The Shadows of Power

by James W. Huston

  “They are,” Rat interrupted.

  Groomer looked over his shoulder at him. “Then what the hell are we doing here? We’re going to be tripping all over each other. Shouldn’t have two people doing the same thing.”

  “They’re watching out for the family. That’s their job. Stovic is our job, and they know it. They don’t like it, and think we’re outside our jurisdiction, but this is coming down from way on top. So they can’t complain.”

  Groomer shrugged. Whatever.

  “You get us a house in El Centro yet? Farmhouse? Somewhere way out of the way?”

  “Yep. We’ve all got to pretend like we speak Spanish, though.”

  “No problem. I’m going to go check on Stovic.”

  “How’s he taking this?” Groomer asked.

  Rat stopped on his way out of the van. “Lightly.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You ever hear of Blue Armor?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “These guys that get selected as Blue Angels think they’re invincible. They’ll deny it all day long, but they think they can fly faster, lower, tighter, better than anyone. I think our boy Ed may be thinking that applies to everything else too; he isn’t bound by the same rules the rest of us operate under.”

  “You’d better get him out of that.”

  “That’s part of my job,” Rat said as he stepped out of the van and closed the door silently behind him. When he turned to walk away, a woman was waiting for him. Rat stopped.

  “You Rathman?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  She shook his hand. “Terri. FBI.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You’re in charge of this . . . whatever . . . this group? The guys in this van and around?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ve got to understand we don’t need them. We’re here to do a job, and we don’t want them in the way.”

  “They won’t be in the way.”

  “The fact that they’re here at all makes them in the way.”

  “Well, you don’t need to worry about them. They’re pros. They’re here for Ismael Nezzar. You’re here to protect the family, right?”

  “Seems to me we’re here for the same reason. I’m going to try to get them moved. We don’t need them.”

  “Well, you go ahead and get them moved. But in the meantime, you’ve got the family, right?”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ve got them covered.”

  Rat didn’t want to hear whatever else she had to say. He walked away toward his car. “You let me know when you get us moved. Okay, Terri?”

  Brad Walker sat heavily in the chair in Sarah St. John’s White House office just down the hall from the President’s. He sighed and closed his eyes momentarily.

  “You okay?” she inquired.

  “Yeah. Yes, ma’am. Just tired.”

  She nodded and leaned back. She looked him over carefully. He looked disheveled. “What’s up? You wanted to see me.”

  “I’ve been getting some inquiries from other agencies. People at my level. But it’s clear they’re being prodded to ask—these aren’t their questions. I know most of them. We’re friends. But these questions are coming from the top.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that the Secretary of Defense is onto this, and probably the Attorney General.”

  “Onto what?”

  “The fact that I’m getting encrypted e-mails with an encryption that isn’t recognized by the people who do the recognizing. They hate that.”

  “What are they asking you?”

  “These odd questions like how I communicate with you, and with people outside the NSA. Whether I use special encryption to do top secret e-mails, that sort of thing, just enough to let me know they know I have software that isn’t the usual.”

  “Well, you do. But there’s nothing illegal about that.”

  “Right, but the NSA is supposed to have the code to all encryption software.”

  “They do. But they’re also forbidden from snooping on American citizens.”

  “Unless they’re communicating with a foreign national.”

  “Yes, well, let them do what they want, and we’ll do what we want. As long as we stay within the law, I have no concerns. Do you?”

  “Yeah, sort of. I feel like I’ve got to start looking over my shoulder.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people are suspecting that we’re doing something wrong.”

  “But we’re not.”

  He sat and stared straight ahead. He finally asked, “So just keep going?”

  “Yes.” She turned her back on him and reviewed a report she had received from another NSC staffer.

  * * *

  Karen moved two boxes from a window seat onto the floor so she could open the bench. She brushed back her hair, noticing again the shocking impact of the saturated air, more humidity than she ever felt in Virginia. The two children climbed over the boxes, undoing most of the organization Karen was trying to bring to the house. They shrieked with excitement. The beautiful old house sat on stilts on the beach directly west of Pensacola. It was a battered gray with white trim, a big, drafty three-story house. It was more than she could ever have hoped to find in Pensacola. She was trying to make the most of a difficult situation and was thankful to have found a home that she could pour herself into. It was the kind of house that she would love to own even after they moved away from Pensacola. They could rent it out while they were based elsewhere and maybe one day move back to the peaceful beach, or if he stayed in the Navy for a career—something she still couldn’t completely accept as inevitable—they could retire and live on the beach, go for walks, watch the sunsets, and grow old together. She found herself smiling. She allowed herself to at least consider that perhaps their time in Pensacola wouldn’t be as bad as she had thought.

  The screen door in the front of the house slammed, and Stovic walked in. “Wilma, I’m home!”

  The two children ran to greet him as Karen stood up from the window seat. She smiled at him as he came into the large family room and looked out the large windows at the vista of the beautiful Gulf of Mexico with the sun setting to his right.

  “This is gorgeous,” he commented. “I can’t believe we found this place.”

  “It really is pretty. Thanks for putting up with my whining in the moving process.”

  “You didn’t whine, you just . . . expressed yourself.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she smiled. “Maybe it was celebrating Christmas in the Holiday Inn that got to me.”

  Stovic nodded. “We should have gone to your folks’ house.”

  “We had to finish moving.”

  She was right. He was just trying to make her feel better.

  Karen looked around. She didn’t want to ask the next question, but she had to know. “Did you find out when you leave?”

  “Yeah. It’s like we thought, 0800 tomorrow. One stop, then land at El Centro in the afternoon.”

  “Make sure I’ve got the number of where you’re staying.”

  “It’s a hotel. Desert something. I’ve given you the number a couple of times.”

  “Are you going to be able to get back at all?”

  “We’ll be flying twice a day six days a week for all eight weeks. Only day off is Sunday.”

  Karen took a deep breath and sat down heavily on the bench. She felt bad for the kids. She looked at them. “And we’re not welcome.”

  “They tried it in the past, but it didn’t work out. We’ll be so focused, no time to do anything, really.”

  “When will we see you?” she asked, watching their children.

  “After the opening air show in El Centro we’ve got one show in Arizona, near Phoenix—Mesa, I think—then we fly back here. I think we arrive on March thirteenth or something.”

  “So nine weeks.”

  “Pretty much.” He stood there awkwardly, not quite knowing what to say. He need
ed to finish packing his gear so he could take it to the hangar in the morning to be loaded aboard Fat Albert, the Blue Angels’ C-130 Hercules, which would be carrying everyone’s gear to El Centro, the winter home of the Blues. Then he’d climb into jet #6 and take off with the rest of the team to California. He looked at the side of her face. It showed sadness. “I’d better go finish packing. I’ll take the kids with me.”

  “Yeah,” Karen said standing, recovering, controlling any emotions that made it all the way to her face. “Dinner will be in about an hour.”

  “I feel like I should apologize for something. Like I’ve done something wrong.”

  She looked at the floor, trying to decide whether to say what she was thinking. “It’s just going to be hard,” she began. “You know, Ed, the Navy will eat you up. They’ll use you as much as you’ll let them for as long as you let them. But someday they won’t need you anymore. And when you look around for your family to go fishing and play in the sand, they’ll be grown and gone. And you will have missed it.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you do. Just don’t let yourself get dazzled by all the admiration. The worship. People worship the Blue Angels. Other wives have told me about it. It goes to your head. Then, at the end, you feel like you owe the Navy something. Just don’t get like that. We have to go after our dreams, but all our dreams. The whole family. Right?”

  “Right,” he said, distracted.

  “What?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”

  “Karen, look, there’s something I should tell you, but they asked me not to.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The federal government.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just waited.

  “Sit down,” he said. “I’m not sure how to say this. . . . You know Rat?”

  “Sure . . .”

  “He’s actually around to protect me. His whole photographer thing is a cover.”

  She frowned and her mouth went dry. “Protect you from what?”

  “You know the Algerian fighter I shot down? Well, the pilot who was killed had a brother. And he’s in the States and may be trying to get back at me—”

  “Get back at you?”

  “Yeah. That wreck I told you about on Virginia Beach Boulevard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was him. He was trying to smash into me, then jump out and shoot me.”

  “What? Why didn’t he?”

  “Rat stopped him.”

  “Is he still around?”

  “They don’t know where he is. Rat thinks he’s going to try to get me during an air show or something. He’s not sure. But sometime when I’m with the Blues.”

  “How?”

  “They have no idea. Could be anything.”

  “So why are you still doing this? It’s already dangerous enough. Now some guy is trying to kill you? This is crazy!”

  “Well, we’re not sure—”

  “Rat’s here to protect you?”

  “And the FBI, they’re all around, you just can’t see them. I think we’ll see more of them soon. They’re discussing how to do it. I don’t really understand.”

  “Maybe this is a sign. Maybe you just aren’t supposed to be a Blue Angel.”

  “A sign? From who? God?”

  “Maybe. How do I know? But maybe you should consider quitting. I mean wouldn’t you be safer just flying out of Oceana?”

  “Probably.”

  “Maybe it’s time to back away. Doesn’t it make the hair stand up on the back of your neck to know somebody is going to try to kill you?”

  “Sort of. But we can’t let terrorists control our lives.”

  “I sure can. If it’s safer to do something else, then maybe we should. Am I safe?”

  “I haven’t heard anyone say you’re not, but I guess they’d really have no way of knowing.”

  Karen leaned back against the window. The sun had set behind her, and they hadn’t turned on the lights inside the room. Her face was almost imperceptible backed by the last remnants of the day’s light. “Will you at least consider quitting? For us?”

  “When we’re in El Centro, I’ll think about it. But I really don’t think it will change anything.”

  “Think about it, Ed, for me.” She touched his face.

  He nodded.

  * * *

  Ismael returned to the Quality Courts Motel where he had moved after three days at his last motel—never more than three days in any one place—and dumped the magazines on the table. He had to have a Stinger missile to be confident of success, and anything you wanted was for sale in America. He had read an article about the Russian Mafia in Brighton Beach, New York. They could get anything and would sell anything to anyone. He read of Russian military helicopters and a Foxtrot submarine that had been sold to a Colombian drug cartel by the Russian Mafia.

  He scoured the advertisements in the weapons magazines, the ones for international soldiers that will fight anyone for pay, the ones for those obsessing about handguns, or shotguns, or assault weapons, or armies and navies, or tanks, or military history, or arms of the future. Every kind of weapon had its adherents and its own magazine. As much as Ismael already knew about weapons from the early training he had received in the Algerian desert, he was shocked at the detail in the publications, details from manufacturers, from those who used and sold the weapons, and sometimes details about where one could get such weapons, occasionally illegally.

  Many of the ads directed those who were interested to post office boxes, but a few had phone numbers. He noticed one ad in particular: “Any weapon, anytime, any caliber, anything you need, for anywhere in the world, I can get it for you. Competitive prices, everything confidential.” There was a telephone number with a Washington area code. Ismael had an irresistible urge to call. His instincts were warning him against it, against violating one of the fundamental precepts taught to him years ago—never deal with someone you don’t know. But he knew there were only two ways to get a Stinger—the black market or dealing with the people who had the few left over from America’s support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the eighties. Not many had made it out of Afghanistan during the War on Terrorism, but he knew that a few had. He didn’t want to play that card, though. The price would be too high.

  He picked up Weaponeer Magazine, the one with the ad he had seen, rolled it into a scroll, and jammed it in his back pocket. He walked to a pay phone six blocks away, a phone he had never used before and would never use again, and dialed the number. He listened carefully as the phone rang, and finally a man with a gruff voice picked up the receiver. “Yeah.”

  Ismael hesitated. He fought to speak, then hesitated still more.

  “Somebody there?” the man asked.

  “Yes.” Ismael said quickly. He tried to make his voice sound lower. “I’m calling about the ad.”

  “Which one?” the man asked impatiently.

  “The one in Weaponeer.”

  “Sure. What do you want?”

  “You say you can get anything.”

  “Sure. I’m a licensed gun dealer. Also broker. I’m licensed to ship interstate and sell anything that’s legal.”

  “I don’t know if what I want is legal.”

  “What is it?” the man asked directly.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Sounds interesting. I have access to a lot of things. Maybe we should meet.”

  “No,” Ismael said, startled at the thought of meeting face-to-face with this man.

  “Then I can’t help you. If you won’t tell me on the phone, and you won’t meet with me, then forget about it.”

  “Perhaps I could write to you or something.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t play games. You want something, you tell me. You don’t wanna tell me on the phone? Fine, but we don’t do business. That’s the way I operate. If you like that, then talk to me. I don’t really give a shit.”

  “Fine.”

  The man hesitated. “Fine what?�
�

  “Fine, we meet.”

  “All right. How about tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.? You come over

  to my—”

  “No. I will call you at this number tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. and tell you where we can meet.”

  “Why the games?”

  “Because I don’t know you.”

  “Where you calling from?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does if you’re in California. If we’re going to meet tomorrow, we both have to be able to get there. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. From where you are, can you reach southeast D.C. in half an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Me too.”

  “I’ll call this number, 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning.”

  “Fine.” The man hung up.

  Ismael placed the receiver back on the cradle. He was breathing heavily, excited and anxious at the same time.

  * * *

  The six Blue Angels flew over the runway at El Centro. Stovic had flown into El Centro several times in the past, mostly on weapons detachments with his squadron and their F/A-18s to the Chocolate Mountains. It had always been one of his favorite places to fly—the control of the air over El Centro was relaxed—an informal encouragement of creative and fast flying, unlike nearly all the other towers in the Navy system, where radar guns and speed control were the order of the day.

  Stovic was trying to keep his place in the tight formation. He was like a boy with a new fishing pole, but he also felt a little like an imposter. He was flying with probably the most skilled and finely trained aviators in the world. He also knew he and Link, the other new pilot, would be the subject of intense scrutiny as the only ones on the team who didn’t know what they were doing. Every debrief, every review of the videotape would concentrate on their performances.

  The desert sky was beautiful, and the Chocolate Mountains were clearly visible in the distance. He was the last of the six to enter the break, and pulled sharply to the left and into the break with a six-G turn to impress anyone who was watching. It was an odd feeling for Stovic to think of people on the ground watching his every move, expecting him now to be perfect. The G forces felt fresher and newer in his blue jet. He was ready to learn how to fly like a Blue Angel.