by Fred Burton
Hopefully not, anyway.
If we can’t stop an attack before it happens, before the smoke clears over the target we open a CT investigation. Once a counterterror investigation is opened, our office has one major objective: Find out what went wrong. Again, it is a defensive role; we want to study the attack—break it down into its individual components to see how the terrorists carried it out. Once we figure out how they succeeded, our security flaws become evident. This knowledge will save lives in the future, as we can devise new security tactics that fill the gaps the attack exploited in the first place. Frankly, we’re way behind the ball right now, struggling to catch up to our enemies. That is what makes us vulnerable.
That’s also why our trip-wire efforts are so important. If we can divine the target of the next attack, we can warn our men in the field. They can counter the threat and hopefully deter the terrorists. One month into my job and this much is obvious: If we miss the warning signs, it’ll be too late. Once the truck bomber starts his mission, the chances of it succeeding are almost 100 percent. The only sure way to prevent an attack is to stop it before he gets behind the wheel. There are two ways to do that: Find and bring down his network, or change tactics and security around the target in such a way that the terror cell aborts the attack.
All day long, Gleason, Mullen, and I work feverishly to find those little nuggets, those genuine threat indicators we can pass along to our agents overseas. Dinner is forgotten. The cafeteria closes at six, and I didn’t have time to get up there anyway. I eat a granola bar at my desk and plow through more incoming cables.
Close to midnight, I’m exhausted and need a break. I finally work my way to the parking garage and find my Jetta. A short drive home, and I fall facedown into my waiting pillow.
I sleep with a portable phone next to my ear and a code card on my nightstand. In the event of flash cable traffic, FOGHORN will call me with the news. Flash is the highest-priority cable we can receive. They demand immediate attention, even at four in the morning. Other times, we get NIACT cables. These are flagged “Night Action,” and are also cause for a call in the dead of night. Over the past month, I’ve not gone more than one night a week without being woken up by FOGHORN’s night-duty officer, telling me in cryptic phrases that something bad has happened again.
I hardly fall asleep when the phone rings. “Venus has reported a threat in Crowbar.” I grab my code card and start scanning for Crowbar. The code words change frequently, and I don’t have the time to memorize them. I know Venus is the FBI. Crowbar eludes me.
“Can you help me out here. City?”
He gives me an elliptical clue. I figure it out. Beirut. I have to deal with this one. Sleep forgotten, I start making phone calls.
Morning. A quick run with Tyler Beauregard fails to shake me loose from the bone weariness I feel. Even when I want to sleep—need to sleep—I have a hard time. Tyler senses how stressed I am, and she stays close to me today. She lopes along right by my side, and I feel the comfort of her fur as she brushes against my legs every few strides. Did I say I love this dog? She’s doing her best to take care of me.
I reach the office before 0600, and it is already a madhouse. Mullen appears unwashed and unslept. Has he been here all night? Probably. Gleason looks more than ever like an over-tasked patrol sergeant. Eyes bulging, he’s already chewing somebody out over the phone. A stack of incoming traffic awaits me on my desk. I get to it.
March 25, 1986, looks to be another really bad day. The U.S. Navy and the Libyans are still fighting in the Gulf of Sidra. Everyone is jittery. The Italians are almost apoplectic, as this is unfolding right in their own backyard. The French are playing coy, which doesn’t surprise me. Rumor has it that the French have cut a deal with various terror groups, including the Palestinians and the many-striped jihadists. France will leave them alone if they do not attack the French homeland. As a result, many of our terrorist enemies have started camping out in Paris, using it as their home base for strikes elsewhere in Europe. That our erstwhile ally would do something like this shocked me at first. Then, over lunch at our desks one day, Gleason mentioned that the French intelligence service has spent much of the seventies and eighties engaged in economic espionage against us. They’ve done plenty of black-bag jobs—breaking and entering—and eavesdropping in an effort to give the likes of Airbus a leg up over Boeing. Hearing things like that quickly knocks the naïveté out of young agents like me.
So in this tussle with the Libyans, the French are off the board. The Italians are spooked. The Germans are quiet. So are the Brits, though I know they’ll offer support when needed. Elsewhere around the Med, we’re catching plenty of flak from the Greeks. The Eastern Bloc allies are all denouncing us. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Radio Tripoli issued a call to arms today, urging supporters to storm American targets in the Arab world.
And then the scary stuff arrives. First, we get a flash message warning that the Libyans are recruiting Palestinian and European assassins to be proxies in attacks against our interests. That’s concern enough, but then the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, reports a disturbing development. Turkish police uncovered a plot to strike at a U.S. officers’ club in Ankara. We have to deal with this one right away. We increase security at all our bases in Turkey and warn all personnel there to take extra precautions on and off base. Meanwhile, the Turkish authorities are tracking down the terror cell involved in planning the attack. I check in with them during the day, but the Turks are keeping the investigation close to the vest, and I don’t learn much more than we already know.
The threats keep stacking up. I’m heartsick. Which ones should we focus on? We can’t cover everywhere at once. We need to marshal our assets. We don’t have enough agents. In crises like this, it would be terrific if we had a strategic reserve of counterterror teams ready to fly to a regional hot spot at a moment’s notice. Right now, Mullen, Gleason, and I are the strategic reserves, and just handling the incoming traffic has us totally committed in D.C.
The afternoon brings a report that the Libyans plan to strike at Sixth Fleet headquarters in Naples, Italy. Follow-up questions from us reveal that the Libyans have assassins poised to strike at our senior Sixth Fleet naval officers. Apparently, they know where our people in Naples live. This tells me the Libyans have done their homework and have been watching our naval personnel very closely for quite some time.
As the threats mount, one basic fact becomes clear: The Libyans have been watching a lot of places for a long time. They must have built target profiles of key installations and vulnerable locations months ago. They have done their homework and their legwork. Until now, nobody has noticed. And now it is too late. We’re chasing the bus at this point, not building the roadblocks we need to stop it.
Later in the day, news of the first attack comes in. Beirut. A Libyan-aligned group tries to shell our embassy. Fortunately, they are bad shots and miss. A few hours go by and a flash cable arrives from Tokyo. The embassy and the Imperial Palace grounds have been rocketed.
I spend the rest of the day and evening chasing this one down, coordinating the investigation with the agents in Tokyo. It doesn’t take long to conclude that the Japanese Red Army, a terror organization sponsored, supported, and sheltered by Libya, carried out the attack.
Two o’clock in the morning comes before I’m aware of it. I sit, bleary-eyed, at my desk, fatigued like I’ve never been in the past. I’ve got to get home and get some sleep. I’m no good in this condition. But before I shut off the lights behind the big blue door, I pull out my three-by-five card file box and dutifully record these new attacks. My makeshift database is growing fast.
Not long after I get home and collapse on the bed, FOGHORN wakes me up again. There’s been an attempted hit on the secretary of state.
five
CHASING SHADOWS
Back in the office long before sunrise, the scene is more chaos. I’m getting used to it now. The burn bags have piled up and we’ve now got piles on piles
cascading around our desks. We’ll have to make some runs down to the basement incinerator today to clear some room in here.
Gleason’s busy trying to get the details of what’s happened to the secretary of state. Mullen has the thousand-yard stare that I had a few hours before. Do I still have it, too? Probably.
Our embassy in Athens gives us sketchy details of the attack. Secretary of State George P. Shultz had flown to Greece to sit down with Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, who had declared the unfolding conflict in the Gulf of Sidra nothing less than the “armed enforcement of a new Pax Americana” and “the attempt for a holocaust in the Mediterranean.”
While Shultz was in Athens, a car with U.S. plates exploded in a gas station a short distance from his hotel. Was it a car bomb? Was there a connection to Shultz’s arrival? It seems a logical conclusion.
While we wait on more information, I open up a CT case on the attack and enter it into my card file. More traffic flows in. It was no car bomb; terrorists threw a bomb of some sort at the car. Another bomb is found on a diplomat’s vehicle and defused. Perhaps the security changes we devised after Lisbon helped catch that one.
The day grinds on. Mullen gets bad news from Bolivia. Somebody threw a stick of dynamite onto the roof of our embassy there. Fortunately, it caused little damage and nobody was hurt.
Sporadic fighting continues in the Gulf of Sidra. Anti-American protests flare in Italy, Greece, Syria, and elsewhere in Europe. Everyone is edgy. Will this conflict blossom into full-scale war? Nobody is sure. The Times of London reports that Qaddafi has earmarked six million dollars for attacks on American and British interests in Lebanon. Apparently, Libyan intelligence agents are talking with militia leaders in Beirut, offering them cash payments to carry out attacks.
A rare piece of good news finally reaches FOGHORN. The Turks have arrested two individuals working for Libyan intelligence. They’ve already confessed to planning attacks on American targets in Turkey. We need more help like that overseas.
And then Qaddafi steps squarely onto my turf. The Libyans are pulling out all the stops in Beirut. A source reports that their agents are offering vast sums of money to Hezbollah to buy the American hostages they’re holding. No word yet on what Hezbollah’s response is, but it is clear the Libyans want some sort of leverage to get the navy to back off in the Gulf of Sidra. Or maybe they just want revenge and plan to simply execute the hostages they’re able to buy.
The master terrorist Abu Nidal weighs in on Qaddafi’s side. His organization vows revenge for the Gulf of Sidra. That’s a very serious threat. Abu Nidal has perpetrated countless acts of murder and mayhem around the globe, but he is most reviled for his attacks in Europe just after Christmas a few months ago. With the assistance of Libyan intelligence agents, Abu Nidal sent two hit squads into the Rome and Vienna airports to attack El Al passengers waiting to fly to Israel. In Rome, the gunmen killed sixteen people and wounded another ninety-nine at El Al’s check-in counter. Simultaneously in Vienna, the hit squad struck at a crowded El Al gate, killing two more people with grenades and wounding another thirty-nine.
Abu Nidal’s group, which uses a number of different names, has a history of striking at airlines and air travel. A vow of revenge from him is no idle boast. His psychological profile in the dead bodies cabinets labels him as a clear psychopath. There have been reports that he is so violent he has tortured his own followers out of paranoia that they’ve become double agents. One report I’ve seen detailed how a suspected double agent in his organization had his testicles seared in skillets of burning-hot cooking oil. Even the PLO reviles him and his methods.
This is a new threat we must try and counter. Airport security must be tightened. Unfortunately, airports all over Europe have slipshod screening practices. We can’t control those potential points of attack, which makes this a gaping weakness in our security armor.
Sometime around six, Gleason puts down whatever he’s reading and suddenly gives his full attention to me. I sense his eyes, and look over to see him glowering through a cloud of cigarette smoke. I wonder if I’m in trouble.
He exhales suddenly, leans forward in his chair, and says, “Burton, go home. Go take a break.”
I can’t see how I can possibly do that. Not with all the things that are happening.
“If you don’t take breaks every now and then, this job will eat you alive. Go home. Forget about everything for a couple of hours.”
I try to protest, but he’s serious. “There’s always going to be another crisis. There’s always going to me more threats.” He pauses to snub out his cigarette and light another one. “This is what we do. And you’ve got to learn to handle the pace and know when enough is enough. Otherwise, you’ll burn out.”
I don’t have any more energy to protest. Besides, I realize he’s giving me valuable advice.
“Go home, Fred. You look like hell.”
I gather up some papers, stuff them in my briefcase, check my beeper, and depart without saying a word. When I guide my Jetta out of the parking garage, I realize that this is the first time in weeks I’ve actually seen the sun.
I head down MacArthur Boulevard, not looking forward to the apartment that awaits me. It isn’t even seven o’clock yet. Sharon won’t be home from her accounting firm for another hour at least, which means the place will be dark and empty. That’s not what I need now. Even with Tyler Beauregard there it will be terminally lonely.
On a whim, I make a quick right turn and speed off toward the National Naval Medical Center. It almost isn’t a conscious decision, just instinct really. I realize as I drive that I’m fleeing into my past life.
Brandt Place. That’s where I need to be right now.
I gun the Jetta past Wisconsin Avenue and duck into an open parking slot right across the street from the hospital. A short walk finds me in front of a white brick stand-alone house, set back from the road and screened by oak trees and bushes.
This is Fred Davis’s house. In our crazy youth, we were known as the Two Freds. We served together on the Bethesda–Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, a volunteer department that covered the streets and highways of our old neighborhood.
I step to the front porch. A mangy old dog is curled up on the welcome mat, snoozing away. I rap on the door, and Fred throws it open with a big surprised grin on his face. I haven’t been by in a long time, but once this Brandt Place tract house was the center of my social life. Those nights out, driving around in a big 1965 GMC Rescue responding to car wrecks and other disasters, had bonded us together. I feel relief at his warm welcome, guilt that I haven’t seen more of him recently, and fear that perhaps we’ve grown apart now that we’ve gone in different directions.
“Come on in, ya want a beer?”
“No. Got any coffee?”
“I’ll put some on.”
In his cluttered, bachelor’s kitchen, Fred brews up a pot of coffee. He’s dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, but he’s still wearing his badge and pistol. I take off my coat, revealing my shoulder holster and the Smith & Wesson tucked inside.
A few minutes later, we settle into a couple of chairs on the front porch. We shoot the breeze, just like the old days when we’d come off shift.
The rescue squad was a pivotal time in both our lives. We recognize that now. The volunteers who staffed the place were cops and EMTs and firefighters from the local departments. Working alongside them left an indelible mark on both Fred and me. The experience led us both into a life of law enforcement.
Fred put himself through EMT night school by working construction during the day. After he graduated from the University of Maryland, he joined the U.S. Park Police in D.C.—the guys who patrol our national landmarks, like the Washington Monument. It is an elite bunch, and from what I heard when I was a cop, Fred had fit right in.
“How’re things going with the Park Police?” I ask.
“They’re good, but nothing like the old days, you know what I mean?”
I nod. Back then, our
only worry was our next call. Next accident. Or catastrophe.
Fred leans back in his chair and takes a drink from his longneck. “I’m applying for flight school soon.”
“That’s great, Fred!” I’m genuinely excited for him. The Park Police includes an aviation division. Fred’s always wanted to be a cop and has always wanted to fly.
“If I get the slot, they’ll send me to Fort Rucker for training.”
“Isn’t that where the army trains its helo pilots?”
“Yeah.”
I haven’t seen Fred in months. Between the training I went through after I joined the DSS and the craziness since I landed in the CT office, I have been absent from this porch. I’ve missed the comradeship. That sort of close-knit bond we had on the rescue squad just doesn’t exist over at Foggy Bottom, as the State Department is known. We’re all too busy and the pace is too intense for much of that. I’ve never been one to make friends easily anyway. Fred’s both a link to my old life and one of the few genuine friends I’ve ever had. He stood up for me at my wedding a few years ago.
“Do any fishing recently?” I’m stretching here. Have we run out of small talk already? Have we let our friendship atrophy to the point that it’s beyond reviving?
He offers a guttural laugh. Fred’s got a gravely voice and looks like a cross between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. I notice with a start that his short, dark hair is hidden by a blue ball cap that reads “BCCRS RESCUE-1.” We used to wear those around the station. We had the Friday-night shifts. I was the acting lieutenant and Fred was my sergeant. We slept upstairs in an old barracks-style bunk room. Whenever a call woke us up in the middle of the night, we’d leap onto a polished brass pole and slide down to that old ’65 GMC. He’d drive; I’d ride shotgun. Those were glorious days, full of adrenaline rushes and lots of excitement.