Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command

by Gary Grossman

  “Do it. I’ll fill my boss in and see you later today. I’ll bring a Starbucks. And don’t even think of getting back into that bed with Penny tonight.”

  “Fuck you again, Roarke. And make it a Venti.”

  Roarke buckled up and closed his eyes before the Air Force jet took off. The events of the very long day rewound before him. It ended as it began. Christine Slocum shamelessly marching right up to Roarke in the men’s locker room, facing him with great delight, and seeing the results. He tried blinking his eyes open to erase the picture. He was sure this was going to lead to something. He just didn’t know what.

  Thirty-five

  FBI Labs

  Quantico, Virginia

  13 January

  “Thanks for the Pandora’s Box. It’s a thing of beauty, Roarke,” Touch Parsons explained. “Every picture leads to another, and another, and another. Group photos, surveillance shots at foreign embassy events, soccer matches, awards banquets. You name it. And with so much to work with, it’s been a snap cross-referencing locations, names, and dates. The result, a fucking rogue’s gallery of characters who will never be nominated for a Nobel. They all interconnect, if not directly, then tangentially through professional associations, university affiliations, and nationality.”

  “What nationality?”

  “Syrian principally. A few Saudis, some Germans, a few Romanians. Even some Indonesians. Here’s the kicker: the intelligence computers started ringing like Christmas bells. This is big, Roarke.” Parsons laughed. “Hell, I’m on autopilot now, the computer is doing the work for me. I’ll need time to sort through it, but Jesus H. Christ, we’ve got serious trouble here.”

  Roarke’s phone vibrated. He took the call.

  “Hey, Penny, I’m with your sweetie.” Parsons gave a wave. “He says hi.”

  “Hi back. Meanwhile, you sure do get around.”

  “Don’t even start with me. I’m wiped. Anyway what’s the latest?”

  “Here’s what I have. Parents dead. Pretty girl’s apparently a trust baby. I gather inheritance paid for schooling and everything else. Very little debt according to a credit report. Either she’s given freebees everywhere or she has a rich uncle. I’d say she’s living beyond her $54 thousand plus per year from the Hill. Oh, and she pays a great deal in cash.”

  “Suspicious?” Roarke asked.

  “Aren’t you? That’s why you asked, right?”

  “That and the feeling that I may have seen her somewhere before.”

  “There’s a good chance you did,” Walker stated. “But I need to run this down first.”

  “Oh?”

  “Give me a few hours. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Come on, Penny,” Roarke said.

  “Later, if this pans out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Say thank you, Penny.”

  “Thank you, Penny.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Roarke rejoined Touch Parsons. The first thing he heard was “Uh oh.” Thoughts that began that way never led to anything good.

  “Something new?”

  “A familiar face.”

  “Who?”

  “Remember how we met. Your little research job that brought us together?”

  Of course Roarke did. Senator Teddy Lodge’s campaign for president. And the conspiracy that came out of it. An assassin. Sleeper spies. An assault in Libya. The president’s rescue in the Pacific. A talk radio host stirring up hate, and a madman set on bringing down America.

  “Look at this.”

  The sassy FBI photo recognition expert hit a keystroke on his computer. A new image came up; grainy but with enough for Parsons to effectively enhance. Mana Al Bushanain, looking very much like the sketch drawn by Cheryl Gabriel. He was standing with another man. A very familiar man. A most wanted man.

  “Holy shit.”

  The White House

  1230 hrs

  “Boss, we have a problem.” Roarke was reporting up the same time Touch Parsons was calling into FBI Director Robert Mulligan.

  “Let’s have it,” the president said.

  “I’m not one for conspiracies, but recent history tells me I better become a believer because we have a hell of a one cooking.”

  Roarke explained what Parsons discovered based on the exceptional sketches from the Montana high school student.

  “And it’s all pointing to one man. You sitting down?”

  “I will if I need to.”

  “Sit down. It’s Haddad. Ibrahim Haddad.”

  Without missing a beat, Morgan Taylor said, “Get here in one hour. If traffic is a problem, get out and run.”

  Roarke was midway to the White House when he reached Katie at her office.

  “I’m back and we need to have a serious talk tonight.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes and no. I’ll explain later.”

  Roarke didn’t say it, but it was going to take delicate explaining.

  Thirty-six

  Las Vegas, NV

  Las Vegas, one of the nation’s fastest growing metropolitan areas, is thirsty. Its residents and visitors gobble up immense amounts of water every day. In raw numbers, more than 1.2 million residents and more than thirty million tourists each year.

  Water flows twenty-five miles from Lake Mead and is pumped up three hundred feet from deep aquifers. The Water District also taps the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, the city’s original spring water. The resources fall under the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the LVVWD, which is a member of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA).

  The infrastructure is built on more than three thousand miles of pipeline, a reservoir system which stores seven hundred million gallons of water with high-tech water-quality monitoring controls. However, only a fraction of the water used in the Las Vegas Valley is consumed. Most is used for fountains, lawns, toilets, and cleaning.

  Introducing toxins into the metropolitan system is virtually impossible. It would take enormous quantities of chemical or biological substances. But poisoning the water in a few hotel restaurants is another matter entirely. It simply requires a few uniforms and fake IDs, a degree of bravado, and the ability to look like you know what you’re doing under the kitchen sink. Such guile is best executed when most of the service staff around are immigrant workers, thankful to have jobs and less likely to point a finger at another hapless worker.

  That’s how two more of Haddad’s men got into four Las Vegas hotel restaurants today. It took only minutes to repipe some lines with their own PVC. In and out in twenty-five minutes. Minutes later, unknowing patrons having Las Vegas’ finest with dinner, enjoyed a few hours on the strip, then went back to their rooms and vomited. Based on the amount they had to drink, they might survive the night or another day. But probably not.

  It would make the news by the morning; the biggest, most visible scare yet. Far beyond the outbreak of bacteria legionella or Legionaire’s disease that was reported in Las Vegas in July, 2011. The coverage would lead to other reports. Other reports would lead to regional, then national threats. Then it would turn into a countrywide crisis. All accomplished on Haddad’s schedule with precise timing.

  This was the story that reporter Paul Twardy was hoping for. This was the report that Bonnie Comley never wanted to see.

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The Centers for Disease Control

  Dr. Comley continued to compile independent reports from across the country. She looked for commonality: high fever, digestive tract complaints, dehydration—all signs of food poisoning. A few were normal in any demographic survey. But the pile of paper on her desk had moved well beyond a few. Now some of the same hospitals updated many of the patients’ status to deceased.

  Salmonella? There had been so many outbreaks in recent years that it was a first consideration. But the locations were so random, and so widely spread out that it was unlikely they could have been serviced by the same food sources. Still, she called each of the hospitals back an
d ordered them to immediately send, to CDC specifications, samples of local grocery food, including chicken, eggs, vegetables, and other basics that might contain the bacteria. She also asked that they get samples of the water from each of the victim’s homes.

  Comley wasn’t ready to hit the alarm button yet, but she advised the director of her concern. At the CDC such advice is taken seriously.

  Wall Street Journal Offices

  New York

  Twardy typed out a story and sent it to his editor, who rejected it immediately.

  The White House

  The meeting began with a cursory, but sincere, “Thank you” from vice president-designee Johnson and an equally quick “You’re welcome” from Roarke. Nothing more was needed. There were more pressing things and Roarke had won the argument. J3 and his wife were staying in the White House. No ifs, ands, or buts.

  Next, the president asked Roarke to provide a flyover of his Montana trip. The first question that followed was the president’s.

  “What are we looking at, gentlemen?”

  The gentlemen sitting around the coffee table were Jack Evans, director of national intelligence; FBI Chief Mulligan; Director of Homeland Security Grigoryan; General Johnson; and Taylor’s Chief of Staff, John “Bernsie” Bernstein.

  Roarke stood on one side of a white board on an easel, the president on the other.

  The floor was open.

  “Dirty bombs?” asked Grigoryan.

  The president wrote it down without comment.

  “Sabotage,” added Bernsie.

  “Unlikely. Unless it’s the electric grid.” Still, the president wrote both sabotage and electric grid on the board.

  “Not the electric grid,” Roarke argued.

  “Why?” Evans asked.

  “Touch Parsons is ID’ing these guys as mostly chemists and biologists. A couple of PhDs in geology, but most chem and bio.”

  Those disciplines resonated and took on even greater meaning as Taylor added them to the grease board.

  “WMDs,” General Johnson added. The abbreviation hung in the air. “A fucking WMD attack on our own soil.”

  Morgan Taylor stood with his hands at his sides. Once uttered, the threat of WMDs was so heavy a concept that he could hardly move.

  “I don’t think so.” Roarke said, breaking the long silence.

  “You don’t think so? And this comes from your expertise in exactly what?” General Johnson said, his voice rising to a shout. In three seconds flat, Scott Roarke felt the full force of General Johnson’s Patton-like personality.

  Taylor, taking Johnson’s side, added WMDs to the list.

  Roarke stood his ground. “Does it have to be mass destruction to be effective?”

  “What are you talking about?” J3 responded.

  “From what we know, these guys may be traveling in pairs. Assuming for the moment that they came in via different cities, which we’ll know soon, their objectives could be smaller. No doubt deadly, but smaller. Only in aggregate does it become bigger. But think of these as a series of forest fires. Coming from Los Angeles, I’ve long worried about the destruction five terrorists with a dozen flares could accomplish driving independently through the hills and Santa Monica Mountains. Tossing them out every few miles along the Angeles Crest Highway or Mulholland Drive could paralyze the city, possibly the county, or worse. In league with accomplices hitting other areas, a fifty-buck box of flares could destroy the economy of California overnight. Is it a weapon of mass destruction? Yes, in the long run. A box of flares. I’m just suggesting we consider the micro as well as mass.”

  “Point taken,” the general said, exhibiting vice presidential timber.

  “Okay, taking Roarke’s narrower view, what would the enemy, with such special skills, be capable of doing?” the president asked.

  The Oval Office went silent. Halfway across the country a teenage boy was going to put the answer up on YouTube.

  Aurora, Nebraska

  The same time

  At seventeen, Kyle Glasgow was like so many of his peers. Smartphones came easily to him, videogames could fill endless hours, and Facebook, tweeting, texting, sexting to his girlfriend were normal ways to stay current and visible with friends. Kyle was also into posting videos on YouTube. He made silly vignettes out of knives, forks, and spoons and longer productions about the short day in the life of an ice cream cone, the boring existence of a stop sign that could never move, and the utter despair of lint. Thanks to his Twitter account, he actually developed a sizeable following. With today’s video he’d positively go viral.

  “Hello, I’m Kyle Glasgow. This is my bedroom and I live in Aurora, Nebraska. Did I say live? I’ll come back to that because although it sounds so permanent. It isn’t.” He coughed. “Sorry about that. Anyway, Aurora is a good community to grow up in. It’s in the heartland of America, just off Interstate 80. I always thought my biggest choices would be East or West. I’m not going to get to decide that.”

  Kyle stepped forward to the camera then picked it up, narrating for a while. “I’m going to just give you a tour of my home. We don’t have a lot of people in Aurora. Maybe five thousand. It’s going to be less soon.” Another cough, this time off camera.

  He walked out of his room, down the hall, pointing at pictures on the wall. “My parents. My younger sister and brother. You know, soccer pictures, birthdays; they’re all on the wall. I’m sure it’s the same at your place.”

  He zoomed outside through a living room picture window past an anyplace-USA kind of quiet street. In the distance, a tall white water tower emblazoned with AURORA painted in red and a graphic image of two trees. The camera microphone picked up some sirens wailing. “That’s the outside world. Let me show you inside.”

  Kyle panned over to his father who is sitting on his favorite easy chair. “That’s my father, Doug Glasgow. I love him. He’s dead.”

  Kyle said it so dispassionately as to be completely shocking.

  “My mom’s in the bedroom. Come look. She was the best. He walked the Canon camera around the corner and stopped in the hall, zooming into his mother. “My mom’s name is, or I guess was, Sheila. Mom, I love you, too. She’s also dead.” He coughs again. “My sis and brother aren’t dead yet. But they will be soon. So will I. And you’re not going to get to see this if I don’t upload it soon.”

  He put the camera on a bureau and then walked in front of the lens. “I just want you to know, I didn’t do this. I’ve called for help, but 911 is pretty busy right now. Can you hear the sirens?” The sound was audible in the background. “I guess we’re not the only ones who got sick really fast. You want to know what I think?”

  Kyle grabbed his side. “Hold on a second.” He fought back stabbing stomach pain. “I better get this online now and tweet word around. Please forward it.” He felt another sharp ache. “What was I saying? Oh, yeah. I think it has something to do with something we ate here. Maybe you can find out. Wanna hear something crazy? I wanted to become a movie director. Does this count? Thanks for watching.”

  Kyle stumbled off screen holding his stomach. The screen went black as he turned it off.

  Friends got his Twitter posting a few minutes later, and the last YouTube video of “Kyle’s Korner,” as he called it, went online.

  New York

  Somebody forwarded the boy’s tweet to Twardy. He began screening it.

  The White House

  The same time

  “What did you get out of Perez about his gang?” FBI Chief Robert Mulligan asked.

  “Lots,” Roarke replied. He consulted his notes. He had the names of the MS-13 gang leaders in Houston, the location of their principal residences, bio info, and details right down to the make and models of their cars. The main guy is a badass named Manuel Estavan. I’m sure you’ll come up with a scary dossier on him,” he said to FBI Chief Mulligan.

  Taylor wrote MS-13 on the board.

  “They’re heavily armed and ready to kill. You’ll know them by thei
r tattoos. And if you’re close enough to read them, then you’re already in trouble.”

  “MS-13? What’s it stand for?” Bernsie asked.

  “It’s an abbreviation for Mara Salvatrucha. Have you heard about them?” Mulligan and Evans knew about the gang, the others didn’t, so Roarke explained. “Mara meaning gang in Caliche, a Salvadoran slang. It actually has an interesting root. It’s taken from marabunta which is a local ant that’s extremely fierce and able to defend the colony. Then Salvatrucha, a combination of Salvadoran and trucha or trout. In local lingo, it’s slang for being alert.”

  “And the thirteen?” Bernsie wondered.

  “Good question. M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. It’s synonymous with La Eme or the Mexican Mafia. MS-13 members like to wear sports shirts, sweats, hats, all with strategic numbers—three, thirteen or twenty-three. The numbers of players like Allen Iverson or Kurt Warner.”

  “Jesus, how do you know this shit?”

  “I came from the streets around the time that MS-13 was getting a stronghold in Los Angeles. Let’s just say I got picked up by a cop at the right time and here I am, one of the good guys.”

  “Anything else on them?” J3 asked.

  “Oh it goes on and on. They’re guerilla-trained in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. They control the train routes and the roads, trafficking weapons and people through Mexico. Right to the U.S.”

  Jack Evans looked at Morgan Taylor. Taylor nodded. He had to make another call to the Mexican president.

  “The gang has spread from Los Angeles to more than thirty states. They basically move into the Hispanic community and sink their teeth in. Eventually, they’ve been able to absorb other gangs, consolidate power, and move on. They have a phenomenal history. Most of it’s written in the obit pages. Director Mulligan can probably tell you more.”

  “A good introduction, Scott. Along with customs enforcement agents, we’ve made wide-scale raids against known and suspected Maras. Hell, hundreds of arrests and hardly a dent.”