Strike Force Bravo (30 page)

Then, just six weeks ago, Al Qaeda–led terrorists managed to take over the top floor of Singapore's Tonka Tower, the tallest building in the world, trapping several hundred American women and children inside. The terrorists wired the building's glass-enclosed summit with nearly sixty pounds of plastic explosive, intent on toppling the building and killing another two thousand people caught in the floors below.

Just as the terrorists were about to detonate their explosives, one of the dozen TV news helicopters circling the building suddenly landed on its top-floor balcony. Someone inside the chopper shot four of the terrorists dead. Other men from the copter and more leaping in from the roof killed the three others and defused the bombs with seconds to spare. As soon as the crisis was over, the rescuers, who were dressed in U.S. military special-ops uniforms, briefly displayed an American flag, then got back in their TV news helicopter and promptly disappeared.

The Pentagon spin on the matter was both deceitful and marvelous: The rescuers were part of an elite special-ops group, so secret neither their names nor anything about them could be revealed. Truth was, no one with any power inside the Pentagon, the White House, or anywhere else in the U.S. government had the faintest idea who these mysterious soldiers were—only that they were probably the same group who had saved the day at Hormuz.

The problem was, they were not under anyone's control. They were a rogue team operating on their own, without oversight from higher authority. This type of thing sent shivers down the spines of the top brass.

The whole Hormuz-Singapore thing hit particularly close to home for Li. She'd always suspected her missing bosses, Major Fox and Lieutenant Ozzi, had gone off to look for the mysterious unit.

So when Nash asked about Hormuz and Singapore, Li replied, “I know what happened at both places, more or less…”

“Okay—well, now there's a third side to the triangle,” Nash said. “Something that ties in Hormuz and Singapore and here it is: There's been a jail break at the detainee compound at Guantanamo. It occurred while a prisoner exchange was taking place with, of all people, the Iranians. We were releasing seven of their citizens, Taliban types we'd caught in Afghanistan, while they were giving us seven Al Qaeda capos they'd grabbed up recently. The Iranians flew an unmarked cargo plane into Gitmo to pick up their people, and these seven characters were put aboard, still in hoods and shackles. The plane took off, but about ten minutes later, someone discovered the seven Iranians who were supposed to be on the plane were actually back in their detainee hut—with their throats cut. They were all lying on the floor, lined up in a row.”

Li almost burst out laughing. “This is a joke,” she told him. “And a really weird way to get out of our date—”

“It's no joke,” Nash replied harshly. “And I could get shot for telling you all this. So just listen. This is where Hormuz and Singapore come in. Besides the Al Qaeda and Taliban types at Gitmo, there's also a number of so-called ‘special prisoners' being held down there—and that's also highly classified, by the way. These ‘special prisoners' are all Americans. There's a bunch of them. They've been deemed threats to our national security and have been locked up down there, without trial, without access to attorneys, some of them for months.”

Li couldn't believe this. “Are you saying these are American citizens who were helping the terrorists?”

“No,” Nash replied. “What I'm saying is that these ‘special prisoners' and the guys who showed up at Hormuz and Singapore are one and the same.”

Li was astonished, almost speechless. “These heroes everyone has been looking for are in jail? Who the hell is responsible for that?”

“That's a question for another time,” Nash said hurriedly. “The important thing is that the way it looks now, seven of these ‘special prisoners' somehow managed to take the places of the seven Iranian POWs who got their throats slit. How? No one has a clue. But even that doesn't matter anymore—in fact, it's a very moot point.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Nash said deliberately. “Shortly after take-off, this plane blew up in mid-air. One second it was on the radar, the next it was gone. It went right into the sea, taking everyone with it.”

She gasped. “My God…What happened?”

“The Iranians themselves most likely planted a bomb onboard,” he told her. “You know, set to go off as soon as the plane left Gitmo? The brain trust here think the Iranian bigwigs never intended for the plane to get back home. Their POWs were all related to high government officials in Tehran, and the mullahs probably didn't want a bunch of Taliban heroes with connections inside the government to be running around loose. Iran's a pretty volatile situation these days.

“Now, you'll probably never hear word one about this ever again. We got our Al Qaeda guys as promised at a checkpoint in Iraq, and the Iranians got rid of seven troublesome relatives, one way or another. A good day all around. Everyone should be happy.”

“Except for the ‘special prisoners' on the plane,” she said. “Who were they really?”

“Well, that's the bad news,” Nash answered slowly. “That's why I felt it was important to tell you all this. That you heard it from me first—and not someone else.”

A much longer pause. “They've ID'd at least two of the people who were aboard that plane.”

A troubled breath.

“And it was your bosses, Li,” he said. “Those guys, Fox and Ozzi. We just got the official word from Gitmo. Both are confirmed deceased.”

 

It wasn't quite
House on Haunted Hill
, but it was close.

It sat behind a row of empty warehouses at the end of a dead-end street, near the Potomac Reservoir extension road, just over the line in Virginia. The Navy had built this place back in the 1920s as an auxiliary weather station, but the sailors back then were better at sailing ships than constructing houses. This one was ugly from the first nail, and eighty years of rain and heat had only compounded the error. It had a strange, miniature-Kremlin look to it, with a skin of faded-green shingles and two creaky turrets rising from the back. A black brick chimney, leaning 70 degrees, sprouted atop the sagging roof. Add the rickety fence, the dirty brown lawn, and the two dead apple trees out front, and what was once homely was now just plain creepy.

This was what Li called home. She lived here for one reason only: The rent was very, very low. In fact, when she first came to live in D.C., she nearly had to turn around and go back home, so few were safe living spaces for young women just starting out on the government payroll. After weeks of searching and living out of a bag, this place became available. It was convenient and it was affordable. Creepy or not, she took it.

She parked out back now, in the small turnaround. Li had lived here for almost a year, but she'd yet to go into the garage, never mind park in it. It was cold up here as usual. A fog had lifted off the reservoir and was pouring through the old chain-link fence and into her backyard. She made sure her car was as close as it could be to her back door, then grabbed her briefcase, her phone, and her unused overnight bag. It was her habit to always hurry inside.

She climbed the back steps to the porch. From here, over several very bad neighborhoods and the winding Potomac beyond, the lights of the Lincoln Memorial burned dully in the mist. The normal bustle of the city was lacking, even way up here. Li paused for a moment, trying to make some sense of it. Everything was so quiet. Even the wind was still. But then she heard a muted rumbling from the south. What was that? Not a truck on the highway nearby. Not thunder, in the clear sky.

She looked out from under the porch's roof.

Two more F-15s flew overhead.

BOOTS ON THE GROUND

A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq

Karl Zinsmeister

Boots on the Ground
is a riveting account of the war in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division as it convoys north from Kuwait to Iraq's Tallil Air Base en route to night-and-day battles within the major city of Samawah and its nearby bridges across the Euphrates. Karl Zinsmeister, a frontline reporter who traveled with the 82nd, brilliantly conveys the careful planning and technical wizardry that go into today's warfare, even local firefights, and he brings to life the constant air-ground interactions that are the great innovation of modern precision combat. Readers of this vivid day-to-day diary are left with not only a flashing sequence of strong mental images, but also a notion of the sounds and smells and physical sensations that make modern military action unforgettable.

Includes photos taken by the author while with the 82
^nd
in Kuwait and Iraq!

“A fast-moving story of courage and competence, written by an observer who offers a far different picture from what was presented by our mainstream media. A moving tribute to what free soldiers united in a common cause can accomplish.”

—Victor Davis Hanson, military historian

ISBN: 0-312-99608-X

Available wherever books are sold from St. Martin's Paperbacks

BOOTS 04/04