The Return of the Marines Trilogy Read online

  he said.

  She didn’t know the duty officer’s name, so she just asked “What do we know? Do we have communications with them?”

  “No, Madame Vice-President. We have no communications with the president. But it looks like the president is alive. We saw him on CNN being helped into the embassy building. He might be hurt, though.”

  She sat down in the President’s chair. Well, it was up to her now. He certainly was not going to be sitting in the chair during this crisis. This was on her to fix.

  Jennifer Wright had been in politics for a long, long time. If someone had told her while she was a Congressional page while in high school or when she was working as a young volunteer for Ronald Reagan’s campaign, that she would someday be vice-president, she would have been overjoyed. But now that she was vice-president, she wanted more. She wanted the Oval Office. Oh, she jumped at the offer of being Eduardo’s running mate. She knew her credentials as chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee and then her subsequent executive experience as governor of Virginia shored up some perceived weaknesses in what Eduardo brought to the table in the election. But after getting to know the man, she was sure that she would make a better president. She didn’t really have anything against him as a person, but she thought his idealism and adherence to budgetary issues made him less than the right man for the job. And while she realized that the vice-presidency could be the final boost she needed to make a run of her own for the presidency, finally putting a woman in the oval office, she was getting older. The voters were far more forgiving of older men running for office than older women. It was possible that after eight years of an Eduardo presidency, she might be considered too old for the job.

  She didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt at the surge of excitement that flowed through her upon hearing the news. Could her chance at the Oval Office be coming sooner rather than later?

  Chapter 9

  Late Tuesday Morning, US Embassy, New Delhi

  Sgt Niimoto and LCpl Fallgatter rushed into the room. They took in the scene in a split second and rushed up to Gunny Mac.

  Gunny realized that everyone was looking at him. He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, calming him down a hair.

  “Sgt Niimoto, everything OK in the tunnel? Any problems?” he asked.

  “It was fine, Gunny. No problem.”

  Niimoto was breathing hard, whether from excitement or from running, Gunny couldn’t tell.

  “OK, Niimoto, Fallgatter, Steptoe, Kramer, start a security sweep. Check for any classified, but do it quick. Meet me at the vault. Saad, you OK?”

  “Sure Gunny.”

  Saad’s dress blues blouse was off and someone had bandaged his shoulder.

  “OK, go with them. Meet me at the vault.”

  Saad nodded, then rushed out of the room to join the others.

  Gunny Mac looked at Van Slyke. It still looked like half of his face was a mess of blood and tissue.

  “How about you?” he asked.

  “I’m OK,” he sputtered, drops of blood spraying as he spoke.

  “Stay here with the president. You too, Ramon. Major, can I ask you to stay here as well?” Gunny Mac asked.

  Major Defilice simply nodded.

  “Sergeant, where are you going? Shouldn’t you be staying here protecting us? Or calling for help?” the president asked.

  Gunny looked up at the president, who was glowering at him.

  “With all due respect sir, we have to destroy the classified. This area is fairly secure right now, and the major, PFC Ramon, and LCpl Van Slyke will watch you and Ms. Howard. We’ll work on getting us out of this once the classified is destroyed.”

  “You are leaving me here with a soldier who has had his face blown away, and two other soldiers who aren’t even armed?” the president asked, sounding indignant.

  “Private First Class Van Slyke and Private First Class Ramon are Marines, sir, not soldiers.” He looked to Major Defilice. “Nothing derogatory intended, sir,” he added. “And as far as arms, we’ll take care of that shortly. “

  He came to attention, did an about face, then marched out, ignoring the protests arising from the president. Actually, he felt embarrassed that the president had brought up the fact that only he was truly armed with both a weapon and ammunition, even if it was only an ancient 9 mm pistol. He should have thought of that himself. He ran to Post 1, barely glancing at the body of Sgt Ashley, which still lay up against the bulkhead.

  “Rodriguez! Run down to the auxiliary weapons locker and get weapons and ammo for everyone. Everything you can carry.”

  He pulled out the electronic key for the weapons locker and gave it to Rodriguez.

  “Do we have any battle gear left?” Gunny asked, already knowing the answer but asking anyway.

  “No Gunny, me and Van Slyke helped SSgt Harwood and Cpl Ashley box all that up last week and got it ready for pick-up.”

  The Army was under contract to the Department of the Navy to provide body armor and weapons to the Marines. The new body armor was to be delivered the prior week and the old shipped back to the States. The problem was that the new armor was held up in Indian customs, something to do with it being shipped via DHL as normal supplies when the Indian customs agents thought they were “instruments of war.” Gunny Mac had tried to keep possession of the old body armor until the new actually arrived, but the shipping arrangements had already been made, and the company First Sergeant in Nicosia had told him they didn’t have the authority to stop an Army shipment. So the old body armor had been boxed and shipped.

  He really wished he had that battle gear now. But there was no use stressing over it—it was what it was. He grabbed PFC Rodriguez by the shoulder and gave him a light push. “Well, get what you can and meet us down at the vault.”

  Gunny rushed back down the hallway, swiped his card at the hatch to the stairwell, then ran bounding down the steps three at a time. He turned the corner and sprinted to the end of the passage and swiped his card again. He ran down one more set of steps, then back up the corridor to the vault. Putting in his key, he waited, but nothing happened. Taking it back out, he carefully inserted it again. The five lights went one by one from red to green, then a voice prompted him to put his chin in the cradle. He did, and a puff of air blew on his right eye. The voice let him know he was who he should be, and the hatch to the vault opened. In front of him, the barred doors remained closed, but perversely, these doors would open to anyone with an embassy card. He swiped the card, and the bars slid back.

  In front of him was a room about 20 feet deep and 10 feet wide. The shelves to the right held an assortment of ciphers and hard drives. The shelves to the left held files of paper. All were labeled, and all had individual RFID transmitters. Each time a piece of classified material left the vault, the radio transmission from the RFID let the tracking software know the classified material had left the secured area. All existing materials were tracked this way, and newly created materials were logged in when they were first taken to the vault. With the president’s visit, almost all material should have been returned, but a quick look at the monitor showed Gunny that there was a hard drive from the Commercial Attaché’s desk missing. Gunny hoped Niimoto would find that as well as anything else not yet logged in as classified.

  Each shelf was covered with a piece of metallic-looking plastic. And on each shelf, there were folded-up bags. These bags looked like normal paper bags, but upon closer inspection, they had a series of wires embedded in them. Gunny had never used the new Classified Neutralization System before except in training, but it sure beat the old system. Just put the classified material in the bag, be it paper, crypto gear, or hard drives, seal the bag, place it on the shelf, then flip the switch on the right hand side of each shelf. Without heat, the classified material was destroyed. Utterly. Gunny didn’t really know how it worked, only that it did.

  Starting on the lower right shelf, he began stuffing the paper in the bags and then sealing them. H
e was about half-way through when the rest of the Marines arrived. Saad had the missing hard drive, and Niimoto had some papers. Together, they were able to prep the rest of the materials in another two minutes or so.

  Despite the fact that the destruction released no heat nor gases, the Marines stepped back.

  “Everyone ready?” Gunny asked the others. There were nods all around. “OK, here goes.”

  Gunny flipped the master switch. There was an audible puff as each bag seemed to shudder. Even having done this in training, this still seemed anti-climatic. Sgt Niimoto opened one of the bags containing paper. Inside was what looked like grey ash. He opened one of the bags that had held hard drives. The drives inside had obviously fused. “Well, I guess that’s that!”

  Gunny set the vault controls to open access so he wouldn’t have to go through the entire procedure again to open the hatch. This was normally only used for allowing large amounts of items to be brought in and out, but Gunny wanted instant access for any member of his detail. He would have to remember to reset the access though, as open access was limited to two hours before reverting to normal.

  They backed out of the vault, and Gunny was surprised to see the Indian staff member he had seen earlier dutifully waiting for him.

  Sgt Niimoto said, “This is Mr. Dravid. We found him in the Ambassador’s office ready to serve tea.”

  “Sir, can you please tell me what is happening? Is Ambassador Tankersly well?” the man asked.

  The man seemed genuinely worried. Gunny had a moment of strong suspicion, which he suppressed.

  “The ambassador is dead,” Gunny said without hesitation.

  Dravid stopped wringing his hands and his mouth dropped open. Gunny wondered what to do with the man. Well, he could decide that later.

  “Follow us for now,” Gunny told him.

  They moved as a group back up the stairs to the upper deck. On the second deck up, they met PFC Rodriguez already there burdened with weapons. Rushing forward, they (except for Dravid) relieved him of the rifles, grenades, and magazines of ammunition.

  “I left some of them in with Van Slyke and that Army major already,” the PFC told him.

  Gunny nodded, realizing he should have told Rodriguez to do that in the first place.

  Feeling a little better for being armed, the six Marines retraced their steps and returned to the office with the president. Things did not look good, but having a weapon in hand with the ability to cause somebody, anybody, grievous bodily harm, did wonders for the Marine psyche.

  Chapter 10

  Late Tuesday Morning, US Embassy, New Delhi

  Gunny led his Marines back into the office. Major Defilice, PFC Ramon, and LCpl Van Slyke jumped up, weapons at the ready. The president was still sitting on the desk, not looking like he had moved since he first sat down.

  “Hey, you might want to take a look at this,” Loralee Howard said from where she was in the back of the office near a coffee mess.

  Gunny went over to find her watching a television. He looked at it for a second before realizing that it was a live shot of the embassy.

  “CNN at work,” Major Defilice said as he moved up in back of Gunny Mac and was looking over his shoulder at the TV.

  The scene was evidently shot from one of CNN’s ubiquitous satellites, and it clearly showed both the mobs outside the embassy and bodies still lying on the ground in the courtyard. The mob seemed to be all facing the same direction, listening to a man up on the roof of a parked car. An announcer kept saying that the fate of the president was unknown at this time, and that the vice-president was meeting with the cabinet in Washington to deal with the crisis.

  “I bet she is,” the president said sourly.

  The president had moved off the desk and joined the group at the TV. He seemed a little unsteady, but otherwise in control.

  “Well, what now? Have you been able to contact anyone?” he asked.

  “No sir.” We seem to have been cut off,” Gunny said, staring at the screen for a few seconds longer.

  “Sgt Niimoto, do you think you can take the sniper rifle and climb the bell tower? Think it would do any good? It seems to me that a few well-placed shots could stop the mob from coming in.”

  Niimoto’s face lit up as he said, “Sure Gunny, I imagine I can do that.”

  “Take Rodriguez with you.”

  “Gunny, you’re going to need everyone you can here. I’ll go it alone,” Sgt Niimoto said.

  Gunny Mac hesitated a second, then nodded and said, “OK, but hook up to the landline jack as soon as you get there. Call Post 1 and let me know when you’re set up.”

  “Aye-aye, Gunny.”

  Sgt Niimoto turned around and walked out to go to the weapons locker to pick up the sniper rifle, then to wend his way through the service tunnels to the bell tower.

  “Where are the Indian police?” asked Loralee Howard.

  Gunny turned around to look at her as she watched the television.

  “Shouldn’t they be coming to disperse the mob? Doesn’t look like they intend to do much,” she said, pointing to the screen where men in uniform seemed to be simply watching the crowd.

  “You are right ma’am,” put in the major.

  “Honey, I am no one’s ‘ma’am.’ Call me Loralee. Seems to me getting out of this mess is a little more important than protocol.”

  She gave a measured glance at the president, who seemed not to notice.

  “OK, ma’—, uh, I mean Loralee. But you’re right. They should be blasting away the mob. But they aren’t doing anything,”

  the major noted.

  The president seemed to pull himself together. “Sergeant, I need to contact Washington, now. I’m going to see an end to this.”

  “Sir, we don’t have communications. Even our Mayday didn’t get out. They’ve got to be jamming us somehow,” Gunny told him.

  “How can they be jamming us? Doesn’t this place have our best, most secure equipment?”

  “Well, yes sir, but we aren’t getting anything out.”

  “This is bullshit! I am the President of the United States of America, still the most powerful nation in the world. How the hell am I stuck in an office in the US Embassy with eight soldiers and a diplomat’s wife? Just how the hell does this happen?”

  “One soldier, sir. One soldier and nine Marines,” Gunny said quietly but with conviction, hooking his thumb to point at Childs and Wynn, lying on the desks.

  The president looked perplexed for a moment before saying, “I don’t care if you want to call yourselves Campfire girls, you are just soldiers. I have dealt with you Marines before, and you always thought you were special, but you are just soldiers, just public servants. Now get me some communications!”

  Gunny Mac looked at the president, not knowing how to respond. He finally did a mental shrug, then simply said “Aye-aye sir.”

  He walked out of the office and back to Post 1. Sgt McAllister looked up as he came. And yes, she winked. Gunny snorted in disbelief. McAllister was some sort of crazy!

  “Do you have any comms with anyone?” he asked her.

  “Just with Post 2. They keep asking what they should be doing.”

  “Nothing with anyone outside the embassy?”

  “Nope. Nobody wants to talk with us.”

  “Well, fuck. We’ve got to get somebody. Niimoto should be on the landline as well once he gets into the tower.”

  “Yeah, he told me. Korea Joe’s got balls.”

  “So do you, McAllister, so do you,” Gunny Mac told Little Mac.

  He turned to walk back to the office, McAllister letting off a hearty laugh as he left.

  “Big enough for the both of us, Gunny!” she shouted after him.

  LCpl Steptoe was waiting for him at the hatch into the office. “I know how they are jamming us, Gunny. It’s the software.”

  Gunny stared at him without comprehension before simply saying “What?”

  “It is the software. Who does all our programm
ing? The Indians. We send all of it to India.”

  “But this is not Windows. These are highly critical, highly secure programs.”

  “Doesn’t really matter. They’re great programmers, and they do probably all of our programs in our non-secure systems. It doesn’t take a genius to hack into our system and jam us. They might have a hard time breaking into our comms, knowing what we are saying. But they don’t have to do that. All they have to do is block our systems. Turn off a few switches. Walla! We can’t talk.”

  Gunny stared hard at Steptoe. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t it be harder than that?”

  “I never said it’d be easy. But with an entry into the system, a talented programmer could shut us down.”

  “Can you fix it?” Gunny asked.

  “Give me a couple weeks, maybe. But I think I have another way. You know Crocker likes the Sox? Dang, of course you know that. But do you know how he gets the games?” When Gunny shook his head, Steptoe went on. “I took his PDA, and I programmed it to work as a repeater for the very low frequency transmitter and receiver I built at the Marine House. Really low. Lower than anything we have here. It travels pretty long distances, even with the low power. I’ve got a buddy of mine in Katmandu. He works there for Oracle. He just hooks up a netcast of the game, then retransmits it to our receiver at the Marine House, then it goes to Crocker on his PDA. If I can get his PDA, I can probably reach my buddy. I don’t think the Indians would be blocking anything that low from here.”

  Steptoe looked expectantly at Gunny Mac as he digested what he had been told. Gunny’s eyes lit up. “

  So we can get comm out!” Good job!” Then as a thought crossed his mind, his countenance fell. “But where’s Crocker’s PDA? Back at the Marine House?”

  “Gunny, Crocker never went anywhere without his PDA. He probably had it on him when he was hit,” Steptoe told him.

  “He had his PDA in an honor guard? What was he thinking?”

  Then realizing that Crocker would not be thinking anything else, ever, Gunny fell into silence. He also realized that Crocker now lay in the courtyard, in plain view of the mob.