by Jeff Rovin
Most importantly, his readings took him to George Washington, whose life and career became an obsession. Upon his shoulders sat the matter of American independence. In his hands lay the decision: what form of office will lead the newly forged nation. He could have been emperor. He chose president. It was a remarkable moment of humility and perception, sacrifice and wisdom.
Not then, not now, did Breen involve himself in the debates over some of the Founding Fathers being slaveholders. They were imperfect people, as was everyone Breen had ever known and respected and loved. But that didn’t change the wisdom they possessed, and courage—and vision. They created a nation that, for all its flaws, had been the guiding light of the free world for centuries.
Breen took America very, very seriously. He took its defense very seriously. And he took its laws most seriously, for without them everything else would be subjective, ungovernable chaos. That was why he had become an attorney and a criminologist, it was why he had joined the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, which had been founded by George Washington himself, and it was the reason he taught students at the JAG Legal Center. All the branches of law the young minds studied here were important, from military criminal law to international law. Curiosity and a broad-based knowledge was important because trials—and thus lives and careers—often hinged upon attorneys knowing things, being able to extemporize about everything from aircraft mechanics to human visual acuity, from the Quran to bitcoin, from global geography to lunar phases. A good attorney had to collect and store data. But above all Breen’s desire was to instill in them the same ideals that had guided him.
The only aspect of his work that Breen did not enjoy was the start of the summer, when the pace and intensity of two semesters came to a sudden stop and the next three months were used primarily to work with interns or to spackle educational holes in military personnel who needed specific classes or skills. All were invariably polite and attentive, but there was rarely the passion he found in a handful of regular judge advocates.
One thing the summer did do, however, was give Breen a chance to play a little with his forensic skills. It was rewarding to have a hobby that was a vocation, and Breen liked to spend time with his friend Chief Bob Fender of the UVA Police Department. The men enjoyed walking around the campus, smelling the variety of foliage, and occasionally engaging with students who—more often than not—had issues with police, the military, and members of both professions. Fender, who was forty-two, older than Breen by five years, had just enough patience to listen without engaging; Breen, however, enjoyed a respectful debate.
At the moment, the men were reflecting on the events in Manhattan, lamenting the inability of law enforcement to do a better job of anticipating attacks like these.
“We’ve both been on the preventative side of things for years,” Fender was saying. “We see the data, the analytics, the trends. What are we missing?”
“Human intelligence,” Breen replied without hesitation. “We’ve surrendered hunches and instincts to satellite imaging and social media intercepts.”
“But those have been increasingly successful,” Fender said. “That, plus luck, has about eighty-eight percent of the terrorist world covered. Compared to nine/eleven and before, we catch most of the activity that’s out there. Certainly most of the major stuff.”
“That’s true,” Breen agreed. “I just don’t accept the fact that the rights and objectives laid out in the Declaration of Independence are not being sustained.”
“‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?”
“That’s the list, sweet and simple,” Breen replied.
“Speaking of happiness, are you going to be taking one of your regular sabbaticals?”
“I’m sure I will,” Breen told him. “There are legal repositories in Missouri with draft writings by our first chief justice, Roger Taney. I want to read them.”
“Any reason in particular?” Fender asked.
“He wrote the Dred Scott decision that said the federal government had no constitutional authority to limit the spread of slavery,” Breen said. “I want to understand how he came to that conclusion.”
“Stripped of contemporary sensibilities,” Fender said. “Tough to do.”
“Like it or not, that decision is part of who we were and it brought us to where we are,” Breen said. “People who only consider current thought gain information at the expense of wisdom.”
“You tell that to your students?”
“Every session,” he smiled.
Fender shook his head. “That should be the mission of this place, of all universities, to challenge people with unpopular ideas. Instead, we coddle them. You know why I came out today, Major? Because President Oxendine felt my presence would reassure the faculty and student body that everyone is safe, that the top cop has eyes on the campus.” He shook his head. “I can do a better job using the security cameras in my situation room.”
“Well, there is a psychological value to seeing a physical presence,” Breen said. “Like the old beat cop.”
“His job was rousting drunks from street corners,” Fender said, his voice lowering. “Not looking for improvised explosive devices in a discarded can of energy drink. Do you want to know what Oxendine asked me after the attack? If we could, in fact, look into acquiring the FIT system.”
“The liberal lion said that?”
“The selfsame woman who opened the school year with a speech on the need for that great oxymoron, ‘public privacy.’”
Fingerprint identification technology was a program created by a private firm that was currently being field-tested at Fort Benning, Georgia. The fingerprints of every soldier were scanned and special readers were installed throughout the base to identify prints on trash, on doors, on handrails that were not on file. Security cameras automatically searched backward for whoever left them to identify outsiders and provide a superficial threat assessment.
“FIT is a great technology with one major drawback,” Fender said.
“It only works in warm weather,” Breen replied. “But it still fills gaps in your eighty-eight percent, and I’m sure there are mitten-readers in development. Those would certainly be easier, spectrographically, though building the database would be a pain.”
Fender sighed. “This is not the world I was trained for, Major. And these kids?” he gestured broadly. “They’re all going to be afraid of shadows before they even venture into the real world.”
Breen was about to remark about the value of baptism by fire when his smartphone chimed. It was a distinctive sound, the bugling of a cavalry charge.
“That’s new,” Fender remarked, hearing it.
“Yeah, and I’ll have to take it,” Breen said. “Excuse me, Chief?”
“I’ll keep walking,” Fender said pleasantly.
The JAG officer turned and walked away. He did not bother to explain that he wouldn’t be coming back. He headed directly toward his residence; the major had been half-expecting something like this for the last three hours. His “sabbatical” would be happening sooner than he expected, and he felt the rush of adrenaline as every part of his training came alive at once. Only when he had reached his quarters and snatched his canvas go-bag from the closet did he bother to check the message for confirmation:
BLACK WASP
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jizan, Saudi Arabia
July 22, 9:00 p.m.
The port city on the Red Sea was as ancient as it was dangerous. An agricultural center serving the kingdom by sea, it was also the only seat of lawful civilization in the region. Directly south of the seaside haven, just a short drive along roads favored by refugees, was the dangerous five-hundred-mile border with Yemen. For nearly a decade, since the ascension of the Houthi jihadists, the failed nation had been a haven not only to that Shia-dominated Zaidis sect, but to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and other terrorist groups.
Though Saudi troops are stationed along the border, the mountain foothills are ungo
vernable, shepherds cross from nation to nation without regard for sovereignty, and trade in the drug qat is the only source of income for many of the locals. The shrub is a widely used narcotic, a stimulant that is chewed or steeped in hot water. Along with hashish, cannabis resin, and opium—most of which was sold in Saudi Arabia—qat was one of the main sources of income for Yemen’s terrorists. Another revenue stream was ransom. Foreign nationals were routinely abducted and held, and those who were returned were often gravely ill due to the poor quality of the food, water, medical attention, and shelter.
A third source of revenue was Iran, a Shia nation that was quietly or openly at war with Sunni nations—which were virtually every other power in the region, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, from the United Arab Emirates to Jordan, from Qatar to Syria. Only Iraq was as heavily Shia as its eastern neighbor. Yemen was somewhat evenly divided, helping to keep it a roiling, sociopolitical crisis zone widely regarded as the most dangerous region on the planet.
It was a nation where few citizens moved beyond familiar paths, and far fewer with confidence. Among the latter, no one moved with greater range or influence than Mohammad Obeid ibn Sadi—referred to simply as Sadi. Officially, the short, fifty-year-old Houthi was the head of Sadi Shipping, which operated widely in the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden. He had an office in Yemen’s largest city, Sana’a—an office he never visited for reasons of personal security. American airstrikes in Yemen had been increasingly bold, and many leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had been killed—men that Sadi knew, like external operations facilitator Miqdad al Sana’ani who was martyred in the al-Bayda governorate … Habib al-Sana’ani, deputy arms facilitator, who perished in the Marib governorate … Abu Umar al-Sana’ani, a Dawah committee member, who was killed in the al-Bayda governorate. With each attack, the greatest loss was experience. That was why it was necessary to constantly recruit veterans from the outside. It was the part of his work Sadi most enjoyed: reaching into the hearts of Muslim men and using his own passion to stimulate ancient tradition. First remotely, by computer or cell phone, and then by personal interview.
Since Sadi knew that his own experience and talents must not be allowed to perish, he lived in a lavish bunker built beneath Saba University, a school he helped to found in 1994. The facility was active with young men year-round, making a missile or drone attack too costly to be of value.
Sadi remained contentedly in hiding because, from his high-tech facility, he was able to command an operation that focused on his own personal passions: the smuggling of arms to Shia fighters throughout the world and the trafficking of young men and women—some for profit, some for a grave point that needed to be made.
As he was doing at this moment.
Sadi was seated on a plain wooden chair in the middle of a small room. There were no windows and just one door, which was locked from the inside. There were hanging electric fixtures in all four corners and a bright overhead in the center of the room; they were ornate lanterns hand-made in the style found in tents of the ancient Saba’ite Bedouins. An ornate rug covered most of the floor and tapestries depicted scenes of Arabic shipping through the ages.
Sadi was dressed in a black robe with a tight white kufi atop his head. He wore his salt-and-pepper beard trimmed just above his collarbone; he fervently believed that anything more than a fistful of hair was makruh, not just unlawful but abominable. It was one of many things he found offensive—including women who did not cover their faces in public. When such a woman, especially a rebellious young woman, crossed the path of any of his trusted lieutenants, she was often followed, taken, and brought to him here.
The girl before him was about sixteen, dressed in Western clothes; her simple white hajib did not please him. Neither did the fact that she had been working, selling homegrown lemons in the market. She was on her way home when she was apprehended.
“Do you not agree that it is immodest and deeply disrespectful to dress as you do?” he asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
Hands clasped tightly behind her, the spindly young woman was not sobbing, but she was trembling. It was a blend of fear and cold; despite the eighty-seven-degree heat outside, an air conditioner kept the room comfortable. She could hear the hum of the generator somewhere behind her, in another room.
“How shall I answer, sir?” the woman replied helplessly.
“Truthfully,” Sadi encouraged.
“If I agree, will it be said that I have sinned? If I do not agree, will it be said that I sin now?”
Sadi’s long face showed no emotion. His pale eyes stared from beneath full white eyebrows.
“What is your answer?” the man asked.
“I humbly plead for forgiveness,” she replied after brief reflection. “I ask for your help that I may be guided by the Disciplinarian of all mankind, by the noble Quran.”
Sadi considered this as he rose. His right hand, which had been behind him, behind the seat, emerged now with a long switch made of hickory. He slashed the air as he approached.
“You are too clever,” Sadi said.
The girl backed away as the switch once again cut through the air. “I … I do not mean to be,” she said.
“You sin and you lie and you profane my eyes and ears with both,” he said, his voice rising now. He held both ends of the stick in his hands as she thumped against the steel door. “You will do penance, on your hands and knees.”
Shaking, the girl dropped to the floor, bowed to the man, and sobbed the names of her loved ones in an effort to find courage—
The first lash tore through her white blouse and drove the words from her, transforming them from wept syllables to a single, inarticulate shriek. The second strike collapsed her arms and dropped her face-first onto the rug while the third whip caused hands to shoot out and turn awkwardly back in an effort to protect her ripped flesh. The fourth blow caused her mind to reel into unconsciousness. The fifth caning caused long sprays of blood to coat the door and a wide area of the rug beneath her.
A half hour later, Hanifa al-Fishi was found facedown in the street, unconscious and barely breathing. She was covered with a white sheet that was soaked through with her blood; it had dried and caked, making the shroud impossible to remove without taking a great deal of skin with it.
The next day, more than the usual number of people purchased al-Fishi lemons at the market. They paid a high 14 rial apiece to her father Ali, the money going to pay for the bandages and ointments his daughter would need to survive.
Few spoke to the quiet, solemn man—and those who did asked in the softest possible voice after the girl’s health. The answer was a helpless shrug. As one man was bold enough to remark before turning away, “That is the answer to everything, is it not?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fort Belvoir North, Virginia
July 22, 2:20 p.m.
Matt Berry took Chase Williams back to the Op-Center parking area to get his car. No one would have left yet; a team of human resources personnel from various intelligence agencies, including Dow’s office at State, were coming over to talk to the employees and to give them instructions as to how to submit for new positions. Williams wished he could have been with them; a commander belonged with his people.
He knew he would see some of them again, the people he was closest to like Anne, operations director Brian Dawson, and intelligence director Roger McCord. The others, especially Aaron Bleich and his tech team—it would be awkward and most likely brief. None of them had sufficient experience in government to know that there were no reunions, no movie nights, no baseball games for failed systems.
Just a boot in the ass and you land where you land.
Before leaving to return to the White House, Berry left Williams with three passwords—all of which changed daily and all of which would be texted to his secure personal phone the night before. Berry also left him with the three codes and instructions that were as clear as they were blunt.
The first password Berry furnished was to operate the food and beverage vending machines at either end of the corridor.
“With so much money lying around, everything would come out of petty cash anyway,” he had said.
The second was the code to the lavatories. There were four, nongender specific; changing codes prevented any outsider who got this far from recovering any spy devices that might have been placed in the facilities on a different day. Many people continued to work on tablets in the restrooms and key strikes could be read remotely.
The third code was to Williams’s own Op-Center files. They were read-only, and access could be revoked at any time.
“Everything you were able to read this morning, you can continue to read,” Berry had said. “The code will also connect you to multiagency files pertaining to the Intrepid, Captain Salehi, and anything else that is learned about the attack. You will be piggybacking on my own access, Chase. No one in any of these agencies knows that you are still in the business and that you and your new team are all that remain of Op-Center. If anyone should ask—former coworkers or someone you meet at Wegmans or Walmart—you can tell them that you’re working at the DLA thanks to my having pulled strings. Which is true.”
“I appreciate what you’ve done, Matt, but that sounds less like guidelines and more like I’m being put in my place,” Williams had said.
“I don’t think I meant to do that, but maybe you’re right,” Berry had replied. “Midkiff isn’t running for reelection but I still have a career. That’s on the line if something goes south here.”
“I understand,” Williams had said.
“When you input the file code,” Berry told him before driving off, “all the data you need to know about your team will come up first. That will include the time and place of your first meeting—which has already been called. Oh,” he added, “and speaking about ‘called,’ I will make every effort to keep you apprised of what other agencies may be doing off the record in pursuit of the target, just so you don’t trip each other up. Otherwise, you and the team are on your own.”