"And then?"
"We sweep around under their radar and land back here at the National Guard base. They"ll think we just disappeared in thin air."
Ben nodded, though Jackie couldn"t see the gesture. "Good. Let"s do it."
Claire Osterman"s head was thrown back against the pillow and she had her hands in Herb Knoff"s hair. "Come on, baby, come on," she urged as she bucked beneath him.
She almost screamed in frustration when the phone on her bedside table rang.
"Oh, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" she growled, the mood broken. She pushed him off her, ignoring the sweaty, pleading look on his face.
"This had better be d.a.m.ned important," she yelled into the phone, breathing heavily and glancing at the clock. It was five minutes until midnight.
Her secretary said, "I hate to interrupt you, Madame President. . . ."
"Not as much as / hate it, Gladys," she growled. "What is it?"
"I have a man on the phone who says he is General Ben Raines."
"Ben Raines?" Claire asked incredulously.
"Yes, ma"am. Shall I tell him to call back at a more appropriate hour?"
"Of course not, you fool! Put him through."
196.
"Yes, ma"am."
There was a series of clicking, buzzing noises, and then the voice of the man Claire hated above all others was on the line, speaking as if he were a long-lost friend.
"h.e.l.lo, Sugar Babe," he said.
"Don"t call me that, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! What do you want?" she asked heatedly.
"I thought I might prevail upon you to move your troops back from our borders and prevent you from making another terrible mistake."
"My troops are just undergoing training exercises on our own territory, Ben," she said, trying to calm herself.
"Yeah, sure, Sugar Babe. But I would like you to try and remember what happened the last couple of times you tried to cause trouble between our countries. You got your a.s.s kicked but good," he added."Listen, you arrogant son of a b.i.t.c.h," she yelled into the phone. "It"s you that"s going to get his a.s.s kicked this time, and that"s a promise."
"Modern warfare is such a b.i.t.c.h, Claire," he said reasonably, as if he hadn"t heard her. "In the old days, leaders could sit behind their desks thousands of miles from the front and send young men and women into combat with nary a risk to their own life and limb."
"So what?" she asked, puzzled at what he was trying to tell her.
"Well, those days are gone forever. Now, if a leader decides to cause a war, that leader must be shown that there is no safe place for those who cause the needless death of others."
"What are you saying, Ben?" she asked, sitting up straight in bed and shoving the covers aside. "Are you trying to threaten me?"
"Not trying, sweetie, I"m promising you that if you continue with this ill-advised course of action, it will be you who pays the ultimate price, not just your troops."
197.
197.
"Listen, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, I"m not in the least afraid of you or what you think you can do," she shouted.
"You should be, Claire, you should be very afraid. Look out your window, if you think I"m blowing smoke," Ben said, and then he hung up, the click loud in Claire"s ear.
She slammed the phone down, shaking from anger. She looked at Herb, lying next to her, a puzzled look on his face, trying to understand what had just been said.
She lay back on her pillows and stretched her hand out to rub the hair on his chest. "Now, where were we, darling?"
As Herb grinned and rolled over to snuggle up against her, the entire room shook from an explosion that must have been directly overhead.
Plaster fell from the ceiling and sprinkled down on the bed as if it were snowing inside the room, while another deep booming vibrated the bed, knocking her phone off the bedside table and breaking the lamp.
"s.h.i.t!" she hollered, and scrambled from the bed, grabbing a nightgown from the chair and running to her door.
General Bradley Stevens, whose room was just down the hall of the underground bunker, appeared in the hallway, his hair tousled as if he"d just woken up.
"What the h.e.l.l . . ." he said, looking around him in disbelief as pieces of the walls disintegrated and began to tumble to the floor.
"Get on the phone and find out what the h.e.l.l is happening!" Claire screamed at him, forgetting her nightgown was unfastened and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s exposed.Stevens glanced at her, then quickly turned away as he hurried down the hall to the guard"s desk at the end of the corridor.
He grabbed the phone and dialed a series of numbers, having to yell into the phone to make himself heard over the rat-a-tat of heavy machine-gun fire coming from above.
After a second, he yelled at her, "Get back in your room and lock your door . . . we"re under attack!"
He threw the phone down and ran up the stairs to the first 198.
floor, and burst out the fortified steel door onto the gra.s.s outside the building.
He ducked as what looked like a Warthog dived directly at him, spraying the ground with 30mm cannon fire, which danced a trail of death four feet to his left and shattered the walls next to him. Though the walls were made of three feet of reinforced concrete over stainless steel, the armor-piercing sh.e.l.ls tipped with depleted uranium went though them like grain through a goose.
Stevens dove to the ground and covered his head with his hands. He peeked out from under his arms to look at the nearest hangar, where several men were trying to get fighter planes launched.
He was just in time to see an F-lll Aardvark follow the Warthog in a steep dive at over six hundred miles an hour. As the Aardvark pulled up, twin rockets loosed themselves from its wings and arrowed down at the fighter planes, still on the ground.
The missiles exploded, blowing both planes and a dozen men into tiny bits, and sent a fireball three hundred feet into the air.
Stevens rolled to the side and caught sight of an ancient Huey helicopter hovering near a distant hangar, pouring fifty-caliber rounds into the motor pool vehicles. A HumVee, with the general"s flag on its fenders, exploded and jumped into the air as if it"d been kicked. The fireball from the HumVee incinerated six men nearby and set three other vehicles on fire.
Stevens laid his head on his arms, wishing Claire Osterman could witness the damage a fifty-year-old machine could do.
Two minutes later, the attackers were gone, as if they"d never existed, leaving behind them a base in utter ruins. Buildings were shattered and caved in, planes and wreckage were burning, sirens wailing, men screaming and groaning in pain, and all was ma.s.s confusion.
Stevens jumped to his feet and began to run across the tar- 199.
199.
mac, yelling at soldiers to get some planes airborne to chase the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who"d done this to his base.It took another fifteen minutes to scramble anything, as burning wreckage had to be moved and fires put out before other planes could be fueled.
By the time they were in the air, Stevens was in the control tower, bending over a radarscope, yelling at the airman there to find out where the attackers had gone.
The young man glanced up, fear in his face. "I don"t know, sir. They came in under the radar and left the same way. Nothing ever showed up on my scope at all."
"That"s impossible!" Stevens screamed, already wondering how he was ever going to explain this to Osterman.
"What do I tell the pursuit planes, General?" the tower con-trolman asked, holding a mike in his hand.
"Tell "em they"d better d.a.m.ned well find something to shoot at or not to bother coming back!" he yelled, making the man cringe back as if he were about to be hit.
He bent over his mike. "Tower to Eagle One, Two, and Three, quarter the skies and search for bogeys. Repeat, search for bogeys until you find something," he repeated, looking over his shoulder at Stevens.
200.
Bruno Bottger stood on the prow of the first of three large transport ships as they sailed into the harbor at Pariso. In the ships with him were twenty thousand battle-hardened mercenaries along with various and sundry equipment they would need on the campaign to take first Mexico City, then to invade and eventually conquer the SUSA and Ben Raines"s Rebel forces.
Perro Loco, Paco Valdez, and Jim Strunk were on the dock to welcome him.
"Look at him, riding the front of the ship like some conquering hero,"
Valdez sneered to Loco. "I think he is one we"re going to have to watch very carefully, comandante," he said.
"I agree, sir," Strunk added. "He is used to commanding, and I do not believe he will take kindly to playing second fiddle to anyone."
Loco dismissed their warnings with a wave of his hand. "Do not worry. I am not underestimating the difficulty of sharing a command with such a person." He grinned as the gangplank of Bottger"s ship was lowered to the dock. "As the old saying goes, "when you grab a tiger by the tail, it is most important not to let go, lest you be eaten." "
"So, you plan to "share" command with this German bigot?" Valdez asked.
"I think it would be wise to let him think so," Loco said. "I will do as General Eisenhower did in the Second World War with the British General Montgomery, who was at least 201.
201as big an egomaniac as this Bottger is reputed to be. I will give him command of his troops on the western borders of Mexico, at least until we reach and take Mexico City." He shrugged. "After that, it may well be time to see if an unfortunate accident cannot be arranged for Herr Bottger."
Strunk grinned, his fingers caressing the hilt of his commando knife in its scabbard on his belt. "I can hardly wait, comandante."
Bottger strolled up the dock, looking around as if he owned the world, followed closely by his second in command, Sergei Bergman, who was talking earnestly in his ear.
At the end of the pier, Loco approached him.
Bottger gave a quick nod of his head and stuck out his hand. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you face-to-face, Sefior Loco."
"Likewise, Herr Bottger," Loco said, smiling widely and taking the hand.
Loco had to fight the urge to stare at the ma.s.s of scar tissue that covered Bottger"s face and head. It was as if the man were wearing a rubber mask that hardly moved as he spoke, the tissue slick and shiny in the Mexican sun.
Bottger, who was used to such a reaction, briefly fingered the scars. "I see you have noticed the gift Ben Raines gave me on our last encounter.
As you might well imagine, I have much to repay him for."
Loco cleared his throat and forced his eyes away from the horror that was Bottger"s face. "Come, Herr Bottger. I have a meal ready for us at my headquarters, and have prepared a suite of rooms that you may use to freshen up from your sea voyage."
"Thank you. That would be appreciated."
Later, in the dining room of the officers" quarters Loco used as his command center, they feasted on the finest Mexican 202.
cuisine. Loco had searched for and found several cases of German wine that he"d heard Bottger preferred.
Bottger kept the talk general and light until the meal was finished and they"d repaired to Loco"s office for brandy and cigars.
As Bottger inhaled deeply of the Cohiba Especiale and sipped the Napoleon brandy, his eyes never left Loco"s.
"Tell me, Loco, how do you envision the separation of duties of our collaboration to proceed?"
Loco smiled and leaned forward in his leather armchair. "I think the most efficient way for us to divide the duties is for you to command your mercenaries and for me to command my troops. That way there is no overlap of responsibilities."
"And the deployment of the soldiers will be under whose orders?"Loco leaned back, waving his cigar in the air to dispel some of the smoke that was rapidly filling the air in the room with a blue cloud.
"Since I have some experience with the situation here in Mexico, I would hope that you would not mind some suggestions from me and my staff as to the most efficient way to maximize the troops under your command." He hesitated. "In other words, we will discuss the situations as they change day to day, and come to an agreement about the disposition of the various men and materiel under our joint command."
Bottger leaned his head back and gave a hearty laugh. "A very diplomatic way to put it, Loco," he said, grinning.
Loco returned the smile. "Of course, with both of us being very experienced in conducting warfare, I would hope that we will agree on what needs to be done the majority of the time."
Bottger nodded. "I can see that this will be an entertaining experience, having someone of your caliber to exchange ideas with." He glanced at Sergei Bergman. "My aide, Sergei, tells me you"ve already given him the authority to run his campaign along the western border, in the mountainous region along the coast."
203.
203.
"That"s correct. Since his troops were much more experienced in guerrilla-type warfare, I thought they would do best in the less populated areas, while my more conventional troops could best serve by moving up the center of the country where most of the Mexican Army is concentrated."
Bottger took another drag of his cigar. "Very wise, Loco. I would have done the same thing in your place."
Loco raised his brandy snifter. "Then we are in agreement on how to proceed?"
Bottger mimicked his toast. "Certainly, Loco. After all, we both want the same thing, do we not? The complete and utter destruction of Ben Raines and his accursed SUSA."
The ship carrying Harley Reno"s team pulled into the harbor at New Orleans. The members boarded a waiting Osprey and were flown to Base Camp One, where Ben Raines was waiting to meet them.
Jersey and Coop were taken to the state-of-the-art medical lab facilities by Dr. Buck, while Harley and Hammer and the others met with Ben in his office.
"Then I take it Jersey and Coop are completely out of danger?" Ben asked.
"Yes, sir," Harley replied. "Dr. Buck says they"re both gonna have to take it easy for a while, especially Jersey, but that they shouldn"t have any permanent disability from the infection."
"Good," Ben said. "Dr. Buck informs me this bug is a mutated form of the type used by Bruno Bottger several years ago here and in Africa.""That"s what he believes."