site. Did I know that for sure? Of course not. But I wasn’t about to risk losing anyone because I hadn’t taken precautions.
1322. I made sure we’d gone over the location stem to stern ourselves before I let Araz alert the Azeri authorities, or Ashley call the embassy. Not that the bad guys had abandoned a lot of stuff when they’d exfiltrated. The tangos had come by sea—and they’d left the same way. I could see where they’d beached their three RIBs, 27 made their way up across the dunes, and set up positions alongside the service road. From the tracks, there had been a dozen, give or take one or two.
As for other evidence, there wasn’t a lot. They’d lefteight LAW tubes behind. I wrote down the lot numbers. They’d also expended a huge amount of ammunition—all of it 7.62 by 39, which is what is used in AKs. I took a handful of the brown, Chinese-made steel casings and dropped them in my pocket. They’d abandoned one unexploded Claymore, which Pick defused. It was a current-issue Russkie mine. I noted with some ironic amusement that it had been manufactured on the same day in November of 1995 that our commander in chief had received a blow job while he was on the phone lobbying a congressman to support military action in Bosnia. Yes, I do indeed keep trivia like that in my head. Don’t you?
When Ashley called the embassy to report the carnage, she got put through to the ambassador’s office. She reported what she’d seen, and described some of what we’d discovered. Then she stood, the phone to her ear, an ashen look on her face, as the ambassador obviously threw what is known in the diplomatic trade as a shit fit.
She finally turned the phone off and dropped it into her blouse pocket. “She’s not very happy.”
“I wouldn’t be either.”
Ashley scowled. “You don’t understand. She’s unhappy because she took credit on TV for rescuing people who are now dead. Now, if you want my best guess, she’s going to try to blame all this”—she swept the area with her right arm—“on you.”
That would be par for the course, especially for political appointees like the Honorable Marybeth Madison. They get where they get because they have money, or influence, or maybe they’ve given a little head to the president (or one of his best friends). Congress goes along with their nominations, becausethat’s the way Washington works—each branch of government greases the other branches of government. And the people—that’s you and me—are the ones who really get screwed.
If you ask me, and no one ever has, ambassadors would be selected because they were professional diplomats who knew all about the place where they were going. They’d speak the language, and they’d make fucking well sure that they represented the United States, not their own narrow parochial political interests. No, I don’t especially like or get along with the striped-suit, pocket change–jingling, heel-rocking, fudge-cutting crowd at the State Department. But they are better than most of the political appointees by a fucking mile. Why? Because even if they are bureaucrats, they are professional bureaucrats. And you can count on professional bureaucrats to act, well, like the apparatchiks they are. Which makes ’em easy to deal with, because I know what they will do, and how they will do it. With the Schedule Cs, 28 there’s no telling how irrationally they’ll act, which makes my life a lot more difficult, and accounts for much of the gray hair on my huge, Roguish balls.
Now, if I had been the ambassador, I’d be trying like hell right now to find out just how the fuck a bunch of tangos were able to divert and ambush a convoy of recently released hostages. How did they know the schedule? How did they infil? How did they exfil? Who tipped ’em off? Where did they launch from? And where did they go back to?
But so far as I knew, the Honorable MarybethMadison, rich-bitch Ambassador Extraordinary and
1322. I made sure we’d gone over the location stem to stern ourselves before I let Araz alert the Azeri authorities, or Ashley call the embassy. Not that the bad guys had abandoned a lot of stuff when they’d exfiltrated. The tangos had come by sea—and they’d left the same way. I could see where they’d beached their three RIBs, 27 made their way up across the dunes, and set up positions alongside the service road. From the tracks, there had been a dozen, give or take one or two.
As for other evidence, there wasn’t a lot. They’d lefteight LAW tubes behind. I wrote down the lot numbers. They’d also expended a huge amount of ammunition—all of it 7.62 by 39, which is what is used in AKs. I took a handful of the brown, Chinese-made steel casings and dropped them in my pocket. They’d abandoned one unexploded Claymore, which Pick defused. It was a current-issue Russkie mine. I noted with some ironic amusement that it had been manufactured on the same day in November of 1995 that our commander in chief had received a blow job while he was on the phone lobbying a congressman to support military action in Bosnia. Yes, I do indeed keep trivia like that in my head. Don’t you?
When Ashley called the embassy to report the carnage, she got put through to the ambassador’s office. She reported what she’d seen, and described some of what we’d discovered. Then she stood, the phone to her ear, an ashen look on her face, as the ambassador obviously threw what is known in the diplomatic trade as a shit fit.
She finally turned the phone off and dropped it into her blouse pocket. “She’s not very happy.”
“I wouldn’t be either.”
Ashley scowled. “You don’t understand. She’s unhappy because she took credit on TV for rescuing people who are now dead. Now, if you want my best guess, she’s going to try to blame all this”—she swept the area with her right arm—“on you.”
That would be par for the course, especially for political appointees like the Honorable Marybeth Madison. They get where they get because they have money, or influence, or maybe they’ve given a little head to the president (or one of his best friends). Congress goes along with their nominations, becausethat’s the way Washington works—each branch of government greases the other branches of government. And the people—that’s you and me—are the ones who really get screwed.
If you ask me, and no one ever has, ambassadors would be selected because they were professional diplomats who knew all about the place where they were going. They’d speak the language, and they’d make fucking well sure that they represented the United States, not their own narrow parochial political interests. No, I don’t especially like or get along with the striped-suit, pocket change–jingling, heel-rocking, fudge-cutting crowd at the State Department. But they are better than most of the political appointees by a fucking mile. Why? Because even if they are bureaucrats, they are professional bureaucrats. And you can count on professional bureaucrats to act, well, like the apparatchiks they are. Which makes ’em easy to deal with, because I know what they will do, and how they will do it. With the Schedule Cs, 28 there’s no telling how irrationally they’ll act, which makes my life a lot more difficult, and accounts for much of the gray hair on my huge, Roguish balls.
Now, if I had been the ambassador, I’d be trying like hell right now to find out just how the fuck a bunch of tangos were able to divert and ambush a convoy of recently released hostages. How did they know the schedule? How did they infil? How did they exfil? Who tipped ’em off? Where did they launch from? And where did they go back to?
But so far as I knew, the Honorable MarybethMadison, rich-bitch Ambassador Extraordinary and
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