THE HELICOPTERS HAD gone in at dusk in Uganda, 10am in Washington. An attack force of nine Apaches flew in low over the LRA base that had been identified in the jungle south of the Sudan border. What happened in the ensuing engagement was still confused and military debriefers were trying to put together the sequence of events. What was clear was that two of the Apaches were down and their four crew members were down with them.
‘This happened five hours ago?’ demanded Knowles incredulously. ‘Five hours and no one told me?’
‘I only just found out after the meeting, sir,’ said Oakley.
‘What the hell? What–’ The president stopped. He looked at Hale. ‘When did you find out, General?’
‘I’ve been aware since last night that the operation was imminent. This was the operation you authorized yesterday, Mr President.’
‘And were you aware that this had turned into this … I don’t know what you’d call it. This goddamn fuck-up! Is that what you’d call it?’
‘I think it’s a fair description, sir. We’ve been trying to recover our pilots.’
‘Can we find out what the situation is? Can we at least get that?’
Hale nodded. ‘I’ll get Admiral Pressler.’
They waited while Hale made some calls. Finally a call came back on the president’s phone.
‘Admiral,’ said Hale into the speakerphone, ‘I’m here with the president and Secretary Oakley.’
Pete Pressler was on the line from the command room of the Abraham Lincoln and there was a kind of low, whirring sound in the background.
‘Admiral,’ said Knowles, ‘can you tell me what’s going on?’
‘We have two Apaches down, sir.’ The admiral’s voice was terse. ‘The circumstances aren’t clear yet. We believe one of them hit the tree canopy and brought the other one down. On the plus side, we believe we killed upwards of fifty LRA fighters possibly including some of their senior leadership. From that perspective it was a high-impact mission but we have four men down. We believe one of them died on impact.’
‘Pete, do we know that for certain now?’ said Hale.
‘I believe we now have the body, sir.’
‘Do we have men on the ground?’ asked the president.
‘Yes, sir. We do. We’ve secured the downed Apaches but there’s no sight of our guys or any of their fighters. Just a bunch of LRA bodies in pieces. We didn’t have men on the ground at the time of the incident. It was a purely aerial assault in keeping with your wishes, sir.’
‘Admiral Pressler,’ said Oakley, ‘operational decisions are yours, as you know. The president doesn’t intervene.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Pressler brusquely. ‘Anyway, I’ve got three of my guys still alive down there in enemy hands and right now that’s all I’m worried about. Hold on, please.’
They heard something being said in the background and the admiral replied sharply. Then he came back on the line.
‘Admiral,’ said Oakley, ‘how long after the incident did you get men on the ground?’
‘As soon as we could. We’re in darkness here now. We have drone surveillance in operation but at this point it’s all infrared and the jungle comes alive at night. There’s a lot of noise. We think we’re tracking a number of groups that headed out in different directions after the attack. Which of them have our men is impossible to say. There’s nothing I’d like to do more than take them out but if we go after them from the air we risk killing our own guys.’
There was silence. The whirring noise from the Abraham Lincoln filled the room.
‘Admiral,’ said the president, ‘what’s your plan?’
‘At this stage we’ll continue tracking them. At sunrise the guys on the ground will do a wider surveillance. With the drones, if we can get sight of the groups and if our guys aren’t with them, we’ll take them out. If we can locate our men I’ve got Chinooks ready to scramble out of Lodwar.’
‘Any chance of our men on the ground getting taken?’
‘There’s always a chance of some kind of firefight.’
‘We can’t have any more casualties,’ said the president.
‘‘I don’t want them any more than you do, sir. But we’ve taken this action, now we’ve got to clear it up. Our men may not be far off, especially if they’re injured. They may have been dumped.’
The president glanced at Hale and nodded.
‘Pete, anything else?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’
The line went dead.
Tom Knowles threw himself down on one of the sofas in front of his desk.
‘So far,’ he said, ‘no one knows about this?’
Hale shook his head. ‘Not from our side, but the LRA can get to the outside world if it wants to. We know they can get messages onto the net. Taking out even one American soldier is going to be a victory for them. We should assume that right now they’re trying to get the message out. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘And we haven’t heard that they want anything for our guys?’
‘Not yet. Again, that might be a matter of time.’
John Oakley doubted it. ‘They’re not that kind of operation. They’re basically killers. They have no program.’
‘There must be something,’ said Knowles. ‘Prisoner swaps? Supplies?’
‘We’ve said our mission is to eliminate them. Look at it from their side. Unless we say that’s not the case any more, what’s the point of anything we could give them?’
‘Could be that some of them might see the end’s coming and might want to use our guys to cut a deal for themselves.’
Oakley looked at the general. ‘Any indication of that?’
‘No, sir. But it’s very early.’
‘Would we do it?’ said the president.
‘Cut a deal with them if they want to come in?’
The president nodded.
‘I’d rather kill ’em,’ said Oakley.
‘If we have to,’ said Knowles impatiently.
Oakley shrugged. ‘We’d have to say they’d have to stand trial. I guess we could guarantee they won’t get the death penalty. We could send them to the Hague. They don’t do the death penalty there.’
The president looked at Hale. ‘Are we going to need a negotiating team?’
‘We’re pulling one together in case we do. The longer we can keep this quiet, the better. Gives us the maximum freedom of action.’
‘You just said we have to assume the LRA’s going to publicize it.’
‘That’s true, Mr President. I’d assume they’ll do it as quick as they can. They’ll minimize their casualties and talk up our losses.’
‘I’m no press secretary,’ said Oakley, ‘but we don’t want to be chasing that story. We want to be in front.’
‘So we need to get some kind of a statement out?’ The president grimaced. ‘This is going to look bad. This is going to look like one hell of a fuck-up. This is like Clinton in Somalia.’
‘We’ve had a success here, Mr President. Let’s not forget that.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it.’
‘Fifty-plus enemy dead against four of our men.’
‘There shouldn’t have been one of our men, General. These guys are stone age.’
‘I’ll release a statement,’ said Oakley.
‘Do we acknowledge we’ve got a man dead and three men captured?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Hale. ‘Operationally the less we say about what’s going on there until this is over, the better. I’d like to say we’ve had a successful operation, fifty enemy dead, and we’ve got men on the ground in the area. That gets our facts out there. That establishes how many of the enemy got killed before they get their version out. Then let’s see what they come up with.’
Knowles frowned. ‘I need to talk to Ed and Dean about this. John, hold off with a statement until I do.’ He looked at Hale. ‘General, I want to know exactly what’s happening, whenever it happens. I don’t care what time of night it might be. We get any information on our men, I want to know.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The president stood. The others stood as well.
There was a knock on the door.
Dean Moss was standing there, ashen-faced.
‘Mr President, there’s a video on the net.’
THEY SAT AROUND the screen in the Oval Office. The president’s key aides had joined him. Moss pulled up a website plastered with anti-American slogans. He paused with his hand on the remote.
‘This is um …’ He took a deep breath. ‘If anyone’s squeamish, I’ve got to warn you, this is the time to leave.’
‘Run the clip,’ said the president quietly.
‘Yes, sir.’
It started with someone ranting incomprehensibly in the glare of a spotlight in a shack. The picture, which must have been uploaded via a satellite connection, faded in and out a couple of times. Then the camera and the light turned and there was an American airman surrounded by five men. His face was bloodied and one eye was badly puffed, and he stood hunched, in pain, held up by the men around him. They didn’t wear masks or make any effort to conceal their identities. One of them held up the dog tags they had ripped off their prisoner and shook them defiantly at the camera. One of them yelled at him. Then two of them pushed him to his knees.
Tom Knowles knew he didn’t want to see what was about to come next.
It started.
‘Oh, my …’ whispered Roberta Devlin, and she turned away.
‘That’s their style,’ said Hale. ‘They like to do it with clubs.’
Gary Rose got to his feet and stumbled out, hand pressed against his mouth.
The body of the airman lay on the ground now. Its legs twitched.
One of the men smashed the broken skull again, and again.
The president closed his eyes. His mind was numb.