by Brad Thor
“Or it’ll surge. Blood is a funny thing, Chuck—especially in politics. Once people get a taste of it, they often want more and more and more. So we’re not throwing anyone under the bus yet. I’m going to personally call for full and open hearings when the dust has settled. I want total transparency. The American people are going to agree to nothing less. It’s the only thing that is going to help restore the sacred trust because I’ll tell you what, today that trust has been utterly shattered. Now let’s get working on my visit to New York. I want us to be under way ASAP.”
“With all due respect, sir—”
“She’s my daughter, for Christ’s sake, Chuck. This is what fathers do.”
“Fathers maybe, but not presidents, sir.”
Rutledge wasn’t going to be swayed. “ASAP.”
“Fine,” said Anderson, the resignation in his voice thick with sarcasm. “Should we use Air Force One or do you want me to see if the tooth fairy is flying up that way? I think we may actually have her cell phone number.”
“Watch it, Chuck. Not only does my daughter need me, the American people need to see their president in New York City.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I agree with you, but all of this should and will be put together in due time. Right now we can’t even get the National Guard into Manhattan. The terrorists have the entire island locked down, including the air space. How are we supposed to accomplish what even our military can’t do at this point?”
“That’s not my problem. It’s yours. Talk to the Secret Service.”
“I don’t need to talk to the Secret Service. I already know what they’ll say. In fact, wait a second.” Opening the door, Anderson stuck his head into the hall and said, “Carolyn, can you come here a moment, please?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Anderson. What do you need?” replied the head of Jack Rutledge’s protective detail as she stepped into the doorway.
“The president wants to go to New York City,” stated the chief of staff. “Manhattan, to be precise.”
“Of course. We’re already starting to plan the logistics.”
“I don’t think you understand. The president wants to go now. Tonight.”
Looking up, Secret Service Agent Carolyn Leonard saw the president’s face and realized he was serious. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not possible. Not just yet at least.”
“Why not?” demanded Rutledge.
“It’s a war zone. The fact that the terrorists have snipers with high-powered rifles and RPGs makes it an absolute no-go.”
“What do you want me to do, Carolyn? Sign a release absolving the Secret Service of any and all responsibility should something happen to me?”
“Of course not, sir. I just want you to understand that there’s no way we can guarantee your safety at this point. You’d make too attractive a target, and not only to the terrorists.”
“Are you suggesting there are Americans who would want to harm me?”
“I can’t say for sure, sir. All I know is that the situation on the ground is starting to heat up a bit.”
“Heat up how?” asked the president.
“There are reports that scattered looting and mob violence against immigrants and Arab-Americans has begun.”
Rutledge looked at his chief of staff.
“It’s in the next briefing. I didn’t think you’d want me bring you updates every three minutes. We want to nail down whether these are isolated incidents or if we’re seeing some sort of groundswell,” said Anderson.
Rutledge was not happy with that answer. “All the more reason I should make a direct appeal to the people of New York from New York.”
“Sir,” said Leonard as she tried to suggest a compromise, “we could arrange for you to be someplace, maybe upstate—maybe in the capital—and then take you in to Manhattan once things cool down.”
“Once things cool down? When’s that? A week from now? A month?”
Leonard understood the president’s anger. Everyone was angry right now. The hard thing was directing that anger in the appropriate direction. She knew the president didn’t mean to take it out on her, and she was enough of a professional to let it roll off her back. What she needed to do was to persuade him against making the trip—at least for the time being. “Sir, my job is to advise you of the risks and what course of action the Secret Service feels is best to assure your safety and well-being.”
“And if it were up to you, I’d be locked in a bunker someplace right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But it’s not up to you. It’s up to me.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Carolyn, my daughter is there.”
“I know, sir, but how do you think it would look to the people of New York if the president could get in to see his daughter when even the National Guard hadn’t been able to make it in yet to help assure order? It might not look like you were truly there for the people of New York City.”
She had a point, and Rutledge knew it. Frustrated, he quietly pounded his fist on top of his desk and then nodded his head. “You’re right.”
“Thank you, Carolyn,” said the chief of staff as he showed her back into the hallway.
Closing the door, Anderson looked at the president and said, “If you want another opinion, I’ll get General Currutt in here and let him give you the Joint Chiefs’ take on trying to get into New York at this point.”
The president sat down, exhausted, and replied, “That won’t be necessary. I’ll stay put. For now. But, Chuck?”
“Yes?” replied the chief of staff as he stopped, his hand on the door-knob.
“I want results, and I want them soon, or I am going to New York, even if I have to pilot my own plane to get there.”
Fifty-Four
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Mark Schreiber dropped the printout onto Joseph Stanton’s already overcrowded desk and said, “That makes three now:Transcon, Geneva Diamond, and the Strong Box beneath the Lincoln Tunnel. Are you still going to sit there and tell me we don’t have a problem on our hands?”
“Take it easy,” replied Stanton as he looked over the printout. “Even if we wanted to, there’s nobody we can call for help now anyway.”
“There’s got to be somebody.”
“There isn’t.”
“Are you serious? We don’t have a contingency for this?”
“For what, Mark? We still don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
Schreiber looked at his boss like he was nuts. “We’ve got three substations that are unresponsive.”
“Unresponsive, but still processing as far as we can tell,” clarified Stanton. “New York has been overwhelmed. Give it a little more time.”
“That’s what you said the last time I came in here.”
“And as the director of this program that’s going to be my answer no matter how many times you come in here and ask.”
“What if the sites have been compromised?” ventured Schreiber.
“Then we wouldn’t be seeing any processing at all. You know how the systems work, Mark. You also know what the communication protocols are. Listen, we’re all angry with what’s happened today and we’re all concerned about the people we know and work with in New York, but I’m only going to tell you this one more time. Stay focused on your job.”
“But what if we—” began Schreiber, but he was cut off by the ringing of Stanton’s phone.
“It’s from upstairs,” he said as he pointed toward the ceiling and reached for the receiver. “I need to take this in private.”
Once Schreiber had left the room and closed the door behind him, Stanton said, “Why the hell are you contacting me on this line?”
“Because you haven’t exactly been answering your cell phone,” said the caller.
“If you turned on your television set once in a while, you’d see we’ve got our hands pretty full today.”
“Fuller than you think.”
; “What are you talking about?” replied Stanton.
“Not over the phone. We need to meet.”
“That’s impossible. Not today.”
“Yes, today,” said the caller. “And I want you there in a half hour.”
“That’s insane,” said Stanton. “Do you know what the traffic is like between here and there?”
“Use one of the company helos.”
“We’ve got a major national crisis going on. Helicopters are for emergency use only at this point.”
“This is an emergency. Somebody knows about Athena.”
Fifty-Five
NORTHERN VIRGINIA
The Bell JetRanger helicopter touched down in the parking lot of a large warehouse, and out stepped Joseph Stanton. With his heavy-rimmed glasses, seersucker suit, and suede bucks, he looked nothing like Gary Lawlor had pictured. Superspooks came in all shapes and sizes, but this was the first time he’d ever seen one who was a dead ringer for a sloppy Warren Buffett.
Once they were sure Stanton had come alone, Gary and Bill Forrester got out of the car and met him halfway across the parking lot. The Marine captain made the introductions and as Lawlor began to speak Stanton said, “Not here. Wait till we’re inside.”
Inside turned out to be a well-appointed office suite at the back of the structure that Stanton and Forrester used for their meetings. Sitting down on a leather couch, Stanton smoothed out his trouser legs, picked a few pieces of lint from inside one of the cuffs, and then said, “Okay, what the fuck is going on?”
Ever the marine, nobody bullied Bill Forrester, especially not some Ivy Leaguer in a seersucker suit. “Why don’t you tell us, Joe? It’s your op.”
“What do you mean, tell us? As far as I’m concerned captain, the only us that should be in this room is you and me.”
“Well, suck it up,” said Forrester, “because Agent Lawlor here might just be the only one able to save your bacon.”
“Who says my bacon needs saving to begin with?”
“Listen, Joe, I didn’t come out here to get jerked around.”
“Neither did I.”
“Good. So let’s save the ‘my dick’s bigger than your dick, but I can’t show it to you because we don’t work for the same agency’ crap for the time being.”
“If you’re suggesting, captain, that we bring Agent Lawlor into the know regarding Athena, that’s not going to happen.”
Forrester had a very short fuse and burned real quick. “Three of my marines are dead, so yeah, it is going to happen.”
“Wait a second,” said Stanton. “I haven’t heard anything about any marines being killed.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. They never were a priority, in your opinion. Now, I want some goddamn answers.”
“Had you given me a little more insight into why you called this impromptu meeting, maybe I would have been able to prepare some for you.”
It was pretty apparent these two were not going to get very far if left to verbally slug it out, so Lawlor decided to step in. “Mr. Stanton, what is the Athena Program?”
“I’m sorry, Agent Lawlor, but I am not allowed to discuss NSA business without proper authorization.”
Forrester was disgusted with his arrogance. “I wanted you to hear it from him, but if he won’t tell you, I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
“If it means preventing any more of my marines from dying, then just watch me.” Turning to Gary, the captain said, “The program is named after the Greek goddess of wisdom, as apparently the Greeks didn’t have a goddess of blackmail. It’s a deep-black-data-mining operation. Using both the Echelon and Carnivore systems, the NSA has been gathering otherwise overlooked intelligence that can be used as leverage against various foreign concerns.”
“Like al-Qaeda?” asked Lawlor, not completely understanding what Forrester was getting at.
“No. More like governments, heads of state, and influential foreign businesspeople. Basically, the Athena Program collects and sorts extremely dirty laundry. Once they have their teeth into something particularly juicy, like the Princess Diana crash, TWA 800, or Yasir Arafat’s death, they assign teams of operatives to flush out the big picture and uncover as much supporting evidence as possible. That way, when it comes time to use it, they have the victim pinned against the wall so tightly, there’s absolutely no room for him or her to wiggle free.
“And if they uncover a conspiracy involving several powerful foreign figures, it’s like hitting the jackpot.”
“You’re going to jail for a very, very long time, Forrester,” said Stanton as he solemnly shook his head.
Lawlor ignored him and asked the captain, “Tell me about the locations in Manhattan.”
“You already know about Transcon and Geneva Diamond. They were the first two tiers. Most of the field agents worked out of Transcon. Because a limited amount of sensitive data was handled there and because all of the employees were field rated and came to work armed, it was decided by Mr. Stanton here that they didn’t need extra security—a position I had always been against. Subsequently, none of my marines were stationed there.
“Geneva Diamond was the next step up. That’s where most of the data coming in is sifted.”
“Sifted how?” asked Lawlor.
“Don’t say anything more, Bill,” cautioned Stanton. “I’m warning you. You’re already in way over your head.”
Forrester disregarded the admonition and plowed ahead, “Whatever intelligence is deemed political in nature goes to a facility hidden beneath the Lincoln Tunnel known as the Strong Box. The location had been conceived during the Cold War as a means to evacuate high-ranking allied-nation UN personnel from the city via submarine in the case of a nuclear attack, but the project was eventually deemed unfeasible and abandoned. The NSA quietly took over the space and used it as a signals intercept and deciphering station. A stairwell is hidden in the south airshaft and allows access to the facility via a bogus storeroom at the New York Waterway bus garage. Like Geneva Diamond, with the high value of the work that goes on there and the fact that the employees are predominantly analysts, my marines provide round-the-clock security.
“As for the personal intelligence side of things, which is often significantly more damning, it goes to a rather ingenious location very near—”
“I warned you,” said Stanton as he drew an extremely compact .45-caliber Para-Ordnance P-104 pistol from his suit pocket, pointed it at Forrester’s head, and pulled the trigger.
Fifty-Six
Gary Lawlor didn’t wait for Stanton to point the pistol at him. Instead, he bolted for the door.
Stanton fired, just missing Lawlor’s head and splintering the doorframe. The man was insane. First he killed an officer of the United States Marine Corps, and now he was trying to take out a Homeland Security agent. Gary didn’t have to think about what to do next. His reaction was instinctual. It was either him or Stanton.
Belying his age yet again, Lawlor dove for cover behind a long, wooden credenza in the outer office and drew his Beretta Px4 Storm. There was a wheeled desk chair next to the credenza, and he sent it spinning into the center of the room to draw Stanton’s fire. As tufts of batting wafted up into the air, Lawlor came around the credenza on one knee and sent a wave of .40-caliber lead right where the NSA man had just been firing from. The problem, though, was that Stanton knew what he was doing and quickly moved to a new location. He wasn’t going to be easy to kill.
“Mr. Stanton,” yelled Lawlor after he had ducked back behind the safety of the credenza. “I’m only going to give you one chance. I want you to throw your gun and then come out with your hands above your head. Do you understand me?”
“The security of those installations was Forrester’s responsibility,” replied Stanton.
It was a very out-of-place response, considering the situation. “Mr. Stanton,” said Lawlor. “Throw out your weapon, come out with your hands up, and we’ll talk about it.”
From the othe
r room, Stanton laughed. “Sure we will.”
“These terms at not negotiable, Mr. Stanton.”
“He shouldn’t have been talking. I don’t care what good he thought he was doing his marines. He knew better than that.”
“Mr. Stanton, I am ordering you to come out of that room with your hands up, right now,” replied Lawlor.
“One of the most beneficial intelligence-gathering programs this country has ever developed and that idiot is ready to let it all out of the bag to save his precious marines. Marines die. That’s their job.”
As Stanton continued ranting, Lawlor crept from around the credenza and tried to maneuver himself for a better line of fire.
“Forrester put his needs and the needs of his marines above the people of this country,” yelled Stanton. “Do you have any idea how many lives have been spared because of this program? It might not be the prettiest way to do business but it’s goddamn effective.”
Lawlor now had a clean line of sight into the inner office. By the sound of Stanton’s voice, he was somewhere over to the right. If he had to, Lawlor was fairly confident he could take him out by firing through the drywall, but now that the playing field was a little more level, he wanted to take the man alive, if at all possible. “Your time’s up, Mr. Stanton. No more talking. I want you to slide your weapon out the door and then follow with your hands clasped on top of your head.”
Once again Stanton laughed. “That’s not going to happen, Agent Lawlor, and you know it. Only one of us is going to walk out of this building today. The question is, which one?”
Gary didn’t bother responding. Like he had said, they were done talking. If Mr. Stanton thought only one of them was leaving the building alive, he was in for a very big surprise.
A company called Guardian Protective Devices of New Jersey had approached the Department of Homeland Security a while back with a very interesting pepper spray device. Very intelligently, DHS had snapped up as many as they could get their hands on, as did many other branches of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. As Lawlor removed the small three-ounce can from the tiny holster on his belt, he was grateful for the ingenious “set it and forget it” feature it contained.