TWELVE
Bennett put his arm around McCoy's shoulder.
"My guardian angel," he said. "You guys know each other, right?"
"Just over the phone," Ziegler replied, shaking McCoy's hand. "Good to finally meet you in person, Miss McCoy."
"Thanks, JZ. Please, call me Erin — it's nice to finally put a face with the voice."
"I agree. Welcome to Gaza Station."
"Glad to be here, thanks."
"You're welcome. You guys have had a harrowing morning, to say the least."
"You could say that," said McCoy.
"I'm sure you'd like to grab some showers and some rest. But here's the deal. Mr. Bennett, in about fifteen minutes you've got a videoconference with the president and the NSC. Erin, the president wants you in on that as well."
"That's fine," she said. "I'd just like to throw on some dry clothes, but all of our luggage is at the King David in Jerusalem. We don't have anything with us."
"No problem, we'll take care of everything," said Ziegler, directing one of the guys on his team to get clothes and towels for Bennett and his team.
"What's the deal with this weather?" Bennett finally asked.
"Happens every now and dien. You may be with us for a bit."
"Wonderful," said Bennett, lying.
"Any word on the DSS agents?" McCoy asked.
Ziegler looked down. The news could hardly have been worse. Thirty-four DSS agents were confirmed KIA, killed in action. Thirty-one others were missing and presumed dead. He'd just tasked one of his Predator UAVs to monitor the emergency rendezvous point, a coffee shop six blocks from the PLC building run by a CIA informant. Any DSS agents who had survived the initial series of attacks would know to head there immediately and reestablish contact with Black Tower, Gaza Station, or what might be left of the joint operation command, at PLC headquarters. Thus far, the Predator hadn't picked up any signs of life, but Ziegler wasn't giving up hope.
The president looked around the Oval Office.
His senior team huddled around him, around the desk where the Kennedy brothers managed the Cuban missile crisis, where little John John played hide-and-seek, where Reagan stared down the Evil Empire. They needed to start making decisions.
First, MacPherson decided to address the nation at 7:15 a.m. EST. Two hundred seventy million Americans were about to wake up to a horror show. They didn't need play-by-play and color commentary from a bunch of network anchors and armchair analysts. They needed to hear from him directly. They needed to understand what was at stake, and know that someone was in charge. He'd condemn the attack and praise the victims, and he'd vow not to let extremists deter the American government from working for a just and lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. White House Chief of Staff Bob Corsetti took detailed notes, as did Press Secretary Chuck Murray.
It was a good start, but every point generated more questions, some practical, some conceptual. Should it be an address from the Oval Office? A statement in the briefing room? With questions? Without? For now, the president said, it was enough for Murray to put the press corps on notice and ask the networks for airtime.
Second, the president directed Murray to hold his first "gaggle" — an off-camera, background briefing for White House correspondents — promptly at 6:45 a.m. All the major morning shows—Today, Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, CNN's latest incarnation, and whatever CBS was calling their show this week — would begin at the top of the hour with the shocking footage of the suicide bombing or its aftermath, whatever the network executives thought the country could stomach over corn flakes and English muffins. Then they'd cut to the White House for a preview of the live address that was coming. It was critical, therefore, for the correspondents doing their live "stand-ups" out on the North Lawn to be up to speed on the latest details, to understand precisely what the president was thinking and what was likely to happen throughout the day.
The White House needed to get ahead of this story, to shape it and mold it before someone else did. It would be up to Murray—"Answer Man" — to make that happen.
Third, the president told Corsetti to page "Shakespeare" — the president's chief speechwriter — at his home in Old Town Alexandria and get him into the West Wing immediately. The NSC's two speechwriters should also be brought in ASAP. By no later than 6:00 a.m., they'd need to have a solid draft of remarks the president could make to the country. The speechwriting team should look to Corsetti and Kirkpatrick to coordinate the message. They should aim for an address no longer than seven to eight minutes, but it had to be just right, and they had to be done by six so the president could edit and practice it, or, if need be, throw it out and start over.
Bennett scanned the room again.
If he was going to be pinned down in Gaza for a few hours or a few days, Bennett figured this was the place to be.
Ziegler pointed to the five large, flat-screen plasma video monitors on the walls and explained that each displayed live feeds from Predator and Global Hawk UAVs hovering over Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, or from U.S. spy satellites operating overhead. THREATCON maps offered visual displays of the latest regional intelligence assessments from the CIA's Global Operations Center at Langley, CENTCOM's main headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida, as well as the most up-to-date intelli gence on the situation in Iraq via CENTCOM's forward command center in Doha, Qatar. A bank of state-of-the-art notebook computers tracked the latest regional intelligence feeds and periodic updates from the Mossad (Is rael's equivalent of the CIA), Shin Bet (their equivalent of the FBI), and Aman (Israeli military intelligence).
A half dozen high-definition, twenty-seven-inch color televisions gave Zie gler and his team the ability to track local and regional news channels. Each was hooked up to a digital recording system that burned DVDs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, just in case any of the material was found to be needed somewhere down the line.
Meanwhile, a dozen smaller black-and-white monitors showed a rotating series of images from tiny security cameras positioned all over the hotel and grounds upstairs. These images were also digitally recorded, though only kept for twenty-four hours at a time before they were erased and rerecorded. A bank of radio receivers, scanners, and digital recorders simultaneously provided Ziegler and his team the ability to listen to and store local and regional radio broadcasts, as well as intercept, monitor, and record cell phone calls and other wireless traffic.
The Batmobile upstairs couldn't have been less apdy named. The Bat Cave Bennett was now in couldn't have been more so. There were multiple, independent, and redundant communications, power, water, and HVAC systems. Bathrooms. Showers. A fully stocked kitchen. A weapons and ammunition room, complete with gas masks and NBC — nuclear, biological, and chemical — gear. And a medical bay, with two operating rooms, twelve hospital beds, and life-saving equipment and supplies worthy of the best urban trauma units or mobile medical triage centers.
Only a half dozen people worked here, Ziegler said, and thus far, less than three dozen people had ever been in these rooms, including those who'd helped build it. All of them were Americans. All of them worked for the CIA. And all of them held the highest possible security clearances, plus written authorization from the president of the United States. Gaza Station was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the U.S. intelligence arsenal. It was expensive, and virtually irreplaceable. And that, Ziegler explained, was why he was so nervous about an Israeli and a Palestinian knowing anything about where they were or why.
"Israeli prime minister Doron doesn't know where we are," Ziegler explained. "And the Palestinians certainly don't know. Arafat didn't. Neither did Mazen. They all figure we've got intelligence assets on the ground, and some kind of headquarters. But for obvious reasons, the less they know about my team the better."