Aim and Fire (6 page)

“Looks like ol’ Shootin’ Spencer was the one who got tagged this time.” Travis smirked as Nate walked around him and sat down.

“If I’d wanted any more shit from you, Travis, I’d squeeze that big greasy pustule you call a head and see what came squirtin’ out. Now get the hell out of here. I got work to do.”

Travis stuck his face right next to Nate’s. “Yeah, you get back to your real important report, buddy. Me, I’m headin’ out to work that slaughter case in the desert. I just 50

wanted to tell you personally. Have fun holdin’ down the fort.”

Nate stared at the retreating back as Travis swaggered out of the office, willing the punk-ass agent to drop dead with his next step, but to no avail. The office was almost deserted, with only a few agents still finishing up their paperwork. Nate blew a breath out and dug in, as well, peck-ing out his report with two fingers on the ancient computer he had been handed down from God knew where. At least the damn thing had e-mail, although it was balky and slower than hell. He finished his report, then leaned back in his chair and snuck a peek at Robertson, who was still working at his own desk.

Nate considered his options.
What do I have to lose by
kicking this up the chain? Well, for starters, Roy won’t be
too thrilled. But he’d be less thrilled if this turned out to
be something, and downright furious if it was something
big. What the hell—at least they can’t say I didn’t try.

He found the copies of the e-mails on his computer and attached the one from Arsalan, along with his thoughts on it, in a message to the Department of Homeland Security.

He hoped they’d give it to an analyst who’d be able to think at least halfway outside of the box. But this is going to Washington—what are the odds? he wondered. He shrugged and hit Enter, shaking his head as the message flashed into cyberspace.

“My God, some days working here is just like any other large corporation, except we’re supposed to be keeping three hundred million people safe every single day,” Tracy Wentworth said as she walked back to her cubicle at the ramshackle headquarters on Nebraska Avenue. She was annoyed after yet another pointless two-hour meeting on analyzing strategic weaknesses in America’s private infrastructure. Everything she’d heard was a repetition of things she already knew. They had just tried to package it in yet another new “assessment procedure.”

Only 1:00 p.m., and already her day was an exercise in futility. Two of her requested follow-ups on what she had thought had been promising leads had been denied due to

“lack of feasibility.” This was primarily due to her boss, a politicking butt-kisser who squashed anything he didn’t regard as a “slam-dunk,” to parrot a certain high-level intelligence chief’s unfortunate choice of words a few years back regarding WMDs in Iraq. Since then, Tracy suspected that all of America’s intelligence agencies had become 52

paralyzed by fear—the fear of not connecting all of the dots fast enough, or even worse, getting something wrong, and having the press lambaste them for not doing their job properly. That especially went for the one she worked for, the Department of Homeland Security.

When she had come to DHS two years ago, Tracy had been filled with the desire to join a department that would fight the real threats that America faced. She had hoped this new agency wouldn’t be hampered by the baggage of the Cold War and the continued focus on potential-threat nations and their standing armies. She wanted to tackle fourth-generation warfare and the emerging terrorist networks spreading from the hotbed Middle East to ensnare other countries in their multitentacled grasp of drugs, money and suicidal ideology.

Unfortunately, that had not proved to be the case. From its once-promising beginning, the DHS had rapidly become stuck in the same operational quagmire that hobbled most other government departments. Small-minded career bureaucrats wielded their power like tyrants, rewarding loyal followers and punishing anyone they didn’t agree with almost at whim.

In particular, there was a terrible lack of information flowing from the top officers down, which was, in Tracy’s and many other analysts’ opinions, crucial to effectively gathering intelligence to identify and stop threats to the nation. Personality clashes and conflicting interpretations of rules, regulations and even the DHS’s role in homeland security were everyday occurrences. It all served efforts to get vital programs off the ground.

The department’s creation by squashing together twenty-two separate agencies under one roof meant there was often confusion as to what section would handle a par-Aim and Fire

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ticular project, which led to even more delays. Certain departments, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, operated under severe budgetary limitations, to the point where the agents could not execute their duties effectively. The problem was later revealed to be infighting among various departments for budget allocation. Tracy had heard the horror stories, and had unfortunately been a part of some of them, as well, as she fought for information, access and resources, along with the other 180,000

people in the sprawling department.

When she got back to her desk, she found an e-mail from her supervisor, Brian Gilliam.

Tracy,

See me soonest regarding your sewage threat analysis.

Brian

“Fantastic, this is exactly what I need right now,” she muttered. Tracy had been analyzing unconventional attacks on metropolitan areas, and had come to the conclusion that there could be a risk—small, but definitely a possibility—that terrorists could attempt to contaminate water supplies of major cities using waste products. The companies that handled raw sewage were often even more poorly guarded than chemical plants, and the waste material could be released into aquifers with relative ease. She had worked up a solid list of facts to support her case, including three known plots that had been foiled in the past five years. She included lists of various treatment plants that were most vulnerable, and their proximity to major supplies of freshwater resources. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but that’s what she was paid to do, and Tracy thought 54

she did it pretty damn well. At least, until her boss came in and crapped all over her carefully researched analysis.

She pulled the leather holder and hair stick from a tight bun, letting her glossy black hair cascade down to the middle of her back. She wasn’t a fool. She figured Gilliam let her do the reports primarily because she made him look good in his interdepartmental progress reports. And every so often he actually sent one up the chain, where it usually died a slow, painful death in one of the various committees that had to approve it. The fact that she was both a woman and part Mexican—her father was a blue-blooded Bostonian, hence her last name—didn’t hurt, either, given the DHS’s dismal record on both minority and gender-equitable hiring. Just what you wanted to be when you got into intelligence analysis—a good-looking figurehead.

She rose and stretched her back, feeling the kinks pop out, then smoothed her skirt. Across from her, Mark Whitney raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You just got back.

Now where you off to?”

Tracy nodded at her supervisor’s office. “I’m about to go zero-for-three with Gilliam. Bet you a grande latte he’s going to flush my sewage-contamination report down the toilet.”

“What? I thought that was a great piece of work. You sure? He just sent one of mine on securing the Canadian border up the chain.”

“Yes, but you’re his fair-haired boy, remember?” Tracy said this without a trace of rancor. She knew Mark was a very good analyst. Tracy strongly suspected her boss was sexist, but he had never given any proof of it, other than the strange priority he gave some reports and not others—coincidentally the reports turned in by the men in the department, in particular. The fact that Mark was gay—and that Brian had never noticed—was a private joke shared between the two of them.

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“Here goes. Wish me luck,” she said.

“Tracy, you work for the government—if they’d wanted you to have any luck, they’d have sent you a memo assign-ing you some,” Mark said with a grin.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Unable to delay any longer, she began the trek to Gilliam’s office at the end of the long, cubicle-filled room, each one manned by an analyst busily crunching the never-ending avalanche of data that poured into the DHS every day. She knocked on the door, and a terse voice called, “Come in.”

Tracy opened the door and slipped inside. Unlike the rest of the stark, gray-walled cubicles, which were only personalized with whatever an employee brought from home, Gilliam’s office was furnished well, if not plushly.

Tracy always felt as if she were entering a bank officer’s workplace. The caramel-colored carpet was thick enough that she barely felt the concrete floor under her leather pumps, and the walls were actually paneled with a light-colored wood. His desk wasn’t a standard-issue metal-and-partical-board affair, either, but also made of wood—cherry, she thought. The surface was spotless, not even a piece of paper on it, only a flat-screen monitor attached by a sleek swivel arm so it could be pushed out of the way when necessary. Gilliam claimed that he had inherited the furnishings from his predecessor, but Tracy knew differently; she had seen the order invoices. Yet another efficient use of the company budget. Executives never learn that they can’t hide anything from a computer geek, she thought.

“Ah, Tracy, thanks for dropping by.”

When she had first met Gilliam, Tracy had searched for the one word that described him best, and had come up with
unctuous,
since it sounded slightly better than
oily.

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Dressed in a pinstriped shirt with coordinated suspenders, and sporting gelled, dark brown hair that was never out of place, with gold, wire-rimmed glasses on his pale, round face, Gilliam was the epitome of middle-management bureaucracy.

“My pleasure, sir. You wanted to discuss my latest report?” Tracy knew from long experience that it was best to keep her boss focused on the task at hand, the better to get it over with as soon as possible. If she didn’t, he might make an attempt at small talk, which would be a punish-ment worse than receiving bad news in the first place.

“Yes, the waste-contamination analysis. First, I’m pleased to say that it was very good work—I really liked what I saw there.”

“Sir?” The curveball threw Tracy. Normally Gilliam was bluntly dismissive of anything that he didn’t automatically jump all over. The hair on the back of her neck rose; something was up, but she didn’t know what.

“Unfortunately, your threat-assessment estimate is too low at this time to forward this through the proper channels. However, I’d like to table it for a revisit in about three months. I’ll just hang on to this version, and we’ll see about further consideration when the proper time comes up,” he said.

Well, a partial victory was better than none at all, Tracy thought as she nodded. “Thank you, sir. I’m glad to hear that. Is there anything else?”

“No, you’re free to go.” Having summarily dismissed her, his attention had already returned to the computer monitor. Tracy knew that this was as good as it was going to get. She rose to leave, and was halfway to the door when he spoke again.

“Oh, there is one more thing.”

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She turned and waited for him to speak.

“Your application for one of the next fusion centers that is about to open—I thought you’d like to know it’s coming up for review in the next few days.”

The fusion centers were a new program, the DHS’s version of boots on the ground. In effect, they were local-ized offices in each of seventeen sectors across the country, where staff would work local law enforcement and private-sector companies in a more closely coordinated joint effort.

Tracy had been working toward a position in one of them from the moment she’d heard about the plan. The way Gilliam had brought it up was just like him—wait until she’d thought the meeting was over, and then spring this bit of news as a surprise.

“Yes, sir?” she said, waiting.

“I was wondering if you’d given any thought as to where you’d like to be posted. Although I’d hate to see you leave my team, I could put in a good word if you had a particular assignment venue in mind.”

Tracy’s instincts screamed at her to proceed with care.

He’s never this nice. What’s going on?
“Thank you, sir. I understand that an office will be opening in Virginia at some point, and I was hoping that could I transfer there.”

Gilliam removed his glasses and polished them, then did something Tracy couldn’t remember seeing since she had come to work for him—he smiled. Instead of reassuring her, the expression filled her with a vague sense of unease, especially since he looked like a cat that had just eaten a dozen canaries. She resisted looking down to see if there were any yellow feathers on her lapel.

“Well, I’ll see what I can do—pending HR’s approval, of course.”

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“Of course, sir. Thanks again.” She walked to the door and let herself out, all the while wondering what trap she may have inadvertently stepped into.

Kate Cochran pushed up her viewscreen glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had just logged out of a quickly convened meeting with the members of the International Intelligence Agency, the governing body that had set up and now oversaw Room 59’s operations. The shadowy figures—literally faceless silhouettes in a virtual, heavily secured conference room, which was all Kate or anyone else who worked in Room 59 ever saw of them—

met to deliver assignments, or, in this case, to discuss a potential mission that any sector director brought to the table.

Kate had conferenced in Pai Kun for support, and the diminutive Chinese head of Asian operations had performed with his usual spotless efficiency. Kate had also done well, opening a continuing surveillance file on Kryukov to find out what he knew about the suitcase nuke, and to try to track it down. The board, as concerned as the two directors were about missing nuclear weapons, voted both missions green with no opposition.