Both men froze in their tracks, knowing the next sound they would hear would be machine gun fire — if they were lucky enough to hear anything at all.
Two paratroopers with red, white, and blue 82nd Airborne patches on their sleeves came forward into the light dressed in universal camouflaged ACUs, carbines pulled tightly into their shoulders. “Weapons on the ground!” one of them bellowed. “Now!”
“Take it easy,” Crosswhite said, noting their unit insignia and muttering to Tuckerman, “Let me do the talkin’.”
“This should be good,” Tuckerman mumbled, dropping the M4 and putting up his hands.
Crosswhite’s weapon clattered to the asphalt half a second later. “Don’t shoot,” he said coolly. “We’re all on the same side here.” He lifted his hands casually, no higher than his shoulders. “Captain Daniel Crosswhite, Special Forces.”
Tuckerman couldn’t help releasing an ironic snigger that very nearly caused Crosswhite to lose his military bearing and bust up laughing.
16
CIA Director Shroyer sat in the back of an armored limousine facing White House Chief of Staff Tim Hagen as they traveled north along the interstate toward Baltimore, where the CIA had set up a temporary headquarters well away from Langley, Virginia, now considered a potential target for nuclear attack.
“… And with the national election only two months away,” Hagen was saying, “our victory is far from assured. Public sentiment is shifting against the president for the first time since before the Sandra Brux abduction, and it’s shifting fast enough to cause him genuine concern. Even small-town America is frightened of being nuked, and so far we’ve done nothing to alleviate their fear. The declaration of martial law has backfired in a big way — as I knew it would — and pulling the 82nd out of Chicago isn’t likely going to help. It’s going to make the president look weak, whether or not voters agreed with the occupation in the first place. We need a resolution, George, and we need it fast. We have to find that fucking bomb.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Shroyer loosened his tie. “It’s worse than looking for a needle in a goddamn haystack. What about the FBI? NSA? Why aren’t you climbing up their asses? We’re supplying them all the intel we’ve got, but our resources are limited with the search being inside the US. You know CIA doesn’t have any official jurisdiction.”
Hagen leveled his gaze. “Which is exactly why you and I are having this conversation.”
This caught Shroyer off guard. “Excuse me?”
“The president feels the urgency of circumstances may call for some behind the scenes tactics,” Hagen explained. “With FBI and NSA having so much constitutional red tape to deal with, it’s very possible they just don’t have the necessary flexibility to bring this crisis to the immediate resolution we all require.” He took a moment to check an incoming text, and then continued. “He feels that since no one in Congress will be expecting CIA to operate independently within our borders, that no one will suspect them should anything untoward take place during the hunt for the bomb. Our nation is in a desperate state of flux, and, as everyone knows, desperate times often call for desperate measures.”
Flexing his fingers, Shroyer glanced out the window at the passing cityscape and then allowed his gaze to shift back toward Hagen. “Is it safe for me to assume, then, that the rest of this conversation will be off the record?”
Hagen shrugged. “My entire trip out here is off the record.”
“In that case, it sounds to me like you’re giving me the go-ahead to resume domestic black operations. Is that what you’re doing?”
“To my knowledge,” Hagen replied innocently, “there has never been a domestic black operation, so I have no idea as to what you might be resuming, but in any event, it doesn’t sound like you’re catching my meaning. Maybe it would help if you took a moment to consider some of the more colorful events in recent CIA history.”
“Such as?” Shroyer said dryly.
“Well, are there or are there not certain persons within the company who have a fairly recent history of operating far outside their authority — persons of various talents who could be rather easily disavowed, or perhaps even brought to trial, in the event that it became necessary in order to protect the White House?”
Shroyer understood that he could all too easily find himself the subject of a congressional investigation if he were to accept such a cryptic, off-the-record conversation as clearance for the resumption of domestic Black Operations. “I need assurances, Tim.”
“Of course,” Hagen replied. “And I’m authorized to provide them — so long as you can assure me that you at least have a viable place to start.”
Shroyer bit his lip and nodded. “The evidence is weak, almost nonexistent,” he admitted, “but we may have a thin lead on the Chechen insurgent we’re looking for. It’s complicated, though. We’ll have to go through his Saudi financier to get to him — if he is a financier — a low-level member of the House of Saud named Muhammad Faisal. Another rub is that he happens to be a naturalized American citizen.”
Hagen smiled with satisfaction, for of course he had suggested the gambit of resuming domestic Black Ops to the president himself, knowing in his bones that CIA couldn’t possibly have shared 100 percent of their intel with their rival intelligence agencies—they never did. He took a small bottle of Evian water from the limo’s built-in refrigerator, unscrewed the cap, and settled back comfortably into the seat with a casual gesture at the secure telephone in the console.
“May I suggest you start making calls, George? There’s no telling how long we’ve got. We may be out of time already.”
Shroyer picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory. “This is Shroyer,” he said. “Get me Bob Pope with the Special Activities Division.” He sat back in the seat and waited nearly a minute before Pope came on the line.
“Bob?” he said. “It’s George. I’m sitting here with the White House chief of staff. Do you have anything more to add to what we talked about last week concerning Muhammad Faisal?”
“Nothing at all,” Pope said. “You told me to stand down on that.”
“Well, the weather’s changed,” Shroyer said, locking eyes with Hagen. “You’re a go. Find the bomb.” He hung up the phone and sat looking out the window.
“Will he be able to find it?” Hagen asked after a few moments.
“Christ, how do I know?” Shroyer said tetchily. “I just hope you know what you’ve cleared me to do — or more precisely, what you’ve cleared me to clear him to do. Pope sees all life on earth as some kind of damn sociology experiment. I don’t even know what the hell he’s talking about half the time. He’s liable to pull anything.”
Hagen absentmindedly brushed a speck of lint from his pant leg. “Yes, well, let me worry about Pope. He’s not as well insulated as he thinks he is.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he’s got a weakness for younger women,” Hagen said, “and one of his little Asian protégées has been playing him for a fool, feeding intel to the Chinese. NSA caught onto her last month. Pretty soon we’ll have enough on him that it won’t matter who he’s got files on. Not even the devil himself will be able to cover his ass.”
A shadow crossed Shroyer’s brow. “Why wasn’t I told?”
Hagen shrugged. “You obviously don’t share everything with NSA, why should they share with you? Either way, no matter how this crisis ends, Pope’s days with SAD are numbered. Let’s just hope he’s got enough gas left in the tank to find that RA-115 before it’s too late.”