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We stand ready to serve in Allah’s great and just cause, wrote Karami.

I bet you do, thought Standing. Why was I not told about the Mufti’s nephew? The Mufti of Jihad was the pen name Aazim Aleem had been known by throughout the Muslim world for his sermons on jihad.

It took Karami a moment to type his response. To his credit, he didn’t lie. You should have been told.

You’re damn right I should have been, was what Standing wanted to say, but instead he wrote, Where is the nephew now?

We do not know.

If the authorities have him, how much of a danger will he be to our operation?

That we also do not know.

Standing was further tempted to ask what the hell they did know, but then Karami added to his last transmission saying, We must assume he knows everything the Mufti himself knew.

So, Karami wasn’t a complete fool after all. I agree, typed Standing.

We stand ready, the terrorist stated again.

Standing typed the words Orange and Yellow, then hit Send.

When?

Orange is to happen Monday, replied Standing, who had been wrestling with the timing for the follow-up. He needed the orange attacks to get extensive, deep coverage before the next attack. It was a gamble, though. If Aazim’s nephew knew everything the uncle did and the Carlton Group broke him, he’d be lucky to see any more attacks.

And yellow? Karami asked.

Wait forty-eight hours after the orange events have been reported. Then you may launch yellow.

Insha’Allah, we will be much more successful this time.

Insha’Allah, Standing agreed before ending the conversation and exiting Skype.

The Chinese seemed almost to have designed this next wave of attacks with him in mind. Not only would it help further push the United States into a state of incredibly disruptive chaos, but he had even found a way to profit by it. America was indeed an incredible country.

CHAPTER 63

N
ORTHERN
V
IRGINIA

A
fter leaving the Carlton Group offices, Harvath had driven straight home, taken a quick shower, shaved, and fallen into bed. He wasn’t going to be any good to anyone if he didn’t get some rest.

When his phone rang, it drew him out of a very deep sleep. Fumbling blindly over the nightstand, he felt around until he found his BlackBerry. Without opening his eyes, he activated the call and brought the device to his ear.

“Scot, it’s Nicholas,” said the little man from up in Reston. “I think I found something.”

“Have you been to sleep at all?”

“No. Listen, you asked me to look into connections between Standing, Ashford, and the attacks.”

“What did you find?” asked Harvath.

“Remember the bomber in Chicago, the one who blew himself up several weeks ago before he could take down that building above the Amtrak tracks?”

“One hundred North Riverside Plaza. Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I was looking at all of the dots on the map again, trying to figure out what they all meant. Then I threw Standing into the mix and that’s where I think I found something.”

Harvath continued to lie there with his eyes closed. “Keep going.”

“The unrestricted warfare plan calls for terrorist attacks that not only sow fear and cause massive loss of life and property damage, but also do dramatic economic damage, right?”

“Right.”

“James Standing has also called for economic damage to the United States. In fact, he has been quite vocal about it. That got me thinking. If he’s the driving force behind all of this, the guy who put up the money to finance hijacking the blueprint from the Chinese, would he be bold enough to try to turn a profit from all of this?”

“I don’t think Standing got rich by being stupid.”

“You obviously haven’t had much exposure to bankers,” said Nicholas. “I have.”

“You’re saying they’re stupid?”

“No, not stupid, they’re aggressive; very aggressive, and they’re smart as hell. They’re risk-takers to the nth degree, and James Standing is no different. It’s well-informed gambling in most cases, and in some it’s counting cards and dealing from the bottom of the deck.”

“Cheating,” mumbled Harvath.

“Yes.”

“So what did you find?”

“I looked at all the color-coded dots on our map again, but this time from a financial perspective. I asked myself how I would try to make money out of these attacks, and that’s when it hit.

“I don’t think the failed bomber in Chicago was targeting 100 North Riverside Plaza because it was built above the train tracks. That might have been part of it, but if so, it was secondary.”

“What was the primary reason, then?”

“It was home to Boeing’s corporate headquarters,” said Nicholas.

“You think the bomber wanted to bring down the entire building just to get to Boeing?”

“I do,” replied the little man, “and it’s not just Boeing. I think this is what the orange dots are all about. The one thing they have in common is that they’re in cities from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Palo Alto, California, that are home to the corporate headquarters of all the companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Can you imagine taking out all thirty headquarters at once? Do you have any idea the economic chaos that would cause, especially if you timed it so that most, if not all, of the senior management was present when the buildings came down?”

Harvath’s eyes were wide open now and he propped himself up in bed. “That would be huge.”

“It wouldn’t just be huge, it would be game over. Let’s set aside for a moment that the Dow is basically a BS indicator—”

“What do you mean? The Dow is the financial indicator everyone looks at.”

“No,” Nicholas clarified, “it’s the indicator that retail investors look at. Since 1910 it has been on an upward trajectory. The funny thing is that only one of the thirty companies that make up the Dow has been there over the last hundred years and that’s GE. It’s a massive psychological operation. If a company does poorly, it gets yanked, so the Dow can keep climbing.”

“So if it’s all BS, what difference does it make if it takes a hit?”

“Regardless of what you think of the index, the companies on it are currently some of the best-performing in the United States. A massive, coordinated terrorist attack, wiping out just the top twenty-five people in each company, in effect their intellectual horsepower, could absolutely devastate their stock and, in turn, the financial markets.”

“If your goal was to collapse the United States,” said Harvath, “why not go right for the Dow attack then?”

“To soften the battlefield. I’d want to sow as much chaos and panic as possible. I think it’s brilliant. Make people across the country feel that they aren’t physically safe anywhere and then take all their money away in a financial crisis, and they’ll beg for a return to normalcy. Start throwing in more attacks after that, and they’ll give up anything and stand behind anyone who promises to return things to the way they were. At that point, America, as its citizens know it, is over and is never coming back.”

Having studied history, Harvath knew that once people gave up their freedom in order to restore order, that freedom was never returned. He didn’t even want to consider that this was possible, but he knew that it was and he knew that they had to figure out a way to prevent it from happening. “You’re sure that’s what the orange dots represent?”

“As sure as I can be,” he replied. “But it’s not just because of the locations. I found something else, and it’s exactly what I would do if I were James Standing and thought I was smarter than everyone else and wouldn’t get caught.”

“What is it?”

“Beginning six weeks ago, significant bets were placed that all thirty companies making up the Dow were going to drastically lose value over the subsequent three months.”

“You mean someone is shorting them?”

“That’s the way it looks,” said Nicholas. “Very much in the same way options were purchased against United and American Airlines stocks right before 9/11.”

“Is it Standing?” Harvath asked.

“I said people like Standing were aggressive, not stupid. The shorts lead back to a series of holding companies, most of them offshore. I’m trying to use the TIP to pierce them. In the meantime, though, what should we do about my hypothesis?”

“If you were going to try to take out the senior management of all these companies, when would you do it?”

Nicholas thought about it for a moment. “Maybe at a corporate retreat or a shareholders’ or board of directors’ meeting.”

“I’m talking about all thirty companies at once and at a time when as many of those people would likely be at their corporate headquarters.”

“If you’re speaking Monday through Friday, then I would say definitely do it on a Monday.”

Harvath looked at his watch. It was technically already Monday. “DuPont Chemical is up in Wilmington, Delaware. They’re still part of the Dow, right?”

“Yes. Why? What are you thinking?”

“I think we need to check out your hypothesis.”

“You only want to check out DuPont?” asked Nicholas. “Why not warn all of them?”

“Because, in light of the attacks we’ve just suffered, everything is already on edge. If word got out that we thought these companies were targets, it would create a panic that could be just as bad as if they were attacked.”

Harvath had a good point. “You’re right,” agreed Nicholas. “What do you want to do?”

“Have you called the Old Man yet?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Anything out of Iceland?”

“Nothing yet.”

Harvath had already gotten out of bed. “Okay,” he stated. “I’ll call Reed. You keep working on things there.”

“You’re going up to DuPont, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Well, you’re going to need help,” said Nicholas. “I’m looking at pictures of the building their headquarters is in right now. It takes up an entire city block and is thirteen stories tall. You can’t possibly search the entire thing by yourself.”

“I won’t be going by myself,” replied Harvath. “I’m going to bring a few friends with me.”

CHAPTER 64

T
he massive, eight-bladed, three-engine Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter thundered over the Atlantic Ocean, straight up the East Coast. Inside, Harvath sat with members of the U.S. Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Group Two out of Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek, Virginia.

Multiple, rapid-deployment U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Nuclear, Radiological and high-yield Explosive Enhanced Response Force Package teams, also known as CERFP teams, were already en route to Wilmington via Blackhawk helicopters from Fort Meade and Andrews Air Force Base. Rodney Square, directly across the street from the DuPont building, was the designated landing zone and had already been secured by the Wilmington Police Department.

The building was composed of a hotel, theater, bank, retail shops, DuPont’s corporate headquarters, and other general-purpose office space. The hotel was at 30 percent occupancy and its guests were sleeping when the first of the helicopters landed.

The concrete corridors of Wilmington’s downtown business district reverberated with earsplitting thunder as one after another, the large birds flared, then touched down and quickly disgorged their teams and equipment, before lifting back off again and disappearing.

DuPont’s executive director in charge of corporate security, Ron Lamat, was one of the most experienced executive protection specialists in the country. A former Baltimore County Police major, he had trained with the Secret Service and was a graduate of the FBI’s National Executive Institute. When he wasn’t keeping DuPont’s hierarchy and their families safe, he was teaching other executive protection specialists how to do the same for their clients. In a crisis, Harvath couldn’t have hoped to have liaised with a more competent or professional chief of security.

Lamat met Harvath and his team outside at the LZ and led them into the building. Schematics had been laid on hastily erected tables in the lobby. Building engineers, roused from their beds and rushed to the scene, stood by ready to answer any questions or provide access to any of the common or private areas. Rows of radios stood in charging stations plugged into outlets along one wall in case the teams needed a uniform means of communication. Lined up near the radios were four of Lamat’s best men, ready to assist in any way they were needed.