There was a never-ending hydra of challenges around the globe, but Ryan knew the worst possible course of action for the President would be to retreat from the world stage and stick his head in the sand. No, the hydra couldn’t be defeated, but with constant diplomacy, and with military and intelligence resources brought to bear, it could be battled back, just enough to keep America and its allies reasonably safe.
Ryan looked down to the third item on the day’s briefing. “Okay, Mary Pat, tell us about your trip to Iraq.”
“As you know,” she said, “we’ve been hunting top ISIS personality Abu Musa al-Matari. Since his failed attempt late last year to train and infiltrate sixteen well-trained jihadists with American passports or visas into the U.S., we’ve taken it as a given that he would try again.”
Ryan said, “He made it to within a hair’s breadth of getting killers on U.S. soil that we didn’t know anything about. And a guy like him is going to be very aware how close he came. Damn right he’ll try again. What did you learn?”
“I learned that he left Syria six and a half weeks ago to go to a place he referred to as the ‘Language School.’ We are working to find it.”
Ryan looked around at the other members of his NSC. “How do you know it’s not just a place where you learn to speak another language?”
Mary Pat smiled a little. “We can’t rule that out yet, but I doubt it. The intel came from one of al-Matari’s teen wives, a kidnapped Yazidi I spoke to. From the context of his other actions and travels, we think there’s more to this than an actual language school. We think it’s code for a location.”
The NSA director said, “We’ve done a broad spectrum data mine on the code phrase ‘Language School’ among Islamic State actors and suspected actors, suspected actors of affiliated organizations, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Any luck?”
“We found the haystack, not the needles. People talk about language schools in their conversations all the time, obviously. But we, I should say NSA and CIA analysts, are combing through the data by hand, and so far they have found nothing that sticks out. Not one suspicious reference in e-mails, recorded phone calls, interviews, international communications between suspects. Not yet, anyway.”
Dan Murray said, “I ordered the same search to be done in the USA for people currently under surveillance by federal authorities who aren’t part of the NSA’s purview, because the communications are CONUS to CONUS conversations. So far, same as NSA, nothing, but we’re still digging.”
Mary Pat said, “Al-Matari might have used this as code just between himself and one other person. The Yazidi girl might have heard something that wasn’t as wide in scope as we had hoped.”
Jay Canfield spoke up now. “We did, however, learn something interesting in Central America. Is it related? That we do not know. The day before last a helicopter crashed off the Pacific coast of Guatemala. There were six fatalities, all former Guatemalan Special Forces commandos. The helo had been rented by one of them from a company in Guatemala City, eight weeks prior to the crash. The last time anyone knew where the helicopter was it had landed at a property in Monterrico on the Guatemalan coast.”
Ryan cocked his head. “There’s more, I take it?”
Canfield nodded. “My local station looked into the men who were killed, and Dan’s people down there interviewed their wives and such yesterday. A couple had been told by their husbands they were going to El Salvador to teach a thirty-day guerrilla tactics course.”
Ryan asked the next question slowly. “To whom?”
“The wives didn’t know. Dan gave Mary Pat the info, and I had my station in El Salvador look into it. We came up empty, so I went to DEA on the off chance they’d have heard chatter. DEA has a good ground game in Central America, lots of HUMINT assets. It turns out DEA agents working on the Pacific coast spotted the helo when it was on the ground there. It was at an airstrip near Playa El Zonte, kind of a hippie surfer town. Frankly, it’s a really weird place to teach terrorist tactics.”
“Surfing terrorists,” Ryan said, and groaned. “Add that to the threat matrix.” This was a joke, but Arnie Van Damm mumbled from the end of the table.
“If the press heard a word of that, their heads would explode from excitement.”
Canfield said, “The DEA guys jotted down the tail number. It matches with the helo that crashed off Guatemala.”
Ryan summarized. “So a guerrilla-warfare school was set up by Guatemalan ex-commandos somewhere in the west of El Salvador. Do I need to run down the list of groups that may have been in that school?”
Canfield answered, “Local insurgents, other Central American revolutionaries, South American revolutionaries.”
Murray took over. “Zetas, Gulf cartel, Sinaloa cartel, MS-13—”
Mary Pat reined in the speculation. “Could be any of those things. But this looks like an ad hoc project, and the timing is right to match up with what we know about al-Matari’s movements. For now we have no idea if al-Matari is in our hemisphere and involved with this. But we’re all looking, Mr. President.”
The meeting wrapped a few minutes later, and Mary Pat went out into the President’s secretary’s office and retrieved her phone, which she always left in a basket there before going into the Oval. It was a West Wing rule. In offices, conference rooms, pretty much everywhere other than hallways, mobile phones in the West Wing were verboten.
As soon as she stepped into the hall, however, her phone started to ring. She answered without looking.
“Foley.”
“Hi, Mary Pat. It’s Gerry.”
“Funny you should call, Gerry. I was just thinking about you. Well, I should say I was thinking about your excellent private equity management firm.”
Hendley Associates was the front company for The Campus. It was, in fact, a working private equity firm, and it even funded Campus operations by the trades it made.
Gerry, however, would be quite certain that Mary Pat wasn’t looking to invest some money. No, she employed The Campus regularly on operations unsuited for any of the agencies under the purview of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. If she was thinking of Hendley’s organization, then she was thinking about espionage.
Gerry said, “Something we can do for you?”
“Not just yet, but I’d wager that pretty soon I’ll be making the drive over to Alexandria for a little chitchat.”
“We’re always ready and waiting. Actually, though, that’s sort of the reason I called. We aren’t as ready as we used to be. As you know, we’ve lost some operational abilities.”
After a pause Mary Pat said, “I think of Sam every day.”
“Yes. So do I. We’ve decided to bring some new blood into the organization, and we’re in the processes of narrowing down some candidates.”
“I’m glad to hear that. How can I be of assistance?”
“There is a name that came forward. Some of my guys have worked with him in the past. He’s currently employed by Jay. Of course I wouldn’t think of making any sort of an approach without your blessing.”
“What’s the name? If I know him I’ll tell you how I feel about him leaving. If I don’t know him, I’ll check him out.”
“His name is Adam Yao.”
Mary Pat’s pause was brief. “Gerry, you know I’d do anything to help your operation out over there. You have become an important part of the IC in the last several years.”
“But?”