The Hammer of God (16 page)

“Whoa, whoa, the world isn't going to end.”

“Bill, I'm scared. I've never been this scared before.”

“Jim Mitchell is a good man, Janice. I'll be there and if anything is going to happen, I'll know. We'll be okay… the three of us.”

The head of Homeland Security reported to the 15 men and 32 assistants crammed into the war room of the White House. “All ports are in lockdown, all border crossings are under manned aircraft and unmanned aerial drone surveillance. The Coast Guard is in full inspect and detect mode. Radiation detectors are at 17 major airports, but that still leaves a gaping hole in our baggage screening. There are airborne radiation detectors on 1400 state and municipal helicopters and all N.E.S.T. units are fully deployed and operational. In addition to the Nuclear Emergency Support Teams, the big cities have just shy of 2,300 handheld and truck-mounted rad detectors between them.”

“Okay, we'll work on emergency legislation to beef up airport detectors and increase public information messages. What about if it's already here?” Reynolds said.

Joey Palumbo, the Special Assistant to the President attached to the science office filled in. “The timelines on possible entry of the suitcase device prior to our alert are marginal, meaning we doubt they would have sat on these devices for very long. They have been covertly obtaining them since the break up of the U.S.S.R. It is possible that we, or more correctly the boys of Delta Foxtrot, stumbled upon the Nursery very early in their planning. And at that time, they had only managed to get one unit out of the facility.”

Bill was seated to the right of Joey, looking at the faces of the men and women around the room. He was thinking about Janice and the promise he made to her and his child yet to be. Back when he was growing up they called this the unthinkable: the actual use of nuclear weapons between warring factions. The people seated around the table here today were starting to learn how to get their brains around the unthinkable in a directionless effort to stop the unthinkable from becoming the inevitable. The sobering enormity of the task of trying to find the device was demonstrated when somebody, maybe American Tourister for all Bill knew, calculated that there were 700,000,000 suitcases in, and going through, the U.S. at any given moment. Of course, there was no rule in the terrorists' handbook that said a suitcase nuke needed to remain in a suitcase. So very quickly one out of 700 million started to look like good odds against one in “everything bigger than a breadbox.”

The Surgeon General was reporting on the strain on the nation's hospitals if there were a detonation in a medium-sized city. Hiccock knew calculations for cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles were useless since four square blocks of those cities could mean 100,000 people killed or wounded and these Russian devices were capable of 100 square blocks of destruction, with partial destruction reaching out to almost two miles. What'sMYCEP.com had gotten those numbers right. Real estate values in most cities were dropping as firms pushed up moving dates or broke leases to flee the possible blast epicenters of 200 cities. All this economic and civil chaos was in full gear and yet there was no credible or actionable intelligence to suggest that terrorists planned to attack a specific city at all. Boulder Dam or any dam would also make a devastating statement. Fort Knox, Kentucky would be a major blow. (On second thought, Bill doubted the terrorists had ever seen the movie “Goldfinger” with its plot to irradiate the American gold supply thus rendering it untouchable for thousands of years.) You could even try to wedge the thing at some geo-critical point in the California mountains and use the energy of the blast to possibly initiate a tremor that could tear open a rift in the San Andreas fault and cleaver all of California into the sea.
Oh wait, that was the plot of Superman: The Movie.
Bill's mood sank as he realized that Hollywood had already written the only how-to book any terrorist ever needed.

“Anything else?” the Head of Homeland Security asked the room.

Bill was tempted to add something but held back. Instead, he leaned over to Joey. “Joe, we need a special team here. You and whoever you think we'll need, have them remain in the room after the others leave.”

In five minutes, six people remained around the large table. Bill had convinced the facilities manager of the White House to put the next meeting intended for that room into the Mural room. Bill took out two folders and a fresh pad from his portfolio. He drew a bull's eye target on the yellow-lined paper then split it in two.

“Here's the way I see it. One of two realities; the bomb already here, or on its way here. The new tighter security is going to have to do the job if it's the second possibility and the bomb is on its way. For now, I want to assume the first proposition: that it's already here.”

“How do you figure that it could be here already?” one of the men around the table asked.

“The ports are locked down now. But a week ago, maybe 20 percent of containerized freight got scanned.”

“Maybe 20,” Joey repeated.

Luck is the only way we are going to interdict this thing and scientifically luck is an undefined number, like zero divided by anything, or infinity. The only way to stop this thing without luck is intel. So here's what I am proposing: a two-pronged approach. We hit all the cells and suspected cells hard and mine any data that's retrieved. At the same time, we game it out on a few Crays and get some probable scenarios and start running those down.”

“So start gathering data or intel then feed it into a big computer and see where the computer points us?” the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency asked.

“Essentially, yes. This way, if we do it ourselves, we aren't stopping everything else that's going on. This just becomes another tool.”

“How do we get raw intel from the various agencies?” Joey asked. “I mean, that's already supposed to be happening through the Director of National Intelligence and the DHS. And so far we haven't gotten enough to feed into an adding machine much less a super computer.”

“We'll get alternate sources,” Bill said.

“That's a pretty tall order, Mr. Hiccock,” Admiral Swank, head of National Security Council noted.

“I think I already have the men for the job.” Bill slid the personnel files for Sergeants Bridgestone and Ross across the desk.

“Are these your aces in the hole? Then, my friend, you haven't seen this.” The head of the FBI's counter terrorism unit slid back over the table that morning's
New York Times
. The above-the-fold headline read, “Army Rangers Face Torture Charges.”

Bill quickly scanned the article. “It doesn't mention them by name.”

“We've asked them for restraint in publishing their pictures and kids' schools' addresses. At least until we play out if the charges will stick.”

“Play out means there's no doubt they did it, just whether or not you can hang them with it. These guys should get medals! They found the ambassador and, from that, we found the nukes. That's 23 little Hiroshimas canceled and, God willing, 24.” Bill shook his head.

“We don't control the press in America, Bill.”

“How did this get out anyway?”

Harold Salter, Deputy National Security Advisor, spoke up and filled in the blanks. “Their key was the Embassy Guard, Jamal's girlfriend. They found out about her and how she apparently conscripted our man over to the terrorist camp. Bridgestone and Ross went into deep cover. They became nomadic tribesmen, stink and all. They tracked her down and used whatever force necessary to get the information in a timely fashion.”

“Whatever force necessary sounds vague. What does that really mean?” Hiccock asked.

“They could have killed her or anybody else. They were not connected to us in any way. They were so deep and so disconnected that they could only be considered mercenaries or freelancers if they were ever caught or killed.”

“The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions,” Bill said, interjecting a line from the old TV show, “Mission Impossible.” The title seemed very appropriate to the current situation.

“Exactly! B and R managed to get the location of the ambassador after some physical torture.”

“How bad?”

“She didn't talk till she lost a finger.”

Bill winced.

“Then, for some odd reason, they brought her to the LZ. That was their mistake! It opened them up to crap like this in
the Times
.”

“But how did anybody find out?”

“Along the extraction route, her boyfriend and she jumped out of the copter at 200 feet. Some nomads in the area saw it and when they found the bodies, they camel-backed them into the town. Some Arab reporters were there and the rest is in the paper.”

“Okay, but how does anybody know it was B&R?”

“They don't. Not by name. But street vendors and some neighbors saw them enter her apartment. They should have killed her in the apartment. That way, at best, they would have been thought of as desert thieves. Eyewitness accounts of them falling from a clandestine U.S. helicopter, however, allowed the Arab press to connect the dots another way around.”

“Has their identity been compromised in the least?” Bill asked.

“We don't know. But the last thing we want is someone to identify them as the two from her apartment. So for now they are still over there but in tight control.”

“Not arrested, I hope?”

“They understand that they cannot go beyond the base right now.”

“These are my guys. I want them on the team.”

“These men tortured this woman,” the Judge Advocate said.

“No, we did. All of us. The United States of America did in our name. These guys just got to be the working end of the stick. We need that stick now to help find the bomb before we find a big hole where Times Square used to be.”

∞§∞

“Bill, are you sure about this?” President Mitchell asked as he pulled out a piece of White House stationary from the desk made from the planks of the
H.M.S. Resolute
.

“Sir, I am convinced we can have a better chance at interdicting the device with these men on the team.”

“They are already on the team. You mean
your
team.”

“They are benched right now, sir. I want to get them back in the field doing what they do best.”

“You know, even though they don't know who it was, any Arab claims that it was the work of Americans will be enough to get some to scream bloody torture, start quoting Benjamin Franklin,” Ray wryly observed.

“Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither,” Bill said, repeating the quote. “Well, that's just another reminder of why, despite what 42 percent of Americans think, Ben Franklin was never President. Flowery language withers in the face of real world responsibility and devil's choices.”

“I thought it was because he was a Francophile,” Ray added.

The President was finishing a note to the Secretary of Defense, ordering him to assign Bridgestone and Ross to Hiccock, when he looked up. “Ray, help me here. Who, or what, am I asking the Secretary to hand these men over to?”

“Good question. Why don't we have them assigned to the NSC here at the White House?”

The President nodded and finished the note. He handed it to Ray, “Get this over to Barney. What are you going to call this idea of yours, Bill?”

“If it weren't so close to the bone, I was thinking Mission Impossible, sir.”

“Get a better name and good luck, to you and to all of us.”

∞§∞

Along with the President's agreeing to the plan came his directive, which immediately did two things. One was that it established the “QuOG,” or Quarterback Operations Group, a new, top-secret cluster to be run out of the West Wing, at the sole discretion of the President, with a 27-million-dollar operating budget. Bill could get more if he needed it, but that was what was lying around in a discretionary fund at the White House that day. This money had already passed through Congress and was held in reserve for the Presidential shopping list of emergency actions or commissions. It was, essentially, anonymous money, and the lack of immediate Congressional oversight was the best way to keep Bill's not-yet-named operation secret and unhindered. The second part of the Presidential order made Bill's Quarterback group the “LFA” on the suitcase nuke investigation. By being designated Lead Federal Agency, Bill was immediately given standing in all the departments under the administration, Justice (FBI), DHS, INS, IRS, TSA and a handful of others, suddenly had a new deputy director. Hiccock's thickened wallet of new ID cards allowed him to have one-way conversations and intel exchanges with these federal agencies without having to explain anything that could expose the true top-secret nature of the QuOG.

When Bill returned to his office, he found Joey was on the phone with Janice. “I know; my wife was sick for nearly eight weeks with Joe Jr. … Eup, he just came in. Take care lady; see you soon.”

Joey handed the phone to Bill, got up, and let him sit behind his own desk.

“Hi babe, how are you feeling?”

“My stomach feels like I'm on a rollercoaster that never stops,” Janice said as she pushed a pile of papers to the edge of her desk and laid her head on her arm as she cradled the phone.

“Maybe you should have stayed home today.”

“I had these patient summaries that I already put off long enough. But I am just beat. How did your meeting go?”

“It went well. That's all I can say right now. You understand.”

“Sure. Oh, Joey was just telling me how his wife used buttermilk to qwell the same Category 5 typhoon that I have going on inside me. Can you stop off…”

“No problem; I'll pick it up on the way home.”

“Thanks, Billy. I think I need to go now.”

“Feel better.”

Bill hung up and looked at Joey. “Thanks for doing that.”

“What?”

“Not letting Janice think she's the only woman who's ever been through this.”

“Hey, Phyllis had her sister around when Joe Jr. was born, otherwise she would have been even more frazzled.”