Act of Terror

by Marc Cameron

  “Well.” The president picked up a light blue file from the coffee table. “Ms. Garcia, it appears we owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  Garcia’s round cheeks, already flushed, turned a darker shade of crimson. “I was just doing my job, sir.”

  “A fine job of it too.” Clark smiled. He leaned forward, cutting to the chase. “Ms. Garcia, we’ve read your report and I have to say, the thing that intrigues me the most is your discretion. Not once do you mention Deputy Director Magnuson as one of the shooters. Care to tell me why?”

  All eyes fell to the CIA officer. Palmer smiled at her composure. He wasn’t sure if it was pure naïveté or something deeper—something he looked for in those he hired for special duties.

  “Well.” Garcia nodded, biting her bottom lip before taking a deep breath. “The idea that senior management at the CIA could be involved in a terrorist act might be a little disconcerting to the American people. I knew Director Ross would release that information if she thought it prudent.”

  Clark nodded. “Something like that gets out, it could cause a lot of trouble,” he said. “That goes without saying. Particularly after we took the time to reexamine Mr. Magnuson’s background.”

  Now it was Ross’s turn to flush. As director, it was her responsibility to see that her employees, and more importantly her division deputies, were properly vetted. Magnuson had passed no fewer than three periodic security clearances over the course of his career and double that number of polygraphs. The fault really couldn’t be placed at her feet, but everyone in the room knew responsibility could not be delegated.

  Clark tilted his head, looking at Garcia. “Would it surprise you to know Magnuson made three unreported trips to Peshawar, Pakistan?”

  “After what I saw today, sir,” Garcia said, “nothing would surprise me.”

  “All three shooters had a calendar in their respective homes with today’s date colored in red and the same Chinese character.” The president paused, glancing up at Palmer. “What is it again, Win?”

  “Dan,” Palmer said. “It means gall—bitterness.”

  “Chinese ...” Garcia mused, almost to herself.

  “Oddly enough, yes,” the president said. “Chinese.”

  He gave Director Bodington a hard look. “Other than that, the Bureau has found precious little evidence to connect them. No emails back and forth, no phone records ...” He paused for a long moment before raising the blue file folder again. “Young lady, I hope you don’t have any plans for the near future. What I’m about to tell you is really going to screw up the next few months of your life.”

  Garcia smiled, giving a shrug that, to Palmer, seemed utterly beautiful and free of guile. The poor kid obviously no idea what she was getting into. “I’ll make it work, Mr. President,” she said.

  “Outstanding.” Chris Clark wasn’t one to stop and linger over the details. “Here’s the deal then, Ms. Garcia. I need to know how much I can trust you.”

  Garcia flushed, recoiling as if the question were a slap. “Well, completely, sir.”

  Clark caught Palmer’s eye. It was his cue that the national security advisor should do his job and dispense a little advice.

  “In the end,” Palmer said, “we have to trust someone, Mr. President. Veronica Garcia has demonstrated her loyalty as well as her valor in stopping the CIA shootings—”

  Bodington weighed in—though he wasn’t willing to interrupt the president, he would interrupt Palmer. “Sir, you’re suggesting we share highly classified material with—my apologies to Ms. Garcia—but essentially a security guard. Is it not just as plausible that Deputy Director Magnuson was trying to stop the shootings and she killed him before the response team arrived?”

  Garcia went from sweet to seething in the flash of her dark eyes. “I’ve never met you before, Director Bodington, but I’m sure you know it’ll take about two seconds for ballistics to confirm the DD’s weapon murdered at least half a dozen of my coworkers.”

  Bodington tried to wave her off, all but ignoring her to make his case to the president. “Please, sir, listen to reas—”

  Garcia’s shoulders began to tremble. “I realize we have an extreme situation here. Frankly, I don’t even give a damn if you call me a security guard. It’s what I do. Someday, I hope to work for the Clandestine Service—and when I do, I hope to have the sense to look at a little evidence before I accuse someone of being a cold-blooded terrorist.”

  Clark gave a quiet smile, sucking on his front teeth the way he did when he was particularly amused. “Kurt, I think the fact that she didn’t call you a son of a bitch shows incredible restraint. Two points here: First, as Win points out, we have to trust someone. Second, I’m not suggesting you share anything. From what I’ve seen, you have damn little to share. I’ll do the sharing. So, do your boss a favor and sit still for a couple of minutes.”

  Bodington clenched his teeth, but said nothing more.

  “Win.” The president tipped his head toward Palmer. “Would you be so kind?”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” Palmer turned in his seat to face Garcia, who calmed immediately from her confrontation. “Plainly speaking, late yesterday evening, intelligence sources in Pakistan confirmed a problem we had suspected for some time. Foreign agents placed within our government—moles.”

  The director of the CIA shook her head. The muscles in her face clenched, but she kept quiet. It was obvious she agreed with her FBI counterpart. Briefing such a low-level employee was just not done. Palmer decided to address that from the beginning, since it was, after all, a plan he had endorsed to the president.

  He moved to the edge of his chair, leaning in to close the distance between himself and the young woman. “We have to assume these agents ... these moles could be anywhere and that they—like Deputy Director Magnuson—have passed various backgrounds and security checks. An in-depth review of both Timmons’s and Gerard’s files found several glaring holes in their backgrounds—facts that when take separately mean nothing, but in light of what they did, mean everything.”

  Garcia sighed, pushing a lock of hair out of her eyes as she processed the information.

  It was a lot of information to dump on her, but Palmer plowed ahead. “Both men are the sole survivors in their families. Neighbors who were interviewed for previous backgrounds admit they really knew the parents better than the boys. Neither have a single friend that remembers them earlier than the seventh grade. According to their supervisors at the Central Asia Desk, both were fluent in Turkic, but when we looked into it further, other than some Internet courses, there’s no record of them ever studying that particular language.”

  “You believe them to be foreign born then?” Garcia mused.

  “We do,” Palmer continued. “And we missed it in their initial backgrounds. Essentially, everyone in the government needs to be re-vetted—and that includes the ones doing the vetting.”

  “Ah,” Garcia said, deflating slightly. “And since you feel you can trust me, I get to begin the process.”

  The president held up the blue file folder containing the background investigation on Garcia. Palmer himself had completed a review only two hours before. “Except for your load of good old American credit card debt,” Clark said, “you come out smelling like a rose, my dear. Who would admit to having a Soviet father and Cuban mother if they wanted to hide something?”

  Director Bodington folded his arms tight across his chest, looking toward the Rose Garden as if to distance himself from events unfolding before him. Palmer never had liked the man, finding him a bureaucratic bloviate without concrete facts to back anything up. All hat and no cattle.

  Garcia’s eyes remained worshipfully attentive to the president, ignoring Bodington altogether. “I assume I’m being assigned to a team,” she said.

  Palmer smiled. “This is the team,” he said. “Director Ross, Director Bodington ... and you.”

  “And we are to vet government employees?” Garcia went pale. “All gover
nment employees?”

  The president laughed, sucking his front teeth again. “All two million of them—not counting the Postal Service—but we’ve prioritized the list. As you clear people, they will begin to assist with the background investigations.”

  Garcia sat perfectly still.

  “You in particular will focus on those with direct access to the president,” Palmer said, hoping to calm her fears.

  She turned her head to one side, hands folded quietly in her lap. Her eyelids drooped with exhaustion. “If I might ask ...”

  Palmer’s chair began to chirp softly. Each piece of furniture in the Oval Office was equipped with a secure phone line so presidential guests could carry out pressing directives on the spot.

  President Clark nodded. “Go ahead and take it, Win.”

  Palmer slid open the upholstered drawer hidden below the seat cushion and took out a white handset.

  “Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Palmer,” the voice said. It was Millie, his secretary. “You need to turn on the news, sir. The president will want to see this... .”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson

  Anchorage

  Canadian cousin to the more ubiquitous government Gulfstream G5 business jet of Hollywood spies, the luxurious Bombardier Challenger CL 601 sat sleek and falcon-like on the ramp. Just as Quinn was an OGA—other governmental agent—the executive jet was an other governmental aircraft. Registered to the Federal Aviation Administration, the pilots were former Special Operations and reported directly to the national security advisor. Palmer had dispatched the plane to get the Quinns out of Alaska. If the sheikh had sent one team, he was likely to have sent two.

  A low fall sun cast a pink blush on the snowy Chugach Mountains to the east, shining through the oval windows of the jet. Jericho knelt in the aisle, looking down at Mattie, who lay sideways in a soft leather seat, head resting in her mother’s lap.

  Two seats back, Kim’s mother reclined with a damp washcloth over her eyes. Her head lolled from the effects of exhaustion and the Valium government medics had given her when they’d all been hustled away from an extremely curious Anchorage Police Department after the attack. Bo stood at the rear of the plane. Broad shoulder against the bulkhead, he chatted up the female Air Force staff sergeant who acted as safety officer and attendant. Brother Bo wasn’t about to let a little bloody ambush on the family cramp his ability to hit on cute women.

  Quinn’s parents were out fishing for Pacific cod, the sheer danger of capricious Alaska waters protecting them from attackers.

  Mattie looked up with a wan smile. Framed in a halo of her dark curls, the features of her perfectly oval face were drawn from fatigue. Her eyelids sagged. She blew him a kiss.

  “You’re looking at me funny, Dad,” she said after a long, feline yawn. “I think I can trap you with my eyes.”

  Jericho kissed her forehead. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “If you only knew ... Now, you better get some rest.”

  Kim ran trembling fingers through their daughter’s hair. She affected a smile for Mattie’s benefit, but the tightness of her breath and the set of her jaw made it clear to Quinn she held him accountable for the attack on their family.

  He didn’t blame her.

  She jumped at the sudden buzz of the secure phone on his belt. He groaned and stepped across the aisle to take the call.

  “Listen, Quinn ...” Winfield Palmer rarely waited for the person he was calling to say a word beyond hello before he moved straight to the business at hand. If you answered, it meant you should be ready to listen. “There’s something I need you to see. Are you on the plane?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said, eyes locked on Mattie as he spoke. “We’re fine, by the way. Thanks for calling.”

  “Yes, of course,” Palmer said. “I mean ... good. I’m glad... . Anyway, I need you to take a look at the news.”

  Quinn shot a look at his drowsy daughter. The last thing he wanted was to have her wake up to whatever catastrophe Palmer wanted him to witness on the news. He made his way down the aisle to the back of the plane, beyond Bo and his new girlfriend, to a teak cabinet on the galley bulkhead. “Any channel in particular?” he asked, turning on the seventeen-inch flat-screen satellite television.

  “Won’t matter,” Palmer grunted. “This dumb son of a bitch is all over the place... .”

  Quinn left it tuned to CNN. He used the remote to turn up the volume as he swiveled the nearest seat to face aft, sinking back into the cool leather.

  The red Breaking News ticker at the bottom of the screen introduced the speaker as Congressman Hartman Drake of Wisconsin. He stood alone, a dark silhouette in front of the brightly lit Capitol dome. A veteran of the first Gulf War with a Purple Heart to prove it, he’d served in the House for over a decade, working his way up to the powerful but slightly boring Transportation Committee. Chiseled, Ivy League good looks and a propensity to wear a bow tie over a starched white shirt made him instantly recognizable. He was well known as a stridently outspoken isolationist, and his handlers made certain he hit the talk-show circuits at least once a month.

  Quinn yawned, wondering what Drake could have done to infuriate Palmer since they were both from the same party. The Canadair’s engines began to spool up without so much as a word of safety briefing from the flight attendant, who was still busy with Bo across the aisle.

  Quinn bumped up the volume on the television with the remote on his armrest.

  “... among us. And so we find ourselves in the midst of what can only be called a national crisis.” Drake leaned into the camera, a master at connecting with his audience. The glowing dome of the Capitol gave him the perfect patriotic backdrop for a nighttime press conference. “... a crisis of epic proportions. There are those, even in these hallowed halls of government, who will, no doubt, seek to discredit me, to call me a crackpot or accuse me of being ... a hater. Well, my fellow Americans, I am a hater—a hater of those who would destroy this great nation.” Drake paused for effect—gazing into the distance as if imagining a round of applause.

  “I have in my possession,” he continued, “a heretofore secret list. The eighty-six names on this document represent men and women within our own government who, it pains me to say, support the cause of militant Islamist terrorism. Further, we have strong reason to believe that certain names on the list were complicit in this morning’s horrifying attack perpetrated on CIA headquarters... .”

  The sleepy crowd around the congressman suddenly erupted in a display of camera flashes and muffled shouts as reporters awoke to the smell of a real story.

  Drake raised his hands to silence them.

  “I am not prepared to go into detail at this time,” he said. “Suffice it to say we have a cancer growing within us. I pledge to you, my fellow Americans, to do everything in my power to root out this malady. To this end, I have asked that the speaker of the House convene immediate hearings.”

  With that, he paused, put both hands on the lectern and mugged straight into the camera.

  “My fellow Americans, I give you my word that I will not rest until I have rigorously examined each and every person on this list to ascertain their loyalty—or their disloyalty—to these United States. May God bless us in our cause, for it is just. Thank you for your time.”

  The congressman paused for a beat, taking time to gather his notes as cameramen got a few more seconds of B roll, before turning to walk back up the hill toward the Capitol. His entourage of staff hung back so the cameras could catch his darkened silhouette, trudging up the hill, alone.

  Quinn had to stop himself from laughing out loud.

  A slender brunette, one of CNN’s pretty talking heads, took over, providing color commentary. Quinn used the remote to mute the sound.

  “Did you get that?” Palmer said on the other end of the line. His voice dripped with unbridled disgust.

  “I did,” Quinn said. He moved back up the aisle, unwilling to be away from Mattie any longer than he abso
lutely had to. “Any truth to what he says about the CIA shootings?”

  “There is.” Palmer gave him a thumbnail sketch, including the CIA deputy director’s involvement. “We’ve got a real situation here, Jericho. I could use you back ASAP.”

  “I need to get my family situated first,” Quinn said, shooting a quick glance at Kim.

  “Oh, yeah, I get that,” Palmer answered, but it was clear in the clipped timbre of his voice he didn’t.

  Kim shook her head, catching Jericho’s side of the conversation. “Go ahead,” she said in a dismissive whisper. “We’ll be just fine.” The “without you” was implied in the frigid blue of her eyes.

  Quinn rubbed the stubble on his face with his free hand, sighing deeply. “I can be at Andrews by ... oh-eight hundred your time.” Cell phone against his ear, he stared at his daughter, drinking in the sight. He wondered if Kim would ever even let him see her again.

  “Very well,” Palmer said, his voice hanging on the edge of another word for a long moment. “Jericho,” he finally said, “I wouldn’t call you back unless it was urgent.. . .”

  “I understand, sir,” Quinn said, looking across the aisle at his ex-wife, who wouldn’t understand at all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Quinn ended the call and returned the secure BlackBerry to his belt. He leaned back to stretch in the soft leather seat as the Canadair jet lumbered down the runway on its takeoff roll. It was the first opportunity he’d had to close his eyes since the attack, even for a moment.

  The damp cold of Kim’s fuming across the narrow aisle pushed away any thoughts of sleep. He could feel her stare, heavy, like a pile of bricks dumped on his chest. He opened his eyes, glancing sideways without turning his head. He’d been right.

  “Who are you, Jericho Quinn?” Her voice was hushed, pitiful.

  Quinn pushed the button to raise his seatback. Some things you couldn’t take lying down.