Free Prime by Jeremy Robinson, Sean Ellis Page A

can cut through solid steel. The
second, larger high-explosive charge would then penetrate deep into the wound
and detonate inside the target.
    The rocket snaked in under the rising
helicopter’s rotors and struck below the exhaust vent on the port side. The shaped-charge
blast cut through the Black Hawk’s exterior like it was made of tissue paper. A
millisecond later, the three pounds of high-explosives in the main charge
detonated, and Beehive Six-Four blew apart at the seams.

 
     
    EIGHT
     
    Washington, D.C.
     
    The President’s palm came down on the tabletop with a resounding smack
that echoed like a pistol-shot in the crypt-quiet Situation Room.
    The operational command center in the White
House basement was all but deserted. The President had only intended to observe
the Delta team operation, and so he had eschewed the normal cadre of advisors,
aides and support staff. The were only two other men
in the room besides Boucher. Lieutenant General Roger Collins, commander of the
Joint Special Operations Command, was a thick, beefy man with puffy, red
features and a poorly-kept secret love affair with the bottle. Collins’s aide
was a compactly built man with a silver-gray buzzcut, colonel’s eagles on his
epaulets and a black name plate that read ‘Keasling.’
    Collins shook his head. “Well…shit.”
    Boucher winced as the President’s eyes sent
daggers through the air at the three-star general. “Shit? That’s all you’ve
got? Shit?”
    Domenick Boucher swallowed nervously and
returned his gaze to the television screen, where the crisis was playing out in
real-time. The feed was from an infrared camera mounted on a circling Predator
UAV, and the images were rendered in an eerie inverted black and white, with
the grayscale hues serving as an indication of temperature. The expanding cloud
of white smoke that now occupied the space where one of the Army helicopters had
been a moment before, could only mean one thing: the
Black Hawk had become an inferno.
    Until the President’s outburst, Boucher had
felt as paralyzed as Collins. He’d watched in mute disbelief as the operation
had fallen apart before his eyes, turning from a simple raid into a full blown
battle. But Duncan’s anger galvanized him.
    Focus , he thought. What are the priorities ?
    He’d never faced a crisis like this as the Director
of the Central Intelligence Agency. There was rarely a need for the DCIA to be
hands-on, but Boucher had come up through the ranks and witnessed some of the
nation’s worst moments from the other side of director’s desk.
    I’ve
got people in the field … He
shook his head; Klein and the crypto consultant were on the helicopter that had
taken off without warning. There was nothing he could do to help them; no way
to reach them. Why? Why did that Black Hawk
go rogue? Who was giving the orders ?
    He dug his cell phone from a pocket, then just as quickly put it away. The Situation Room was
shielded; no radio signals could get in or out. He would have to make do with
one of the hard-wired telephones, which like all the other technology in the
Situation Room, was painfully obsolete and actually less secure than Boucher’s
encrypted digital phone.
    Collins was still fumbling for an answer.
“Sir, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do.”
    “You can get those men out of there.” The
President’s voice was low and flat, a steel blade hissing from between clenched
teeth.
    The general, perhaps without thinking it
through first, shook his head. “Mr. President, it’s not that simple. We’re not
coordinating with Defense on this, and if we make that call, we’ll have to
disclose the whole operation. We won’t be able to keep the mission a secret.”
    “Do you think those men out there give a damn
about that?”
    “That’s what we pay them for, sir.”
    Boucher wasn’t the only man in the room
shocked into action. The general’s aide likewise leaped for a phone. The
President’s eyes followed him, but