Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command

by Gary Grossman

  The White House press room

  “We’ve struck in Indonesia, the Philippines, in Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. We have done so with the permission of those governments,” Morgan Taylor continued without the benefit of notes. “We have destroyed weapons caches and training camps without committing troops. But there’s no victory to celebrate. And I don’t stand before you to claim one. I can’t, because like it or not, the enemy is here.”

  “Next question?” So far no one had touched the other hot button—Taylor’s plan to overhaul the laws that govern the line of succession. Maybe now. He pointed to a legendary Wall Street Journal reporter midway in the first row. “Yes, Bill.”

  “Mr. President, you must realize what civil liberties activists, as well as Democrats, will say about this.”

  “Yes,” Taylor said. No question yet, he thought. It’ll come.

  “Sir,” the reporter continued, “Do you intend to sell this up the Hill in the name of National Security?”

  The president took a deep breath. “Mr. Barlow, within the last two years we have learned a great deal about the lengths to which seemingly ordinary citizens will go to destroy our republic. Their means always surprise us. Did any of us recognize the enemies among us? Would we now?” Taylor paused. The response, unstated, was nonetheless in the minds of everyone in the White House press room.

  “So what will I do?”

  The reporter put his pencil on his pad ready to write.

  “I will keep expanding the sphere of influence of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity, CIFA, which was created under President George W. Bush during his first term in office. At that time, CIFA was transformed from an office that coordinated Pentagon security efforts around military facilities, protecting them from attack, to an agency which can investigate crimes within the United States, such as terrorist sabotage, treason, and, of utmost interest to the Journal, economic espionage.”

  The reporter was now fully engaged. But as he listened, he wrote down the year 2003 and double underlined it. It was his reminder to check the date. He recalled that a Department of Defense directive from 2003 prevented CIFA from engaging in the kind of law enforcement activities the president now proposed.

  “In my estimation, we did not go far enough at that time. It has left holes in our intelligence gathering efforts. So, in answer to your question, yes. I will be sending legislation to Capitol Hill this week that, in this age of terrorism, gives intelligence and law enforcement authorities more equal footing on already tenuous ground.”

  Hands shot up in the air, but Taylor was not finished.

  “I will save you the trouble of asking your follow-up,” the president noted. He grasped the podium with both hands and leaned forward. “What will this mean? Stepped-up domestic-based missions by Marine Corp Intelligence with bureau cooperation and Jack Evans’ oversight. Without the mumbo jumbo—they’ll investigate people who are believed to be threatening or planning to threaten the physical security of Defense Department installations, operations, visitors, and most importantly employees.

  “Greater analysis of threat assessments across the country. The Pentagon likes to call it ‘data harvesting.’”

  There was a chuckle in the room. Despite the news that personal freedoms could very well be devalued, most of the reporters admired the moderate Republican president. They admired his candor. They were about to hear more.

  “There will be no torture. But we will not stop at ‘polite’ questioning.”

  “Mr. President,” the reporters shouted.

  “What I mean is that investigations will be conducted under the letter of the law, but bail will not be a safety net for the uncooperative. Now for some bad news for the conspiracy theorists among you,” the president added. “The government of the United States is not out to invade the privacy of law-abiding citizens or disrespect your life, lifestyle, or religion. There will be no wholesale arrests, no coercive practices. I will not allow it, Congress will not abide by it, the Supreme Court will not uphold it. The purpose is to make our domestic facilities safer while we continue to target terrorist strongholds outside of America. The purpose is to protect America.

  “And to that point, let me add that I will not tolerate actions taken by vigilante or political groups that do not respect the rights of others. I will go as far as legally possible to discover and disrupt terrorist or would-be terrorist plots.

  “There will be debate, which I have no doubt, you as members of the press will find rich in copy. There will be disagreement, which I implore you to report in a balanced manner for your readers and viewers. This isn’t the time to fan partisan political fires. It’s time to figure out what we can do within the letter of the law.”

  This triggered disturbed looks and mumbling. The president had to talk over it.

  “I know you’re concerned. And for some of you, it is about personal freedoms. Well, I’ll ask everyone—do your news organizations tell you that you can’t investigate a lead? Do your news networks say you can’t question sources? Do you think that life would be better if you simply waited to report what happened?” Taylor surveyed the room. There was no argument even from the journalists who would skewer him later on the TV talk shows appearances, their commentaries, and political blogs. But for now, they were silent.

  “Let me do my job. I guarantee you’ll have plenty to report.”

  Taylor didn’t say a word about another story that would break soon if a phone call in his office didn’t go well.

  “Thank you.” The press conference was over.

  Three

  George Bush Intercontinental Airport

  A few minutes later

  The ten-year-old Buick circled the airport perimeter waiting for the arriving passenger. The driver had a specific description and a password. But on his first and second pass, no one flagged his car. The third trip around took longer. A pair of police cars cut in front, sirens blaring. Traffic began to build up. By the time he got back to the Aeromexico terminal he ground to a halt. Passengers were streaming out. Police secured the entrances preventing anyone from entering. An officer tried to direct cars away to make room for more police and an ambulance. His rubber-necking told him nothing. “Fuckin’ shit,” he swore. He maneuvered to the left lane to make it around once more.

  Thirty minutes later he was creeping by the terminal again. This time he managed to ask a cop what happened.

  “Keep moving.”

  The driver hated police. But he needed to ask. “What’s going on?”

  “None of your fucking business,” the officer shouted to the young Hispanic. “Now move!”

  The white officer was wrong. It was Miguel Vega’s business.

  Vega was twenty-one and he had a great deal of responsibility today, and for the next few days. He’d been ordered to pick up a very special visitor. Now he was scared. If he couldn’t make his pickup he’d have to come back empty. That could prove to be very dangerous. There would be consequences. There always were for members of 13-30, a new and deadly spin-off of one of America’s growing internal threats—the MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha. Better known as the Maras.

  Originally, MS-13 was a street gang with its roots near MacArthur Park, west of downtown Los Angeles. After two frustrating decades, L.A. police attempted to break up the gang. They instituted a deportation policy and sent thousands of immigrants with criminal records to Central America. But the deportations backfired. The first deportees returned from Central America almost to the man. Now the Maras had organized cells in Washington, D.C., Boston, Baltimore, Houston, and many other U.S. cities.

  Even the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency acknowledged that deportation essentially amounted to taxpayer-financed visits with family and friends before their inevitable return north. The result—a never-ending string of gang members shuttling between the United States and Central America.

  The common joke for Maras facing deportation in one
city is, “See you in L.A.” They were guaranteed to be back in the United States in weeks.

  Estimates are that Mara Salvatrucha members number fifty thousand or more. They’re involved in hard-core immigrant trade, extortion, and racketeering. Thirteen-30 was rumored to be involved in even worse crimes. Little was known about it. Neither the FBI nor the ATF had successfully infiltrated the tight organization. Members were recruited at thirteen. At age thirty there were initiation rites that considerably thinned the herd. Those who “graduated” were set for life. There was, however, no definition how long that meant.

  Now Miguel Vega didn’t know if he’d make twenty-two. “Fuck!” he exclaimed as he drove around again. A few minutes later he parked, but he failed to retrieve his “package.”

  Moscow, Russia

  The same time

  Arkady Gomenko chose one of the doors at B2. There were many in the complex of lounges, restaurants, and pool halls. He liked B2 because the building had character. In days gone by, it had formerly housed departments of the old Soviet ministry. Now, it was a bar. And the stories people told were different than the confessions heard under torture in its many rooms years earlier.

  Arkady sat on a stool. He removed his unstylish black frame glasses, rubbed his tired eyes, and studied his reflection in the mirror behind the liquor. He was less interested in seeing how he looked. Who else is here?

  It was quiet for the next two hours, which made the forty-four-year-old functionary perfectly happy. He shared some small talk with the bartender, a few words with a blonde half his age—that went nowhere, and listened to one lost soul who believed Khrushchev should have stood his ground in Cuba. The whole world would be different and every Russian would be rich like the Americans, the man argued. Arkady thought he was full of shit, but the conversation helped him waste the evening away.

  One more check of the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw. Too much flabby skin under his chin, receding hairline, and gray coming in. No scoring tonight, he realized. Arkady settled up, put down an adequate tip and waved good-bye to the bartender. “Dosvidonya.”

  “Dosvidonya,” came the reply. The bartender waved automatically, happy for a tip. At least Arkady left one. So many other beleaguered middle-aged government workers on their fixed incomes didn’t.

  The Oval Office

  Later

  Three of America’s most powerful men were gathered for the meeting.

  Jack Evans, the director of national intelligence, was seated on one side of a brown leather couch. Next to him, General Jonas Jackson Johnson, the president’s recently named national security advisor. In the chair opposite them, Norman Grigoryan, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. He was absorbed in a file.

  The president settled into a seat he recently brought out of storage. He decided to update the Oval Office. Update to him meant that the colonial furnishings of the last administration went back to the White House collection in favor of some familiar and historic Navy-issue relics. His pride and joy was sitting in the captain’s chair, which had belonged to Admiral Isaac Hull when he commanded The USS Constitution during the War of 1812.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said rising from his coveted seat. “We’re going to start without Mulligan.” Robert Mulligan was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a close friend of the president’s. “He’ll join us when he can.”

  Taylor looked at his secretary of Homeland Security. “All set, Norman?”

  Grigoryan was the last to read the report. “Mr. President, this is….”

  “Hold onto that thought for awhile Norman. First, a little background that’s not in Jack’s file.”

  Grigoryan closed the folder and put it on his lap.

  “I asked Jack to do a little paperwork to maybe ease a serious case of K-PAN.”

  Evans laughed. He knew the term. Grigoryan and General Johnson didn’t.

  “K-PANs,” Taylor explained, “are simply the things that Keep the President Awake Nights.”

  There were light smiles.

  “And that describes most nights.”

  The men agreed.

  “Jack generated the report. Mulligan added to it. Now, maybe I won’t be alone at 2 a.m.”

  More laughter.

  “Now, let me tell you what it’s all about.”

  Capitol Hill

  “This is just great!” Duke Patrick shouted to the crowd of aides who had assembled in his office to watch CNN. “The best that reality TV has to offer.”

  Just then, the Speaker of the House’s leggy new political aide walked by his office. She caught everyone’s attention; something she was quite capable of doing anywhere on the planet. “Mr. Speaker, do you need me?”

  “Come in, come in, Christine. Watch what political suicide looks like on national television. Taylor’s just put a big fat target on himself and asked us all to end his misery.”

  Christine Slocum stood to Patrick’s left, brushing slightly against him. He shifted back in his chair and eyed her exquisite body, which he was determined to experience. Soon, he hoped.

  For years, Patrick had been a loose cannon; speaking before thinking and not framing those thoughts particularly well. But he could be molded. Slocum knew it and used it. That’s why she was there. For the man, currently second in line of succession because the nation was without a vice president, Duke Patrick was definitely someone who needed to improve his game and up his public persona if he was going to make it to the White House. Christine Slocum was now close enough to counsel Patrick; to coach him on what to say and when, and who to say it to, whether it was Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow on the left or Bill O’Reilly to the right. And with every well-positioned sound bite, Patrick gained ground.

  Duke Patrick would have to consider how to respond to Taylor. Or more accurately, Slocum would, though he would still think it was his idea. He was good. She was better.

  Four

  North Shore Boston

  Charlie Messinger stepped off his G-4 at the Beverly, Massachusetts, Airport. His flight from Chicago was made all the more easy since he didn’t have to go through Logan. But that hadn’t been a problem for years; not since his government contract. Messinger developed key software used in the intelligence community’s newest generation of Echelon—the telephone and Internet probe that listened for and identified words that might be used by terrorists, anarchists, or spies.

  Messinger was not a computer expert himself. He was a man with connections, family money, and the ability to capitalize on opportunity. He retired from the military with honors and Pentagon contacts. He then set up a business, and struggled only as long as it took to build one of the leading Route 128 software companies. Within three years, Globix ComPrime, went from nothing to a firm valued at more than $3.5 billion. He commuted anywhere in the world from Beverly Airport, which was minutes away from his exquisite home on the ocean, along Route 127.

  Obviously, Messinger could have had chauffeurs, but he preferred driving himself. He kept his Bentley in the garage for the sixteen-mile commute to his office and drove a pale blue Thunderbird back and forth from the airport.

  Today, he wasn’t going right home. He scheduled a luncheon meeting not too far away in Rockport. A French software manufacturer was interested in a new program Globix was developing. Messinger intentionally leaked news of it to trade magazines. On the open market, it could increase the company’s price per share. The Frenchman represented a buyer he hadn’t cracked yet. And though the former army colonel did not trust the French government, he believed in the Euros they traded.

  The visiting Frenchman flew in the night before, and Messinger proposed a favorite North Shore haunt. The plan was to meet M. Paul Le Strand at The Greenery, a small restaurant with one of the best views of Rockport’s famed Motif #1 on Bearskin Neck.

  Messinger arrived thirty-five minutes after landing. He might have made it quicker, but a late afternoon storm slowed traffic along state highway Route 128. He easily found a
parking place on Main Street.

  With time to spare, he took a stroll along Bearskin Neck, which could be shoulder-to-shoulder crowded in the summer months, but in January only attracted diehards and locals.

  Messinger enjoyed the quaintness of Rockport, though he didn’t get there often enough. As a kid he used to bring dates to the rocks at the far end of the jetty, share a lobster, and watch the ocean slam against the breakwater. There’d be no eating outside today. Light rain was still falling. The air was raw, and, most importantly, Roy’s, the great lobster joint along Bearskin Neck, was closed for the season.

  Still, a few people were out, determined to get a snapshot of Motif #1, a simple red shack that jutted into the harbor and was purportedly one of the most photographed and painted buildings in America. It certainly was one of Messinger’s beloved sites.

  Motif #1 stood out against the sky in any weather. It was originally constructed in 1884. It survived the harsh New England winters until the massive blizzard of 1978. Donations from tourists, friends, and residents paid for its complete restoration. But no cameras were out today. At least one visitor was happy about that.

  Messinger pulled his collar up and wished he had grabbed an umbrella from the car. The rain was getting heavier again and the wind off the ocean had picked up. Messinger doubled his pace along Bearskin Neck. Suddenly, someone brushed by him from the side. Messinger didn’t take much notice, but an instant later he thought he felt a prick on the back of his left thigh; nothing bad, more like a mosquito bite. He turned, first in one direction, then another. By now all he saw were people scurrying in different directions under their open umbrellas.

  Messinger continued down Bearskin Neck. He felt a momentary wave of light-headedness which soon passed. He was much more aware of the rain than anything else.