fighters could respond in kind, cutting down the Iraqi soldiers in an unrelenting storm of gunfire. Sixteen Iraqi soldiers had died in the encounter, two Marines. It had been two too many, as far as Simmons was concerned.
He clenched his jaw. Simmons had never lost a man in the field, ever. After that night, war had become intensely personal.
Stepping from the elevator, he walked down a corridor, following it as it jogged left then right. He passed through another pair of bulletproof glass doors, into a control room similar to the one he’d left behind downstairs. After the requisite security checks, he crossed the room and slipped into another, smaller room where several men and women in business suits sat at a large mahogany table with polished brass inlaid trim.
Simmons ignored the other six and focused on a big bear of a man seated at the head of the table. CIA director James Lee returned the stare.
“Good news, David?”
“No, sir.”
“Tell me what’s wrong. And for God’s sake, pull the rod out of your ass and stand like a normal person.”
It was only then that Simmons realized he stood at attention, legs and back bolt upright, arms and hands stabbing toward the floor. Old training died hard, he thought. And he’d caught himself in more than one stressful moment falling back on the order and discipline of the military.
“It’s the operation, sir. We need to talk.”
He paused while Lee dismissed the others in the room.
“Sit down, David.”
“I prefer to stand, sir.”
“Fine. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“You told me to inform you of any irregularities, right?”
A worried look passed over Lee’s features. Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his elbows on the table and stared intently at Simmons. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“One of the informants failed to make a rendezvous.”
“His whereabouts?”
“Unknown.”
“So we may have been compromised?” Lee asked.
Simmons shrugged. “It’s possible. But I can’t say that with certainty.”
Looking up from the table, Lee met Simmons’s gaze. “Well, what can you say with certainty?”
“That the informant missed the rendezvous.”
“You already told me that. But what the hell does it mean?”
“Hard to say. The guy might have gotten cold feet. He might be waiting at his girlfriend’s house, hoping the whole thing just blows over. It’s hard to find people in Iraq willing to cross Saddam.”
“Can we track him down?’
Simmons shook his head. “Not a good idea. If we make too big a stink, we raise everyone’s suspicions. Whole thing goes to hell after that.”
“Well, give me something I can work with here. Can we accomplish this mission without him?”
“Possibly. He had the itinerary information. He could place Saddam within a five-minute window. Without that, we may have to expose ourselves for longer periods, probably forty-five minutes to an hour.”
“What’s your comfort level with this?”
Simmons pondered this for a moment. In an operation such as this, with a paranoid target like Hussein, any deviation from the plan was cause for alarm. “Stone, Archer and Doyle are three of our best operatives. They adapt quickly to adversity. We’ve been training the Iraqis for six months. They’re good to go.”
Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m comfortable. As long as my men get the air support they need, they can pull off this mission.”
Lee leaned back in his chair. Lacing his fingers together into a double fist, he stared at his thumbnails, as though lost in thought.
“You bearing a grudge?”
“Sir?”
“I know about the op in ’91. You lost men, good ones. Is that clouding your judgment?”
Anger colored Simmons face and heated the skin of his shoulders and arms. His hands clenched into fists. Lee’s bluntness took him by surprise. “Of course not. I won’t put my men in harm’s way just to settle a score.”
Lee came to his full six-foot, four-inch height and stared down at Simmons. “You’re right,” he said. “You won’t.”
A lurch that had nothing to do with the cancer passed through Simmons’s belly. “Excuse me?”
“No mission. Not tonight, anyway. My orders from the President were explicit—a surgical strike. Quick and deadly. No hint of American involvement in this, period. The Middle East is a goddamn tinderbox as it is. We don’t need to put a blow torch to it by creating another Bay of Pigs. My gut says to abort the mission. If you were using your damn head, you’d see the same thing.”
“Sir—”
“I want those people out of there. Tonight. End of conversation. Don’t get greedy. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to plug this bastard before retirement rolls around.”
“Jim—”
Lee held up a hand to silence Simmons. “Make the call. I want our people out of Iraq within twelve hours. If you hand me a problem, I’ll hand you back more trouble than you can handle.”
Squelching an impulse to punch Lee in the solar plexus, Simmons snapped ramrod-straight to attention and fixed his gaze on an invisible spot on the wall. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“I knew I could count on you, David.”
From his peripheral vision, Simmons saw Lee smile and more rage bubbled up from within.
Lee ignored his subordinate. Hooking his jacket with two fingers, he hefted the garment and slung it over a narrow shoulder. A moment later he was gone and Simmons was alone, numb.
His stomach burning as he exited the meeting room, Simmons reached into his shirt pocket and extracted two painkillers. He’d been warned not to exceed the dose, that it might impair his coordination, his judgment. So what? According to Lee, his judgment was already flawed and Simmons’s body hurt like hell.
Returning to his own command center, Simmons considered Lee’s words. Lee was a flaming jerk, but he made a good point. A botched coup attempt in Iraq only would solidify support for Saddam Hussein, make him a sympathetic figure on the Arab street. And the coup’s backer, America, would walk away with egg on its face, a superpower unable to topple a two-bit dictator.
You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to plug this bastard before retirement rolls
