“I was doing my job,” Walker shot back. “That image on Facebook is our best lifeline to Savannah right now. And it’s already inspired a Savannah Emergency Facebook Committee, like the one that Facebook people all over America started after the Pakistan floods and Japanese earthquakes. They raised millions of dollars and organized a help line for relief workers. We’re hoping to develop something like that when we get our teams into Savannah.”
“So this girl sent her picture to somebody’s Facebook page?”
“She apparently sent it out to all her friends—forty or fifty people—from her Facebook page. And one of them, or perhaps many of them, passed it on to GNN. By some fluke she was near a cell tower that was working. She didn’t speak. She only sent the photo. Her message was the photo.”
“But the blackout, the EMP?” Falcone asked.
“We’ve got NSA guys trying to tease out information about the status of that cell tower,” Walker said. “The idea is to ‘walk back the cat,’ as our NSA liaison says, using the tower as a reference point to find out what might still be working in Savannah.” Walker turned to Frank Nakamura, her chief of staff, who was seated along the wall. “Frank, tell us what we know.”
Nakamura’s expression changed in a moment from the surprised look of a student who had not expected to be called to the confident look of a student who had done his homework.
“NSA has been scanning for any communication from the Savannah area. They picked up the photo as soon as she sent it out, tagged with her name,” he said. “NSA got her profile and pinpointed her location. She had a 4G—fourth generation—smartphone, which sends very fast burst transmissions. That’s probably how she got through.
“NSA thinks her phone found a control channel that could pick up a roaming phone signal and move it to a cell that accepted a connection. NSA says the accepting cell was on Hutchinson Island in the Savannah River, north of downtown Savannah.
“The overturned car, about a quarter of a mile from where the girl was, probably had been taken by the river during the tsunami-like wave that surged up the river and then receded, with the wetlands absorbing a lot of the water.
“The girl—her name is Victoria Anna Meredith—lives about a mile west of Hutchinson Island. The land there is flat. But she was probably on the second floor of her house, giving her a line-of-sight not available at ground level. From all those bits of data, NSA was able to get some idea of one boundary in the mapping out of damage areas and the probable extent of EMP penetration. We think—”
“I thought the EMP produced a total blackout,” General Wilkinson cut in. “We’ve been planning our response on that assumption.”
“This one is different from what we know about EMPs,” Nakamura said. “In the case of the Hutchinson tower, the island itself seems to be blacked out. But NSA’s cell-phone experts found the company that owns the tower. It’s relatively new and has a self-actuated electric generator, a type that reacts instantly to a power interruption, switching first to batteries and then a diesel generator. Also, the EMP may have been blocked in some peculiar way. There’s a high-rise hotel there that may have screened it. But, like so much, we just don’t know.”
“Thanks, Frank,” Walker said, smiling. “Now, Sean, you can see what we were doing on Facebook. We’ve inserted what we learned into the master disaster map that the NGA people have been putting together.”
Smiling ruefully, Falcone said, “Thanks, Penny and Frank. Good work.” Taking her reference to the disaster map as a cue, he signaled the communications staff to bring it up on screen. Across the top of the map were the words TOP SECRET/SCI.
“A secret map,” Quinlan said scowling at the image. “Christ, Sean. When are we going to have anything to say? We’re getting clobbered for holding back. The White House media guys are all but carrying pitchforks and torches. All the media has to work with is the President’s speech. So that puts the focus in one place: here. They want to know what the NEST guys found. And they want casualty numbers. How many bodies? That’s all the bastards say, ‘How many bodies?’”
Quinlan, Falcone, Secretary Walker, Attorney General Williams, CIA Director Stone, and General Wilkinson were the only ExComm members at the table; Max Cunningham was there as a Raven Rock talking head on their video consoles. Marilyn Hotchkiss attended via a hookup from the State Department videoconferencing system; she and Bloom were handling international offers of assistance and assessing the silences from several other countries. The rest of the ExComm members, frantically working in their own offices, were available if Falcone wanted to press for their attendance in person or on video. He had a feeling that Quinlan would never miss a meeting because he felt obliged to keep watch on Falcone. Or perhaps he was watching on Oxley’s orders.
“I’m due for a NEST report by noon today,” Falcone said, turning to Quinlan. “On the basis of that, I’ll decide whether Penny and I should hold a press conference. I’m assuming, Ray, that we’re going to have a two-track media approach: Deciding what we say publicly and what we keep our mouths shut about.”
“Amen to that,” Wilkinson said. “Let’s keep a lid on as best we can until we get things set up—I’m talking, of course, about the military response.”
“I can ride with that, Gabe,” Williams said. “And, Sean, I hope we don’t have to declare martial law—not out loud anyway. Gabe’s got an old Army Civil Disturbance Plan in some filing cabinet. It goes back decades and was used in the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Using troops to aid civilian authority is as American as apple pie and those awful words ‘martial law’ haven’t been used for a very long time.”
Marilyn Hotchkiss, an old hand at videoconferencing, saw a moment to speak up without sounding as if she were interrupting. “There have been some early reactions,” she said. “Prime Minister Weisman has advised us that he has put the Israeli Defense Forces on full alert. Also, NATO has invoked Article Five of the NATO Treaty, which essentially says that an attack on one is an attack on all.”
“Sure,” Quinlan said, bending forward toward the image of Hotchkiss on the videoconference monitor. “They’re all Americans now. They’ll all be with us until we decide to bomb the hell out of whoever did this. But just ask them then, ‘Who’ll be with us for the attack?’ and they’ll all sound like a bunch of wigged barristers in a British court, insisting that we satisfy a burden of proof. We don’t need them. They’ll just complicate any response we may want to make.”
Hotchkiss ignored Quinlan, as she usually did on the rare occasions when they met. She continued, “We have a cable from the Swiss Embassy in Tehran sending us a message from Iran denying any responsibility for what has happened and offering their full support in finding and punishing the perpetrators.”
“What did you expect?” Quinlan said with an artificial laugh. “A confession and an invitation to send them an ICBM?”
After a slight hesitation, she went on. “There’s also a blog claiming to be from the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution saying that they planned and orchestrated this—just as they did for the hit on Khobar Towers back in 1996. There is no proof that they did it then or now.”
Stone looked up. He had been writing on a pad, tearing off pages, and pivoting in his chair to hand the pages to a man who sat along the wall looking like a bored patient in a dentist’s waiting room. He was the head of the CIA’s Analysis Division, and sometimes he wrote on the pages and returned them to Stone. It was as if they were at another meeting. But Stone was back at ExComm the moment he heard Hotchkiss make what sounded like an intelligence reference.
“We’ve got more or less the same thing, Marilyn,” he said, without looking at her image. “All bullshit. The fact is that we just don’t have anything real on this yet. And, Sean, thanks to you, I guess, I’m getting courtesy calls from NSA. They haven’t heard anything worthwhile. No proof.”
“How the hell can you be talking about proof?” Quinlan exclaimed. “You think when we find out who did this we’ll read them a Miranda wa
rning and give them a trial before a jury of their peers? You all heard what the President said: ‘Our response will be extremely severe.’ That’s fucking French for nuclear retaliation. That’s the reality. Stick a few nukes up the ass of the mullahs in Iran.”
“It’s not that easy, Ray,” Falcone said wearily, beginning to show signs of sleep loss. “How could Iran have done this? And why? Iran may have the intent. Sure. Maybe they’d like to blow a lot of us up, maybe wipe Israel off the map—but there is no chance of that right now or in the near future. Intentions are one thing; capabilities, another. If we’re talking capabilities, it could just as well have been the Russians or the Chinese.”
“Then they just declared World War III and they’re going to pay!”
“Jesus!” Falcone said in exasperation. “I’m not saying the Russians or Chinese were involved … Just that we don’t know anything yet. Assume that it wasn’t state-sponsored, but a rogue operation? You still want to—”
“I’m saying we’ve got to stop talking like lawyers. About needing proof. The President can’t just remain calm on this. He’s got to show some passion. Tell the American people that he’s going to avenge the deaths of thousands of our citizens who have been just turned into ash heaps.”
“By attacking whom?” Falcone persisted.
“It doesn’t matter, Sean. The American people are going to want blood … anyone’s. Send a message to the Muslims. Carpet-bomb the hell out of Medina and tell them that Mecca is next!”
“Oh, that’s just great. Now you want to start a religious war. Another Crusade.”
“Hello! What do you think’s been going on anyway? You can’t print a cartoon about Mohammed without getting a goddamn fatwa in your mailbox saying they’re going to slice and dice you and your family into little pieces. We take a shot at Medina and they’ll get the message. We’re not going to take their bullshit about Mohammed any longer.”
“Ray, you’re close to being certifiable,” Falcone said. “Someone hits Savannah and you want to attack Saudi Arabia, an ally who hates the Iranian mullahs as much as we do.”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you of all people that fifteen of the nineteen terrorists who attacked us on nine-eleven were Saudis. Those bastards have been preaching the most virulent brand of Wahhabism for years … absolute hatred for the West. Time to tell them that their fried chickens are coming home to roost.”
Falcone’s neck thickened and his face turned crimson, a sign that the string had run out on his patience. He was not a man you wanted you make mad. “I’m wasting my breath on you.… You should be working for Stanfield and Nolan. You’re talking as nutty as they do.”
“Well, if the Iranians didn’t do it, maybe it was the gift of a friend,” Quinlan said, rising from his chair, half turning away from Falcone.
“Are you suggesting the Israelis?”
“Why not? What better way to get us to eliminate their enemy?”
“With that logic, you might just as well accuse them of delivering the bomb!”
“From your lips, not mine,” Quinlan said, turning back toward Falcone and stabbing an index finger at him. “Was it a matter of mere coincidence that the Israeli prime minister was in town when it happened?
“So now you’re telling us that the Israelis were in fact behind this. You are one sick son of—”
“No. Only that they stand to benefit if we decide to attack Iran. And they sure got out of town fast.”
“I thought all the Jew-bashing bastards were cleaned out after Nixon. Man, now you sound like a shill for the Iranian mullahs.”
The angry dialogue produced an embarrassed silence. Everyone knew of the feuding between Falcone and Quinlan but rarely did it break out into the open.
“That’s it, Sean. For me, the meeting’s adjourned,” Quinlan said, heading for the door.
Penny Walker broke the silence. “Well, let’s get back to Savannah.”
37
AFTER STUDYING the infrared images and disaster map that Falcone had transmitted to him, Lanier decided to make his headquarters at Fort Stewart. It was farther than Lanier preferred—about forty miles southwest of Savannah. But it was safely beyond the western edge of the apparent disaster zone. And, as the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River, Stewart would provide him and the NNSA with security and access to unlimited military resources.
Before taking a helicopter from Albuquerque to Kirtland, Lanier called Stewart, using NNSA protocols that the intelligence officer recognized. Fort Stewart was already reacting to the Nucflash message, and Lanier could sense the tension in the officer’s voice.
The officer told him that electrical power had been restored at Stewart’s Hunter Army Airfield. Electricians discovered that a computer controlling the self-actuated electric generator had been destroyed, “as if by a lightning strike,” the officer said. They replaced the computer and the generator went on line.
The aircraft that Lanier would be sending to Georgia were given special Nucflash designations and cleared for landing at Hunter. Lanier was pleased that he did not have to waste time by landing at the Savannah/Hilton Head Airport. He was also pleased to have obtained Army information that trumped Falcone’s. Given the choice, he would usually rather deal with a military officer than a civilian official, a realization that often surprised him.
Lanier liked the anonymity of the Hunter base, which was operated not by the Air Force but by the Army. He had frequently flown to Hunter for unannounced visits to a NNSA nuclear reservation, known simply as the SRS, for Savannah River Site.
Lanier had often made surprise inspections of the site because he was concerned about the possibility that a minor incident at the SRS could be magnified by the media. Now, with Savannah synonymous with nuclear disaster, he made a last-minute secure call to the director of the SRS.
“You’re the second paranoid caller so far today,” the director told him. He recounted the conversation with Hawkins, then added, “Obviously, Rube, they don’t know what this is about. Who the hell did this?”
“Well, Bert, at least it’s not us,” Lanier said lightly. But he felt a flash of anger when he realized that Falcone’s search for perpetrators had apparently begun with the NNSA.
Lanier’s title—Energy Senior Official of an emergency response—did not sound like much. But he issued orders under the mantle of the National Nuclear Security Administration. As director of the NNSA’s Office of Emergency Operations and field manager of NEST, his power reflected the covert clout of the NNSA.
The Department of Defense’s Nucflash message, which had alerted every Department of Defense facility in the world, had also galvanized the nuclear side of the Department of Energy, whose NNSA controls and guards U.S. nuclear weapons. By the time the President authorized the Nucflash alert, Lanier was already gathering his NEST group and assuming control of the NNSA response.
NEST was part of the NNSA’s Office of Emergency Operations. For decades, NEST—America’s “Nuclear Bomb Squad”—had been highly visible and well publicized. NEST was an arm of the nearly invisible NNSA. Besides designing and making nuclear weapons, the NNSA watched over U.S. nuclear reactors and the handling the of radioactive waste, and, through its system of National Laboratories, sponsored more scientific research than any other federal agency.
As secretary of the Department of Energy, Dr. Harold Graham gave close scrutiny to the NNSA, but his interest reflected his career as a nuclear physicist who had been more concerned with getting rid of nuclear weapons than with building them. Lanier’s Office of Emergency Operations, by demonstrating the mortal danger of nuclear weapons, emphasized the need to get rid of them. But, as a man of action and a seeker of results, Graham had little patience for NEST’s participation in countless tabletop games and expensive exercises. When Lanier got the call from Falcone, Graham was at a nuclear disarmament conference in London. Essentially, this put Lanier in charge of NNSA’s response to the catastrophe in Georgia.
*
>
LANIER and the three NEST operatives he had chosen were sitting in the Ready Room at Kirtland, waiting to board F-16B Falcon fighter jets. Each NEST member would fly as a passenger in a two-seat Falcon. The second seats in two additional F-16Bs were already jammed with the team’s hazmat suits, radiation-detection devices, and communications equipment.
Elsewhere on the base, forklifts were bringing pallets stacked with wooden and aluminum boxes of equipment to the gaping aft cargo hold of an Air Force C-17 Globemaster. At the same time, the aircraft’s load chief was briefing the first wave of the NNSA response team: forty-five other NEST members, the advance group from the Office of Emergency Operations, twenty-six people from the Aerial Measuring System, and the entire Nuclear/Radiation Advisory Team. Lanier had also reached into the NNSA’s Office of Electricity to find a team of experts on large-scale electric power outages. And, after thinking about a nuclear explosion without a clear provenance, he added four experts from the Nevada National Security Site, which had long been named the Nevada National Test Site. N2N2, as the site was known, had shifted its emphasis from testing nuclear weapons to conducting highly secret experiments aimed at thwarting terrorists.
As the Globemaster’s aft door quietly closed, six Falcons roared down a runway, formed into a V high above, and headed for Georgia.
38
ABOARD A jet fighter travelling at 1,300 miles per hour, Lanier thought of the many times he had flown to a drill or to a false alarm. Now he was flying toward reality. Only once in his career—more than a decade ago—had he entered reality with NEST. He rarely talked about it.
He had been in a full-scale exercise involving more than five hundred engineers, doctors, technicians, CIA, and nuclear experts who ranged from bomb designers to NEST bomb disposers. Also involved, but mostly out of sight, were Rangers from a U.S. Special Operations Command unit and Navy SEALs.
More than sixty aircraft full of equipment and supplies flew in and out of a remote Royal Air Force base in the Cotswolds, headquarters of the highly realistic exercise. As usual, the exercise involved the finding and disabling of a nuclear device planted by terrorists. Lanier, a connoisseur of exercise code names, wondered who picked this one: Jackal Cave.
Blink of an Eye Page 22
