Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [299]
At the grave, Gerry Hendley and John Clark stood beside each other and watched as the members of the escort platoon stoically and smoothly slid the flag-draped coffin from the hearse and then fell into position behind the chaplain for the march across the lush lawn.
“Starting to sink in,” the head of The Campus murmured.
“Yeah,” Clark agreed. Six days had passed since Yucca, four since Brian’s body had returned home from Tripoli. Only now had any of them had time to absorb everything that had transpired. For the country, The Campus had scored a big win, but it had come at a big price.
The rain that had been falling most of the morning had cleared away an hour earlier; the rows of stark-white headstones seemed almost luminous in the midday sun. Paralleling the pallbearers’ course to the grave, a Marine band contingent marched in lockstep while playing a somber drum cadence.
The casket reached the foot of the grave, and the family members took their positions. The escort commander softly barked, “Order … arms …” then “Parade … rest.”
Per Dominic’s request, the chaplain kept the ceremony short.
“Escort … ten-hut. Escort … present arms.”
Then came the Marine Hymn and the gun salute, the Firing Party going through its crisp, almost robotic movements until the last shot echoed through the grounds. As it faded away, a lone bugler played taps as Brian’s flag was carefully folded and then presented to the Carusos. The Marine band played the Navy Hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”
And it was over.
The next morning, Monday, The Campus resumed business, but the mood was predictably subdued. In the days leading up to Brian’s funeral, each of them had, of course, written and submitted his own after-action report, but this would be the first time the members of the now dismantled Kingfisher Group would meet for a postmortem. Faces were grim as everyone filed into the conference room. By unspoken agreement, a single chair at the table was left open for Brian.
The answer to Jack’s big “Why?” question had taken all of them by surprise. The Emir did, in fact, have larger aspirations for Lotus. The Heartland Attacks and the aborted Losan incident had been designed as jabs, the Yucca Mountain detonation as the uppercut that would awaken the sleeping giant. With an inept and reactionary Edward Kealty at the country’s helm, the FBI and CIA would in due course unravel the identities of those responsible for the attacks, only to find carefully constructed and fully backstopped legends that would eventually lead directly to the doorstep of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence and radicalized elements of the Pakistan Army General Staff, both long suspected to be less-than-enthusiastic supporters of the war on terror.
Where the United States rightly invaded Afghanistan following 9/11, she would again react swiftly and overtly, expanding military operations east across the Safed Koh and Hindu Kush mountains. The inevitable destabilization of Pakistan, already a near-failed state, would, according to the Emir, create a power vacuum into which the Umayyad Revolutionary Council would step and take control of Pakistan’s substantial nuclear arsenal.
“It’s plausible,” Jerry Rounds said. “Worst case, the plan succeeds; best case, we have to go into the area big, maybe quadruple our current presence.”
“And stay there for a couple decades,” Clark added.
“If we thought Iraq was a recruiting poster for militants …” Chavez observed.
“A win-win for the Emir and the URC,” Jack added.
“I told Werner to dig into the legends first. He’ll figure it out,” Dominic Caruso said. “The question is, was this the only trick the bastard had up his sleeve?”
As if on cue, the phone beside Hendley’s elbow buzzed. He picked it up, listened, then said, “Send her up.” He hung up and said to the group, “Maybe one less question that needs answering.”
Mary Pat Foley appeared in the doorway sixty seconds later. After greetings were exchanged, she laid a manila folder