Sleeping Dogs

by Tony Vanderwarker

  Jamal’s reported from their facility in Philadelphia that Mehran underwent his first practice session in the tank yesterday, placing the collars on the mock weapons again and again.

  In early December visibility is at a minimum. At twenty feet Mehran will be lucky to see his hand in front of his face. At forty, it will be swimming through ink. His facemask will be partially blacked-out during the final training, shifting the position of the bomb so that at each attempt, Mehran will confront a new challenge.

  Then Jamal will change the bomb model and send Mehran back into the tank again. Fifty, seventy-five, a hundred times, each time clocking him until he is in and out of the water faster and faster.

  El-Khadr is pleased. With the pool and tank training, Mehran is a finely tuned machine. Free-diving with his monofin, he can zip to the target in seconds. In deeper water, even with his scuba gear, his unique stroke can take him effortlessly to the bottom. Depending on the depth, El-Khadr is confident Mehran can be in the water and down to the bomb in a remarkably short time. Jamal estimates the longest as two minutes, the shortest thirty seconds.

  His strike will be lightning fast. Even if Mehran is right under the eyes of the Americans, he will be able to detonate the bomb before they know what hit them.

  And thinking of his final touch, El-Khadr has to smile. Though Mehran is devoted and exhaustively trained and as comfortable in the water as a fish, he is still human. El-Khadr has seen suicide bombers get panicky and detonate their charges prematurely. No matter how dedicated, with your finger on the button it is easy for the palms to get sweaty and the will to falter. And when drugs are given to calm the nerves, disorientation too easily results.

  For Mehran, he has found the perfect solution. Though Jamal has instructed Mehran to climb back into the boat and use the remote to detonate the collar, he will never have the chance. The second Mehran clicks the collar into place around the bomb the circuit inside will be completed and two milliseconds later the Semtex will detonate, simultaneously triggering the four hundred-pound TNT charge and setting off the atomic chain reaction that will begin the hydrogen bomb’s fusion process.

  In one glorious moment, a towering mushroom of billowing radiation will erupt in the skies over the East Coast, Mehran’s atomized body soaring up in its center, sending out a shock wave that will bowl over buildings twenty miles away followed by a searing firestorm that will immolate everything in its path.

  Now it is time to wait for the plan to unfold.

  He suddenly sits forward and stares at the screen, alarmed by the post that appears on the website. El-Khadr scans it carefully, then reads it again. How could they lose Collyer like that? At a mall of all places?

  He checks the time. He disappeared inside the shopping center at 1:35 EST—in the middle of the afternoon. But how? Why would he be shopping at a time like this? Then he remembers it is Christmas in the West. Collyer must have succumbed to the buying mania himself.

  A new post pops on the screen and El-Khadr breaks into an uncustomary smile as he reads the message. Cindy is back in the dahlia garden, we eagerly await her digging up her prize dahlias in anticipation of the approaching winter.

  He leans back in his chair. Whatever caused Collyer to go shopping in the mall, he is now back in their sights again.

  “Naguib,” he calls as he stands and grabs his riding crop off his desk. “Come, let us take a tour and make sure everyone is prepared. I believe the time is approaching.”

  Naguib is out of his chair before El-Khadr exits his office. Though he knows El-Khadr hasn’t had more than a couple hours’ sleep in the past day, his peg leg taps like a quickening metronome on the concrete floor. Naguib is eager to go inside the operation’s control room for the first time. He has only had a chance to peek in, peering around people as they entered and left. Two security guards, hiding their khat sticks and shouldering their Kalashnikovs, shuffle out of his way as El-Khadr elbows past them and stalks up to the entrance. El-Khadr’s fingers tap out the code and the door clicks open.

  Though the programming Naguib is doing on his side of the wall is state-of-the-art, when he steps through the doorway he’s stunned at what he sees.

  “A mission control room, just like NASA,” El-Khadr says proudly as Naguib stands, taking in the impressive installation. Banks of workstations crowd the large room, two men to a station, each with a desktop computer and its own large plasma screen suspended overhead, satellite pictures of different areas displayed on the monitors, the entire East Coast of the United States arrayed on the walls.

  “No matter where Collyer goes, we can track him in real time with instant updates not only from satellite, but from remote cameras we can position anywhere. Unless the bomb was jettisoned over the Continental Shelf in thousands of feet of water, we will be capable of directing retrieval. And if we are extremely fortunate, a simpler option will present itself to us.”

  “You mean Dahlia?”

  El-Khadr nods. Then smiles and says, “Yes, a hundred Hiroshimas in the Chesapeake.”

  35

  Pentagon, Friday afternoon

  Watt hears a knock on his door. He looks up to see Hatkin striding into his office, crisply closing the door behind him, a man on a mission.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Watt says. From the expression on Hatkin’s face, it doesn’t look like the day’s going well. Walking over to a window, Hatkin stands gazing out at the expanse of parked cars, his mind somewhere else.

  “Anything I can get for you? Coffee, soft drink?”

  Hatkin shakes his head. After a long pause, he says, “The SecDef just called. He wanted to know if I knew anything about the Coast Guard scrambling a unit out of Little River, Virginia.”

  “The Coast Guard—Jesus. When?”

  “In the middle of the night.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him the truth—I didn’t know a damn thing about it.”

  “That has to be Jimmick over at DHS. He beefed up that unit recently, brought in a lot of new people. From what I’ve heard, it’s not a bunch of Coasties anymore. Do we know where they went?”

  “I made a few calls. Had someone at Naval Intelligence check. He said the entire place was cleared out. Coffee cups sitting around, half-eaten chow, unmade racks. Like they all just scrammed at a moment’s notice.”

  Hatkin loosens his tie and sits down in a chair, returns to staring out through the tinted windows.

  “Somehow Jimmick must have an inside track,” Watt offers.

  “But how? What can he know? Homeland Security has as much intel capacity as the Department of Agriculture.”

  Watt can tell Hatkin’s feeling the heat. With the Coast Guard involved, now the situation is spinning out of control. And with pressure coming down from the top, he’s running out of options. The finger is pointing at him. The top brass would take him to task for everything. Rake him over the coals for allowing lost nukes to surface as an issue, lay the blame on him for not informing them earlier of the terrorist threat—they would assume control of the operation and take credit for the outcome. Then they would eat him alive. Bust him down to colonel and retire him to a one-bedroom concrete block bungalow on the outskirts of some military base in the middle of nowhere to live out his days puttering around in the garden and taking orders from his wife.

  And there’s no point in calling the group together, he has nothing to tell them. They’d see through any tap dancing he tried to do. Better to leave them in the dark. For the first time in his career, Whitey Hatkin is up the creek without a paddle. And Watt knows he’s sitting in the same boat, right alongside his boss.

  The bigger they are, the harder they fall. As banal as the phrase sounds, both officers know it’s dead on unless they find a way to regain control.

  “There’s always the possibility the Little River business could be something totally unrelated to Collyer,” Watt offers, groping for light at the end of the tunnel.

  “Of course, but we can’t dismis
s Collyer until we rule out his involvement for certain. What I don’t get is that with all the resources at our disposal how Collyer has avoided us.”

  “Unless Winston Straub is orchestrating the whole thing.”

  “But he’s just one guy. Even if he has the Agency’s support, the CIA has no domestic capability, no operatives in country, no fleet and no aircraft. And what is Straub—fifty-eight, fifty-nine? That boy’s ready for shuffleboard, not a high stakes game involving terrorists and hydrogen bombs. I don’t care what he did in Eastern Europe. That was twenty years ago. Have you seen him lately?”

  “I run into him occasionally.”

  “Nebbish, if you ask me. Paunchy, out of shape, looks like a real estate agent out in the burbs, wears duffel coats and suede shoes and one of those fuzzy hats with mallard feathers on the side—that kind of thing. Wife’s got all the money, big social climber, supposed to be a bitch on wheels. I know Straub’s an old buddy of Collyer but the thing just doesn’t stack up.“

  Hatkin sits forward in his chair and reaches across Watt’s desk for the roll of Tums. “Mind if I have one?”

  “Take as many as you like.”

  Watt watches as Hatkin peels off three tablets from the roll before tossing it back on the desktop.

  “I’m going to activate the unit out of Belvoir, Black Hawks and Apaches to do flyovers of the Chesapeake, get an AWACS into the air to keep an eye on things. Then I’m going to check and see what friends we have in the Coast Guard. Maybe somehow we can neutralize whatever Jimmick has going there. And get some Special Ops people poking around. See if anyone’s up to anything.”

  “What are you going to tell them to look for?”

  Watt isn’t sure if he’s ever seen General Hatkin look stymied before. “Damned if I know,” he says.

  Watt volunteers, “It’s grasping at straws, but years ago when I was stationed down in Florida, Jimmick and I handled some operations together. I could visit him, put quarters in and see what comes out. Push him on Little River, poke around about Collyer, bring up the subject of terrorists, watch his body language. It might be worth a try.”

  Hatkin gets up, snugs up his tie and straightens out his coat as he says with a snicker, “I never thought we’d find ourselves playing up to the secretary of Homeland Security.”

  Watt is about to add, or running around like a chicken with its head cut off on account of Howie Collyer, but thinks better of it.

  “My driver can run you up there,” Hatkin volunteers and then edits himself. “On second thought, maybe you’d better take a cab.”

  Lucien Jimmick knows he’s running on fumes. Ten years ago, he would have been fine. Now, just inside sixty, if he doesn’t get a good night’s sleep, he’s not worth much the next day. Awakened by Straub at two in the morning, followed by a long series of phone calls with Little Creek and his operation center, he’s ragged around the edges.

  A shower temporarily revives him. He buttons up a fresh shirt, puts on a tie, grabs his coat and heads down the hall. His wife is waiting at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a robe and a forced smile, a sandwich held out on a plate in front of her.

  “It’s a fried egg melt, dear, your favorite,” she says. Jimmick takes the sandwich as he stuffs his arm into his jacket.

  “I wish you’d sit down at the table, Lucien.”

  “A few bites are all I need.”

  She runs her hand over the top of his head. “Your hair is still wet.”

  “It’ll dry going over in the car,” he says between mouthfuls of his egg on toast. He needs to get into the office where there’s a secure stew as soon as possible. Straub could contact him at any minute.

  “You know what your doctor said about eating on the run. It would take me only a minute to make some oatmeal. Or what about some fresh fruit? After all, it is seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “This is fine, thanks.” Jimmick hands back the plate with his half-eaten sandwich, gives her a kiss and reaches for his coat.

  “I know it’s against the rules to ask, but can you give me an idea of how long this crisis is going to last?”

  “No crisis, dear, it’s just typical end-of-the-year stuff. Everybody has a list of things they want to get done before the holidays. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Then maybe you can get off early this afternoon and come home and take a nap? Remember, we have the McDormands’ wedding tomorrow. You’ll want to be rested for that.”

  Jimmick tries to decide whether he should beg off now or wait until later. He knows it isn’t prudent to let anyone know the secretary of Homeland Security is canceling engagements. I might even have to show up at the damn wedding, he thinks. Before he took the DHS job, Jimmick kept his wife up to speed about everything he had going at work, sharing the ins and outs of his operations as well as the latest in office politics as it made good cover for his extracurricular philandering. Now he has to shut her down on everything since one innocent and inadvertent comment from her can make the front page of The New York Times.

  He leans over and plants another kiss on her cheek. “You have a nice day, dear. I’ll try to check in sometime during the day.”

  Cassie Jimmick stands at the door watching her husband doubletiming down the walk toward his waiting car, briefcase in one hand, his other fumbling with the twisted collar of his overcoat. She hadn’t noticed that his right shoelace is flopping around. Normally a fastidious dresser, her husband’s untied shoelace confirms her suspicion—something significant is going down. Standing on the stoop watching as her husband’s car pulls away, Cassie Jimmick says a silent prayer that this Washington craziness will soon be over and she will be back in sunny Miami arranging flowers with her garden club buddies.

  Sliding into the backseat, Jimmick waves to his wife. She pastes on a cheery smile and waves back. He makes a mental note to send Cassie a dozen roses from the fancy florist in Georgetown.

  Marcus, Jimmick’s driver, wants to make small talk about the Redskins’ playoff chances. Jimmick pulls out his BlackBerry and acts like he has important work to do as the car pulls away from the curb.

  Marcus isn’t taking no for an answer. Looking at his boss in the rearview, he says, “If you ask me, Mr. Secretary, I say you got to point the darn finger at the quarterback situation. Just no way a guy who’s close to forty has any business running the darn team—if you know what I mean.”

  Jimmick notices the laces on one of his shoes. Damn, how did I miss that? I must be more distracted than I thought. He’s reaching down to tie them when his cell buzzes in his pocket.

  “Hello?” Jimmick answers.

  “Secretary Jimmick, it’s Lewis.”

  “Good morning, Lewis.” Tim Lewis is his scheduler, bright kid he brought up from Miami.

  “I received a call this morning from the Pentagon. A man by the name of Watt, General Greg Watt.”

  “I know him. What does he want?” Down in Florida they teamed up on a few operations. Now he’s Mr. Nuclear at the Pentagon, rumored to be involved in ghost programs up to his elbows, anything associated with radioactive materials from warheads to toxic waste spills. Part of the Vector Eleven group that knows where all the nuclear bodies are buried and dedicated to keeping them that way, he’s the last person Jimmick would expect to be calling. But then, maybe not—is Vector Eleven so in the dark about Collyer they are casting around for clues?

  “He wants to set up a meeting.”

  “Schedule him at the next available opening. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Yes, sir.”

  Jimmick slaps his cell phone shut. His driver prattles on about the Skins’ quarterback situation as Jimmick wonders whether the Pentagon has discovered he’s activated the Little River unit. News travels fast in this town. But have they connected the unit to Collyer? He’ll soon find out.

  Jimmick waves to the guard at the entrance to the Nebraska Avenue Complex. The sedan pulls up to the main building. The place looks so muc
h like a college campus, Jimmick has often thought he could be mistaken for its dean. As his driver opens the door for him and Jimmick swings his feet to get out, he notices he forgot to tie his shoelace.

  “Better tie these, huh, Marcus?” he says as he leans down. “Wouldn’t be too good for the secretary of Homeland Security to trip on his shoelaces going into work, now would it?”

  Two hours later, General Greg Watt is in his office. Jimmick is glad to see he isn’t the only one in Washington who isn’t getting any sleep. Deep circles under his eyes, he’s feigning a breezy manner and his uniform is crisp and creased, but nothing’s hiding the fact that Watt’s frazzled. He’s playing it close to the vest, engaging in a bunch of small talk, weather, plans for the holidays, chitchat about mutual acquaintances down in Florida. This is going to be interesting, Jimmick thinks. He can’t resist a wisecrack.

  “What brings you in out of the dark, Greg? I thought you Vector Eleven guys were allergic to light.”

  Watt lets it pass. Standing and walking to the window and peering out at the grounds, its neatly tended walks and red brick buildings, he shifts the subject closer to home. “I have great respect for what you’ve done over here, Lucien. You’ve got this place nicely shaped up.”

  “We still have a lot of work to do.”

  “My father worked here during the war breaking Japanese codes, he was a cryptologist with the Navy.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “By 1945, there were five thousand people working here cracking codes day and night on crude, early versions of the computer. My father still insists it was the birthplace of the machine.” Watt points out the window. “Right in that building over there.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Watt sits back down. “This place has an interesting past. Did you know that before the Navy took it over it was a girls’ school?”