Rogue Forces

“Shut the hell up, McLanahan!” Wilhelm shouted. But he rose out of his seat in horror, studied the image for a few heartbeats, then hit the button for the regimental network and cried, “All Warhammer players, all Warhammer players, this is Warhammer, you have incoming artillery from the north, reverse direction, get away from Parrot now!”

“Say again?” one of the recon sections responded. “Say again, Warhammer!”

“I say again, all Warhammer players, this is Warhammer, you have twenty seconds to reverse direction of movement away from Objective Parrot, and then five seconds to take cover!” Wilhelm shouted. “Artillery inbound from the north! Move! Move!” On the Tank’s intercom he shouted, “Someone get the fucking Turkish army on the line and tell them to cease fire, we’ve got troops on the ground! Get medevac choppers in the air and get reinforcements out there immediately!”

“Send the B-1 across the border to those launch points, Colonel!” Patrick said. “If there are any more launchers, it’ll be able to—”

“I said shut up and get off my net, McLanahan!” Wilhelm snapped.

The Stryker reconnaissance patrols moved quickly, but not as fast as the incoming rockets. It took only ten seconds for the two dozen rockets to fly thirty miles and shower the Zahuk tunnel complex area with thousands of high-explosive antipersonnel and antitruck mines. Some mines exploded a few yards overhead, spraying the area below them with white-hot tungsten pellets; other mines detonated on contact with the ground, buildings, or vehicles with a high-explosive fragmentary warhead; and still others sat on the ground, where they would explode when disturbed or automatically after a certain period of time.

The second barrage occurred just a few moments later, aimed a few hundred yards west, east, and south of the first target area, designed to catch any who might have escaped the first bombardment. This was the attack that caught most of the retreating members of the American recon platoon. The mines tore through the light top armor on the Strykers from above, ripping them apart and leaving them open for the other high-explosive munitions to follow. Many of the dismounts who escaped the carnage inside their vehicles were lost to submunitions exploding overhead or underfoot as they tried to run for their lives.

In thirty seconds it was over. The stunned staff members watched it all in absolute horror, broadcast live via the Reaper and Predator drones high above.

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

A SHORT TIME LATER

President Joseph Gardner was logging off his computer in the private study adjacent to the Oval Office and had just reached for his jacket to call it a night and head up to the residence when the phone rang. It was his national security adviser, longtime friend, and former assistant secretary of the Navy, Conrad Carlyle. He hit the speakerphone button: “I was just about to call it a day, Conrad. Can it wait?”

“I wish I could, sir,” Carlyle said from a secure cell phone, probably in his car. His friend rarely called him “sir” when they spoke one-on-one unless it was an emergency, and this immediately got the president’s attention. “I’m en route to the White House, sir. Reports of a cross-border attack into Iraq by Turkey.”

Gardner’s heart rate went down a few percentage points. Neither Turkey nor least of all Iraq was a strategic threat to him right now—even goings-on in Iraq rarely caused long sleepless nights anymore. “Any of our guys involved?”

“A bunch.”

Heart rate back up again. What in hell happened? “Oh, shit.” He could almost taste that glass of rum over ice that he had his mind set on back up in the residence. “Are they set up in the Situation Room for me yet?”

“No, sir.”

“How much info do you have?”

“Very little.”

Time for one glass before the action really started ramping up. “I’ll be in the Oval Office. Come get me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gardner put a few ice cubes in an old Navy coffee mug, splashed some Ron Caneca rum into it, and took it out to the Oval Office. There was a crisis brewing somewhere, and it was important for onlookers around the world to stare through the windows and see the president of the United States hard at work—but that didn’t mean he had to deprive himself.

He turned the TV in the Oval Office to CNN, but there was nothing yet about any incident in Turkey. He could get the feeds from the Situation Room in his study, but he didn’t want to leave the Oval Office until the emergency was broadcast on worldwide TV and he was seen already watching it.