Even before the big airplane came to a complete halt, a dozen armed Air Force security troops formed a perimeter around the aircraft.
McGarvey had insisted on remaining in Denver until Shaw was cleared to travel, in part because the delay was only a couple of hours, and in part because he and Katy needed the rest. Overnight, Adkins had briefed him on the bin Laden tape. He suspected that the coming days were going to be intense.
The hijacking of the Spirit and the attempted kidnapping of Shaw were only the tip of the iceberg. And no one at Langley expected the threatened terrorist attacks to be the end of it unless bin Laden and the rest of his fanatical al-Quaida planners were bagged.
The president was going to speak to the nation at 8 P.M. Eastern. Before then, the CIA would have to coordinate the development of the latest National Intelligence Estimate and the Watch Report, both of which detailed the current and expected future threats to the U.S. Then the president would have to be briefed; he needed to know his options, which could range from all-out war to a purely political move such as demanding UN sanctions against whatever country or countries harbored terrorists.
A one-on-one surgical strike, of the variety that McGarvey was intimately familiar with, would be included in the list of possible actions.
So far as McGarvey was concerned, it was the only option.
He could see Khalil’s hands on Katy, his pistol pointed at her head. He could hear the cries of the young mother desperately searching for her baby in the water. He could hear the screams of panic as the cruise ship was sinking.
Bin Laden’s taped message had been downloaded to McGarvey’s PDA very early this morning, even before it had been hand-carried to the White House, and he’d watched it several times.
There was no doubt in his mind that the tape was authentic and had been recorded last week, but there was something about bin Laden that didn’t set right with McGarvey He had met the man several years ago, and had spent enough time with him to form a vivid impression of how he looked, how he acted, how he spoke.
The man in the tape was bin Laden, but there was something wrong with him. It was something that seemed wrong to McGarvey. He had been turning it over in his mind for the past couple of hours without being able to put his finger on exactly what it was that bothered him. But it was something.
He had spent several hours on a secure phone link with Adkins and with Otto Rencke, his director of special projects as well as with his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Todd Van Buren, both of whom were currently instructors for the CIA’s internal operations course at the Farm.
Priority one was finding out who Khalil was and where he was hiding. He was bin Laden’s right-hand man and chief planner, which meant he had not only been responsible for the attempted hijacking, but he had also had a hand in setting up the new round of threatened terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Get to Khalil soon enough, and we might be able to stop them once and for all.
“How’s mother?” Elizabeth had asked at one point.
It was around three in the morning, and McGarvey had just finished watching bin Laden’s monstrous tape for the fourth or fifth time. “She’s sleeping. But she came out of it okay.”
“Promise?”
“Scout’s honor,” McGarvey said, feeling a wave of love and protectiveness for his daughter and for his wife. Both of them, along with Elizabeth’s unborn baby, the baby her mother was carrying, were legitimate targets in bin Laden’s world.
The bastard and his henchmen were going to die. And their deaths would not be pleasant. No trumpets, no angels on gossamer wings transporting them to Paradise, only pain and then lights out.
One hour out, Katy had touched up her makeup and fixed her hair, but now as a crewman opened the forward door she still looked tired and worried. She squeezed her husband’s hand. “Will we be able to stop them before they hit us this time?” They were dressed in the Coast Guard utilities that they’d been given after they’d been rescued from the sound by the Storis.
Of all the people McGarvey wanted to reassure, his wife was at the top of the list. But he had to give her the same answer that he would have to give the president: “It’s not likely. But no matter what happens, it’s over for them now, for sure.”
Katy’s eyes filled, and she turned away momentarily to look out the window. “Nobody will trust anybody. It’ll be worse than after 9/11,” she said, a bitter edge to her voice.
McGarvey had considered that possibility, and he thought that Katy was probably right. “Once the tape is broadcast, no parent is going to feel safe anywhere, not even in their own home.”
Katy shook her head. “It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”
“Yes, it is.”
Shaw was still sedated, but Karen gave them a hug; then she gave McGarvey a searching look. “Thank you for what you did for us. But this time let’s finish the job.”
“You can count on it,” McGarvey told her. He looked down at the SecDef lying on the stretcher. Shaw was pale, but he did not seem to be in any distress. “Take care of him; he’s a good man.”
Karen nodded, a sudden look of fierce determination on her pleasant face. “You can count on it.”
McGarvey shook hands with the medical crew, then handed over the sidearms he and Katy had borrowed in Juneau to one of the aircrew. “See that these get back to the Storis.”
He helped his wife off the aircraft, shook a few more hands, and accepted what he figured was probably just the start of a lot of tiresome congratulations for simply doing his job. Then Adkins hustled them into the backseat of the limo, after first introducing Neal Julien, McGarvey’s new bodyguard.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Julien said. He was a sturdy, chocolate-skinned man with a warm smile, a round nearly bald head, and a mellifluous voice that held a hint of a Bermudan accent. His manner was pleasant but professional.
“Watching over me has become a dangerous job,” McGarvey told him.
“Yes, it has, Mr. Director,” Julien said.
The SecDef was being carried off the aircraft when the DCI’s limo, with two vans in front and two in the rear, headed up to Chevy Chase, Julien in constant radio contact with the two dozen Office of Security operators in the four vans. They had no police escort, but McGarvey figured there would be at least one chase helicopter armed with air-to-ground missiles somewhere in the vicinity The bad guys might bag a DCI elsewhere, but it wouldn’t happen here on his home territory.
“What’s the drill this morning?” McGarvey asked his deputy director.
“I went through your list overnight, and everybody’s up to speed,” Adkins said. Since his wife died the previous year, he had no one at home, so he had thrown himself into his work. He was content to remain the DDCI, putting McGarvey’s orders into effect and sometimes smoothing over his boss’s administrative rough edges when needed. “We’ll get you home first so that you can change clothes. We’ve swept your house and grounds, and set up a solid perimeter, so Mrs. McGarvey will be okay for the time being. But I still think you should get to the safe house.”
“They weren’t after me,” McGarvey said. The last couple of times they had run to ground had not been very successful anyway.
Adkins shrugged, knowing it was the answer he would receive. “The staff meeting is set up for ten-thirty, and the full National Security Council meets at noon at the White House. We should have the NIE and Watch Report pretty well cobbled together by then.”