The Threat

by David Poyer

  Which seemed to be Sebold’s cue. “Now, Dan, Brent, let’s calm down. We’re saying things in the heat of the moment. Things we don’t really mean. Okay? Dan’s going to apologize. Then we’re all going back to work.”

  “I’ll apologize to Tony,” Dan told them. “But not to the asshole with the suspenders. He should be in prison. They only let him walk because he was the first to turn state’s evidence.”

  But Sebold’s intercession seemed to have given the assistant national security adviser a chance to regain his composure. “An apology would be a start. What were you doing in with Holt in the first place?”

  Dan explained about the report. Sebold and Gelzinis exchanged glances. “Dan, that should have gone through me,” the general said.

  “The president asked me for it.”

  “Again, you’re not in the loop,” Gelzinis told him. “You think you see what you think you see and that’s all there is. But it’s not.”

  “I saw people being killed.”

  “And you think due to inaction on our part.”

  “Damn right.”

  “While what you’re actually perceiving is the Pentagon fighting us tooth and nail to avoid having to commit troops. And a certain lack of … traction on our part vis-à-vis the Joint Chiefs and others.”

  “De Bari’s the commander in chief. All he has to do is give an order.”

  The two men exchanged the looks of adults dealing with an unreasonable three-year-old. “It’s not just a matter of giving an order. Especially with Stahl as chairman. That’s not how things work at the higher levels. More of a—a collaborative process—”

  “Last time I looked, we still had civilian control.”

  “I’m afraid in practice that control’s situational. A directive they don’t care for can be modified. Circumvented. Even ignored, if the Chiefs and the combatant commanders don’t agree.”

  “Then fire them! Lincoln and Truman did it. You mean he’s afraid to play hardball.”

  “‘Afraid’ is too strong a word. We’ve got our problems with the Pentagon, sure.”

  Dan thought that had to rank as the understatement of the century, given the open ridicule from senior officers, the open disobedience, the way midgrade people were hemorrhaging out of services that couldn’t seem to make up their mind either to move ahead or stand pat, that instead whipsawed back and forth, bewildering the rank and file. But he didn’t interrupt as Gelzinis went on. “But there are other ways to address the issue.… What’s actually happening is, we’re giving certain parties the green light to ship arms into the region. To redress the balance, so to speak. We have to do it quietly because our European allies, that’s contrary to their policy. But it’s the only way we’ll get the combatants to a state of exhaustion, where we can step in and broker a peace.”

  Dan felt as if he’d stepped through the looking glass. Hadn’t De Bari told him in the Oval Office debriefing that he wouldn’t permit arms shipments? “A state of exhaustion … Who is shipping in these arms?”

  “That’s not important,” Gelzinis said, at the same moment Sebold said, “The Iranians.”

  “We’re letting the Iranians ship arms into Bosnia?” Dan clutched his temples, unable to comprehend the piling up of ever more catastrophic idiocies. “And who’s training them? The Iranians, are they training them too?”

  “That’s classified and you won’t discuss it,” Gelzinis said. “You don’t know what you’re doing, and you’d better shut your mouth. Garner, we need to talk about this—”

  “No need,” Sebold said equably. “I’ll tell you exactly what’s happening here, Brent, and don’t get all huffy on me, okay? You’re talking past each other. Because each of you thinks the other guy’s like he is. Okay? But you’re not.

  “Dan, you’re talking to a guy who’s been throwing elbows in politics a lot of years. He knows that most of the time, if you take the high road, you end up going over the cliff. And maybe because of that, he tends to expect the worst out of the people he deals with.

  “Brent, you’re talking to professional military. A guy who still has a functioning sense of honor. He doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Like they say, politics and making sausage, right? He’s telling you that, up front, but that’s as far as it’s going to go with him. Because he does believe in the Constitution, and taking civilian direction. He’s not going to leak a word about arms shipments. Or Tallinger. Or about anything else that takes place inside the fence. This may strike you as quaint, but he’ll keep his word. It’s not going to be like dealing with the rats over at State, or the Hill.”

  A pause. Finally Gelzinis sighed. Turned away.

  “Dismissed,” the general said in Dan’s direction.

  * * *

  He stopped in the corridor. Above his head the nineteenth-century light-globes glowed. Staffers were leaving. Brushing by him, carrying briefcases and rolled-up newspapers. He leaned against antique plaster and rubbed his eyes till stars burst. The enemies were gathering. Like buzzards above some wounded thing trailing its guts on the asphalt. Didn’t anyone care about the country? About anything beyond his own interest?

  He smiled grimly, remembering how Sandy had laughed at him once when he’d asked that. In ten years, it had gotten worse. Much worse.

  But until they did shitcan him, he didn’t plan to stop doing his job. What could they do—send him back to sea?

  He only wished they would.

  14

  The house was quiet when he let himself in. He paused, listening. No Larry King. No Crossfire. Blair snapped on the set as soon as she got in. She was a news junkie. But it wasn’t on now.

  He found the letter on the dining-room table.

  Dan,

  I was very angry after our last talk. I tried to write off your unjust accusations to what you went through in Srebrenica. But I find I can’t let it go. You need to call your doctor. Get some meds or—something. Maybe you can’t see it, but you are getting really unbalanced. I won’t stay in the house with someone who might turn violent. And sleeps with a gun by the bed.

  What is happening? I still care about you. We’re so much alike. But I get the feeling there’s a wall where a door used to be. And I have no idea how to break through it, or if you’re even still there, on the other side.

  Anyway, rather than ask you to move out, I have. If you want to talk, you can reach me on the cell, or at the office, though we have a lot of travel scheduled this month. Or at Fort Myers—I’ll be in a suite there. When I’m in town.

  I’m sorry. I really thought this could work out.

  Blair

  He fingered the note for a few seconds, looking at his reflection in the black windows.

  * * *

  He didn’t feel like staying at home, with beer waiting in the fridge. He hadn’t seen his daughter since school started. So he called and suggested he take her out to dinner. She sounded glad to hear from him. That raised his spirits a little.

  He was on I-66, driving west in a chill drizzle, when his pager vibrated. When he checked the number it wasn’t familiar. Not even a D.C. area code. He debated not answering it. Then pulled off at the next exit and found a pay phone that worked outside a convenience store. It began to rain harder as he listened to the call go through. There wasn’t any overhead shelter. He flipped up the collar of his coat, hoping this didn’t take too long.

  “JIATF West, how may I help you, sir or ma’am?”

  “This is Dan Lenson, NSC counterdrug.”

  “Whom did you wish to talk to, sir?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m returning a call.”

  The duty person asked him to stand by, and a few seconds later Miles Bloom came on. “Dan? That was me paging you. Returning your call.”

  “Huh? I didn’t call you, Miles.”

  “I mean, your message askin’ me to check out what happened at Laguna Verde. Slid in from Ecuador last night. Stopped here, got your e-mail, made a couple calls.”

  A car lurched into the
lot and squealed to a halt, catching him in the headlight glare. He turned his back. Then, feeling vulnerable, faced it again. Several men piled out of a battered Citation and filed into the store. They left the lights on, illuminating him as he stood in the now-freezing rain.

  Bloom said, “Talked to a federale I know in Mexico City. He told me under the counter as it were some things about that raid that didn’t make it into the papers. Where are you, anyway?”

  “At a 7-Eleven in, uh, Falls Church.”

  “Should be secure. The dead guy the attackers left behind. Guess what. He was shot in two places: the gut and the back of the head. What’s that tell you?”

  “Oh. That … they killed him themselves. Rather than taking him along.”

  “Which is the way who operates?”

  “The cartel. Nuñez.” Cold rain ran down his collar. He shivered.

  “Bingo. This is all off the Mexican government record, by the way. No journalists within five miles of the plant. They’re hoping to make this all go away rather than admit how flip-fucked their security was.”

  The men had come out with bottles and cans and were joking and hooting, opening them on the concrete pad in front of the store. Dan said, “Miles, let me ask you something. What they were making. The radiologicals. Why would the cartel want them?”

  “I don’t know. You might want to ask Luis that. He keeps closer tabs on what they’re up to per se than I do.”

  “Okay, but is there any market for that stuff?”

  “You mean, like black market pharmaceuticals? Resell to hospitals? Be a hard way to make a buck. Way I understand it, there’s only a few places use this stuff, cancer treatment centers mainly. It’s way too hot for diagnostic tracing.”

  Dan knew the difference between the low-emission isotopes used for tracing and the high-energy particle emitters used to zap cancers. He’d picked up quite a bit of that information after Horn’s contamination, making sure his crew was being taken care of. Holding the phone, he watched the men from the Citation drinking and shoving each other. One kept glancing his way.

  “What’s all that hollering?”

  “Just some locals blowing their paychecks. Look, I’ve got to get back on the road. When are you getting back?”

  “Gonna take the weekend off and head back Monday. That cool, boss man?”

  “Sure. See you then.”

  The men started Dan’s way. He got into the Escort and pulled out. He watched for the on-ramp. The rain was coming down so hard he had the wipers on as fast as they would go. He merged with inches to spare as a tractor trailer roared and blared behind him. Traffic was insane, seventy-five, eighty, bumper to bumper and no visibility.

  Why would anyone want to steal radioactives? Enough to put together a major, coordinated, obviously rehearsed raid?

  Only the cartel killed their own wounded. But medical isotopes, however valuable in monetary terms, weren’t something they could sell on the street. Why would they want high-energy neutron sources? He was no nuclear engineer, but he was pretty sure you couldn’t use medical isotopes to make a nuclear bomb. The way he understood it, the only metals that would actually chain-react were uranium, plutonium, and thorium.

  He tried putting it together with the idea of shipping containers going across the border to a humanitarian assistance organization. He smiled. It’d make a great premise for a thriller. It even locked in with that remark the Baptist had supposedly made, on the way to Haiti, before the Marines and the DEA had crashed their party.

  Say the cartel had stolen the isotopes. Certainly they had the muscle, the money, the arms. They could get inside any organization they wanted. They send the isotopes, small, high-value packages—just like drugs, so much like drugs—across the U.S.-Mexican border, either in air freight containers, or by “mule,” ignorant peasant smugglers, or in small, low-flying aircraft—the way most coke traveled now.

  Then, when they’re across, pool them at some location federal agents wouldn’t want to go. Like a religious compound. After Waco, nobody wanted to touch a religious compound.

  He liked to drive, even in the dark, in the rain. The enforced idleness, the half attention you had to pay, let the back of your brain play with fantasies, idle reveries. Such as, if somebody wanted to make trouble with what had come out of Laguna Verde, what he’d do.

  The bomb that had shattered Horn hadn’t been intended to wipe out Tel Aviv with blast and fire, but with a deadly cloak of radioactive cobalt. Cobalt wasn’t a common material. One of the techs who’d interviewed him after the blast had suggested sheep feed. It sounded off the wall, but the guy said the stuff was rich in cobalt compounds, and certainly common enough around the Middle East.

  What if you spread some radioactive iodine around? Technium? The other isotopes Roald said Laguna Verde made? It wouldn’t have to be aimed at a specific target. A radioactive plume was the ultimate area weapon. It would sicken and kill thousands. Like Chernobyl.

  There’ll be a hot wind in Washington this spring. What Nuñez had chuckled over in the plane with his financier. Say “Spring Wind” meant an isotope release. Say Washington really was the target. Something like that could make the Mall, the White House, Pentagon, Congress, uninhabitable for years. Maybe generations. Depending on the isotope mix, the laydown density, the half-life.

  He was glad they hadn’t actually gotten their hands on any of the stuff.

  * * *

  He picked Nan up at her residence hall. Despite the weather she was in an off-the-shoulder blouse and a short skirt. He had to remind himself she was eighteen, old enough to choose her own wardrobe.

  “So how’s the White House?” she said, once they were in his car and headed for the restaurant.

  “Keeps me busy.”

  “You look awful tired, Dad. Don’t take this wrong. But you look older than when you started.” She touched his temple. “Like, gray. And your eye’s all bruised.”

  “Guys don’t complain about their hair. They’re just glad to still have it.”

  He looked at her profile, the fall of dark hair, the button nose. A wave of gratitude swelled his heart. No matter what was wrong with the world or his life, she was in it. He surreptitiously touched his eyes, ashamed at getting so emotional. She gave him a conspiratorial smile and patted his hand.

  They were into the second course when his pager hummed. “Damn, not again,” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Got to call the office. Sorry.”

  He found a phone in the front lobby. Had to use his AT&T card. Same area code as the last time, but a different number.

  “New news,” Bloom said. “I made a couple more calls on that last issue we talked about? And guess what? The bad stuff got away.”

  “I’m sorry?” His mind was elsewhere. “Uh—what bad stuff?”

  “You know what bad stuff. The shit they make there.”

  He was back in the picture, despite the agent’s elliptical references. “You said they said they never got to it.”

  “That’s what their honchos put out. Right. But it isn’t what happened.”

  He tensed. Cupped the phone to his ear. “Okay, I know this isn’t a secure line. But can you—”

  “They flew off with the pixie powder,” Bloom said. “Enough to turn a whole bunch of folks into pixies.”

  “Shit!”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In Fairfax.”

  “Pay phone? Picked at random? Okay, what I’m hearing is, they got away with thirteen hundred pounds of encapsulated isotope.”

  “Thirteen hundred pounds?” A woman lighting a cigarette a few steps away looked up, startled, and he lowered his voice. “Is that what you said?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not isotope weight. Far from it—most of that’s going to be the lead shielding. But it’s two months’ output. And hot, hot stuff. Cesium, mostly. Fresh out of the reactor. They hit the plant the day before shipment. Obviously had inside intelligence.”

&n
bsp; His head was going at about sixteen miles a second. So the fanciful scenario he’d developed on the road might be more than that.

  And in that chilling moment he understood that no one else, no other site or agency in the whole edifice of government, military, the intelligence community, had the information to put together that he, Bloom, and Ed Lynch had. Each agency would know a bit. This fragment or that. But nobody else had enough pieces to show a picture that had been jigsawed apart by someone more cunning and patient and inventive than any other adversary he’d ever faced.

  The downside was, he had no proof. Only supposition.

  It was exactly the kind of event he’d thought the Threat Cell might pick up. The trouble was, there was no Threat Cell yet. So there were no procedures to put out an alert, get other agencies involved, the way there were for an imminent military attack or an impending natural disaster. He felt sweat break along his hairline, and dragged his sleeve across it.

  At the same time, he might be wrong. He was already walking a narrow line. If he cried wolf on this one, and no wolf was stalking the flock …

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” he said. “With what Ed dug up about the UPS flights, and what that other guy, the one we caught, said the cartel was planning to do—”

  “Thinking the same thing, boss. So where do we go with it?”

  He looked at his watch, knowing there was no way he could go back in now and eat a quiet dinner with his daughter. “There’s only one place we can do anything from. I’m on my way.”

  “Sit Room?”

  “Call me there in an hour. Get hold of Marty and Ed and tell them to come in. And find out as much more in the meantime as you can.”

  “How about Alvarado?”

  Dan remembered his suspicions about the Coast Guard lieutenant commander, that if anyone inside his own office was the leak to the cartel, it might be Luis. Or was that prejudice, just because the guy was Hispanic? And worked his tail off, and stayed late? He said reluctantly, “Yeah, Luis too—but don’t tell him what it’s about, okay? Just tell him to get his tail in to the Eighteen.”