The Rise of the Speaker by Pete Driscoll

Author:Pete Driscoll [Driscoll, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

The great escape.

“What the fuck happened!” David Turnbull Jr barked at the four senior members of the US Security committee from his place being the Resolute desk. Gerald Meisner – National Security Advisor – shifted awkwardly in his seat as the President’s eye drew down on him. “you made some pretty solid guarantees, Gerald,” the President said predatorially, “something about nobody being able to stand up to that kind of firepower, something about him surrendering, something about his tech being reverse engineered… Am I missing anything!?!”

Meisner shook his head weakly, unable to bring himself to look the President in the eye. Admiral Garfield coughed behind a fist before speaking up. “Mr President, there is no way we could have known the combat capabilities of those robotic soldiers before we initiated the operation. They were far more effective than even our wildest estimations – there were also a lot more of them.”

“That sounds less like an explanation and more like an excuse, Admiral. And a pretty fucking bad one at that!”

“With all due respect sir, it is not an excuse.” Garfield answered firmly, “we designed this operation based on all the information that was available to us at the time. They used 6 soldiers to take out 50 CIA agents when they attacked Montana, standard military doctrine would suggest that they used 6 soldiers because they needed 6 soldiers to do the job. In reality, it was overkill. One of those things could have wiped out a thousand agents without taking a scratch, but that information simply wasn’t available to us. We sent in over 2200 soldiers, backed up with armour and air support – that’s more soldiers than we used to take Baghdad.”

“And 2200 soldiers couldn’t do the job?!?” Turnbull yelled incredulously, raising to his feet behind his desk.

“No, sir!” the Admiral almost shouted back in defiance. “2200 soldiers, 10 tanks, 12 gunships, 4 attack aircraft, 9 Bradleys, 5 artillery pieces and 35 Humvees couldn’t do the job! There are more than 1400 dead soldiers and a few hundred billion dollars of wreckage on that hill and that’s not including the wounded... We have the strongest military force in all of human history and we just had our asses handed to us!... sir!”

Hearing a decorated war veteran and the head of his armed forces lay it out in such plain terms seemed to take the fire out of Turnbull’s interrogation. He slumped back down into his chair with a sigh, resting his elbow on the plush leather armrest and rubbing the bridge of his nose as he digested this new reality. “Ok… take me through it… from the beginning.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Meisner said, finally finding the courage to speak. “as we discussed, an FBI and ATF taskforce was sent in as soon as ‘Marcus’ was located. 2 predator drones were loaned to the FBI to assist in the search but both were shot down. The taskforce moved in for an assault but the enemy detected them and initiated a dialogue – the feds settled down for a siege.

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