“My suggestion, my strong suggestion,” Matloff said, interrupting, “is to disavow Garroway’s people. Immediately. If necessary, explain to the UN that some of our Marines may have, ah, misunderstood their orders…ah, may have interpreted them too strongly, in fact, and that UN forces on Mars should take measures to beef up security around the Candor site….”
Warhurst was on his feet. “You can’t do that!”
“Sit down, General,” Admiral Gray said.
“Sir! With respect! We can’t just—”
“We understand your concern, General,” Harrel said. “I think, however, that it would be best if you would wait outside. Please.”
“The Marine Corps has a tradition, gentlemen,” Warhurst said. “A very old one. We never leave our people behind. Never.”
“That’s quite enough, General,” Harrel said.
Gray took Warhurst by the arm. “Come on, Monty,” he said. “Wait outside until this is over.”
“That…that bastard is about to throw away the lives of our people!”
He turned to glare at Matloff, but the man refused to meet his eyes…probably out of an instinctive sense of self-preservation.
Fists clenched, not trusting himself to speak further, Warhurst shook off Gray’s hand and slowly walked for the door.
Beyond the conference-room door was an outer office and waiting area manned by a couple of Army Special Forces security guards standing at rigid and unresponsive attention. Furious, Warhurst paced the blue-and-white carpet for several moments, trying to organize his thoughts. When he’d told the tale of O’Bannon and his Marines at Derna, he’d neglected to tell them the ending. The very day that O’Bannon’s men stormed the fortress, an agent of the US State Department had signed a humiliating treaty that granted a $60,000 ransom to Tripoli in exchange for the freedom of captured American seamen and an end to hostilities, though news of the treaty didn’t reach Derna for another week. Eaton and the Marines were forced to abandon their Arab allies by slipping quietly out of the harbor on an American ship.
There would be a fine comparison with history, Warhurst thought…to have the diplomats resolve this whole business on Earth while Garroway’s Marines were embroiled in a small war!
He cooled his heels in the outer office for another fifteen minutes before the members of the NSC Principals Committee began filing out of the vault door. Except for Admiral Gray, none stopped to speak or even look his way, and Warhurst had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They couldn’t follow Matloff’s advice. They couldn’t….
But then, he knew Washington well enough to know that that was exactly what they would do, if they felt they had to.
Gray clapped a hand on Warhurst’s shoulder. “That’s got to be a first, Monty. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guest at one of these meetings go for a cabinet member’s throat before.”
“I apologize for my behavior, Admiral.” The words came woodenly, without feeling. It was impossible to really mean them.
“I think everyone knew how you felt, Monty. And, well, they know about Ted.”
“Sir, I—”
“Matloff can be a thoroughgoing bastard. If a war starts after all of the negotiating he’s been doing here and in Geneva, he’s going to look very bad. It could ruin his whole career.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for the man!” Warhurst managed to pack the words with acid. “So they’re going to turn our people over to the enemy to save his career. Is that it?”
Gray didn’t meet his eyes, and the sinking feeling got worse. “They’re not turning them over to the UN, no. But Harrel’s going to tell the president that we should adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Matloff, I’m afraid, is going to see the president later today and pass on his own recommendations. Which is his right, of course. He is the cabinet member tasked with maintaining peaceful relations with the rest of the world…however unreasonable they seem, sometimes.”
“So? What do you think the president is going to do?”
“If I knew that, Monty, I’d be president.” He shrugged. “Hell, Markham’s pro-military, which is a point in our favor, and I have the feeling he’d grab at just about any chance, however slim, to get us out of this bind with our honor intact as well as our territory. But I also know that Matloff is right about the odds we’re facing. Our best hope, the country’s best hope, is for a settlement with the UN that gives them most of what they want…and lets us maintain our sovereignty a little bit longer.”
“Admiral, you can’t agree with that…man.” He stifled the urge to use a stronger word, and it nearly choked him.
“The trouble is, Matloff is right. Sooner or later, that one-world state we’ve been hearing so much about is going to happen, just to make sure food and resources get properly distributed all over the globe, if nothing else. When it does, the United States is going to lose an awful lot of its power, its prestige, and maybe its territory as well. If it comes down to a choice between giving up on what we’ve built on Mars, and having the UN occupy the US the way they did Brazil, well, I know what I would have to choose.”
“So…our people are on their own.” He thought of Ted, alone on the embassy rooftop as the transport lifted off without him. He felt sick.
Gray hesitated for a brief moment, then dropped his eyes. “Yes.”
“I’d like to work out a way of getting a message back to Garroway, sir. I know we can’t send e-mail back the same way we got it, not without risking tipping the bad guys off, but Garroway’s daughter may have a back door for us.”
“That’s a negative.”
“But—”
“I said negative. Harrel was specific on that point, and he made sure to tell me to pass it on to you, loud and clear. If the president needs negotiating room on this, he can’t have us undercutting his position by sending messages to Garroway.”
“What?”
“If the UN intercepts our messages to Garroway, they could claim that Markham was negotiating with one hand and managing some kind of guerrilla operation on Mars with the other. We can’t take that chance, Monty. We can’t even acknowledge that we got his message in the first place. The fact that we know the UN pulled an offensive move against us up there when they don’t know that we know what they did, well, that might provide us with some leverage in Geneva. As far as you and I and everybody else on Earth is concerned, we have no idea where Garroway is or what he is up to.”
“You’re abandoning him, then.” The words were hard and bitter.
“Call it plausible deniability. Anyway, it’s not as though we could do anything to help. The next cycler’s due for Earth return next week, but we don’t have time to put together a reinforcement mission. Even if we did, it’d be another eight months before they could reach him.”
“Just knowing that you’ve got people pulling for you can help sometimes, Admiral. Right now, I’d guess that Garroway and his people are about as lonely as any US military detachment has ever been in history.”
“Well, God help them,” Gray said. “Because we can’t.” He stopped and held Warhurst with his gaze. “I mean that, Monty. That’s a direct order. No communications with Garroway until this matter is resolved.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
In thirty-six years of military service, Montgomery Warhurst had never disobeyed an order…but damn, he was tempted to now.
SIXTEEN