by Jim Geraghty
“It’s a citizen’s arrest!” Karl shouted back. “He could be in there stabbing his parents right now for all we know!”
The door opened a crack, and Ed’s face and mustache were visible in the space between the door, behind the chain. “Karl, please calm down.”
“Open up, Ed!” Karl shouted. “I don’t want to have to kick this door down.”
Ed shook his head, perplexed, angry, outraged, and sad simultaneously. “Karl … I’m going to have to call the cops.”
“We already did!” several people shouted simultaneously. Karl shouted in the space, jamming his foot between the door and the doorframe. “We have to get in there, Ed, your kid’s a terrorist!”
“He’s nothing of the sort!” Ed shouted back. “Get your foot out of the door!”
“Stop!” Raquel shouted. She was watching the situation spiral out of control right in front of her. She tried again to dial 911 on her phone; this time she was told all circuits were busy.
Instead of stopping, Karl slammed his bat against the door as hard as he could. It splintered a bit, leaving a dent in the door, and Ed backed away from the door.
“We’re going in!” Karl shouted. He wound up for another swing, hoping to break the chain.
But before he could swing his bat again, a deafening gunshot rang out, echoing up and down the street. Everyone flinched and instinctively ducked, eyes wide, suddenly terrified, adrenaline pumping, looking around for who had shot the gun.
Raquel turned and was stunned to see Vaughn, holding his own Glock 19 up in the air. He had fired a warning shot straight up.
“That’s enough,” his voice somehow boomed, even though it was barely above a whisper. “Everybody go back to your homes.”
Stacey and the other three neighbors looked at Karl. Stunned, he looked around at everyone else, then he looked down at the broken bat in his hand.
“No lynch mob tonight,” Vaughn said, staring at Karl.
Karl shook his head.
“Look, I tried to do something. When that kid in there kills somebody, that’s all on you!” he said, pointing at Raquel and Vaughn. He walked back away from the Taylors’ door. Ed closed it, and everyone could hear the deadbolt turning. Everyone started walking home and closing their doors, quietly. Within a few minutes, the street was quiet again, except for police sirens in the distance. Raquel hoped it was a delayed response to someone’s 911 call, but it was apparently a response to some other similar tense confrontation a few blocks away.
“Are you going to be all right alone here tonight?” Raquel asked Vaughn. He looked at her and let out the smallest of smiles.
“I think I just made that clear,” he said. “Will you be?”
She drove to work, listening to news radio. The anchor was trying to keep up with the reports of violence across the country and asked the best expert the station could find at that hour, a retired police chief, if he had ever seen anything like it.
“A little,” he said. “First night after the Rodney King verdict, back in ’92.” He paused, and the station broadcast dead air for an uncomfortably long stretch.
“But this is worse.”
***
The violence of the Night of Sirens seemed to have largely calmed by dawn, but it had been a tense eight to ten hours across the country. Police in riot gear had to disperse angry crowds from coast to coast: New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Mobile, Tampa, Las Vegas. The sense of anarchy hit worst in cities that had endured long rough patches of high unemployment, racial tensions, and mistrust of the police: Youngstown, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Camden, New Jersey. Once the first wave of violence was reported, more than a few gangs saw an opportunity to take out rivals and have their murders blend in with the wave of violence. More than a few bad jokes comparing the night to “the Purge” floated around social media. The National Guard was called out in fourteen states.
California was hit the worst; the Atarsa message arrived in late afternoon, giving angry crowds daylight hours to assemble and then the cover of darkness to lash out. One angry mob would march down to the nearest police station demanding an immediate roundup of everyone with a name mentioned in the Atarsa message; another crowd of protesters gathered and shrieked that the other side was racist—not really the most accurate denunciation, since Americans of almost every hue and creed matched the names in the message—and the more accurate accusation that the crowds wanted to repeat the shame of the Japanese internment camps during World War Two. The angry mobs brought out the bored and the opportunistic, who were just eager to break things and maybe steal something from a superstore. No matter the crisis, no matter how serious an impending disaster was, somebody was convinced they could get a new flat-screen television out of the mess.
The mayhem-minded gathered in Los Angeles, San Jose, Oakland, Stockton, Santa Ana, Fremont, and Chula Vista, and looting ensued as midnight approached. In San Francisco, Apple and Google ran private buses to get their employees home and found themselves under attack, even though no one could really explain how Google or Apple were responsible for Atarsa’s menace. One bandana-masked young man, stopping to speak to a local news crew, explained that if the “fat cats in the tech companies” hadn’t invented “all of this stuff,” then Atarsa wouldn’t be able to interrupt the television signals and threaten them, a justification that revealed the protester/rioter/looter understood absolutely nothing that had happened in recent weeks. Another explained, “the kinds of people in Atarsa are the ones who took our jobs.”
Immigrant communities bore a disproportionate brunt of the violence on the Night of Sirens, even though so far none of the attacking Atarsa sleeper agents had been an immigrant. Angra Druj’s accented voice was all the justification the angriest xenophobes needed to lash out.
The intelligence officers at Liberty Campus were particularly attuned to the immigrant communities within the United States. Recent immigrants often made excellent sources and could describe all kinds of details in their home countries, in ways that might elude even the best intelligence officer. Case officers sometimes grew attached to these newest Americans, who sometimes traveled back and forth to their home countries, picking up more local gossip and useful information.
It wasn’t part of their official duties, but by the early morning hours, the intelligence officers were scouring news reports, both national and local, and social media, tallying up the dreadful costs of what the media had labeled “the Night of Sirens.” As of ten a.m., the best estimate was about seventy to eighty people dead, between four and five hundred injured, about sixty cops injured by thrown rocks and other debris, and tens of millions of dollars in property damage. But it was the specific acts that made the night feel like the country was falling apart: some unknown persons set the home of the Garcia family in Baltimore ablaze, burning Carlos, Maria, and their three children to death; a man started randomly shooting people in the street in Newark, and an out-of-control mob beat several people to death in Madison, Wisconsin.
Raquel had seen the looped footage of the Baltimore flames one time too many. She needed to clear her head and got up to walk around the campus. She was surprised to find Patrick Horne, Alec’s long-detested rival, standing by the elevators, not pressing a button, staring ahead into the doors blankly. He usually dressed impeccably and never had a hair out of place, but he was starting to show stubble and had bags under his eyes. He didn’t move as she approached, lost in whatever thoughts were haunting him at that moment. While Alec loathed Patrick, Raquel found him merely annoying, and she had long since accepted the need to find ways to work with him. But she had never seen him like this; she wondered if he had just learned of the death of someone he knew.
“Patrick, are you all right?” she asked gently, fearing she was about to startle him.
Patrick looked up, and seemed to shake himself out of whatever trance he had been in. “It’s bad,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry about Peck, I know he was your mentor,” s
he said, trying to figure out what else to say.
“He’ll recover,” Patrick said, wiping his hand across his face, as if to remove some invisible grime. “No, this was something else last night, I just heard. I grew up outside Boston, little town, still have a lot of friends there. Heard from one this morning. He told me at dawn he went in for his usual breakfast, a McMuffin.”
Patrick stood silently for an uncomfortably long time, and Raquel wondered whether he should refer him for immediate counseling.
“He said when he got there, he saw a body hanging from the golden arches. Somebody had strung someone up there in the middle of the night.”
CHAPTER 62
KARAKUM DESERT
TURKMENISTAN
SATURDAY, APRIL 3
Alec and Katrina were ten miles out of the village of Erbent before they could even speak of what they had just witnessed. She kept checking the rearview mirrors.
“Atarsa’s a cult,” Katrina exhaled. “Not that surprising. A lot of terror groups have the same basic structure, psychological appeal, extreme beliefs, apocalyptic worldview.”
“Crazy loves crazy.” Alec mumbled. He wondered if other people would look at his wife and himself and conclude the same. “If I’m Gul, I’m outta here the moment I hear the US might be bombing. I’m long gone. According to the Iranians, I operate out of Cyprus as well …”
She pulled onto a dirt road that headed toward a railroad track running parallel to the main north-south highway. Then she turned and drove parallel to the tracks.
“If I’m them, I’m changing my identity and maybe even my face. Plastic surgery or something. If we gave Dee the coordinates to the altar underneath that obelisk in the village, the Gate of Hell, and the site that the Tomahawks bombed … any phones that were in more than one of those locations is probably Atarsa,” she murmured. Maybe, with a little luck, they could ping a cell phone and find Gholam Gul and Sarvar Rashin.
Knowing that the Turkmen had tipped off the terrorists once, they needed thoroughly secure way to communicate back to Raquel. The only safe bet was probably back on a US Air Force C-17. Luckily, the road ahead revealed farms and signs of civilization, a signal the city was growing closer.
***
The corner of Ashgabat International Airport used for refueling and restocking US Air Force planes was remote from the rest of the facility, by mutual agreement of the Americans and the Turkmeni government. Rackety, dirty tractor-trailers stood silently in a line, and a lone Turkmeni workman—probably a spy—sat in forklift parked in the shadow of the plane. His machine appeared to be held together by duct tape.
Alec and Katrina had to sign a seemingly endless series of documents in Turkmen before they were cleared to step onto the tarmac and speak to the US military personnel.
US Air Force Captain “Big Jim” Richards and Airman Chris Cook did not greet the two Americans cheerily at all.
Richards growled through a strong Texan drawl, “Say that again?”
“We need you to fly us to Cyprus immediately,” Katrina said. She looked up at the massive Globemaster C-17, where spirit of vernon hargis was painted on the cockpit.
“Where were you scheduled to fly?”
The two men spoke simultaneously. “Who the hell are y—” Richards began, before Cook answered, “Incirlik Air Base, Turkey.” Richards glared at the junior officer.
“Who the hell are you, and why should we tell you this?” Richards repeated.
Katrina flipped her fake Department of Defense credentials. “We’re with Langley. We think two leaders of the Atarsa terror cell are on their way to Cyprus. You’re going to have to take us there.”
The Air Force pilots exchanged a skeptical glance.
“Do you see an Uber or Lyft logo on the plane behind me, ma’am?” Richards asked sarcastically. “Book yourself a commercial flight.”
Katrina burst with exasperation. “You know the guys who have been launching these attacks back in America?! They’re on! Their way! To Cyprus!” She pointed three times for emphasis, momentarily acting as if Richards was deaf or slow. “They’re gonna have plastic surgery and change their identities and if we don’t get there as soon as possible, they will disappear! In the wind! Gone! We will be back to square one!”
“We can’t just change where we’re going without orders,” Richards said.
“You are the only plane we can access right now!” she shouted. Alec was taken aback, momentarily thrown off. The good cop was reading lines from the bad cop’s script.
Alec waved his hands. “Okay, okay.” He gently turned her away from them, walked her a step or two away, and leaned in close to the two men.
“Gentlemen, we don’t have time to argue. You’re free to stick to your orders, but if you do, that’s going to force our hand.” The two Air Force pilots eyed him skeptically. “We’re going to have no choice but to ask for help from the Turkmeni Air Force.”
Richards let out a laugh. Katrina whipped her head around and wondered if Alec had indeed gone insane while wandering in the desert. There was no way they would tell the Turkmenis anything. Richards and Cook seemed equally shocked by the suggestion.
“Captain” – he glanced down at the uniform – “Richards, am I correct that you’re a Texan?” Alec guessed.
“Damn straight,” he nodded.
“I cannot believe I’m going to have to tell everyone that the Turkmen helped us catch a terrorist and a Texan would not,” Alec shrugged. Richards bristled and scowled. Alec turned and started waving at the Turkmen military soldiers standing by the doors to the terminal building.
He had barely gotten out a “Hey!” when Richards grabbed his arm.
“Whoa, whoa, let’s hold off on that, son,” Richards said. He gave a grumbling look to Cook, who nodded. “We’ll get you to Cyprus. Just get on the damn plane.”
CHAPTER 63
THE WHITE HOUSE
SATURDAY, APRIL 3
The morning after the Night of Sirens brought the country and the Agency only limited respite. With the National Guard mobilizing into cities coast to coast, Americans took a short break from overtly lashing out at random strangers out of fear and helpless rage and settled for mere suspicious glares. But social media, the nation’s seductive accelerant for outrage, exploded with accusations of terrorist affiliations and broad scapegoating of various groups: Iranian Americans, Muslims, Mexicans, white nationalists, ex-cons, violent video game players, millennials and anyone else. The national television media noticed and argued that the government was faltering in the face of a worsening crisis.
This put the already mercurial president into the foulest of moods, and the commander-in-chief dealt with it by chewing out Acting Director Mitchell at the emergency morning cabinet meeting. Now Mitchell was determined to chew out everyone under him, and this meant Raquel’s late-morning meeting on the seventh floor did not go well at all. She had very little good news to report. Katrina and Alec had not reported in yet, an uncharacteristically long stretch of silence that increasingly worried her. The CIA’s Ashgabat station had no reports of any Americans in Turkmen police custody, but there was no way to keep tabs on every police station in the vast Karakum desert.
Raquel also had to report there was no record of anyone with the name “Reese Scovi” in any government database. Dee and the NSA were running searches of variations of the name in other databases, but couldn’t promise results.
The president demanded that the next Atarsa broadcast be their last. Mitchell challenged everyone around the table: stop the terrorizing messages, by any means necessary. Raquel found herself wanting that last phrase in writing.
***
Raquel returned to Liberty Campus to find a marginally rested Dee, lamenting that no news had broken on her end during the meeting. And still no word from Katrina or Alec.
“What’s the word from upstairs?” Dee asked.
“The White House is apoplectic. Thirty-nine percent of Americans told a pollster that they were
having nightmares about Atarsa and the attacks.” She paused. She knew Merlin would call the bombardment of disturbing images a psychic attack upon the American people.
She wondered if Dee could come up with some way to stop Atarsa’s messages. “FCC, FBI, Homeland Security—everybody’s running around trying to come up with ideas. The military has signal-jamming units, used them to disrupt signals to IEDs in Iraq. They could set them up around the city …”
“Yeah, but once you set up jammers to disrupt any signal on the broadcast station frequency, then the local news affiliates can’t do any live remotes,” Dee guessed. “Might make it just about impossible to broadcast any signal. And the Atarsa video nightmare gang can just drive up the road to Baltimore or Philadelphia or any other city and start it over again. You can’t jam broadcast signals in every city.”
She thought for a moment. “And even if we made it impossible to broadcast pirate signals, they could always just go back to uploading YouTube videos and anonymously send them to news stations.” The good old days, thought Raquel. It was a courier who eventually led the agency to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.
Watching the morning news and examining the incoming reports from stations around the world left Dee bereft of her usual bubbly optimism. Raquel knew Dee’s mind could be daring and creative but also completely unpredictable—much like the rest of her team. Dee was probably smart enough to figure out a way to stop the Atarsa messages; the only question was whether in the process she would set off some sort of electromagnetic pulse that would blow out half the televisions on the Eastern seaboard or trigger some other comparable catastrophe.
“Dee, if I said I could get you anything you needed …” Raquel began, almost afraid to complete that promise, “could you figure out a way to stop these Atarsa messages?”
“Anything?” Dee’s eyebrow rose in a manner that Leonard Nimoy would admire. She drummed her fingers on the desk, looked up, nodded her head sideways one way, then the other, thinking through something obscure.