“So!” the President growled at Eleanor Prenty, who was standing respectfully behind him on the Oval Office’s carpet as the chief executive of the United States, hands clasped behind him, gazed out through the bulletproof glass into the Rose Garden. “The hard drive’s been destroyed and the backup disk stolen. And now we have the possibility — indeed the probability — that some terrorist cell, who knows where, will throw it back at us in the form of a prototype bullet, torpedo, or missile, a technology which we don’t know how to counter because we’ve had the damn technological data stolen.”
“Mr. President,” said Eleanor, in what was almost certainly the understatement of her career, “I know it looks bad.” She paused. “It is bad, but Chief Scientist Moffat has e-mailed me that it’s only the very latest C.P.L. equipment—”
“For God’s sake, Eleanor, speak English!”
“Sorry, sir. That’s computer precision lathing equipment that would be needed to tool up for the extraordinarily small tolerances required to produce the super-cavitation hardware. I’ve alerted every one of our embassies, consulates, cultural, and trade liaison offices to keep their eyes peeled for any shipments of such ultra-high-quality equipment to any big or small-arms manufacturers throughout the world. And for all we know, Roberta Juarez—” She saw that the president was trying to put a name to a face and explained, “She was one of the senior scientists working on this super-cavitation stuff.”
“Yes,” replied the president. “I remember now.”
“She was the one,” continued Eleanor, “who alerted us to the fact that the floppy backup disk had a battery transmitter in its hub before she died. Another of the dead scientists had a note in his hand with ‘RAM’ and ‘SCARUND’ written on it.”
“My God, you think that’s that sarin — nerve gas?”
“No,” said Eleanor, “but, given it was presumably the last thing he wrote, we presume it’s the name of the terrorist leader or that of one of the other terrorists.”
“Huh! Probably the one who left Freeman that note.” The president turned around to face her. “That must have hurt. Filthy insult like that.”
“I’m sure it did,” said Eleanor. “It upset me.” She took a sheet of paper from her briefcase. “This is the forensics report on the envelope and the discarded shoulder-fired rocket launcher the terrorists used to down the Chinook.”
“What have we got?” the president asked glumly. His reelection desk calendar reminded him that tomorrow he was to give a progress report on the war against terrorism.
(1) TRACES OF THIOKOL TX-657 REDUCED-SMOKE SOLID FUEL WITH DISTINCTIVE SULFUR CONTENT, AS SUSPECTED BY GENERAL FREEMAN WHO WITNESSED THE MANPAD LAUNCH. SPECTROMETER ANALYSIS OF SULFUR LOCATION SPECIFIC.
(2) ELECTRON MICROSCOPE AND SPECTROMETER ANALYSES OF BROWN ENVELOPE, WHICH IS CHINESE, AND YELLOW PAPER NOTE ADDRESSED TO GENERAL FREEMAN AND PLACED INSIDE TRANSPARENT PLASTIC ZIPLOC BAG REVEAL PULP ACID USED TO MANUFACTURE PAPER NORTHEASTERN CHINA. ALSO YELLOW PAPER IS 21 CM ×29.7 CM, A STANDARD CHINESE SHEET, WHILE OURS IS 21.5 CM × 27.9 CM. SEVERAL MICROSCOPIC GRAINS OF SOIL DETRITUS FOUND IN DISCARDED U.S. UNIFORMS ON CANADA SIDE OF IDAHO-CANADA BORDER REVEAL LOCALIZED IDAHO — BRITISH COLUMBIA DEPOSITS. GRAINS OF SOIL AND GRASSES FROM BOOTS’ SOLES AND INTERIORS WERE ALSO SPECTROMETERED AND REVEALED SOIL INDIGENOUS NOT ONLY TO PACIFIC NORTHWEST BUT TO AREAS OF NORTHEASTERN CHINA AND RUSSIAN FAR EAST IN LAND ADJACENT TO AND INCLUDING LARGE WILD BIRD SANCTUARY IN AND AROUND LAKE KHANKA. DEPOSITS OF CRUSHED BIRD EGGSHELL AND DISPROPORTIONATE AMOUNT OF GUANO WERE FOUND DEEP IN THE SOLES OF SOME OF THE BOOTS, THE GUANO’S COMPOSITION POINTING TO TANCHO AND SEVERAL SPECIES THAT NORMALLY CLUSTER NEAR OR ON LARGE BODIES OF FRESH WATER, SUCH AS LAKE KHANKA. INSIDE THE BOOTS SEVERAL MICROSCOPIC SPECKS OF ANT REMAINS DETECTED, ALSO INDIGENOUS TO LAKE KHANKA AREA.
“So, Eleanor,” asked the president, “what’s your take on this soil stuff? A wild bird sanctuary? You think any of this has anything to do with the attack on DARPA ALPHA?”
Eleanor shrugged. “CIA has used soil forensics to locate terrorist training areas in the past. The director of national intel is more interested in how we can stop the manufacture of DARPA ALPHA’s hypersonic technology. As I did, he’s also alerted the State Department, which has sent an Immediate/Urgent Defcon 3 to all U.S. embassies’ military attachés to be on the lookout for the movement of any high-precision computer-slaved lathing equipment needed to tool up for everything from torpedo and artillery nose cones to small-arms 7.62 mm rounds. CIA and DARPA ALPHA’s General Charles concur that in two months at the latest, one damned terrorist with a rifle will be able to take out anything, from an M1 Abrams tank to our billion-dollar Joint Strike Fighters to any commercial aircraft or any other vehicle.”
The president unleashed a train of obscenities, several of which Eleanor hadn’t heard since 9/11.
“Let’s pray, Eleanor, that someone somewhere can get a handle on this. Do we have current SATPIX of this Lake—” He looked down at the DHS report. “—Khanka?”
“CIA courier is bringing over a package.” She glanced at her watch. It was almost time for the next press briefing. Right now she wanted to quit the White House, get out from all the pressure, go home, and be with her daughter Jennifer, go shopping, play Scrabble. No, that would take too much energy. Why not go to bed — pull the covers up, go into a cave, do anything but face a hostile Washington press corps? She imagined that this was how Condi Rice must have felt when confronted by the European press scrums, whose members had relentlessly pushed for details about the CIA’s POW “rendition” policy, in which Al Qaeda suspects were spirited away to secret prisons in eastern Europe. If the press even suspected what was on the DARPA ALPHA so-called “personnel files” disk, and that no backup had been found, it could sink the presidency. Didn’t the press know, Eleanor asked herself, that scientists were human too, that yes, maybe Roberta Juarez, God rest her soul, should have had a backup of the backup, but how much backup do you have for your own computer? C’mon, people, give us a break. We’re doing the best we can.
“Eleanor?”
“Oh, sorry, Mr. President.”
“You okay?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was just wondering whether Roberta Juarez had another backup disk somewhere. So far there’s no sign of one.”
“Great,” said the president, his tone one of utter exasperation. “So not only have the terrorists destroyed the damn disk, probably downloaded to their HQ by now, but we have no record of what it is they’ve stolen. And those people who did know what was on the disk are all dead. God help us. We need a miracle. I mean it.” He looked up as if startled. “Those men who were on Freeman’s team. They’re out of the picture now, but are we confident they’ll keep their mouths shut?”
“Absolutely,” Eleanor assured him. “Freeman had Fairchild — the air base near Spokane — disperse them back to their homes. Fairchild used six different planes, Special Forces, so no names were given out. At least the press understands something about the need for privacy when—”
“That won’t keep the tabloids quiet for long.”
“No, it won’t,” she replied.
“The Pentagon, I suppose, is unloading on Freeman.”
“Everyone’s unloading on Freeman, Mr. President. Success has a hundred fathers, but failure—”
“—is an orphan,” said the president. “Are we unloading on him?” It was an election-year question, ends justifying the means. If you win the election you can do a lot for the country but you need to win.
“I don’t think we should,” she answered. “He mightn’t be as fast as he was, an old warhorse, but a warhorse nonetheless. Among the older guys his leadership and soldiering in that Far Eastern U.N. command is still legendary.”
The president nodded knowingly, recalling the feat of arms in the taiga. Freeman’s famous U-turn! He paused for what seemed a long time to Eleanor, then confessed to her, “I’m sorry for even posing the question. Of course I’m disappointed as hell that he never bagged those terrorist bastards, but he was fast off the mark.”
“And,” added Eleanor, “if we do pick up their trail again, his team might be useful.”
“If we don’t pick up something, it’ll cost me the presidency.”
Eleanor Prenty knew he was right, and it wasn’t her habit to throw him a soft pitch. The Iranian hostage crisis had cost Jimmy Carter the presidency. And though you couldn’t put a price on American lives, she knew that the loss of the top secret data from DARPA ALPHA, and the fact that no backup disk was in sight, would in the long run be much more punishing for the country. His opponent knew it; everyone knew it.
“I’ll have to put it to rest,” he said solemnly.
Eleanor was alarmed. Did he mean he would have to absorb the loss politically, as Carter had done after the attempted rescue of American hostages by the American commando force had crashed and burned in the desert night, holding the administration up to more ridicule by the Iranian revolutionaries? “You mean, Mr. President, that we’d have to eat it?”
“No, no. By putting it to rest I meant we’ll have to run it down, go after the terrorists no matter where they go. No matter what people say about Bush going into Afghanistan and Iraq, it showed the world that we’ll go in anywhere and go in unilaterally if we have to. We’re not letting people come into this country, murder our people, and think they can ever find safe haven.”
Eleanor Prenty was visibly relieved, but only temporarily, because both she and the president knew that all the tough talk in the world was nothing more than rhetoric unless the intelligence community could locate the receiver and the specific location of the stolen property. No one in America wanted another wild-goose chase for WMDs that didn’t exist. That had been a monumental intel disaster. What had Colin Powell and then three-star General Freeman called it? “The mother of all intel screwups!”
“The problem then,” the president reminded Eleanor, “was that we didn’t have enough agents on the ground, relied too much on high-tech, satellite photos, et cetera. It takes years to build up the kind of HUMINT networks like Al Qaeda had.” The Rose Garden’s sharp, unforgiving thorns suddenly appeared to him as ill omens. He turned away from the garden, and Eleanor saw that his hands were clasped so tightly that they were bone white, drained of blood. And National Security Adviser Eleanor Prenty knew that unless, in the parlance of the media, something broke, and soon, not only the presidency but the fate of the entire country would be in terrorist hands. The country’s chief executive and commander in chief looked across the Oval Office at Frederic Remington’s bronze sculpture, “The Bronco Buster,” alive with furious action.
“We’ve alerted all carrier groups, right?”
“Yes.” It was what all presidents had done in times of crisis, to extend the country’s reach and allow it to strike back if possible. But where?
“Would you want to involve Freeman again?” Eleanor asked.
“Yes. He may have lost them but he was Johnny-on-the-spot. And because he’s already been up against them, he might know something, deduce something, that we can’t.”
“I agree. We owe it to him.”
“No,” the president said. “We don’t owe him anything. He volunteered. We owe the man he lost and those who were murdered.”
An aide entered with the latest intel report. The president scanned it. “Nothing,” he concluded, dropping the file on the desk. “Not even a possible recipient of the info. Can you believe that?”
“Well,” Eleanor told the president, “I’m not at all surprised.”
The president looked haggard, defeated. “Well, all we can do right now is pray. Pray for a miracle.”