“You think so?” He put the files he held under his arm on the table and sat down next to her instead of across the table.
“This is my favorite pastry.”
“I know,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner.
Sarah stared at him. He was good-looking, charming, and from the quick search she’d done on his military background in the past half hour, Commander Dunn was destined to move quickly up the Pentagon ranks. He was also divorced, Sarah reminded herself, and he was definitely making some less than subtle moves on her. A very dangerous situation.
“Thanks for the pastry,” she told him. “So what did you find out downstairs?”
“Their best resolution still isn’t good enough to give us faces,” he told her. “But forget about how many scuba tanks they found in the Ways. Not counting McCann and Russell, twelve other people crossed the catwalk and went down the hatch.”
“That means they had help from inside the shipyard, too.”
He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “And they had help from the crew of Hartford,” he said in a confident tone. “The same sailor who was on watch for the hijackers was also guarding the hatch when McCann and Russell boarded.”
“Do you know who that was?”
“Kevin Barclay, twenty one years old, originally from Winona, Mississippi. He’s right out of sub school. Hartford was his first submarine after serving on two surface ships,” Dunn explained. “I’ve already arranged for a crew to be sent to Mississippi to question the parents, neighbors, high school friends, and anyone else willing to talk. We have some NCIS agents going through his apartment in Groton right now.”
“How would a young kid like him turn on his own country?” she murmured.
“How does Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Army veteran of the Persian Gulf War, get to the point of launching his own semi-private war on the United States government?” he asked rhetorically.
“From what I remember, McVeigh was described as an extraordinary contradiction,” Sarah said thoughtfully. “Which brings me to what I’ve been able to find so far on Lee Brody.” She pushed her notes in front of him.
As she talked, he started perusing the lists she’d made. Brody had a lot of characteristics regarding his family and school and lack of social life and restlessness that were actually similar to McVeigh. There was even some mention of him being spotted with a friend at a couple of right-wing fringe group meetings over the past five or six years.
“There’s a basic difference between Brody and McVeigh, though,” Dunn said.
“Yes. The rage that builds up and makes him feel he needs to do one horribly violent act. I don’t see it, either,” Sarah explained. “But it still could be there and we’re just not seeing it.”
Bruce stared at a bookcase across the room. She could see he wasn’t thinking about books.
“This entire situation is very fascinating. This could be a rerun.”
She waited for him to say more, but Dunn sat back in his chair. He took a bite of his donut, drank his coffee. He occasionally opened one of the folders that she had on the table and glanced inside. He went through his own notes, too, and checked a couple of things on the laptop. He was concentrating fully, and she found herself watching him. She wondered what was going through his mind.
She also wondered what he was all about. As a person.
He had a wiry build, maybe five foot ten or eleven. Definitely a runner. He walked and moved with confidence. At the same time, he didn’t overpower. He shared his knowledge but welcomed what others had to offer. Sarah had already seen that, not only in her own dealing with him, but in the way he worked with the rest of the people in their group.
He was not standard navy issue.
She stole a glance at his face. He had a thin face, broken nose, and short, thinning hair that he was definitely not ashamed of. She’d seen a number of officers who were letting their hair grow a little longer on top in a comb over attempt. He had a strong jaw and a well-defined chin. But his eyes were the best part of his face. They were amazing. Green or maybe hazel. No, she definitely thought they were green. They seemed to change every time she looked at them. And they were intense. As reasonably handsome as the individual parts of his face might have been, his eyes pulled all the elements together.
Those eyes turned on her, and there was a long moment of awareness. She shook herself out of it.
“What do you mean, this could be a rerun?” she asked, not too comfortable that he’d caught her looking at him.
“Do you know that demand for the release of the two dozen prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? It’s all bullshit.”
He’d just thrown her for a loop. “What do you mean by that?”
“I had them run a check on the names — looking for any possible connections — and as far as I can tell, none of those people mean anything. From what the preliminary reports show, they’re Afghani nobodies who have just been cooling their heels there for the past few years. They were all scooped up during operations south of Kabul in 2004 and, based on what’s on file, should have been released long before now.”
“That makes no sense.”
“My point exactly.”
“And how is this related to your comment about this situation being a rerun?” Sarah asked again.
“I was thinking back to your comment about the Oklahoma City bombing.”
She nodded. “What about it?”
“Early reports after Oklahoma City suggested that a Middle Eastern terrorist group may have been responsible for the bombing,” he explained. “Even liberal Democrats in Congress were saying it.”
“But within days, federal authorities linked the attack to McVeigh,” she countered.
“Yeah. Days,” he repeated. “We only have hours. Maybe minutes. And while the president is a guy who’d nuke the entire Middle East if Hartford makes one false move, we have enough to suggest that the hijacking might be the work of homegrown boys.”
Sarah swiveled her chair to face him. “You thought that an outsider could be running that submarine.”
“It was a possibility, but the hijackers must be mostly mercenaries hired to do the job. Now, I believe that these men are acting on their own. And that means we could meet all of their demands, real or fake, and they’ll still go out in a blaze of glory, blowing up the entire East Coast.”
She knew he was just thinking out loud, but something about his analysis wasn’t sitting right with her.
“If what you say is correct, then why are they waiting? Why make ultimatums? Why not do what McVeigh did and go after the greatest carnage. Hit us hard and do the most damage possible?”
“Maybe it’s not political. Maybe they’re just after the money, and the rest is just a smoke screen.” He shrugged. “The truth is, I don’t know. But I think that’s what we need to go after. Motivation. We have to figure out what the hell is going on in these people’s minds. But the bottom line stays the same. The combination of guys on that boat just doesn’t sound like a foreign terrorist group.”
One of their aides called out that President Hawkins was going on air with another address to the nation.
Chapter 28
“That’s a wrap,” the director of the camera crew called out.
President Hawkins waited in his chair until the microphone was removed before getting up. He moved past the cameras and lighting equipment to his staff, who were waiting at the other end of the Oval Office.
“How did I come across?” he asked.
Three of the aides blurted out compliments in rapid succession.
“Excellent.”