The Profession
“What about Hayward?”
No one knows. I’ve tried him twenty times, by phone, Skype, and AKOP. I’ve even phoned Agocopian, the FBI guy. Hayward has gone invisible.
Chris tells me the political scuttlebutt. A hot wire has just arrived from Salter’s law firm in D.C: the decisive votes are in hand. “The Emergency Powers Act. The amendment’s gonna pass.”
Dubai is the Miami Beach of the Arab world. Right now it belongs to Salter. CSPs, concentric security perimeters, ring the Burj at three thousand yards. Passing the Karama Center I note four I-SAMs, mobile surface-to-air missile launchers, and count a dozen more as we approach the tower itself. Antimissile drones swarm above the summit like hornets. I hear the thwack-thwack of Apache rotors, juking along the urban canyons, and the whine of F-35s high above. Every corner seems to sprout a colony of security contractors, mostly Arabs, packing AK-47s with Russian PKM machine guns behind sandbagged emplacements. Primary checkpoints are blocked by MRAPs and other armored vehicles, parked sideways, with troopers on .50 cals topside.
Entering the Burj’s defensible space, our Suburban, which is bristling with security IDs and clearance freqs, is shunted through three additional checkpoints. First,
TURN OFF ECM
where we are inspected to be sure the vehicle’s electronic counter-measures—a humming pod that takes up the entire rear luggage compartment—have been disabled, as well as searched by thermal scan and bomb-sniffing dogs; then
CLEAR WEAPONS HERE
where we dismount, eject all rounds from chambers, remove all magazines, then hand over our weapons entirely; and finally
STOP FOR BIOMETRIC ID
where we are individually retina scanned and argon IDed, and at last patted down by hand.
“And this is for friends!” says Junk.
Inside, our foursome is met by other new faces, who greet us politely but professionally and escort us to a belowground level of the lobby. From there we ride a freight elevator to the third subbasement, where another phalanx of security men processes us again, including a second patdown.
Stairs and two passageways take us even deeper into the skyscraper’s bowels, to a blast-proof bunker that, inside, looks like a convention suite at the Holiday Inn in Topeka. Steel folding chairs are arrayed in a U around two military-style tables. A buffet spreads along two walls: coffee in industrial urns, stale turkey and roast-beef wraps, wilted Caesar salad served with plastic forks, and bowls of M&Ms for dessert.
Salter enters, preceded by Petrocelli and Cam Holland and his old combat team leader, Gunnery Sgt. Dainty, with Col. Klugh, the security chief, and four other gunslingers that I don’t recognize. They’re all in cammies, dirty, coming straight from the desert, Salter as always with his M9 in a shoulder holster. Next in the door is Jack Stettenpohl. He looks as trim as ever, in a gray business suit and modified Semper Fi haircut. Three Lowther Schapiro & Bloom lawyers accompany him, whose names I can’t recall but whose faces I’ve seen a dozen times at capital evenings in the past couple of weeks. With them are a half-dozen young Saudis in tribal robes. The senior, Chris tells me (the prince can’t be older than thirty), has been the kingdom’s ambassador to China but will now fill that post to the United States. Present via satellite, displayed on a battery of flatscreens and holos, are two dozen Euro, Asian, and North and South American power players. Finally, on a video screen set up just east of the M&Ms bowl, shimmers Maggie Cole, in jeans and Western-cut shirt, via satellite from her farm in Virginia.
Champagne toasts are drunk out of paper cups, saluting the wedding. Cigars are broken out. Petrocelli lifts his Dixie cup, addressing Salter.
“Do you realize, sir, that as we stand here at this hour, you’re not only the happiest man on earth but also the most powerful!”
The confab’s subject is how to get Salter home. He’s trepidatious; he trusts no one in the U.S. government. A homebound plane can be shot down at the push of a button, he says, and he believes his enemies are more than capable of such an act. He feels no more confident about his personal security, even after safely arriving home. “I’m not stepping down onto the tarmac at Andrews or Dulles to find myself being zip-stripped and arrested.”
On cue, a “breaking news” story appears on Trump/CNN: demonstrations are being held in twenty-one cities, calling for Salter to be brought up on charges of treason. A motion before Congress calling for the revocation of Salter’s citizenship has not been rescinded, nor has its companion proposal stripping citizenship from all Force Insertion operators and their subcontractors.
While Salter’s brain trust debates, I find a quiet corner and try to get through to el-Masri. Channels bounce me from one link to another; it takes twenty minutes to determine that the Egyptian is in the field and unreachable. I leave word that I’m in Dubai and will try to get north to see him before I fly home.
When I return to the group around Salter, they’ve got Marty Bloom, the lawyer, and a couple of his associates on video teleconference from D.C. Apparently the vote tally for the passage of the Emergency Powers Act amendment is shakier than the firm had believed. Bloom names a specific congresswoman from Indiana, who is being negotiated with as we speak.
“Her vote is everything,” says one of the partners on-screen, adding that he’s confident that the lady’s requirements can be met. “One last hurdle, Jim, and you fly home with F-35s on each wing.”
Marty Bloom addresses Salter, cautioning against premature self-congratulation. “When the amendment passes, the gloves really come off. Your enemies will hit you with everything they’ve got.”
“I don’t blame ’em,” says Salter. “I would too. In their eyes, my return equates to tyranny.”
I hear myself speak up. “Then why do it?”
Every pair of eyes swivels in my direction. Salter smiles.
“Because if Force Insertion sits tight in Arabia, Gent, we’re dead meat in ninety days. The troops starve. The U.S. gets a president it despises. We lose the oil. In four years there’s nothing left of the United States but a damp spot by the side of the road.”
I ask Salter why he can’t simply link with the new president, whoever he is, and put Force Insertion under U.S. command.
“Because I won’t,” he says.
Cheers fill the room. I’m caught by surprise.
“I’ve done that before, Gent. I’ll never do it again.”
Approbation swells from every man in the suite. As this emotion crests, one of Salter’s aides cues up a video that has apparently just appeared on Trump/CNN. The scene is a Pentagon press room. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Harley Spence, reads a statement. He is flanked by his colleagues in full dress before a wall of Stars & Stripes.
It is not the role of the Joint Chiefs to establish policy, but to enforce policy once it has been decided upon and, when requested by our civilian superiors, to contribute to the debate preceding its adoption. Still, in extraordinary circumstances such as those faced by the United States at this hour, the Chiefs would be derelict in their duty, should we fail to go on record in a matter in which we, collectively and as individuals, are professionally and personally involved. We favor the lifting of all charges against General James R. Salter, USMC (R), and we urge Congress to enact his formal repatriation as expeditiously as possible.
More cheers from the room. I’m thinking, can Spence and the chiefs be making such an extraordinary statement on their own? Surely they have conferred with both the president and his challenger. Is this a ploy by the chiefs to position themselves for a future dominated by Salter or is it a signal by them and the next president that the city gates have been opened, the besieger is free to enter?
Jim Salter is not only the finest fighting general of his generation but a leader whose gifts and talents the nation, at this hour, cannot afford to deprive itself of. Bring him home!
Later, I pull Chris, Chutes, and Junk aside. What do they think of this shit?
“Whatever the man wants,” says Junk.
r /> “It ain’t by the book,” Chutes says. “But what other choice is there?”
Jack Stettenpohl comes up. He tells us excitedly that it looks like the Emergency Powers Act will pass—and that some sort of unity government will be formed, with Salter at its head.
“What’s a unity government?” asks Chutes.
I want to hear this myself.
“A wartime apparatus,” says Jack. “Like Lincoln had, or Churchill, or the Israelis during their wars of survival.”
“Meaning what? No Bill of Rights? No vote?”
“Meaning the people who count will be in power. Meaning the country can finally get something done.”
“Jack,” I say. “This is bullshit.”
He stares at me as if he’s never seen me before. “Gent, don’t scare me like this.”
“What the fuck, bro. Do you hear what you’re saying?”
Jack glances to Chris, Chutes, and Junk, as if to confirm that they’re with him and I’m crazy.
“What do you think has been going on, Gent? Whose side did you think you’ve been fighting on? Since East Africa we’ve all seen how fucked this country is—and we all agree there’s only one man who can unfuck it.”
I try to reach A.D., then Ariel when I can’t find her, but all channels are coming up goose eggs.
Around midnight, a text comes in from el-Masri. I shuttle to the comms room and get him on a secure line. He bitches for twenty minutes about getting screwed on pay and bonuses and thanks me (he has sources, he says) for my efforts on his family’s behalf. Unprompted, he gives his dish on Salter and the Emergency Powers Act.
“Let me tell you something, my friend. When a man has lived under a police state like I have and, worse, been part of the apparatus himself, he appreciates the hell out of a Constitution. New Jersey is heaven. Get me back there, dude! I pray to wake up again in that shithole, where at least a man can say what he thinks without some motherfucker in a uniform kicking down his door in the middle of the night.”
Hanging up, I try for another two hours to wangle a ride home for my Egyptian brother. Still no luck. I don’t get off till two in the morning. My handheld has a message from Salter—find him and report. He wants me in on the current discussion.
Salter has settled now in the Lion Suite on the summit floor. He’s working on a room-service Cobb salad when I enter. A Steelers game is on TV. Petrocelli and Holland perch in separate corners, pecking away on secure text lines. Half a dozen security men man the room, including Dainty and Col. Klugh, with a dozen more covering this floor and the one below. I note two ATAs, Airborne Threat Assessors, coordinating the various satellite defenses, AWACS planes, choppers, and fighters screening the sky for the surrounding 240 miles. Against one wall stands a pair of dry-erase boards full of notes and a wad of PowerPoints and printed leavebehinds. Four official-looking suits exit as I come in.
“Know who those guys are?” Salter asks. He passes me a room service menu and points me toward the bar to make myself a drink. “That was the A.G. of the State of California. He’s here to offer me forty thousand early-release inmates.”
Sacramento, Salter says, is prepared to issue special pardons, turning these prisoners over to Force Insertion as volunteers (all drug-free and in the prime of health) to be trained and employed as legionnaires. And of course to ingratiate itself with what it believes will be the new power in Washington.
“We’ll have an Aryan Brotherhood brigade, and one from the Mexican Mafia. What do you think, Gent?” Salter is laughing, but he’s serious too. “Forty thousand is more than the United States had in Afghanistan for nine years—and that’s just from one state.”
Dainty mutes the tube as a commercial comes on. “Everybody loves a winner.”
Maggie Cole’s face appears on the VTC screen, as well as a number of laptops around the room. It’s lunchtime in Virginia; Mrs. Cole sits at the banquette nook in her farm kitchen, wearing a flannel shirt and sipping from a mug of coffee.
She listens for a few minutes as the group discusses the predicament of Salter’s Force Insertion troops in-country—in Arabia, southern Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia. Salter, through his representatives in Washington, has made it known that full amnesty must be granted to all personnel serving under his command and, further, that they and their formations, in their current configurations, must be integrated without prejudice into the armed forces of the United States. He wants American citizenship for all Third Country Nationals who desire it—and, most important, the legitimization and inclusion of the full force under conventions consistent with the troops’ present station—meaning salaries and bonuses commensurate with those paid by Force Insertion, as well as medical, education, and death and dismemberment benefits for field operators and their families—and for the force as a whole to remain under command of its current officers, in an autonomous position outside of DoD chain of command and commanded by Salter for life.
“Are we talking to Salter,” one columnist has demanded upon hearing this, “or Caesar?”
Salter’s response: “How about gas at forty bucks a gallon?”
The officers in the suite are deliberating Salter’s options. They’re talking power in military, economic, and geopolitical terms.
Now Maggie Cole weighs in.
“You’re searching for the solution in the wrong arena. Forgive me, gentlemen, but at this hour, General Salter possesses the most unstoppable power of all—the force of political momentum. The American people love him, and they’re going to love him more tomorrow and more the day after that.
“Jim,” she says, speaking directly into camera, “you’re riding a once-in-a-century wave, like the ones that swept Churchill and FDR into office. You can ride it to whatever height you wish, but ride it you must. This is the force of historical necessity that you’ve always embraced in theory. Now it’s real. The moment is irresistible, but it’s perishable, too. It must be seized now.”
The Steelers game is still playing. Nobody’s watching. Maggie wraps it up with a minute more of specific technical suggestions, then signs off. Salter shuts down all screens. The suite gets very quiet.
“Gentlemen, I’ve always prided myself on thinking three and four jumps ahead. That’s my game; it’s what I’m good at. But I never saw this coming.”
Everyone in the room has turned toward him.
“Maggie’s right. The American people will call me home in any capacity I choose. They’ll make up a new office if I want it. And here’s the tricky part: I can’t say no.”
I glance to Jack Stettenpohl and to Chris and Chutes and Petrocelli and Holland. The men in this room have been with Salter for years. They are his circle. They have come of age serving under his command and have had their worldview shaped, willingly and indelibly, by his intellect.
“You’ve heard me talk many times,” Salter says, “about ‘the intersection of Necessity and Free Will.’ I believe in such moments. I’ve studied them my whole life and prepared myself not only to recognize them, but to be ready to act upon them. The moment compels me to seize it. If I don’t, someone or something worse will step in.”
He pauses and turns to the company.
“But if I perform the bidding of Necessity, I violate the code of the republic to which you and I, all of us, have sworn allegiance. I cross a line, beyond which there can be no return. Do I lose you, brothers? Tell me now. Will you cross that line at my side?”
A rush of concurrence follows from every man in the room. Salter scans the faces. Pledges of fidelity issue from every officer. They stand with him. They will never abandon him.
“If we fail, gentlemen,” says Salter, “every one of you crashes with me.”
“Fuck that,” says Mattoon.
Laughter all around. Obscenities issue from every quarter. Salter is not the type to weep, but I see emotion, profound and authentic, in his eyes.
“Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, my friends.”
22
EMERGENCY POWER
S
I’M BACK IN D.C. Still no Hayward. I have grilled Dainty and Col. Klugh in Dubai. Both claim Tim is on assignment in Indonesia. I tell them I don’t believe them. Klugh grabs his crotch. “Believe this, fuckhead.”
One other thing has happened regarding Hayward.
After the confab at the Burj Khalifa, I catch a C-130 up to Mosul to see el-Masri. Chris Candelaria is on-site too, working the same pipeline deal he had been negotiating when my team and I originally ran into him south of Nazirabad. After a drunken day and an even more drunken night, Chris piles me and el-Masri aboard the Iraq-era Humvee that is his personal car/office/sleeping hooch and drives us south along the Tigris.
He has something he wants to show us.
While el-Masri and I carve out seating space amid a small landfill of tech journals, ammo, MRE boxes, and cases of bottled water, Chris confesses to me that our original meeting south of Nazirabad was not an accident. He was sent there, he says, with orders to link up with me.
“What?” For some reason, this unnerves me. “Who sent you?”
“Salter.”
“Salter? What for?”
“To protect you.”
I don’t get it.
“I should’ve told you before,” Chris says. “But my instructions were to keep my mouth shut.”
This is seriously pissing me off. Was all that stuff with the tuxedo and the financial team bogus too?
“That was straight,” Chris swears. “Salter just wanted a few extra guns to look out for you.”
We’ve turned east now, past a sign for Qaraqosh and Al-Hamdaniyah. Terrain is treeless semidesert. An irrigated greenbelt runs along a tributary of the Tigris. “Where the hell are we going?” asks el-Masri.
“Trust me,” says Chris.
I ask him what he knows about Tim Hayward.
“Nothing.”
He’s lying. Godammit. I feel the veins in my neck start to swell.
“Chris, what the fuck is going on?”
“Bro, you gotta learn to stop asking questions.”