Detained, page 33
Suddenly, their faces flashed through his mind.
The girls on the gymnastics team. The elderly couple asleep in the back. The American family. The eyes of Natasha Batsakova, her sweet voice thanking him for taking care of her.
“Giorgy-Alexeevich. Please!”
“Shut up, Dimitry!”
“Eight . . . seven . . . six . . .”
Dimitry reached for the pistol in his holster. He worked the action and pointed it straight at the pilot’s head. “Giorgy-Alexeevich! Land the plane!”
• • •
US NAVY F/A-18 HORNETS
OVER THE NORTH ATLANTIC
1920 HOURS ZULU TIME
“Three . . .
“Two . . .
“One.
“Jesus, forgive me.”
Garcia pressed his thumb against the missile launch button.
He felt a burst. Two AIM missiles streaked out in front of the jet, slicing across the skies toward the Russian airbus.
Static over the loudspeaker.
“US Navy, hold your fire! We are landing! We are landing!”
The blinding fireball lit the sky like an exploding sun. Static blared over the air-to-air.
Garcia steered the fighter into a right bank. From over his shoulder, flaming debris from the blown-up aircraft streaked toward the ocean below.
Loneliness blanketed his cockpit like a heavy, steel curtain. His arms felt immobilized, his hands frozen. Garcia prayed, silently, to the heavens. He wiped tears from his eyes and switched frequencies.
“Bush Control. Golden Warrior One. Be advised. Target is eliminated.”
“Warrior One. Roger that. Return to ship.”
• • •
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY JET
BOEING 777
OVER THE ATLANTIC
1940 HOURS ZULU TIME
“When we land in Reykjavík,” Max Porterfield said to the small squad of TSA ELITE agents gathered around him in the aisle, “we will board the Russian airbus. We will identify the subject, handcuff her—”
The phone rang. Homeland Security headquarters.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” He answered the phone. “Yes, Mr. Secretary.”
“Porterfield. No need to land in Iceland. We can pop the champagne, Porterfield. The Navy has eliminated the problem for us.”
Porterfield understood what Strayhorn was saying. The Aeroflot jet carrying Emily Gardner had been shot out of the sky. He felt instant relief, but also instant disappointment. He wanted to be the one to solve the Emily Gardner problem, which would have benefited him professionally.
“Acknowledged, Mr. Secretary. We’re standing down and flying back to Washington.”
• • •
PULMONARY INTENSIVE CARE UNIT
(WALTER REED NATIONAL MILITARY MEDICAL CENTER) BETHESDA NAVAL HOSPITAL
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
2:45 P.M.
“It’s about time you got here,” Diane said, half teasing and half irritated. The target of her verbal jab was Commander Larry Berman, Medical Corps, United States Navy, her attending physician, who, in Diane’s estimation, had taken too long to appear in her room to discuss the prospect of her immediate discharge from this place.
“My apologies,” Berman said with a chuckle. “A couple of emergency procedures with the thoracic surgeon I practice with, and the next thing you know, the day is gone. So, I hear you want out of this place.”
“I can’t do anything with her, Doc,” Zack said from the corner of the room. “She’s harder headed than a brick.”
“You’re one to talk about being hardheaded, Zack Brewer.”
Berman flipped through the reports he had in his hand. “Okay, vitals are good and you’re getting good oxygen flow through your lungs, but I’m still a little skeptical about cutting you loose today.” Berman and Zack exchanged “what are we going to do with her?” glances. Then Berman looked at Diane. “You know, since you aren’t active duty anymore, I can’t stop you from leaving if you want to get real stubborn about it. And I see you’ve changed into your jeans and boots, which isn’t exactly our standard patient attire.”
“I know, Doc. I made Zack get my clothes. But I promised him I’d at least hear what you have to say before I walk out of this place.”
“Hmm.” Berman scratched his chin. “If I release you today, will you promise that you’ll come back and let us check you day after tomorrow? And that you’ll let Admiral Brewer bring you back if you feel the slightest bit queasy or have any shortness of breath?”
Diane smiled. “You’ve got a deal, Doc.”
“Okay.” Berman nodded. “For the record, this is against my better judgment, because in my opinion it’s kind of a fifty-fifty call in your case, but I’m going to go ahead and sign the discharge papers.”
“Thanks. I love you, Doc!” She stood up and gave him a big bear hug and kissed him on the cheek, then turned to her handsome hunk of a three-star husband. “Let’s get out of here, Zack!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER 30
THE WHITE HOUSE
THE OVAL OFFICE
3:00 P.M.
President Surber sat alone, reviewing a memo from his chief of staff, Arnie Brubaker, outlining updated casualty reports from the barbaric mall terror attacks that besieged the United States.
The weight of his office was not only on his shoulders but also in his throat, in his stomach, and through his arms and legs. The sobering report of climbing casualties encompassing more than two hundred dead Americans, including women and children, from the four mall terror attacks around the country was compounded by the fact that he had just authorized the shoot-down of a Russian airliner that was about to rain destruction on the capital city of America’s closest ally.
He had hoped that the British would have been more active in the operation, but they had no warplanes in the area, and the conservative British prime minister, David Mulvaney, had asked that the US take care of it. They could not wait until that plane got past Iceland.
Britain was not only America’s closest ally but a fellow NATO member, and the seventy-year mantra of NATO was that an attack against one is an attack against all. And Britain was under terrorist attack, or about to be, if America had not acted.
Still, the knowledge that Britain and the US Embassy in London had been saved from the terror that America had experienced in the last two days did not lessen the indescribable sick feeling of guilt and sorrow that gripped him.
He wanted to weep. But he could not weep. At least not in public. He was the elected leader of the free world. He had to project an outward mantle of strength.
“Mr. President.”
“Yes, Gail?”
“Admiral Cameron and Secretary Lopez are back. They need to see you.”
He laid down the casualty report. “Send them in.”
Both men entered the Oval Office, walking past the black-suited Secret Service agents. Their faces were grimmer than ever before.
“What’s wrong?” the president demanded.
“Sir,” the four-star admiral began, “naval intelligence has been monitoring the transmissions that Secretary Strayhorn claimed tipped off Homeland Security about the Russian airliner that we shot down, and frankly, sir, the military has concerns.”
Cameron looked at Lopez, and Lopez nodded. “Sir, this is preliminary, but we no longer believe that the Russian airbus was a terror threat.”
“What?” The president raised an eyebrow. “Did you just tell me that the Russian airliner that I ordered shot down was not a terror threat to smash into our embassy in London?”
“Yes, sir. Naval intelligence has been able to backtrack the source of those e-mails, and we highly doubt their authenticity.”
“So I killed three hundred innocent passengers because of an intelligence failure? Is that what you’re telling me?”
More contorted glances between the high-ranking military men. “Mr. President,” Cameron said, “this is hard to say, sir.”
“Spit it out, Admiral. I don’t have time for bull.”
“Sir, we believe we killed three hundred innocent civilians. But not because of an intelligence failure.”
“What? You’re talking in circles, Admiral! Spit it out!”
“Sir, the reason I said it was not because of an intelligence failure. We believe it may be the result of intelligence fraud.”
“Intelligence fraud? Admiral, what the heck are you talking about?”
“Sir, we’ve determined that the so-called threats concerning this airliner originated from Department of Homeland Security computers. There were seven e-mail messages. All claimed to be from groups in different locations around the Middle East. Two from Pakistan, two from Afghanistan, two from Yemen. And one from Somalia in Africa. They all supposedly had inside information about the same Russian airbus. On the surface, if you believe that, the threat looked credible.
“The problem is that the Navy’s tracking codes traced the origination of all of these messages to a single computer at the Department of Homeland Security back here in Washington. It appears that someone in Homeland Security wanted you to order the attack on that airbus based on phony information.”
“What? Does Secretary Strayhorn know about this?”
“No, sir. And we recommend that we hold off informing him, at least for the time being.”
“Why, Admiral? This is his department. He should be the first one to know.”
“Sir, this is preliminary, but we believe he already knows.”
“He knows? Then why hasn’t he informed me?”
Cameron waited a few seconds before answering. “Sir, we’ve traced the false flags concerning the Russian airliner to the secretary’s office.”
“To what secretary? . . . To the secretary of Homeland Security?”
“Yes, sir. We believe somebody sent the false flags from Secretary Strayhorn’s office.”
Douglas Surber stood up, folded his arms, and walked over to the bay window of the Oval Office. He looked out on the South Lawn and beyond that to the National Mall. The American flags were fluttering in the circle around the base of the Washington Monument. On the outside, from a distance, all looked well.
But appearances could be deceiving. In reality, Douglas Surber, the president of the United States, was living one of those worst-nightmare moments. The whole country seemed to be out of control.
“How did the Navy crack this?”
The answer came from over his shoulder. “Sir, someone tried to put encryption codes on these messages to make them impossible to break. What the programmer didn’t know is that the Office of Naval Intelligence has software to break those codes that not even Homeland Security knows about. Someone tried building in a foolproof encryption code that would be untraceable. Fortunately, it failed.”
“What are your recommendations, gentlemen?”
“The first is obvious, Mr. President.” This from the secretary of defense. “First, we can’t let the Russians or anyone else know, aside from the British, that we were involved in the shoot-down. That airbus has disappeared off the radar screen, and no one knows why it disappeared at sea.”
“So I can’t let anyone know, but the blood will forever be on my hands,” the president said.
“We can’t let anyone know,” Erwin Lopez said. “Too much is at stake, and it won’t do any good.”
“What else?”
“Sir”—again Secretary Lopez—“we can’t play our hand with Secretary Strayhorn yet. If he’s somehow involved with this, now is not the time to let him know. We need a bit more time to investigate a couple of other things. There’s an outside possibility that he’s not involved, but if he is, and I suspect he is, we need to play it cool to get to the bottom of this.”
Douglas Surber turned around, his back now to the outside. He had ordered the portraits of three presidents hung in the Oval Office. The greatest president of the eighteenth century, George Washington. The greatest president of the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln. And the greatest president of the twentieth century, Ronald Reagan.
What would they tell him if they were here? What would they advise?
He already knew. They would advise him to preserve the republic and to defend the Constitution at all costs. That’s exactly what he was sworn to do.
If members of his administration were subverting either the Constitution or the republic, he had to act, and he had to act decisively. But he had to act when the time was right.
“Very well, gentlemen. I’m ordering the Department of Defense to monitor this situation under top-secret conditions. Report to me every two hours, or sooner if needed.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
CHAPTER 31
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, DC
6:15 P.M.
“This calls for a celebration, Willie.” Fallington Strayhorn poured champagne into the flute and slipped it across the desk to the young, starry-eyed sycophant. “You were brilliant.”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I’m glad to do it for the safety of our country and for the best interests of the department.”
“A toast,” Strayhorn said, “to present successes and to future successes!”
“I’ll drink to that, Mr. Secretary.”
Glasses clanged. Strayhorn chugged down half the champagne and refilled his glass.
“Another toast,” Strayhorn proclaimed, raising his glass, watching Willie Roberts raise his in response. “Here we go. Sic semper evello mortem traditorem. Do you know what that means, Willie?”
“Let’s see, sic semper is . . . “thus ever to” . . . Sorry, sir. My Latin is rusty.”
“Well, get used to it. It is the future motto of the elite leadership of Homeland Security, of which you will be a part. It means ‘Thus ever shall I always kill the traitor.’ Or, more succinctly, ‘Death to the traitor.’ I’m thinking about shortening it to Sic sempter traditorem. ‘Death to the traitor.’ What do you think?”
“I like it, sir.”
“Yes, well, Emily Gardner and her predecessor, Jerry Myer, were traitors. So let us raise our glasses to our new and future motto, ‘Death to the traitors.’ ”
The bubbles percolated to Strayhorn’s head. The weight of the world lifted from his shoulders, thanks to the US Navy. Soon, under his plan, all the armed services, including the US Navy, would reorganize under Homeland Security—under his command.
Indeed, the plan to have the military moved under Homeland Security had already begun. The United States Coast Guard was moved under Homeland Security in 2003. That was only the beginning. All of the departments of defense and transportation and agencies like TSA, the FBI, and even the IRS should be consolidated under Homeland Security.
Strayhorn’s US Coast Guard forces, including Coast Guard cutters, were already deployed to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, which, along with the presence of TSA ELITE Forces, was a step in the right direction.
Once all the branches of the armed forces joined the Coast Guard under the control of Homeland Security, that consolidation of power would make security enforcements within the United States that much easier.
The phone rang. “Mr. Secretary.” The voice of Carol Gibson came over the speaker.
“Yes, Carol.”
“Max Porterfield is calling from the air phone of the Homeland Security jet, sir.”
“Ah. Speak of the devil.” Strayhorn sipped more champagne. “Porterfield, my boy. Your ears must have been burning. We were just talking about you.”
“Mr. Secretary.” Porterfield sounded anything but jovial. “We have a problem.”
“A problem? No problems here. The US Navy has taken care of the problem.”
“No, sir, Mr. Secretary. I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.”
Strayhorn put down his champagne glass and sat up straight. “What kind of mistake?”
“Sir, our ELITE Forces have gone back and reviewed video surveillance from Dulles. Emily Gardner pulled a fast one on us.”
“What the heck are you talking about, Porterfield?”
“Well, sir. She bought a ticket to Moscow and got in line and checked onto the flight. Aeroflot reported to us that she had checked in. We assumed she was on board. But she slipped out of the line, and we didn’t catch that on tape at first. She bought another ticket to Rome.”
“Rome! What are you telling me, Porterfield? Are you telling me I persuaded the president to blow up a Russian plane over the ocean and Emily Gardner wasn’t even on it?”
“I’m sorry, sir. It happened so fast. Sometimes it takes awhile to verify and cross-check data.”
“Porterfield!” Strayhorn launched into a profanity-laced tirade.
“You let a woman lawyer outsmart the whole DHS and our ELITE Forces?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I—”
“When is her plane landing in Rome?”
“Right about now, sir.”
“Great! That’s just great! What time is it over there?”
“Just after midnight, sir.”
More cursing. “Porterfield, you turn that plane around, and you get to Rome, and you get our people to snatch that traitor out of the airport there, or wherever she is, or don’t bother coming back to the United States! Because if you come back here and Emily Gardner is still alive, I’ll bring in some of our Saudi allies and have them do a little sharp-blade Muslim justice to the area between your head and your shoulders, then I’ll have your head mounted like a stupid twelve-point buck, and I’ll have the taxidermist staple a set of twelve-point deer antlers on your head, because you’d be as stupid as a deer in the headlights, and I’ll mount your dead head on the wall so I can remind our future ELITE agents not to be as dumb as that guy on the wall! Do you understand my instructions?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Secretary. I’ll take care of it, sir.”
CHAPTER 32
BACHELOR OFFICER QUARTERS
NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY
US NAVAL STATION
