J Saint - Collateral Damage

All because he'd made a decision. A decision that as a commander he'd make over and over again. A decision that given the way it played out, he couldn't seem to live with as a man.

Collateral damage was the prettied-up phrase to describe untargeted death in warfare, or more accurately, the accidental murder of innocents. Friendly fire was the palliative phrase for accidental murder by a royal fuck-up. Legally excusable murder, and both of them sat squarely on his shoulders. But that wasn't the worst part. Every commander, every soldier realized the world wasn't perfect and shit happened. That in any war there would be collateral damage. That in any battle friendly fire could happen. It was what he had to do every day in the aftermath of Lebanon that had him torn completely in two. Lying to the world and to the men who trusted him most.

But the only salient point-goal, objective, whatever tag the military and Presidential brass wanted to put on it-in the situation was to avoid fanning the flames of World War at all cost. A big picture that Roger agreed with as much as he disagreed with covering up of the truth. Thus his grueling state of turmoil.

His cell phone vibrated and he quickly dug it from his pocket, hoping it was Officer Cain with the news that Mari's attacker had been apprehended or, better yet, dead. But no such luck. It was Beck, DT's best friend and the one man Roger didn't want to talk to at the moment but didn't dare to avoid. Beck was the wild card that could bring the cover up down like a house of cards.

"Weston." Roger ascertained that the hallway was empty. Just to be sure though, he kept his voice low.

Beck didn't say anything, but then given Beck's recent behavior the man might be too drunk to speak.

"Where are you, man?"

"Sober."

"That's good."

"No, sir. That's not so good. You see, at least drunk I can rationalize what we're doing to DT, Rico and Pecos. Sober I can't. Just fuck the rest of the world, sir."

"We can't and you know it. It will set the radicals on fire."

"You can't but I'm pretty damn sure I could. And in case you haven't seen the news today, they're already on fire. We sacrificed our souls and lied for nothing. Christ, if I could go back and do it all over again, I would have never identified that Muhammad al Qassem entered the terrorist's hideout. DT would have nailed al-Qaeda's number two SOB from the inside anyway. I never fucking imagined you'd send in a missile."

"You're not remembering it all. Comm-"

"I know. Communications were dead."

"So were-"

"The signs of life signals. I know. I do remember shit. And I remember saying that I still heard gunfire inside the hideout."

"Which, given the data we had, meant that the men Qassem brought with him were firing on the terrorist. Most likely there to take Prime Minister Shalev's daughter and Ambassador James's daughter hostage from the original kidnappers. The odds that DT, Neil, Rico and Pecos were still alive were minimal at that point."

"But they were damn it, and I knew it in my gut."

Weston turned to face the wall and rested his forehead on the hard cement.

"Beck, you and I both know that sometimes decisions can't be made on gut feelings. We had to go with the facts. That we now know about the existence of Wipeout and its ability to disable our systems doesn't change the decision we had to make then." Experts were still trying to analyze the jamming device the terrorists had used. The downed communications and signs of life signals had been bad, but the effect the device had on the Samson's GPS had been a disaster. The Samson was the newest air-to-surface missile in the precision strike arsenal with an accuracy of less than a meter. The missile, launched from a UH-60 Black Hawk, was the US's compliment to Israel's Delilah and had a small but effective warhead designed to keep collateral damage to a minimum. But it was the stored explosives, both in the terrorist's hideout and in the building next door, a supposed orphanage, that had caused the devastation.

"You're wrong, Commander. You were wrong then and you're wrong now. DT, Rico and Pecos deserve the truth."

"Damn it, Beck. We've set a course and we have to see it through. Do you have any idea what the global ramifications would be if you blew the lid off of this? The orders came from the top and it's our sworn duty to-"

The line went dead in Roger's ear. Shit. Bad just turned worse.

0330 hours

"?Y ahora que, George?" Andreas demanded, wanting to know what would be next in the continuous plague of disasters following Bill Collins's betrayal. Flying at the top speed of four Rolls-Royce Trent 977/B engines in an Airbus A380 customized by Design Q in Worcestershire, he sat in the fully outfitted Turkish bath with George at his side, agitated that he couldn't relax and enjoy his newest acquisition. He'd recently bought the flying palace off the hands of an oil-rich prince whose well had run dry when his father disapproved of his repeated dalliance with a junked-out pop star.

The thought of having eighteen hours to twiddle his thumbs before reaching El Santuario had him stretched over a torturous rack of painful frustration-pain that the incompetence of Fidel's hired operatives in Atlanta only sharpened. The therapeutic benefits of the mint showers and eucalyptus steam room did little to help ease him. Not even Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" being broadcasted live from the musicians in the concert hall above helped. Minute by minute the reports feeding in from Atlanta went from bad to worse. Bill's wife and children had escaped and they had help now. Someone who could handle a gun, a man by the name of Jack Hunter that Andreas's resources were having difficulty in getting information on. Hunter's abandoned rental car had been found on Angie Freemont's street about fifty yards away from where Lauren Collins had parked hers.

Sure at any moment he'd be driven past his soft-spoken vow to screaming like a maniac, he shut his eyes and upped the volume of the music. He tried to focus on easing his anger as he turned his mind to his home above all others, El Santuario. Almost as big as an entire Peruvian region, El Santuario housed Andreas's perfect home, his research and development facility, and George's personal primate reserve, where a number of George's wild brethren roamed. The area also provided an ample and secretive operational base for his special ops teams as well as anything else he wanted to keep from prying eyes. He imagined exactly what he would do the minute he arrived. Bill Collins's body would already be there and so would the traitor's wife and children. Andreas would personally extract what in the hell Collins's had planned to do with the formula for GXP from his wife, using the children, of course. Then he'd make an example of Collins's family.

Putting the fear of Diablo himself into the people working for him was the only way to close ranks on Collins's betrayal. The video of the event would make the current executions on YouTube look like Walt Disney films. Andreas prided himself on speaking softly and carrying a big stick-the binding, torturing and killing of a betrayer's family made for a really big stick-one that he anticipated George would have a hand in this time.

The kids would never even see it coming. Cute, funny chimp suddenly going murderously wild. The video would likely go viral.

Andreas must have had the music unusually loud because he never heard Fidel knock. He felt George move and opened his eyes to see Fidel standing fearfully before him. George had moved to stand between Andreas and Fidel, clearly agitated and wanting to protect Andreas. Andreas's heart swelled.

Fidel had better have good news. "?Que?"

"We're f-f-finally learning that J-J-Jack Hunter is part of the US Military, and Guru has decrypted one of Collins's email acc-counts." Fidel's skin color went from green to white and back to green.