Root and Branch
Root and Branch
Preston Fleming
Contents
Abbreviations
Chapter One: Puerto Rico Trench
Chapter Two: American Intifada
Chapter Three: Clausewitz of Counterinsurgency
Chapter Four: Islamic Youth
Chapter Five: Triage
Chapter Six: Making the Case
Chapter Seven: Anarchist
Chapter Eight: Common Ground
Chapter Nine: Middleburg
Chapter Ten: Temptation
Chapter Eleven: Missing
Chapter Twelve: Takeover
Chapter Thirteen: Corvus Base
Chapter Fourteen: Loadmaster
Chapter Fifteen: Base Chief
Chapter Sixteen: Termination Clause
Chapter Seventeen: Renditions Branch
Chapter Eighteen: Carcassonne
Chapter Nineteen: Repatriation
Chapter Twenty: Assodé
Chapter Twenty-One: Timia
Chapter Twenty-Two: Limbo
Chapter Twenty-Three: Withdrawal
Chapter Twenty-Four: Ultimatum
Chapter Twenty-Five: Escape
Chapter Twenty-Six: Truth and Reconciliation
Author's Biographical Note
Notes
Books by Preston Fleming
Copyright © 2020 by Preston Fleming
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form of by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
PF Publishing
Salt Lake City, Utah
Publisher’s Note: This eBook is a work of fiction. Names characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9994418-4-8
ISBN-10: 0-9994418-4-1
For more information, go to www.PrestonFleming.com
Abbreviations
DHS Department of Homeland Security
DNI Director of National Intelligence
DOD Department of Defense
DOJ Department of Justice
DRA Detainee Risk Assessment
EMP Electromagnetic pulse
EOB Executive Office Building
ESM Emergency Security Measures
ICE U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
NDA Nondisclosure Agreement
NSC National Security Council
SAP Special Access Project
Chapter One: Puerto Rico Trench
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
–Winston Churchill
JUNE, SUSSEX COUNTY, DELAWARE
Roger Zorn awoke from a deep sleep to the mingled stench of ammonia, charred flesh and something that smelled like shrimp left to rot in the sun. Even though the limo’s tinted windows were shut tight and the air conditioner ran forcefully enough to make him shiver beneath his windbreaker, the stench was turn-back strong.
Zorn sat up straight in the cool leather of the town car’s rear seat. Though he was fit for a man in his early sixties, his neck was stiff from having slept sitting upright with his head tilted steeply back, and his thinking felt clouded from his too early start at four A.M.
“What on earth is that smell?” he asked the driver.
The latter, a taciturn fellow in his late fifties, likely ex-military, as Zorn judged from his close-cropped graying hair and his lean physique, answered after a moment’s pause.
“We’re in Delaware, sir. Big-time chicken farms here.”
Zorn looked out the window. In the morning’s pre-dawn glow he could see countless rows of soybean plants and, beyond them, fields of waist-high cornstalks. Nowhere could he spot any of the sprawling, flat-roofed poultry sheds typical of a commercial chicken farm.
“Really? I don’t see any sheds.”
“It’s summer. Smells travel and the worst ones have superior range. We should be coming out of it soon.”
“How much farther to the air base?” Zorn asked, rubbing his tired face with both hands.
“ETA in twelve minutes,” the driver answered, glancing at the car’s navigation screen. “We’re running ten minutes early.”
“Do you come out here often? With passengers, I mean?”
“Not until recently, sir. The flights used to travel from Joint Base Andrews. Once a week. Now that they’ve moved out to Dover, flights run daily.”
“And your passengers? Mostly contractors like me?”
“Yes sir, mostly.” The driver shot a glance at Zorn in the rearview mirror and Zorn could detect uneasiness in his eyes. “Sorry, sir, but I’d better not say more. We’re not supposed to talk about the flights or our passengers.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t work for Tetra Corp. I won’t tell them anything you said.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
Ten minutes later, as predicted, the town car pulled off the highway and stopped behind a dozen tractor-trailer units queuing at a bomb-inspection roadblock to enter Dover Air Force Base. The base, home to two airlift wings and more than a quarter of the nation’s strategic airlift capability, had grown busier than ever to support the president’s new containment strategy to stop the spread of fresh jihadist insurgencies across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
By now, the sun had peeked over the horizon and was casting long shadows onto the air base, which at six in the morning already teemed with trucks on their way to unload cargo at the largest military airfreight terminal in the world. Zorn felt a shiver of excitement as the town car inched forward. Soon he would enter the lion’s den. At least he wouldn’t be traveling alone.
When the sniffer dogs finished their loop around the limo, the bomb inspection team waved Zorn’s driver on. Through the vertical steel bars of the sliding security gate, Zorn spotted an Air Force sentry dressed in desert camouflage fatigues and a black beret. When at last the town car pulled up to the gate, the young guard stepped out from behind a waist-high sandbag barrier to the driver’s window, reached in to accept the driver’s Tetra Corporation identification card and checked it against a list on his clipboard. Next he asked to see Zorn’s passport, gave it a quick glance, and returned it before waving the car through.
The driver cruised past several blocks of nondescript administration buildings before making a sharp right turn and parking outside a windowless cinderblock structure that bore no markings except for a street number. Barbed wire entanglements that stretched across the building’s roofline and sides barred access to its rear. Zorn stepped out of the car and looked up and down the street. Unlike the area around the gate, here the town car was the only vehicle visible for a block to either side, with not a pedestrian to be seen.
The scream of a heavy-lift C-5A Galaxy cargo aircraft taking off with all four engines at maximum thrust was enough to hurt Zorn’s head. He pressed his palms hard against his ears until the noise let up. Then he reached for his overnight bag and dragged it out of the car onto its two wheels.
“I’ll take you inside to check in, sir, but from there, you’re on your own,” the driver offered. “When you get back, one of our people will be waiting for you. No need to call. We’ll know you’re coming.”
To Zorn’s surprise, the building’s steel front door opened onto a brightly lit reception area filled with stylish office furniture worthy of a hedge fund office or a pharmaceutical company. The only thing mis
sing was a corporate logo. Instead, the Stars-and-Stripes and the Delaware state flag stood to either side of photos of the U.S. president and vice president, marking the place as a government facility. Zorn drew a deep breath and caught the odor of fresh paint.
As Zorn approached the reception desk, a camouflage-clad female Air Force officer in her late twenties stepped out from a back room and greeted him with a deferential smile. She was tall and slim and rather plain looking without the enhancements of make-up, but showed some attractive curvature inside her loose-fitting fatigues. She wore a brimmed patrol cap covering dark hair that barely reached the nape of her neck. The bars on her collar tabs showed her rank as first lieutenant and the name tag on her chest read “Vazquez.”
“Mr. Zorn?”
“That would be me. Good morning, lieutenant.”
Zorn drew his passport out of his shirt pocket and opened it to the photo page. The officer inspected the document closely before slipping it into a manila envelope.
“I’ll take over now,” she said to the driver, who nodded once and made his exit without a word.
Next she tore open a sealed letter-sized envelope and held out a set of military dog tags for Zorn, along with a Tetra Corporation ID card bearing his photo, under the name Clifford Weaver. He tucked the tags and their chain into a pocket of his windbreaker, chuckling to himself at the alias and wondering if people would be calling him “Cliff” where he was headed. A name suited for adventure.
Lieutenant Vazquez stepped out from behind her desk and moved in close enough that Zorn could detect the lingering fragrance of her bath soap. Irish Spring came to mind. Or was it Coast?
“Because this is a classified flight,” she said with a solemn expression, “you’ve been logged in under a pseudonym so that there won’t be an official record of your travel. I’ll hold your passport and any other forms of identification here, including your driver’s license and credit cards. You won’t need them where you’re going.”
She held out a slender hand, palm up, to receive his wallet. He withdrew all the cash and stuffed it into a trouser pocket before forking over the card-filled wallet, which she promptly dropped into the manila envelope that held his passport.
“Any other materials that might identify you, sir? Prescription drug bottles? Engraved jewelry? Monogrammed clothing?”
“Nope. I read the instructions. I’m clean.”
“Then I’ll take your cell phone. No electronics allowed from here on.”
He turned off the phone and handed it over.
She acknowledged the device with a curt nod before sliding it into the same envelope, sealing the flap and depositing it in a combination-locked file drawer.
“All right, sir, come with me. But first, please put this on over your shirt and trousers.”
Lieutenant Vazquez pulled open another drawer and removed a sealed plastic bag that contained a one-piece flight suit made of khaki-colored cotton twill. Zorn laid his windbreaker over a chair and stepped into the flight suit. It was a couple sizes too large and fit easily over his shirt and trousers. The zippered front closed easily and left plenty of room to move his arms and shoulders. As he expected, the suit bore no sign of name, rank or service branch.
“Has Undersecretary Craven checked in yet, lieutenant?” Zorn asked after handing back the empty plastic bag for disposal. “He and I are supposed to be flying together. Should I wait for him here or will someone else escort him out to the aircraft?”
The young officer’s face clouded over.
“The undersecretary canceled earlier this morning. Didn’t his office contact you?”
“No.” Zorn tried not to show his apprehension at being left in the lurch. “You’re certain he canceled? Did you take the call yourself?”
“No, sir, but the duty officer’s message left no doubt.”
“I hope you don’t mind my asking, lieutenant, but is there anything about this flight that might be, let’s say, out of the ordinary? Anything I ought to know before I get on board?”
“Nothing at all is out of order with the flight, sir,” the young woman bristled, her earlier deference suddenly replaced by thinly veiled indignation. “The crew is expecting you. If anything at all has changed, you’ll be briefed on board. Please come this way, sir.”
She punched in a key code to disarm the alarm on the office’s rear door and ushered Zorn onto the tarmac. Parked ten yards away was a black Chevy SUV with gray tinted windows. She opened the rear door for Zorn to climb in, but instead he tossed in his overnight bag and circled around to the front passenger seat so as to have a better view. Vazquez raised an eyebrow but didn’t object before taking the driver’s seat.
“The aircrew will know me only by my pseudonym, right?” Zorn asked once the SUV’s engine roared to life. “Is it fair to assume they all hold TITAN-level clearances?”
“Yes, sir, everyone you’ll meet on the trip will be cleared for TITAN material. Of course, their access to compartmented information may vary.” She cast a sideways glance. “And from now on, you’ll be known as Mr. Weaver. Is that all, sir?”
“Thank you, lieutenant. I think I’ve got it now.”
Lieutenant Vazquez backed out from the parking spot with a lurch and set off at a clip along the edge of the tarmac, past the control tower, toward a series of hangars. En route they passed a quartet of parked Lockheed C-130 Hercules cargo planes, aging turboprops that, judging by their plain white non-military paint jobs, likely belonged to Tetra Air Logistics. Two of the aircraft had lowered their rear loading ramps to take on cargo and passengers. Parked a short distance from one plane was a school bus with blacked-out windows. Zorn watched from afar as the bus unloaded thirty or forty detainees dressed in bright orange jumpsuits. They were shackled together in single file, but each had managed to unzip his jumpsuit sufficiently, despite being handcuffed, to bare his left shoulder to receive an injection from a medical team gathered at the base of the loading ramp.
As the SUV drew even with the bus, Zorn’s gaze focused on the first man in line, a gangly youth with shaggy black hair and sloping shoulders who towered over those behind him as he shifted his weight absently from one sneaker-clad foot to another. The youth wore a Lincolnesque beard in the style favored by many Islamists, but what struck Zorn most about him was the look of utter despair in his eyes. Here was the proverbial dead man walking, a wretch who seemed to have died where he stood without anyone to close his eyelids. The face looked familiar. Where had he seen it before?
The moment the SUV passed the line of detainees, Zorn realized that he had left something behind. His windbreaker was still flung across a chair with his alias ID card and dog tags inside.
“Lieutenant,” he began with an embarrassed wince. “I’m afraid we may need to go back to your office.”
The young officer took her foot off the gas and let the car slow down.
“Is something wrong, sir?” she asked, giving him a sidelong glance.
“I left the alias ID back at your office, in my jacket.”
“No problem, sir.”
As she made a tight U-turn on the tarmac, Zorn detected a faint smirk on her face but said nothing. He deserved it.
Once they were back at the office, the lieutenant returned phone messages while Zorn used the toilet. As a result, it was nearly a quarter of an hour later when they reached a spot near where Zorn had seen the gangly youth and his fellow detainees queue up for injections. But now the bus was gone and one of the C-130s had closed its loading ramp and was firing up its engines for takeoff.
“I noticed that the detainees who lined up by that plane were getting injected,” he noted. “Inoculation against tropical disease?”
No answer.
“Yellow fever, maybe? Or Zika?”
When Vazquez failed to respond, Zorn stared at her until she relented.
“Something like that, sir. You’d have to ask the medics.”
A moment later the SUV pulled to an abrupt stop alongside the
second C-130 just as its rear ramp lifted shut. Zorn thanked Vazquez before grabbing his overnight bag and heading for the cockpit stairs. Inside the aircraft, he found its civilian contract pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer running through their pre-flight checklist. Having flown many times in the 1960’s-era transport plane, the workhorse of the U.S. military’s airlift capability, Zorn already knew the interior layout and made a beeline for the only vacant seat in the cockpit, one of two located directly behind the pilots. Bright sunlight streamed through the double-row of windows that offered a one hundred eighty degree view of the tarmac.
The pilot, a short and stocky fellow in his early fifties whose flight suit looked a size too small, interrupted the checklist to greet his passenger. He reached for a clipboard holding the flight manifest and read out Zorn’s pseudonym.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Weaver. I’m Travis, and my partners here are Clayton and Marcus. Is it okay with you if we call you ‘Cliff’? We’re a pretty informal bunch.”
Travis spoke in a relaxed drawl that Zorn guessed represented Georgia, or perhaps the Carolinas.
“Please do,” Zorn replied, smiling at the sound of his new nickname. “Excuse me for interrupting your checklist. Where would you like me to sit?”