Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (readera ebook reader .TXT) 📗

in all directions paid him the slightestattention. More than twenty-five thousand military personnel and civilians were employed inside the enormous building. Andin a place where Army, Air Force, and Marine generals and Navy admirals were a dime a dozen, a junior officer, even one witha police escort, apparently didn’t rate so much as the flicker of an eye.

Maybe it was a trick of the poetic imagination he’d inherited from his Irish immigrant grandfather, a teller of many tales, but something about this silent procession through the bowels of the Pentagon struck him as eerie—as though he were nothing but a ghost drifting through this massive military bureaucratic machine. Jet lag brought on by an overnight flight from the Middle East only intensified this weird sense of disembodiment, as did the preemptory orders he’d received to report here today for “further debriefing on the Wath Incident.”

Flynn honestly wasn’t sure what more there was to analyze about the tribal ambush and its aftermath. He and the other survivorshad spent days with Air Force and DoD investigators. Every observation, word, and action they could recall had been relentlesslyprobed, questioned, and challenged in an effort to develop a clearer and more detailed picture of how the attack unfoldedand how it was repelled. The precision-guided munitions used to destroy the downed C-130 and its cargo had also obliteratedevery scrap of physical evidence, so all that was left were differing and imperfect human memories.

With Flynn in tow, the gray-shirted police officer turned right into a narrower hallway, one of the five concentric ringsthat ran around each floor of the huge building. Two Marine sergeants in camouflage battle dress uniforms stood on guard outsidea door a few yards farther on.

“This is Captain Nicholas Flynn, USAF, reporting here as ordered,” the police officer announced. “You have him?”

The older of the two Marine noncoms nodded. “I relieve you of the responsibility, Sergeant,” he said formally. Without anyfurther word, the policeman turned around and walked away.

Curiouser and curiouser, Flynn thought, raising an eyebrow in surprise. He offered the two sentries a dry smile. “So I’m your ‘responsibility’ now?Is that some kind of new DoD code word for ‘prisoner’?”

“Couldn’t say, sir,” the younger Marine sergeant replied woodenly. He held out a hand. “May I have your cell phone, please?”He nodded toward the door and its adjoining electronic card reader and ten-key pad. “That’s a secure room. Per SOP, no personalelectronic devices are allowed inside.”

Wordlessly, Flynn handed over his phone and watched the guard stash it in a lockbox. Then he stood still while the noncompatted him down, making a final check for any additional prohibited devices. He glanced at the door. The usual alphanumericcode used to identify rooms inside the Pentagon had been covered over by another sign: i-con (t).

“Icon?” he asked.

“Intelligence Conference,” the older sergeant explained.

With the (t) signaling that it was only a temporary use of this particular facility, Flynn realized. Maybe even just for today’s scheduledexercise in once again plowing the same stony ground of trying to figure out exactly what had gone wrong in the Libyan desert.

The Marine swiped his ID card through the reader and rapidly punched in a code on the pad. With an audible click, the doorunlocked. “Go right on inside, sir,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”

Which was probably pretty much what the Babylonian guards had said to Daniel right before they shoved him into the lion’sden, Flynn decided warily. He took a quick look around the room as he entered. Five men were seated behind a long table. Fourof them were military. The fifth was a beefy, overweight civilian in a dark suit, a collared white shirt, and a red silk tie.

A couple of the Pentagon brass, a colonel and a major general, were from the Air Force. The other pair were Army, both ofthem brigadier generals. Oddly, and in Flynn’s view, ominously, no one else in the room had a name tag or an ID badge on hisuniform or coat. That was totally against all regulations. What the hell was going on here? He took a closer look at the civilianat the far end of the table. Everything about the guy shouted high-ranking CIA executive. You could take the man out of Langley,but you couldn’t take the shadowy aura of Langley out of the man.

Definitely worried now, he came to attention. “Captain Nicholas Fl—”

“Take a seat, Captain Flynn,” the Air Force two-star said quietly, interrupting. He indicated the lone chair set in frontof the table.

Working hard to keep any expression off his face, Flynn did as he was told. His mouth felt as dry as dust. Suddenly, thissetup seemed a hell of a lot more like a trial than it did a routine intelligence debrief. More than ever, he thought, thiswas a time to be cautious.

As though he’d read his mind, the major general shook his head. “Relax, son. This is not an official UCMJ proceeding.”

Which was very cold comfort, Flynn concluded. Proceedings conducted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice at least had protections for those involved, including the right to legal counsel if necessary. He leaned forward slightly in his chair. “May I ask exactly what the purpose of this meeting is then, sir?”

The general glanced briefly at the men seated next to him before turning his attention back to Flynn. “Consider this moreof an informal, interagency discussion, Captain,” he said. “Together with our colleague from the CIA here, we’re simply tryingto find a mutually agreeable way to handle this unfortunate situation before it spins further out of control. And we’d appreciateyour cooperation in that effort.”

Spinning out of control? How so? Flynn wondered. From the moment they’d landed back at El Minya, everything that had happenedin Libya had been classified top secret. Under direct orders from higher up, he and all the other survivors had already signedmounds of official paperwork swearing to keep everything hush-hush.

“Maybe you missed the news out there in the back of Bumfuckistan, Flynn, but our bid to keep this quiet has failed. Some sonof a