"Sounds like you're on the case. Let's synchronize and talk again tomorrow at 0800 hours, local."
"Okay. We're counting on you. Don't mind telling you I'm scared. We're outgunned and Ramirez has started killing people."
"Michael, we're working as fast as we can. Just be by a radio tomorrow." Dimitri Spiros switched off the microphone and lapsed into troubled thought.
3:29 p.m.
Events were getting serious enough that the operation had been moved down to the Situation Room, in the White House basement. Scarcely twenty feet on a side, it was dominated by a teak conference table, with leather-bound chairs lining the walls. Although it appeared cramped by corporate standards, especially when the full National Security Council met, its close quarters intensified the focus needed for international crisis management. Besides, in the new age of electronic decisions, it was state-of-the-art, making up in technology what it lacked in spaciousness. Installed behind the dark walnut panels that covered three of the walls was the latest in high-tech electronic equipment, including a variety of telecommunications terminals, video monitors, and apparatus for projecting and manipulating images on the large screen on the fourth wall—normally concealed by a drawn curtain but now open and ready.
"We'll have to work through Joint Special Operations Command," the President was saying as he looked around the room. The five people there were intensely at work—their coat jackets crumpled across the chairs, shirt sleeves pushed back, ties loosened or off. They included Chief of Staff Morton Davies, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Ted Brock, and Head of the Joint Chiefs Ed Briggs. "So we're about to find out if this country has any counterterrorist assault capability."
Special Operations Command had been created in the eighties after the string of embarrassing communication snafus during the Grenada invasion. Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, it had overall control and supervision of America's major commando units.
"I guess the first decision they'll have to make," he continued, "is who we should send in."
There were two options. The Navy had a 175-frogman unit, Sea-Air-Land Team Six, operating out of the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base near Norfolk, Virginia. SEAL Team Six specialized in underwater demolitions, clandestine coastal infiltrations, hand-to-hand operations. The other unit trained to carry out hostage-rescue missions was Delta Force, headquartered in a classified installation at Fort Bragg. The SEALs were high profile, whereas everybody denied the very existence of Delta's assault team—called "shooters" in military parlance. Delta Force was probably the worst-kept secret in America.