screaming, the detonations, and the pom-pom beat of the Spectre’s 40mm gun, he heard his name repeated over and over again, as if someone was working a loudhailer…
‘Colonel Ulm, sir… Colonel.’
Ulm’s eyes snapped open. They looked straight into the face of the pretty female co-pilot who had come back from the flight deck of the C-21. He saw, too, the shock on her face. The same look on the face of his wife whenever she woke him from the dream.
Ulm was drenched in sweat. His face was grey, drawn; and he was shaking.
The captain managed to control her voice. ‘Colonel, we’ll be touching down at National in ten minutes. You ought to prepare yourself for the landing.’
He grunted his thanks and watched her move past him to Shabanov.
Ulm looked out of the window and saw the Washington monument pierce the horizon. Los Torrijos had not been his fault and the Air Force knew it. Someone — a punk colonel in the air-tasking office at Southern Command Headquarters in Panama City, he had found out later — had fucked up. But people with influence in Washington had made it clear that it wasn’t going to be anyone from Southern Command HQ or the Rangers that paid. The Air Force defended him, but afterwards considered it best he be removed from the limelight. And so it was that he and the 1725th Combat Control Detachment, his Pathfinders, were sent into exile at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
Were they giving him a second chance? Was his advice sought over recent developments in the Middle East? After the dream, his mind was too fuzzy around the edges to provide any answers.
The co-pilot slipped back to the flight deck, giving him a strange look as she passed his seat.
Whatever the truth of the matter, there were those who said the Pathfinders had had their chance and blown it.
Confirmation of his worth came on the day USSOCOM told him he had been selected to enter into a secret bilateral exchange programme with Spetsnaz. He was warned against showing the Russians too much. The Romeo Protocol, USSOCOM pointed out, was hatched by politicians who did not understand about the ways of the military.
As the Learjet swept into National airport, Ulm cast a glance back to Shabanov. The Russian’s eyes darted eagerly over the sights of the capital. No longer in uniform, Shabanov passed for any other US serviceman heading into DC on legitimate business.
Two bumps through the airframe signalled they were down.
Ulm almost asked the driver if there had been some mistake. After dropping Shabanov at the Soviet Embassy, he had expected the car to swing south for the Pentagon. But instead, they had kept going deeper into the tree-lined suburbs of Washington’s north-west district, eventually stopping outside a mundane office building a short distance from the National Zoo.
The driver walked round and opened Ulm’s door. Ulm was led across the sidewalk to the building. The entrance hall was cool, its floors and walls lined with dark polished stone tiles. A middle-aged woman, sitting behind a desk against the far wall, looked up as soon as his footsteps rang out across the atrium. Ulm kept walking. It was only when he reached the desk that he realized his escort had gone. He turned to see the limousine pulling into the early morning traffic beyond the double plate glass doors.
Ulm had expected a military facility, but there was not a shred of evidence that a single cent of the DOD’s budget had gone near this place. The woman looked at him expectantly. He gave his name.
She smiled again, then filled out a form and handed him a pass, which he clipped to his jacket. Then she lifted the telephone and announced his arrival as if he had been expected for a week. She pointed to the elevator and told him he would be met on the fourth floor. As he turned, Ulm glanced up at the board behind the desk listing the companies in the building. For the fourth floor, there was just one entry: Comco Software Inc.
The lift did not stop at any of the intervening levels. When the doors parted, Ulm was met by a sallow-faced, studious-looking man in his mid-forties.
‘Colonel Ulm? Welcome to TERCOM. I’m Jacobson.’ He offered a delicate hand, which Ulm shook suspiciously. ‘You probably have a thousand and one questions, but if you’ll be patient a while longer, I promise that you will get your answers. If you’d like to follow me, Colonel.’
Ulm stepped into the corridor and was struck immediately by the absence of natural light. There was an unpleasant artificial odour, and a hum of air-conditioning about the place, too, which exacerbated his growing feeling of isolation.
Jacobson led him into a dim room with a large oak table in its midst. He was offered a seat and accepted a cup of coffee. There were two windows set in the wood-panelled walls, but the blinds were down allowing no early morning light to creep into the room.
Jacobson took a seat opposite Ulm, clasping his styrofoam coffee cup between both hands.
‘It will probably help you to think of me — and this place — as your direct link to every asset this country possesses for the neutralization of the terrorist threat,’ Jacobson said. ‘By comparison, your General McDonald at USSOCOM is limited in the resources at his disposal. Believe me, Colonel, that there is absolutely nothing I cannot call upon in the pursuit of that goal. You see, we — that is, my colleagues and I — have a mandate from the highest possible authority. General McDonald has therefore temporarily assigned you to us.’
‘That’s very impressive, Mr Jacobson,’ Ulm said drily. ‘But maybe you could start by telling me what I’m doing here.’
‘Simple, Colonel. We want you to go after the people who carried out Beirut. We want you to find Ambassador Franklin and bring him and his staff home — alive. And we want the people who perpetrated this deed punished. Is that a mission you feel you are prepared, or able, to undertake, Colonel?’
Ulm battled not to let his feelings show. ‘The 1725th is ready for anything,’ he said. ‘But- ’ Ulm looked at Jacobson again and was reminded of one of the Pentagon prosecuting attorneys at his trial. A jumped-up little bureaucrat with a big opinion of himself who was real good at talking and full of ideas about the way things should be done, but pig-ignorant of the realities. Ulm thought he’d like to see Jacobson handling a PDF sniper with a star-scope on a pitch-black night or trying to defuse an Iraqi chemical mine with the fur flying around him. Jacobsons used people as stepping stones through shit to further their ambition.
‘Yes, Colonel?’
‘Why us? Why not Delta or the SEALs? From what I’ve seen of this case, it’s more their style.’
Jacobson chuckled. ‘But there is no provision under the Romeo Protocol for Delta or the SEALs to work with the Soviet Union. You see, you’ll be going in with Spetsnaz on this mission.’
Ulm felt his blood run cold. ‘You’re pulling my chain.’
‘No, I’m not, Colonel. This will be a joint US-Soviet operation.’
‘But everybody knows the Romeo Protocol is a sham,’ Ulm said. ‘God knows, I’ve been playing my part, but it was always intimated that we would not have to go into action with them. At least, that’s the way SOCOM explained it.’