Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

As the triumphant victory turned into a prolonged occupation and a brutal campaign against insurgent guerillas—news pundits began calling it a ‘quagmire’—the rationale for the war came under intense scrutiny. What had, in the days leading up to the invasion, seemed like a ‘slamdunk’—damning evidence of an impending strike against American interests utilizing a deadly combination of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons—now seemed like a fallacious pretext for a war of imperialism.

It would later be revealed that much of the so-called evidence had been fraudulent, supplied by Saddam Hussein’s political rivals, who had—successfully it seemed—tricked the nations of the West into toppling the hated dictator from power. While many would subsequently argue that Saddam’s overthrow was justified, even absent the threat of illegal weapons programs, the perception that America had been deceived into starting the war haunted the former President to the end of his first and only term in office, and his decision not to run for a second term paved the way for the election of dark horse candidate Thomas Duncan.

Duncan, a former combat veteran, was intimately familiar with the very real cost of war, in both treasure and blood. His policy from day one in office was that there would be no hand wringing or recriminations over the miscalculations of the former administration, but he did intend to give the American people exactly what he had promised in the campaign—a government that was accountable for every dollar and every drop of American blood spent in the war effort.

Although there was no easy solution to the Iraq problem, Duncan was aggressively pushing his advisors for an exit strategy that would ensure long-term security and stability in the region. It was a politically popular position, and the war hawks in Congress, still stinging from the WMD fiasco, were keeping their heads down.

The discovery of a ‘smoking gun’—a secret bio-weapon production facility leftover from Saddam Hussein’s regime—would change all of that. A single shred of evidence, even circumstantial evidence, might be used to justify the war in the court of public opinion. Although doubts would linger, the uncertainty would undermine the President’s position. The hawks would demand a more aggressive approach to foreign policy, with pre-emptive military action as a tool of statecraft, and more American soldiers would pay the price with their lives.

Duncan shook his head. “It is what it is, Dom. I won’t lie to the American people. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the sooner we get this out in the open, the better.”

“In point of fact, we don’t actually know what it is. That’s what the D-boys are going to find out tonight.”

The President sighed, then lowered his eyes and scanned the brief. “What’s this about a cryptanalyst?”

Boucher stifled a laugh. “The code the insurgents are using triggered an internal protocol that’s been around since the days of the OSS. Sci-Tech says it’s a code that’s never been cracked, the holy grail of crypto. They begged and pleaded for me to deploy their expert with the team, and I saw no good reason to refuse. Her presence won’t put the mission at risk.”

The President did not pursue the issue. “I want to watch the game. Transfer control of this to the Situation Room. I want General Collins there, too. Those are his boys on the ground.”

Boucher frowned. Some in the media had opined that, if the President had a failing, it was that he didn’t like to relinquish control to his subordinates. The DCIA knew better; Duncan wasn’t a control freak, and he didn’t hire anyone without absolutely trusting them to get the job done.

He just misses the action.

“I’ll order the pizzas.”





FIVE


Iraq


The three MH-60L Black Hawk helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, arrayed in an echelon-right formation, cruised through the darkened sky high above the Mesopotamian flood plain, performing the very task that had earned them the unit designation of the ‘Night Stalkers.’ Huddled together with Parker and the rest of his squad in the middle aircraft, Jack Sigler peered through his night vision scope, looking over the shoulder of a Black Hawk crew chief seated behind an M240H machine gun. He could make out a distant glow—the lights of Baghdad—far to the south, but below them, there was only the flat featureless desert landscape.

Featureless, but not quite empty.

The reconnaissance drone had uncovered the desert’s secret: a low, cinderblock structure, half buried by windblown dust, just to the east of what the map called Buhayrat Shari Lake. The lake was now just a dry salt flat, two miles across and almost twenty miles long. The drone had showed them the target building, but revealed no sign of activity—no cooking fires burning, no vehicles, not even tire tracks. The facility looked abandoned, but looks could be deceiving.

After completing the initial sweep, the drone returned for refueling, but it was back in the air now, feeding real time infrared imagery to the PDA Rainer carried with him in the trailing helo. Sigler kept expecting the Cipher element leader to keep them updated, but Rainer had been uncharacteristically quiet. With the exception of Strickland’s sotto voce whispered: “Mommy, are we there yet?” comment, everyone else had remained quiet as well.