Executive Actions (43 page)

“Stay with what we’re dealing with,” Evans requested.

“Well, here’s the lastest computer model showing the development of a powerful extratropical cyclone that’s dug far south in the storm track. It’s got a leading squall line with heavy dust behind it. It looks like the kind of storm that brought down a passenger aircraft in Tunisia a number of years ago. Behind it, another…”

“There’s more?” the DCI exclaimed

“Well, yes.” He called up the image. “This first one is marked by a line of clouds that extends from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia northeast, across the Mediterranean over Italy, Greece, Albania and onto the Adriatic Sea. The model calls for this second one to develop right behind it. I can’t say for sure, but I think this is building to something similar to episodes last seen in January ’82 and again in January ’95.”

“And your prediction for the next few weeks?”

“Heavy rain where it rains, snow in higher elevations. A lot more than usual. For a lot longer.”

As Tetreault expanded his explanation, Evans watched a step frame projection of the weather system play out on the meteorologist’s computer. Light shades of blue, representing fair weather clouds in the lower atmosphere, thickened to the hallmark ominious dark green shades of cold convective towers. Evans had enough background in satellite imagery interpretation to know that these areas corresponded to rapidly intensifying thunderstorms.

“And what about here?” Evans demanded. He stuck his finger on the screen right on top of Tripoli. “What’s going to happen right here?”

“It’s not a place I’d pick to vacation.”

“Mr. President, I have to talk to you,” Evans said on the secure line. “You better call J3, too. And the Secretary of Defense.”

The meeting between D’Angelo and Sami Ben Ali did not take place on the second day, or the third or the forth. Ramadan observance should have given the two men opportunity to meet and speak. However, D’Angelo saw that the men following Sami took extra precautions. He’d be surprised if Ben Ali noticed the two new men. They were better than the first team of clowns. So D’Angelo couldn’t chance contact. As a result, he had nothing to report home.

More than a week after they first met, the fifth day of Ramadan, the CIA man took a seat at an empty chess board under an awning and out of the rain. Sami would walk by. D’Angelo would catch his attention. He had to. Time was running out.

D’Angelo figured that there was nothing more boring than watching people play chess for two hours. He expected the men following Ben Ali to lose interest and go for a drink.

“Checkmate,” Sami said laying down his opponent’s king. It was the second game he’d won since they started hours earlier.

“Another?” Sami added. “Maybe your men will learn the moves they need to take.”

“I’m ready, my friend,” D’Angelo said, understanding the meaning.

They set up the pieces and D’Angelo was ready to get the information he came for.

Indeed, he played a better game, putting Sami on the defensive early. He looked nervous and began tapping the only pawn he’d taken upside down on the chessboard.

After ten more minutes his tapping stopped. However, he slowly passed his right foot closer to the stranger’s right leg. The computer disk was under his shoe. He had casually put it there while scratching his ankle during the second game. After a few more moves, which had not gone his way, he took his pawn and tapped out a simple message in Morse code.

_.. ._ _ _. / .._ _. _.. ._. / ._. _ _. _ / .._. _

To anyone paying attention, and nobody was, it would have seemed like Sami was just another chess player under stress. It was crude and low tech, but by the third pass D’Angelo got the message.

dwn undr rgt ft

Very lightly D’Angelo rested his left foot on top of Ben Ali’s. Sami stopped tapping, never once looking directly at the man opposite him. Sami gently slid his foot away and brought it back under his chair. D’Angelo put his foot directly on top of the floppy disc. They took forty minutes to complete the entire transfer. D’Angelo waited another entire game before he reached down to palm the disk. He smiled and lost the final game.

Louise Swingle placed the call for the president. She knew Scott was in Boston visiting Katie.

“Hello, Scott,” she said when he answered.

Roarke was in the middle of steaming the clams for his surprise dish of linguine vongole. He cradled the phone between his neck and his ear as he dumped the pasta into the colander.

“Hello sweetheart.”

Katie looked at him and frowned. Roarke hadn’t explained how he flirted with the President’s secretary. He pointed to the phone and saluted with his left hand. It didn’t help. When he mouthed the word “work,” she got the message.

“The boss needs you,” Louise said.

“How soon?”

“Very soon.”

“Dinner’s cooking.”

“There’ll be a Navy driver waiting outside in thirty minutes.”

“Aw come’on, Louise.”

“Sorry, Scott. He’s scheduled you for a briefing at 23-hundred.”

“Subject?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

Roarke knew that D’Angelo had returned to Libya. He could only assume, based on the urgency of the call, that his summons home was related. A deeper, inner voice told him even more.
D’Angelo got what he went in for. The events in the U.S. and Libya are connected and the common denominator is Lodge!

“What flight?”

“Your very own courtesy of your special uncle.”

Roarke said goodbye to Louise and faced Katie. He pulled her close.

“Do you have to?” was all she said.

Roarke sighed deeply and looked into his lover’s eyes, seeing so much more than he’d ever seen before.

“Why?” she appealed to him. “Why? I still don’t understand.”

For the first time in his life his heart spoke to him louder than his devotion to duty. He whispered in her ear, “I’ll tell you.”

A
message in bold red letters on the 50” plasma screen caught everyone’s attention.

TOP SECRET

Ten people—all key players in the Taylor White House—were assembled around the conference table when the president burst into the 24-hour watch and alert center known as the Briefing Room, downstairs from the Oval Office.

“Good morning. Let’s get started.” He reached forward and tapped a pad at the desk. The overhead lights lowered, but individual lamps at each seat lit up. “You all have a folder in front of you.” Everyone had already seen it, but noted that in addition to the
Top Secret
designation there was a specific instruction that they knew to follow:

Do Not Open
without permission of
the President of the United States

The president politely reinforced the point. “Hold off looking at it until I talk you through things first. Some of you are more up to speed than others.” He gave Roarke an appreciative acknowledgement. “I apologize for that inequity. But in a few minutes you’ll all know everything.”

Taylor looked to everyone for the affirmation he sought. Vice President Stanley Poole flanked him on the left, different from his usual position across the table in the Cabinet Room. Directly to his right was Chief of Staff John Bernstein. Going around the table from Bernsie’s right were General Jackson, or J3, then FBI Director Robert Mulligan. Beside him, Eve Goldman, the nation’s attorney general. Next to her National Security Advisor Arthur Campanis. Coming around the table, CIA Chief Jack Evans was opposite the president. Then Scott Roarke, Secretary of State Joyce Drysdale and Defense Secretary Norman Gregoryan.

The president intentionally discarded established White House seating protocol. He placed
people in the know
next to members of his administration who were about to be shocked out of their wits.

The inner circle would widen in the next few minutes and the debate couldn’t feel like it was
us against them.

“This briefing is protected by the National Security Act of 1947, as amended in 1996.” Taylor announced the ground rules in such a way that no one would misunderstand his meaning. “You will soon see and hear details of an operation. Only a handful of people will be privy to the exact purpose
until
we have successfully accomplished our mission. You are those people. There
will be
no leaks.

“Should anyone even harbor the notion that what you are about to learn is an attempt by this president to maintain personal power, dismiss it now. I assure you this concerns the very security of the United States of America and the integrity of its constitution.”

The attorney general surveyed the room. This sounded like more than she ever expected when she was called to the briefing.

The silence told Taylor that he had everyone’s undivided attention.

“Now, allow me to tell you what we’ve discovered. And then what we’re going to do about it,” the president stated with authority. “You will have to get passed the fact that I’ve kept some of you out of the loop on all or parts of this investigation. Suffice it to say, it simply had to be.”

Goldman looked around the room again.
What’s going on?
She noticed that some of the others were shifting uncomfortably in their chairs.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” the president continued, “there has been an attempt by a foreign government to insert a deep cover inside our government.”

Goldman caught Arthur Campanis tightly pressing his lips together. He was nodding ever so slightly.
He knows.
She looked around.
So does Bernsie, J3, Evans, Mulligan, Gregoryan and that agent Roarke.

“How deep?” Secretary of State Drysdale asked first.

“Very deep.”

“How deep, Morgan?” she asked again, but calling out the president’s first name.

“Inside the White House, Joyce.”

“Impossible!”

“Impossible?” the DCI said taking over for the president. “The CIA has had spies. Bob Mulligan knows all too well that the FBI’s not immune to infiltration. So why not the White House itself?”

Drysdale pointedly asked, “Where in the White House?”

“I think all of your questions will be answered shortly.” The president, still standing, finally took his seat.

“A member of the Kharrazi family, in a plan that was acquired through Syria by way of Iraq, has been controlling a number of sleepers—deep cover spies—on a slow, sure and deliberate track.

“Great patience went into making this scheme succeed. Over many years. It was conceived following the Yom Kippur War in ’73. According to our intelligence, this plan was originally the work of Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. He controlled it for the next twenty-seven years.”

Solid intelligence,
thought Goldman. She blurted out a question to the CIA Director “Twenty-seven years, Jack?” How long have
we
known about this? Or in my case, not known about it,” she coldly added for the rest of the room.

Evans looked to the president for permission to answer. He got what he expected.

“I’ll come to that, Eve,” Taylor stated. She wrote a notation on the file in front of her.
Indictments.

“After Al-Assad died, his son passed the plan, no I should say, sold the plan to Uday Hussein, you remember, one of Saddam’s boys. We have no idea how much was paid. But the goal remained the same.”

“Just days before the fall of Saddam and his family, Uday contacted a friend in Libya with his own political aspirations—Fadi Kharrazi. He wanted to unload the plan, perhaps in an attempt to negotiate a safe haven for himself or for hard currency. Why Fadi? We’re not sure, but it does suggest that Saddam and his sons were aware of plans for a coup in Libya even if they weren’t around to see it through. In fact, Hussein could have helped fund the revolution which brought General Kharrazi and his family to power. Jack has the CIA gathering further intelligence on that matter. But as I said, Fadi bought the plan from Uday, lock, stock, and ultimately
barrel.
His purpose was three-fold. On a basic level to give him political clout at home. Second, to move up in the favored line of succession. Third, and most importantly, to upset the balance of power in the Middle East by affecting or maybe better,
infecting
the American political process. That relates to a fourth point which I’ll get to shortly.”

The president reached for the glass of water in front of him.

“Please, Mr. President?” It was Eve Goldman. “Again. How long have we known? I need to see all of the evidence immediately.”

“And what about the impact on our allies?” Secretary of State Drysdale added. “Since I also seem to have been kept out of the loop, when can I expect to see
if or how
we’ve been compromised?” She was obviously annoyed. It appeared to her that once again the boys ruled this club. She assumed Eve was equally pissed.

Morgan Taylor slowly sipped his water. He wanted to press on, but decided to answer her in the briefest of terms.

“First of all, Joyce, I said there has been an
attempt
. It has not fully succeeded. Not yet. To your question Eve, we’ve only known for a very short amount of time. And no, we’re not prepared for you to go further right now. Let me continue.”

Goldman slowly nodded knowing that Morgan Taylor would play this out on his own time table.

The president cleared his throat and proceeded. “Once Kharazzi’s father came to power the plan became more realistic to Fadi. And now, with the General dying, Fadi is in the catbird seat thanks to his long-term investment.”

“It’s still not clear to me,” SecState added. “For what purpose?”

“Oh, that’s the easiest part.”

“Fadi bought a very well managed and comprehensive operation, some thirty years in the making, that placed agents in the U.S., trained at a very special Soviet school called Red Banner.”

“Trained to be what?”

“To be Americans,” the president snapped. “Sleepers. Long-term assets. Likely from Syria originally, but we’re not certain.

“I’ll explain how they were inserted into life here and what happened to them over the course of three decades. How they grew up, entered college, and launched successful careers. How people were killed to assure their secrecy and how they advanced to the critical point we’re at today. Make no mistake, this has been an extremely well-financed operation. We believe the ultimate goal, still operational, is to destabilize Israel by illegally
influencing
the government of the United States and changing public opinion here.”

“Influencing?” Secretary of State Drysdale wondered aloud. “How? How would they get someone in the White House?”

“Right through the front door,” Taylor solemnly concluded. “They’ve plotted to take over the Executive Branch, with the unknowing help of the American people. And if we don’t stop them, come January 20
th
we’ll have a Russian-trained, Arab national spy serving as the elected President of the United States.”

“Now for the bad news. At this point,
nothing
can be positively proven,” the president said. “This meeting is about getting that proof.”

Eight men and two woman declared in unison, “Yes, sir.”

“J3, it’s all yours.” The president turned over the briefing to General Johnson, the head of us Special Operations Command, or USASOC. The general had been meeting with his senior command and Jack Evans since 0500 that morning.

The fifty-six-year old black man slowly rose from his chair. He spoke with authority; his voice as big as his huge frame. General Jonas Jackson Johnson, or J3 as he had been called since West Point, expanded—the best possible way to describe his build—to 6’4”. He was the proud decendent of a decorated Allentown, Pennsylvania soldier who bravely fought for the Union against the South some 150 years earlier. He commanded attention in any group; this one being no exception.

Morgan Taylor clearly viewed J3 as presidential material should he ever decide to hang up his uniform. But the General represented the fourth generation of his family to earn stars on his shoulders—in his case, four of them. He had no desire to wear anything but Army green for the rest of his career. Now he proudly served as Taylor’s senior officer in the Army Special Forces.

A slight drawl accent added some gentility to his otherwise tough demeanor. He used it now.

“Gentlemen. Ladies. Thanks to information provided by Mr. Evan’s own asset, code name Sandman, the objective is this building.” J3 pointed to the monitor. A freeze frame of Fadi’s complex now filled the screen. The picture was not from the roll taken by Vinnie D’Angelo. His film and memory chips had been seized by Abahar Kharrazi’s men. This was a satellite image captured from 250 miles away at roughly 35 off access. It showed the building with amazing clarity.

“With the help of the Pentagon,” he acknowledged Secretary of Defense Gregoryan with a nod, “we’re going in very secretly. We may be exiting with a little more noise. The top floor is our hard target.” The pictures were being fed from a laptop computer. The general pressed a key and the picture zoomed in tighter. “Specifically the southwest corner office.

“Rear Admiral Boulder Devoucoux is readying the USS
Carl Vinson
for staging. He reports we will be operational in twelve days. In the meantime, we’ve been training at a site we constructed in Kentucky. We’re aiming for the night of a new moon. Total darkness. December 18
th
. In two weeks we’ll take the building without signing in at the front desk.”

“Rock and roll,” Roarke said under his breath. He knew that subtlety was not one of the rear admiral’s traits, hence the nickname “Boulder.”

“Boulder Johnson’s flying shit cans,” J3’s terms for the Black Hawks, “will be dropping the team in. Air support will close down the nearby streets. Our intel reports that what we’re looking for is contained in Fadi’s file cabinets. We’re going to extract not just one, but a whole bank of them. In and out in under four minutes. A little faster than Atlas Van Lines.” He paused and took a breath. “And then
everyone’s
coming home.”

“In front of you are our plans. Please open them now.”

J3 waited until everyone had ripped open their materials and the paper shuffling had subsided.

“Going forward, this is ‘Operation Quarterback Sneak’ Swift. Daring. And dangerous.”

The participants read along as J3 reviewed the strategy. Twelve minutes later, the general asked the obvious. “Questions?”

“What if the files have been destroyed?” the attorney general proposed.

Jonas Johnson looked to the president and read his eyes very clearly. “Madam, I’d say we have one helluva problem to deal with back home. They’re our proof.”

“And if the files are there
and
you get them back?” Secretary of State Drysdale asked.

“Then, Joyce, we have one helluva problem to deal with back home.”

With that they began discussing the operation and the biographies of the principals who would comprise the assault team.

They’d been training as a unit for weeks.

Lethal firepower would come from two men: The Army’s Special Forces best sharp shooters, Sgt. Andrew Aplen and Lt. Lee Gardner.

The communications officer, Lt. Shawn Recht, would keep USA-SOC focused on the maneuver every step of the way, while also providing the eyes and ears for the internal communications on ground. Recht was backed up by Sgt. Wil Jones who was a good second with a camera, but first with a knife.

And at the command was Colonel Samuel Langeman. Langeman grew up in Tulsa, and by all accounts, should have died on the streets long ago. But he was always bigger than everybody else. And that kept gang members away. He hated being called Samuel or Sam. Nobody dared. So for as long as he could remember, his name merged into simply
Slange.