by Brad Thor
The look on Tang’s face had them all wondering what the boy had just said. “What the hell did he say?” Fordyce asked.
“He says he knows why we’re here.”
“Bullshit,” Johnson quipped.
Fordyce motioned for him to shut up. Looking at Tang, he said, “How the hell could he possibly know why we’re here?”
“He’s pretty bright,” the CIA operative replied. “He figures we’re here because of the Chinese.”
“So?”
“So, he says that if we help his sister back in the camp, he’ll tell us anything we want to know.”
“Don’t do it, LT,” Johnson said. “We’re just here to take pictures.”
Fordyce looked at Tucker, who replied, “I’m with Les. This kid is going to get us all killed.”
“You ever shot a kid before?”
Tucker shook his head.
Fordyce looked at Johnson. “What about you?”
Johnson looked away.
“I’ll do it,” Tang stated.
All eyes were now on him.
“If he has zero value, I’ll do it,” the CIA man reasserted.
“Billy, we don’t have the time,” Fordyce replied.
“Start scrubbing the trail.”
“And then what?”
“Then,” Tang stated, “I’ll either get you some intel, or I’ll bring you the body of a dead little boy.”
CHAPTER 21
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* * *
WASHINGTON, D.C.
While most government workers were fighting Beltway traffic on their way home or out of town for the weekend, President Porter had reconvened his national security team in the Situation Room.
“Let’s start with the CIA,” he said.
There were certain people in the room who didn’t need to know who Harvath was, so CIA Director Bob McGee referred to him by his call-sign. “As previously discussed, Norseman succeeded in locating Khuram Pervez Hanjour. During the interrogation, Hanjour gave up the names of six engineering students he had recruited on behalf of Ahmad Yaqub.”
“Do we know where these six engineering students are now?”
“The FBI is working on that.”
The President looked at FBI Director Edward Erickson and raised his eyebrows.
“We have confirmation that they did in fact enter the country,” Erickson replied. “They flew from Dubai to Houston via Emirates airlines.”
“What do we know about the NASA internship program they were in?”
The FBI Director knew the President wasn’t going to like the answer, but there was no getting around it. “It was started under the previous administration and it really wasn’t an internship as much as it was a goodwill summit.”
“Meaning?”
“Muslim students would go through a bunch of feel-good exercises and leave with the impression that without Islamic contributions to science, there would be no U.S. space program.”
“In other words,” said President Porter, “it was a boondoggle.”
The FBI Director shrugged. “From what I understand, there are legitimate Islamic contributions to science. Also, these were college and grad students and this was a summer program. It wasn’t supposed to be difficult.”
“Of course not. And in addition, I suppose everyone left with a certificate or a trophy of some sort?”
“Yes, sir.”
Porter shook his head. “Do I even want to know what this cost the American taxpayers?”
“No, sir. You don’t.”
“What about the six students? Are they still at NASA?”
“No, sir,” the FBI Director replied.
“Were they ever at NASA?”
“Yes, sir. After entering the country last May, they stayed for the duration of the internship and then departed.”
“Departed for where?” the President asked.
“No one knows. Our Houston field office already has a team at the Johnson Space Center conducting interviews with anyone and everyone who might have had contact with the Al Ain Six.”
“Al Ain Six?”
“All six of the engineering students came from Emirati universities in the city of Al Ain. It’s just a shorthand we’ve developed.”
“Let’s make sure the press doesn’t get hold of that. It sounds way too catchy.”
“That wasn’t the intent, but I understand, sir,” the FBI Director replied. “I’ll make sure it stops being used.”
The President processed everything he had been told. “So, the program ends and everyone goes home, except for our six students from UAE. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And we have no idea where they are now.”
“Correct.”
“Do we have photographs? That’s part of the visa process, right? We fingerprint and retina-scan them upon entry into the United States, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir, we do,” the FBI Director answered. “And we have all of that.” He nodded to the Situation Room tech, who put the photos up on the monitors. Under each man’s picture was his name.
“Are we putting these pictures out to state and local law enforcement?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?” the President asked.
“Because when those pictures go to the state and local level, we have to assume they’ll get leaked to the press. That could push them to launch the attack.”
“Do we have any other leads?”
“Having their names and faces is a big leap forward from where we were twenty-four hours ago,” said Director Erickson. “In addition to the interviews the Houston field office is conducting, we’re trying to decide what to do about the man who ran the NASA Islamic internship program.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“We haven’t made the determination yet. When NASA recruited him, he was working for an organization that has had a very checkered past. Several of its board of directors have been indicted for terrorism-related funding.”
“Why was NASA even talking to them?”
“They are the best-known Muslim advocacy group in the U.S., but they’re not the cleanest, that’s for sure. NASA’s director told me that the wife of someone in the last White House knew somebody at the organization and it just sort of happened.”
The President shook his head. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Before the FBI Director could continue, the Attorney General spoke up. “My office and the FBI have been discussing whether to interview the internship director or go to the FISA court, get a warrant, and dig around first.”
“Your grounds for a warrant being?” the Secretary of State asked.
“That the internship director had to personally approve the candidates for the internship, that he communicated internationally in the process, and that six of the interns—who have been conditionally identified as being part of a terrorist plot—have overstayed their J-1 visas and cannot be located.”
“Go for both,” the President ordered. “Don’t waste any more time. Get the warrant, gather as much intel as you can, and then bring him in for questioning. If you get any pushback from the FISA court, I want to know immediately. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the Attorney General replied.
When the man remained seated as if he intended to stay for the rest of the meeting, the President pointed toward the door and said, “Go. Now.”
The President had a brusque style when he felt things weren’t moving fast enough. He hated inertia and believed in kicking people’s rear ends often and hard in order to get things moving.
The Attorney General gathered up his documents and exited the Situation Room.
Looking at the remaining faces gathered around the table, the President said, “What else do we have?”
The CIA Director spoke up and all eyes turned back to him. “Before leaving the UAE, each of the engineering students was given a phone, told to keep it charged and to turn them on when they arrived in the U.S.”
/> “Have we been able to track those?”
“We know when the men cleared customs and immigration control, so that gives us an arrival window and narrows the search. The NSA is compiling a list of every phone in and around the airport that was turned on during that time.”
“Good,” replied the President. “What else? Any problem with the Pakistanis?”
The Secretary of State shook his head. “Fortunately, no,” he said. “It’s like a hornet’s nest over there, but nobody is pointing a stinger at us. Yet.”
“Until they do, we’re not going to worry about it. And if they do, I want you to speak to me first before responding. Understood?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“And what’s this issue with our ambassador in Abu Dhabi?”
“He’s upset that he hasn’t been fully read in on what’s going on.”
“He’s upset? What did you tell him?” the President asked.
“I told him he didn’t have a need to know and that you’d be glad to appoint a new ambassador if he didn’t cooperate.”
“Did that work?”
The Secretary of State nodded.
“Good. As long as Norseman makes it out of the UAE with everything, that’s all we care about. When’s he due to arrive?”
“It’s a fourteen-hour flight, so they should arrive here around 0700.”
The President looked at CIA Director McGee. “You’ve got a full crash team meeting the plane?”
“Yes, sir. Crypto, finance people, NSA, the whole nine yards. We’ll dive right into the material as soon as he touches down.”
“Good,” the President repeated. Looking back at the FBI Director, he said, “Before you all hear the bombshell Treasury has uncovered, where’s the Bureau in regard to the Chinese princelings?”
The FBI Director looked at his colleagues. “The Politburo Standing Committee is the most powerful body in China. It is composed of nine members. Of those nine, four have sons attending college or grad school in the United States, and one has a granddaughter.
“Because of who their fathers, and in one case grandfather, are, they have been flagged for special monitoring. Communications, rotating physical surveillance, that sort of thing. In light of the Snow Dragon revelations, the FBI has stepped up its monitoring of the princelings. We now have them under 24/7 surveillance. We’re also monitoring all of their communications in real time.
“If China’s attack is as bad as predicted, we believe the princelings will be moved, or given some sort of head start before it takes place. They could be our only canaries in the coal mine.”
“I wouldn’t put all my resources in just one basket,” the Secretary of State cautioned.
“We’re also watching Chinese embassy personnel and other high-ranking Chinese currently in the country,” the FBI Director replied.
“Anything else?” the President asked, looking around the table. No one spoke. “As we all know, Gold Dust is a zero-communication op. We won’t hear back from the team until they have been exfiltrated from North Korea. In the meantime, we have something else.
“Based upon the intelligence the CIA received, I asked the Secretary of the Treasury to look into another possible motivation for a Chinese attack. The Secretary has come back with some very disturbing information. Mr. Secretary?”
CHAPTER 22
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* * *
Secretary of the Treasury Dennis Fleming looked like an aging bank president. He kept his gray hair short and neatly combed, wore gray suits, wingtip shoes, and muted ties. He took notes in pencil on a large, white legal pad. He was bullish on America and its prospects for economic recovery. The President’s “Wild West, blow the gunk out of the system, trim all the fat to the bone, and let the pieces fall where they may” style was disconcerting to him, to say the least.
Where the President saw the economy as an Abrams tank that needed to be whacked with a gigantic wrench to get it going in the right direction, Fleming saw it as a Swiss watch that needed delicate adjustments. While the President’s cowboy rhetoric and bold approach to problems was popular with a public beset with economic worries and a national identity crisis, every time Porter stepped up to a microphone, Fleming’s heart seized in his chest. He was convinced that one of these times Porter was going to fly wildly off script and send the markets tumbling.
But President Porter had no script. He had a vision for returning America to greatness and either you were on board or you were tossed overboard. He made no secret of the kind of people he wanted around him.
That didn’t mean, though, that the President sought only to surround himself with yes-men. He welcomed healthy debate and differences of opinion. But you had better be prepared to defend your position. And no matter what else, your policy ideas had to be informed by the same sense of America’s continued potential that coursed through Porter’s veins.
In the history of the world, Porter was fond of saying, there had never been a greater force for peace, stability, liberty, and freedom than the United States. Before America, the history of mankind had been one of tyranny, with the masses lorded over and controlled by the few. The United States had been established to protect the rights of the smallest minority that had ever existed—the individual. You could not work for President Paul Porter and not be fully dedicated to these ideals.
It was with those things in mind that Secretary Fleming had accepted the quiet assignment given to him by the President several days ago. In all honesty, he had thought the President was sending him on a wild-goose chase. The suggestion that something like what he had suggested could even exist was unthinkable before the threat by the Chinese. And while Porter might not have possessed a Ph.D. in economics, he did hold an MBA and he was an extremely intelligent man. Still, Fleming couldn’t understand how the President had come to suspect what they now knew to be true.
Fleming had been cautioned to lay things out in a manner as easy to understand as possible. Though Porter encouraged his people to ask questions when they didn’t understand something, he knew that when it came to economics, most people were in the dark and didn’t want to flaunt their ignorance. “Assume they know a lot less than you,” the President had directed him.
Keeping that directive in mind, Fleming accepted the remote from the Situation Room tech, cleared his throat, and began his presentation. “After Snow Dragon came to light, the President asked me to look into something. He was curious about the fact that the Chinese believed they would be able to land and establish permanent forces in the United States after an attack.
“What did this mean? The intelligence suggests that the Chinese are training some sort of specialized force in North Korea, but to what end? And why would they believe they would be able to put troops on American soil without any fear of international reprisal?
“The Chinese do not possess any specialty that would be uniquely needed in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. None. This left us with only two reasonable possibilities. One, that the attack is biological in nature and that they possess some sort of immunity to the causative agent. This type of scenario is obviously outside our area of expertise at Treasury, and is being considered by other, more appropriate national security parties here in this room.
“Which brings us to the second. Is it conceivable that China could make a legitimate, legal claim to the United States after a catastrophic terrorist attack?”
“Of course they can’t,” stated the Secretary of Defense.
Fleming raised his index finger in caution. “Up until this week, I would have agreed with you.” He advanced to his first slide. “The national debt under prior administrations has been mounting at an alarming rate. “Skyrocketing” would actually be a better term. The bigger our government gets, the more money it needs to operate. In order to get that money, it has two choices. It can continue to raise taxes again and again on our citizens and risk a revolution, or it can borrow in relative quiet, out of sight of everyday Americans who don’t
pay attention. The federal government has chosen to do a crippling combination of both.
“While high personal taxes leave Americans with less money to invest and spend in the marketplace, high corporate taxes leave businesses with less money to hire employees and force them to move things like manufacturing and customer service call centers offshore in order for their products to be competitive.
“We saw the last administration increase the top marginal tax rate by 5 percent. The increase pulled billions of dollars out of American households and ended up being only enough to run the federal government for six days.
“We then saw this same administration, desperate to reverse its falling poll numbers, continue to stoke the embers of class warfare. There is no more anti-American, anti-democracy rhetoric than this. To turn neighbor against neighbor because of the size of one’s pocketbook is to plow the ground and sow it with the seeds of socialism. In America, only opportunity is assured, not outcomes. Anyone who promises otherwise is acting contrary to the values upon which our Republic was founded.
“The bottom line is that the federal government was never intended to be the size that it has grown to. The Founders intended for it to remain small and for the majority of issues to be handled at the state level where citizens can be more easily involved and have their voices heard.
“But as the federal government has expanded, it has become its own living, breathing organism. You have all heard the President liken it to Jabba the Hutt from the Star Wars movies, sitting on his throne gorging himself all day and dispatching his henchmen whenever his existence is threatened. This is exactly what the federal government has become. It is like a giant octopus with razor-sharp tentacles, which lashes out whenever it feels threatened. We have seen the IRS, the NSA, the Attorney General’s office, and countless other federal departments and bureaucracies weaponized and turned against the American people.