by Jim Geraghty
The C-17 worked its way around Iranian airspace, crossing Azerbaijan into Armenia. The next hour of the flight was relatively quiet, until Katrina discovered something on her laptop and began hitting the side of the plane in frustration.
“Please stop hitting my plane, ma’am!” Richards barked.
Katrina muttered an apology and turned to Alec. “Remember those blueprints for the old plane, the Trident? The ones that Rat had, that we thought didn’t mean anything?” Alec nodded. She held up her laptop, and showcased a satellite image.
“Nicosia International Airport in Cyprus. It’s been abandoned since the war in ’seventy-four. There’s a Cyprus Airways Trident that’s been sitting on the tarmac for decades, just falling apart and collecting dust.”
“That explains the operating manual Rat had,” Alec said, thinking back to the singed papers from the Berlin hostel room. “Gul and the gang have somebody fixing that plane for them.”
“Their that’s their get-out-of-Dodge plan,” Katrina concluded. “Get on, take off, freak out every member of the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus, and then land somewhere else.” She thought for a moment. “And somewhere along the line, they’re going to get plastic surgery. They know we’re after them, they know we know their faces, so they’re going to reinvent themselves. New identities. This al-Qaeda guy, Luia Sakka, did it a bunch of times.”
“I’m gonna get you, Sakka,” Alec murmured. Katrina didn’t get the joke. “This is great. We’ve got them, as long as we can get to that plane before they do!”
They reconnected to Raquel’s office and brought her up to speed.
“There’s a dozen airports and airfields within an hour’s flight that are closed, no longer used, abandoned, private airfields,” Raquel sighed. “They walk off the plane, get new faces, new names, new passports, and then they’re gone.”
Alec looked at the Air Force pilots in front of him and wondered how much they were hearing and understanding. He hoped they could somehow metaphorically step on the gas and get them to Cyprus faster. After Katrina explained the need for speed, Richards looked at his charts and started calculating how quickly Gul and Rashin could get to Cyprus.
“Distance from Tartus to the Cyprus coast is about 130 miles, say 140 nautical miles. Maximum speed of their boat is forty-five knots, that’s about fifty miles an hour, let’s say they take three hours, maybe four.”
“Probably going to take them longer,” piped up Cook from the copilot’s chair. “There’s a serious thunderstorm forming, and you almost never see that at this time of year. Must be global warming or something.”
“Or something,” Alec muttered.
***
Alec crossed himself. “If you’re up there, God, now would be a nice time to help out,” Alec whispered.
Oh, sure. Now you call.
“A guilt trip is not help,” Alec told the voice in his head. “I’m trying to protect your creations. Could you at least pretend to be interested? Bad enough you created a world with evil nut-jobs like this running around.”
You would complain if I had created a world of always-noble automatons, missing free will.
“There’s a lot of doubt around here about whether you’re all-good or all-powerful, because you can’t be both.”
You’ve got the same free will that they do. What do you have, stumps at the ends of your arms? I gave you a body. I gave you a mind. I gave you Katrina.
Alec pursed his lips. “Fair point.”
Get to it.
CHAPTER 64
LIBERTY CROSSING INTELLIGENCE CAMPUS
TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA
SATURDAY, APRIL 3
NBC’s coverage of the Georgetown—Saint John’s University men’s basketball game began at three p.m. Eastern. There had been debate about canceling it after last night’s violence, but eventually authorities agreed that the normality of sports might bring some comfort to a shocked country. The entire game was played without incident, although the crowd was sparse for the first half as fans encountered delays going through the metal detectors as part of the new security measures. When NBC switched to the local news at six p.m., Dee told everyone to expect an Atarsa signal interruption within thirty to thirty-five minutes.
Surely enough, shortly after the national newscast from New York began that evening at six-thirty, viewers in the Washington area suddenly saw increasing static on the NBC signal. The visual images and sound grew more and more disrupted and inaudible until, a few moments later, Angra Druj’s face appeared on screens again. Tens of thousands of viewers shuddered, taking pictures of their television screens and sharing the invasive spectral image on social media.
What the viewers at home didn’t know was that at that moment, sitting behind her console and computers at the Liberty Campus complex offices, Dee executed an electronic program of hot pursuit. Her triangulation with the various radar and other sensor arrays within the Washington area did not take long, barely a minute and a half into Druj’s recitation of all the ways Americans would find their loved ones brutally murdered.
“Homing in on the signal,” Dee announced as Raquel looked over her shoulder. “Tracking. Real close to the broadcast tower …” She checked the coordinates against her map. “Got it. Parking lot of the National Presbyterian Church. It’s right next door to NBC’s complex.”
Dee typed furiously, opening new windows, typing in new codes, hitting enter, fingers a blur on the keyboard.
They went right back to where they poisoned the director, Raquel noted. She began barking orders to the assembled staffers. “Get the location to MPD and FBI, they must have somebody close by.”
Dee emphatically hit the enter key and smiled. “Actually, they wo—” she began.
“We spotted them with the drone!” another technician interrupted with a shout. “I’m putting it on the big screen!”
The black-and-white live video feed came up on main screen in the bull pen. A black van with a sliding panel door was parked in the corner of the church parking lot. The panel door was open, and two figures, a man and a woman, were holding a small dish, perhaps two feet across, aimed at the NBC broadcast tower.
“Boy, are they in for a rude surprise,” Raquel finally allowed herself a smile. “Enjoy the broadcast, Atarsa, because it’s your last.”
But the euphoric moment was suddenly interrupted by loud screaming and swearing in the office adjacent to their bull pen of cubicles and desks. Raquel felt like her attention was being pulled in a million directions at once. She glanced at the screen showing the live feed of the Atarsa message, but it was just Angra Druj damning the West in her ghostly tone.
A DNI staffer burst into the room.
“Somebody says they just saw a missile flying over the Potomac!” he cried, eyes bulging.
“What?” Raquel cried in disbelief.
“Visuals confirm something flying up the Potomac really fast, social media’s going nuts, gotta be Atarsa!” The other room burst with gasps, expletives, and cries. “Headed toward Northwest!” someone shouted. Someone yelled for NORAD and other air defense, but among the cacophony, Raquel heard one voice cutting through it all because of how soft it was—almost a mumble.
“That wasn’t Atarsa,” Dee had murmured.
Raquel’s head snapped around. Dee hadn’t just …
“What did you just say?”
Dee simply pointed up at the screen and shrugged. A second later, on the black-and-white screen, the black van suddenly exploded, disappearing in a white flash. The entire office gasped again, until someone let out a thrilled, “Yeah!” and pumped his fist madly.
On the monitors tuned to the local NBC broadcast signal, the Atarsa message abruptly ended, returning to the regular NBC nightly news broadcast from New York.
Everyone stood silently, looking around in confusion.
“What the hell was that?”
Another intelligence liaison shouted from elsewhere in the office. “NORAD’s reporting they just had an una
uthorized missile launch at Joint Base Anacostia!”
“Wasn’t really that unauthorized,” Dee mumbled quietly, rubbing her hand over her mouth as she spoke.
“What … did … you … just … do?” Raquel whispered.
Dee looked sheepish.
“It’s not hard to reprogram a missile to home in on a particular signal’s location,” she said quietly. “Back in the Persian Gulf war, they had to warn all the network correspondents about what frequencies they used, otherwise the US Tomahawks might land in Bernie Shaw’s lap. Over at Joint Base Anacostia Bolling, they’ve got a SLAMRAAM—Surface Launched Advanced Medium Range Anti-Aircraft Missile—designed to shoot down any plane veering off course from Reagan National or some other plane on a suicide course. It didn’t take a lot to get that system to track the source of the broadcast, and to … well, basically treat the source of the signal the way it would treat a plane coming in on a suicide course.”
Raquel blinked, still coming to terms with what she had just heard.
“You just blew up the Atarsa van?!?” Raquel exclaimed. She tried to organize the million emotions running through her, and concluded that for now, disbelief would take priority.
“I promised you I could stop the broadcasts,” Dee said. “And you didn’t really specify any limits as to how I could stop them.”
Raquel’s eyes bulged, and she fumed, as she contemplated how she could even begin to explain an unauthorized missile launch and strike in the middle of Washington DC—into a church parking lot, for Christ’s sake!—to her superiors and, at some point, how those superiors could explain that act to the American public.
She stepped closer to the large screen, showing the signal from the drone. The van’s roof had been completely blown off … it was a mass of flaming shrapnel with four wheels. There was no way either figure seen within could have possibly survived. She turned back to Dee.
“You …” Raquel gasped, holding on to her sanity by her fingernails. She pointed an angry finger at Dee. “You have been hanging around with Ward and Alec for too long! They’re rubbing off on you!”
Dee pointed her finger back. “As far outside the law as I needed to go! You said it yourself!” she shouted indignantly. “I told you I was going to need a presidential pardon beforehand!”
“I said theoretically!” Raquel shouted back. “I thought you meant breaking into some database or something! You said no war games!”
“This isn’t ‘war games’! This is just killing some people by pressing buttons!”
Then she realized how inappropriately casual that sounded. “Okay, that came out wrong.”
Another staffer shouted to interrupt: “Raquel, it’s Director—I mean, Acting Director Mitchell. He says it’s urgent!”
“I’ll bet it is.” Raquel walked over to the nearest secure phone and picked up the receiver, punching up the right line. How on earth could she even begin this conversation? She remembered his furious challenge in the morning’s meeting.
“Directorate of Any Means Necessary, Raquel speaking.”
***
There was a lot of yelling on that phone call, followed by a lot of yelling on the Agency’s seventh floor, followed by a lot of yelling in the White House. One person who surprised everyone by not yelling was the President of the United States, who seemed pleased with the newfound ability to announce on Twitter to the American people that the evening explosion in a usually quiet corner of Northwest Washington represented the US Governmenta striking back at Atarsa and destroying their ability to send the threatening messages. Yes, the sight of the incoming missile and sudden explosion had caused quite a few car accidents throughout Northwest Washington, particularly up and down Nebraska Avenue, and at least a dozen emergency room visits. The whiplash personal injury lawsuits wouldn’t be sorted out for years. But thankfully, the only two dead bodies in Washington this evening were Atarsa’s propaganda wing, now burnt to a crisp.
The cable news networks and the big broadcast networks again interrupted their prime-time programming, but their reports were almost joyous. A few cell phones had recorded glimpses of the missile flying over DC, and the sudden mini–mushroom cloud of smoke formed by the van’s destruction. A few guest analysts and senators calling in to the programs pointed out that the US government had just killed American citizens without a trial on American soil using a method similar to a drone strike, something a previous attorney general had promised to never, ever, ever do.
The public didn’t get to see the Defense Department’s reaction to someone—even another federal agency tasked with national security duties—remotely taking over one of their air defense systems and launching a missile without their consent. The secretary of defense spat hot fire in the National Security Council’s emergency conference call. Among the recommendations from the joint chiefs for the appropriate consequence for this act was prosecution, incarceration, drawing and quartering, and “shipping that CIA hacker to Gitmo.”
Dee wasn’t physically dragged up to the director’s office on the seventh floor, but she felt like she might as well have, escorted by two beefy uniformed Federal Protective Service officers. Acting Director Mitchell was in video conference in the director’s conference room, and more than a few generals and National Security Council staffers couldn’t hide their skepticism that the woman who had just launched the missile was relatively young and pretty, the kind of woman who could be dancing in a Target commercial for Christmas sales.
“Miss Alves, as you can probably gather, your little stunt with NORAD’s systems has a lot of people very upset right now,” Mitchell began, a human teakettle about to bubble over. “I’ve pointed out to our counterparts in the Pentagon that if they really want to prosecute you, that will require a long public trial discussing exactly how vulnerable our local air defense systems are to a remote takeover, a prolonged and detailed humiliation that would probably end a lot of careers.” He shifted in his seat.
“While they contemplate the ramifications of pursuing charges, I figured I should ask you if you have one reason why I shouldn’t have you arrested right now.”
He noticed a disapproving stare from Raquel, sitting next to Dee. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency had to balance a lot of unaligned duties in his job, and if protecting the American people was the top priority, then number one-A was protecting his own people. The CIA was the universal scapegoat, demonized for being too reactive or too active, too reckless or too timid, too invasive or insufficiently thorough, too tied up in bureaucratic knots and red tape or too arrogantly convinced that no laws applied to itself. Everyone else in the federal government, or perhaps in America, liked to point the finger at the Agency when things went wrong. The agency’s rank and file couldn’t speak publicly to defend themselves, for obvious reasons. It was the job of the director to remind everyone else—other agencies, Congress, the media, even the president—that yes, we did brief you on that. Yes, you did ask us to do that, even if it’s politically inconvenient to acknowledge that now. Yes, we warned you about the risks; yes, we informed you about the contrary evidence.
The CIA director had to stand up for his people, because no one else would. And right now, in Raquel’s eyes, Mitchell was coming dangerously close to throwing Dee under the bus. The dynamic between Raquel and Alec and the rest of the team worked so well because she could tear them a new one over their mistakes—and she did so, regularly—but she relentlessly defended them among her peers and superiors. They never spoke of it directly, but it was clear. The team was like family—“friends are the family that you choose,” Alec had said—and a bit like the old mafia, Raquel never chose anyone else over the family. She knew she had a uniquely challenging position—to take their unorthodox methods and clear out a path for them to do what they did best, within an organization whose incentive structure increasingly punished risk. She thought Mitchell was going to give them a longer leash, but now she had her doubts, watching him trying to placate a line of DoD officials w
ho looked angrier than a YouTube video comments section.
Raquel, Mitchell, and the rest of the room expected Dee to argue her missile launch was a necessary step to save lives. But she went in a completely different direction.
“No one’s had any luck getting any of the arrested Atarsa sleepers to talk, right?” she asked. Mitchell grunted affirmatively.
“One of our officers got the name ‘Reese Scovi’ as the handler for one of the sleepers—maybe all of them,” Dee said cheerfully. “That name didn’t match any public record, so I expanded the parameters for variations. A few hours ago, I found one hit in the Census records for ‘Fabrice Vuscovi.’”
Raquel’s head snapped around. Another little development that Dee had neglected to mention immediately. Dee looked down at her yellow legal pad.
“Turns out that despite ‘Fabrice’ being a man’s name, Fabrice Vuscovi is a woman. Born in Silver Spring, Maryland. Thirty-five-year-old licensed psychiatrist, traveled to Iran, Turkmenistan, and Cyprus six years ago. Closed private practice a year ago, sold her house six months ago, mail is sent to a P.O. Box. But her name is still on the property records for an out-of-business nursery and garden supply place on Route 50 in Fairfax County.”
“That’s practically our backyard,” Mitchell gasped. He turned to his Bureau liaison. “How long will it take to get an FBI team to that site?”
“No need,” Dee said. “I texted it to Ward Rutledge shortly after I found it, he’ll be there any minute.”
And with that, almost everyone in the room quickly forgot about how upset they were about the unauthorized NORAD missile launch that had occurred ninety minutes ago.
***
It was once a fair-sized greenhouse, series of sheds, and a garden supply store. But that “once” had to have been three or four years ago. Ward had brought his flashlight, a hunting knife, and three guns. Once he saw the overhead lights flickering in the greenhouse, he figured his night was getting easier. A Prius had been parked at one end of the parking lot, which now had a healthy crop of weeds emerging from cracks in the pavement. Ward crept over and quietly punctured all four tires. Fabrice Vuscovi was not going to drive away from him tonight.