With a Vengeance

by Marcus Wynne

  Chapter Two

  Two hours after the attack, while local crews struggled to get into the closed off airport, the editors of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and a dozen other major newspapers received an e-mail.

  A large video file was attached.

  The whole incident, in Quicktime: the black man shooting the two passengers, the brief hostage taking, then the hand grenade clenched to his neck going off – it was all there.

  Including the final close up of the anguished face of Hunter James, a face known to every news organization in the country as the Hero of Flight #923.

  But there was more.

  After a brief flickering of blue, there was an image of a masked man seated at a table, dressed in neat camouflage clothing. Behind him were heavy maroon drapes; flanking him on either side were two similarly masked and uniformed men, holding M-16 rifles.

  “I am Ahmed Samir Said,” the seated man said, in a deep, mellifluous voice, in very good English with only a faint hint of accent. “This is our declaration of war against the Great Satan. You have brought war to our people, you have killed our women and our children, you have corrupted our culture with your filth and decadence…we are here. Now. In America. We brought you the fall of the towers, Allah be blessed, on September 11th, 2001. We brought you the martyrs of Flight #923. We bring you the martyrdom of our American brother today in Chicago. We are many. And we will continue to wage our war. Your planes will fall from the sky. Your airports will swim with blood.

  “There is nothing you can do to prevent this, unless you renounce your war against the innocent people of the Muslim faith. The followers of Allah refuse to allow themselves to be slaughtered like so many sheep. We are warriors, we are the wolves who will defend ourselves. We demand the immediate removal of American forces from the holy lands of Saudia, the immediate removal of all American and Western forces from the illegal occupation of Iraq. If these enemy occupiers are not removed immediately, then we will continue with our war in the air.

  “Planes will fall. The airports will roll with blood. As we have demonstrated over and over, there is nothing you can do to stop those who are committed with the faith of Allah behind them. Allah walks with us, and greets our martyrs into the Heaven with many blessings.

  “You Americans. Call for your criminal President to remove the forces from our holy lands and from the occupation of Iraq. You have the power to stop this. Protect your families, your children, your women. Take action, speak out against the continued injustice in the Middle East. You can save yourselves.

  “Otherwise planes will fall, and the airports will roll with blood. You cannot stop us. I am Ahmed Samir Said, I am a sword in the hands of Allah. I will strike where and when I am directed, and nothing will stand in my way.”

  1

  CNN beat Fox by three minutes. In the White House Situation Room, the Duty Officer whose job it was to monitor all the major news stations took immediate notice and banged out an electronic communication that went directly to the desk of the National Security Advisor. A few minutes later, in the Oval Office, President George Taylor faced his National Security Advisor, Natalie Sonnen, across the broad desk that so many powerful men had sat at before him. Together, they watched the big television monitor placed so the light from the windows that looked out across the grassy expanse of the White House grounds wouldn’t glare on the screen.

  President Taylor watched in silence, his big jaw jutting out as the muscles there clenched and unclenched. Natalie Sonnen glanced from the big screen back at him as she calibrated his response to the video footage unfolding in front of him. Natalie was a graduate of Georgetown Law School, a practicing attorney with a specialization in international law and security, and at one time a protégé of Condoleeza Rice, her mentor who had suggested to the incoming President that another sharp young woman might be a beneficial thing in the new administration. She’d done well so far. She’d led the way with the Senate Investigation Committee in the aftermath of Flight #923, and her coolness under fire as she faced heavy criticism from the Senate and its investigators had picked up big points for her – and her boss. She meshed a quiet, down to earth Midwestern wholesomeness in public with a foul-mouthed and aggressive demeanor when behind closed doors. Her staff referred to her behind her back (and in whispered meetings with select members of the press corps) as the Iron Bitch.

  President George drummed his fingers on his desk top as the video zoomed in on Hunter James.

  “Is that who I think it is?” he said.

  “Looks like it,” his National Security Advisor said. “What the fuck is he doing there?”

  “Good thing he was,” the President said.

  “He didn’t do anything,” Natalie said.

  “He was there, and his face is all over the world by now,” the President said. “And we know him.”

  They paused while the monitor flickered with the monologue from Ahmed Samir Said.

  “Anything on this one?” the President said.

  “Not yet,” Natalie said. “Give me half an hour.”

  “You don’t have that. Meeting. The usual suspects.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I want the Federal Air Marshals in. I want to know what Hunter James was doing there. We need a genuine hero out front, I think.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  2

  All across America, in homes, bars, shopping malls and electronics stores, anywhere you could find a television set, people stood or sat transfixed, and watched the intimate scale of the disaster in Chicago play out across their screens. Huddled together in the reflexive action of the herd when disaster strikes close, the American public watched the return of terrorism to the heart of the homeland.

  And again and again, Hunter James’s face filled the screen.

  And again and again, the menacing masked visage of The Ahmed Samir Said, and his precise, educated voice spelling out more of the same for the American public.

  There’s a period, after a major incident, where the public takes a collective pause while they absorb what’s happened. It doesn’t take long for the active members of what of the American people to get motivated to DO something. As the news casts rolled, e-mails began to pore into the news rooms from the public demanding to know how this could happen again.

  How could it happen here in the heartland?

  More to the point, how could it happen again?

  That question was on the lips and minds of every person watching their television screens.

  In P.J. Clark’s, on the North Side of Chicago, a battered truck driver turned to the well dressed attorney next to him.

  “What’s it going to take to be safe on a plane again? I won’t ever let my kids fly again. No way, no how.”

  The attorney shrugged. “Politicians. Let’s see how long they hold their offices after this one.”

  In a Circuit City electronics store, two mothers, children in strollers, cringed at the sight of the young children scampering out of the way of the airport shooter. They saw Hunter James reach out and sweep a child out of the way.

  “That’s the Air Marshal,” one mother said. “From Flight #923.”

  “Oh, God, those poor children,” the other mother said.

  In a cluttered Glen Elyn townhouse, a gray haired man played and replayed the videotape of the O’Hare shooting. He stopped the image on Hunter James’s face and played with the toggle stick to the right of his keyboard.

  “Hunter James,” he hissed through a cloud of blue cigarette smoke, masking his face. “You’re a bad penny. You always turn up…always too damn late. You should have put that gun to your head, you son of a bitch.”

  3

  In the Cabinet Room of the White House, the assembled members of the meeting called by National Security Advisor Natalie Sonnen stood when President Taylor entered the room.

  “Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” the President said. “Natalie, roll.
”

  Natalie Sonnen stood in front of the big screen monitor with a remote control in her hand.

  “You’ve all seen the video footage,” Natalie said, the crisp professional tone of a long time briefer in her voice. “Here are the marching orders. FBI leads the investigation. CIA coordinates with overseas assets and domestic assistance as required. DHS – we’ve got some jurisdictional overlap here since the event took place in an airport. The Federal Air Marshal Service and TSA have interests here. The FBI Critical Incident Response Group will coordinate through the Strategic Information and Operations Center at Quantico. The team will include a representative from the Air Marshals.”

  The Director of Homeland Security, a Cabinet member from the beginning of the administration, Randolph Richards, a retired Secret Service agent who had leveraged his past into a number of high law enforcement positions before going to work for the then-governor of Missouri, the now-President George Taylor, looked up and said, “We have no problem whatsoever with that. We will assign our best investigators to assist and of course all our resources are available on a top priority basis.”

  “That’s nice, Randolph,” Natalie said. “And the Bureau will be running things. But it’s important to public perception management that the Air Marshals are involved in a very public way. Your man Hunter James was the hero of Flight #923, and it just so happens that he was Johnny on the Spot again, though he didn’t fire a shot this time. How did that come to be?”

  Richards looked over his shoulder at the man he’d brought to the meeting, the recently appointed head of the Federal Air Marshal Service. Alexander Fields had been a Special Agent In Charge of the New York Field Office of the Secret Service when he retired, and then immediately was recruited to run the New York Field Office for the Air Marshal Service. He’d worked on improving his “street cred” by taking some of the Air Marshal training, where he’d done well on shooting, the litmus test for Marshals, and flown a few missions as a ride along with various teams. After the resignation of his predecessor, who had only been appointed two days before the hijacking of Flight #923, Alex, as he was known to his friends, and he liked to include politicians and higher ranking bureaucrats among them, had been tapped to take over. He was good in front of a camera, and, to the rank and file, had his heart in the right place by increasing the standard and type of training made available to the marshals. He’d worked (at least in the public eye) hard to make the kind of administrative changes to screening and profiling to prevent a recurrence of the events of #923.

  “Alex?” Richards said.

  “Pure chance,” Alex Fields said, in the smooth, unctuous manner of a professional bureaucrat. “Agent James declined reassignment to training or an administrative position…he just wanted his old job back. He’s still on light and limited duty because of his injuries. The Field Office had him running our pro-active surveillance in that part of the airport. It’s a cream puff job. We were just lucky he was there.”

  “Why didn’t he shoot the terrorist immediately?” Natalie demanded.

  The President listened with interest.

  Alex Fields raised his eyebrows and answered delicately. “Well, Ms. Sonnen, as a law enforcement officer on the street…”

  “He was in an airport,” Natalie cut in.

  “…in an airport,” Fields went on. “An officer has to make a judgment not only about the possible threat he has to deal with, but also with the innocents around him. Agent James was moving on the individual, had profiled him as a potential threat, but when the terrorist pulled out his gun and killed those two passengers, there were too many people in the way for James to shoot. As you saw in the video, there was a family with young children in the way, and Agent James had to make a decision not to fire because they were in his line of fire…”

  “That was a brave thing he did,” the FBI Director, Thomas Klein, said. “Scooping that kid out of the way. That man has got balls of brass.”

  “…he is a brave man,” Alex Fields said, after a pause. “And once the terrorist had taken a hostage and presented his hand grenade, a killing shot would have put a live hand grenade rolling among running civilians, possibly resulting in even more loss of innocent lives. While it’s unfortunate that the two passengers died, we feel that more people did not specifically because Agent James exercised restraint and did exactly what he should have done. Agent James is probably the finest example of restraint under duress we have out there.”

  “That’s a good point,” the National Security Advisor said, with some satisfaction. “Because we want him up front in this investigation.”

  Fields was caught short. “Well, that’s a bit out of his area, ma’am. Agent James is not an investigator…he’s an Air Marshal with limited experience in running criminal investigations.”

  “According to my sources, he was a shit hot intelligence gatherer overseas, good enough that we shopped him out to your cousins at CIA,” Nicole said. “Isn’t that so, CIA?”

  The current Director of Central Intelligence, a former field operative risen through the ranks by the name of Gene Harding, nodded his head.

  “I’ve seen the reports,” the DCI said. “He’s good in the field. If he ever decided to come over…”

  “That won’t happen,” Fields said quickly. “He’s very happy where he’s at, I’ve been told. And his CIA involvement was a long time ago. But if you want him over there, we’ll assign him to the Task Force.”

  The National Security Advisor nodded. “Done. FBI, who is ram rodding the investigation?”

  The FBI Director cleared his throat. “We have a senior and very experienced Supervisory Special Agent heading up the team. Her name is Basalisa Coronas.”

  “Her?” the National Security Advisor said, pleased. “What’s her story?”

  “Seasoned investigator out of New York and Washington D.C., lots of involvement since 9/11 in our counter-terrorism cases, smart and savvy politically, but most of all, she’s one of the best investigators we’ve ever had. There are some people who work with her who honestly believe she’s psychic, that’s how good she is. She’s the top gun at CIRG.”

  “Good to have a woman out front,” the President said. “It’ll look good on the briefings – sharp woman FBI agent, and the hero of Flight #923. Make sure it happens the way it’s supposed to happen, ladies and gentlemen. I want Ahmed Samir Said in the box. Like yesterday. I want him and his organization run to ground and in custody…or dead. Period. This happened on our watch and it’s not going to happen again. I want to know how this came about, how they mounted their operation, where they came from, and I want to know where they are. And I want our finest dogs of war put loose on them. Am I clear?”

  The Cabinet and the Incident Working Group looked around the table, and in one voice answered, “Yes, sir.”

  The President said, “Natalie, you and the Attorney General, in my office. Everyone else, you know what to do.”

  With that dismissal, the assembled members filed out. Alex Fields was already tapping a message into his PDA.

  The President turned and looked to his two closest advisors. “So,” he said. “What do we do about this goddamned Sam Waters?”

  The National Security Advisor rolled her eyes and shook her head. “He’s already going on with Bill O’Reilly tonight, and he’s prepping the big guns. As the head of the Aviation Subcommittee for the House, he’s the big man for the aviation security incentives – and he’s calling for heads to roll. He’s going to be hard to ignore.”

  “We’re not going to ignore him,” the Attorney General said. “Can’t do that. I advise bringing him in some way. Find something to make him part of the solution.”

  “That’s my instinct,” the President said. “Better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.”

  Natalie Sonnen laughed out loud as three of the most powerful people in the world filed into the Oval Office.

  Chapter Three

  Basalisa Coronas strode down
the hallway of the Chicago Federal Building, her low sensible heels clacking sharply, like gunshots, on the worn but still polished tile floor of the interior hallway of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI. She swept by agents and staffers who nodded to her, though she ignored them, her brown eyes focused, as always, straight ahead, in this instance at the door at the end of the hallway. Basalisa, or Lisa as she was known to the handful of friends and intimates she kept around her, was a small woman, only five feet five inches tall and a lean, hard muscled 115 pounds, but her presence, her aura, her gravitas was that of someone much larger and harder.

  “She walks like she’s got size 10 balls,” some of the male agents who’d worked with her said, behind her back, of course.

  They’d learned to keep those sort of comments quiet and behind her back, because one of the many things the Filipina agent was renowned for was a fierce love of face to face confrontation. She had the gift for staying completely calm and focused in the heat of battle (or confrontation of any kind), and then lunging in for the kill with a precisely chosen word inflected just exactly right with a lift of the eyebrow or change of vocal tone. She was also able, when it suited her purposes, to draw upon a softer and gentler persona, when she felt that she might get more with sugar than with the stick.

  But she loved the stick. And the knife. And the gun.

  The only child of a famous Filipino practitioner of kajukenbo karate and kali, she learned how to fight with stick and knife before she could write. She didn’t advertise that, though at the Academy, the defensive tactics instructors still told stories of how she had decimated her classmates and more than a few instructors during hand to hand combat training. When it came to gun, she was just as good. When she’d made up her mind to apply to the Bureau, she’d spent thousands of her own dollars going to the best private shooting schools in the country to prepare herself: Bill Rogers in Georgia, Clint Smith in Oregon, Massad Ayoob in Massachusetts.