The phalanx code, p.22
The Phalanx Code, page 22
I turned around and walked toward the front and stopped when a young woman looked up at me.
“Hello, sir, Barbara Ruddy,” she said, holding out her hand.
I shook it and she proceeded to tell me that she was a British ex-pat. She was a petite blonde with wide gray eyes that sheltered what I imagined was a sharp intellect. Her hair was knotted into a ponytail that ended between her shoulder blades. She reminded me a bit of Lieutenant Colonel Sally McCool, my former pilot who was killed at the Eye of Africa battle.
“What’s your mission?” I asked her.
“I’m the intelligence analyst for these cretins, sir,” she said. “Without me, they’d just be banging their heads against the wall.”
“What happened on the bridge?”
“They didn’t listen to me, that’s what happened.” Her cheeks reddened. “Told them it was a danger area and to cross the Tappan Zee and come down through Harlem into Manhattan proper.”
“You were right,” I said. “So, what are we facing here?”
She lifted her tablet and pointed at the split screen showing a blueprint of the mine shafts and an external satellite image of Drewson’s Wyoming compound.
“An impossible situation,” she said. “Only three entrances that I can see. An improbably complicated series of mine shafts that lead to God knows where. The ventilation system has the capability to carry chemicals to render personnel unconscious or something … worse. The most defensible terrain I’ve ever seen from the outside. There are antennae and cameras everywhere, not to mention the assured linkage to the Optimus satellite constellation, giving Drewson a wholistic intelligence picture the likes of which I’ve never seen.”
She looked up at me and shrugged, the glimmer of a smile on her lips.
“Trying to boost my morale?”
She pursed her lips, smiled, and said, “Cheeky one, aren’t you? In a way, yes. It is dire, but I do have an idea.”
“Talk to me,” I said.
“Sit down, sir, if you don’t mind. It’s rather intimidating having an infamous general staring over me like some god,” she said.
I moved from my position propped against the armrest and slid into the seat next to her.
“Infamous?”
She nudged me with her shoulder. “At least you’re not boring.”
“Doing some research on me?”
“Naturally,” she quipped. “Need to determine how hard I’m going to work.”
“Have you made up your mind?”
She blushed. “We’re going to get your people out, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s up with the rogues in the back?” I asked.
“They’re a new lot, as far as I know. Everything is pretty compartmented in Sharpstone. Could be snipers or something like that.”
I nodded and looked at her tablet.
“Now here’s what I’m thinking,” she said.
She showed me, and it wasn’t a bad idea at all.
24
AFTER SPEAKING WITH A few more of the Sharpstone troops, I checked my gear and ran through Ruddy’s idea in my mind. It could work, but everything was priced to perfection. One mistake and everything unraveled.
Gnawing at the back of my mind, though, was my father. Garrett Sinclair II was a good soldier, if not a mostly absent and average father. As a child I’d had no real issues with his travels because he had deployed to combat in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Always living in the shadow of Coop, he had struggled to carve out his own name. He earned a reputation as somewhat of a career climber, which I always attributed to his efforts to break free of Coop’s legacy. Instead of embracing it and emulating the traits that made my grandfather an icon in the military, Dad chose an alternate path where he sought out the most prestigious assignments in the Pentagon instead of repeated commands in the field with troops. While he did command at every level, the book on Dad was that he was mostly drafting on Coop’s reputation. Plus, many of the leaders in the army were Coop’s protégés and felt obligated to choose Dad over some other deserving candidate for promotion. Legacies existed in the military as well as in universities and business.
Running through every scenario in my mind, despite his emotional distance from me as a father, I couldn’t reconcile his role as my father with the idea that he would be so bitter and angry as to attack me, much less my children. But if the contract that Blanc had shown me was true and accurate, Drewson was paying him a cool million-two to help him carry out his plan. Or, thinking generously, perhaps Dad was advising Drewson how to defend against Blanc’s assassin squads, if indeed both Blanc and Evelyn were playing me. Because there was no reliable source of information anywhere in the world anymore, I couldn’t know the truth. So, I kept coming back to the one thing I did know for sure: I loved my children and my team, and they meant everything to me.
My father knew this, as did Drewson and Blanc, and of course Evelyn. Drewson holding them hostage to achieve some pyrrhic victory over Blanc was the only scenario that made sense. Coop used to tell me, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” His point being, don’t be indecisive. Commit to something and move forward.
I chose to believe that Blanc and Evelyn were telling the truth, that Drewson was holding hostage my precious cargo. And that my father, despite his motivations, was irrelevant. I looked out of the window as we were descending through a snowstorm into Wyoming. If I met my current self in a dark alley, I would bet on the guy in the reflection.
We landed in a raging snowstorm at Central Wyoming Regional Airport three hours later. The pilots maneuvered the state-of-the-art aircraft through mountain passes with skill. Waiting on us were five black Humvees with electronic gear installed to jam roadside bomb signals, relay internal communications, and see in the dark via infrared and thermal imaging to avoid ambushes and safely arrive at the objective area.
Sharpstone was equipped with the most advanced gear in the business. It seemed that Blanc and Evelyn spared no expense when it came to their troops.
We wound through mountain passes and down icy roads, approaching the compound from the northeast. The snow was coming down in sheets, and Maximillian had ensured there was winter gear for everyone stocked in the SUVs, including softshell white-and-tan digitized jackets, skis, and snowshoes.
Ruddy’s plan called for all the above.
The SUV train followed an off-road path until the lead vehicle arrived at an area they called their forward command post. We pulled into a circular gravel or dirt lot that was covered in snow. Two trailers sat on elevated slab foundations with wooden steps leading up to the doors. A log cabin was farther up a path with smoke pouring from the chimney.
Maximillian said, “We organize here and get the plan set.”
During the drive, I had tried to reach Mahegan, Van Dreeves, and Hobart several times. I had called Reagan and Brad with no success. Worry clawed at my stomach. Once we were inside the cabin, I asked Maximillian, “Is there a video communication link I can use?”
“LanxPro right there on the big screen,” he said pointing at an eighty-inch television monitor hanging above a fireplace that was roaring with a wood fire. He used the remote to switch it on as I sat down at the dining room table.
“Can you mimic a number?”
“Have to get Ruddy in here for that,” he said.
A minute later intelligence and communications specialist Barbara Ruddy came in and said in her British accent, “How may be of assistance, sir?”
“I want to make a call that could lead the receiver to believe that he’s receiving a call from Drewson,” I said.
“Easy enough,” she replied. Retrieving a tablet from her rucksack, she plugged a wire into the control panel for the video conference equipment. After typing some commands and moving her finger across the touch screen, she pushed the control panel across the table, looked at me, and said, “Go ahead and dial your target’s number.”
I used the control pad to dial the number I wanted and let it ring. The camera above the television blinked from red to green when my father answered his phone.
“Drewson?” he barked.
Jesus. My father broke the first rule of operational security.
“No, but you need to understand your alliance with Mitch Drewson has put your grandchildren in danger. My questions are: did you do that on purpose, and can you talk Drewson off the ledge?”
He didn’t respond for a long moment. Maximillian and Ruddy watched me. They both flinched when my father started laughing.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said. “I’ve done nothing of the sort. I’m sure they’re just fine up in Virginia. Reagan doing her college thing and Brad wasting his education on that stupid band Napoleon something or other.”
The tinny voice was a few octaves off from his normal baritone, which was the tell, but I wanted more confirmation he was lying.
“Push that button on your OptiPhone, Dad. The one that says, ‘Opti-Face.’”
A few seconds later his forehead appeared on the monitor.
“Now look into the phone and talk to me,” I said.
“Who are you to tell me what to do, son?”
“I’ll be your worst fucking nightmare if you’re lying to me,” I said.
Ruddy smiled and turned away, covering a laugh.
“Well, well, prison didn’t do a thing for you, did it?”
“Just another deployment,” I said.
Finally, he was looking into the phone. His normally hard edges had softened. His neck was a bit fuller and his cheeks puffier. During his prime he had been trim and fit. He had brown eyes and graying hair that appeared dyed a darker color. He hadn’t shaved in at least a day. He was sitting in his home office. A bottle of bourbon sat on his desk and a tumbler was filled with the amber liquid. In the background were dozens of plaques and pictures, all the marks of a storied military career tacked onto the wall as a reminder of prior greatness. The “I-love-me” wall was a relatively standard practice. Soldiers were rightly proud of their service and most tastefully displayed a few of their most grand achievements. Van Dreeves had once said there was an inverse relationship between the size of a man’s I-love-me wall and his manhood. If that were true, my father had serious problems. From my one visit a few years ago to their new home, I knew that the pictures wrapped around all the walls of his office and bled into the hallway, but my mother had stopped it there.
“I’ve got stuff to do, Garrett. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I want nothing to do with. You brought shame to this family and to our lineage. Coop, of all people, would be ashamed of you.”
“Before you dismiss me so quickly, Father, Aurelius Blanc asked me to say hello.”
His face turned bright red, and he looked away. His hands fidgeted with something I couldn’t see on the desk. He turned and knocked over his glass of whiskey, the booze spreading across a series of papers stacked on his desk. He muttered a series of expletives and stood up, brushing at his pants.
“Look what you’ve done!” he shouted.
“What are you doing for Drewson?”
He stopped, turned, and looked at the camera.
“Drewson is trying to help the world, Garrett. Something you wouldn’t know about. All your bullshit with Parizad and killing the secretary of state and getting your sergeant major killed. You’re a disgrace!”
“I may be, but I’ve never turned on my family,” I said.
“Your family?” He walked toward the camera so that his face filled the screen. “Your family?! What have you ever done for your family? For me? Your mother? This past year has been hell on us. The embarrassment. The ridicule. Social media everywhere. People mistaking me for you, of all things.”
“Yes, well, speaking of family, have you spoken with your half brother lately?”
“God damn you! He’s provided no proof of anything. He’s … he’s an interloper. A fraud!” He visibly calmed himself, taking a different tack. “Son, listen to me. You don’t even know. There’s an encrypted file they conveniently can’t locate, and if you knew what was on it you’d be singing a different tune.”
The encrypted file was at least true, I thought. It was in my boot. His attorneys must have hired a forensic digital expert to comb through Coop’s documents and will.
“If I were you, I’d be cozying up to him. He’s got bucks,” I said.
“So does Drewson, you dimwit,” he snapped.
And there it was. The contract was real.
“So, what are you having to do to earn your one-point-two million a year?”
“Where are you getting your information, Garrett?”
“That’s not important. What’s important is that my team and your grandchildren are being held by Drewson locked in a tunnel somewhere in a mine shaft in Wyoming. What do you know about that?”
Again, my smash cut with the information stopped him cold.
“That’s a lie,” he croaked after a moment. His eyes went distant as he looked into the night through the window. Perhaps it was the first reflection of doubt. While I knew he was angry at me for a variety of what I considered unfounded reasons, he could have no substantive motive to be upset with Brad or Reagan other than that they were my offspring.
“It’s not a lie. Jake Mahegan is with them—”
“Mahegan. The Indian?”
“Jake is an American, Dad, but yes, he’s Native American from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a state you know well from our years there. He is with them and has told me there’s trouble. Now I can’t reach him. So, I need you to call Drewson and tell him to knock off the bullshit.”
His countenance softened, as if reflecting the reality that his grandchildren could be in trouble.
“I know nothing about this. Drewson offered me a big contract to help him with global strategy. It’s what I do. Help companies understand the geopolitical environment in which they are operating.”
“Even better,” I said. “Then just call him and give him your best strategic advice to free my kids and my team.” I was one level below shouting and growling into the microphone. If I could have reached through the monitor and grabbed his neck, I would have. He looked away again.
“He wants Blanc, not you,” he said.
“I don’t care what he wants. Call him and tell him to stand down.”
“Okay, he also wanted your team. I didn’t know about the kids,” he said.
“So, you helped him plan luring my team into his compound so he could hold them hostage and blackmail Blanc?”
He never looked back at the camera. He might have imperceptibly nodded his head before dropping his chin on his chest. My father was a self-serving man and had spent much of his career putting his boots onto the backs of many good soldiers whom he saw as competitors. But I didn’t believe him to be a depraved soulless grifter who would sacrifice his grandchildren at the altar of his greed. I was outraged enough that he had apparently helped Drewson plan the coalescence of my team into Wyoming to be used as fodder.
“So, it was your idea? The whole thing?”
He didn’t respond, which was response enough.
“Call Drewson now or I will,” I said. “I’m sure he won’t take my call. Your path to redemption may lie in unscrewing this. Maybe.”
He looked at the camera and nodded. Picking up his phone, he disappeared for a moment and then the monitor filled with a split screen of my father and Mitch Drewson.
“What is this, Garrett?” Drewson said to my father.
“Let my people go,” I said.
Drewson apparently had not been warned he was going to be merged with me. Score one for Dad.
After a pause, Drewson smiled and said, “Not sure what you’re talking about. They’re here of their own volition.”
“I know about your plan,” I said. “Whatever you need from Blanc doesn’t involve me, my team, and certainly not my children.”
“On the contrary. It’s all about you, Garrett the third, or should I call you ‘Trip’?”
“Let them go,” my father said.
Drewson smirked and said, “The million two isn’t enough to keep your loyalty?”
“This wasn’t part of the deal,” he said.
“But you gave me the idea of getting them all here. The kids are just a bonus!”
“Let them go,” he said again.
“You’ve obviously violated your mutual NDA with me, so would you prefer I do the same and tell your son about you and his beloved Melissa?”
Melissa?
“There’s nothing to tell, Drewson, now let them go.”
The screen went blank. Because my father controlled the three-way video feed, having patched in Drewson, he was able to terminate the entire call. I immediately tried both my father and Drewson’s numbers. Neither answered after multiple attempts.
“Damn it!”
I walked toward the fireplace and stared. Drewson had mentioned something about Melissa when I first met him. Now again? The flame danced in front of me, licking my face with heat.
“General?” Ruddy said, pulling me back to the moment. Nothing was bringing Melissa back, and she would want me focused on saving our children, so that’s what I did.
“Yes, Barbara?”
“We’ve got three drones working Drewson’s compound. He’s got counter drone technology in the air, but our tech is beating his tech right now,” she said.
“What do we know?” I asked, as if Ruddy and I had been working together for years. She leaned forward, tapped some keys, and the large monitor was now filled with three drone feeds. They were grainy and obscured by cloud cover amidst the snowstorm, but using the thermal cameras, she was able to walk me through her assessment.
“Sir, drone one in the top left-hand corner is showing the heat signature from a large underground structure, perhaps a cavern. There are multiple heat signatures beyond the door, which appears to be a hangar. The outlines appear to be airplanes and helicopters,” she said. Zooming the camera in, she was able to show the glowing orange thermal reflection of two helicopters.
