From the Pulpit, Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Sarajevo, Bosnia
December, 1998

Captain Farris walked into the command center in southern Sarajevo wearing the white polo shirt and khaki dockers he had put on the previous morning as he got out of bed in Pasadena, California.  His apartment was safely locked and the post office had been notified to hold his mail while he was away on his annual two week reserve duty with the Marines during the summer break in his seminary studies.  When he stepped onto the airplane he had not been looking forward to the next twenty hours of air travel that would take him to his destination on the other side of the globe.

“Mike!” a voice called out, “you look like crap!”

“Yeah, well, I feel like crap sir.  Is there a place I can take a shower?”

“Of course.” Replied Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Hardwick, commander of UNSOCOM Bosnia. “You are bunking down the hall in a private room.  Sorry to say that you have to share a bathroom with the enlisted guy next door, but I believe you know him so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“I know him?” asked Mike.

“Staff Sergeant Paul Hogan, from your last command.”

“Hogan is here?” Capt. Farris got visibly excited. “I haven’t seen that guy since he literally saved my skin in Somalia.”

“Well, he’s going to be your NCOIC for this operation.”  Answered Lt. Col. Hardwick.

“Outstanding!”  Mike said, then his excitement suddenly drained. “But sir, I have to ask for permission to take that shower soon, I am pretty ripe after nearly twenty hours on that plane.  How long before the briefing Colonel?”

“It is 0945 now,” said Hardwick looking at his watch, “you have until 1400 to get cleaned up and maybe get some rest.  I’ll send a runner to pick you up at that time and have you to the briefing room at 1430.  Be in bdu’s and ready to leave as soon as possible, we’ll take care of all of the other logistics as needed later on.”

“Aye aye sir.”

“Carry on, Marine.”  Said Hardwick, who then turned and walked away as Captain Farris made his way down the hall to the room the Lt. Colonel had pointed out.

He went in, dropped his bag by the door, took off his smelly clothes and went to the bathroom between his room and the next where he enjoyed a long hot shower, rinsing away all of the horrible travel grime he had built up in the long journey from Los Angeles International Airport to Sarajevo Military Headquarters of the United Nations Special Operations Command, UNSOCOM.

After the shower, Mike Farris didn’t hear or sense a thing as he lay on the comfortable bed for four hours until there was a light tap on the door signaling him that nap time was over and it was now time to get to the business portion of his trip.

He opened the door to see the runner, a 19 year-old lance corporal in a bravo dress uniform of short sleeve khaki shirt, green wool trousers and shoes shined to a glasslike sheen standing at attention two feet away. 

“Sir, Lt. Colonel Hardwick requires your presence at the briefing room in thirty minutes.”

“Alright lance corporal, take a seat and wait while I get dressed.  I’ll be about five minutes then you can take me to the nearest coffee pot on the way.”

“Aye, aye captain.”  Replied the young man.

Five minutes later Mike Farris exited the door of his room and followed young Marine down the hall and around a flight of steps to a small break-room filled tables and chairs.  A large coffee machine stood at the beginning of a row of other vending machines. 

The lance corporal pointed to it and said, “This machine is probably the best cup of coffee in the building. It actually grinds the beans fresh for each cup, and makes it according to how strong you want it.  Just choose what kind of coffee you want from the menu then press the star button here in the corner to increase the strength, one press equals about one teaspoon of coffee grounds, and hit the “go” button here.”

The young man spoke as he was trying to sell Farris the machine itself. 

“You got stake in a franchise for these things, Marine?” asked the captain smiling. 

“No sir, I just get to show it to a lot of people.”  Answered the young man.  He grinned then added, “But, once I get my promotion to full corporal I am going to take the pay difference and invest it in the contractor who has our vending business, this company is making a killing!”

Mike pressed the buttons to make a straight up black coffee then hit the star button four times.  He needed it to be as strong as possible.  The machine whirred for second, followed by a grinding noise as the beans were pulverized into a course powder.  After grinding stopped, a cup dropped from inside the machine onto a grate where it was held by a spring loaded arm while steaming hot water ran through the grounds and into the waiting container.  When Mike pulled the cup out of the machine he put it to his nose, inhaled its steam, then took a sip.  The lance corporal was right.  This was one of the best cups of coffee he had ever tasted.

They moved through the building, went up two flights of steps and finally came to a room at which the lance corporal opened the door and motioned for Captain Farris to enter.  Once inside the door was closed and Farris was alone.  It was ten minutes before the scheduled meeting was to take place.

Mike walked over to the window of the building and looked outside.  He had been here for six months as a NATO Observer at the outbreak of hostilities in 1992.  The general landscape and layout of the city was the same, except that the beautiful buildings that had made this country a jewel of the Balkans for hundreds of years were now mostly burned out shells of their former glory.

From this vantage point on the fifth floor of the building that stood above the slow running Miljacka river he could see the reconstruction of the Unis Towers, now called Unitic Towers, to the north west.  They had been scarred badly during the height of the war that had tenuously ended in 1995 but somehow had structurally survived. 

Each tower, he remembered, had been called by it’s own name, one being Momo, a Serbian name, and the other Uzier, a Bosniak name.  He wasn’t sure which was which, but it didn’t really matter.  Because, the derrick that stood beside them demonstrated the important fact that this was a city that was coming out of the ashes of a horrible war, and its people were doing what they could to help it along.

The door abruptly opened and in walked a half dozen men in uniforms and a man and a woman in civilian attire. Lt. Col. Hardwick was among them.

“Mike!”  He called out.  “Good to see you more like your normal self.”

He gestured to the rest of the group and said, “Let me introduce you to the coaching staff of our fine institution.”

Hardwick pointed to the uniformed men and began the introductions in ranking order, starting with a mustachioed British general in his mid-fifties. “This is Brigadier Charles Fender from the British Special Air Service. Moving on we have Colonel Harold Blake from the US Army Special Forces.  I believe you have met Lt. Colonel Kevin Arlington USMC Special Operations.  Finally this is Lt. Colonel John Jacoby, Commander of the US Army Ranger detachment in Bosnia.” 

Farris moved down the line shaking hands with each man as they were named by Hardwick. 

“Next we have our civilian representatives, Mark Clark, CIA station chief, and Margaret Chung MI-6 area supervisor.  They will be the one’s actually briefing you on your mission details.”  Hardwick finished with the introductions and motioned everyone to their seats.

Clark and Chung moved to a laptop computer that was hooked up to a projector.  Chung, an attractive woman of Korean descent in her mid thirties, touched a couple of computer keys that brought the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation, agency logo and the title ‘Operation Anti-Anarchist’ up on a screen on the far wall of the room.  Clark, a grey haired portly man in his late fifties, moved towards the screen and began to talk.

“Captain Farris, you come highly recommended for the job we need done.  I understand you that you may be familiar with at least one of our targets, which is why we asked for you specifically.”  Clark cleared his throat and took a sip of water from a bottle he had brought in, “Excuse men gentlemen, it seems I’ve gotten a bit of scratchy throat the past couple of days.”

He took another sip of water and continued.  “As you all know the official war here in Bosnia ended a little more than two years ago.  It would seem though, that not everyone is happy with that arrangement. Margaret, go to the next slide please.”

The slide changed to a picture of several people standing on a city street corner somewhere. 

“This was taken two weeks ago by one of Margaret’s operatives in the city of Jajce, northwest of Sarajevo.  The men in the picture are all known members or associates of the Sons of the Sword organization.”

Margaret clicked the keyboard and the picture of the men zoomed in so their faces could be clearly seen.

“This,” Mark said aiming a laser pointer at one of the men, “is one Brett Mathis.  Do you recognize him Captain Farris?”

Mike’s expression became grave as image before settled on his eyes.  “Of course, how could I forget that face?  Is he a Muslim now?”

“No.” answered Margaret.  “He is just as much an atheist as ever, and still a mercenary.”

“This time though,” added Mark, “he has joined up with these Jihadists.  They obviously have gotten some good funding, because our sources indicate he is being paid very well.”

“Two and a half million pounds.”  Said Margaret.  “We verified that it is already in his Suisse Banc account.”

“Dear God!”  chimed in Brigadier Fender.  “What on earth is he being paid that much to do?  Kill the Pope?”

“No sir.” Replied Mark, “We believe he is being asked to repeat history on a grand scale.”

Colonel Blake leaned back in his chair and said, “Just what do you think they are planning?”

“In 1914 a Serbian dissident named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand as part of the nationalist Serbian movement called Young Bosnians.  This somewhat small scale local event, sparked a war between Austria and Serbia which as I am sure you are all aware became World War 1.  Five years, and nine million lives, later the world wondered how it got so far so fast.”

Brigadier Fender spoke up, “We all know the history of what happened there and assume by what you are saying that this Mathis intends to assassinate someone and start another world war.  But, the question of the moment is whom does he plan to kill?  To my knowledge there are no officials of such rank coming here any time soon that could start such a war.”

Mark motioned to his British counterpart who changed slides.  The face of the Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, appeared on the screen.

“We didn’t know at first either,”  Margaret said, “but just yesterday President Yeltsin’s staff let us know that he was planning to make an unannounced visit to his troops that are working as observers.  We believe that Mathis has been hired to assassinate Yeltsin, most likely disguised as an American or British soldier in order to throw the blame our way and possibly spark a new war.”

Lt. Colonel Jacoby took a sip of his coffee then set it down and said, “How much time do we have?”

“Three days.”  Replied Mark. 

“That is why we called in Captain Farris, gentlemen.”  Said Lt. Col. Alexander.  “The locally available spec ops teams are, well, unavailable due to other mission requirements.  The captain here has been an ace in the hole reservist for a couple of years.  With his personal knowledge of Mathis we figured he would be the fastest route to track him down and end this thing before it takes off.”

Colonel Blake looked hard at Farris, “Just how do you know Mathis?”

“We met originally at scout sniper school when I was an enlisted reservist in the late eighties.  He was one of my instructors.  Later I was his shooting partner on half a dozen missions over a period of a year.  He had a falling out with several senior officers a year or so later and took off to freelance.  He became a contract operative and we used him on black ops several times with no problems, his issues seemed to be personal with a couple of specific officers at Quantico and not with the Corps or the US government.  I met him last in Indonesia in December of 1994 when my team was sent in to rescue some US civilians who were being held hostage by local communist guerillas.  I noticed that his personality had changed a bit but he stilled seemed stable.  Mathis led us into a trap that killed two of my men.  We managed to get out, but he got away from us.  I haven’t seen or heard anything about since then.”

“Is this a personal issue between you and he then?”  asked Jacoby.

“No sir,” replied Farris.

“Gentlemen,” said Lt. Col. Alexander, “there is no need to worry about personal concerns getting involved here.  Captain Farris is a serious professional with a lot of experience in this arena.  But we need someone who knows the way Mathis moves, and Farris happens to be one who has spent the most time with him of anyone we have available.”

“Alright, then.”  Said Blake, “the clock is running, let’s get this thing going.”