Fires of war ft 3, p.1
Fires of War ft-3, page 1
part #3 of First Team Series
Fires of War
( First Team - 3 )
Larry Bond
Jim Defelice
Larry Bond, *New York Times* bestselling author of *Dangerous Ground*, and Jim DeFelice have earned widespread acclaim for the gritty authenticity and spellbinding suspense of their military-political adventures involving the First Team. "The Team" lead by top CIA officer Bob Ferguson, and supported by Special Forces commando Stephen Rankin and Marine Jack Young, is authorized to take immediate action, beyond the bureaucratic restraints of US intelligence or the military establishment, in the ever-surprising War on Terror.
After years of exhaustive negotiations, North Korea's Kim Jong Il abruptly agrees to surrender all of his nuclear weapons. This sudden change in policy has the US suspicious, and the Team is dispatched to uncover the truth. Newest Team operative, the young and beautiful Thera Majed, goes undercover during the preliminary inspections of the entire Korean peninsula, on a mission so sensitive that she will be disavowed if discovered. But when she discovers hidden weapons in South Korea, a firestorm of debate is set off in Washington. A public announcement of their suspicions could derail the North Korean agreement, and the South Korean government may not even be aware of the weapons' existence. Ferg and the rest of the Team jump in to investigate, and the closer they get to the truth, the harder mysterious forces work to keep them away. Someone is planning for a full-scale nuclear attack that would throw the civilized world into political and economic upheaval, and Ferg and the Team are the only ones in the position to stop them.
Larry Bond, Jim DeFelice
Fires of War
Dramatis Personae
FIRST TEAM
Bob “Ferg” Ferguson
Sgt. Stephen “Skip” Rankin, U.S. Army
Sgt. Jack “Guns” Young, U.S. Marines
Thera Majed
SUPPORT PERSONNEL
Col. Charles Van Buren, commander, 777th Special Forces
Jack Corrigan, mission coordinator
Lauren DiCapri, mission coordinator
WASHINGTON
Corrine Alston, counsel to the president
Jonathon McCarthy, president of the United States
Thomas Parnelles, CIA director
Daniel Slott, deputy director, CIA
Josh Franklin, assistant secretary of defense
Senator Gordon Tewilliger
James Hannigan, legislative assistant to Sen. Tewilliger
SOUTH KOREA
Park Jin Tae, businessman
NORTH KOREA
General Namgung il-Tan, commander First Armed Forces
Dr. Tak Ch’o, scientist, Peoples’ Waste Site 1
ACT I
Heartless time floats,
A dream, on and on…
— from "The Seventh Princess," traditional Korean song for the dead
1
SICILY
“Dance?”
The blonde took a step backward, clutching at the collar of her blouse as if it had been wide open.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Come on. You look like you could use a dance.” Bob Ferguson gestured to the side of the open piazza, where a small jazz band was playing. “They’re playing our song.”
“This isn’t dance music,” said the woman stiffly, “and you’re very forward.”
“Usually I’m not,” Ferguson turned to the woman’s companion and pleaded his case, “but I’m here on holiday. Tell your friend she should dance with me.”
“I don’t know.”
Ferguson laughed and turned back to the blonde. “I’m not going to bite. You’re British, right?”
“I am from Sweden.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“You’re Irish?”
“As sure as the sun rises.” He stuck out his hand. “Dance?”
The woman didn’t take his hand.
“How about you?” Ferguson asked, turning to the other woman.
“I’m Greek.”
“No, I meant, would you dance?”
Thera Majed hesitated but only for a moment. Then, shrugging to her companion, she stepped over to Ferguson, who immediately put his hand on her hip and waltzed her into the open space near the tables.
“Hello, Cinderella,” whispered Ferguson. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. What’s going on?”
“I felt like dancing.”
“I’ll bet. What would you have done if Julie accepted your offer?”
“I would have enjoyed two dances.”
Ferguson whisked her out of the way of a hurrying waiter.
“There’s no one else dancing, you know,” said Thera.
“Really? ‘But I only have eyes, for you.’” Ferguson sang the last words, grabbing a snatch of a song.
“Why are you contacting me?”
“Itinerary’s changed,” he said, spinning her around.
“What’s up?” she asked as she came back to him.
“Everything’s being moved forward. Some sort of push by the UN. You’re leaving for Korea in the morning.”
Ferguson danced her around, improvising a stride slightly quicker than a standard foxtrot to swing with the jazz beat. He’d learned to dance as a teenager in prep school — the only useful subject he picked up there, according to his father.
“We’re not going to have time to get security people on your team,” he whispered, pulling her back.
He felt her arms stiffen and started another twirl.
“You all right, Cinderella?” he asked her, reeling her back in.
“Of course,” said Thera.
“We’ll have people standing by. Relief caches will go in while you’re down South, exactly where we’d said they’d be. Plan’s the same; you’re just not going to have anyone on the IAEA inspection team with you.” He stopped and looked at her. “You cool with that?”
The IAEA was the International Atomic Energy Agency. After two months of training, Thera had been planted on the agency as a technical secretary; her team had just finished an inspection in Libya.
“I’m OK, Ferg. We shouldn’t make this too obvious, do you think?”
“Hey, I’m having fun,” he said, leaning her over.
He glanced toward the Swedish scientist, who was watching them with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and outrage. Ferguson gave the blonde a smile and pulled Thera back up.
“If you want to bail, call home. We’ll grab you.”
“I’m OK, Ferg. I can do it.”
“Slap me.”
“Huh?”
“Slap me, because I just told you how desperately I want to take you to bed.”
“I—“
“’I only have eyes, for you…’”
“I won’t,” said Thera loudly. She took a step back and put her hands on her hips. “No.”
“Come on,” said Ferguson. “We’re obviously meant for each other.”
Thera told him in Greek that he was an animal and a pig. The first words sputtered. She imagined herself to be the technical secretary she was portraying, not the skilled CIA paramilitary looking for violations of the new Korean nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
And she imagined Ferguson not to be her boss and the man who had saved her neck just a few months before but a snake and a rogue and a thief, roles he was well accustomed to playing.
Though he was a handsome rogue, truth be told.
“Go away,” she said in English. Her cheeks were warm. “Go!”
“Should I take that as a no?” Ferguson asked.
Thera turned and stomped to her table.
* * *
She seemed to take that well,” said Stephen Rankin sarcastically when Ferguson got back to the table. “What’d you do, kick her in her shins?”
“I tried to, but she wouldn’t stand still.” Ferguson sipped from the drink, a Sicilian concoction made entirely from local liquor. It tasted like sweet but slightly turned orange juice and burned the throat going down, which summed up Sicily fairly well.
“You think she’s gonna bail?” Rankin asked.
“Nah. Why do you think that?”
“I don’t think that. I’m asking if you think that.”
Ferguson watched Thera talking with the Swedish female scientist. He could still smell the light scent of her perfume and feel the sway of her body against his.
She wasn’t going to quit, but she was afraid. He’d sensed it, dancing with her. But fear wasn’t the enemy most people thought. In some cases, for some people, fear made them sharper, smarter, and better.
Ferguson thought Thera was that kind of person; she’d certainly done well in Syria, and there was as much reason to be afraid then as there would be in North Korea.
He jumped to his feet to chase the thought away “Let’s get going, Skippy.”
“One of these days I’m going to sock you for calling me Skippy.”
“I wish you’d try. Let’s get out to the airport.”
2
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Ms. Alston? Ma’am?”
Corrine looked up from her computer to see Jess Northrup, poking his head in the doorway.
“President was wondering if you could wander into his office in about five minutes,” said Northrup, who as an assistant to the chief of staff was the president’s schedule keeper. “Senator Tewilliger’s in there.”
“Thanks, Jess.” Corrine hit the Save button and stood up. “How’s the car?”
&nb
“You promised me a ride with the top down.”
“Soon as it’s done.”
Northrup’s car was a 1966 Mustang convertible he’d started rebuilding soon after Jonathon McCarthy won reelection as senator nearly four years before. McCarthy was now president, but Northrup’s car still lacked key items, among them an engine.
“Do you have a fresh yellow pad?” she asked her secretary, Teri Gatins, in the outer office.
“Wandering into the Oval Office?” said Gatins.
Corrine returned the assistant’s smirk. Having an aide “spontaneously” interrupt him was a favorite McCarthy tactic for cutting short visits from people like Gordon Tewilliger, who were too important and dangerous to blow off but too dense to take all but the most obvious hint that it was time to leave.
“You have that appointment with Director Parnelles at Langley on Special Demands this afternoon,” said Gatins as Corrine took the notebook. “Should I get you a sandwich?”
“I’m not really hungry. It’s only eleven.”
“I’ll get corned beef,” said the secretary, picking up the phone.
* * *
The president’s office was only a few feet down the hall, but in that distance Corrine transformed herself, consciously changing her stride and stare. Senator Gordon Tewilliger was not, technically speaking, an enemy, but he was far from a friend.
Very far. Though he was a member of McCarthy’s own party, there were strong rumors that he was thinking about launching a primary fight against him. The election was a good three years away, and Tewilliger had steadfastly denied that he was interested in the job, but even the news-people thought he was testing the water.
Corrine winked at Northrup, knocked once on the door, and pushed inside.
“Well, now, if I didn’t know any better, Gordon,” said McCarthy, eyes fixed on Tewilliger, “I might think one or two of those projects there smelled of pork.”
“Pork?”
“Pork might not be the proper word in this context.” McCarthy came by his South Carolina accent honestly — his forebears, as he liked to call them, had been in the state since before the revolution — but sometimes it was more honest than others. At the moment it was honest in the extreme.
“I expect that many of those programs are important programs in their own right,” added McCarthy. “One or two of those highway patrol elements, I believe, should be funded through Transportation. And in a case or two of high priority relating to homeland defense, those items might be added by our budget director, working in close relation with your staff, of course.”
Senator Tewilliger, who for a moment had felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach, now felt like a man pulled from the ocean. He knew it was partly, perhaps mostly, a game — he’d seen McCarthy operating in the Senate and was well aware how smooth he could be — but still, in that instant he felt grateful, even flattered, that the president was going to help him.
Then he felt something else: the absolute conviction that he, Gordon Tewilliger, deserved to be the next president of the United States. McCarthy couldn’t be trusted with power like this.
Corrine cleared her throat. “I didn’t realize you were in the middle of something.”
“Well, now, Miss Alston, I am always in the middle of something,” said McCarthy. “Isn’t that right, Senator?”
“Yes. Corrine, how are you?” Tewilliger nodded in Corrine’s direction.
“Senator Tewilliger and I were just discussing how important the security of Indiana is. He has been doing quite a bit of work to ensure that we do not forget the state in the upcoming homeland defense bill.”
“Just keeping the home fires burning,” said the senator.
It occurred to Corrine that, had McCarthy lost his bid for president, she could well be working for Tewilliger right now, as counsel to the Senate Armed Services Committee; he had inherited the chairmanship when McCarthy left.
Then again, she and Tewilliger had clashed in the past, and it was much more likely that he would have fired her. He liked his aides and staffers to be people he could push around.
Tewilliger got up to leave; McCarthy got up as well, extending his hand. “It occurs to me, Gordon, that you haven’t declared which way you will vote on the Korean nonproliferation treaty.”
“No, I haven’t,” said Tewilliger.
“Well, now, I hope you will explain your views to me on any possible objection you have.”
“I’m not sure I have any objections.”
McCarthy continued to grip the senator’s hand. “You’re worried about verification of the treaty?”
“We all have concerns.”
“That is a difficult section of the entire document, I must give you that.” McCarthy glanced toward Corrine. “Have you had a chance to finish your review, Miss Alston?”
“I have looked at it, yes, sir,” said Corrine. The president made it sound offhand, but in fact Corrine had reviewed several drafts of the treaty and spent countless hours with State Department lawyers refining some of the language.
“And what do you think?” said McCarthy.
“At first blush, the language appears solid. The difficulty is making sure North Korea complies with it.”
“Now that is the first time I think in the history of the Union, perhaps in the history of mankind, that a lawyer has admitted there is something of importance beyond the letter and face of the law,” said McCarthy. He turned back to Senator Tewilliger. “I have some concerns about verification, but ultimately our question should be: Is the treaty better than nothing?”
“I’ve always taken a hard line with North Korea,” said Tewilliger. “We have to be tough with them. We need assurances.”
“What sort of assurance would be sufficient, Senator?” asked Corrine. “We have their six warheads under constant surveillance. Their launch vehicles have been dismantled. The International Atomic Energy Agency will inspect all military and nuclear facilities on the peninsula and Japan. Beyond that, we have the satellites and—”
“That’s another thing that bothers me,” said Tewilliger. “South Korea is being treated like a pariah here.”
“Well, now, Gordon, I have to say the South Koreans are the least part of the problem,” said McCarthy. “They have less to hide than the preacher’s wife.”
“I didn’t say they were a problem, just that they have to be treated fairly.”
“True, true,” said the president. “Perhaps you could give the verification matter additional thought. Maybe someone from State could go over and brief your committee.”
“Yes. Of course.” Tewilliger decided it was time to leave. “I better let you get back to work.”
“Always a pleasure talking to you, Gordon,” said McCarthy, walking with him to the door.
“South Korea’s being treated unfairly?” said Corrine after the senator was gone. “Where did that come from?”
The president pulled his chair out and sat down. He had known Corrine literally all of her life; her father was one of his best friends, and he had visited the family at the hospital the day after she was born. She’d worked for him since high school, first as a volunteer, then as a lawyer.
“Well, dear. What the senator just told us is very interesting,” explained McCarthy. His thick Southern drawl not only made “dear” sound like “deah”; it removed any hint of condescension. “I would wager a good part of the back forty that some of Senator Tewilliger’s Korean-American constituents are feeling that North Korea is getting all of the attention.”
“The South Koreans pushed for the deal.”
“South Korea did, yes. We are not talking about South Korea. We’re talking about the senator’s constituents. Very different.”
McCarthy leaned back in his seat. Against his wishes, the disarmament treaty had become an important centerpiece of his foreign-policy strategy, an important test not only of his plans to limit the growth of nuclear weapons — Iran was his next target — but of his influence with Congress. Lose the vote, and Congress would feel emboldened to block any number of initiatives.
