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  To Velvet

  Smooth, beautiful, and dangerous

  Historians report that in 1914, with most of the world already plunged in war, Prince Bülow, the former German chancellor, said to the then Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg: “How did it all happen?” And Bethmann-Hollweg replied, “Ah, if only one knew!”

  If this planet is ever ravaged by nuclear war … if the survivors of that devastation can then endure the fire, poison, chaos, and catastrophe, I do not want one of those survivors to ask another, “How did it all happen?” and to receive the incredible reply, “Ah, if only one knew!”

  —PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY,

  UNIVERSITY OF MAINE, OCTOBER 19, 1963

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  June

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  August

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  October

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Forge Books by William S. Cohen

  Copyright

  JUNE

  1

  NED WINSLOW, Google News Network’s best-known correspondent, stood at the edge of a dusty parade ground in his familiar pose—white shirt, sleeves rolled up, hair mussed, one hand clutching a microphone, the other one pointing. Viewers were used to seeing him grimly pointing toward the wreckage produced by another suicide bombing. But today he was smiling and pointing to arrays of soldiers, Americans in ranks on one side, Iraqis lined up on the other side. Between them was a tall pole with an American flag snapping in the breeze.

  The camera swung away from Winslow to the flagpole. The American flag came briskly down to the waiting hands of two American soldiers. Two Iraqi soldiers stepped forward to raise their flag as GNN SPECIAL REPORT: GOODBYE, IRAQ ran across the bottom of the screen.

  “Yes, the last of the troops are going. As you know, the combat troops left little more than a year ago, leaving behind fifty thousand soldiers who were designated as noncombat and given “advisory and assistance” missions. These are those soldiers, hauling down the flag, handing Iraq over to the Iraqis.”

  *

  AMONG the millions of screens showing GNN’s “Goodbye, Iraq” coverage was a large screen on a wall in the library of a mansion on a hill that rose from the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. The owner of the mansion watched from the depth of a gray leather chair. He was alone in the room.

  “Yes, goodbye,” he whispered. “Goodbye to America.” He walked to a long mahogany table that served as his desk, opened the drawer, and reached for a cell phone. He hesitated for a moment, put down the phone, and resumed looking at the screen.

  *

  LIVE appeared on the upper right of the screen. The view changed to a seascape of docks, small boats, and landing craft.

  Winslow now stood in one of the landing craft. “Within minutes of the flag-raising ceremony earlier today,” he said, “American troops here in Basra began boarding landing craft like this one. Now all the ceremonies are over and we are bringing you the final act. They have handed over responsibility to the Iraqi Army and we are on our way out.”

  The camera panned to the grinning soldiers surrounding Winslow. They wore their usual camouflage combat uniforms and caps instead of helmets. They did not carry weapons or backpacks. Piled around the craft were duffel bags bearing soldiers’ stenciled names.

  “We’re leaving via the port of Basra and heading for the USS Elkton, an amphibious transport,” Winslow said as the camera aimed toward the gray silhouette of a ship, about half a mile offshore.

  Winslow’s British accent sometimes strayed toward donnish. But he always leavened it with a sardonic air that reached out to his audience, as if urging them to connive with him in telling the story. He had the confident look of a correspondent who knows he is trusted.

  “In her enormous hold, the Elkton can accommodate a fleet of amphibious vessels like this one, along with about four hundred troops—a small percentage of the thousands of U.S. combat troops leaving Iraq. Others have been flying out of Kuwait in transport planes or leaving by sea, as we are—in the last wave. The boats around us are U.S. landing craft like this one and local port lighters, slim little boats carrying supplies to the Elkton.

  “Welcome to Goodbye Day,” Winslow continued. “Yes, it’s Goodbye Day for U.S. forces in Iraq. A personal note. I was here—here in Basra—for the start, in March 2003, when it all began.” A few moments of taped battle scenes appeared behind Winslow, fading as he said, “And now, on this momentous day, I am here again.”

  The landing craft was close to the Elkton when the camera suddenly shifted from Winslow, drawn to the image of a boat that was pulling away from the others, its frothy wake spreading into a broad V.

  Winslow kept speaking: “In this ship, and in many more, the last American soldiers are leaving this war-torn land that the United States invaded in March 2003. And today—” Noticing the speeding boat, Winslow turned his head and interrupted himself. “That boat … What’s happening?”

  The camera focused on the speeding boat, now within one hundred yards of the Elkton. The camera switched to a telescopic lens that zoomed down on the boat. A new image filled the screen: a green-hulled boat, a bearded man, black-hooded, crouched over the steering wheel in the bow; another man at the stern, clutching a weapon.

  “Jesus!” Winslow, off-camera, exclaimed. “He’s got an RPG! Looks like he’s aiming it to us!” A billow of smoke erupted from the rocket launcher.

  In a blurri
ng whirl, the image of the boat vanished from the screen. The horizon tilted, as the helmsman sharply swung the landing craft away from the speeding boat. “Get it!” Winslow yelled at the cameraman. “Get the boat!”

  The camera turned back to the boat, which was alongside the Elkton. In the image, the ship’s gray hull loomed large. The boat veered, striking the hull, near the Elkton’s bow.

  On camera, the roar of an explosion. A cloud of smoke. A jagged hole in the hull. The sea rushing in. Bodies in blue shirts and dungarees bobbing in the sea.

  *

  IN the Connecticut mansion, the man stood and picked up the phone again, his eyes never leaving the screen.

  “They will pay for this,” he said aloud. He punched a number, waited a moment, and spoke rapidly, his voice gruff and angry.

  He lived amid one of the great private art collections in America. The paintings in the library, his favorite room, reflected his eclectic taste: On one wall, a Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, his colors merging sea and sunset and hinting at the impressionists to come. On another wall, a tranquil seated nude by Henri Matisse, known not so much for its soft beauty as for its price at a Sotheby’s auction: $41 million, topping the bid of the Museum of Modern Art.

  The library’s south wall was a window on the Sound, framing an ever-changing view of sea and sky—“the greatest art in this room,” he inevitably said to his rare visitor. At the moment, the clouds were darkening.

  *

  ON screen, the camera was focused on the Elkton. Sailors jumped into the sea to recover the dead and wounded. Helmeted, shouting men appeared along the deck, waving weapons.

  Winslow’s landing craft swung around, as did all the other boats and landing craft. “We’re heading back to shore,” Winslow said “The RPG missed us. We’re all okay.” The camera swept around the craft, showing the soldiers’ faces as they tried to take in what they had just seen.

  Winslow hated disseminating to the world the sight of America’s soldiers at their most vulnerable and desperate moments, but he had no choice. He was a professional journalist, one of the very best in the business, and for him, there were no holidays from tragedy or history. As he and his crew headed back toward shore, he continued to describe the attack and the desperate effort being made by those aboard the Elkton to save their comrades and their ship.

  Suddenly, the on-screen image changed. The unfamiliar face of a young, frazzled-looking woman appeared at a newsroom desk. GNN REPORT: TERROR AT SEA scrolled across the bottom of the screen, as it would for many days to come. “GNN has just learned that the suicide boat that struck the Elkton is of Iranian origin,” the woman said, her voice quivering. “It’s a kind of boat called a Bladerunner. The original, British-built Bladerunner has a top speed of sixty-five knots per hour and can carry one or two Russian-made supertorpedoes.” She looked down at the sheet of paper in her hand. “The source of this information is said to be highly reliable.”

  2

  PRESIDENT BLAKE Oxley was seated at the table in the conference room of Air Force One, thirty-five thousand feet over Missouri when his chief of staff, Ray Quinlan, opened the door and shouted, “Put on the television!”

  Oxley looked up from a lined yellow pad, picked up a remote, and aimed it at the wall in front of him. One of the screens lighted up, but all that appeared were wavy white lines. He switched to other channels and saw the same image.

  He turned to Quinlan. “What the hell is going on?” he said. Quinlan was a large, curly-haired man, whose height and width made him look rectangular. He wore a maroon-and-gold Boston College sweatshirt, maroon sweatpants, and sneakers of an indeterminate color. Big as he was, he moved as swiftly and smoothly as a dancer.

  Oxley’s press secretary, Stephanie Griffith, appeared next to Quinlan at the open door of the conference room, the central space of the presidential suite. The table dominated the rectangular room. Curtained portholes ran along one wall. On the three other walls were rectangular screens.

  “Iraq,” she said. “Attack on a ship. One of our ships.”

  A Secret Service agent shouldered his way past them and stood between them and the President. “We have temporarily lost some communications, Mr. President,” the agent said. “The pilot ordered electronic countermeasures. We have a tech figuring a way to clear for television signals.” The agent closed the door and stood before it.

  The phone console next to Oxley rang and a light lit in the row of direct-line buttons. Next to each small light was a title. This one was FALCONE, for the national security advisor, Sean Falcone. “Well, something’s working,” Oxley said, picking up the phone and motioning for Quinlan and Griffith to take chairs at the table. “It’s Falcone.”

  “Mr. President, when can we expect you back?” Falcone asked, his voice sounding as if he were in the back of a cave.

  “Sean, what the hell is going on?”

  “An attack. You haven’t seen GNN?”

  “We’ve got some kind of blackout.” He clicked the remote on and off as he spoke.

  The phone rang again. Another light, this one CJCS, for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Gabriel Wilkinson.

  Oxley turned and pointed to the console in front of Quinlan. “It’s Wilkinson. Take it. Tell him I’m talking to Falcone.

  “Gabe is on another phone, Sean,” Oxley said into the phone. “What’s happening?”

  “A suicide bomber—two, it looks like—hit one of our ships in Basra. Many sailors killed. We think twenty-one. We’re in contact with the ship through Central Command. It’s not in danger of sinking.”

  “Jesus! What else do we know?”

  “Not much. About all we have is what was on GNN. They filmed the explosion. And they aired a report that it was the Iranians. You’ve seen it?”

  “Sean, I’m completely in the fucking dark. Jesus!”

  Oxley looked up at the agent. “Tell the pilot to turn off that goddamn electronics thing.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President,” the agent said. “Defense of the aircraft. For jamming hostile radar. It’s part of DEFCON Three.”

  “Who ordered DEFCON Three?”

  “The Secretary of Defense, sir, on recommendation of General Wilkinson.”

  Oxley pointed to Quinlan. “Tell Gabe I just ordered us back to DEFCON Four.” He pointed to the agent. “And you tell the pilot Air Force One is now at DEFCON Four.” The agent left.

  “I’ll meet you at Andrews, Mr. President,” Falcone said. “Shouldn’t take two hours.”

  Quinlan, after speaking briefly to Wilkinson, hit another button, put his hand over the mouthpiece, and listened in to the Falcone call. He began looking at Oxley and shaking his head.

  Oxley looked toward Quinlan, nodded, and continued talking to Falcone: “This is a big fund-raiser, Sean. It’s Dallas-big.”

  “I realize that, Mr. President. But I am sure the appearance of politics as usual—”

  “Let me do some thinking and call you back, Sean,” Oxley said, hanging up and aiming the remote at the screen again where, after a moment, Ned Winslow appeared. He was back on shore, standing by an armored personnel carrier. Behind him, two helicopters were heading out to sea.

  “—to pick up the wounded. There’s understandable confusion here,” the reporter was saying. “The U.S. troops we saw leaving are reassembling. Iraqi soldiers are nowhere to be seen.”

  Winslow pointed to landing craft whose ramps have lowered. Soldiers were streaming down the ramps, splashing through the surf, and forming lines to trucks, where arms, helmets, and armor vests were being passed out. As each soldier was armed, he joined a force that was forming a cordon around the Basra waterfront. More personnel carriers were rolling in.

  “We can’t turn around,” Quinlan said, eyes on the screen.

  “I know that, Ray. I know that,” Oxley said, his eyes also on the screen. “I assume you mean leaving Iraq.”

  “I mean Dallas, Mr. President, and I know damn well you mean that, too.”

 
; Oxley looked toward Griffith. “Steph. Tell the comm guys in back that I need them to pump in a replay of GNN on one of the screens here. They’ll figure a way. It’s got to be all over the Internet.”

  Griffith stood. She was a tall, red-haired woman who looked perpetually beleaguered. “It’s a zoo out there, Mr. President,” she said. “They’re screaming for information.”

  “Tell them I’m in constant touch with Falcone and Wilkinson.”

  “We’re not going back to Washington?”

  “Next stop, Dallas, Steph. But don’t tell ’em yet. Get back here in ten minutes. And bring in Barry. We’re going to need some quick speechwriting.”

  The room was still. Oxley and Quinlan, their heads close, did not speak for a moment. Then Oxley said, “Tell me one thing, Ray. I’m the President. I’ve got—what?—sixteen intelligence agencies. How come I don’t know a goddamn thing that GNN doesn’t know?”

  In the stillness, the phone flashed again, indicating a call relayed from the White House but not through the red-phone lines.

  “Senator Stanfield, Mr. President,” the White House communication officer said.

  Oxley signaled Quinlan to listen in on the phone in front of him.

  “Mark? How good of you to call. What can I do for you?”

  “About the Elkton, Mr. President.”

  “Yes?”

  “I believe that the nation—”

  The phone line went dead.

  “What the hell’s going on? I thought they had it fixed,” Oxley said, looking to Quinlan, who was already on his feet and heading for the door.

  “I’m on it,” Quinlan said, heading for his small cubicle next to the conference room. Using a red-phone line to the White House, he learned only that line was available. He tried to reach Stanfield but someone in his Senate office told Quinlan that the senator was on the road and not immediately reachable. Quinlan thought for a moment—only a moment—about leaving a message explaining the phone cutoff. But what was the point? Whatever that gasbag Stanfield wanted to say would not help Oxley prepare for Dallas.

  3

  SEAN FALCONE got up from his desk and stood by a tall window. Sheets of rain blurred his view. Summer’s started. Already heat and rain. Heat and rain. And tourists. Don’t forget the tourists, Falcone thought, the view reflecting his soggy mood. Then he was lifted by a sudden memory of Boston summer, when the days were full of baseball and prayers for the Red Sox.