“You know what a bombshell can do,” Herbert reminded him. “With just a look she can both fog your brain, clear your eyes, show you reality, and inspire a new one. But a bomb, Paul. That’s pure destruction. It will break your spirit and body and will resonate through your soul. You’ll hear the explosion and feel the shock wave every day for the rest of your life.”
Like Rodgers, Herbert knew what an explosion could do. The former CIA field operative had lost his wife and the use of his legs in the Beirut embassy blast of 1983. But Herbert was right about the damage the bombshell could cause as well, and there was a reason he made the comparison. Several years before, Hood happened to meet his former fiancée, Nancy Jo Bosworth, in Germany. The great love of his life had turned Hood’s head, literally, and when he looked back at his life, it was no longer the same, no longer comfortable or satisfying. It took a trauma — a United Nations hostage-taking involving his daughter Harleigh — and a few more years for his marriage to Sharon to end. Bitter though it was, at least there was time to adjust, to make the inevitable crash landing as gentle as possible.
The impact of the EMP was much different. It took everything from Op-Center in a flash. And the explosion didn’t just necessitate the long and difficult rebuilding of Op-Center. The power of the electromagnetic disturbance showed Hood and his colleagues how vulnerable modern technology was to a lone gunman with the proper tools. They realized how important it was to get all of American security resources up to speed to protect the nation. That weakness made the rebuilding process seem even slower.
Now Op-Center’s reconstruction was done, and however tired Hood felt, the real work was just beginning. Though he was eager to undertake it, he was also struggling to motivate himself for what was coming next, the Monday morning senior staff meeting. There was a curious and surprising conflict taking place in Hood’s head. The NCMC had done some significant work over the years, but that was in reaction to events, not prevention. Running Op-Center was like bailing a rowboat. Success still left them deep in cold water with the sea pouring in.
Hood was unreasonably, inexplicably angry at Op-Center for that. Nothing like this had happened when he was mayor of Los Angeles. He got frustrated, yes, with the city bureaucracy but never enraged. But then, his staff in city hall were mostly career politicians more dedicated to themselves, to advancement and power, than to their responsibilities. The people of Op-Center were different. They had to be: they were ready to die for their work. It was as if their dedication, their sacrifice, had given this place sentience, a soul. A target for his frustration.
Op-Center was not supposed to get sick. The NCMC had been designed to be a constant in a world of changing dynamics and new challenges, with experts in every field and the technology to support their activities. Hood’s people were devoted, and they were the best, but they required a support structure. They rallied after the explosion, but they were not able to do their jobs effectively for over half a year.
Not that Hood had discussed this with them. It was all rah-rah as technical genius Matt Stoll supervised the electronic recovery and upgrades. There were heavy doses of can do as they borrowed intel and data from other agencies so they could watch national and international hot spots. But through it all Hood was crying inside. Staff psychologist Liz Gordon probably would have told Hood that he was having a serious bout of transference, laying what he felt about his failed marriage onto Op-Center. Sharon Hood had let him down, too, in his mind. She had failed to support his dedication to his career, his responsibility to the staff and the nation.
Maybe it was true that Hood was shifting his feelings from one situation to the other. It did not change the fact that Op-Center had taken on water, and the man in charge was angry and disappointed.
To make matters worse, the bailing pail was smaller now. Fewer hands, less money. All Hood had wanted to do this morning was get the place on its feet and running. Instead, he finished his coffee, told his assistant Bugs Benet where he was going, and headed toward the elevator.
Benet rose inside his cubicle. “Do you know when you’ll be returning?”
“I don’t,” Hood said. “Tell Ron to start the show without me.”
“Yes, sir. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
Op-Center was housed in a two-story building at Andrews Air Force Base. During the Cold War, this nondescript, ivory-colored structure was a staging area for flight crews known as NuRRDs — nuclear rapid-response divisions. In the event of a nuclear attack on the nation’s capital, the job of the NuRRDs would have been to evacuate key officials to secret bunkers built deep in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the downsizing of the Air Force’s NuRRDs, evacuation operations were consolidated at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The building at Andrews was given over to the newly chartered National Crisis Management Center.
The two floors of upstairs offices were for nonclassified operations such as finance, human resources, and monitoring the mainstream news services for possible hot buttons, seemingly innocent events that might trigger crises. These included the failure of Third World governments to pay their troops, accidents such as a submarine ramming a foreign fishing vessel or yacht — which might not be just a fishing vessel or pleasure cruise, but a spy ship — the seizure of large caches of drugs that could harm the black economy of local provinces, and other potential domino-effect activities.
The basement of the former NuRRD building had been entirely refurbished. It no longer housed living quarters for flight crews. It was where the tactical decisions and intelligence crunching of Op-Center took place. This executive level was accessible by a single elevator that was guarded on top twenty-four/seven.
Hood acknowledged the guard with a nod. The red-cheeked kids were rotated every week to keep any of them from being tempted by foreign agents looking for access. Ironically, it was an individual with seemingly perfectly legitimate credentials who had been able to deliver the EMP bomb. In an era when a smart teen with a computer could shut down power grids, phone systems, banks, and military installations, passwords and swipe cards seemed quaint relics of a very distant time.
Hood stepped into the parking lot. The day was warming quickly. It helped to invigorate him. Hood knew it was partly a radiant effect of all the asphalt on the base, but he let himself think it was the sun. And it was a glorious spring morning, one in which the scent of the flowers that lined the security fence was actually stronger than the smell of the jet fuel coming from the airstrips.
Hood hoped the day stayed warm and welcoming.
In Washington, the weather had a way of changing unexpectedly.
FOUR
Morgan Carrie always regarded her career as a classic good news — bad news situation.
One year before, at the age of fifty-three, Carrie was the first woman to earn the rank of three-star general in the United States military. It was a low-key promotion. The army wished to promote a woman without calling attention to it. As her husband, Georgetown University Hospital neurosurgeon Dr. T. H. Albert Carrie, put it, “They wanted to break the glass ceiling without the sound of shattering glass.” That was all right with the woman. Since she was a kid playing war games with her four older brothers — she was usually the nurse, only occasionally the French Resistance fighter Mademoiselle Marie — she wanted to be the officer she had become. She outranked two of her brothers, both of whom were in the Navy.