Across the Line of Departure

By Mike Smith

Across the Line of Departure is a gripping thriller about a jaded army officer whose unconventional code of honor sets him on a dangerous path to vengeance, from which there can be no turning back. It's the dramatic sequel to Backazimuth, Mike Smith's debut novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Smith
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452491912

Mike Smith

Targeted's author Mike Smith is Vice President of Revenue Platforms and Operations at Hearst Magazines Digital Media and General Manager of Core Audience at Hearst Corporation. The former President of Forbes.com and former Chief Digital Officer of Forbes Media, Smith is an authority on how using real-time bidding systems with finesse can dramatically promote online advertising and branding. Before joining Forbes, Smith was Vice President and Chief Information Officer at TheStreet.com. He also worked at HBO in a variety of positions, including director of information technology. Smith is a graduate of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

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Prologue

The term Line of Departure denotes the spot at which a soldier crosses from friendly territory into unsecured ground, leaving safety behind to do his duty in the face of all the dangers that surround him. For some reason, this concept has an almost mystical significance within the Army. It marks the beginning of an endeavor from which no soldier can retreat. It represents an irrefutable challenge voiced without the use of language. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, for example, he was crossing a line of departure. Once crossed, the act can’t be undone—and you never get to act like it didn’t happen.

My line of departure—this time—is a real-life smear in the sand delineating the makeshift boundary between the countries of Iraq and Saudi Arabia . . . although, that’s not quite precisely the truth. My crossing will happen in a place designated since 1922 as the Neutral Zone—a nebulous border region in a barren wasteland with no precise boundaries. It’s an expanse of desert that no nation valued enough to claim . . . and the term is quite fitting, really. There can be no better metaphor for my dead-end Army career and my neutral zone of a life—both of which I’m leaving behind.

Somehow, someone years ago piled sand in two parallel lines straight through the heart of the Neutral Zone—dual berms, like dry-land sandbars, piled ten feet high and ten feet apart along what should have been the border. He must have known I would need a line in the sand.

I’ll cross this sandbar in the desert later today, and maneuver into the unknown with its wild reefs and dangerous shoals. And when I do, my life will change. No longer will life be as simple as it was before I crossed the line in the sand.

I am neither oblivious nor indifferent to the consequences of my actions—simply determined to see this task through to the end; even when the ending is likely a wreck from which I may not be able to swim ashore.

I’ve become accustomed to dealing with such consequences . . . I’ve been here before.

Crossing a line of departure is more an act of one’s will than of one’s body.

. . .

Chapter 1. A Mission

Dawn on February 24, 1991. On the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. D-Day, H-Hour minus eight for the Desert Storm ground attack.

Around me, the mechanized division, a voracious clockwork predator 25,000 men strong, awakens from its months-long slumber. Tanks and fuel tanker-trucks mate and separate at frantic speeds. Loads are checked. Guns are cleaned. We are making our final preparations for going to war. This turbulent activity kicks up clouds of dust which billow in the predawn darkness, swirling like a primordial haze over some primeval landscape. In my mind, though, it’s not dust. Rather, it’s the stage curtains preparing to rise on the final act of a tragedy. Acts one and two have been performed and recorded. The last act is about to begin.

Dawn breaks, and the indifferent sun hammers first bronze and then copper and finally gold into the eastern sky. Around me the dust clouds eddy in the stirring daylight. And in my imagination the audience hushes in their seats as the orchestra leader gets their attention.

The mission of the 24th Infantry Division is simple: find and destroy the Iraqi Republican Guard divisions—all seven of them if need be. It’s a mission this unit is uniquely suited for, and one it will vigorously prosecute.

But this is not my mission. For weeks I’ve known that I have a more dangerous path to tread. Ahead of me across that line is a man whom I once admired, but who I now know to be a traitor and a murderer. The rest of the world thinks he’s buried in a hero’s grave in the cemetery at West Point. They’re wrong. He may have fooled everyone else—but not me.

Before the sun rose this morning I renewed a pledge to abandon my assigned tasks and pursue another course—a personal vendetta to find, then kill, this man. That pledge is recorded in six notebooks bound in a rag and stuffed into a map case in my Humvee.

My nemesis is Colonel Ken Holland. I first met him at West Point in the early 1970s when he was a mere captain and my tactical officer—a teacher and mentor. He and I collided again at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin last July, where he and his accomplices tried to kill me and were responsible for the deaths of several soldiers—men who were in my charge and were my friends. He faked his death and fled. The Army thinks he’s dead and buried . . . but I know differently.

I discovered that he was a traitor—an agent for Saddam Hussein. For almost a decade he provided information to the Iraqi dictator to help him prepare to fight against the U.S. Army. He had been Saddam’s man for these ten years, ever since his wife was murdered at the hands of the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries. His spying for Saddam started out as his way to get revenge on the Iranian mullahs who stoned his wife to death for her crime of marrying the infidel. Now he’s in Iraq, where he fled after faking his death, and where he continues his treachery as he helps the Iraqi Republican Guard organize to fight against his former comrades-in-arms.

Until I arrived at Fort Irwin’s NTC last July, Holland was one of the Army’s designated favorite sons—their fair-haired boy—embarked firmly on a golden career path. He would have completed his tour at Fort Irwin, been vaingloriously awarded something lavish like the Legion of Merit, ritually promoted to brigadier general, and then sent to lord over several corridors of the Pentagon. His treachery would continue to be hidden as he rose through the ranks and assumed more and more responsibility. In death, he was still one of the Army’s favorite sons. His faux military funeral was grander than most state funerals and uncounted flags throughout the Army waved at half-staff in mourning for his premature downfall.

But it’s all rubbish. He’s not dead. He’s not a hero. What he is . . . is a traitor, a deserter, a collaborator, a murderer, and my quarry.

And while he was a favorite son, my career staggered down a different path. I’m a fraud, a miserable drunken excuse for an officer and an even worse human being. So far, I’ve kept my alcoholic secret poorly hidden behind a screen of wintergreen breath mints and my other secrets hidden inside a bottle. I don’t lie awake at night waiting for messengers carrying orders effecting my immediate promotion or a decree from the pope canonizing me—because they’re not coming. My major endeavor in life is keeping the rest of the world from recognizing my hypocrisy. I’ve surrendered hope of finding some tiny bit of good in myself.

Back in my home environs, the local populace to the Mississippi delta region has a method for determining the ripeness of watermelons. With a simple thump from a strong middle finger, an experienced practitioner can tell if a given melon is green or has matured to red-ripeness. Despite years of attempts while growing up, I never got the hang of this technique and ruined a goodly number of melons before finally giving it up. I simply never got it

I concluded from this that I was either tone deaf . . . or color blind. It was like my head contained faulty wiring—a factory defect. In much the same way, I never got the Army. I never embraced the basic treatises which govern Army behavior. Sure, I honored its sacraments and learned its mythology—stories of leadership and valor and sacrifice . . . and honor. But as a rule, I survived by aping the actions of my successful colleagues. Some of these rituals and procedures I understood, and some I didn’t. For me, Army life consisted mostly of the miserable periods between my last drink and the next.

Now that I’ve been sober for several months, I have to ask myself, why did I stay in the Army all these years? What force kept me from escaping out the main gate of each of the indistinguishable bases where I was held captive? Was it gravity, the Army pulling on my soul in some veiled, indiscernible way? Was it inertia, a basic laziness to get off my ass and get another job, certainly not in my father’s footsteps . . . to follow the plow? Or was it a vacuum, the absence of some fundamental ingredient in my character—another manifestation of a factory defect? It doesn’t matter now.

And like my own, Holland’s crimes are unpunished. Now I, Major Bill Slade—the most unlikely person imaginable—intend to find him and pronounce judgment. This is my mission, my self-appointed duty. Years ago I discarded my honor, and soon I will abandon my duty as an officer, a soldier, and a leader in the Army, so I can pursue my prey with all my strength.

In my mind I picture the maestro raising his baton. The curtains rise with the dawn. I clinch my teeth and pronounce, It’s time to go to work.

. . .

Chapter 2. A Plan

At first light the vehicles and staff members of the brigade headquarters move to our starting line position and await the appointed hour. Despite warnings not to increase our radio traffic, the radios throughout the division blare and squeak with reports of arrivals and departures. So much for radio silence!

Like every other soldier in the division, I’m wearing enough crap, ah . . . I mean protective equipment, to stagger a team of oxen. From toe to head, my uniform starts with combat boots, a chemical protective suit, a chemical protective mask, two atropine injectors (an antidote to nerve-agent poisoning), a chemical decontamination kit (so the mortuary team that handles my poisoned remains can render it safe), a bullet-proof ballistic vest, load-bearing equipment or web gear holding my compass, flashlight, knife, pistol, four extra magazines of seven bullets each, two canteens, a pair of spare ammunition pouches (for candy and a brace of now-empty hip flasks), and a first aid kit. We have new camouflage hooded parkas with a digital desert camouflage pattern—we wear only the outer parka shell. Without the heavy liner it’s a great windbreaker and light rain jacket—perfect for this weather. Completing the list are my helmet, hearing protection and finally, ballistic laser eye protectors (called BLEPS).

That’s me, Major Bill Slade: the OSHA-approved soldier incarnate . . . except maybe for the empty hip flasks.

Standing by the open tailgate of my Humvee, I clean my weapon. The familiar ritual holds a sense of closure—a focus to the final chapter of my preparations. Each component is dismantled and examined, primed, prepared, and then the whole is reassembled and made ready. In much the same way, I inspect my heart, picking up my courage—and my will—turning them over in my mind, examining and preparing them for the coming test. In earlier days, soldiers on the eve of battle sharpened the edges of their blades as a way of honing their souls as well as their steel. For the first time in my career as a soldier, I savor the act of cleaning my gun.

Private First Class Jack Hudson stands next to me cleaning his M16 rifle. He’s a good kid. I’ve come to trust him over the past few months. We work in silence for twenty minutes, trading cleaning supplies and little else. When we finish, I inspect his rifle and ask him to check my pistol.

Examining my handgun, Hudson asks me, Hey Major, why do you carry this heavy old piece-of-shit pistol rather than the slick new nine-millimeter?

Before we left Georgia, I decided to keep my .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol rather than upgrade to the new nine-millimeter Beretta. The heft of this ancient piece of American steel comforts my hand. Whenever I feel the need for solace, I just hold my nice, cool gun. Besides, I know how to disassemble and clean the old .45, so why mess with what you know . . . right?

I smile, Private, I carry a forty-five, pausing now for comedic effect . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . now, because they don’t make a forty-six. I imagine a comic’s snare-drum and rim-shot sound effect, but it doesn’t come. He gives me a puzzled look—he doesn’t get the joke. Am I the only person in the Army with a sense of humor?

Anyway, after he checks the pistol, he turns to hand it back to me. My dad had one of these . . . oh shit. I’m sorry, major. It slips from his hand and he awkwardly drops it in the sand.

I stand looking down at my twenty minutes of wasted effort. It’ll need recleaning. I muffle a curse and restrain my urge to snap at him. After a few seconds, I sigh, No problem. Hand it here and I’ll clean it off.

He picks it up and holds it to his chest, No, sir. I’ll clean it. I dropped it and I should make it right.

What just happened? He said sir. This sort of surprises me; he has never used that word to address me before. Never. He always calls officers by their rank and not sir. Waiting a beat to make sure I heard him right, I slowly agree and accept his offer, Alright, clean it up. Do you know how?

Oh yes. My father showed me how to clean his automatic.

I’m still puzzled, but I let it go, Okay. I’m going to walk over to the command post and check in. I’ll be back in an hour. Is everything else ready for move out?

Yes it is, major. We’re all squared away. I have rations, water, fuel, and extra ammunition as well as our gear. The Humvee is in good shape and the radios have checked out great.

Hmm, so he’s back to calling me major, Great. See you in an hour.

Under a cloudlessly perfect sky, I walk off towards the command post as Hudson starts disassembling my pistol to clean it. He called me sir. What’s up with that, I wonder.

Hudson’s been my driver for seven months, ever since we arrived in Saudi Arabia. He’s a farm boy from out west—a good, reliable soldier to have around. I question if he knows that his two predecessors were killed at the National Training Center last July by my former roommate, Dennis Napier, who was working with Holland to spy for Saddam Hussein. The next time I run into Holland, I can’t let Hudson die like they died. Holland’s betrayal caused the deaths of eight people last July: my two drivers, my former roommate, another good friend, two undercover DEA agents, and two of Holland’s accomplices.

Now, though, it’s time to get my head in the game. Walking through the dusty haze kicked up by the vehicle movement, I stomp toward the brigade command post, while mentally reviewing the division’s attack plan. The division’s attack formation is simple, really. The division has three brigades. For this attack, two will march side by side (or abreast in military lingo) and the third will follow, as a reserve, trailing the left-most brigade.

I always stifle a giggle when a briefer says the word abreast to describe a military maneuver. I guess I need to grow up.

Anyway, Second Brigade, with me and the rest of the Third Engineers will be the right-most forward brigade. Each brigade will cover a front of about ten miles, with the division covering a front of twenty miles. This corridor is called the zone of attack. The division’s zone of attack is a north-to-south corridor 100 miles west of the border point where Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq meet.

Since I’m riding with the Second Brigade command post, I’m actually close to the front of the formation. The Old Man, my boss and the rest of the engineers, are about five to ten miles behind me in the convoy’s order of march.

The ground in front of us is open desert. There are no towns or villages and few buildings between us and the Euphrates river valley, 140 miles distant. The only structure of significance is a two-lane paved road stretching from Basra to the east (our right) and another town to the west towards the Syrian border. The road is about 50 miles to our front and cuts straight across our path like a blade. The division’s planners have, like a bunch of old women, spent a lot of time nagging and fretting about this dipshit little road. But I guess it might provide the enemy a neat axis of advance right into our flanks, if we get really careless.

So in response to this insignificant threat, our razor-sharp planners have developed an extraordinary number of contingency plans. What a bunch of nervous Nellies. When the division reaches the road, we have plans in the vault to: a) continue the attack north; b) continue the attack to the east; c) continue the attack to the west; d) continue the attack to any two of these directions at once; e) defend against an enemy attack from the east; f) defend against an enemy attack from the west; g) defend against an enemy attack from the north; h) defend in one direction and attack in another; and finally my favorite; i) attack in all directions at once.

I’m not confused! I once asked a friend on the division staff if they just might be over thinking it a bit. He didn’t get the joke—why does that not surprise me?

Anyway, once the division clears the major obstacle of this puny two-lane road in the middle of the desert, we have to deal with the Euphrates River valley. The division should start encountering enemy units about 110 miles into our little jaunt across the desert. These will be the rear echelon units and supply dumps—people who generally hate to fight.

You see, what we’re doing is sneaking up behind the bad guys so we can rabbit-punch them in the back of the head. The bad guys in this case are the Republican Guard divisions, and they’re facing east towards Kuwait while we come across the desert behind them. Surprise! Guess who’s knocking on the back door?

The Republican Guard divisions are the only Iraqi units capable of giving us any trouble. Although, even that is highly unlikely—unless these units get some help and know how we fight and how we operate. If they know our tactics, weaknesses and our tendencies, then we’ll find them harder to beat.

And with Colonel Ken Holland on their side, they will have this knowledge. You see, Holland is a master tactician. He understands how to fight with or against the U.S. Army as well as any soldier has ever known its adversary. The Army selected him to be the lead trainer at the National Training Center because he was the best at leading and explaining how to fight at the brigade and division level. With his advice, the Republican Guard units might prove more formidable than we expect. In fact, they just might kick our ass. I mean, we’re potentially already outnumbered seven to one, right?

Three things make a great combat leader: courage, experience and intellect. Holland has them all, in spades. As examples of this, Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal and Alexander were the most successful ancient field commanders of all time. Yet these field commanders fought about one or two battles a year and each saw no more than a few dozen battles in an entire lifetime. As the chief, or COG, at the NTC, Holland was a major part of twelve to fifteen battles a month for eighteen months. The ancients only saw their portion of the battle and not everything. Through the use of the NTC’s technology, Holland saw every vehicle movement, heard every command, and witnessed every round fired. Even more important, he dissected each battle and then taught the lessons from the battle to a very smart audience. He simply knows how to get the most out of a fighting formation. What’s even worse for us, he knows how to defeat every fighting formation.

From the information in his obituary, there’s a two-year gap in Holland’s assignments and I’ve noodled out that he was with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army as it fought the Iranians in the early 1980s. This gives Holland a perspective and experience with both armies that are about to meet on the field of battle. If I’m correct and this is true, then his betrayal is even more dangerous for us.

Regardless of all these circumstances, we’ll attack at 2 this afternoon. Holland and the Republican Guard better have their helmets cinched tight, because ours are.

Yesterday, after the last rehearsal, the brigade commander stood in front of the soldiers here in the command post—whom he would soon lead into battle—and spoke of his confidence and his pride. He said that if we performed as brilliantly on the battlefield we did on the rehearsal pit then our victory was assured. Hearing this yesterday, I just hoped that tomorrow the enemy performs as poorly as they did on our rehearsal pit, too. But then, they didn’t hear his motivational speech.

It’s now about nine in the morning and I check in with the command post. The command post consists of four command tracked vehicles. Map boards and radios fill the insides of these tracks, while captains and senior sergeants provide the manpower to operate them. Stalking outside the command tracks are the majors and light colonels in charge of the command post—led by the brigade executive officer and the brigade operations officer. The brigade commander operates from inside a tank—well forward and close to the fight. He shows up here from time to time to issue orders and take status briefings and chew on some ass that needs it. These vehicles are pulled side by side, hub to hub with the backsides of each in a row. They resemble four apartment building entrances on any street, except these buildings can drive away if needed. They all lower their back ramps and brace them level to form a kind of catwalk along the street. One of the command tracks belongs to the engineers. The other three belong to the operations officer, the brigade artillery officer, and the intelligence officer. If we had more time, we would put up the associated canvas and make this the full command post. Then the other staff members, like the chemical officer and the air defense officer, would find a place set for each of them. For now, however, we’re waiting to move out and are set in an expedient mode.

The engineers are represented in the command post by two captains and two senior sergeants who rotate duty shifts. I meet with them frequently to get updates and give advice. They handle most of the coordination with the brigade staff. I have operated this way for two reasons. First, I want to keep the normal situation inside the command post. These four have been doing this job for six months and have the confidence of the brigade staff and commander. The second reason—my hidden agenda—is I want to be able to slip away from the brigade unnoticed when I get wind of Holland’s whereabouts. If I were tied to the command post, it would be tough. Besides, they appreciate that I’ve treated them like competent professionals and not like mindless drones stuck in a dead-end job. Our mutual commander, the Old Man, Lieutenant Colonel Vreebrook, tends to the latter, which has not endeared him to them.

Vreebrook has been my personal tormentor since the early days of my plebe year at West Point. It was then that he targeted me for an honor code scam that backfired, nailing my friend and room mate, Dennis, and expelling him from West Point—which started Dennis down a long, twisting path to madness and murder. After I take care of Holland, I plan to look up Vreebrook and settle some accounts with him as well. The little prick has a few surprises coming.

Vreebrook is only slightly over my age and his self-serving approach to military service has gotten him promoted early to major and early again to lieutenant colonel. The pretentious bastard would sacrifice anyone in the battalion if it would benefit his sorry career. He has never served in a combat engineer battalion before, just as he has never before served in a mechanized division. How this tool ever got to command this particular combat engineer battalion at this particular time is an artifact of the sea-change happening within the Army. Until the invention of the National Training Center about five years ago, sycophants like Vreebrook routinely made rank without ever needing to get their boots muddy—and this was especially true in my branch, the venerated U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But in a major step forward by the Army, this is no longer the case; now only warriors—blooded in the sand of the NTC—get promoted. Some highly placed mentor of his wants to get him the proper credentials as a fighter, so he was sent to take command of this hard-bitten unit a mere week before Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait and we, in turn, launched ourselves into the fray. Now he commands a 750 man battalion of steely-eyed killers who are about to cross the border and ruin Saddam Hussein’s plans for mid-east domination. He fits in here about as well as a hippopotamus does in a tuxedo. It fits the Army slogan that’s been around since the time of General George Washington: situation normal—all fucked up.

Anyway, at daybreak the Marines 200 miles east of us kicked off their attack by crossing the border into Kuwait. This is a supporting attack to our main attack. The timing is intended to draw the attention of the Iraqis to the east so we can begin our later attack, in the west, unnoticed. The distraction should help us sneak up behind the bad guys.

The latest rumor has the Marines doing so well that Central Command is considering moving up our attack time. Leave it to the jarheads to screw it up—in reverse. I take it they didn’t get the memo about being the supporting attack.

In all our rehearsals, we never anticipated an early attack time. It would simply be a disaster for us. What the genius Central Command (or CENTCOM) planners may not appreciate is the complicated nature of the last few hours before crossing the line of departure—it’s really too bad the planners never actually got off their asses and attended the rehearsals. Like we say around here, the letter P in the acronym CENTCOM stands for Planning.

That’s because the Army folks on the CENTCOM staff represent, almost exclusively it seems, two of the Army’s cute little prima-donna outfits—either the 82d or the 101st Airborne Divisions, rather than a tank-heavy division like the 24th. Misfit for a desert conflict, these fragile formations face the essential problem of anyone bringing only a Buck knife to a shotgun fight. The CENTCOM planners, trained since youth in such bantamweight divisions, see no issue with cavalierly shifting the launch time for the largest land campaign since World War II. They have no clue—no concept—about the staggering amount of fuel us bruiser-class divisions will burn through in the next week, for example. These lightweights think a day’s supply of fuel consists of two 5-gallon jerry cans. Situation normal . . .

One of our simple starting line tasks is knocking down the double earthen berm which marks the border. We have bulldozers in place to start just in time—again, so as not to give away our plans too early. But this takes an hour or two and we’ll need an advance warning to remove the berms in time for the new departure time.

The complicated part of the plan is the fueling operations, which are going on right now. Abrams tanks consume almost as much fuel while standing idle as they do pounding full speed across the desert. A full Abrams tank can run for about 8 hours. After that, it runs out of fuel and becomes a static pillbox. The Bradley Infantry Vehicles are slightly better in the fuel consumption department. Bradley vehicles are smaller and run on a conventional diesel engine rather than the modified aircraft turbine engine of the Abrams tank.

Our plan is based on the premise we cross the border with absolutely full fuel tanks in each Abrams tank and Bradley. To make it happen, the division has an elaborate plan to fill them up from large tanker-trucks at the last minute. Then these tanker-trucks can haul ass south down the main supply route and get refilled for the next time they’re needed. Once the attack starts, the supply route becomes one way—going north.

If the timing of the attack is thrown off, then two things will happen. One, the Abrams tanks will cross the border with less than full tanks. Two, the tanker-trucks will be trapped at the line of departure and can’t return back to the fuel depot until after every vehicle in the division has departed—eight hours after the attack begins. This disrupts the timing of our entire advance. We will have to stop the Abrams tanks earlier than planned and refuel. These fuel tanker-trucks will be late in their trip back to the fuel depot in Saudi Arabia to get refilled. The dominos start falling.

Moreover, the second wave of these same fuel tanker-trucks, which we’ll need tomorrow, won’t be ready. So, when the Abrams tanks need to launch northward again, they can’t—their next refueling tanker convoy is trapped back at the end of the division’s convoy. The tempo of the entire attack will be thrown off. More dominos topple.

While an early attack time might look like a good idea to some genius planner sitting in Central Command, it will ultimately delay our advance onto the Republican Guard, which should happen in three days. The ripple effect of the early departure time will show itself just as we’re about to engage the Republican Guard, three days from now.

The idea of an early