“You can send a memo to Graham later, Gomez. Right now, I want a NEST flying to Savannah.”
Gomez paused for a moment, checking an on-screen procedure manual and an NNSA contact database. “I’m calling our NEST ready-response unit,” he said.
Little more than a minute later Falcone heard a deep voice. “Dr. Reuben Lanier, Mr. Falcone. What is the basis for your request?”
Falcone irritably repeated what he had told Gomez.
“Yes, I can understand your concern,” Lanier said. “Now that I think of it, we met at one of those NSC war games where a terrorist is supposed to—”
“We need solid information, Lanier,” Falcone interrupted, still sounding irritated. “And, goddamn it, we need it as soon as possible.”
“All in due time, Mr. Falcone. All in due time, I promise you. Do you have any direct evidence of a nuclear device? And, if Savannah is so extensively damaged, where exactly can we insert our team?”
“I have given you all the information we have at this time, Lanier.”
“Are you aware, Mr. Falcone, that NEST personnel have been involved in well more than one hundred nuclear threats? And they have responded to, well, at last count, I think, thirty. They have all been hoaxes or false alarms. You can understand my reluctance to—”
“What I understand, Lanier, is that the President of the United States wants NEST in Savannah. And if you refuse to do so, I will personally see to it that you are placed in federal custody under the U.S. antiterrorism law.”
“Very well, Mr. Falcone,” Lanier said, his tone unchanged. “My databases shows Hunter Army Airfield as the nearest—”
“We believe that Hunter is inoperative. Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport appears to be undamaged. But we have no knowledge of the extent of radiation. That is the most urgent information we need.”
“Very well. A NEST group, with hazmat suits, radiation shielding, and detection kits will be ready for transport in approximately ninety minutes, along with—”
“Where are you, Lanier?”
“At Los Alamos National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.”
“We’ll send an aircraft from the nearest Air Force base.”
“That would be Kirtland,” Lanier responded. “We have an arrangement for instant use of military aircraft. We drill about that all the time. I’ve already pushed a button. I know you said you have given me all the information you have. But you mentioned a disaster map and infrared images. Please send them right away so we can begin evaluation.”
“ Got it. You’ll have them immediately,” Falcone assured him.
“The NEST personnel will conduct ground surveys and, after delivering the personnel, the NEST aircraft will take air samples at various heights. I will call you—in the Situation Room, I assume—to confirm the takeoff.”
“Thank you, Dr. Lanier. I assure you that this is no false alarm.”
Falcone returned to staring at his monitor, watching Annaheim’s preliminary disaster map roll down the screen. Savannah had been laid out in 1733 as a city consisting of four squares; the city grew along a grid plan, square by square. Each of Savannah’s twenty-four squares was now a small, leafy gem—Johnson Square with its sundial, Columbia Square with its fountain, Washington Square with its old garden.…
Annaheim used the squares as a grid in the center of the map. He superimposed the infrared aerial images as a transparent layer upon the squares, the heart of the city. Falcone had gone to a friend’s wedding in Savannah a few years back. He remembered the vibrant squares now as he looked at the spectral images that showed, in flowing shades of red, the ghost of a vanished city.
32
JUST BEFORE 4 A.M., Captain Bernton, still in her flight suit, arrived in the Situation Room Watch Center, escorted by two Marines. She was a tall, trim woman. Her black hair framed a tense pale face.
Falcone nodded to a Secret Service agent who had been trained in radiation detection. She ran a dosimeter over Bernton and said, “You’re clean, Captain. But as soon as you’re through here, a White House vehicle will take you to the National Naval Medical Center for a thorough examination.”
“Nice work, Captain,” Falcone said, stepping forward to shake Bernton’s hand. He had left the monitor and was in the small Watch Center office that he had made his headquarters. Next to his desk was a cot that he had yet to use.
The agent went off to arrange the transportation. Falcone pointed to a cubicle. “There’s coffee and sandwiches next door, Captain,” he said. “When you’re ready, I’d like to debrief.”
Bernton stepped into the cubicle, poured coffee into a white mug, picked up a sandwich, and returned to Falcone. He motioned her to a metal chair in front of the desk. He pulled his chair around the desk so that he faced her directly. He held a yellow pad, half of its pages full of his notes. He curled the pages back and wrote BERNTON on a new page.
“Have you ever been to Savannah? I mean, on the ground, walking around?”
“No, sir.”
“A beautiful city,” Falcone said.
Bernton nodded in response.
“This mission, as I told you, is highly secret.”
“It won’t be secret for long, sir.”
“You’re right. At dawn the world will see what you saw in infrared. And at dawn the President will speak.” Falcone paused. “Tell me, Captain, in your own words, what you saw.”
Her pale face blank, her eyes staring straight ahead, Bernton spoke: “I saw death, sir. I was looking at death. All of those people.…”
Falcone could not ask her any questions. He was hearing not robotic sounds but her natural voice: soft, touched with what could be a Maine twang. In those few words she had given him her debrief, the truest, most powerful debriefing he had ever heard.
“You have had a terrible experience, Captain. If you want, take a rest here. He took a fresh yellow pad out of a desk drawer. “Write down anything you want. Again, please take a rest. I want you here until after the President speaks. Then you’ll be taken to the medical center.”
“Very well, sir,” she said, leaning forward, her hair spreading across the yellow pad as she rested her head on a page that would remain blank.
Falcone, carrying two mugs of coffee, returned to the monitor. Annaheim, his fingers moving swiftly over the keys, was still working on the map, adding new details he had extracted from the infrared images. Falcone handed him a mug.
“Anything to add from Captain Bernton, sir?” Annaheim asked
“Death, Annaheim. Just death.”
“Sir?”
“Did you read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?”
“No, sir. But I saw the movie,” Annaheim said. He touched three keys. “Is this what you mean?”
On the monitor came the two-ply image, made into what looked like three dimensions by Annaheim’s manipulations. The map showed a large tract of land near the eastern city limits. Upon the map was part of an image, which Annaheim enlarged and tagged BONAVENTURE CEMETERY. Uprooted live oaks and coffins floated in shallow water beneath the infrared scrim.
“It said in the book that midnight was a special time,” Falcone said, half to himself. “As long as it lasted, there was good magic and after that was the time for evil magic.”
33
AT 5 A.M., the Executive Committee members filed into the Situation Room and took their places at the table. “ExComm will come to order,” Falcone said, and the MIC ON indicator lights appeared.
Quinlan and Wilkinson, who, like Falcone, were history buffs, exchanged glances when they heard Falcone’s shorthand version of “Executive Committee.”
All rose as the President entered at 5:05. Like everyone else in the room, he looked as if he had not slept, but he had showered, shaved, and changed. His tie was a blue so dark that it was almost black. He was followed into the room by Attorney General Roberta Williams and J. B. Patterson, director of the FBI.
Patterson, every inch the stolid, sharp-eyed FB
I agent, had been known as J. B. ever since his girlfriend, a drama major at Notre Dame, noted that his initials (for James Benjamin) were the name of her favorite play, J. B. by Archibald MacLeish. When Patterson joined the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover insisted on a first-name-plus-initial identification, which Patterson retained until he became the director and could order exactly what to put on his nameplate and business cards. Patterson told the story many times, always noting that the girlfriend became his wife.
As the newcomers entered, Patterson, in an awkward moment, stepped back to allow Williams to precede him. But she motioned for him to go ahead, looking faintly bemused by Patterson’s misplaced chivalry. They usually got along well, though Patterson, white and Mississippi-born, sometimes overly demonstrated his approval of a black boss who also happened to be a woman.
“Two more for … ExComm,” Oxley said. Falcone realized that Oxley had heard the word while he lingered at the entrance to the Situation Room, perhaps to take a few moments to gather his thoughts. The slightly sardonic way that Oxley had said “ExComm” gave Falcone a message, as did Oxley’s surprise appointment of Williams and Patterson: either Oxley wanted to add heft to the group or he wanted to establish his authority and rein in his national security advisor a bit.
Fair enough either way, Falcone thought. It’s Oxley’s call, not mine.
The President took his seat and nodded toward Roberta Williams. “I’ve added Roberta because I want to make damn sure when we react to … to whatever this is … we stay legal. As for J. B.”—Oxley pointed to Patterson—“I want the FBI here from the beginning.” He looked down the table at Sam Stone. “Along with the CIA.” Oxley turned to Falcone. “Okay, Sean. What have we got?”
Falcone signaled for Annaheim’s disaster map to be shown on all the wall screens. There was a sudden silence, punctuated by gasps and, from someone, a quiet utterance of “Oh my God!”
“There is no doubt that much of Savannah has been devastated,” Falcone said. “And there are at least two other collateral disasters. The label REGAL refers to a cruise ship with as many as two hundred and fifteen people aboard. POSSIBLE FLIGHT 342 can carry one hundred and twenty-five people. As you can see, the center of Savannah appears to be destroyed. The damage seems to irregularly extend outward to the east and—”
“What’s the population of Savannah?” Oxley asked, his voice barely audible.
Falcone looked down at the fact sheet Annaheim had prepared. “Approximately one hundred and thirty-one thousand, Mr. President,” Falcone replied.
“My God!” Oxley exclaimed. “And how many…?”
“We have no way of knowing the casualty count at this time, sir,” Falcone replied. He looked down again at the fact sheet, which contained figures that Annaheim had derived from databases on disasters. “We have several estimates, based on the little we know. In a catastrophe of this size, the number of dead—”
“I spoke to Governor Morrill about an hour ago,” Oxley interrupted. “He is still thinking tsunami and is expecting casualties in the thousands.”
“Worst case analysis, sir, is twenty thousand, with three thousand the lowest probable—all based on extremely limited data from large-scale disaster casualty experience. We are hampered by the power outage blotting out communications.”
“Morrill says Atlanta still has power,” Oxley said.
“There is reason to believe that the blackout was caused by an electromagnetic pulse, an EMP, and that—”
“EMP?” General Wilkinson exclaimed. “That means—”
“That probably means,” Falcone continued, “a nuclear event of some kind.”
“Event?” Wilkinson nearly shouted. “Event? Good God, Sean! It’s got to be a nuclear explosion, a nuclear weapon.”
“We don’t know that for sure, Gabe,” Falcone said.
“Possibly a nuclear power plant?” Penny Walker asked.
“Not likely. There are two plants in Georgia,” Falcone replied. “One is about eighty miles to the west; the other is about one hundred and twenty-five miles south.”
“Radiation?” Oxley asked
“Nothing on that yet,” Falcone replied. “We’ve got a NEST—a Nuclear Emergency Support Team—heading to Savannah.”
“Where the hell did that goddamn tsunami report come from?” Oxley asked, sounding impatient.
Falcone quickly recounted the events—Tourtellot’s pickup of the huge wave transmission, the computer failure in Tourtellot’s helicopter, the report to the NMCC, the probable nuclear flash seen by a satellite. “Piecing it all together,” he continued, “it appears that some kind of a nuclear device exploded off Savannah and created a tsunami-like wave that surged into Savannah, preceded by an EMP that—”
“Device?” J. B. Patterson exclaimed. “You mean a nuclear bomb has been detonated in American waters?”
“Again, we don’t know that, J. B. All we do know is that power has been knocked out in and around Savannah. There has been great physical destruction with many, many people dead or injured. There are fires burning out of control, and—”
“Sean, is there any question that this is an act of terrorism?” Patterson asked. “I want an FBI counterterrorism team heading down there right now. And I mean, right now. We are the lead agency for domestic terrorism.”
“Slow down, J. B. I don’t want anything to happen until I get on the air and talk to the American people,” Oxley said.
“Agreed, Mr. President,” Patterson said. “But the minute you—”
Ignoring Patterson, Oxley took charge of the meeting. “About an hour ago,” he said, “I asked the attorney general to lay out the legal boundaries if the situation in Savannah makes it necessary for me to declare a national emergency. Roberta, if you will.”
Roberta Williams had been the captain of the women’s basketball team that had twice won the national collegiate championship. She still played one-on-one with any man or woman in Washington who dared. A New Yorker profile described her voice as soft but steely. Everyone looked up and listened to that voice when she started to talk.
“For decades,” she began, “president after president has declared various emergencies in response to local disasters. But in 2007 came the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which trumped all previous directives regarding presidential power. That directive has the effect of a federal law. And, incidentally, it makes no reference whatsoever to Congress.
“Under the Presidential Directive, if President Oxley declares a national emergency, he may, for instance, seize property, including farmers’ harvests and any ‘agricultural commodities’ he chooses. He may also seize and control all transportation and communication, restrict travel, and, of course, declare martial law.”
“As you know, Gabe,” she continued, turning to General Wilkinson, “in October 2002, the Department of Defense established USNORTHCOM, making the United States a command theater and giving the President an armed force to aid him in the protection of the homeland. Essentially, USNORTHCOM becomes the President’s army.”
“Tanks in the streets, right, Roberta?” Wilkinson said, shaking his head. “You well know that a very old law—Posse Comitatus—says soldiers cannot be used in civil situations.”
“We’ve come a long way since Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, Gabe. That was in reaction to the use of federal troops by U.S. marshals in southern states. This is a federal emergency. I’ll send you an up-to-date memo,” Williams said. “In a declared national emergency, the President can essentially use the armed forces in any way he sees fit.”
She shifted her attention to Penny Walker and said, “Under both the congressional legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security and a specific National Security Presidential Directive regarding a catastrophic emergency, the President is empowered to maintain ‘continuity of government.’ One of the specific definitions of that kind of emergency is ‘extraordinary levels of mass casualties,’ which looks like what we are faci
ng. Under that law, the President can assume strong—some may say dictatorial—powers.”
When Williams paused, Ray Quinlan blurted out a question: “Can the President postpone or cancel the election?”
Williams leaned forward, her hands outspread on the gleaming tabletop. “That particular question, Ray,” she said, a touch of exasperation in her voice, “has been on the Internet paranoid hit parade ever since President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act. There was another flare-up of paranoia in 2007 when he issued the Presidential Directive. There’s little doubt in my mind that the directive gives the President the power to postpone the election.”
“But is it specifically in the law?” Quinlan persisted.
“I cannot legally respond to that, Ray,” Williams replied. “Large portions of the law are classified.”
“What?”
“Attached to the law were several documents called ‘Annexes.’ They are classified in a special way. According to the language in the law, the Annexes shall be ‘accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.’ And those Executive Orders are classified. It’s a maze. Essentially, the President, while dealing with a ‘catastrophic emergency,’ can do whatever he believes he needs to do to maintain continuity of the federal government.”
“Let’s get to the structure, Roberta,” Oxley said sharply. “We’re running out of time.”
“Yes, sir,” Williams said, leaning back. “The law creates the position of a single national continuity coordinator, responsible for maintaining the operation of the federal government. And the Department of Homeland Security becomes the lead agency for handling the coordinator’s decisions. The directive specifies that the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism is to be the national continuity coordinator. And since that particular assistant to the president post is not filled at the moment, the President may pick anyone.”
“I guess that’s my cue, Penny,” Oxley said. Reaching out to pat Falcone on the back, Oxley added, “You now have another title. Start coordinating.”
Blink of an Eye Page 19
