“Sir, we’ve tracked Rainer and the others to Mandalay. Our people on the ground have placed them at a remote facility east of the city. We’re in the air now. Once we arrive and get the lay of the land, I will have a better sense of what our options are, and I’ll develop contingency plans.”
Boucher had no difficulty reading between the lines. Keasling was anticipating a covert assault on the Burmese facility, an action that was technically illegal and which carried enormous diplomatic risk, to say nothing of the danger to the Delta operators. Of course, that was the very reason why Delta had been created; sometimes, the strict letter of the law had to be broken in the interest of the greater good. Delta’s job was to take those risks in a strictly unofficial capacity, giving the President full deniability, and if things went south in the field, they were on their own.
“Contingency plans,” Duncan muttered, and then he shook his head. “We are in this mess because the system we’ve inherited — the way things have always been done — is completely ass-backwards. We’ve got too many agencies working at cross-purposes. Hell, sometimes actively working against each other. Too many ‘yes men’ who think it’s their mission in life to either tell me exactly what they think I want to hear, even if it means cooking up the evidence to support it, or to protect me from knowing the truth.”
It wasn’t the first time Boucher had heard Duncan utter some variation of those words. He’d told the American people as much during the campaign. The bitter pill he’d been forced to swallow upon assuming the office of Chief Executive was that it truly was impossible for one man, no matter how dedicated and passionate, to overcome the inertia of bureaucracy. It had nothing to do with the limits of Constitutional authority; there were simply too many moving pieces. Too many human parts.
But there was something different about the way Duncan said it this time. Boucher saw a faint gleam in his old friend’s eyes as he continued. “Enough. No more contingency plans. No more ‘cover your ass.’ As one of my predecessors famously said, the buck stops here.”
He looked Boucher in the eye. “Dom, I trust you implicitly, and I know it’s your job to keep me from going off the rails, but right now I need you to just shut up and listen.”
Boucher felt an electric tingle in his extremities. What the hell is he doing?
“General Keasling, we don’t know each other very well, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I wouldn’t have given you that star if I didn’t think you were up for the job.”
Boucher knew that Duncan had been prepared to frock Keasling as a Major General — the rank associated with his new position as the leader of JSOC. It had actually been Keasling himself who had insisted he not be advanced three full pay grades, a promotion that would have ignited a firestorm of jealousy in the Army high command.
The satellite connection couldn’t completely mask Keasling’s guarded reply. “Thank you, sir.”
Duncan just smiled. “Oh, don’t thank me until you’ve heard the rest.”
SIXTEEN
Jack Sigler — callsign: King, climbed out of the taxi and scanned the street ahead. He turned a slow arc, checking the area, high and low, from the ten o’clock position to the three. The other men who had been sandwiched together in the back of the vehicle did likewise upon emerging, each checking a different quadrant, overlapping their sectors of responsibility to identify potential threats.
They had all exchanged their combat fatigues for civilian clothes. King now wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt with a picture of Elvis Presley, which Stan ‘Juggernaut’ Tremblay had purchased for him at an airport gift shop. To further reduce their visibility, it had been decided to move from the airport to the Mandalay safe-house in two separate groups. King’s group, which consisted of Tremblay, Silent Bob, and a sniper named Meyers, who went by the callsign ‘Dark,’ had taken the lead, traveling by taxi. General Keasling, ‘Irish’ Parker, ‘Roadrunner’ Bellows, ‘Race’ Banion — the other sniper from the Eagle-Eye team — and heavy weapons specialist Erik Somers, the last addition to their team, would follow in a pair of rented SUVs.
Somers had been brought on board just before leaving Tikrit. King knew him only as the big guy who had manhandled the M2 during the extraction the previous night, but he’d come with a personal recommendation from Parker. The two men had gone through Delta selection together. An intense but quiet figure, Somers was Iranian by birth, but had been adopted by an American family shortly before Ayatollah Khomeni’s government closed off Iran from the rest of the world. He was a former marine who had switched services to become a Ranger, and he possessed seemingly superhuman strength, which should have made him an ideal candidate for Special Forces. According to Parker, Somers had aced the course but hadn’t made the final cut. There could have been a number of reasons for that, not the least of which was team chemistry. That was something that weighed on King’s mind as he contemplated both the mission ahead and the other special assignment General Keasling had given him.
The street was bustling with activity, all of it seemingly harmless, but the men remained vigilant as they followed King along a maze-like path between the freestanding buildings and eventually up a rickety wooden staircase that led to the second story balcony. He found the door with the yellow smiley face sticker he’d been told to look for; someone had used a pen to add fangs and sinister eyebrows to the iconic image.
Tremblay, with a mischievous grin, nodded at the decal. “I’m going to fit right in here.”
King appraised him with a sidelong glance. It was still a little hard to reconcile this blond man with his punk-rocker goatee and an always ready one-liner, with the guy that had dropped out of the sky wielding .50 caliber death in both hands. He had no doubt of Tremblay’s ability in combat — he’d already witnessed it first hand — but a successful team had to be able to work together every day of the week, not just on the day of the big game.
Two hours ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. Two hours ago, his orders were simple: take the team you’ve got and go after the bad guys. But then, Keasling had taken him aside. “The President has ordered me to put together a new unit; fast, mobile, unlimited resources, non-existent radar signature, if you take my meaning. He and I both agree that you are the ideal candidate for field leader.”
King had been in the Army long enough to be extremely wary of ‘special assignments.’ “Sir, that’s already Delta’s job description.”
Keasling’s expression at that moment had spoken volumes. The general hadn’t seemed particularly happy about this development either, but he wasn’t about to contradict the President. He clearly expected the same from King. “Think of this as the Delta of Delta. The difference is that you will get your orders directly from a handler in the National Security office. Administratively, you’ll still be part of JSOC, but in all other respects, you will completely bypass the chain of command.”
King had decided to keep the rest of his opinions to himself. “When does this go into effect?”
“It went into effect five minutes ago, when the President told me to make it happen. Obviously, we’ve got some growing pains ahead of us, but arrangements are already being made for a live uplink to your new handler.”
Keasling hadn’t asked if he wanted the job; maybe that wasn’t even an option, but King figured the general had known all along that he wouldn’t refuse.
Which meant he now had to think about trying to select a team of operators for this ‘Delta of Delta,’ while at the same time planning for the mission already underway. It was evident that Keasling expected him to build his new team from the current group, but King knew that no matter how outstanding the shooters were as individuals, what really mattered was whether they could work as a team.