by Larry Bond
Even worse, you lost total control over your own movements and actions. Like a naval convoy reduced to sailing at the speed of the slowest ship, any large group tended to act at the level of the lowest common denominator. No matter what the reason, if enough people in a mob started moving in a particular direction, you either moved with them or you got trampled.
Thorn narrowly avoided a collision with a coffee-carrying Navy captain apparently deep in his own morning fog. He shook his head. This was crazy. Every soldier in Delta Force knew the importance of teamwork—but their teamwork was based on a clear understanding of each man’s distinctive strengths and skills. The only skill involved here seemed to be in putting one foot in front of the other with your eyes open. He had the sudden sinking feeling that he was going to miss the tight-knit professional community at Delta’s Fort Bragg compound more than he’d ever imagined.
Beyond the staircase the stream of civilians and military personnel arriving for work began to assume some semblance of order, forming into long lines to funnel through the security station guarding the Pentagon’s main entrance. Everyone entering the building had to flash a badge toward the bored-looking Department of Defense guards manning the station.
With a sense of relief, Thorn veered out of the line he’d been stuck in and headed for a desk near the guard post.
One of the DOD policemen behind the desk looked up from the sports section of the Washington Post. “Can I help you, Colonel?”
“Sure hope so.” He held out his military identity card. “My name’s Thorn. I’m taking up a new post here, but I don’t have a pass yet.” He nodded toward the enormous entrance hall visible beyond the security station. “Plus I’m not real eager to wander around in there without a native guide.”
The cop smiled in agreement. “It’s a hell of a maze, all right, sir.” He took Thorn’s ID and flipped open a thick book in front of him. “Right. Let’s see if we can find out where you’re supposed to go.”
Squinting back and forth between the card and the book, the policeman ran his finger down a long list of names, ranks, internal addresses, and phone numbers. “Thomas … Thompson …”
His finger stopped moving. “Yep. Here you are, Colonel. JSOC Intelligence Liaison Unit. Director: Thorn, Peter, NMI.”
NMI. No middle initial. That was the bureaucratic abbreviation used to fill in forms for those without middle names. Thorn knew that wasn’t really accurate in his case. He had been born and baptized with a middle name—Aloysius. But the name had been his mother’s choice. He’d dumped it when he was eleven, right after she divorced his father and vanished to “find herself.” That was just a year after his dad had come home from Vietnam, and just two years before they went to Iran.
He squared his shoulders, shrugging off the flash of pain that always came with remembering those events—even after all this time. He’d survived. His father had survived. And he knew lots of people who were worse off. A whole lot worse off.
The DOD policeman picked up a phone from his desk and punched in a five-digit internal number. “Intelligence Liaison? Yeah, this is the main entrance security station. Listen, your new CO is here.” He listened to the voice on the other end and then turned to Thorn. “They’re sending someone up to meet you, Colonel.”
Thorn nodded his thanks and stepped back from the desk to wait. He was conscious of curious looks from some of those shuffling past him on their way to work. But not from many. Colonels were a dime a dozen in the Pentagon. Here you evidently had to have three or more stars on your shoulder boards before anyone paid any attention to you.
He’d been waiting for more than ten minutes with rapidly diminishing patience when his “guide” finally showed up. A young red-haired man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, a loosely knotted blue tie, and a security badge clipped to his shirt pocket came zooming out through the entrance, dodged through the crowd funneling in, and hurried over to the desk.
“Colonel Thorn?” the young man asked anxiously, clearly out of breath.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Mike McFadden, sir. One of your junior analysts. The Maestro … uh, Mr. Rossini … sent me up to get you in.” McFadden swallowed. “Sorry it took so long, but it’s quite a hike.”
Seen up close, the analyst’s appearance inspired even less confidence. Pens and what looked like a pack of chewing gum bulged behind his security badge, and the bottom of his tie showed signs of having been dunked in coffee or a cola not long before. There were even tiny traces of powdered sugar caught in the scraggly mustache McFadden seemed to be trying to grow.
Thorn sighed inside. Like every other special warfare operative, he’d never been a spit-and-polish fanatic, but this was going to take some getting used to. Strike that, he thought, looking at McFadden again. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. He cleared his throat, searching for something diplomatic to say. “You must be very, very good at your job, Mike.’
“Sir?”
“Never mind.” Thorn motioned toward the security checkpoint. “Lead on, Macduff.”
“That’s McFadden, sir …” The young man stopped and grinned suddenly. “Oh. I get it. Shakespeare. Right.”
The analyst moved off again, ushering him through the checkpoint and metal detectors. He paused on the other side. “Where to exactly, Colonel? Want to pick up your building pass first? Or go straight to the office?”
Thorn made a quick decision. He needed to find out just what and who he was dealing with in his job. “The office.”
McFadden nodded rapidly and led him past a row of shops selling everything from books to toiletries, walking fast at a pace that almost bordered on a trot. Thorn was glad to see that. It made him think that the red-haired young man might not have just been making excuses for his own tardiness earlier.
Within minutes he was sure of it.
By then they’d gone up and down so many ramps, staircases, and identical corridors that Thorn was starting to feel totally, hopelessly lost. A sign on one wall reading “C-Ring” gave him the only clue to their current whereabouts. They were in the third of the Pentagon’s five concentric rings. Swell. That narrowed it down to somewhere within a few hundred thousand square feet. Real useful.
McFadden held open the door to another staircase. “We’re almost there, Colonel. Like I said, it’s quite a hike.”
Thorn followed him down the stairs and out another door. He stopped dead in his tracks.
They were in a basement corridor. Fluorescent lights glowed overhead at wide intervals. Some were out. Others flickered wildly, throwing misshapen shadows against walls painted a faded institutional green and off the bare concrete floor. Electric trolleys piled high with tools, machinery, and boxes of files whirred by in both directions.
Thorn looked up. The low ceiling was a tangled maze of girders, pipes, and wiring. He lowered his gaze to McFadden. “Is this a shortcut?”
“A shortcut?” The analyst seemed confused. “No, sir.” He pointed down the corridor. “Our office is just down there a little ways.”
Christ. Thorn knew that some of the armed forces’ more traditional-minded senior officers bitterly resented the special warfare community’s growing clout and stable budgets. He guessed that someone in charge of Pentagon office space had decided to exact some petty vengeance by installing the JSOC’s new intelligence outfit in the most godforsaken place possible.
He trailed after the younger man until they came to a brown steel door set into one of the corridor walls. It was equipped with an electronic card reader and a ten-key pad. The letters “JSOC-ILU” were stenciled at eye level in fresh white paint.
McFadden gestured toward the door. “Welcome to the Dungeon, Colonel.” He reddened. “I mean, that’s our nickname for it …” His voice trailed away.
Thorn took pity on him and smiled. “Seems appropriate, Mike. Okay, the Dungeon it is.” He pointed his index finger at the door. “Now let’s get inside and get to work.”
“Right.
” McFadden moved in front of him to slide his ID card through the reader and to input the code needed to open the door. Thorn noticed that the other man was careful to block his view of the lock’s keypad. That was a mark in his favor. Even though the analyst didn’t pay much attention to his personal appearance, he obviously took the need for security very seriously indeed. So his priorities were straight.
The door buzzed suddenly and unlatched.
“We each have our own card, sir,” McFadden explained, stepping back as the door swung inward. “You’ll get yours and the number code when you sign in at the Security Office.”
Nodding his understanding, Thorn walked briskly into what McFadden called the Dungeon. At first glance the accommodations looked better than the bare corridor outside—but not that much better. There was a lot more light, the walls were painted a pale blue, and at least someone had laid a worn brown carpet over the concrete floor.
Beyond the secure door a narrow hallway opened on to a common area. A large table surrounded by chairs filled the center of the room and a small table off to one side held a coffeemaker and a stack of paper cups. Other corridors led off from this central room into the rest of the complex.
Thorn didn’t have time to notice more. Several men and a couple of women were gathered near the coffeemaker, clearly waiting to greet him. They ranged in age from their early twenties to their mid- to late forties. All of them were civilians.
One of the oldest, a tall, balding, heavyset man, stepped forward right away and held out a huge, bearlike hand. “Colonel Thorn? My name’s Joe Rossini. I’m your deputy director. Welcome aboard.”
“Thanks.” Thorn shook hands with the man who would be his number two for the next year. Steeling himself to make the white lie sound sincere, he said, “I’m glad to be here.”
Rossini nodded toward the others. “The rest of these eager, shining faces are your section leaders.” Dark brown eyes gleamed behind the thick lenses of his plain black-frame glasses. “They crack the whip on the other analysts, keep the computers humming, and generally do all the real work around here while I fill in the New York Times crossword puzzle and think deep thoughts.”
Thorn grinned. Whatever else he was, at least Rossini wasn’t the kind of pompous bureaucrat he’d feared being saddled with. He paid careful attention as the big man introduced the others one by one, matching faces to names for later reference. He hadn’t wanted this posting, but he was here now and he planned to do the best job he could.
When Rossini finished the introductions, Thorn looked the group over one more time. “I won’t make a speech right now. I’m sure you’ll all hear my voice far too often and far too soon.” There were a few mildly nervous chuckles at that. He waited for them to die away before continuing in the same easy, informal tone. “I do want to make one point, though. I care a lot about accuracy and about the truth. What I don’t care much about is strict military formality. So you don’t have to keep calling me ‘Colonel’ or ‘sir.’ My first name’s Peter and I expect you to use it. Okay?”
They looked relieved.
“Great. That’s it, then. I’ll see you all later in the day.” He turned and nodded toward Rossini. “Right now the Maestro here and I are going to get better acquainted.”
His new deputy’s thick black eyebrows shot up in surprise at Thorn’s use of his office nickname. Half hidden behind the other analysts, Mike McFadden gulped audibly and faded away down one of the corridors.
Thorn smiled inwardly. He’d filed away his guide’s first, accidental revelation of Rossini’s handle for use at the first suitable opportunity. In his experience it never hurt to have a reputation for being ultra-observant.
The man they called the Maestro wasn’t slow on the uptake himself.
Rossini saw McFadden vanish, glanced at Thorn, and pretty clearly mentally added two and two together. The big man shook his head in mock dismay. “So what do people call you behind your back, Pete?” he asked.
Thorn shrugged, smiling. “I suspect you’ll find out a hell of a lot sooner than I will.” He motioned in the general direction of the rest of the complex. “How about giving me the fifty-cent tour before we get down to business?”
“To hear is to obey.” Rossini led the way down the right-hand corridor. “We’ll start with the Regional Analysis sections …”
Beyond the meeting room, the Intelligence Liaison Unit’s quarters branched out into a warren of small offices crowded with cubicles, desks, computers, and filing cabinets. Maps, blackboards, and bulletin boards hung from the walls almost everywhere Thorn looked. Every room held two or three people either hunched over computer keyboards or conferring together in earnest tones. Television sets flickered in several corners, tuned to the major news networks with the sound muted.
The whole organization gave off a feeling of energy and quiet excitement. One bulletin board held rows of small black-and-white snapshots showing the high-ranking terrorists confirmed killed in Amir Taleh’s crackdown. Another tracked the ongoing disintegration of the HizbAllah’s command structure.
Thorn liked what he saw so far. These people weren’t just going through the motions. They were genuinely committed to their work.
He could also sense Rossini’s pride in his creation. In a little over a month, the big man had molded a disparate collection of forty or so counterterrorism experts drawn from everywhere across the vast alphabet soup of U.S. intelligence agencies into a unified team. That was an impressive accomplishment. Thorn knew a lot about motivating soldiers to work hard when their lives and those of their comrades were on the line. He was savvy enough to realize that he knew a lot less about motivating people when the stakes were more abstract.
The JSOC Intelligence Liaison Unit might be Major General Sam Farrell’s brainchild, but it was obvious that Joe Rossini’s drive and dedication had brought it to life.
His office was about as far back inside the complex as it was possible to get—right next to Rossini’s. They shared a secretary and a photocopier. Beyond that and the same basic floor plan, the two rooms didn’t have anything in common.
The deputy director’s office was a mess. A series of framed photographs on the walls gave the room a personal touch. They showed a smiling Rossini, his wife, and an assortment of four or five children in a variety of settings. Everything else was work-related. Almost every square inch of desk and floor space was piled high with computer printouts and floppy disks. And books. Books on terrorism and psychology. Books on weapons, explosives, and sabotage. Books on the climates, cultures, and histories of different parts of the world. Stacks of books that were piled so high and so precariously that you had the feeling the slightest tremor would start an avalanche.
Slightly stunned by the sight of so much crammed into so little space, Thorn pulled his head out of Rossini’s room and ushered the big man into his own barren work area. None of his own personal effects had arrived from Fort Bragg yet—not that he would have very much to hang on the walls even when they did, he realized.
He shut the door behind them, tossed his uniform cap onto his empty chair, and perched himself on one corner of the desk. He gestured toward the room’s only other seat. “Take a pew, Maestro.”
“Thanks.” Rossini sat down heavily.
Thorn watched the big man closely, noting the way he winced as he straightened his left leg out. He had been limping by the time they finished the brief tour. “Your knee giving you trouble?”
“A little. Too much football when I was younger and too many extra pounds now. My wife and kids watch my calories for me, but the weight doesn’t seem to come off.” Rossini dismissed his personal problems with a disinterested shrug. “What would you like to know first, Pete?”
“Well, I’d like a rundown on exactly how the outfit’s shaping up. Plus, where you see us fitting into the JSOC and Pentagon scheme of things.”
Thorn had read a huge stack of reports before flying up from North Carolina, but he wanted to hear it straight, without th
e usual official gobbledygook. From what Sam Farrell had said, Rossini had a reputation throughout the intelligence community for not pulling any punches—even when keeping quiet might benefit his career. This seemed like a good time to find out how much of that reputation for candor was deserved.
Rossini didn’t disappoint him.
“We’ve got some damned good people working here, Pete.” The big man smiled gently. “Some of their social graces aren’t exactly up to snuff, but they’re some of the brightest puzzle-pushers I’ve ever seen. Too bright for the powers-that-be in their old agencies, I guess.”
Thorn nodded. He’d been worried by some of the things he’d read during his first quick scan through the Intelligence Liaison Unit’s personnel records until he’d begun to see the emerging pattern. Backed by Farrell’s carte blanche, Rossini had recruited mavericks—men and women whose skills were undoubted but who were widely viewed as square pegs in round holes inside the existing intelligence bureaucracies. At a time of declining budgets, the CIA, the NSA, and the other agencies were under increasing pressure to cut costs and staff. In those circumstances, the first to go were usually those who didn’t quite fit the button-down, yuppified tone emanating from each organization’s upper floors.
Those were exactly the kind of people Farrell had said he wanted for the JSOC liaison unit: people who were independent-minded and “just plain ornery enough” to take the analyses generated by the rest of the intelligence community, shake them up, turn them inside out, and basically play holy hell with the conventional wisdom.
Well, Joe Rossini had taken the general at his word, Thorn realized. The offices outside this room were crawling with men and women who loved nothing better than poking holes in other government agencies’ pet theories. Men and women who were now under his authority. Terrific. He had the sudden, unnerving feeling he’d just stepped out into a bureaucratic minefield.
He shook off the feeling and asked, “Any problems so far?”
