One Rough Man (27 page)

He typed up Pike’s paragraph, adding some of his own observations, and launched it out, including the Counterterrorism Center on the distro, along with the usual Latin American Affairs desks. He included the crypt that Pike had given him.

 

 

THE CABLE TRAVELED AT THE SPEED OF THE INTERNET, instantly residing in the in-boxes of the people he had put on the distro. Because of the crypt, it was rerouted to several select boxes as well.

Seconds later, alarms began to go off in some of the most powerful offices in Washington, D.C. Some had official titles; others were simply oak doors with no indication of what was behind them. The crypt that Pike had given was unique to his last unit, and was guaranteed to get attention. It was a verification, sometimes a distress code that allowed operators working in deep cover to send a message through “ordinary” CIA channels during extreme situations, when established communications had failed. It had never been used. It was designed to get attention, and within a second or two of Eric’s finger depressing the button on his computer’s mouse, it had done its job.

 

 

INSIDE TASKFORCE HEADQUARTERS, the duty officer sat staring at a computer screen, bored out of his mind. The man was dressed in casual business attire, but like everyone else in the office, except the little old ladies downstairs, he looked like an athlete. He always wondered if maybe they shouldn’t change their cover to something with professional sports.
Maybe be Jerry Maguire’s D.C. office or something. Maybe hire Kelly Preston to roam around here, solidifying the cover.
Before his mind could wander to something less savory, the computer at his desk signaled an incoming message. He stood up and printed it out, giving a low whistle when he saw the crypt.

He took the cable directly to Kurt Hale’s office. He knew Kurt was in the process of packing up to go on a date night with his wife, something they hadn’t done in over six months. He saw Kurt’s expression change when he walked in, Kurt recognizing that his night might be shot.

“What’s up, Mike?”

“We got a Prometheus message five minutes ago.”

Kurt stopped what he was doing, running through his mind the two active operations currently ongoing. Only Knuckles was anywhere near an endgame. The other operation was still in the formative stages, laying the groundwork for execution two or three months from now. A Prometheus alert meant something had gone very badly for someone.

“Which Team?”

“Well, that’s what’s strange. I think it’s from Pike. It’s not from anyone active here.”

“Pike? Pike Logan?” Before Mike could respond, Kurt realized he was asking questions that Mike couldn’t possibly answer. He reversed himself and said, “Okay. Let me see the cable. And holler down the hall at George.”

“You got it. Here’s the message.”

Kurt read the cable, a short, simple paragraph. Skipping through the usual disclaimers about walk-ins, no established reporting record, and the ominous “Contact may have been attempting to influence as well as inform” trailer, he read:

It was impossible that anyone on earth would know the Prometheus alert crypt unless Pike had told them, and in Kurt’s mind, it was equally impossible that Pike would have told anyone such a secret. On the other hand, the Pike he knew might no longer exist.
Maybe he’s slipped down completely, and is selling plasma on the street for his next bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, babbling secrets to anyone who will listen.
Kurt rejected that, as it didn’t explain how a stranger was able to contact the CIA in an overseas embassy, then send the message. Everything pointed to its being Pike, however bizarre it appeared. Even so, they would need to confirm the identity before proceeding. Kurt turned at the knock on the door, seeing his friend and deputy commander.

“How long’s it been since you made a trip to Central America?”

George looked puzzled by the question. “Well, not since we were supporting the Contras back in the good ol’ days. Are they now the next terrorist threat? We going down to take them out?”

Kurt chuckled, filling him in on what he knew, then saying, “Call the station down there and let them know we’re coming. Tell them to contact whoever’s calling himself Pike. If it’s him, we’ll figure out what’s going on. If it’s not, we’ll figure out where the breach occurred. Either way, this is too big of a problem to ignore. We should be able to get down and back in one day, two at the most.”

“Easy enough. I assume we’re leaving tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a date tonight that I can’t miss.”

A
few miles away, Harold Standish sat at his desk in the Old Executive Office Building, silently reading the Prometheus cable. He saw an opportunity. A way to get America back on war footing, and get control of the Taskforce at the same time. A way to strengthen the defense of the United States.
If the whiners on the Oversight Council are too timid to preempt an attack, maybe they need to see one up close
.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. America had lost its focus on terrorism precisely because it hadn’t been attacked in close to a decade. The stupid electorate had the memory of a bovine, conveniently forgetting the threat, instead lambasting the very government that provided their protection.
A WMD going off would wake them the fuck up, that’s for sure
. There would be a feeding frenzy just like 9/11. All the politicians would be screaming for action. The Oversight Council would have to bend with the pressure. The Taskforce would be turned loose.
With any luck, the council will be too busy doing their day jobs to look closely at Taskforce activities. I’ll be the man left at the wheel. It’s not like my day job takes up a lot of time.

Standish paused, realizing he was thinking about the slaughter of untold innocent civilians, not simply numbers in a news report. He pondered the cost and benefits. He decided the deaths were necessary.
Great leaders throughout history have had to make hard choices such as this.
He knew that Truman himself had made the decision to drop the atomic bomb based on this very same principle
. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians killed to save millions of Americans. This is no different. There’s a greater good here.
He, of course, would need to go on vacation for about a month to ensure he was out of the blast radius, should Washington be in the crosshairs.
This town could stand to lose a little deadweight anyway.

He called his in-staff intelligence officer and asked him to run down any “chatter” on terrorist threats within the last three days involving the words
Israel, WMD, Iran,
and
poison weapons
. Within thirty minutes, the man arrived with fourteen NSA reports that had some tangential relationship to the search criteria. Most were clearly not what Standish was looking for, only detailing vague information of little value. Using the Prometheus cable, he necked down the reports until he found a NSA cut describing a WMD attack against Israel. He didn’t have the background in terrorism to understand the reference to the far enemy, and was unsure why the intercept mentioned the historical state of Persia instead of the modern nomenclature of Iran, but since this was the only bit of intelligence that talked of pushing the Zionists into the sea via a single weapon—something that anyone could understand—he honed in on it, noting the reference to something called Operation Badr. He was pleased to see the intel was raw, meaning nobody had analyzed it yet, and thus nobody knew it existed.

“Ken, run a search on Operation Badr. Bring me what you find immediately.”

Five minutes later Ken returned with a single message. “This is the only thing that’s come in with those search terms.”

Standish read the report, which simply said that Operation Badr was progressing and that a device had been tested successfully. He connected the dots. “Okay, do an open-source search on anything strange happening in Belize. Focus on a group of unexplained deaths. See if anyone in the press has reported anything like that.”

After another wait, Ken returned, saying, “There was nothing in Belize. The only thing I could find was a bus crash on the border, but it was on the Guatemalan side.”

“What’s so fucking strange about that? I told you unexplained deaths.”

“Well, everyone on the bus died, but nobody died from the crash.” He handed the press report to Standish. “Apparently, they all died of some strange illness.”

Standish read the news report and smiled.
The weapon’s real
. “Ken, I want you to destroy any mention of these two intercepts about Operation Badr. Figure out who else got them, and erase them. Do it without their knowledge. Those reports never existed. Understand?”

Ken, a sycophant cut from Standish’s mold, didn’t question the directive. “Easy enough. I’ll do it as soon as I get back to my office.”

“Good. In addition, I got a cable from Belize today. Rescind that cable as well. Ensure it also doesn’t exist.” He gave the intelligence officer the cable cite number.

Ken asked, “What about the station in Belize? Won’t they ask why it was rescinded?”

“I’ll handle the station when they come in to work tomorrow. Just get rid of the cable right now.”

“Okay—I’m on it.”

Standish reflected on what he knew. On the one hand, it was a golden opportunity to accomplish exactly what he believed was necessary. On the other, while not out of control yet, it was an opportunity that had quite a few leaks. He had managed to stop the raw intel from being spread but couldn’t be sure about the Prometheus cable.
If that thing’s not rescinded in time, I’ll never be able to deny I knew about it.
Luckily, it had come from Belize. CTC would probably shunt that cable to the back of the pack, focusing on Pakistan, Iran, and whatever else was brewing right now.
They won’t give a shit one way or another about a rescinded cable from Central America.

His primary problem was the Taskforce. They would get the Prometheus alert and would act on it. He had to shut them down right away. There was no love lost between himself and the unit, but they would listen to him, since they were still on shaky ground and couldn’t afford an enemy of his stature. He could bring them down with a well-placed leak, and they knew it.

He called the Taskforce duty officer, went secure on his STE telephone, identified himself, and asked if the unit was planning any new movement in the next twenty-four hours.

On the other end, the duty officer Mike, knowing who it was, stated no. He didn’t literally lie, as his bosses were traveling true-name as part of their true affiliation—Kurt as a member of J3 SOD, and George as a TDY member of the Office of Southern Hemispheric Relations—thus they weren’t traveling under any of the covers used by the Taskforce. His answer was technically correct—there was no Taskforce movement. Standish next asked to speak to the commander and was told that he was out.

Standish hung up after leaving a message for Kurt to call first thing in the morning. He was satisfied that he was good for the time being. The cap was in place.

I
woke up to the phone ringing, answered and perked up, replying quickly and ending the call. I saw that Jennifer was awake and leaning on an elbow, wearing a cheap tourist T-shirt with her hair sticking out all over the place, making me grin. Rubbing her eyes, she asked who was on the phone.

“It was the embassy. They want to see us at ten o’clock. The cable must have worked, because we’ve been invited behind the green curtain. We get to talk to the wizard.”

Waking up fast, Jennifer tried to brush her hair in place, asking, “What’s that mean? Who’d you talk to?”

“That was the asshole Eric.”
Shit . . . Be nice. . . .
“Sorry. That was the nice man from the embassy, Eric. He asked us to come back.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it? Do we need to do anything before we go?”

“No. I’m not sure what the cable caused. We’ll just see how it goes. Either way, we got some action, so that’s good.”

She looked at me like I was hiding something, and I was, but she let it go. “Okay, Jason Bourne, I’ll follow your lead.”

When we got to the embassy, even I was surprised at who was waiting.

 

 

STANDISH CALLED THE TASKFORCE first thing in the morning, early enough to get Mike before his twenty-four-hour shift as the duty officer was over. Going secure on his STE, Standish asked to speak to Colonel Hale.

“Sir, he’s gone TDY this morning.”

“
What?
I thought you told me last night that he was out with his wife. Where is he?”

“Sir, he was out with his wife last night. Today he left.”

Who does he think he’s talking to?
“Tell me where he is right this minute.”

“Sir, I can’t give you that information on this phone.”

Standish was on the verge of frothing at the mouth. “I’m on a fucking secure line. You will tell me where he is, right this minute. Do you understand me? Is that clear?”

“Sir, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I must follow security procedures. Colonel Hale’s location is top secret. Your phone is only certified up to secret message traffic. I’m not allowed to tell you his location on this line. Not my rule.”