The Threat

They watched shaky handheld footage of sooty smoke rising over littered, dusty streets. A crackle of automatic fire, punctuated by thuds Dan judged as light artillery. Or … tanks? The Sudanese had T-76s. Women in rags wailing, shaking fists at the sky as an SH-60, the model the Army called the Black Hawk, whacked overhead.

“Rumors are a senior deputy of elusive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, suspected of several attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East, was engaged in the planning of the elaborate trap.”

“‘Trap,’” Roald repeated drily. “Damn it — they’re going to want to put out a react. A statement. Along with Korea … and no matter whether we’ve actually had the time to think it through. Anyway. They tell me you know strike plans.”

“I’ve done my share.”

“CENTCOM’s been proposing for some time that instead of fighting the rebels in Eritrea, we hit their base camps and weapons dumps inside Sudan. Now they want to do it to relieve the pressure on Kerkerbit. Mrs. C wants us to evaluate their plan.”

Dan tried to focus. Lethality analyses. Vulnerable dimensions metrics. Roald was still talking. “Is what they’re proposing reasonable? Short term. Long term. We don’t have time for a paper. Just talking points. Any hard spots you see.”

He hesitated. It took a master conductor to orchestrate subordinate commanders to achieve surprise, shock, and overwhelming force while keeping one’s own troops out of the enemy’s lethal envelopes as long as possible. The finished plan could run twenty single-spaced pages. Hours of analysis lay beneath every digit. If one got changed in the wrong way as it ascended the chain of command, people could die who didn’t deserve to. Innocent civilians. Friendly troops. Pilots. He’d seen what could happen if too many fingers got stuck into that pie.

But he wasn’t being asked for an opinion on just the strike plan, but on the whole idea of going over the border into Sudan. Maybe even whether they ought to be in Eritrea at all.

“Got a problem?”

“I don’t think we should be screwing with what the force commander wants to do. The last thing they need is us second-guessing them.”

Roald put her hand on his shoulder. Bent his head close, so the watchstanders couldn’t hear. “I know you’re a new gain, but you’d better reorient your thinking. Crossing that border will extend that war. If the situation goes to shit, there’ll be diplomatic and political fallout. As well as maybe a lot more troops dead. Understand?”

“I hear you, but—”

“Our job’s to advise the president. That means: not blindly accepting what the Chiefs hand us. Second-guessing the generals is our job. And think ahead: effects on allies and neutrals and, yeah, on the domestic constituencies — though that’s more De Bari’s political people that’ll be bending his ear on that. Clayton’s on the line to Nelson Mandela’s office now.”

“Uh … why Nelson Mandela?”

“It’s a joint U.S. — South African task force.”

While Dan contemplated this, Roald’s short nails hit the keyboard. A message flashed on the screen, displacing the mountains, trails, villages of a distant country. “Okay … that’s the preliminary execute order to evacuate Seoul. Pacific Command wants us to posture to Defcon Three to warn the Chinese off. I can’t give Eritrea another minute. Tell me if this strike plan is smart, and if it isn’t, what you recommend. Stoneman here’ll help you. J.T.’s from State. He put in three years in Eritrea before he came to us.”

* * *

For the next five hours, CNN carried speculation by “military experts” on the deepening emergency in Korea. Hundreds of messages streamed in from Pacific Command, Central Command, Strategic Command, and the joint task force commander in Eritrea and the strike assets in the Red Sea. The assistant national security adviser, Brent Gelzinis, argued with Roald in the teleconferencing room.

Hunched at a terminal, Dan and the State analyst made sure the attack aircraft and Tomahawks would arrive on time, and that as few as possible friendly forces, economic assets, and local noncombatants would be endangered. They worked on paper maps a courier brought over from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Western Eritrea and eastern Sudan were not yet e-mapped. Here and there, through Stoneman’s vivid vignettes, Dan got a heartrending glimpse of the ancient Baraka Province, and what was happening as the drought worsened, as crop failure, famine, and now war began to erase its long-suffering but incredibly brave half-Christian, half-Muslim Tigrai and Agau peoples.