The Threat (4 page)

Dan frowned, trying to get his head around why the military didn't want to participate. That didn't make sense.

As soon as Desert Storm wrapped, everyone had expected that peace dividend. The Republicans wanted lower taxes. The Democrats wanted to fund social programs. The idea of being ready for war seemed like an anachronism. A lot of people saw the military-industrial complex as a blind and hungry wolf, swinging its muzzle to and fro as it searched desperately for the next threat.

Sometime he saw it that way too. But at other times, his complacent, tolerant, unsuspicious country looked more like a staked-out hog, around which predators circled in a threatening night.

He said, “I read the presidential directive. Sounds like he thinks this is the new big threat.”

“There's a case,” Bloom said, his attention engaged at last. “The Russians and Cubans used to fund all these terrorist organizations along the spine of Central America. Now that teat's gone, the producers, the traffickers, and the terrorists are doing a mating dance. These are not a bunch of barefoot boys from the barrio doing things on a whim. They've got technical training, the latest weapons and equipment, and strict operational security.”

“Their interests interlock,” Meilhamer said. “The armed groups can undermine and eventually overthrow the governments. The traffickers fund them in exchange for protection. And the producers, well, the weaker the government, the freer they are to operate. Right now the relations are local. The Shining Path in Peru. FARC in Colombia. But if they start coordinating operations…”

“We've got a fucking war,” Bloom finished for him.

Dan had read the speculation in
Defense News
and
Armed Forces Journal
about the next threat. He had personal reasons for disliking China, a country that would soon have the industrial horsepower to present a serious challenge. There was also the possibility of a resurgent Russia. And the fanatical Muslim terrorists who'd attacked
Horn
.

But maybe this was the real menace of the future. Ruthless multinational criminal syndicates, with their own banking, logistics, intelligence, armies.

“Right now,” Meilhamer said, “they're on the defensive. With the aerostats and patrols we've just about got the cork in in the Caribbean and Gulf. And this new guy in Colombia—”

“Tejeiro,” Bloom put in.

“—Edgar Tejeiro, the new president, he sounds serious about clamping down. If he'd cooperate, root 'em out on the producer end, that'd be a double whammy.” After a moment he added, “Of course, it'd be dangerous for him too. You make these people mad, the default is to blow you away.”

“We could actually make some progress then?” Dan said. “With this Tejeiro? I'd like to find out more about him.”

“You want Luis for that. He does most of the interfacing with the host governments down there.”

*   *   *

Luis Alvarado brought in a PowerPoint brief on his ThinkPad. The Coast Guardsman said trafficking via the Bahamas and the Caribbean had gone up and down since importation started in the sixties. Fought to a trickle in the late eighties, when the product had been mainly grass, flown in to dirt airstrips, it had rebounded once traffickers got their hands on Global Positioning Systems. Now they precision-dropped cocaine at night. Intercepting them took a cruiser to track aircraft out of the Barranquilla Peninsula. When that net got too tight, he predicted, they'd fly at low level up Central America, land in Mexico, and jump across the border by road, with local cops paid not to notice. There were signs traffic was rerouting already.

“How about Tejeiro?” Dan asked him. “Is he serious in these promises he's making to move against the traffickers?”

“It might cut down on the coke supply,” Alvarado said. “But the meth suppliers will just pick up the slack. The only real answer to addiction is to cut down the demand side of the equation.” He glanced at Bloom. “Education. Awareness programs. Maybe even partial decriminalization.”

“Then the pusher goes for the fifth-grader instead of the teen,” the DEA agent said. “Ever go into a ward, see the babies addicted to crack? Do that, you won't talk about legalization.”

“I'm not talking about legalizing crack, Miles.”

“You remove the stigma, you'll have ten times as many fucking addicts.”

Dan sensed a long-running argument and stepped in. “Thanks, Luis, Miles. I'd like to have a few minutes with Major Harlowe now.”

*   *   *

Dan laced his fingers, listening to Marty Harlowe's oral brief on Asia. Like every marine he'd ever met, she projected perfect self-assurance. Unlike the others, she also looked very good in patterned stockings. She said the rate of initiation for new heroin users in the U.S. was climbing again, and typical age of first use was down to seventeen. In Burma, the United Wa State Army, what Harlowe called a “narco-insurgent group” linked to the junta, was trafficking methamphetamine and heroin into California. Dan asked her if there was a link to China too.

“Definitely. They provide Wa with ephedrine, a methamphetamine precursor. Along with weapons, computers, software, communications … The drugs go through Chinese shipping channels to Canada, and into the U.S. through motorcycle gangs.”

“How do we know all this?”

“The royal Thai government. Operation Tiger Trap. I can give you chapter and verse if you want it.”

One of the items of discussion at the meeting that morning, in fact the one Mrs. Clayton had spoken so sharply about, had been approval of what Dan understood to be the export of satellite stabilization technology to China. Now he asked, “What's the State Department's take? Do they ever put Beijing on report?”

“Not a good idea,” Meilhamer put in. “Commerce is powerful in this administration. They're pushing hard to get access to the Chinese market.”

“Yeah, but they can't have it all their own way. Importing our technology, exporting us drugs.”

“I'd run anything like that past the senior director first,” Meilhamer said firmly. “Really. Commander … you've just taken over this ship, remember. That's deep water where you're headed.”

Dan thought of pointing out that shallow water was what a skipper worried about, not deep, but decided that would sound like nit-picking.

When they were gone he swiveled his chair and looked down into the creeping gloom in the courtyard. Rolled his head around, trying to work out the kinks, though it actually didn't feel that bad today. Some people—his previous commanders—had accused him of having a hair trigger. But what was the point in gathering the intel, finding out where the shit came from, if you didn't try to close the spigot?

He knew this much by now: It was better to come out of the gate bucking. Start off as a chair warmer, it was too easy to stay one. But if you charged off in the wrong direction, you might end up stampeding over a cliff.

Thank God there was one enlisted around to serve as a reality check. “Ihlemann!” he shouted.

“What?” she yelled back, just as loud.

“Grab yourself a cup of coffee, Sergeant. Then get in here and tell me how things really work around this friggin' place.”

4

Over the next weeks, he began to find his way around.

He went to the Indian Treaty Room for a retirement ceremony, some old-timer gold-watching out of Systems and Technical Planning. This was a majestic space, with green marble, encaustic tile, bronze sconces with shield-bearing cherubs, opal glass chandeliers, and a glorious view of the Jefferson Memorial. Less splendid was the Old Executive cafeteria at 0630, with its high-school steam tables and no place to sit. The gated courtyard where the Roadrunners were parked, mirror-black Econoline vans that acted as command centers when the president went on the road. The pressroom, with the worn folding seats of a 1940s movie theater, filled day and night with bored, unshaven reporters and cameramen. The White House mess, where you could order a burger on the tab, and pick it up at the window outside the Sit Room.

Connected to the West Wing by a short corridor was the White House itself. Wandering through the public rooms on his lunch hour, looking at paintings, china, exquisite antiques, it felt to him more like a museum than a residence. The first family lived on the second floor, with the most private and informal areas on the nearly invisible third. Beneath everything lay a noisy, smell-filled basement that was busy at all hours, like the kitchen and scullery of some great hotel. A concrete-walled ditch in front of the North Portico let staffers cross from the West to the East Wing without going through the ceremonial spaces. A basement archway still showed black smudge marks the British destruction party had left in 1812. To the south lay the clipped and fragrant rectilinearities of the South Lawn, glistening in the mornings with the rainbows of spray irrigation on the Rose Garden; a running track; and the heli pad for
Marine One
.

The political staff, who seemed to Dan very youthful, operated in a different world than the military. He sensed standoffishness from the permanent staff too. They were polite, but had the air of residents watching the transients pass. The Secret Service were like Terminators in business suits, as if the radios plugged into their ears had taken over their brains. His only unpleasant encounter was with a young female staffer he'd asked for directions to the East Colonnade. She'd glanced at his haircut and turned away without a word. There certainly seemed to be a lot of them about—young, good-looking women.

But he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. Work sucked him into its vortex. He read interagency approvals. He spent a lot of time on the phone. Meilhamer told him to go to all the meetings he could, to get his face known. Sounded reasonable, but sometimes Dan wondered if his assistant preferred to have him out of the office. He'd gone to a session of the Iraq working group, which discussed Saddam's defiance of the inspection regime. When an attendee from Commerce had questioned the embargo, Dan had been able to make some points about its effectiveness, based on his time in the Red Sea and the Gulf.

This afternoon he was due at the National Photographic Interpretation Center. For something that close, he took the Metro, a three-block walk through downtown to the Farragut West station. When he got off at the Navy Yard stop it was another two blocks to the west gate. The last time he'd lived in D.C., this had been a dangerous section. Now it showed signs of gentrification.

A CIA counternarcotics specialist asked the attendees not to make notes, then began explaining how multispectrum overhead imagery could do crop estimates in Peru. Find individual pot plants in national forests. Show upturned faces on a boat being loaded at a Guajira pier. Unfortunately, it was less useful above triple-canopy jungle, where the processing took place. What Dan found interesting was the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls. The briefer said if assets were requested in advance, and the environment was radio frequency–quiet, they could provide real-time relay of cell conversations. “Given, of course, that they're not scrambled,” he added. “And that this administration doesn't cut the program, along with the rest of our high-technology assets they're throwing out.”

Dan raised his hand. “We can't decode?”

“Year before last we could. Now companies are marketing systems we can't break.”

When the brief was over he checked his watch. He'd already told Meilhamer he wouldn't be back in the office. He had an appointment out in Fairfax. One he'd made weeks before, and wasn't about to break.

*   *   *

“Dad! Over here!”

His daughter leaped and waved in front of a new-looking redbrick dorm. Her legs were brown in shorts. He swallowed, dizzied by how much she looked like her mother.

Nan gave him a quick hug. Said into his ear, “Boy, Dad, I almost didn't recognize you out of uniform.”

He tried to smile. “They don't like 'em where I work.”

“The White House, right? My roommate was so impressed.”

Strolling around a huge lawn where the students were tossing Frisbees or lying together on blankets, she told him about her courses. She didn't have to decide till sophomore year, but thought she'd try for a bachelor's in life sciences and maybe a master's in molecular medicine.

“Holy smoke,” he said.
“Molecular medicine?”

“I know, but they've got a world-class biotechnology program.” She wanted to take economics and Japanese too. She was already on the tennis team. Did he want to play a game? He said he was out of practice, hadn't brought his racket. Instead he proposed a snack at a café overlooking the campus. “So, what's new with your mom?”

“She's the dean now. She does yoga these days. Says it helps with the stress.”

“I can imagine. How's Ted?”

“Oh, the same. How's Blair?”

“She's good. Really busy, but we'll take you out to dinner. The Four Seasons, maybe.”

“So who's more important, her or you?”

He had to grin. “She swings a lot more weight in this town than a Navy commander.”

“You know, I met a guy from the Navy once. In an airport. I asked him if he knew you. He said everybody did. You were a … what did he call you … a warfighter. Like, you'd really done stuff. Dangerous stuff.”

“Most people don't have that positive an opinion.”

“He said you got the Medal of Honor. You never told me that.”

He looked away. “It's not something you make a big deal about, Punkin.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“Because the guys who really deserved it didn't make it out.”

“Didn't make it out of where?”

“The Middle East. Actually Iraq.”

“And, what—you don't deserve it, because these
other
guys got killed?”