The Threat (28 page)

“Tell me how to do it legally, and I'll be the first to help you,” Roald said. “You'd better ask yourself if you're not getting too excited, though.”

“You think I'm too excited?”

“You
do
seem awfully fired up.”

Lynch, holding the phone's mouthpiece against his chest: “No good getting them to kick the shipment off. She said it's all loaded and my people are already aboard.”

“Your
people
? What's she mean by that?”

“I asked her. She said, didn't I know? There's some techies riding along, accompanying our shipment.”

Dan knew then beyond any doubt this was not what it seemed. Whoever they were, they were there for no good purpose. And probably armed to the teeth to boot.

Lynch was on the line again. He rolled his eyes. Slapped the phone back down and blew out. “They're gone. They're in the air.”

“How about fighters, Captain? We can't use active forces on the ground. Can we use interceptors in the air to force that flight down?”

Roald hesitated, then picked up the phone again. Dan and Lynch waited as she talked to a duty officer at NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command center.

She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “They won't scramble without orders. And they can't scramble on a civilian jetliner. The desk guy turned me down flat on that. Posse Comitatus Act. Maybe on a direct presidential order, he said. But of course the president's not here.”

Dan stood blinking. The whole machine, immense, powerful, and expensive, was too slow. And somehow the people who were supposed to look out for things like this had missed it. Oh, they'd probably had hints. A little here, a little there. But no one had pulled it all together. Because that wasn't anyone's job.

Maybe he should call the Pentagon himself. No … why bother? He'd get the same stonewall, stall, runaround that Roald had.

He turned abruptly, bumping into Harlowe, and went back out into the watch area. Stood behind one of the desk officers, fingering his lip as incoming cables streamed across the screen.

Infinite information, and blindness to the essential. Instant communication, and total paralysis.

“I'm back,” said Alvarado, coming in carrying a cup of what smelled like bouillon.

“You don't know anything else about this?” Dan asked him, distracting himself from the tragedy he saw coming but was impotent to prevent.

“What?”

“Nothing else, Luis? Nothing else about the cartel's plans?”

“If you don't trust me for some reason, say it.”

He looked away. Caught Roald's concerned glance through the glass.

She got up and came toward the little, wilted group. “Your UPS flight. Where's it land?”

“Washington. Dulles.”

“I mean—there was an intermediate stop, right? Didn't you mention one?”

Lynch said, “A fuel stop. In Kentucky.”

She looked at her watch again. Then at Dan. “I guess I was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“We're not going to be able to do this by the book.”

He nodded, not really understanding.

“Come back in,” she said, and turned on her heel.

*   *   *

She had a screen of numbers on her monitor. Dan saw it was the emergency contact numbers of the National Guard adjutant generals for each of the fifty states.

“I'm thinking of something Colin Powell told me once,” she said.

“Which was?”

“You never know what you can get away with until you try. Now look. Before we do this…”

“Yeah?”

“I can run interference for you. But I can't carry the ball. Understand? The Sit Room has no authority to initiate action.”

“Well, neither do I.”

“Neither do you. Exactly right. But you're the one who believes there's a critical situation here.”

Dan nodded, remembering what they'd told him when he reported aboard: Staff did not command. They coordinated. But there had to be a limit, when no one could be reached; had to be a time for
someone
to make a decision. Accepting too what she hadn't said: that she still didn't quite believe him enough to put her own career on the line.

That was okay. She might still have a future in the Navy. Probably even stars, considering where she was sitting now. Whereas he'd written that off a long time ago.

“Deal,” he said.

She nodded and reached for the mouse. Ran the cursor down a column, highlighted a number, double clicked.

They looked at each other as she waited, handset to her ear. “Hello? Major General? Sorry to disturb you, sir. Take a moment and wake up if you need it.

“This is the director of the White House Situation Room. Yes, sir … the White House … That's right. Not so good, sir. We have a possible problem developing at uh, Standiford Field in Louisville. I'm going to put the man on who knows the most about it. Going to the speakerphone.”

Dan found himself leaning toward the console as a man came on who sounded as if he'd just been awakened. He cleared his throat, reminding himself neither to give his own rank, nor to call the man on the other end “sir.” “Good morning. We—I—have grounds to believe an air freight shipment of stolen radioactive material will be landing in Louisville about”—he pulled Lynch's note toward him—“1012 local—wait a minute—”

“That's central time,” Ed Lynch said behind him, and he turned and saw them all in the doorway. Harlowe flashed him a thumbs-up.

“Yes, central time. There are people accompanying it. We believe they may be armed and should be considered dangerous. We need you to—”

The distant voice interrupted, asking who else had been notified. Dan told him, not untruthfully, that the relevant authorities were being informed, but warning time had been too short to prevent the takeoff. The only chance of stopping it now was the Kentucky Guard and State Police on the ground, as it refueled in Louisville.

Roald cleared her throat. “General, we realize we are not in your state chain of command. We recommend you notify your State Area Command on an emergency-response basis. You are not officially federalized. We will just have to catch up to that after the fact—we don't have time to do this officially and still catch that shipment.”

“I've got an Air Guard unit there. At Standiford Field. An airlift wing.”

“The choice of units and forces is yours, but we strongly recommend you take this aircraft on the ground with the best assault team you can lay your hands on. I would also recommend you call in your state police counterparts and whatever radiological emergency-response team Kentucky has available. My next call will be to your governor's office, letting them know we have passed the ball to you.”

The general wanted to know again what and who were aboard. Dan told him, as closely as he could, hearing hoarse breathing and the scratching of a pencil on the other end. No doubt on a nightstand, a sleepy wife looking on. “That's UPS flight 3913, coming in from Ontario, California,” he said again.

“I'm on it,” the general said, and the phone slammed down. Leaving him staring at it. Eyebrows raised.

“He went for it,” he said, sounding, even to himself, rather stupidly surprised. “Are you really going to call the governor?”

But she was already punching more numbers. He leaned back, realizing only then that there was no way they could separate his involvement in this, and hers. Whatever she said, she was laying her ass on the rail along with his.

He only hoped they were wrong. That they'd lose their jobs for raising a false alarm. That there really weren't people who hated America enough to dump radioactives on a sleeping city.

But he was afraid there were.

*   *   *

Five hours later, exhausted, drained, he was back in the counterdrug office, untouched coffee in front of him, CNN on the office television. He'd watched with Mary, Ed, and Luis as smoke rose over the terminal buildings and shots crackled. Now wavery telephoto images caught clumsy figures in masks and hoods circling a smoking aircraft in the brown-and-gold UPS livery. A fire truck was laying curtains of dirty foam. Behind it response trucks and an armored personnel carrier—not a Bradley, an M113, he thought—stood off.

“A team composed of local and Kentucky State Police SWAT teams assaulted twenty minutes ago. We are still waiting for some indication as to exactly how much of this dangerous material, thought at this time to be radioactive waste, this aircraft contains. Preliminary indications are that the hijackers were members of an armed terrorist group. The destination of the aircraft has not been released.”

The camera cut to a woman in a dark suit. Dan thought at first she was a news anchor, then saw that she stood at a podium, the FBI seal behind her.

“Regional Director Claire Bruffi announced the plot had been uncovered by a joint team from the FBI and the CIA. The aircraft's takeoff was earlier than expected. This morning FBI raids are being launched in Pomona, California, where the explosives and other materials involved were stored prior to loading the aircraft.”

The voice-over stopped and the woman said, “It is simply fortunate that we managed to catch the aircraft on the ground, before explosives could be rigged for detonation. We owe thanks to the valiant officers of the Guard and the Kentucky State Police who boarded the plane, once it had landed to refuel, and to the patient and dangerous investigative work by Bureau agents that resulted in the disclosure of the plot.”

Lynch, Alvarado, and Harlowe growled, glanced at Dan. They looked outraged. He said nothing. Just swirled his coffee, feeling a strange amalgam of relief and anger. Relief that they'd managed to foil the threat. Anger that ass-covering and lies would prevent his people from getting any credit. What had Sebold said? About how much of what went on inside the iron fence never went public? Now he understood.

“Those fuckers,” Lynch said. “They had
nothing
to do with this. We put it together.
You
put it all together.”

Dan said, “You really think they can say that? That a bunch of field-grade bozos in White House counterdrug stapled this together in their spare time?”

“They should give us credit—”

“You know what the media'd do with that,” Marty Harlowe said. “They'd say: Why do our wonderful intelligence agencies need so much funding if they missed something this big?”

Alvarado said, “It's a good question.” They looked at him and he said, “Well? Isn't it?”

The phone rang. The slick-headed admin sergeant answered it. Ouderkirk's eyes flicked to Dan, who started to get up. But the receptionist held up his hand. Said, “Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am,” and hung up.

To Dan he said, “That was Mrs. Clayton, sir. She just got in. She'd like to see you in her office.”

III

EAST WING

 

 

031331Z JAN

SCHOLAST:

//Logging on. See Amicable, Hellgod, Blue Danube here already. Thanks for promptness. Welcome Seaward to the group. Gents, I've already placed Sea in the picture regarding both security and aim of our enterprise.

031331Z JAN

AMICABLE:

//Welcome, Seaward.

031331Z JAN

HELLGOD:

//Welcome to the history behind the history.

031331Z JAN

SEAWARD:

//Hope to be able to contribute. Any way I can.

031332Z JAN

SCHOLAST:

//BD, your report.

031332Z JAN

BLUE DANUBE:

//The candidate is motivated and moving into position. Actually there were some lucky breaks in this regard. Unplanned by us, but I'd be happy to take credit.

031332Z JAN

HELLGOD:

//My question same as three-four sessions ago. We can create conditions, but how do we make him move? What exactly is your hold on this guy? Who we need a name for. Not real name, but some kind of handle.

031332Z:

SCHOLAST:

//Call him Forthright.

031332Z JAN

BLUE DANUBE:

//OK. The point is, HG, not so much to make Forthright do what we want as to make it believable afterward that he did. See the diff? We'll put him into position where it would be perfectly credible that he does what he does. If he doesn't, then we go to Plan B, but he still remains the presumptive actor.

031333Z JAN

HELLGOD:

//BD and I have discussed this between us & with one other interested party. That is, how to make it happen if our buddy doesn't operate as planned. Don't trigger off, Schoolboy, the other party was not made privy to any of the rest of the enterprise & is just as security conscious as we are.

031333Z JAN

SCHOLAST:

//Not happy to hear you discussed any part of this outside the group. But trust your judgment. Wd like to hear more on this between us, let's meet.

//Reminder for everyone: close hold, close hold, CLOSE HOLD.

031333Z JAN

AMICABLE:

//It's still only a contingency plan. Right?

031334Z JAN

HELLGOD:

//Nobody seems to be listening, but I'll say it again: it's past time to retire this player. Don't poll me when G wants to execute, you know where I stand.

031334Z JAN

SEAWARD:

//What happens to Forthright?

031334Z JAN

SCHOLAST:

//Okay, everyone has his piece of the pie to work. Let's get to it. Out here.

***LOGOFF***

031334Z JAN

AMICABLE:

//Off.

***LOGOFF***

031334Z JAN

BLUE DANUBE:

//Out.

***LOGOFF***

031334Z JAN

HELLGOD:

***LOGOFF***

031334Z JAN

SEAWARD:

//Scholast? You still there?

031335Z JAN

SEAWARD:

//Signing off.

***LOGOFF***

16

The first thing he noticed was how much quieter it was. No tourists, no journalists, no camera crews shouting and trailing cables and pointing lights. There wasn't much going on in the hallways. The doors stayed closed. The carpet was the same dark blue, the walls the same marigold cream, but it seemed like the far side of the moon after the West Wing. He hesitated at a double door of polished mahogany, then pushed through.