General Henry Turner, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, leaned into his microphone. “We want to go in and get him as soon as possible. The navy is moving a task force into position in the eastern Med, and we can fly a Force Recon rescue team in over Israel and plop right down on these people. Thirty minutes on the ground and we bring out both Middleton and the informant. All we need to green-light the mission is the President’s authorization.”
Buchanan nodded once. Good, the general had shifted the attention of the group from questioning the “how” to the “what next.” He stood abruptly. “Sounds good. Make your final plans and prepare a briefing for the President.”
“Yes, sir. We will get him everything he needs to know.”
“Then let’s go and get your general,” said Buchanan. He turned and left the room.
State caught up with CIA on the way out. “This is too damned easy,” she repeated.
CIA shook his head almost imperceptibly in agreement. “I just work here,” he said. They left the White House together.
Gerald Buchanan stood at the window of his office with the door closed, ready to sign the death warrant. A high position carried burdens. He, and he alone in this building, including the fool who sat in the Oval Office, had the guts to sign an order of the sort he contemplated. Few men in the entire city would be willing to sign it. That bitch from State certainly could never do it. They were weaklings who did not understand putting higher needs over the survival of one man. For the good of the United States of America, General Bradley Middleton had to die.
General Turner had made a tactical verbal mistake in his eagerness to rescue Middleton by unveiling his determination to use only Marines. Buchanan had captured one of Turner’s pawns in that move, because he would now be able to confine his search for just the right man, someone qualified to carry out the order, to a handful of Marines to put U.S. military fingerprints on this assassination.
He moved to his wall safe, placed his right palm against the biométrie reader, and dialed a combination. When the heavy door swung open, he pulled out a file that had been secretly ordered from the CIA on a dozen Special Forces operatives who were occasionally used for unique missions. “The wet stuff,” CIA had explained.
Taking it to his desk, sitting in the black high-backed chair and studying the papers under the bright light, he flipped to a section that identified three Marines who were employed for such work, and saw that two of them were already on other assignments.
The remaining candidate was an expert scout sniper and gunnery sergeant. The statistics and the photograph showed that he was five-nine, 160 pounds, with gray eyes and short brown hair; a combat veteran; age thirty-four; single; and numerous decorations including awards from foreign governments and letters of commendation that were marked TOP SECRET. Buchanan read the biography with some interest, for it seemed that the man had been in almost every hot spot around the world for the past ten years, including special missions with the Israelis, the British, and the Russians. He was officially credited with eighty-one confirmed kills, but the real figure was much higher, for the number included only his victims who had been confirmed, and not any killed in special secret operations. Interestingly, the file also had a couple of letters of reprimand that indicated problems with authority. His last mission had involved a questionable kill on the wrong side of the Pakistani border, which had caused a serious diplomatic incident. The shooter was reprimanded and temporarily banished from the active list of covert agents. This would be a good time to bring him back. Not only was he finishing a contract job with some weapons company and was free for new orders, but he also might be wanting to prove that he was still up to doing clandestine work. Buchanan underlined the name: last name Swanson; first name Kyle.
The National Security Advisor possessed one of the most secure computers in the entire U.S. government, but Buchanan refused to believe it could not be hacked. All of those whirring and clicking sounds only meant that the hard drive was storing and shuffling information. There was no such thing as a really secure computer. He did not want anyone to someday unveil his secret correspondence to a Senate investigating committee or have it become a headline in The Washington Post. He would not even trust his secretary on this one.
From his middle desk drawer, Buchanan slid out a single sheet of expensive stationery that bore THE WHITE HOUSE across the top in simple blue letters, and began to write in a neat, precise longhand. There would be only this one original, and it would rest in a briefcase locked to the wrist of a special courier. Once the instruction was read by the Marine sniper, the courier would destroy the document. No copies, no paper trail.
Buchanan finished the note, sealed it in an official envelope, and put it into a light blue file folder with a red stripe diagonally across the front and WHITE HOUSE TOP SECRET stenciled in big black letters. He sealed that, too.
Then he told his aide Sam Shafer to locate this Gunnery Sergeant Swanson and get him to that fleet Marine unit in the Mediterranean as soon as possible. Shafer would also fly out to the task force, carrying the letter in a burnished aluminum briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, to personally deliver it. By using his private staff and a CIA cover, Buchanan would bypass General Turner and the others in their fancy uniforms.
As he worked, Buchanan once again had to grudgingly approve of Gordon Gates’s enterprising and farsighted ideas. Sending in a bloodthirsty robot like Swanson was indeed a good insurance policy.
CHAPTER 14
ALI SHALAL RASSAD KNEW THAT sometimes just a little shove was all that was needed to force friends and enemies alike to do something they would later regret. He was a master of that quiet tactic, and was about to employ it against the United States of America. Rassad was known as the Rebel Sheikh not so much for being a great fighter, although he was, but because he refused to be consumed by any higher political power. His streak of stubborn independence made him an ally of convenience from Baghdad to Tehran to Washington. He worked with all, trusted none, and worked only for himself.
He had agreed to perform a very precise role in the drama involving the American general, the sort of multilayered deception that he most enjoyed. He was being paid well to lend some of his militiamen to the mission, then to hold a single brief meeting with the Pentagon correspondent from a major American television network. The reporter had been in Iraq many times and had great credibility within the United States. His story would be accepted as fact.
Rassad sipped a cup of strong tea as he scanned the International Herald Tribune and other newspapers and magazines that were brought daily to his office in Basra. A staff that monitored the Internet furnished its hourly report: the blogs were busy, but had nothing significant. Just braying opinions of people who didn’t really know anything. Three television sets ran CNN, al Jazeera, and Sky News, and stories about the disappearance of General Middleton and the peculiar demands made by the Holy Scimitar of Allah dominated the news.
There was nothing in the papers or on television to match the fresh information on a decoded message that was also on his desk. Task Force 32-A of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet was moving into position in the western Mediterranean. Israel had granted flyover permission for the Americans. The Marines were coming. Rassad intended to spur everyone along with a renewed sense of urgency to prevent them from having second thoughts that might breed caution.
Rassad loved the game. He pushed aside the papers, finished the tea, and snapped his fingers for an assistant to clear the desk and incinerate all of the papers. Some posturing politician someday might send a raiding party to his palace in attempt to find and seize incrimination information. That would fail, of course, and the politician would soon be assassinated, but Rassad kept his most important information in his head. Everything else was consigned to ashes.