Threat Zero

by Nicholas Irving

  Stone turned the truck. Rockets whizzed past the rear, this time far more accurate, one cutting through the canvas covering the ribs of the cargo bay.

  “Jump out!” Stone shouted over his shoulder.

  With Harwood in the well, Stone opened his door and leapt. The vehicle was doing no more than thirty miles per hour. Harwood tightened the rope, tied off two half hitches against his round turns, and felt the vehicle speed along the road. Grabbing his rifle and rucksack, he opened the door and jumped into the narrow gorge, slamming into the side of the rocks. His head took a hit he could ill afford, but thankfully he was wearing a helmet.

  Momentarily confused, Harwood remained motionless as the Shahed 285 turned the corner and unloaded a pod of rockets at close range into the truck bouncing along the road. The truck exploded into a fiery ball as the helicopter pulled away and began to circle its kill like a vulture.

  CHAPTER 9

  Former Virginia senator Sloane Brookes looked at her longtime employee, Chip Ravenswood, with a smirk. He was standing on the porch of her riverfront mansion near Reedville, Virginia, wearing a tight-fitting blazer over a sweater that hugged his muscular frame. His blue jeans were cut fashionably above his burgundy chukka boots. The plantation-style home sat astride nearly three hundred feet of Potomac River frontage. Giant oak and maple trees dotted the thirty-acre estate and compound.

  That her ancestry dated back to the original Jamestown settlers had made her as close to royalty in Virginia as anyone could be. Her family property was a chunk of land along the Chesapeake Bay in between the mouths of the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. Hills, rock formations, and floodplains combined to create a beautiful site for a compound worthy of a king. High walls with turrets at the four corners were the distinctive features of the outer perimeter. The home was a classic Virginian mansion with white columns and red bricks. The parlor looked out onto the Bay and on a clear day, Brookes could see Tangier Island.

  Having just flown into her helipad from a meeting at Washington, D.C.’s new trendy Wharf, Brookes looked fetching in a light blue sleeveless dress cut just above the knees, her four-inch Jimmy Choo stilettos that accented her toned calves and six-foot height, and her modest diamond earrings. Her blond hair fell loosely on her shoulders, making her look ten years younger than she was. Her actual age was a matter of great speculation among the Washington, D.C., glitterati.

  “Took you long enough,” she said to Ravenswood.

  “You have a helicopter. I have a motorcycle. You win that race every time,” he replied.

  “I win every race, every time,” she replied.

  The evening air was filled with the thrum of insects with the occasional sound of a large animal growling, most likely a black bear.

  “Well, except the last one,” Ravenswood ventured.

  “Three House terms and one Senate term. I can still be president,” she replied.

  “That’s why I’m still around,” Ravenswood said.

  “Yes, me too. Now tell me what you know,” Brookes said.

  Ravenswood swiveled his head, eyeing the rockers on the full-length covered porch.

  “Here?”

  Ravenswood was a former marine and still shaved his scalp every day. She didn’t know if he did it to hide a balding pattern or to look more badass, but either way, it worked. The hairless scalp, pinched eyebrows, and multiple tattoos on his arms and body—she had slept with him—combined to sinister effect. Rarely had he protested about the crazy hours she imposed upon him, but she didn’t care whether he had grown accustomed to her late evening calls or not. He would come to her when she needed him. That was their arrangement and she paid him a nice, fat six-figure salary to be at her fingertips.

  “The boathouse,” she said. “I’ll see you there in five minutes.”

  She closed the door in his face and walked through the labyrinth of her house to her bedroom, where she changed into boat shoes, blue jeans, a lightweight sweatshirt with the words Dream Team on the front. The term had no meaning to her. She simply liked the sweatshirt. She holstered a Ruger LC9S on her hip, slipped the edge of the sweatshirt over the weapon, and walked through her parlor, dining room, and kitchen, then paused as she considered taking the private tunnel from the basement. Deciding against that route, she opened the back door, walked through a screened porch, and then stepped outside. She followed the flagstone path to the wooden walkway, which led to the pier in the Potomac River. At the end of the pier was a house every bit the size of a small Cape Cod, perhaps two thousand square feet.

  Stand-up paddle boards and kayaks were hung in the rafters. Two large speedboats were tied off on either side with smaller jet skis next to them, looking somewhat like pilot fish.

  She sat on a padded seat in her Riva 63 Virtus powerboat and leaned over to flick on the radio.

  “Have a seat, Chip,” Brookes said. “Now, how about a status update?”

  Ravenswood stepped onto the gunwale, the boat’s sturdy frame shifting only slightly in the water as he lowered into the seat.

  “Raafe Khoury is no more,” Ravenswood said.

  Brookes nodded, relieved. It was turning out to be a good day. Khoury was the information technology manager she had hired to manage her networks, including her campaign servers, Senate emails and communications, and personal networks. He had made some fatal errors that had perhaps even put in motion much of what was happening. But she was dealing with it as she knew how.

  “We don’t talk about him anymore,” she said.

  Ravenswood nodded. “Okay, then what’s the emergency, boss?”

  “What went down at Camp David?”

  Ravenswood shifted uncomfortably.

  “It appears that twenty-two people were killed. Twelve family, ten Secret Service. No survivors. A former Army Ranger named Sammie Samuelson is the prime suspect. He did a Facebook Live event, which authorities are seeing as a partial admission of guilt. His apartment building was destroyed, and I assume along with that, any evidence he might have left behind.”

  Brookes nodded again. Things were looking even better. “I saw the Facebook thing. Who was this Vick guy he mentioned?”

  “Vick Harwood. Also known as The Reaper. Samuelson was his spotter in combat.”

  “The Reaper?”

  “Best special operations sniper in the business.”

  “What’s his status?”

  “He has disappeared,” Ravenswood said.

  “Nobody disappears. I’m hearing the president has a special team hitting the families of the terrorists.”

  Ravenswood arched his eyebrows and leaned forward.

  “Now that would be insider information, Senator.”

  “Only information I work with,” she said. “But if you check Twitter there are the usual conspiracy theorists who are already fantasizing about plots and subplots.”

  Ravenswood smirked. “Sometimes they’re right.”

  “But we usually shut them down, don’t we?”

  “Almost always,” he said.

  “Look at this,” she said, handing him her iPhone. “Maximus Anon needs to be shut down ASAP.” The tweets were consecutive and listed chronologically with numbers the way some of the Twitter researchers and pundits liked to do. Maximus Anon had over one million followers and had all the hashtags associated with the current presidential administration such as #besmartvotesmart. They read the tweet together.

  1. MaximusAnon: I think I’m onto what happened at #CampDavidAmbush. There were 22 ppl killed, one of which was the @SecDef daughter, #CarlyMasters. Masters worked for the intelligence committee & had taken a week of vacation.

  2. MaximusAnon: Hear me out. Masters had indicated through a text to a friend that she had found something significant on a former member (don’t ask me how I know, but this is 100%). The info she had related to previous presidential campaign.

  3. MaximusAnon: Apparently this candidate had significant classified information stolen by, or worse, sold to foreign agencies. Masters alert
ed her friend, Corporal Samuelson, former Army Ranger sniper, who is being touted as assassin.

  4. MaximusAnon: There is NO WAY Samuelson committed the ambush. Forensic evidence points at him, but he was framed. If you watch the FB live video in real time, he bats his eyes in Morse code, like POWs used to do.

  5. MaximusAnon: His message is: I didn’t do this. The government did. We have to now find out the connection between @sloanebrookesusa and the government.

  “This is total bullshit, but can we shut him down before he gets any further?” she asked.

  Ravenswood retrieved his phone and sent a text. He waited a minute, staring at his phone the entire time.

  “Okay, refresh your feed and try to go to Maximus Anon,” he said.

  She swiped down with her thumb, watched the Twitter feed refresh and then typed in the handle.

  “Account no longer available. Tweet no longer available.” She smiled. “Good work.”

  Despite the fair winds and following seas of helpful social media icons that wanted her to win, Brookes had narrowly lost her presidential bid by less than one percent of the popular vote to the iconic businessman Bob Smart, who ran on the slogan, Be Smart, Vote Smart. Brookes, though, was young, beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious. She wasn’t concerned. The country considered her a lock for president either six or two years from now, depending on whether the economy tanked and whether any international crises billowed out of control. One could hope. Something had to give, she believed. And she was a given for the party nomination this next cycle, despite some nascent challengers. Her support of abortion, increased gun control, free college tuition for all students, tax increases on the wealthiest two percent, and single payer universal health care anchored her hard-core leftist base. She even gained some Bernie Sanders supporters who saw her as a more viable candidate. As a former prosecutor and commonwealth’s attorney, she was viewed as tough on crime. Her father had served in the Marines during Vietnam and had earned the Purple Heart, which gave the illusion that she had a soft spot for the military. She frankly saw that seven-hundred-billion-dollar budget as a target that could be shredded by a third, but knew she would have to keep up at least semi-hawkish appearances. She could say whatever she wanted on the campaign trail. Once she was in office was a different matter.

  Now, she just needed an edge beyond the help of the tech giants with their favorable algorithms and offensive/defensive cyber capabilities to shadow ban social media pundits whose findings and research might take root. Yes, she needed all that and something more.

  The president seeking a personal vendetta against the family members—noncombatants—of terrorists? Now that was something more.

  She could have a field day with that, if done properly. She would have to walk that fine line, which she was capable of doing, between showing empathy for the families of those slaughtered at Camp David and disgust for the president’s tactics. Though, she had to admit, it was a Machiavellian move he was doing by attacking the families of terrorists. She was disappointed she wasn’t in office so that she could have thought of it first. Or had she? Confident that the majority of people would find the president’s actions appalling, she would nudge the right people to pursue the legal angle. Congressional demands. The FBI could kick in a few doors and seize computers. Leaks to CNN and MSNBC to get Fox News spun up defending the president. Get a full-on media war going.

  “You want me to take your information to the press,” Ravenswood said. Not a question. He knew his boss. She was not going to leave a fingerprint, human or digital.

  “Yes. Our guy at CNN. Rocky Campagne will eat this up. The public has a right to know that noncombatants are being targeted,” she said. “I’m concerned that we’re losing the moral high ground. We are a nation that welcomes the oppressed and stands up for the little guy. Not one that slaughters women and children.”

  “Save it for the stump, boss. I’m not wired. Loyalty is my middle name,” Ravenswood said. “Who in Congress should we touch?”

  “Well, in addition to Rocky, I want the appropriate lawmakers to know what is happening. They deserve to know. The intel committees. Armed soldiers. There are already reports that the Sultan family has been murdered,” she said.

  Ravenswood let out a slow whistle. “In less than twenty-four hours we capture Sultan at Dulles and now have killed his family? Sends a strong message.”

  That was her concern. People’s immediate reaction would be that this was some kind of display of strength. But over time, she could obscure the issue. Find ways to muddy the waters by highlighting the women and children, who were either killed or left as orphans.

  “How is it strong to kill innocent families?” she snapped. “And do we know Sultan was involved?”

  Ravenswood held up his hands. “Easy, boss. That was my gut reaction. As a Joe Six-Pack out there, you need to know that there will be a lot of people on board with this eye for an eye.”

  “It’s not legal. Even the team conducting the raids is called Team Valid. They’ve got three men and one woman. They’re in Iran right now attacking the Perza compound.”

  “You’re scaring me, boss. This is intel about a deep black operation against terrorists we haven’t even found yet. How do you know who the Perza family is and that they were involved?”

  “I’ve still got my sources, Chip. In fact, you should be telling me this, not the other way around.”

  Ravenswood looked away.

  “That’s right. You’re slacking off. You’re still on my payroll. You’ve got your fancy Wharf condo and slaying all the women you want. Well, earn it,” she said.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  Exactly where she wanted him.

  “Expose this thing. Campagne and Congress. Tonight.”

  Ravenswood nodded, but faltered. “If we expose this now, it could get field operatives killed.”

  Brookes shrugged, careful about her response.

  “They’re killing innocent people, Chip. Are you okay with that? This Team Valid is in violation of every principle we have in this nation. There’s a greater duty here.” After a pause she added, “I can always get someone else to do this … and everything else.”

  With that threat, Ravenswood stood, brushed off his pants as if to sweep away his conscience, and said, “I’ve got it.”

  Brookes nodded and stood, keeping her hand near her hip and the pistol.

  “I’ll let myself out,” Ravenswood said.

  “If they never make it back, that would be just fine,” she whispered. Some Kenny Chesney lyrics enveloped her words, but she saw him nod. “I’ll expect to wake up to the morning news of major scandal breaking.”

  Ravenswood nodded, stepped onto the dock, and walked into the darkness. She watched him disappear into the night, heard his car start, the gravel crunch, and the tires squeal. Headlights cut through the night like beacons until he was out of sight.

  Brookes pulled out a burner phone she carried and dialed a number.

  “Are we in business?” the voice answered.

  “Yes. It’s your turn,” she said.

  “Roger,” the person replied.

  Brookes hung up the phone and stuffed it back into the pocket of her blue jeans. She breathed in the musty smell of spawning fish and muddy water. Insects buzzed around her. Fish smacked at the surface of the river. Something swam in serpentine fashion in the water next to the boat, perhaps a moccasin. There were certainly plenty of those here. And to think, she’d moved to her ancestral land to get away from all of the snakes in Washington, D.C.

  The presidential loss still stung, she had to admit. She had believed there was a chance. The résumé was perfect. To bolster her pro-veteran image, she had founded a development company that also did community charity work for veterans. Brookes, Inc. had rebuilt and gentrified much of downtown Richmond, Virginia, which she oversaw in her two terms as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Then she had handily won the First Congressional District of Virginia, a
conservative bastion; she had won as a Democrat on a centrist, pro-business platform. The “October Surprise” scandal her candidate had endured certainly put some wind behind her sails, flipping her in the polls from down three percent to up four percent. From there it was smooth sailing into her senatorial bid and wins. Twenty-two years of elected public service and she was still a young woman. She ran, swam, and did yoga every day.

  Now two-plus years into a new administration, she was in full prep mode to take on the incumbent. Better with Brookes was her new campaign slogan. Her advisors had said the alliteration of the B would subliminally work on voters. It was all bullshit, of course. Most voters did so along party lines and the real fight was for the independents. Could she reach them in greater numbers than before? She thought so. She needed an edge to draw in more of the base that was toying with socialism, while also digging into that independent core enough to get across the finish line. The truth was that any national race today was a fifty-fifty toss-up. It was all about promoting your positives, suppressing your negatives, and doing just the opposite to your opponent. True, she was focusing on her speaking engagements, board of directors work, and nonprofit leadership, which in the end meant nothing. It was all about finding that insider edge, which she might have just discovered.

  She had never married, speculating rumors about her sexuality. She knew it would enhance her chances if she married, but she hadn’t found that man yet. While a politician, she did have some personal principles to which she adhered. Technically not too old to have children, she had resigned herself to the strong possibility that it might never happen. She did want them, desperately, but again, she wasn’t going to sacrifice her personal happiness and marry the wrong man.

  Brookes was desperately searching for a solid male running mate, preferably one from Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, or Ohio. She needed a defense hawk and possibly a governor who had executive experience, as opposed to simply legislative chops. Brookes was a bona fide liberal and wanted someone the conservatives could look at and say, “I could support him.” She could give it time, though. She knew she would have challengers from those states and she wanted to see who performed best in the debates. Among party elite, there was little doubt that she would win the nomination again. There was grumbling, though, that if she couldn’t beat him the first time, why would people believe she could win a second time?