Decency

by Rex Fuller

  The President was running through a schedule of five minute blocks, designed to handle meetings, phone calls, briefings on pending issues, and the normal flow of events as well as to catch him up on the items that piled up while he was out of town. Still, a part of his mind was working on the Chinese mole. How to define the scope of the problem? How to monitor events for clues as to where the re-engineered devices were going? What criteria to use to see whether risks are widening or narrowing?

  He fought off a fleeting temptation to check on the Situation Room. The image of Samantha Pierce created in his mind by the motion filed this morning kept recycling through his conscious.

  …a parent’s gift from God…a teacher’s dream…an employer’s right hand… dutiful, dedicated, perseverant, clever, betrayed and, now…gone…if she hadn’t done what she did, would we have ever discovered the mole…? if we had, how much more damage would have happened in the interim…?

  The President kept on meeting, phoning and talking, and, all the while, sorting and re-sorting the problem and hoping to do justice for the woman who found it.

  Colonel Zhin Guo, or as he was known in Long Beach, Mr. Michael Cheng, sat in the rented Cherokee with his partner, Captain Ming Zhuan, Mr. John Yang. It was two hours ago that they took up this position, at the top of a rise, just off the road on a turn-in for field equipment, three quarters of a mile west of the Pierce farm house. They faced their Jeep east, toward the house, so they could comfortably look out the windshield. This afforded an excellent field of view and the sun, now behind them, did not beat upon them through the windshield. They could drink good green tea from the thermos, smoke the excellent Marlboros, and watch. And the Colonel counted his frustrations.

  …a fool’s errand…but not my concern…the incompetents in Beijing lost control of the devices I am to attempt to recover…idiots do not even know where the devices are…

  …they can only hope I can match some American with the photograph…if, and when, he ever comes to get the devices himself…

  …I am to allow him to do so, and then deprive him of them…insufferable dolts in Beijing did not even consider it warranted to supply me a picture of the devices…

  …apparently the clods intend for me to know by heavenly inspiration that the unscheduled arriving American has in fact obtained the devices…

  …donkeys in Beijing apparently assume that any briefcase, grocery bag, athletic equipment, or cigarette case carried by this one, unique, undisguised American will contain the devices, should he ever happen to arrive and to later depart…

  …such a masterpiece of planning and coordination could not have been worse crafted by a monkey…

  So they watched.

  Horton reconvened the action team by tapping his pen on the metal water pitcher.

  “Let’s review. Treasury.”

  The word “Treasury” was not an inquiry, “What can you do?” It was a command, “Report what you have done.”

  “Alerted international bank monitoring team to watch for fund transfers possibly related to Fitzgerald, purchase of the devices, or travel of Fitzgerald and Chinese operatives.”

  “Defense.”

  “Joint Stars aircraft scheduled for take-off from Offutt in thirteen minutes. ETA to station sixteen minutes. NSA already started sweeping for the devices, we may get lucky and find one. Alerted and standing by: E-3A Command and Control aircraft, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma; U-2S Reconnaissance and Surveillance aircraft, Beale Air Force Base, California; Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, Special Operations Detachment Delta, Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Special Forces Combat Control Team, Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina; Mobile Medical Facility and Medevac aircraft, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; Defense Communications Agency, Washington D.C., and Mobile Communications Team, Fort Ord, California.”

  “Homeland Security.”

  “Report through Border Patrol and Coast Guard.”

  “Border Patrol.”

  “Working the databases of in-country Chinese for possible identification of their recovery team members. Customs alerted for movements of Fitzgerald and Chinese.”

  “Justice.”

  “Office of Justice Programs is on line with Nebraska authorities and checking availability of SWAT team equipment and potential replacements.”

  “Commerce.”

  “Defer to NOAA.”

  “Transportation.”

  “FAA created temporary restricted airspace over five mile radius of Pierce farm, surface to 50,000 feet and coordinating with Offutt, Lincoln, and Omaha air traffic controls on flights related to this operation; rerouting commercial traffic in all midwestern corridors to minimize interference.”

  “Joint Chiefs.”

  “No action; defer to Special Operations Command.”

  “FBI.”

  “On-scene commander en route, ETA Offutt 6:13 Eastern, and holding on open phone line to complete planning of on-scene operations; two Chinese from Long Beach tracked to Denver; attempting to re-establish tracking; Hostage Rescue Team, Quantico, en route, ETA 6:12 Eastern; search of Fitzgerald residence on-going; Fitzgerald on Most Wanted List.”

  “Coast Guard.”

  “All Coast Guard Operations alerted for movement of Fitzgerald and Chinese.”

  “NOAA.”

  “Weather Service coordinating with FBI, Air Force, and FAA for products as necessary; local weather at Weeping Water, temperature 54, clear, calm; forecast, wind increasing to possibly 20 knots by 6:00 p.m. local, and continuing clear, no overcast.”

  “NRO.”

  “Retasking thirty millimeter resolution satellite for on-scene coverage, ETA two minutes. Tasking video and radar capable Global Hawk UAV, ETA in…two two minutes.”

  “Special Operations Command.”

  “Delta Force, Seal Teams Two and Six and Air Force Search and Rescue, alerted and standing by.”

  “Secret Service.”

  “No action.”

  “All right. Anyone need Joint Chiefs, Commerce, or Secret Service to stay? Very well. Those are excused to phone contact.” The Admiral, Commerce, and the Secret Service representative quietly departed the room.

  “Kimberly, can we have the on-scene commander brief us on his plan and what help he needs in, say, ten minutes?”

  “We can start with what we have then.”

  “Okay. Back to your portfolios until ten minutes.”

  28

  “C’mon, Redbone! Get some birds?”

  “YYAPP!”

  Redbone certainly did want to get some birds. His ancestors answered that question the same way to medieval Magyars. Redbone would rather get birds than…well… The two year old trueblood, golden rust Vizsla hopped onto the tailgate from the ground and pranced happily around the truck bed.

  Joe Manckovic lifted the tailgate and the latch caught.

  Joe had to get to town before the store closed. His wife was sick and they were out of Enfamil. Just as urgently, he needed a couple of pouches of Red Man chew. Joe jumped in and surged the Dodge out onto the county road. He zig zagged the route and even circled a section or two instead of heading directly to town. With his Winchester 870 .12 gauge at the ready, barrel pointed to the floor, he exercised the ancient tradition of local nullification of game laws, hunting from the road.

  …this is fine…a chance to maybe pop a wily ringneck before it gets so late in the season you can’t dig ‘em out of the brush with a shovel…oldies on the best country station…things can be worse than bustin’ down the road in a Dodge Ram, bangin’ along with David Allen Coe…

  …hell…another “1” county plate…looks like another bunch of Omaha road hunters up ahead…must be a city ordinance…bird season rolls around…not before…you got to load up somebody’s four wheel drive and waste good shells thinkin’ you can hunt pheasants…

  The radio bleated, “…she got runned over by a damned ol’ train.”

  …let’s see what these ol’ boys are up t
o…

  A faded green 1989 Dodge Ram pickup approached Colonel Zhin’s Cherokee straight ahead from the east, slowed, then stopped on the opposite side of the road with the drivers’ side windows aligned. Another of the numberless varieties of dog animals infesting America stared Zen-like with unsightly, caramel eyes and pointed a pale lavender nose at him from the back of the truck. The creature was almost nauseating.

  The driver rolled his window down, spat a slug of juice on the road, smiled, and tipped back his cap.

  Colonel Zhin was unsure of the etiquette for such situations, but rolled his window down and did his best to spit on the road too.

  “You boys havin’ any luck?”

  Colonel Zhin believed his English was excellent, but unfortunately, non-idiomatic. Nor was he attuned to the mild twang of the rural Midwest, which to him sounded like a puppy’s playful yelping. “You boys” was pronounced as one word, “yew-boehs,” which he did not recognize. The words “havin’,” and “any” were conjoined. Colonel Zhin heard “havaninny.” “Luck” he recognized from California parlance as one of two kinds, a “lucky day,” or possibly, “successful gambling.”

  He knew Captain Ming, a largely unschooled Mongolian, who did not even bother to remove his eyes from the farm house, had much more limited English at his disposal and was not expected to guess at the meaning. More than anything else, he wanted the man to think he was innocuous and did not want him to report the presence of strangers to any authorities.

  So, he answered “Yewboehs havaninny luck,” with “Yes, it is quite a lucky day.”

  This seemed to work. The man grinned excitedly, shot more juice on the road, and replied.

  “Yeah? Hell, I ain’t seen but three birds all week.”

  Colonel Zhin felt he had brilliantly navigated the customs and the language, regardless of the fact that “birds” of several kinds were far more numerous in the area than “three.” So, he too grinned, slobbered on the road again, and repeated himself.

  “Yes, lucky day.”

  The man seemed satisfied enough.

  “Well, all right.”

  The man rolled up his window and drove on.

  Colonel Zhin considered the matter a great success.

  …it is a pity that Captain Ming is unable to appreciate this prowess in American folkways even so much as to acknowledge it with a glance…

  Ten minutes had almost expired. Horton directed the commanders’ briefing to begin.

  “Kimberly, put him on the speaker and let’s get started.”

  When the speaker clicked there was annoyingly heavy background noise from the Learjet’s engines.

  Horton nearly bellowed, “Mr. Sandoval, can you hear us okay?”

  Sandoval’s voice itself spoke separate from his words and said “calm,” like a resting lion.

  “I hear you fine, Mr. Horton. Please call me Santos.”

  “Thanks, call me Craig. You have Treasury, Defense, Justice, Transportation, FBI, Coast Guard, NOAA, National Reconnaissance Office, and Special Operations from Defense, here on the line with you now and ready to help. In a couple of minutes an Air Force Joint Stars aircraft with special capabilities will be on station over the site and we’ll put them on the line with us. So, what should we plan for?”

  “Craig, and everybody, here’s what I think from what Kimberly and I have talked about. I agree it should be a covert approach because of uncertain conditions. We are going to have too many vehicles invading a rural area to be unnoticed. So, I suggest we add a loudspeaker and play some young people’s music so it sounds like a beer party. That will give us some kind of cover for the number of vehicles.

  “Second, we will need at least two local vehicles, preferably old pickup trucks for scouting.

  “Third, we need a better map. The one Kimberly faxed to me is the smallest scale road map but we’ll need the county plat map of the section of land the farm is in. We need that for a whole lot of reasons but most of all for terrain features, like creeks. And if that map doesn’t come marked with the utilities service - electric power, telephone, water, sewer, even cable TV – we need that added to it.

  “Fourth…”

  “Joint Stars is on station.”

  “Patch ‘em here and directly to Santos.”

  “…we need night vision goggles, at least twenty pairs, and a good weather report including winds. In Nebraska the winds can be ‘light and variable’ and five minutes later ‘get the kids indoors.’ Pray for that. Nasty weather will give us some cover. Also, moonlight condition. It gets really dark in the country, especially to anyone unfamiliar with the locale.”

  “Joint Stars one niner, calling Horton and Sandoval.”

  The action team participants who knew what a Joint Stars (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System) airplane could do felt their confidence go up several notches. A Boeing 707/300 airframe, Air Force designation E-8C, reconfigured, it was a flying radar station. The radar was housed in a forty foot “canoe” under the fuselage. The radar pointed down for searching ground targets, not up for airplanes. A flight crew of four operated the plane. A mission crew of up to eighteen systems operators directed the radar and computer systems. Together they put graphic representations of ground targets up to 250 kilometers from the aircraft on ground terminals where people like the action team could decide what to do about the targets. The publicly available information of the number of targets it could track stated it was a “large” number, far greater than any drone.

  “Horton hears you. Santos do you have him?”

  “Five by five. How do you read me, Joint Stars?”

  “Loud and clear. This is Lieutenant Colonel Jefferson Johnson, United States Air Force, Systems Commander for Joint Stars One Niner, on station, two six nautical miles southwest of Offutt at flight level three nine zero…I’m the guy in the back running the pictures, not the pilot. I’ve taken shots of the farm with synthetic aperture. It shows no apparent vehicles, repeat no apparent vehicles, at the house at the present time. I have display available at your command. Sandoval, if you give me a number I’ll fax slices to you.”

  Sandoval gave him a secure fax number for the Learjet.

  “Okay, on the way. Joint Stars is at your disposal.”

  “This is Horton. Colonel, we’re all breathing a little easier with no vehicles at the house. Sweep around in widening concentric circles out from the house and let us know when you get some contacts.”

  Horton keyed the display. The Joint Stars graphic depicting the farmhouse and two other objects lit up.

  “NRO give us infrared to see if there are warm bodies anywhere.”

  “Go ahead, continue, Santos.”

  “Fifth, we need a map or drawing of the interior of the house, probably from the county building permit application.

  “Sixth, a list of all of the phone numbers for the house and cell phone numbers of the occupants.

  “Seventh, extra tear gas and masks.

  “Eighth, we’ll use standard FBI rules of engagement, namely deadly force is authorized for self-defense and defense of others from threat of deadly force.

  “Finally, we’ll need some agents, probably two, dressed like locals.

  “As far as action planning, if no one is in the house now, I want to put an agent in there if there is an attic or basement where they can hide.

  “We will assume the worst, namely that the Pierces get home, and Fitzgerald or the Chinese get in and take them before we do. If that occurs we will seal the farm, negotiate, and if necessary attack. Walking back from the worst scenario, Fitzgerald or the Chinese get there first, we’ll apprehend them immediately. I am assuming there is adequate evidence of a crime by the Chinese to constitute probable cause. I’m sure we have probable cause on Fitzgerald. While we’re on that subject, can someone there confirm we have probable cause on the Chinese?”

  Horton spoke before John Corrigan or Kimberly Burke could do so.

  “Legitimate point Santos. But yes, we have
probable cause for espionage.”

  “Excellent. That way we don’t have to wait for them to do something on the scene. Now, another step further back from the worst case, the Pierces arrive and we see the Chinese or Fitzgerald coming, we apprehend them before they get as far as the house.

  “The deployment of agents for apprehension, or attack, the timing, and related decisions, have to await availability of the maps, personnel, and equipment to know what our capabilities are. Any other suggestions?”

  Horton liked what he heard.

  “Good briefing, Santos. Full operational command and control will chop to you at the moment you arrive on the scene. After that, we’ll only be here to provide information or other help.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Horton asked, “Suggestions?”

  “This is Jim Clinton from Treasury. If we have the resources, maybe we should put people at the arrival gates in Omaha and Lincoln to watch for Fitzgerald.”

  Horton didn’t think that had been overlooked but didn’t want to waste time discussing it here.

  “FBI, you take that, if you haven’t already. Borrow TSA or undercover local police if you have to.”

  An idea flashed upon the mind of the Defense representative and he spoke the instant it formed, almost blurting it.

  “This is Conor Flaherty from Defense. If Fitzgerald is the one who put the devices there, as the Chinese said, wouldn’t he want to put one in their lawyer’s office, back in Washington? It would be a lot closer to him and we could probably get consent to…”

  Horton cut off the ramble. A doubt gnarled in his stomach whether it was done.

  “Good suggestion. FBI, you take that.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Joint Stars for Horton and Sandoval.”

  “We’re on, Colonel, go.”

  “Very warm vehicle, not moving, three quarters of a mile west of the farm house. I can’t tell if there are people in it. If there are, they are the closest ones to the house that we can pick up with radar.”