First Strike (Tyler Griffin Book 1), page 5
Tyler made his way through this maze of activity, enlisted personnel making way for him and saluting as he passed. The Air Boss, Cary “Grant” Dwight, was a die–hard F4 Phantom driver and Vietnam vet’ who was overlooking the carrier’s deck from Primary Flight Control. Dwight directed Tyler to the skipper’s cabin, located within the bridge so that the carrier’s commanding officer was always near the action. The captain actually had two cabins; the smaller of the two near the bridge, and a much larger state room on 03 deck that was more like a luxury hotel room and was used to entertain VIP guests when in port.
Tyler checked his appearance before he knocked on the skipper’s door. Although he was wearing his flight suit without adornments, as was the norm during cyclic operations, he was still required to present himself with some degree of professional appearance.
‘Enter.’
Tyler walked in to see Commodore Ellis J. Ramirez sitting behind a narrow desk in the small cabin. There were no windows, one wall dominated by an image of a Vought F8E Crusader rolling over the smoke trail of a vanquished MiG–19 trailing flames and debris over what Tyler figured was South East Asia. The legendary F8 Crusader was known as the “last of the gunfighters” and was considered by most fighter pilots to be the greatest “tits machine” of all time, a crude naval moniker intended to represent greatness among airframes. He figured the airplane was one that Ramirez had once flown, but decided not to ask.
Tyler closed the door behind him before saluting smartly.
‘Spook,’ Ramirez greeted him and gestured to a seat. ‘At ease.’
Tyler relaxed and sat down as Ramirez put his pen down and regarded the young pilot for a moment. ‘How’s the head?’
‘Just as hurt as my pride.’
‘Good,’ Ramirez replied. ‘I’d rather you bought your Tomcat home in one piece with a headache than remembered your harness but dunked a twenty–million–dollar jet in the ocean. You haven’t bottomed out on the Greenie Board since you got here, which is saying something given the goo.’
Tyler smiled and nodded but said nothing. The “goo” was a reference to bad weather. The Greenie Board was a score for all pilots based on their carrier landing performance. Every landing was graded by the LSOs, going from green for a perfect 3–wire trap, to an ungraded red or “wave off” for a dangerous approach. Nobody, but nobody, wanted to be on the bottom of that board.
Ramirez was wearing his khakis but upon them were his wings of gold, the mark of the Naval aviator or “tailhooker”. Nobody ever commanded an aircraft carrier who had not once flown from one.
‘You settling in okay?’
Ramirez was playing it easy but Tyler had the suspicion that there was something going on behind the scenes that he wasn’t going to like.
‘Just learning to focus on the job,’ Tyler replied. ‘Tryin’ not to let yesterday’s mistakes screw up tomorrow’s performance.’
‘Good,’ Ramirez said again, peering at Tyler with interest.
‘Why am I here, sir?’
Ramirez leaned back in his seat and folded his hands before him for a moment as he considered his response.
‘I’ve got a monkey on my back out of Virginia, wants me to start dabbling in ground operations north of Chad.’
Tyler sighed. He probably should have known that, even far from home, his father would make his presence felt.
‘What does my old man want?’
Ramirez smiled graftefully. The last thing that Tyler wanted on his first cruise was to become a thorn in the side for the skipper or the Commander of the Air Group. While he couldn’t imagine what the old bastard would want with him all the way out here, Vincent Griffin had a way of ingratiating himself into the business of others. Tyler had gone through flight school and got himself posted half a world away just to escape.
‘That how you got your call sign, Spook?’ Ramirez asked, already knowing the answer. ‘Family business.’
‘My old man’s reach goes a long way.’
‘So I understand,’ Ramirez glanced down at the paperwork that was before him. ‘Your sister’s at the barn too?’
‘She joined two years ago. Works one of the intelligence division desks, though not as a field agent.’
‘Patriotic,’ the skipper said with a genuine smile. ‘Unfortunately, it looks like your daddy wants you to go fetch a ball they’ve dropped out here and he wants my help to make it happen. What I’m about to tell you is classified, came through on the secure line from DC.’
Tyler raised an eyebrow. ‘I came here to fly Tomcats, not crawl about in the dust.’
‘I don’t think they want you as boots on the ground son,’ Ramirez replied as he donned his spectacles and read from a sheet of printed paper. ‘They’re playing their cards close to their chest but according to this they’ve lost track of a high–value asset out of Tripoli. Reading between the lines, I’d say they’ve lost someone to Libyan intelligence, and that someone knows all sorts of juicy details about other operatives in the field within Libya. If they twist his arm and he spills the beans…’
Tyler didn’t need to know any more than that. A lifetime living under the iron rule of a CIA operative and later senior officer had taught him enough to know that a knowledgeable asset in enemy hands could mean the difference between winning and losing a war. He had seen for himself the Memorial Wall at Langley, with a star carved into it for each CIA life lost in the service of the United States. There had been a lot of stars. That said, he had also come to view his father as a shadowy figure, someone whose entire life had been enshrouded in secrecy and who was rarely present at home, even when Tyler’s mother had passed away.
‘They’re after an extraction plan,’ Tyler guessed. ‘What’s that got to do with me? Wouldn’t you just send SEALS in or something?’
Ramirez nodded.
‘We have a Special Forces detachment right here aboard America ready to deploy at an instant’s notice, but they’re an absolute last resort. You know about the negotiations?’
Tyler nodded. Libya’s subterfuge attempts around the globe were becoming mainstream news, the mad Colonel’s attempts to undermine French influence in Polynesia just one front in a campaign to extend Libya’s role into the wider world. Of course, the fact that Libya was state–sponsoring acts of terrorism around the globe had tended to erode what little support they had from the international community. Now, with attacks by Libyan cells in western countries becoming ever more brazen, the President was seeking unilateral support for military strikes on Tripoli itself. The brutal terrorist strikes a year previously in Rome and Vienna by Libyan cells had outraged the entire planet.
‘US forces on the ground ahead of any agreement could jeapordise support for strikes,’ Tyler understood immediately. ‘But we’ve had people on the ground there for months, right?’
‘Wrong,’ Ramirez replied, ‘at least according to what the CIA report suggests. They say they have a safe house south of the Chad border but none in Tripoli and no agents on the ground in Libya. While you and I both know that’s not the truth, it does suggest that they don’t have a mechanism for getting this individual out of the country. We’re the closest military asset they can turn to and time’s running out. If we bomb Tripoli before this guy is liberated, then he’ll be strung up at dawn and lynched.’
Tyler winced. Any military strike on Tripoli would naturally put the Libyans’ blood up. There would inevitably be civilian casualities, women and children, who would fall victim to the strike. Weapons dropped on urban centres simply were not sophisticated enough to be aimed with sufficient accuracy to avoid killing passers by. That would bring international condemnation along with support and sympathy for the Libyan leader and his people. As for the captured individual, he would be lucky if his death was swift.
‘What do you need me to do?’
Ramirez smiled again. Tyler knew that if he refused whatever his father had dreamed up, it would only cause the skipper a headache and would put Tyler’s own career in danger of being derailed. He only barely managed to avoid cursing in fury at how his father had chosen to use him as a tool in some larger political game.
‘They want you to join a surveillance team to see if you can locate the captured agent’s location, that’s all. They’re having trouble tracking communications on the ground in Tripoli. CIA stations in Berlin can pick up the big stuff but they’re missing data. We’re close enough to bridge the gap, and you’re fluent in Arabic.’
Tyler’s eyes narrowed as he thought for a moment. The captain had made no mention of an extraction.
‘Just the location,’ Tyler repeated.
‘That’s what it says here.’
‘That’s not a rescue plan, it’s an execution order.’
Ramirez’s back straightened. ‘There’s nothing here about an assassination.’
‘It’s implied,’ Tyler said. ‘They want to know where this guy is being held. If they can’t get him out, he’ll become a target. They probably don’t want to save his life at all.’
‘It’s not up to us to set policy, Spook,’ Ramirez said. ‘We’re just the instruments of that policy.’
‘That’s a convenient excuse that my old man would use.’
‘It’s a Court Martial offense to refuse an order,’ Ramirez pointed out.
‘Not when the order presumably condemns an ally to death,’ Tyler countered. ‘Wouldn’t that be a form of treason?’
Ramirez sucked in a lungful of air. ‘I need to get back to Langley on this. Why don’t you have a think about it before you make your call, and consider your career choices while you’re at it?’
***
VII
Langley, Virginia
The sun was out and for the most part it was looking to be a fine spring day as Vincent Griffin sat outside a restaurant and watched the world passing by. The sunshine and the promise of warm spring weather had tempered his mood somewhat, which had darkened considerably when he had received a Telex from DC informing him that his son Tyler had formally protested a request to assist the CIA.
Vincent stared at young men and women walking by, at shiny vehicles glinting in the sun. Kids rode BMX bikes and the occasional chopper in groups on a housing complex, a cassette player belting out Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know? to the disgust of two old ladies shuffling through a nearby park.
Vincent sighed to himself. Most all folks had no idea about what went on overseas, about how many Americans were risking their lives on any given day serving in some of the worst hell holes the world had to offer. Most of those were located in Siberia and the Middle East, two regions of the world that seemed diametrically opposed to each other and yet which shared considerable characteristics. The Soviet Union was frigid with cold, a land of darkness and brutality ruled by the Politboro and the threat of death in the gulags for any who opposed their rule. In contrast the Middle East was scorched desert populated by near–medieval peasants who viewed outsiders as rivals at best and the minions of Satan at worst. Yet it was also ruled by tyrants, dictators and Royal princes who thought nothing of executing any who stood up to them. The one thing that both regions had in common was their hatred of America and all that it stood for, and that was one war Vincent had always been proud to fight.
‘You’re early.’
Hannah Griffin strode toward the table, her long black hair pinned back in a pony tail and her green eyes clear and bright.
‘As are you.’
Vincent stood and embraced his daughter. Despite the embrace, Vincent always could sense the separation between them, just as with his son, Tyler. Vincent was the father that was always omnipresent but never actually present, as his wife had once said when he had finally returned home after a particularly long assignment in Oman. At the time, he hadn’t seen his children in eight months.
Hannah was tall and lithe like Tyler, and also like Tyler prone to opposing authority. The fact that they were now both serving their country was a matter of great pride to Vincent, although the fact that Tyler had chosen the Navy and not the CIA still irked him. He was sure Tyler had done it just to stick in his craw.
‘How’s my kid brother?’ Hannah asked.
It was always the same. Her interest was genuine, but she knew that Vincent disliked talking about Tyler.
‘All at sea,’ he replied, ‘so nothing new there. He’s on station off North Africa, Gulf of Sidra, part of the 6th Fleet.’
‘USS America,’ Hannah replied, as he knew that she would. She knew everything about Tyler’s deployment. ‘I asked how he was, not where he was.’
‘I haven’t spoken to him,’ Vincent replied, taking a sip of water, ‘they’re on cruise so contact is minimal. How’s my little girl?’
‘She’s fine,’ Hannah replied, ‘as fine as I can be while stuck behind a damned desk five days per week.’
Hannah wasn’t a “sit–down” kind of girl. As much one of the boys as her brother, she would have damned well joined the Navy and flight school with Tyler if she’d been interested in flying. There were rumours, and only whispered rumours at that, that Congress was considering allowing female pilots to serve in combat theatres. In this ruinous age of equality and political correctness, Vincent wouldn’t have been surprised if Congress backed the ridiculous plan.
‘You know I don’t like female operatives into the field.’
Hannah raised an eyebow.
‘I wonder why? Perhaps you’re concerned that we might actually be good at our jobs? Maybe even better than the men?’
Vincent chuckled. ‘That’s easy to say when you’re sitting here in Langley.’
‘Yeah, that’s the problem.’
Vincent was uncertain that Hannah had any real sense of what field operations were like. Driven by an idealistic and patriotic fervour, most young recruits to the CIA didn’t. Reality only dawned once they found themselves far from home, far from help, their identity exposed and people hunting them who would gladly slit their throat for nothing other than mindless satisfaction. Vincent had been there, seen that, done that and really had no great desire to ever return to a world where life was cheap in the big game played out between every nation on earth.
‘The world of counter intelligence is changing,’ Vincent said. ‘Boots on the ground are as important as ever but our new satellites are able to eavesdrop from space and our covert recon’ aircraft can fly undetected through even Soviet airspace. If I could tell you half of what I’ve seen over at Groom Lake this past year, you’d be resigning from the agency and taking up tennis again.’
‘I doubt that,’ Hannah replied. ‘Technology only goes so far. They said that the dogfight was over when they didn’t hang a gun on missile–equipped Phantoms in Vietnam, and we all know how that worked out. We lost ten jets for every kill.’
Vincent nodded in agreement, but he didn’t give up the fight.
‘We need people like you here in the capital. HUMINT is nothing without the analyst’s eyes.’
‘And the analyst is nothing without HUMINT. Dad, I’m just not for sitting behind a desk. I passed the field officer course and I want my butt out of a chair. There are plenty of folks who are happy to sit behind one of those damned computer things day in and day out, let them do the analysing.’
Vincent leaned back in his seat. ‘How do you know you’d be any good at it?’
Hannah scoffed.
‘Don’t re–write history, dad. You and I both know that the CIA has employed women operating at the highest level. Eloise Page served in the OSS and ended up as the third highest–ranking officer in the CIA Directorate of Operations, and she became the first station chief and head of an intelligence community committee. Janine Brookner worked in Asia and became station chief in Jamaica, the station from hell, and ended up infiltrating the Communist Party and recruiting assets. Jeez, even Julia Child worked for the OSS before she started cooking for a living.’
Vincent did not deny the history of the agency’s female operatives, both in and out of conflict zones. He simply didn’t want to see his own daughter sent off to some god–awful CIA station in Mexico or Africa or the Malay to face who–knew–what horrors.
Behind them, the gaggle of kids cycled past on BMX bikes and choppers, plastic cards wedged into the spokes mimicking the sound of engines.
‘See those kids?’ he said. ‘By the time they hit their teens, we’ll be watching the enemy over his shoulder from space. A decade after that we’ll probably be able to see through walls and read their minds from right here in DC. The age of the field operative is coming to an end.’
Hannah laughed. ‘I doubt that.’
‘Don’t,’ Vincent said. ‘When you were a child we didn’t even have computers and some US fighter aircraft were still driven by piston engines. Things move fast, Hannah, faster than you can predict. Computer power doubles every eighteen months, right? Moore’s Law. Think about what they’ll be able to do in twenty, thirty years time? They took us to the moon over a decade ago, and the power of those computers was less than that of a table top calculator now.’
Hannah’s mirth vanished as she considered this. Vincent sighed theatrically as he added:
‘Sadly, right now we don’t have quite that luxury and we could very much do with it.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘A high–level asset, code–name Minotaur, has been compromised in Tripoli.’
‘Okay,’ Hannah said, watching her father. ‘And the asset is on the run?’
‘Location unknown. I’ve got the fleet working on it at the moment.’
Hannah’s eyes narrowed mischievously.
‘You’ve spoken to Tyler,’ she said, and then after a moment’s thought. ‘You’ve asked him to assist, he’s told you to take a running jump, and now you want me to speak to him.’
‘This is why you make such a great analyst.’
