“Can you tell me where I can find Southwest Airlines?” the man asked as politely as possible. He was beginning to feel this was taking too much time.
“After baggage claim, go outside. There’s a tram.”
“Thank you.” The man shifted his weight again and forced a smile, hoping this would speed things up.
Egyptian. Deluca decided. But the computer’s identity program still hadn’t given her any reason to hold the man. She reluctantly returned his passport.
“Proceed to your right and straight through the doors.”
The man smiled again and then let out a breath.
A sigh of relief? Deluca could hold him, however travelers behind him were growing impatient after their long international flights. But still.
“One more question.” The fifty-nine-year-old mother of four was clearly stalling. Agent Deluca wanted to give the computer another moment. That’s when a short pinging sound indicated an incoming message onscreen. She checked the monitor. One word appeared under the picture captured by the new Customs surveillance program.
DETAIN
When she looked up, a couple and their child were now standing at her window. The subject had taken his passport and left.
“Where the hell?”
Deluca rushed out of the booth, down the hallway, and through the doors where she had directed the man. She reached for her walkie talkie, but she’d left it at her post. On the other side of the doors she faced the concourse lined with luggage turntables. Which flight? She remembered. Aeromexico out of Mexico City.
Another customs agent read the urgency on her face as she passed him.
“What is it?”
“Got a detain. White male. Well, white-ish. Medium build, brown sports jacket. Short brown hair.”
Carlita Deluca had just described dozens of men within fifty yards. The second customs agent did what Deluca hadn’t done. He radioed upstairs. But it was already redundant. Homeland Security computers had signaled an alert. Simultaneously, the conveyer belt froze. The outer doors locked. No one was going to get through.
Five agents converged in the baggage area; all with printouts of the subject’s photograph. Deluca pushed past some arriving passengers to get to the arrivals board. She read it aloud until she came to Aeromexico 4325/Mexico City. Baggage Claim 7. “Yes!” Deluca turned and looked down the line.
From twenty feet she spotted the man who was walking near the conveyor belt. She signaled the agent closest to radio the location. Seconds later, agents appeared from everywhere. People automatically made room for the uniformed officers whose 40-calibre Glock 23s were out.
The Egyptian sensed the mood change in the concourse. Three of the largest men he’d ever seen were now running across the expanse on an intercept course. Behind them, he saw the cursed female agent who was pointing him out. She had a gun. So did the others. He couldn’t place the weapons. That wasn’t his expertise. He panicked.
Abdul Hassan started to run. There was no time for how or why. All he could do now was escape. The exit.
Hassan ignored the shouts to “Stop!” He pivoted right and bounced off an elderly couple. The man nearly fell down. A pregnant woman next to him was not so lucky. She hit the ground hard. This brought screams from another family and the crowd began to scatter. People tripped over one another. The route to the doors clogged. He darted to the left and suddenly found himself running at full force toward the customs agent from the kiosk. He jammed his head into her gut, instantly bringing Deluca down. The Egyptian grabbed her gun.
“Drop it!” shouted another agent.
He answered the order with a wild shot. Twenty feet away, a father of two fell to his knees. His last thought before his head cracked on the cement floor was for the safety of his twin boys.
People screamed and dropped low. Only five remained upright. Hassan and four of Houston’s most experienced U.S. Customs and Border agents. Their guns rang out from nearly 360 degrees to the target, each finding its mark—a difficult-to-make head shot, two bullets to the lungs, front and back, and two more in the heart. Any of the agents could have taken credit for the kill.
Two
Washington, D.C.
The White House press room
The same time
“Why, Mr. President?” shouted a dozen reporters in one voice. Each hoped to be the loudest. Morgan Taylor knew this would come. Even his chief of staff warned against making the announcement. But it was time.
The president of the United States looked around the room. It didn’t matter who he went to. The question would be the same.
“Okay, Mark.” He pointed to Mark Montgomery, Washington bureau chief for Time. He’d tell Montgomery. The rest of the world would hear it.
“Why, Mr. President?”
Why? was the most important follow-up question any reporter could ask. Why? was exactly what he expected. Why? hadn’t been asked enough in recent years. And it was hardly ever answered honestly.
In that single moment, Morgan Taylor cautioned himself. Be clear. Be precise. With seventy-five reporters in the room his answer could be reported seventy-five different ways. Be very clear. That wouldn’t be a problem. Taylor suffered from clarity. It was his trademark, particularly in his second term as president.
Now Why? would take him where he needed to go. He would tell the nation why every traveler passing through U.S. Customs, whether at an airport or a border crossing, whether American or foreign national, would be photographed. And that photograph would be checked against the largest bank of interlinked computers in the history of the Internet.
“Why,” Taylor began. “Today we face the greatest challenge of our lives. The enemies of freedom and liberty are out to destroy us.” He stared at the faces in the room and shook his head. Shit. Too political. Sounds like another stupid campaign stump speech, he quickly told himself. The president ran his hand through his hair, still trimmed to military regulation length. “No,” he continued, “Let me give it to you straighter. They want to see us dead.”
Everyone in the room sat mesmerized by the man in the black pin-striped Brooks Brothers suit. He was fifty-four, the average age for a president these days. But nothing about his character was average. Taylor was a former fighter pilot. He had experienced war firsthand; as recently as the previous fall in the jungles of Indonesia. He could fly an F/A-18 off a carrier or bring Air Force One in for a crash landing in the Pacific. Morgan Taylor was a force of nature; a man who wasn’t used to the word “no.” He drilled that point into his cabinet and staff. World leaders also knew he meant what he said. That was ultimately more important than how the reporters reported his answer. Still, he wanted to be unquestionably precise. No more Whys.
He had stature well above his 5’11”—not just because of the electorate, but because he commanded. Morgan Taylor really commanded. It earned him respect and made him hated. He represented American ideals more than any American political party. And though he was a Republican, as a rule he was neither left, right, nor center. In this, his last term, he viewed the country and the world from a white house, not tainted or painted with a red or blue political brush.
Taylor was an Annapolis graduate, earning top honors in his class. As a Navy pilot, he was praised for his skill. The fact that he was brought down by enemy fire in Iraq during the war which drove Saddam out of Kuwait only elevated respect for him.
After his discharge, Commander Morgan Taylor, USN (Ret.) signed a lucrative contract with Boeing, the parent company of McDonnell Douglas, which manufactured his high-performance jets. In time, he used his military contacts to score an appointment as a strategist at the State Department. A few years later, he made a run for the Senate from Washington State, where he was elected as a moderate Republican from a progressive state. Two terms later, he took his place in history as President of the United States.
Now, he brought all of his experience, all of his jobs, and all of his sensibilities to bear. He evaluated problems with the perspectiv
e of a highly skilled pilot who had delivered death from twenty thousand feet and considered life from the position of a downed flier who had crawled through the desert sand hoping to see his wife and family again. He publicly embraced science and personally maintained his faith. He was a hopeful man and a realistic leader. If anything, as commander in chief he didn’t mince words. Not in the cabinet room or during a press conference.
“I’ll give it to you again, Mr. Montgomery. They want to see us dead. You. Me. Your wife and children. Your sister, your brother, and everyone you know. That’s what they want. So from this day forward, we’re going to start thinking the unthinkable. That is the way we’ll stay alive in today’s world.”
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Jack Evans cracked the seal on the file. He’d waited months for the report. It was finally here and as complete as it was going to get—for now.
Evans, the director of national intelligence, oversaw the entire intelligence network that included the NSA – the National Security Agency, the CIA, the DIA—the Defense Intelligence Agency—and elements of the FBI. America’s chief spy, a former top cop, and head of civil service investigations from New York state, opened to the first page.
DNI ONLY
The report was commissioned by, and intended solely for, Jack Evans. Depending upon its contents, he’d be sharing it one office up.
The White House press room
“Now I’ll save you the trouble of asking the next obvious question,” Taylor volunteered. “What is the unthinkable?”
There were rumblings of yes in the room. The former Navy vet bore down on the young turk Time reporter who got frequent airtime on Meet the Press. “Everything is unthinkable. Everything that turns civilians into armed combatants, cities into the front lines, cars into explosive devices. The enemy is not working off the playbook we teach our military at West Point, Annapolis, or Colorado Springs. They’re not equipping uniformed officers to take ground and lead troops. They’re arming women and children to blow themselves up. They don’t see defeat in death. They see victory. But a suicide bomber is just one means. We’ve also seen them turn hijacked airplanes into missiles. Thinking the unthinkable means we consider where we are most vulnerable, and we defend against attack. We cannot allow ourselves to be blindsided, either by natural disasters or holy wars.”
Taylor almost wished he could have called back his last comment, an attack on a previous Republican administration and a worldwide religion. But it was time to tell the truth. He had already enumerated and acted on his policy to go after terrorist strongholds and arms caches anywhere in the world. Now he needed to prepare Americans for the same at home. No more platitudes, he told himself.
“Sir Ian Hamilton, in his Gallipoli Diary in 1920, said, ‘The impossible can only be overborne by the unprecedented.’ 9/11 was unprecedented. A bomb on a London subway was unprecedented. What else do we need to add to that list? Because each time, under the headline, are names of people. And whether it is one, ten, hundreds, or thousands, we share the blame for not recognizing the unprecedented. But we will not be blamed for ignoring the unthinkable.
“Now I’m going to tell you how we’re going to do it.”
Durham, NH
The second-year doctor looked up from the chart and saw the teenage girl doubled over. She had no color in her face.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Renu Sitori,” she said through an Indian accent. “What do we have here? Appendicitis?”
The nurse at the rural New Hampshire clinic in downtown Durham, NH, who had already seen her said no. “But severe abdominal pain, like the man who came in yesterday. One-hundred-three fever.”
The girl barely opened her eyes.
“I have a few questions for you. Then we’ll get you taken care of. Can you speak?”
She barely nodded and clutched her stomach.
“This won’t take long, but I have to know. Did you eat anything unusual?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Did you take a fall?”
Another labored no.
“Did you touch anything unusual around your parents’ farm? Especially any dead animals?” She was trying to rule out birds.
“No.”
“Is anyone else in your family sick?”
She blinked once and tried to nod yes. It was becoming too uncomfortable for her.
Dr. Satori turned to the nurse who shrugged her shoulders.
“Who brought her in?”
“Her father. He’s in the waiting room.”
“Stay with her.” Satori tore out of the examination room and found the forty-year-old farmer pacing the floor, ignoring the president’s speech on the TV. The young doctor introduced herself, and then asked him the same questions.
“Dunno,” he kept answering. “Dunno.”
“And what about anyone else? How are your other family members? Your daughter indicated that someone else was sick.”
“My wife. She’s in bed.”
“With what?”
“Dunno.”
“Like your daughter?”
“Kinda. Maybe.”
The doctor considered food poisoning. However, the nurse had already pointed out that the girl’s symptoms were similar to another patient’s. This was going to take more time. She told the farmer to wait for a few minutes.
Satori went to the nurses’ station down the hall and pulled the chart for the patient she saw the day before. The diagnosis was relatively the same. Abdominal pains, high fever, developing nausea. “Where’s this?” the resident pointed to the address. The nurse didn’t know. Nor did the senior nurse on duty. “Come on, you all live here, it’s a small town. Where is Foss Farm Road?”
An aide called out. “Past Oyster River Reservoir on Mill Road.”
“And Lee Lane?” That’s where the girl lived.
“Lee’s west of town. On the 155.”
Dr. Satori walked back to the waiting room to speak to the girl’s father. He was still pacing.
“Is she all right?”
Satori ignored him. “Does your wife have a high fever, Mr. Huggins?”
“Well, a little.”
“Bring her in.” It wasn’t a polite request.
As the father turned to leave he grabbed his side and stumbled over a metal folding chair. Satori caught him before he hit the wall. “Get a gurney!”
Satori helped Huggins to a chair and saw that his eyes were suddenly cloudy and vacant as if he were going into shock.
CIA Headquarters
The same time
The first few paragraphs simply rehashed the history. A shooting in Moscow that wasn’t really a shooting.
There were eyewitnesses. People saw the chase. An elderly man was hunted down at the Gum Department Store blocks away from Red Square. But officially there was no police action, just a cover story. Something about a training exercise with an undercover officer disguised as an old man; a drill to determine whether citizens might note a terrorist, possibly a Chechnyan, in their midst.
Considering how quickly the “crime scene” was contained, it seemed plausible.
Tourists bought the story. Muscovites knew not to question it.
Days after the “training exercise,” a New York Times reporter was shot to death in the Bronx. On its own, it could have been written off as a simple robbery. But this particular reporter had been at Gum; a witness to the shooting and a recipient of some remarkable information. Jack Evans knew some of it. As director of national intelligence, he was anxious to learn more.
Evans read what five grand could buy in Russia today. The cash went to a thirsty, horny Moscow police officer; the first to arrive at the Gum shooting. He was happy to take the money. After all, the cop was talking about a man who didn’t exist. The FSB, the new KGB, had made certain of that.
The Moscow cop explained that when he got to the famous Gum mall complex, a trapezoidal Neoclassical structure built in the time of the tsars, he did exactly a
s he was told by the FSB agent in charge. Leave. But doing so, he overheard another agent mention the name of the old man who had been shot.
“Dubroff. Aleksandr Dubroff.”
He remembered it and told the CIA officer. It really didn’t matter to him. There was no police report to back it up.
Jack Evans continued to read. Once CIA analysts had a name to work with, they began to find a great deal.
Dubroff, Aleksandr. Former Politburo member. Former Colonel, KGB. Former Chief Intelligence Officer of Red Banner training program (see footnote on Andropov Institute). Widower.
There were additional biographical hits, then a qualitative note.
Based on the following information, Aleksandr Dubroff could be considered one of the KGB’s true Cold War henchmen.
Evans continued. Next came excerpts from online blogs, posted by an assortment of Dubroff’s associates, underlings, and a few who survived his wrath. They were all writing or rewriting their version of Soviet spy history; most without a publisher; most unsubstantiated beyond their own accounts.
Jack Evans believed all of it. Dubroff had sensitive information for the West; information even the new Russia didn’t want out.
The DNI finished reading. Good, but not good enough. Before he went to the president he needed more verifiable data. Not just a tip from a cop on the take. Not just Google searches or even Interpol’s assessment. He needed more from the inside. He had just the man who could find it.
The White House press room
“I’ve called on the secretary of Homeland Security, Norman Grigoryan, to tighten the screws; to identify weaknesses in our infrastructure, from airports to power grids to transportation hubs. We will divert resources to strengthen these possible hard targets. Do not expect life to get easier as we do this. We will be faced with more surveillance cameras, admittedly an assault on some of our traditional rights. And we will require tighter entrance and exit policies. Count on being asked to prove who you are and what your business is. It won’t be popular, but it is necessary. We will improve our ability to process data quicker and determine who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s not what I want. It’s what it’s come to. Do you belong on the airplane? Do you belong on the bridge? Are you allowed in the building?
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