"Let's say NSA just so you feel better."
"Why would that make me feel better?"
"It seems important to you to know who I work for."
"I want to know who I'm talking to."
"My name is Royce."
Vaughn stared at him. He was older, in his later forties, maybe early fifties. The way he carried himself indicated he'd been in the military at one time, probably long ago, before disappearing into the covert world and landing wherever he had – NSA, or elsewhere. Royce's face was tanned from the sun and had plenty of stress lines etched into it, typical for his line of work. He was tall and thin with somewhat long dark hair with a liberal amount of gray in it. His face was clean-shaven and there was the slightest trace of a scar across his forehead, disappearing underneath the hair on the right temple. Vaughn recognized a kindred spirit in the shadow world, but that didn't make him feel any better, since it was a world where secrets were kept and motives were often questionable.
"What do you want, Royce?" Royce indicated a chair.
"Mind if I sit?"
"Yes."
Royce sat anyway. He regarded Vaughn with mild interest, as if he were an exhibit in a zoo. Vaughn disliked the way this was going.
"You always ask questions you've already determined the answer to?" he demanded.
"I know my answer," Royce replied.
"I just wanted to know yours."
Vaughn sighed. He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin.
"I don't want to play games."
"I'm not here for games," Royce said. He nodded his head toward the door that led to the rec room.
"How come you're not watching the news?"
"I know what happened."
"But not what's going to happen," Royce pointed out.
"Neither does CNN," Vaughn said. Royce leaned back in his chair, turning it sideways. He stretched out his long legs and put his heels on another chair as he continued to contemplate Vaughn, tipping the chair back, balancing it on the rear two legs.
"Why don't you tell me what happened?" Royce asked.
"Read the debriefing."
"I did."
Royce waited, like a good therapist wanting the patient to expose himself more than he had, but
Vaughn wasn't into it. He'd done all the talking and explaining he was going to. The silence stretched out for a couple of minutes. Abruptly, Royce removed his heels from the other chair and slammed his chair to the ground with a bang.
"All right. You answer me square, just a couple of questions, and I'll be out of here and leave you to your misery."
Accepting the inevitable, Vaughn nodded.
"Did you fuck up?" Royce asked. There was no hesitation in the answer.
"Yes."
Royce frowned, and Vaughn could see the scar more clearly. Royce leaned forward.
"In the AAR you said that the battery in the designator died. It appears from that point you did everything humanly possible. And the dead battery was the communications sergeant's fault, who unfortunately is no longer with us."
"So?"
"So, doesn't that mean what happened is the communication sergeant's fault?" Vaughn stared Royce in the eye, his gaze unblinking.
"I was the team commander. Everything on that mission was my responsibility."
Royce abruptly stood.
"All right."
He headed for the door, then paused and turned.
"If you had to do it all over again, would you?"
"I'd have a good battery in the designator."
Then Royce was gone.
In the early days of World War II, after the attack at Pearl Harbor, there was serious concern that the Hawaiian Islands would be invaded by the Japanese. Defensive preparations were made throughout the islands, including the digging of tunnels in the lava flows that made up most of the land. These tunnels housed various military organizations, from air defense headquarters to hospitals.
One such tunnel system on Fort Shafter was still in use. It housed an agency known as Westcom Sim-Center, which stood for Western Command, Simulation Center. It was the place where the major commands of the United States military in the Pacific theater played their war games using sophisticated computer simulations.
At the moment, inside the Simulation Operations Center – which mimicked the one at Western Command headquarters – a simulation involving the Air Force was being run. On the large video display at the front of the room a map showing North Korea and vicinity was projected. A blinking red dot was rapidly moving across the Korean peninsula from east to west, closing on a blue triangle.
The red dot represented a B-2 bomber, the blue triangle the principal North Korean nuclear plant that produced weapons grade material. Anxiously watching the dot were two dozen Air Force officers. Their billion-dollar toy was "in action," and the Sim-Center had a notorious reputation for what the officers would say – only among themselves – was "no bullshit."
If the computer determined that the North Koreans had spotted the bomber – or worse, shot it down – the computer would play out the simulation that way. These officers had planned the mission using the best intelligence they had, and now the computer was taking their plan and testing it and the expensive high-tech toy they were employing.
At the very back of the room sat the scientist in charge of the Sim-Center, Professor Foster, who appeared to be the exact opposite of what he was: a computer programming genius. Foster was a hulking man, over six and a half feet tall and weighing in at a beefy 280 pounds. He'd played football at Stanford, where he'd received his undergraduate degree. He'd actually been good enough to be drafted by the Oakland Raiders and had gone on to training camp, where he blew out his knee on the first day, ending his professional career. Then he'd gone back to graduate school and focused on developing computer programs to simulate real events. He approached these simulations like they were the Super Bowl and the American military was the opposing team.
Today he was a bit disappointed. The flight route chosen for the B-2, the crew that was locked in a simulator at Wheeler Air Force Base "flying" the plane, and the intelligence used to plan the mission were all top-notch and working perfectly. Foster was tempted to throw a curve in, one of a dozen he had prepared. Perhaps an engine malfunction on the airplane, or a North Korean antiaircraft missile being moved into the flight path, or even the National Command Authority that had authorized the mission canceling it at the last minute. But he knew the probabilities of any of those happening were very low and it wouldn't be fair, although what was fair in warfare, no one had been able to pin down.
So the red dot reached the blue triangle without being spotted, dropped its bombs "destroying" the nuclear facility, and made its escape without incident, much to the delight of the military men in the room. After they had all filed out on their way to celebrate at the Fort Shafter Officers' Club, Foster sat alone in the Sim-Center, preparing the after-action review, which would be disseminated to the various commands involved.
Successful AARs were always harder for him to write, because there was little he could comment on. There were a few minor suggestions, but otherwise it was a pathetically thin report. And the problem with thin reports was that people then began to question the value of the Sim-Center. It was a Catch-22 that Foster had been fighting for over eight years.
The secure phone on his desk rang, and he frowned. It almost never rang unless a simulation was running. He stared at it through four rings, then reluctantly picked it up.
"Foster."
"Gambit Six."
The phone went dead, but Foster remained perfectly still, holding the receiver to his ear as if the voice would come back and retrieve the two words. They were words he had hoped to never hear.
CHAPTER 3
The hammer came down on the Delta survivors draped with the thin velvet sheen of secrecy. It didn't soften the blow, just kept anyone other than the team from being aware of it. They were to get the hell out of the Philippines without anyone knowing they had left, just as no one had known they'd arrived. Vaughn found it ludicrous, because the world certainly knew they'd been here. But he kept his mouth shut, said "Yes sir," and, with his gear in hand, climbed into the back of the deuce-and-a-half covered truck that had backed up to the door of their isolation facility.