by Brad Taylor
“Where is this transfer? How was Carlos going to sell it?”
Booth’s eyes grew wet, and his head lolled to the side in defeat. “I don’t know. Please, I don’t know. All I did was bring the protocol. Carlos was supposed to pay me outright, but you killed him. He was going to sell it to someone else, but he knew all that, and he’s dead. Please, please, don’t kill me. I don’t know….”
Waste of time. But the sicario hesitated still. He had hunted men who had taken great care to survive, and he had always proven the precautions they took were worthless. He had been given hard targets with nothing more to go on than a photograph and had brought the head home dripping from the neck. All of those men had been Mexican. People who understood the terrain and how to hide. People who knew they needed to hide. Not like the three foreigners. He had a great deal of information from the meeting with Carlos, and he knew he could find them again.
The sicario put away his razor. “You will show me how to work this protocol. You will give me the keys to unlock it. Understand?”
Booth nodded over and over again. “Yes, of course. It’s all yours. I’ll show you everything about it… then you’ll let me go?”
“Perhaps. But, to maintain our relationship of honesty, I’ll most likely kill you tomorrow.”
47
Kurt said, “We’re going to need the entire council for a decision. I’ve got a thread to work, but it’s unorthodox, to say the least.”
Alexander Palmer said, “Look, give us what you have and I’ll determine if it’s worth bringing the president and everyone else back into a room.”
Kurt had already sent a report on the safe rescue of Jack, along with a preliminary analysis of what he knew. Since then, Pike had done a thorough debrief and the Taskforce had translated what was on the digital recorder that Jack’s kidnapper had taken.
Kurt said, “Here’s what I know right now: Jack went with the kidnapper — we’re calling him Baldy — on two separate occasions to the Mexico City international airport. His purpose was to identify a Caucasian man who was bringing some software package down to Mexico to sell to the Sinaloa cartel. Both times he was unable to complete the identification. On the second visit, Jack’s original kidnapper — a man named Carlos — showed up at the airport and met three men. When the Caucasian smuggler didn’t show for reasons unknown, Baldy decided to follow Carlos and recorded a meeting in a park with the three unknown subjects. They discussed something called the POLARIS protocol, which is apparently an undetermined method to defeat our GPS constellation. Some time later Baldy took Jack back to the airport, where he was able to identify the Caucasian smuggler. Baldy followed him to a meeting with Carlos, where he was apparently going to transfer the protocol. Baldy interrupted the meeting, killed Carlos, and took the Caucasian with the protocol. Pike managed to track their location and rescue Jack, but lost Baldy and the man with the protocol. These are the facts that we know right now.”
The director of the CIA said, “So it’s a real thing? Someone has the ability to interdict our GPS constellation?”
“Yes, apparently. Unfortunately, he’s still loose in Mexico, in the hands of the Zetas drug cartel, either willingly or as a captive.”
“Who were the three men Carlos met in the park? Who’s trying to get it? Another drug cartel?”
Kurt shook his head. “No. It’s much worse than that.”
The secretary of defense leaned back and rubbed his face, saying, “I don’t think I want to hear this.”
Kurt said, “I guarantee you don’t. Baldy took a recording of the meeting with Carlos using a directional microphone, and it came in crystal clear. Most of the conversation is in English, discussing monetary terms for transfer. Some time during the meeting Carlos left, and the three men began discussing the purchase of the protocol. In Arabic.”
The D/CIA said, “Are you telling me it’s the Hezbollah crew? They’re tied into this?”
“I can’t confirm one way or the other, but the Arabic translation indicates that, yes, they’re working for Hezbollah. They discuss bringing another man in. A money guy, and they talk about him as if he’s from a different organization. They say he’s coming from Waziristan, Pakistan, which indicates al-Qaeda. Because they mention the organization being different from theirs, it means they aren’t al-Qaeda. Which, understandably, could mean a hundred other Arabic terrorist organizations, but given the Hezbollah team movement the CIA tracked, I’m betting it’s them.”
The SECDEF exclaimed, “Are you saying we have a Hezbollah crew that’s working with al-Qaeda? And they’re both going to get this protocol?”
“Whoa,” said Palmer, “Hezbollah is Shiite. AQ is Sunni. Why would they cooperate? They’re on the opposite sides of the fight in Syria, so why would they be on the same side here?”
Kurt said, “Well, they have cooperated in the past, but in this case, it looks like the usual animosity is still in play. Apparently, the guy coming is a moneyman for AQ, and he thinks he’s getting the protocol for use against our drones in Pakistan. Hezbollah wants his bankroll, but on the tape they talk about using him to buy the protocol, then killing him because they want to keep the protocol for themselves. They know we’ll figure out how to defeat it given enough time, and they don’t want some backwoods Taliban bullshit triggering it too early. They want it for their Iranian masters in case we strike them. To give them an edge in the fight.”
The principals committee sat in stunned silence for a moment, then began talking among themselves, ignoring Kurt, the chatter rising as the implications settled in. The secretary of defense, arguing with the secretary of state, finally exclaimed, “You don’t get it! It gives them more than an edge. It’ll even up the fight at any time. They don’t have the reliance on GPS that we do. Our systems depend on it, and losing it means much more to us than them. It’ll put our force back to Vietnam. Maybe worse, because we’ve ditched all the Vietnam-era equipment.”
The secretary of state said, “But surely we can find it. Get rid of it like a computer virus at home. Right? I mean, we know it’s there now.”
“I hope we can. But hope is not a method. It’s just that: hope. We don’t know how it works, so we’re having trouble finding it. Boeing and Second SOPS have been going around the clock since this started and found nothing. The software upgrades are all clean. Nothing’s standing out, and we might have to wait until it’s triggered to find out how it works. Because of that, we’ll have to take the damn thing into account for any military operation. Prepare for not being able to access GPS in every OPLAN we have.”
The D/CIA said, “Operation Gimlet. What do we do about that? We only get one shot, and if the GPS is disrupted, it won’t work.”
Kurt said, “What’s Gimlet?”
Palmer held up his hand. “Nothing. Not Taskforce business.”
“Screw it,” said the SECDEF, “read him on. He deserves to know what’s at stake.”
Palmer looked at the D/CIA, who nodded. He said, “We have an asset deep in the Syrian army. He’s tasked with placing a beacon on the chemical-weapons stockpiles hidden around the country. Gimlet is the operation to take them out. We need to have precise locational data because some of the munitions are hidden in urban areas. Others are in hardened underground bunkers, requiring a precision strike with massive ordnance.”
Jesus. So that’s why they were pushing so hard. Why they’re willing to risk the cover. Hezbollah gets POLARIS, and Gimlet ends up in disaster. Kurt said, “What’s the timeline?”
“Most of the beacons are in place. The asset is conducting a tour of the facilities and has two left. The problem is the beacons only have a battery life of five days, and the asset will not get the ability to execute a second time. We don’t even know if the munitions will be in the same place a week from now. We’re set to execute in forty-eight hours, right before the beacons begin shutting down, but without GPS we’re not going to be able to. We can’t afford to end up slaughtering a bunch of civilians, or worse, on
ly incinerating half of a target and releasing the other half of the nerve gas on the population.”
What a mess. But it makes this sell a little easier.
Palmer said, “So, now you know. We’ve got a critical operation in play, and it’s time-sensitive. What’s your next step? Do you have anything on Baldy or the Hezbollah guys?”
Kurt said, “No. Nothing. No phone numbers, locations, or anything else, and Mexico City is one of the biggest cities on earth. We could spend ten years there and get nowhere without a lead.”
“So you’re saying we’re screwed? All this time spent on building the capability, all this effort developing a super-secret surgical strike force, and we’re now helpless?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. Pike has an idea, but it’s pretty extreme. Like I said, we’re going to need the full council for this decision.”
“Well, spit it out. I’ll determine if the president calls a council meeting.”
“Okay,” Kurt said. “The potential killing of the AQ courier is an edge for us. We know the name he’s using from the recording, which means we can locate him when he flies and take him out.”
“What good will that do? He doesn’t have the protocol. The Hezbollah guys will still get it.”
“You remember the Ghost? The terrorist we captured in Dubai?”
“The guy who tried to kill our Middle East envoy?”
“Yeah. Pike thinks we can use him. Get him involved to help us.”
“What? How the hell can he help? Isn’t he in the Cloud?”
“Yeah, he is. Pike wants to take out the AQ courier and inject the Ghost. Have him go to the meeting with Baldy and the Hezbollah guys. They’ve never met, so they won’t know the difference, and the Ghost can talk terrorism like a master. He can lead us to the meeting, then we take them all out.”
Kurt saw nothing but shock at the idea. Palmer said, “Are you saying you want to use a terrorist we captured to penetrate another terrorist cell?”
Kurt smiled. “Does this meet the criteria for a council meeting? Like I said, it’s out of the box, but in my mind, it’s the best chance we have. Unorthodox, I know. But that’s it.”
“How on earth are you going to get him to agree?”
“That’ll be up to Pike.”
48
The town was small, as American towns go. A square patch outlined by parallel streets and no buildings with more than two stories. Main Street was a throwback to quieter times, with bunting in the windows and every store a stand-alone family affair, sporting names like Cowboy Collectibles and the Blue Pine Motel.
Surrounded on all sides by great swaths of national forest, Panguitch, Utah, was like an island of Americana that someone forgot to tell to grow with the times. A town where everyone still waved when they drove by, whether they knew you or not, and the chosen vehicle was a pickup, preferably a four-by-four dually.
My kind of place, although the damn hybrid rental I was driving wasn’t helping my reputation any.
I was a little shocked that the Oversight Council had given me the go-ahead for my plan. Okay, a lot shocked. They were usually a bunch of handwringers, and I would have thought a request to recruit a terrorist I’d previously captured would be dead on arrival, but they’d said yes.
I’d flown into the closest airport, located in Cedar City, and driven about an hour, looping around the national forests on Interstate 15 and other back roads. Pulling into town, I’d checked into a roadside hotel and then set out to meet the county sheriff.
I’d never been to any of our Cloud locations before and was a little interested in how they worked. When we developed the Taskforce, we had one overarching problem: what to do with the guys we captured. Contrary to popular belief or what the news blabs, we don’t set out to kill everyone. Capture is a much, much better option because it allows us to extract more information that leads to further dismantling of the terrorist threat. Allows us to start painting a picture of the network.
Too often, the intelligence community hears a name or a reference to something and doesn’t know why it’s important. But the terrorists do, so if you can get a thorough debriefing, you can start building the connections, then wait for some bit of chatter to spike interest. You hear the name Abu Bagodonuts, and while you’d otherwise have thrown it away or stored it for future reference, now you have the reference, and you know that ol’ Bagodonuts is a passport forger or whatever, and you can start piecing together the puzzle of what they’re trying to do.
The problem was that we operated outside official channels, so we couldn’t very well march into a New York City courthouse and throw the terrorist on the floor, trussed up and whining, then fly out with a big S on our chests. So we’d come up with our own solution: the Cloud.
Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo Bay would seem to have been the logical choice. I mean, according to the world press and jihadist propaganda, we capture and torture the shit out of terrorists there on a daily basis, without any oversight whatsoever, right? In reality, Gitmo is the most overwatched prison on earth, with a permanent international Red Cross office that has instant access to any and all detainees. Once you go there, you’re pretty much treated like a king — at least as far as prisoners go — with soccer fields, prayer rugs, cable TV, and the ability to bitch about the food and get on a worldwide stage. Make no mistake, once someone’s interned at Gitmo, there’s little information coming out. The only talking the terrorists do at the prison is screaming about imaginary abuses to CNN.
In the early days we could have used a CIA black site in a foreign country, but that went by the wayside with press revelations about “secret prisons” and the enormous backlash from the countries who had agreed to work with us because we promised we could keep a secret. Which we couldn’t.
We kicked around starting our own version, black site lite, as it were, but eventually decided that involving foreign governments was probably not the way to go, considering the Taskforce was illegal under our own laws. They’d want to know how we got the bad guys, which could expose the existence of the Taskforce and create a potential leak that we couldn’t control. So, no new black sites.
Someone finally came up with the idea of using the terrorists’ own techniques against them. While they were all separate entities and sometimes fought among themselves, Islamic radical groups were also interconnected and used those connections to further their goals. Know a guy you went to school with who now works in a bank? Get him to transfer some funds off the books. Have a buddy you met at a training camp from a country you want to enter? Get him to coordinate travel. It worked out very well for them, and it turned out we could do the same thing.
There are a plethora of special operations folks who have served and are now in the private sector, working in a host of legitimate roles, from schoolteacher to insurance salesman. Having risen to the cream of the crop, they all still held a deep patriotic bent and would help if asked, and so we did.
We reached out to a very select few who were now working in law enforcement. The idea was to hide the captured terrorists in plain sight, at a jail in the United States that was run by someone who held a security clearance and had worked in special operations. Someone who could stash the guy, allow interrogations, and ensure his health and welfare was taken care of while keeping it all under the good-ol’-boy hat.
And the Cloud was born.
The name was a play on cloud computing, whereby we’d remove the terrorist and his “data” from the real world and “store” them in a special place that nobody on the outside could see or touch, locked away from other prying eyes, accessible only by authorized members of the Taskforce. One of those locations was here.
The Garfield County sheriff’s office was a few miles out of town, on a road that ran along the Panguitch creek. On the same property was the county jail, used pretty much exclusively for household domestic violence calls, drunk drivers, or, more dangerously, marijuana growers, who were staking their claim more and more to the surroun
ding national forest lands, playing cat and mouse with the Forest Service response teams.
The sheriff’s name was Bob Marley, something I’m sure he hated now that the marijuana growers had started to move in. He had some history with special operations and had agreed to use his jail as a Cloud location, one of many sprinkled throughout the small towns of America. He was responsible for the man I wanted to see, but first I had to prove who I was.
I pulled my hamster-powered hybrid in front of a corner coffee shop that looked straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, parking between a Jeep and a Ford F-250 pickup. I shut the door, getting some stares from two old guys sitting on a park bench out front. One said, “How well does that thing work when it snows?”
I passed by them and said, “Not so good, but the hamsters under the hood are trained to dig.”
I entered the café without waiting on a response and glanced around. There was another pair of old guys sitting at the counter drinking coffee, a man and woman in a booth to my right, and in the back, a solo man with a laptop in front of him, facing the door. He was dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans, and a cowboy hat. I was expecting someone in uniform, making identification easy, but there was nobody here like that.
I walked up to the guy in back and he stood. I said, “Sheriff Marley?”
“Yep.” He shook my hand and motioned to the opposite seat in the booth. After the waitress had come and gone, he said, “How can I help you?”
Feeling like I was in a Mission: Impossible movie, I slid across a thumb drive. He plugged it into the laptop, did some fiddling around on the keyboard, and waited, giving me a smile.