The Threat

by David Poyer

  For the first time, he really felt afraid.

  Roald was saying, “The bottom line is there’s no confirmation from the Mexican authorities. And we’re not the initiating authority for alerts for most of these agencies. Not for FEMA. Not for NORAD. I can’t even get anybody at Transportation. They’re supposed to have a duty officer but there’s no answer.”

  “Well, who’s the initiating authority for an alert if not the White House? Presidential emergency authority—”

  “Whoa, there. Don’t get the Sit Room confused with the national command authority, Dan. Remember, we just answer the phones here,” Roald said mildly.

  “Okay, okay, I know.… But how about NMCC? The Pentagon’s got to have the authority to get the Air Force moving, and maybe the FBI.”

  “The National Military Command Center has no link with the FBI. But they could get interceptors up, yes. If they believed there was an imminent threat.”

  “How about calling the FBI direct then?”

  “They’re in the crime-fighting business, not round-the-clock command stuff. They don’t have a 24/7 operations center.” Roald considered it. “I could probably punch the book and get somebody’s pager, or contact a phone watch. Ask for a callback. But I doubt we’re going to get any live people to talk to this late on a Friday. Let alone somebody who can order a raid in California. We’d do better to wait till eight or eight thirty in the morning, catch people as they open for business—no, then it’ll be Saturday.”

  “How about the CIA?”

  Roald bared her teeth. “Believe me, you want somebody to actually do something, Dan, you do not go to Langley. Just trust me on that one.”

  Dan stared at her, then reached for her phone. Her hand closed over his. “Hold on, Commander. I’ve presented the issue where it needs to be presented. They’re doing the notifications according to their lists. If they think it’s worth going to general quarters for, they’ll go.”

  “But how long will that take?”

  For answer he got his hand back. “I don’t know. But I’ll keep pushing the other buttons. Maybe try the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  “Call the Pentagon again. Damn it, let me talk to them.”

  “No. I have a call in to the deputy assistant. If she thinks we have something worth pursuing, she’ll call Mrs. Clayton. Who will then, if she agrees, be the one to really light things off. That’s how we’re going to do it. By the book.”

  He was about to burst out that while they were playing Mother May I and making sure no one got offended, terrorists might be loading an aircraft with the most dangerous payload since Nagasaki. But then he remembered how deftly Jennifer Roald had handled a call from Eritrea. How she’d defused that situation, and probably saved a general officer’s career. If she thought he was getting tunnel vision, maybe he was. He took a deep breath. “All right. We’ll do it your way. Until I see that’s not working.”

  He felt her cool gaze brush him. As if about to ask: And then what? But she didn’t, just picked up the phone and tapped a single button.

  “This is the White House Situation Room,” she said. “I need you to call me back just as soon as you hear this message.”

  * * *

  But no one did. Roald left other messages, left her number on pagers. Still no response. By 4 A.M. Dan was getting nervous. Where was the CIA? The FBI? He couldn’t believe no one else had picked up these clues. Or maybe they weren’t clues, and he was seeing mirages.

  He was sitting with eyes closed, worrying, when Ed Lynch shook his shoulder. “I’m awake,” he snapped.

  “I called the UPS hub office in Los Angeles. Told them I was the warehouse manager at International Blessings, and wanted to check on our shipment.”

  “That’s underhanded and brilliant, Major. What did they say?”

  “Three containers. That’s a big shipment, apparently.” He read off the back of a phone message form. “They’re marked for Sudan. Flight 3913. I got the shipment number.”

  Once more Dan thought of the empty containers air transportation security had noticed being shuttled around. He was starting to see what that must have been about. Getting familiar with the air carrier’s procedures, schedules, maybe even doing a dry run. Smoothing out any snags, so the final operation would go smooth as silk.

  “Routing?”

  “Ontario, California—that’s near L.A.—to Washington, D.C., via the UPS national hub in Louisville, Kentucky. Container transfer at Washington International for the overseas flight to Sudan.”

  “Great work, Ed.” He slapped the major’s shoulder and walked the info back to Roald, realizing on the way that Washington International Airport, more commonly known as Dulles, was only about thirty miles from the White House.

  A man with slicked-black hair had his head bent together with the captain’s. When Dan tapped a knuckle on glass Brent Gelzinis looked up, annoyed even before he saw who it was knocking. Uh-oh, Dan thought. Roald beckoned him in.

  “What are you trying to do now, Lenson?” the assistant national security adviser snapped.

  This wasn’t going to be easy, trying to deal with the man he’d called a weasel only yesterday. He laid the printout in front of him, trying for professionalism. “Trying to abort a terrorist strike, sir. Flight 3913 from Los Angeles to the Sudan, via Washington International. Taking off at 0130 local time, that’s 0430 Washington time. This morning. Carrying three containers from International Blessings, an Islamic charity based in Pomona, California. That’s a suburb of Los Angeles. The containers will transfer at Dulles. If we’re right, you’ll find enough radiocesium in them to contaminate most of the District of Colombia.”

  Gelzinis didn’t look impressed. “‘If we’re right’—what does that mean? Who reported this? CIA? FBI?”

  Dan didn’t answer. Neither did Marty Harlowe, whose presence Dan sensed behind him by her scent. Roald cleared her throat. “Commander Lenson’s people have put together some indicators. Pretty strong ones, I think.”

  “Confirmed?”

  “We’re checking them out. But we don’t have confirmation yet.”

  “What about the intelligence agencies? Did you bother asking them?”

  Roald said quietly that she’d tried, but couldn’t reach anyone. Gelzinis snorted, made a pushing-away motion. “Which means they have no indicators. Or they’d have someone at the airport.”

  “Not necessarily. They may have no idea—”

  “I’m surprised you called me, Jennifer. Not that I mind coming in, but … obviously our counterdrug people, Lenson here, they’ve picked up some rumor. He’s to be … complimented for bringing it to your attention. But if you’ve done your best to check it out with the proper agencies, left messages for action in the morning, as far as I can see, our responsibility ends there. And you have the morning summary to prepare.”

  Dan saw Roald stiffen. Gelzinis waited. Then added, when neither responded, “Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roald said.

  * * *

  But Dan didn’t leave when the assistant did. He couldn’t. The others stayed too. They didn’t say much. Just watched him until he went back to Roald and asked if there was any other way they could get that aircraft looked at before it took off. Get someone to check it out. Confirm what he suspected, or prove him wrong.

  “Brent made it clear he’s not going to wake Mrs. C.”

  “Right. But damn it, he’s assuming the CIA knows everything. You and I both know, Jennifer, there have been times that wasn’t true. Not to mention that we can’t get them to actually do anything in the middle of the night.”

  “Well, there’s the DOMS route,” Roald said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Director of Military Support. Another way to get Defense to react if NMCC won’t.”

  She explained that the secretary of the army was the executive agent for military support to civil authorities. “We use DOMS a lot when U.S.-Mexico border issues crop up. Which I guess this
might fall under, in some sense … But we can’t just tell active-duty forces to go do this, go do that, inside the U.S. That’s just not our bailiwick.”

  “How does that work? And how long does it take?”

  “Well, that really should go through channels too. I convince Mrs. Clayton. She calls the secretary of defense, Weatherfield. And he—”

  “And that’s faster … how?”

  “Point taken. Maybe, considering it’s off-duty hours, I could just get her verbal authorization to call the DOMS contact in the Pentagon. I can almost always get hold of him, even at night. He’s the one who can ask the governor out there to authorize whatever’s needed.” Roald paused. Then her voice changed, and he heard an edge. “Of course what we should really be doing is our important work—like getting the morning summary ready. Did you hear that one?”

  Dan drummed his fingers. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the need for the national security adviser to approve alerts, or that the armed forces couldn’t go into action on U.S. territory without getting the permission of the civil authorities. But it seemed like the whole system had been designed a long time ago, when things moved a lot slower. “Do we have to go through all that? There’s no way to declare an emergency?”

  “If we want to use active-duty forces inside a state, we have to get the governor’s permission.”

  “How about his state troops? The National Guard?”

  “We don’t have access to them until they’re federalized,” Roald told him.

  Dan had been looking at the clock as they talked. Now Lynch put his head in. “Excuse me. That flight’s taking off in ten minutes.”

  “Call and do your shipping-manager act again. Tell them you want to hold the takeoff. You forgot something. Under no circumstances do you want it to go out tonight. Or you’ll sue them. You’ll never send another thing UPS.”

  Sweat broke under his armpits and ran tickling down his ribs. He hoped they were right, the people like Gelzinis who had to check off every block before they acted. Who thought if the intel agencies didn’t know about a threat, there was no threat. “Damn it—we’ve got to stop that plane!”

  “Tell me how to do it legally, and I’ll be the first to help you,” Roald said. “You’d better ask yourself if you’re not getting too excited, though.”

  “You think I’m too excited?”

  “You do seem awfully fired up.”

  Lynch, holding the phone’s mouthpiece against his chest: “No good getting them to kick the shipment off. She said it’s all loaded and my people are already aboard.”

  “Your people? What’s she mean by that?”

  “I asked her. She said, didn’t I know? There’s some techies riding along, accompanying our shipment.”

  Dan knew then beyond any doubt this was not what it seemed. Whoever they were, they were there for no good purpose. And probably armed to the teeth to boot.

  Lynch was on the line again. He rolled his eyes. Slapped the phone back down and blew out. “They’re gone. They’re in the air.”

  “How about fighters, Captain? We can’t use active forces on the ground. Can we use interceptors in the air to force that flight down?”

  Roald hesitated, then picked up the phone again. Dan and Lynch waited as she talked to a duty officer at NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command center.

  She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “They won’t scramble without orders. And they can’t scramble on a civilian jetliner. The desk guy turned me down flat on that. Posse Comitatus Act. Maybe on a direct presidential order, he said. But of course the president’s not here.”

  Dan stood blinking. The whole machine, immense, powerful, and expensive, was too slow. And somehow the people who were supposed to look out for things like this had missed it. Oh, they’d probably had hints. A little here, a little there. But no one had pulled it all together. Because that wasn’t anyone’s job.

  Maybe he should call the Pentagon himself. No … why bother? He’d get the same stonewall, stall, runaround that Roald had.

  He turned abruptly, bumping into Harlowe, and went back out into the watch area. Stood behind one of the desk officers, fingering his lip as incoming cables streamed across the screen.

  Infinite information, and blindness to the essential. Instant communication, and total paralysis.

  “I’m back,” said Alvarado, coming in carrying a cup of what smelled like bouillon.

  “You don’t know anything else about this?” Dan asked him, distracting himself from the tragedy he saw coming but was impotent to prevent.

  “What?”

  “Nothing else, Luis? Nothing else about the cartel’s plans?”

  “If you don’t trust me for some reason, say it.”

  He looked away. Caught Roald’s concerned glance through the glass.

  She got up and came toward the little, wilted group. “Your UPS flight. Where’s it land?”

  “Washington. Dulles.”

  “I mean—there was an intermediate stop, right? Didn’t you mention one?”

  Lynch said, “A fuel stop. In Kentucky.”

  She looked at her watch again. Then at Dan. “I guess I was wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “We’re not going to be able to do this by the book.”

  He nodded, not really understanding.

  “Come back in,” she said, and turned on her heel.

  * * *

  She had a screen of numbers on her monitor. Dan saw it was the emergency contact numbers of the National Guard adjutant generals for each of the fifty states.

  “I’m thinking of something Colin Powell told me once,” she said.

  “Which was?”

  “You never know what you can get away with until you try. Now look. Before we do this…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can run interference for you. But I can’t carry the ball. Understand? The Sit Room has no authority to initiate action.”

  “Well, neither do I.”

  “Neither do you. Exactly right. But you’re the one who believes there’s a critical situation here.”

  Dan nodded, remembering what they’d told him when he reported aboard: Staff did not command. They coordinated. But there had to be a limit, when no one could be reached; had to be a time for someone to make a decision. Accepting too what she hadn’t said: that she still didn’t quite believe him enough to put her own career on the line.

  That was okay. She might still have a future in the Navy. Probably even stars, considering where she was sitting now. Whereas he’d written that off a long time ago.

  “Deal,” he said.

  She nodded and reached for the mouse. Ran the cursor down a column, highlighted a number, double clicked.

  They looked at each other as she waited, handset to her ear. “Hello? Major General? Sorry to disturb you, sir. Take a moment and wake up if you need it.

  “This is the director of the White House Situation Room. Yes, sir … the White House … That’s right. Not so good, sir. We have a possible problem developing at uh, Standiford Field in Louisville. I’m going to put the man on who knows the most about it. Going to the speakerphone.”

  Dan found himself leaning toward the console as a man came on who sounded as if he’d just been awakened. He cleared his throat, reminding himself neither to give his own rank, nor to call the man on the other end “sir.” “Good morning. We—I—have grounds to believe an air freight shipment of stolen radioactive material will be landing in Louisville about”—he pulled Lynch’s note toward him—“1012 local—wait a minute—”

  “That’s central time,” Ed Lynch said behind him, and he turned and saw them all in the doorway. Harlowe flashed him a thumbs-up.

  “Yes, central time. There are people accompanying it. We believe they may be armed and should be considered dangerous. We need you to—”

  The distant voice interrupted, asking who else had been notified. Dan told him, not untruthfully, that the relevant authorities were being informed,
but warning time had been too short to prevent the takeoff. The only chance of stopping it now was the Kentucky Guard and State Police on the ground, as it refueled in Louisville.

  Roald cleared her throat. “General, we realize we are not in your state chain of command. We recommend you notify your State Area Command on an emergency-response basis. You are not officially federalized. We will just have to catch up to that after the fact—we don’t have time to do this officially and still catch that shipment.”

  “I’ve got an Air Guard unit there. At Standiford Field. An airlift wing.”

  “The choice of units and forces is yours, but we strongly recommend you take this aircraft on the ground with the best assault team you can lay your hands on. I would also recommend you call in your state police counterparts and whatever radiological emergency-response team Kentucky has available. My next call will be to your governor’s office, letting them know we have passed the ball to you.”

  The general wanted to know again what and who were aboard. Dan told him, as closely as he could, hearing hoarse breathing and the scratching of a pencil on the other end. No doubt on a nightstand, a sleepy wife looking on. “That’s UPS flight 3913, coming in from Ontario, California,” he said again.

  “I’m on it,” the general said, and the phone slammed down. Leaving him staring at it. Eyebrows raised.

  “He went for it,” he said, sounding, even to himself, rather stupidly surprised. “Are you really going to call the governor?”

  But she was already punching more numbers. He leaned back, realizing only then that there was no way they could separate his involvement in this, and hers. Whatever she said, she was laying her ass on the rail along with his.

  He only hoped they were wrong. That they’d lose their jobs for raising a false alarm. That there really weren’t people who hated America enough to dump radioactives on a sleeping city.

  But he was afraid there were.