The Threat (6 page)

Listened, gaze remote. Then snapped to a hovering Gelzinis, “Clear it out.”

“Let's go, folks,” the assistant said, herding them with outstretched arms toward the door. As it swung closed Dan heard her tone go angry.

She came out ten minutes later with lips set. The assistant stood with head bent as she spoke rapidly, laying her finger in her palm.

Without looking at the analysts and watch personnel, the enlisted people who'd been called in to help with the cable traffic, she whirled and left. Leaving Gelzinis contemplating the ceiling. He coughed into his fist before looking down. Dan thought again how much, with his glasses and slicked-back hair, he resembled McNamara. The apologetic yet still smug smile was the same too.

“The strike package is canceled,” Gelzinis said. “Orders are going out now from the national military command center at the Pentagon. I know you've all worked hard on this tonight. But there you have it. Thanks for your help.”

*   *   *

“Lenson?” One of the watch team, leaning away from the endless stream of priority messages and cables rolling in from every command and embassy on the planet. “Weren't you working Eritrea?” He pointed to a secure phone, lit and blinking.

Dan was sitting at the desk he'd spent the night at, feeling as if he'd just vomited. The strike plan had been sound. As far as he could see, there was nothing else to do, if they didn't want more trouble from the bandits and militias that had already massacred hundreds. Yes, there was a crisis in Korea too, but none of the forces tabbed for Eritrea were on call for a Korean response. “I was, till they scrubbed it,” he said.

“Can you take this? It's from Camp Cougar. Isn't that in Eritrea?”

“Who is it?”

“Guy named Wood.”

The joint force commander in Eritrea was named Wood. But why would he be calling here? Bypassing the National Military Command Center and his unified combatant command? Dan glanced toward Roald's office. He could see her through the window; she was talking earnestly to someone out of his line of sight, drawing shapes with her hands for emphasis. He remembered how much he'd always hated being put off when he'd called headquarters, being fobbed from hand to hand.

Someone called across the room as he picked up. “Remember, don't use your rank. And there's no need to identify yourself beyond the Sit Room.”

The set synced, and an angry voice crackled out. “This is Lem Wood, in Keren. Who'm I talking to?”

“This is the Situation Room.” He choked off the reflexive “sir” at the end of his sentence.

“Sorry for the call, but I can't get any consistent response from higher here and I can't wait, my people are under fire. I'm standing by for support here—”

Dan said, “Your strike's been canceled. You'll get the word any minute now via your chain of command.”

The eight-thousand-mile-away voice went baffled. “
Calling off
my strike package?”

“That's right.”

“But … the CINC signed off. NMCC signed off. What the fuck's going on up there?”

Dan felt his feet go numb, as if the impetus of his heart no longer pushed blood that far. “That's the decision, General. Sorry.”

“You people don't understand. We need support here. I've got—”

“The issue was discussed at the highest level,” Dan interrupted. He was fighting to keep his voice level. Because everything he'd ever seen told him the furious, bewildered man on the other end of the line was probably right. So that now he said through a constricted throat, “There are other considerations involved.” Though he didn't know what, so it felt like a lie before it was past his teeth.

“What's higher than protecting our troops? We let these people keep pushing us back, this whole piece of the planet's going to slide right back down the shithole.”

“This is no place for a debate,” Dan told him. “Your orders are on their way. The strike's off.”

“Leaving people to get massacred? This is … goddamn it, I've got five KIAs now, fifty-plus wounded. Goddamn it. God
damn
it! I want to talk to the president. That … conscientious-objector son of a—”

This was getting out of hand. He still hadn't found words when a calm, emotionless voice cut in. Roald's gaze met his through the glass wall.

“General Wood?”

“Yes?”

“This is not an appropriate call,” the Sit Room director told him in even, clear notes. “Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the secretary of defense has full authority, direction, and control over all military forces. Military action must be directed by the national command authority. If your combatant commander disagrees, there are ways for him to make his disagreement known. And if you dissent from his action, you can tender your resignation as a serving officer. You know all this, General. Therefore I suggest you hang up and obey your orders.”

“Listen here. We've put up with enough of this … lack of support … this …
backstabbing,
when my guys are dying out there. I want to talk to that lying, cowardly son of a bitch—”

“I don't want to continue this conversation. And I don't think you want to either.”

Silence on the far end, the crackle of scrambled microwaves. A sucked breath that told Dan what the other was feeling. He knew that desperate rage. The kind that made your career worth throwing away. That rage at those who
didn't understand
. Who
didn't want to hear
.

The warble of a disconnected line.

He hung up too. Sweat trickled under his shirt. He understood now why they'd told him not to use his name. Why none of the watchstanders used their military ranks.

He dragged his hands down his face. The surge personnel were leaving. They looked subdued, but not as overwhelmed and guilty as he felt. They nipped out under the awning for a smoke, or went back to their offices, or down the street for the early
Post
to see what had leaked.

0600. Just another dawn in Washington.

*   *   *

He was so exhausted and furious that any thought of going home was out of the question. His neck felt tight as iron. He looked at his watch, then sprinted across West Executive between arriving sedans.

In room 303, Harlowe was already at her desk. A dozen e-mails were in his queue. By the titles, nothing that couldn't wait. He grabbed his gym bag and went back downstairs.

The Old Executive had been built sixty years before anyone thought of exercising at work. A grimy washroom on the ground floor, 18-M had the fiberglass shower stalls you found in cheap hotels, blue-tile walls, and a busted ceiling he could see asbestos-crusted pipes through. And five vertical gray steel lockers. He pushed through the morning crowd and got the last one. He didn't know the guys undressing, clanging locker doors, but judging by their haircuts, they were military like him.

Which they must have figured too, because one said, “Mike Jazak. Army.” Looking at Dan. “You West Wing?”

“NSC. Dan Lenson.”

They shook hands. Jazak said he was one of the military aides. “You a runner? Up for a couple miles? Not too fast?”

“I guess so,” Dan said, not catching anything in the glances the others exchanged.

“We suit up every morning and wait around for Mustang. If he comes, we go.”

“Mustang?”

“POTUS. President of the United States.” He asked one of the others, who Dan now saw had an earphone, “Okay if this guy comes along? We're supposed to have four on the track.” The Secret Service guy ran an eye across Dan and nodded.

*   *   *

He followed them to the South Lawn and a glare of sun more suited to July than September. Did a few push-ups, sucking in his breath as pain lanced up his arms. “You all right?” the Secret Service agent asked. Dan said he just needed to warm up.

He was still stretching when the president came out in gray cutoff sweatpants and a baggy T screened with what seemed to be a cherub. It might have been an old rock concert T. Out of a suit De Bari looked less impressive than he had in the corridor. More like somebody who got into the ice cream more often than he should. He tousled Jazak's hair and poked the other runners in the ribs, joking about how much dust they were going to eat today.

The aides and agents eased into motion like a destroyer screen escorting a carrier out of port. Shoulder holsters printed under the protective detail's track suits. Across the lawn Dan caught sight of a guy watching them, in full uniform, a black briefcase at his feet.

It wasn't much of a track. Maybe a fifth of a mile, a resilient-surfaced loop. They started fast but the pace dropped off quickly. Dan lagged back, letting the agents stay close to their charge. They shambled along together in a close scrum meant, he supposed, to protect the president if someone took a potshot from the fence line. As they rounded a turn he saw tourists pointing. Taking pictures, though at this distance they wouldn't get much.

“Whew … take a breather,” someone muttered. They slowed to a walk. The chief executive's layer cut sagged over his forehead. He rubbed his side, blowing out ruefully. An intern or press relations woman was walking along the colonnade. De Bari eyed her yearningly.

He muttered, “You know, I had a good ole boy working for me in the governor's office. He always had the best-looking women around. I asked him one day how he managed to do that. Know what he told me? ‘I tell 'em to walk over and face the wall. If their tits hit it before their nose, I hire 'em.'”

The agents laughed dutifully. Dan didn't, and caught the president's glance.

They jogged another slow lap, then walked again. The air was sultry. Everyone was sweating now despite what Dan found to be an undemanding pace.

A hand with two fingers missing came through the press and grabbed his arm. “Hey there. Who's this?”

He'd thought De Bari might remember him from their encounter that first day. But face-to-face with flushed cheeks and blue eyes, Dan realized he didn't. Well, as many people as he met … He introduced himself and said where he worked.

“Counterdrug,” the president said, looking toward the colonnade again. No one there Dan could see. “Need to make some waves there. What do you think? Are we doing all we can?”

“Mr. President, I'm not sure we are. Especially in Asia.”

“That's what I thought. Damn it! Look, anything I need to see, anything to shake things up, put it in a paper and send it up. Tell Mrs. C I said so.”

He sounded so concerned and eager that Dan felt eager too. Even if this was just a job to bureaucrats like Meilhamer, the president cared. “Yes sir, I sure will.”

They came abreast of the Mansion, and though Dan had thought Jazak had said two miles, and they hadn't gone that far yet, the president broke off and headed across the lawn. The detail stayed with De Bari, as if welded by invisible bars. The aides didn't. They kept walking till the president was hidden by the shrubbery, then broke into a run again. Someone said something Dan didn't catch, and they laughed.

Suddenly he felt energetic, optimistic. There were those who said Bad Bob wasn't particularly bright. But close up the guy seemed very intelligent. Dan put on a burst of speed, catching up with the aides, then cut off the track and kept going, walking now, sweating, not meeting anyone's eyes, through the West Wing.

6

His first meeting the next morning was at the New Treasury Building, south of the Mall, listening to a senior Treasury investigator touting a new weapon against trafficking. So sensitive he didn't even want to describe it over the “high-side,” or classified, government Internet. The theory sounded good: a cell that traced money.

The investigator said the U.S. twenty-dollar bill was the currency of choice for drug dealers from Oakland to Karachi. Every Andy Jackson not fresh from the presses carried traces of coke from being on the same tables with it. The Federal Reserve had maintained records of bills' movements to their first destination. The Secret Service had traced them to defeat counterfeiters. The FBI and DEA had recorded the serial numbers of seized currency to frustrate diversion. And the Argonne National Laboratory had used gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy to identify finely milled organic substances on permeable substrates. Not just cocaine, but precursor and process chemicals.

Now Treasury was bumping all the databases together, and a subterranean river was rising into view.

“We see drug-related movement in three directions.” The investigator slid a graphic in front of him. It was marked “Top Secret LIMDIS” and looked like a chart of ocean currents. Only this ocean was the world economy and its currents were cash flows. “The first goes from refiners and distributors in Colombia to Peru and Bolivia. Not well known, but very little coke's actually grown in Colombia. It comes from farther south, via the Cali and Medellín networks. They pay the growers and paste manufacturers in U.S. dollars, because that's what the farmers demand. The scale's consistent with that interpretation.”

“Okay,” Dan said.

“The second movement's out of the U.S. to Central America, as payment back to the cartel. Again, consistent with our model. There's also what we call the peso exchange system. They buy luxury goods here and smuggle them into the receiving country. But most of that goes as cash too.”

Dan nodded again. The Treasury agent leaned to place a pencil point on a smaller arrow angled northeast. “The third's unexpected. This vector into Europe. We don't have full cooperation there. Also, most of the capital shifts to Western Europe are handled by electronic funds transfer. That makes it harder to trace. Though not impossible.”

“Investments? Escobar and Gasca and Nuñez's retirement fund?”

“We thought so at first. We've been trying to make the financial system more transparent. If we can confiscate their profits, that'll get their attention. Give us more resources to prosecute the war with too.”