Rogue (Alex King Book 9), page 2
Standing sat in his Humvee and watched the sun going down across the desert to the west. He nursed the radio in his hand and thoughtfully stared out to the horizon. The sky was on fire. Not just the glow from the setting sun, but to the south as well, where Saddam’s forces had blown up the oil refineries. He had heard that the sand had turned to glass, such was the intensity of the fires.
Standing saw the Captain and called him over. “Get my driver, will you?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been called back to base. You’re in command. I should be back tomorrow by thirteen-hundred hours.”
The Captain nodded. “What for?”
“For the damned chain of command, Captain!” replied Standing sharply. “And I’m counting on you to stop things from going down the pan here. The men have had a taste of riches, and a taste for killing. It’s important to keep them under control.”
“Yes, Sir.” The Captain nodded. “And what about the gold, Sir?”
Standing couldn’t tell if he was being impudent, but he gave the man the benefit of the doubt. He needed to keep the status quo. “We can’t take the gold home. Not yet. But I am going into business next year, when I retire. I’ve made the right contacts already. Imports and exports. I have approached the Pentagon for the removal of damaged and destroyed military hardware, ours, the ally’s and the enemy’s. There’s a whole load of scrap metal out here, and when the war finishes, and peacekeepers are keeping the region secure, millions of tons of scrap metal will need clearing up. It’s the perfect cover for this little… venture. It’s fallen into our laps, and I have the means to get it back out. Tell the men they will have to be patient, but in a year or two, we all get an equal share. Hell, I’ll put them all on the payroll to come back out here and get it moved. You can be a senior partner.” He smiled and turned towards the sky, the sun having set and the sky above burning illustrious and yellow. “Look, it’s golden, just like our future.”
Chapter Five
They had passed the first of the camps. MPs were processing the prisoners, who after forty-two days and nights of continuous bombing from the air, had gladly thrown down their arms and walked to where they were handed out biscuits and bottled water and told through the medium of flyers dropped from the air, that they would not be detained long.
An MP looked at him coldly as he drove slowly by. The man was a major, like Standing. He stood six-five and would have weighed in at two-fifty, all shoulders and chest. He looked back at his team, barking off an order to a small Hispanic female sergeant. Standing caught the man’s eye again, but he clearly had his hands full with mounting prisoners, although he felt it had been close. Had the big major not been swept along with the tide of surrendering enemy soldiers, he would have questioned Standing’s presence for sure.
Standing relaxed as the Humvee swept by. He could see in the prisoners’ eyes that there was distrust, but they frankly hadn’t had other options. They could not hope to cross the desert and most of the vehicles in the area had been destroyed. He thought how lucrative his future contract with the Pentagon would be, but it paled into insignificance with what they had done. The gold would be worth thirty contracts alone, but he would need the scrap metal angle to move it.
When they had cleared the last camp, Standing turned to his driver and said, “Pull over here.”
The man frowned. The road was empty and there was nothing for miles. The light was dull, the last of the sunset to their right, the sky to their left was already full of stars. Enough to see by. “What are we doing?”
Standing smiled. “You performed well, today. You did what was needed.”
“They were jerks,” he said with contempt. “Fucking boy scouts, they had it coming.”
“How so?”
The man shrugged. “We did some shit in Kuwait City. They didn’t like it then, they weren’t going to like that shit this morning, either.”
“What kind of shit in Kuwait City?”
Standing had never heard a soldier display such little regard for a high-ranking officer. But then again, Standing had not behaved like one today. You got the respect you deserved. The unit was close to mutiny, or so he thought. Standards had been on the slide since they had seen the gold, learned that what they had captured from the intelligence officer was merely the tip of the iceburg. It had surprised him how quickly some of the men had taken the order to kill prisoners, but he had not been ready for the swift dispatch of the men who had objected to taking the gold for themselves.
“We haven’t seen women in a while,” the corporal said with a shrug. “Things got a bit rapey when we liberated that hospital. Just a bunch of us and a few nurses…”
“You raped women?”
The soldier sneered at him, squeezed the steering wheel as if to alleviate stress or aggression. “Really? After today, you want to go there?”
“I’m still your commanding officer,” Standing said. “I’m still in charge. And you’ll do well to remember it.”
“Whatever,” the driver said. “We’re all in this shit together. You get the MPs involved in a few of us getting our rocks off, and maybe we won’t keep quiet about you ordering us to execute prisoners…”
“Are you threatening me?”
“They were your orders,” he said. “No capitulation. Nobody to be spared. And you told us to retrieve the gold, bury it so the CIA didn’t commandeer it. Hell, with what Uncle Sam is charging the Arab states for this liberation, the CIA and the rest of the damned country will be in profit!”
Standing smiled. He had it coming. This little grunt wasn’t as stupid as he looked. But then, maybe he was. Standing took the captured Makarov pistol out of his pocket and shot the man through the head. He gasped and groaned, his hands still clasping onto the wheel. They lifted momentarily, as if checking on the bullet wounds each side of his head, then dropped into his lap and lay still. Standing hadn’t expected so much blood, and the wounds pumped out in time with the man’s heartbeat, as if someone were turning a tap on and off. Standing reached across him and opened the door, then shouldered the body out and onto the ground. The man’s legs were kicking and Standing fired another bullet into his head. Still the body moved, but he knew he would soon be still, and the wounds were unrecoverable. He hadn’t killed a man before, and he was surprised how slowly the man had died. Not like the movies, but he knew it wouldn’t be. He’d been around the block enough to have picked up the insights of fellow officers, and the NCOs. He eased himself into the dead man’s seat, then wiped the pistol with his handkerchief and placed it on the seat beside him.
Picking up the radio, he took a deep breath and said, “CENTAF… CENTAF… this is call sign CHARLIE APHA THREE ONE, repeat CHARLIE ALPHA THREE ONE… Broken Arrow! Repeat, Broken Arrow! This is Captain Mike Reynolds of the 105th, 1st Division. Repeat, Broken Arrow! We have been overrun and are retreating on foot to the south. We need everything you have on Lat 29.3140762, Long 47.491749.” He paused, ignoring the reply and when the line opened again, he said, “Repeat, Lat 29.3140762, Long 47.491749. Broken Arrow!”
Standing got out of the Humvee and gave the body on the ground a kick. It did not move, and nor did it groan. He caught hold of it by the webbing straps and belt and heaved it around and into the passenger seat. As he started the vehicle, he checked his watch and drove a U turn. He did not have much time.
Chapter Six
Standing stood outside the cordon of smouldering vehicles. He had put on a facemask in an attempt to keep the dust out of his lungs, the A-10 Warthog’s or Tankbusters would have used depleted uranium rounds to penetrate the vehicles and create a mini nuclear reaction inside, vaporising everyone within. The rest of the bullets would have been copper-coated lead or incendiary, and all fired at a rate of sixty-seven bullets a second from their 20mm Gatling guns. He figured the two planes had taken a few runs each.
He found what he was looking for after a few minutes, ignoring the moans clearly audible above the cracking of fuel fires and the popping of ammunition cooking off in the heat. He checked the magazine of the captured AK47 assault rifle and dropped the selector switch down two clicks to single fire.
Almost everything and everyone had a 20mm round in them. Or rather, one or many had gone through leaving holes the size of a man’s fist. The two A-10s had dropped a few bombs before their strafing run, and the unlucky few were swiftly dispatched with a 7.62x39mm bullet from the AK47 in Standing’s hands. It wasn’t such a big deal as he had been told. Of course, he hadn’t had to live with it yet – only time would tell – but right now, it was about the same as shooting coyotes in his native state of Alaska. His father had kept cattle, and each year the coyotes had waited for the cows to birth, and had eaten the young as they were born, sometimes starting with the front feet and eating their meal alive as the calf breached. As the snows melted and the coyotes were easier to hunt, Standing would set off on horseback with a .30-30 Winchester and get five dollars a tail for every coyote he shot from his father. Ten for a wolf.
The wounded soldiers were shocked and disorientated and had no time to process what Standing was doing until it was too late. Confident there was nobody from his unit left alive, he found three of the Iraqis his men had earlier executed and dragged them into the Humvee. He collected another Kalashnikov and dropped it into the footwell. He checked his watch again. It would be tight.
Chapter Seven
Standing passed the last of the three camps and started to relax. There had been no security blockade, and no road checks. The half-dozen MPs and dozen or so soldiers at each camp had been overwhelmed. Standing could see something had happened at the second camp, the prisoners were all lying face down, covered by a .50 calibre machine gun mounted on the roof of a Humvee. The big major and tiny female sergeant were walking the line of prisoners, pistols drawn and reading from printed script sheets. There were less organised bodies on the ground and the MPs looked between shaken and pissed off. Nobody had expected the Iraqis to simply form a queue and walk south. They were hungry, exhausted and it was clear that the average soldier did not want to be there, and never had. Only the Republican Guard had put up a fight, and even then, no senior officers had remained to the last of the aerial bombing campaign. They had taken themselves off to Baghdad, clearly seeing the bigger picture and the writing on the wall.
Standing rummaged through the first kit and took out a morphine ampule. He jabbed half of it into his upper left arm, and the other half into his left calf muscle. He then got out of the vehicle and pulled the Iraqi bodies out and onto the ground. Leaving the driver’s body where it was, slumped in the passenger seat, he calmly took out his Colt .45 and shot the Iraqi bodies up. He holstered his weapon and picked up the AK47, cursing the limp he now had and the distinct lack of movement in his arm. But he wanted it like that. He fired two magazines at the Humvee and took out the driver’s side glass. He put a round through the driver’s body for good measure, then dropped the rifle next to one of the Iraqi bodies.
It was a scene of chaos. But there was a war on, and nobody was going to look too closely. He drew the Makarov and took a breath. He picked a fleshy part of his calf, held the muzzle two inches away and fired. Standing dropped like a stone, screaming. The morphine hadn’t numbed the area in the way he thought it would, but after the initial shock of being shot, he rolled over and managed to sit on his backside. He tore at the fabric of his fatigues and placed a wad of dressing on the wounds both sides of his calf muscle, then taped it in place. It hurt like hell, but as he secured the tape, the area started to feel numbed and he had a feeling of drunkenness as the opiate kicked in. He gritted his teeth together, worked the pistol over to his bicep and fired again. It was just as painful, just as much of a shock as before, but he pushed through it and tossed the pistol at one of the bodies and struggled to the Humvee. The pain was subsiding, and he realised the morphine was taking effect more quickly than before. He wrapped some tape around the wound, making this look like a less managed affair, and started the engine. He did not steer away from the bodies and bounced over them as he headed south. The MPs had a contaminated crime scene, that is, if any crime was to be reported.
And it never had been.
Chapter Eight
United States Army
Court Martial Findings
Case #A1012978-897
Hearing Date: 04/27/1991
Content: Dereliction of Duty
Major Willard Standing and his driver, Corporal 1st Class Nick Ramirez, had been heading to a field hospital to treat MWS for a gunshot wound to the leg. They had been ambushed by an Iraqi commando unit and forced off the road. During the struggle, CNR had been killed, but three Iraqis had died, and despite being wounded in the arm, MWS had valiantly retaliated and shot and killed three Iraqi soldiers with his Colt .45 – a non-standard firearm – #Note - a present from General Norman Schwarzkopf, supreme commander of the allied forces during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. MWS was subsequently awarded the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor. During MWS’s intended brief excursion from the battlefield, his unit had become overrun by Iraqi Republican Guard forces and his second in command, Captain Mike Reynolds, had called in Broken Arrow - the term for being overrun and in need of sanitisation to prevent enemy victory – and not used by the US military since the Vietnam War – it is believed that CMR’s intention had been to tactically retreat and return when the area had been given aerial support, but the close proximity of two A-10 Warthogs had not been taken into account. MWS remains the most decorated officer for the Gulf War and is recognised for his exemplary service.
Court Martial Verdict: Not Guilty
No further action
Chapter Nine
Part Two
The Rise
Time Magazine Feature 1996
“Five Years On”
In keeping with this edition’s Five Years On feature, we move onto a national hero. A former warrior who returned to the place he commanded a small strike force and earned both the Congressional Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart in the one-hundred-hour war to liberate Kuwait. One of the earliest contractors to bring back the scrap metal left behind on the deserted wasteland of Kuwait, he also cleaned up parts of Saudi Arabia and even dealt with Saddam and the Iraqi government in contracts to remove the burned out hulks of Iraqi tanks and vehicles rendered radio-active from the allies’ use of depleted uranium ammunition. Later, he was accused of spying and expelled from Iraq, and returned to concentrate on gold mining concerns in Alaska and the Klondike. Retired Colonel Willard Standing III has made the apparent rags to riches journey in five short years. We ask the war hero to elaborate on the secret to his success.
Time Magazine (reporter: Peter Williams): Hello. What do we call you?
Willard Standing: You may call me Willard.
TM: You grew up on a farm in Alaska. Did the remoteness lead you to a life in the military?
WS: I needed to explore the world. I was a young man, my mother and father ran the farm, but I could see there would be nothing gained for them, or myself if I stayed. It was a hard life, almost self-sufficient. Unless you had your own homestead or business concern in oil or mining, perhaps fishing, then Alaska wasn’t the place to be.
TM: So, you joined the army.
WS: I went to the officer training academy at Westpoint. It wasn’t as simple as just joining up. It took money and an education to get in. I’m lucky in that my family put enough by for me to go to college and education was important. Just growing up with my mother making me read and do math extra to what I did in grade school. My father had a way of educating while performing mundane tasks. Simply hanging a gate would be a geometry lesson. When I passed-out I was a Second Lieutenant and posted to Fort Bragg and the 101st Airborne. I commanded an A-Team for a while and with my next promotion did a little time at the Pentagon before heading an MP unit for almost a year. I was back at the Pentagon again until I reached Captain and then served in the Armoured Division from then onwards.
TM: Did that not feel like a side-line?
WS: No. Why would it?
TM: Well, the Pentagon…
WS: This was in the Cold War days. The armoured brigades were lining up along the Iron Curtain. A ground war with the Soviet Union was about as tactically on point as it could get.
TM: But those early Pentagon days stood you in good stead getting the contract to clear the desert of scrap and ammunition cases…
WS: I approached the department of procurement. I had no dealings with them when I was there.
TM: But it can’t have hurt.
WS: Do you know how many coffee shops are at the Pentagon? There are thousands of offices and hundreds of departments. There are government agencies, and there are attachments from other governments. There are bodyguards and personal assistants, secretarial staff and God knows who else. I approached the relevant department, and because nobody else had the same entrepreneurial vision, I was awarded the contract. My service was due to finish in the May of 1991 and I was awarded the contract for the July. They must have known how the ground war was going to play out, because I was given the contract in principle in the January of that year.
TM: I seem to have touched a nerve…
WS: (Shakes his head emphatically) No, not a nerve, but it’s just the general ignorance of people in your position. Journalists who are always looking for the angle, they miss the straight-line right in front of them. I came from a family who had a few bucks in the bank, but not a fortune. They were kind to me, paid for college in California and ensured that I saw a bit of the world. They helped me out with money until I became an officer in the United States Army. From then on, I was on my own. I upheld the morals I had been given by my family, my superior officers. I made mistakes, but I answered to them. I saw an opportunity while talking to a supply sergeant one day, before the build up to Desert Shield had truly started. He told me that they wouldn’t be bringing so much back. The shell casings for one. Millions of rounds were fired in practice, but they were lost to the sands. Metal detectors and simple ploughs and sieves on the back of wagons saw me collect two thousand tons of brass. That same sergeant said that it would be cheaper to blow up some of the older vehicles than to clean them and ship them back. That got me thinking. This was going to be the biggest military build-up since D-Day. Larger than that, if you think about how many nations were involved and how much personnel was put in place. So, I had a eureka moment and tried my luck. But five years on from that day, the media can’t wait to find some hidden agenda, some smoking gun from a shady deal at the Pentagon. It’s fantastical, and I’m fed up with it.
