Primary Threat

by Jack Mars

  He was too old.

  He had been a Freedom Rider since the very first ride, May 1961, risking his life to help desegregate the South. He had been one of the young speakers on the streets during the Chicago Police Riot of August 1968, and had been tear-gassed in the face. He had spent thirty-three years in the House of Representatives, first sent there by the good people of Connecticut in 1972. He had served as Speaker of the House twice, once during the 1980s, then again up until just a couple of months ago.

  Now, at the age of seventy-four, he suddenly found himself President of the United States. It was a role he had never wanted or imagined for himself. No, wait. Scratch that—when he was young, a teenager, early twenties, he had pictured himself one day as President.

  But the America he had imagined himself President of was not this America. This was a divided place, embroiled in two publicly acknowledged foreign wars, as well as half a dozen clandestine “black operations”—operations so black, apparently, that the people overseeing them were reluctant to describe them to their superiors.

  “Mr. President?”

  In his youth, he had never imagined himself President of an America still utterly dependent on fossil fuels for its energy needs, where twenty percent of the population lived in poverty, and another thirty percent teetered on the verge of it, where millions of children went hungry every night, and more than a million people had nowhere to live. A place where racism was still alive and well. A place where millions of people could not afford to get sick, and people often had to decide between taking their prescription medications and eating. This was not the America he had dreamed of leading.

  This was a nightmare America, and suddenly he was in charge of it. A man who had spent his whole life standing up for what he believed was right, and fighting for the highest ideals, now found himself crawling through the muck. This job offered nothing but trade-offs and gray areas, and Clement Dixon was right in the middle of it all.

  He had always been a religious man. And these days he found himself thinking of how Christ had asked God to let the cup pass him by. Unlike Christ, however, his place on this cross was not pre-ordained. A series of mishaps and bad decisions had brought Clement Dixon to this place.

  If President David Barrett, a good man whom Dixon had known for many years, hadn’t been murdered, then no one would have looked to Vice President Mark Baylor to take his place.

  And if Baylor hadn’t been implicated by a mountain of circumstantial evidence in that murder (not enough to charge him, but more than enough to see him disgraced and banished from public life), then he wouldn’t have resigned, leaving the Presidency to the Speaker of the House.

  And if Dixon himself hadn’t agreed last year to spend just one more term as Speaker, despite his advanced age…

  Then he wouldn’t have found himself in this position.

  Even if he’d just had the strength of will to turn the damn thing down… Just because the Line of Succession dictated that the Speaker assume the job, didn’t mean he had to accept the job. But too many people had fought for too long to see a man like Clement Dixon, the fiery standard bearer of classical liberal ideals, become President. As a practical matter, he could not walk away.

  So here he was—tired, old, limping through the hallways of the West Wing (yes, limping—the new President of the United States had arthritis in his knees and a pronounced limp), overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the thing entrusted to him, and compromising his ideals at every turn.

  “Mr. President? Sir?”

  President Dixon was sitting in the egg-shaped Situation Room. Somehow, the room reminded him of a TV show from the 1960s—the show was called Space: 1999. It was a silly Hollywood producer’s idea of what the future must look like. Stark, empty, inhuman, and designed for maximum use of space. Everything was sleek and sterile, and exuded zero charm.

  Large video screens were embedded in the walls, with a giant screen at the far end of the oblong table. The chairs were tall leather recliners like the captain on the control deck of a starship might have.

  This meeting had been called at short notice—as usual, there was a crisis on. Outside of every seat at the table being taken, and a few along the walls, the room was mostly empty. The usual suspects were here, including a few overweight men in suits, along with thin and ramrod-straight military men in uniform.

  Thomas Hayes, Dixon’s new Vice President, was also here, and thank heavens for that. Having come aboard straight from being governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas was accustomed to making executive decisions. He was also on the same page with Dixon about many things. Thomas helped Dixon form a unified front.

  Everyone knew that Thomas Hayes had designs on the presidency himself, and that was fine. He could have it, as far as Clement Dixon was concerned. Thomas was tall, and handsome, and smart, and he projected an air of authority. Yet the most prominent thing about him was his very large nose. The national press had already started to tweak him about it.

  Just wait, Thomas, Dixon thought. Wait until you’re President. The political cartoonists were drawing Clement Dixon as the absent-minded professor, a cross between Mark Twain and Albert Einstein with their shoes untied, and minus the homespun humor or penetrating intelligence.

  Boy, they would sure have fun with that Hayes nose.

  A tall man in a green dress uniform stood at the far head of the table, a four-star general named Richard Stark. He was thin and very fit, like the marathoner he surely was, and his face appeared to be chiseled from stone. He had the eyes of a hunter, like a lion, or a hawk. He spoke with utter confidence—in his impressions, in the information given him by his underlings, in the ability of the United States military to hammer any problem into submission, no matter how thorny or complicated. Stark was practically a caricature of himself. He seemed as if he’d never experienced a moment of uncertainty in his lifetime. What was the old saying?

  Often incorrect, but never in doubt.

  “Explain it again,” President Dixon said.

  He could almost hear the silent groans from around the room. Dixon hated to have to hear it again. He hated the information as he understood it, and he hated that one more try ought to make him understand it completely. He didn’t want to understand it.

  Stark nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He pointed with a long wooden pointer at the map on the large screen. The map showed the North Slope borough of Alaska, a vast territory at the northern edge of the state, inside the Arctic Circle, and bordering on the Arctic Ocean.

  There was a red dot in the ocean just north of land’s end. The land there was marked ANWR, which Dixon well knew stood for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—he was one of the people who had fought for decades to have that sensitive region protected from oil exploration and drilling.

  Stark spoke:

  “The Martin Frobisher drilling platform, owned by Innovate Natural Resources, is located here, in the ocean six miles north of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. We don’t have an exact census at the time of the attack, but an estimated ninety men live and work on that platform, and a small surrounding artificial island, at any given time. The platform operates twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, in all but the most severe weather.”

  Stark paused and stared at Dixon.

  Dixon made a hand motion like a wheel spinning.

  “I got it. Please continue.”

  Stark nodded. “A little over thirty minutes ago, a group of heavily armed, unidentified men attacked the platform and the encampment. They arrived by boat, on a vessel made to appear as a personnel tender bringing workers to the island. An unknown number of workers have been killed or taken hostage. Preliminary reports, gleaned from video and audio feeds, suggest that the invaders are of foreign, but still unknown, origin.”

  “What suggests this?” Dixon said.

  Stark shrugged. “They don’t seem to be speaking English. Although we have no clear audio yet, our language experts believe they are speaking a
n eastern European, likely a Slavic, language.”

  Dixon sighed. “Russian?”

  The day he took over this thankless job, indeed moments after he took the Oath of Office, he had unilaterally stood American forces down from a confrontation with the Russians. The Russians had done him a favor and responded in kind. And Dixon had then been subjected to merciless and scathing criticism from the warmongering quarters of American society. If the Russians turned around and attacked now…

  Stark shook his head the slightest amount. “Not sure yet, but we think not.”

  “That narrows it down,” Thomas Hayes said.

  “Do we have any idea what they want?” Dixon said.

  Now Stark shook his head completely. “They haven’t contacted us, and refuse to answer our attempts at contact. We have flown over the complex with helicopter gunships, but except for a few fires, the place currently seems deserted. The terrorists, and the prisoners, are either inside the rig itself, or inside complex buildings, away from our prying eyes.”

  He paused.

  “I imagine you want to go in with force and take the rig back,” Dixon said.

  Stark shook his head again. “Unfortunately, no. As much as we are one hundred percent certain we can take back the facility through sheer force, doing so will put the lives of any men being held prisoner at risk. Also, the facility is of a sensitive nature, and if we make a large-scale counterattack, we risk calling attention to it.”

  A few people in the room began murmuring together.

  “Order,” Stark said, without raising his voice. “Order, please.”

  “Okay,” Dixon said. “I’ll bite. What’s sensitive about it?”

  Stark looked at a bespectacled man sitting halfway down the table from the President. The man was probably in his late thirties, but he carried some extra weight that made him look almost like an angelic child. The man’s face was serious. Heck, he was in a meeting with the President of the United States.

  “Mr. President, I’m Dr. Fagen of the Department of the Interior.”

  “Okay, Dr. Fagen,” Dixon said. “Just give it to me.”

  “Mr. President, the Frobisher platform, although owned by Innovate Natural Resources, is a joint venture between Innovate, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and the United States Bureau of Land Management. We have extended them a license to do what is known as horizontal drilling.”

  On the screen, the image changed. It showed an animated drawing of an oil platform. As Dixon watched, a drill extended downward from the platform, below the surface of the ocean, and into the sea floor. Once underground, the drill changed direction, making a ninety-degree turn and now moving horizontally beneath the bedrock. After a time, it encountered a black puddle beneath the ground, and oil from the puddle began to flow sideways from the drillhead into the pipe following behind it.

  “Instead of drilling vertically, which is how the vast majority of drilling was done in the twentieth century, we are now mastering the science of horizontal drilling. What this means is that an oil platform can be many miles from an oil deposit, perhaps a deposit in an environmentally sensitive location…”

  Dixon held up a hand. The hand meant STOP.

  Dr. Fagen knew what the hand meant without having to ask. Instantly, he stopped speaking.

  “Dr. Fagen, are you telling me that the Martin Frobisher, out at sea six miles north of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is in fact drilling inside the Wildlife Refuge?”

  Fagen was staring down at the conference table. His body language alone told Clement Dixon all he needed to know.

  “Sir, with the newest technologies, oil platforms can exploit important underground deposits without endangering sensitive flora or fauna, which I know you have previously expressed your concern…”

  Dixon rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in the air.

  “Aw, hell.”

  He looked at the general.

  “Sir,” Stark said. “The decision to grant that license was made two administrations ago. It was just a matter of perfecting the technology. Granted, it’s controversial. Granted, neither you nor I may agree with it. But I believe that’s a fish to fry at another time. At this moment, we have a terrorist operation underway, with an unknown number of American civilians already dead, and even more American lives at risk. Time is of the essence. And as much as is possible, I think we need to keep this incident, and the nature of that facility, out of the public eye. At least for now. Later, after we rescue our people and the smoke clears, there will be plenty of time for debate.”

  Dixon hated that Stark was right. He hated these…

  ...compromises.

  “What do you suggest?” he said.

  Stark nodded. On the screen, the image changed and showed a graphic of what appeared to be a group of cartoon scuba divers swimming toward an island.

  “We strongly suggest a covert group of highly trained special operators, Navy SEALs, infiltrate the facility, discover the nature of the terrorists and their numbers, decapitate their leadership, and, if at all possible, take back the rig with as little loss of civilian life as circumstances will allow.”

  “How many and how soon?” Dixon said.

  Stark nodded again. “Sixteen, perhaps twenty. Tonight, within the next several hours, before first light.”

  “The men are ready?” Dixon said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dixon shook his head. It was a slippery slope when you were President. That’s what he, despite all his years of experience, had never understood. All his fiery stump speeches, his podium thumping, his demands for a fairer, cleaner world… for what? Everything had been sold down the river before you even started.

  The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was off limits to drilling. From the surface. So they parked themselves at sea and drilled from beneath it. Of course they did. They were like termites, always biting, gnawing, and turning the sturdiest construction into a house of cards.

  And then the men doing the drilling were attacked and held hostage. And as President, what were you supposed to say—“Let them eat cake”?

  Not a chance. They were Americans, and on some hard-to-understand level, they were innocents. Just doing my job, ma’am.

  Dixon looked at Thomas Hayes. Of all the men in this room, Hayes would be the closest to his own thoughts on this. Hayes would probably be feeling boxed in, betrayed, frustrated, and flabbergasted, just like Clement Dixon.

  “Thomas?” Dixon said. “Thoughts?”

  Hayes didn’t even hesitate. “I understand it’s a discussion for another time, but I’m shocked to hear that we’re drilling in a natural environment that needs to be cherished and protected. I’m shocked, but not surprised, and that’s the worst part.”

  He paused. “After these men are rescued, and as you say the smoke clears, I think we need to revisit the moratorium on drilling, and make it crystal clear that no drilling means no drilling, whether from the surface or from under the sea.

  “Further, if there is going to be a military action here, I think we need to make sure there’s civilian oversight of the entire operation from beginning to end. No offense, General, but you guys at the Pentagon have a tendency to swing at mosquitoes with sledgehammers. I think we’ve heard about one too many wedding receptions in the Middle East being annihilated by drone strikes.”

  General Stark looked like he was about to say something in reply, then stopped himself.

  “Can you do that, General Stark?” Dixon said. “No matter how many military assets are involved, can you guarantee me civilian oversight and participation during the entire operation?”

  The general nodded. “Yes, sir. I know the exact civilian agency for the job.”

  “Then do it,” Dixon said. “And save those men on the rig if you can.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  10:01 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  Ivy City

  Northeast Washington, DC

  A large man sat on a metal folding chair, in a quiet cor
ner of an empty warehouse. He shook his head and moaned.

  “Don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t do this thing.”

  He was blindfolded, but even with the rag obscuring part of his face, it was easy to see that he was bruised and beaten. His mouth was swollen. His face was covered by sweat and some blood, and the back of his white T-shirt was stained with perspiration. There was a dark stain across the crotch of his blue jeans, where he had wet himself moments ago.

  From the ends of his shirtsleeves to his wrists was a dense tangle of tattoos. The man looked strong, but his wrists were manacled behind his back, and his arms were secured to the chair with heavy chains.

  His feet were bare, and his ankles were also cuffed with steel manacles—they were cuffed so close together that if he managed to stand up and tried to walk, he would have to bounce instead.

  “Do what thing?” Kevin Murphy said.

  Murphy was tall, slim, very fit. His eyes were hard, and there was a small scar across his chin. He wore a blue dress shirt, dark dress pants, and polished black Italian leather shoes. His sleeves were rolled just a couple of turns up his forearms. There was nothing rumpled, sweaty, or bloody about him. He did not appear to have made any sort of strenuous exertion. Indeed, he could be on his way to a late dinner at a nice restaurant. The only things that didn’t quite fit his look were the black leather driving gloves he wore on his hands.

  For a few seconds, Murphy and the man in the chair were like statues, standing stones at some medieval burial site. Their shadows slanted away diagonally in the bleak yellow half-light illuminating this small corner of the vast warehouse.

  Murphy took a few steps away across the stone floor, his footfalls echoing in the cavernous space.

  He was dealing with an odd combination of feelings right now. For one, he felt relaxed and calm. He was just settling in to the interview, and he had the next few hours if he needed them. No one was coming here.