“Another thing to consider,” said Barbara, “is that 60 Minutes is planning an entire program about the illness and the cure. They’ll send sound crews to interview people all across the country, not assembled in one place as a tempting target, as Buster pointed out.”
“I don’t think Ellen would do it,” I said. “Like you, Sarah, she’s living her life again. I doubt she’d want to risk it, no matter how well-intentioned the PR event would be. Besides, I’ll tie her to a chair and bolt the door.”
“Well,” said Watson, “you folks pretty much sum up my thoughts on the subject. The 60 Minutes people will do their usual excellent work, and a lot of women won’t be put at risk. The producer has already been in touch with me. How about Ellen, Rick?”
“Yes, they’ve been in contact with us. They want me and a bunch of other husbands to be on the segment as well. I don’t think that part is a good idea. As head of counterterrorism, I don’t want my puss plastered all over TV.”
“I’ll make all of your thoughts clear to the White House. I get the impression that the First Lady isn’t crazy about the idea either.
“Now, can anybody enlighten me about this imam’s idea that something big is on the way?”
“We’ve told you all about Imam Mike, our friend from Brooklyn,” said Buster. “He’s the best inside mole we’ve ever had. Director Carlini insisted that we put him on our payroll with a secret bank account, but Mike flatly refused. The guy isn’t looking for money, he’s looking to right some wrongs. If it wasn’t for Mike, we wouldn’t have known about either the spray bottles or the Baltimore factory. He also gave us inside information about people involved in Ellen Bellamy’s kidnapping last year. So when Imam Mike says the shit is about to hit the fan, I duck. Problem is, we have no idea what they’re up to. Mike will feed us information as soon as he gets it.”
“So right now we have no idea when the event or events will happen, only that it will be a big one,” said Watson.
“Let me put the word ‘big’ in perspective,” I said. “We’ve seen the attacks of 10/15, the sinking of two cruise ships, two college football stadiums destroyed, and the Super Bowl disaster. Then there was the loss of the nuclear submarine, which we believe was terror related, and the bombing of that elementary school in New York, not to mention the attacks with The Scent of Revenge. If Imam Mike thinks something big is coming, I guarantee it won’t be small.”
“Well, guys, always a pleasure chatting with you folks about the mayhem in the world. I have to get back to Washington. It was great seeing all of you.”
“Sarah,” said Barbara Auletta, “I usually let my people talk for themselves, but I know I speak for everyone in this room when I say it’s great to have you back.” We stood and applauded.
Watson brushed away a tear as she opened the door.
Chapter 58
I walked into our apartment at 6:30. Ellen was on the phone having an animated conversation with somebody.
“It’s for you, honey,” said Ellen.
“Who is it?”
“Some guy from Washington named Reynolds.”
She handed me the phone, laughing.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” I said, as I pinched Ellen on the ass.
“Rick, I have an important matter to discuss with you. Please be in my office tomorrow at noon. A car will pick you up at 9:30 tomorrow morning. By the way, I just had a great conversation with your charming wife. The Bellamy Foundation will be an inspiration to the country. See you tomorrow, Rick.”
I hung up the phone and turned back to Ellen.
“So what did the president want? I can’t believe I picked up the phone and he was on the other end. He didn’t even have a secretary place his call.”
“That’s signature Reynolds, hon. He loves the direct touch. He wants to see me at the White House tomorrow at noon. He says it’s important.”
***
Ever since Ellen and the First Lady were stricken with The Syndrome within days of each other, President Reynolds seems to have taken a liking to me. I can’t say that I’m not flattered, but he seems to have a trust in me that makes me feel honored. I’m a big fan of his. He’s smart and he’s tough, two important characteristics the country needs right now. I would have actively worked on his campaign, but that’s strictly forbidden for FBI agents.
An aide met me at the entrance to the White House and escorted me to the Oval Office. I keep reminding myself that I’m an FBI agent, not a prima donna. But it’s not easy to be cool and calm when entering such a historic building. Okay, I had to admit it to myself. I felt important.
“Great to see you again, Rick. Please have a seat. Coffee?”
“No thank you, Mr. President.”
“I’ll come right to the point, Rick. I want you to become a member of my cabinet, specifically as Secretary of Homeland Security. Our current secretary is stepping down. It can be a shit job, Rick, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in the years since the post was created in 2003. Whatever goes wrong, and things go wrong every day, some people will blame it on you. Sunday morning talking heads will rip your ass apart just for sport. But I’m not worried about it because you’re one tough guy. I’ve been following your career for a while, and I need a brass pair of balls like yours on my cabinet. You’re the best FBI agent we have on counterterrorism, Rick, and Homeland Security and counterterrorism are becoming almost synonymous.”
Holy shit, he’s asking me to be a cabinet secretary. Rick Bellamy, grunt FBI agent, is about to become Washington brass.
“Do you accept, Rick?”
“Yes, sir! I don’t see how I could not. I think my skin is thick enough to put up with the critics,” I said, hoping that I really believed what I was saying.
“A big part of the job, Rick, is to be square with the American people, and to calm things down when the shit hits the fan.”
I was blown away. Me, Secretary of Homeland Security.
“You won’t regret your decision, Mr. President.” Kind of a lame comment, but I thought it seemed like an appropriate thing to say.
“Jack Conklin, my Chief of Staff, will fill you in on the details that you need to know. Welcome to the Reynolds Administration, Rick. I’m glad to have you on my team.”
***
It was June 24. What an amazing few weeks it had been. In early April, almost three months before, I lost my Ellen to a bizarre mental disease. Then she came back, smarter than ever. Now I’m Secretary of Homeland Security.
I called Ellen to tell her what time my flight would arrive in New York. She asked me to tell her what the meeting was all about, but I said that I wanted to tell her in person.
I arrived at our apartment at 6:15. Ellen greeted me at the door with a hug and a kiss.
“I’m bursting. What was the White House visit all about?”
“You’re looking at the new Secretary of Homeland Security, hon. Your old man is now a cabinet officer.”
“Holy shit, that is so outrageously wonderful. I’m so proud of you! You’ll be on TV all the time. Tell me all about it.”
“Well, a cabinet post doesn’t pay quite as much as a partnership at Whitney, Cox, and Bellamy, but yes, my puss will be on TV a lot. I take my oath next Friday at the Oval Office.”
“The Oval friggin Office? Pardon me while I faint.”
“You’ll be with me of course.”
“Oh my God! I’ll be with my Rick in the Oval Office. I hope Amanda Reynolds will be there. We’ve become close email buddies.”
“The only problem is that my office will be in Washington, but I’ll be spending a lot of time in New York, because that’s where the FBI counterterrorism happens.”
“And I’ll come visit you in Washington. Our firm gets a lot of assignments in D.C. I’ll talk to Phil Whitney about assigning some to me. I’m so friggin proud of you, Rick. Do Buster and Bennie know?”
“No, and please don’t tell them. The White House likes to make dramatic announcements. Barbara Auletta has been
briefed already.”
Chapter 59
On Friday, July 1, I was sworn in as Secretary of Homeland Security. My parents and Ellen’s parents were there. Also on hand were Bennie and Buster, and all the big TV networks and major newspapers. I had to admit, it felt cool.
After we all had lunch in the White House dining room, I met with Bennie and Buster in my new office nearby.
“We’re going to miss having you around, Mr. Secretary,” said Buster.
“The name’s Rick, and you two are going to see more of me than you ever did. The most important part of my new job is counterterrorism, and that’s where you two come in. Bennie, welcome to the bullshit capital of the world. I’m going to need your advice more than ever. And, Buster, I know you love to take action and see results. That’s exactly what I’m planning. President Reynolds wants Homeland Security to work more closely with the FBI and CIA, so you’ll be seeing a lot of me.”
“Rick,” said Buster, “are you thinking of doing things beyond what we’re doing already?”
“Yes, we’re going on offense. I don’t like the plan that I’m about to describe to you guys,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I hate it. But we’re at war, and I’ve decided to play rough. Simply put, we have to get inside. Imam Mike is our best source for now, but we’re going to need hundreds of Imam Mikes. Buster, I want to hear your thoughts.”
“Imam Mikes are in short supply. We do have a few insiders, who I really can’t discuss, but—”
“Can’t discuss?” I said.
“Oh shit, sorry, Rick. I forgot that you’re now a cabinet secretary. You have a need to know—everything.”
“Maybe I should get out of here, guys,” said Bennie.
“No,” I said. “Bennie, psychological profiles will be a major part of our offensive. I need you, and I need you to know what’s going on. So getting back to Buster, tell us about our inside efforts.”
“The news isn’t good. We have exactly 77 people who I count on as good moles, only 77 people, including Imam Mike, who’s the best. Remember that guy Smitty who helped us raid the al-Qaeda safe house where Ellen was a hostage? We need more people like him, great people, but in short supply.”
“Talk to me about recruiting. What more can we do?”
“I think I’ll to defer to our psychiatrist friend here on that one, Rick. Remember, we’re talking about a strong pull of a religion and ideology, and that’s not easy to crack. Imam Mike had his own epiphany. He saw the light all by himself. He got fed up with senseless killing and came over to the side of enlightenment. We didn’t recruit him. He recruited himself. What do you think, Bennie?”
“Well, The New York Times carried an article recently about a group of eight young men from a small town in Norway called Fredrikstad. Out of a population of around 75,000 people, eight kids went to Syria to fight alongside ISIS. Eight kids from one small fucking town. Let’s take a look at ground zero of the jihadist mind, the place where twisted radical ideas take root. There was a time when we could spy on radical websites and track suspects with the CIA’s brilliant algorithm. But, as we all know, the jihadis are on to us, and they’ve gone underground. We’ve been calling their new procedures The Shadows of Terror. They avoid radical websites. Shit, as we’ve learned from Mike, they even avoid going to mosques. They’ve learned to hide in the shadows.”
“So what do you think is the new ground zero of radicalism?” I said.
“It isn’t new,” said Bennie, “but it’s the one place where they don’t lurk in shadows, and that’s prisons. We’ve all heard countless times about a jihadi who became radicalized in prison. Bill O’Reilly recently talked on his show about a man named Faud al-Bayly who called for the death of that Islam reformer woman Ayaan Hirsi Ali. That son of a bitch was actually hired by the State Department to preach Islam in prisons. And you’ve heard me say this before: a mind can become radicalized over the craziest of reasons. As we saw with the 10/15 bombers, it could be a slight, an insult, or something in a person’s life that creates a mind that’s ripe for revenge. A lot of killers went to prison without any religious belief at all, and then came out the other end totally swayed by a religious ideology from the dark ages. It’s a simple way for a criminal to give meaning to a wasted, disaffected life. Does that mean they’re psychopaths? Yeah, frankly, a lot of them are.”
“So give me a concrete suggestion, Ben.”
“We need to put our people in prisons. We need eyes and ears. All they have to do is look, listen, and report. Once they tell us about a newborn radical about to get out, we put the guy into Buster’s database and watch him—or her. There are 1,800 state and federal prisons in the country and 3,200 local and county jails. If we just concentrate on the state and federal prisons, where people serve longer sentences, we’ll need 1,800 inside spies. Buster says we only have 77 moles that we can count on. We have a lot of recruiting to do.”
“But how the hell do we convince people to go to a prison voluntarily as a spy?” I said.
“We need to pay them well and make their assignments of a short duration,” Bennie said. “To count on a regular turnover, we need a lot more than 1,800 people. I hope you’ve got friends on the Ways and Means Committee, Rick. We’re gonna need one hell of a budget.”
“This can work,” said Buster. “The people we’ve been recruiting up till now all speak Arabic, a primary qualification. Since Bennie is talking about putting the eye on home-grown jihadis, we don’t need Arabic speakers. And we don’t need combat-tested recruits. Their only job is to watch, listen, and report. We can do this.”
“I have one final question for this meeting,” I said. “So we follow Bennie’s plan and identify radicalized prisoners who are about to get out. Then what do we do, put surveillance on each one of them? If we want to use tracking devices, we’ll need a FISA court order.”
“Well, Mr. Secretary,” said Buster, “we now have a powerful and persuasive man in charge. That would be you.”
“Okay, guys, time to lock and load.”
Chapter 60
“Peace be with you, Brother Pashez. Welcome to The Committee,” said Ali Muqtada, who was sitting at the head of a table of 12 other men.
“And peace be with you, Brother Ali. But should I not be called by my infidel name, Howard Orlando?”
“Here in Yemen, we do not worry about such things, but when you are in America, you’re right to be cautious.
“So please bring The Committee up to date on our plans for next year,” said Muqtada.
“Our research shows that our plan will be the most ambitious we have ever undertaken,” said Pashez. “It will make all of the events since October 15 seem like minor incidents. Even the Super Bowl or our attacks with The Scent of Revenge will pale in comparison.”
“Please be specific, Brother.”
“I shall be quite specific. We have studied the American electric grid, and it is surprisingly vulnerable, but that does not give us confidence. Yes, it is vulnerable, and the list of targets can be quite small. Taking them out will do an enormous amount of damage. The country has three large regional power grids, but they have limited connectivity between them. This means that if one goes down, it cannot easily take power from one of the other grids. Of the 55,000 electric-transmission substations, only nine are critical. Attacking these nine substations and taking them off the grid can plunge America into darkness that will last for months, as long as 18 months, according to our calculations. Also, there are only a handful of companies in America that manufacture the huge transformers that are necessary. If we attack the substations and also attack the transformer manufacturers, the result could be chaos. Unless they can replace the transformers, we may be thinking in terms of years of darkness.”
“But, Brother Pashez,” said Muqtada, “I am getting the impression that you are not enthusiastic about attacking the American electric grid. Am I wrong, or do you doubt the plan?”
“No, Ali, you are not wrong. I have serious doubts. All o
f the planning we’ve done to date assumes that the infidels are stupid. They are not. The ill-conceived attack on the electric substation in California in 2013 resulted in more newspaper and magazine articles than we could have imagined. The attack was daring. The brothers who took part in the raid opened fire on 17 electric transformers, taking them out. The shooting went on for almost 20 minutes. It took almost a month for the Americans to get the station back on line. Before the police arrived, the brothers escaped. The articles discussed the problem with the grid and its vulnerabilities. To put it simply, the Americans are aware that they have a problem; and when they are aware of a problem, they are vigilant. The California incident put them on notice, and we have to assume that they have come up with secret plans to avoid such a disaster in the future.”
“So, if I’m hearing you correctly, you have concluded that the electric grid attack has a high risk of failure,” said Muqtada.
“Yes, that is exactly what I am saying,” said Pashez. “So much time, money, and people would be involved that the risk of failure has convinced me that we should abandon the plan. If the plan were intercepted somehow, all of our other plans would be put off far into the future.”
“And what have you come up with to replace this glorious plan, Brother Pashez? Do you expect us to remain quiet for a while?”
“No, Brother Muqtada. Our new plan will be the most ambitious one we’ve ever launched, more ambitious than 9/11 and even 10/15. Our new plan will be unlike anything else we’ve ever discussed. It will be relentless, non-stop, and designed to bring the infidels to their knees, begging for mercy, which, of course, we will not give them.”
“Please be specific, Brother Pashez.”
“It has already begun, my brother. Two years ago, we began a quiet recruiting campaign, assisted by our new policy of waging jihad in the shadows. Some of the heathen FBI and CIA people have called it The Shadows of Terror. It’s nothing new that we have recruited martyrs from prisons, but the difference is the scale. In the past year alone, we have brought 3,000 young men, and a few women, into the embrace of Allah. Our plan is huge, vast, but it is also quite simple. Call it a death by a thousand cuts. Every day in America, there will be at least five, and sometimes as many as 20 or more, incidents of jihad, carried out by our new and growing army of recruits.”
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