State of Siege - Tom Clancy [41]
A yellow alert meant gearing up and waiting in the ready room to see if the team was going to take the next step. The ready room consisted of a gunmetal desk by the door, which was manned round the clock by a desk sergeant; hard wooden chairs arranged classroom style-the brass didn't want anyone getting too comfortable and going to sleep; an old blackboard; and a computer terminal on a table in front of the blackboard. In the event that they were needed, a Bell LongRanger fifteen-seat Model 205A-1 was being fired upon a nearby landing strip for the half-hour ride to Andrews Air Force Base. From there, the team would be flown by C-130 to the Marine Air Terminal at New. York's La Guardia Airport. Rodgers had said that Striker's potential target was the United Nations building. The C-130 didn't, need a lot of runway, and La Guardia, though not a regular stop for military traffic, was the field closest to the United Nations.
The one thing the tall, lean, thin-faced colonel hated above all was waiting. A holdover from Vietnam, it gave him a sense of being out of control. Where August was a prisoner of war, he had to wait for the next middle-of-the-night interrogation, the next beating, the next death of someone he served with. He had to wait for news, passed along in careful whispers, by new arrivals in the camp. But the worst wait of all came when August tried to escape. He, had to turn back when his partner was wounded and needed medical care. He never got another chance to break out. His captors saw to that. He had to wait for the long-winded, heel-dragging, face-saving diplomats in Paris to negotiate his release. None of that taught him patience. It taught him that waiting was for people who had no other options. He'd once told Liz Gordon that waiting was the real definition of masochism.
The United Nations was on the water's edge, so Colonel August had the Strikers bring their wet gear. And since they were going to Manhattan, they were dressed like civilians. While the ten team members checked their suits and equipment, August used the ready room computer to visit the United Nations home page. He had never been to the building and wanted to get an idea of the layout. As he navigated to the web site, the on-line news of the day talked about the breaking story in New York, the hostage situation at the United Nations. August was surprised-not just that a nonpartisan facility would be attacked by terrorists but that U.s. troops would be on call to assist. He couldn't think of a single scenario in which American armed forces would be invited to help out in a situation like that.
As he studied the web site options, Sondra DeVonne and Chick Grey came up behind him. There were icons for Peace and Security, Humanitarian Affairs, Human Rights, and other feel-good topics. He went to the icon for Databases to try and find a map of the damn place. Not only had he never been there, he had no desire to go. For all their tub-thumping about peace and rights, they'd left him and his comrades from Air Force Intelligence in a Vietnamese prison for over two years.
There were other reference materials in the databases. Video records of Security Council and General Assembbly meetings. Social indicators. International treaties. Land mines. Peacekeeping Training Course database. There was even a site for a glossary of United Nations Document Symbols, which was itself an acronym: UNIQUE for UN Info Quest..
"I hope Bob Herbert is having better luck," August said. "There isn't a single map of the compound." "Maybe publishing it is considered a security risk," DeVonne suggested. Since joining Striker, the pretty African-American had been training for Geo Intel-geo-graphic intelligence-which, in addition to planning reconnaissance, was being used more and more to target smart missiles. "I mean," she said, "if you