Rogue Forces

There was a long pause on the line; Patrick saw the vice president lean back in his seat and rub his face and eyes—in confusion, fear, doubt, disbelief, or all four, he couldn’t tell. Then: “General, I didn’t know you that well when you worked in the White House,” Phoenix said. “Most of what I know is what I heard in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, usually during someone’s angry tirade aimed at you. You have a reputation for two things: pissing a lot of people off…and making timely, correct analyses.

“I’m going to talk to the president and recommend that Secretary Barbeau and I make a visit to Turkey, to meet with President Hirsiz and Prime Minister Akas,” he went on. “Stacy can be in charge of making apologies. I’m going to ask President Hirsiz what’s going on, what he thinks his situation is politically and security-wise, and what the United States can do to help. The situation is obviously getting out of hand, and simply declaring the PKK a terrorist outfit is not enough. We should be doing more to help the Republic of Turkey.

“I am also going to recommend, General, that you be allowed to continue your surveillance operations on the Iraq-Turkey border,” Phoenix went on. “I don’t think he’ll buy it, but if Colonel Wilhelm says it’ll take weeks to get back into position, we don’t have much choice. Obviously, there will be no more of that netrusion stuff against the Turks without express permission from the Pentagon or the White House. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Colonel Wilhelm, Secretary Barbeau is not in your chain of command, and neither am I. You should follow your last set of orders. But I’d recommend being on the defensive and ready for anything, just in case the general’s theory comes true. I don’t know how much warning you’ll get. Sorry about the confusion, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

“That’s the way it goes most of the time, sir,” Wilhelm said. “Message understood.”

“I’ll be in touch. Thank you, gents.” The vice president nodded to someone off camera, and his worried, conflicted visage disappeared.

THE OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

A SHORT TIME LATER

“Patrick McLanahan is in Iraq!” Secretary of State Stacy Anne Barbeau shrieked as she strode into the Oval Office. “I just spoke with him on the conference call with Phoenix and the Army. McLanahan is in charge of aerial reconnaissance in all of northern Iraq! How in hell could that guy surface in Iraq and we not know about it?”

“Relax, Stacy Anne, relax,” President Joseph Gardner said. He smiled as he loosened his tie and sat back in his seat. “You look even more beautiful when you’re angry.”

“What are you going to do about McLanahan, Joe? I thought he’d disappear, move out to some condo in Vegas, play with his kid, take up fly-fishing or something. Not only has he not vanished, but now he’s stirring up shit between Iraq and Turkey.”

“I know. I got the briefing from Conrad. That’s what the guy does, Stacy. Don’t worry about him. Sooner or later he’ll go too far, again, and then we can prosecute him. He doesn’t have his high-tech air force to fight for him anymore.”

“Did you hear what he told me? He refuses to turn over his mission data to the State Department! I want him thrown into prison, Joe!”

“I said, relax, Stacy,” Gardner said. “I’m not going to do anything that’ll bring McLanahan’s name back into the press. Everyone’s forgotten about him, and that’s the way I prefer it. We try to haul him into a federal court for putting up a few fake radar images to fool the Turks, and we’ll turn him into a media hero again. We’ll wait until he does something really bad, and then we’ll nail him.”

“That guy is bad news, Joe,” Barbeau said. “He humiliated both of us, shit on us and rubbed our noses in it. Now he’s gotten himself some kind of big government contract and is flying around northern Iraq.” She paused for a moment, then asked, “Does he still have those robot things, the ones he…?”

“Yes, as far as I know, he still has them,” the president said. “I haven’t forgotten about them. I have a task force in the FBI that scours police reports all over the world for sightings. Now that we know he’s working in Iraq, we’ll expand the search there. We’ll get them.”

“I don’t see how you can allow him to keep those things. They belong to the U.S. government, not to McLanahan.”

“You know damned well why, Stacy,” Gardner said irritably. “McLanahan has got enough dirt on both of us to end our careers in a hot second. The robots are a small price to pay for his silence. If the guy was tearing up cities or robbing banks with them, I’d make it a priority to find them, but the FBI task force hasn’t reported any sightings or received any tips about them. McLanahan’s being smart and keeping those things under wraps.”

“I can’t believe he has such a powerful weapon like those robots and suits of armor or whatever they are and hasn’t used them.”