“You can say it,” Hail told him. “It’s OK—the last time you saw me at the funeral. That was more than two years ago, but it wasn’t much of a funeral. There were no bodies.”
“Is that why you came here?” Rodgers asked.
“Short answer is yes. And the long answer is “Yes because I paid for this memorial. I wanted to make sure they did it right.”
Rodgers knew Hail was lying. Not about paying for the memorial, but he was lying about the reason he was there.
“And did they do it right?” Rodgers asked. “I mean, it’s odd that there are no flight numbers or countries. Really nothing is on the stones but names. Shouldn’t there be more information?”
“None of that matters,” Hail said, turning to look back at the monument as if he were seeing it for the first time.
“Only the names matter,” he added. “No one cares about the dates or planes or countries, and at times like this, when there is nobody here, I don’t think they even care about the names anymore.”
Rodgers didn’t say anything.
“With no bodies, this is the only place for me to go. You know—to see them,” Hail said, struggling to keep it together.
Hail looked back one last time.
“But I will never come here again. It hurts too damn much,” he added in a tone as sorrowful as it was resolute.
Silence hung in the air, providing space for Hail to grieve.
“Do you want to walk?” his friend asked, “Or should the chopper come back and give you a ride?”
Hail laughed and then coughed. He wiped away moisture from the corners of his eyes with a flick of his finger.
“I think walking would be good for me, don’t you?” he asked Trevor.
“That’s what they tell me,” Rodgers said. He turned and faced Constitution Avenue and took a few steps. Hail fell in next to him.
“Remember in second grade when you tied Barbara Belcher’s hair to the back of her chair and then screamed fire?”
“Yeah, that was funny,” Hail chuckled.
The White House Rose Garden—Washington, D.C.
T
he president was dressed in a smart tight suit; a navy-blue skirt and a navy-blue jacket over a peach colored blouse with a narrow collar. She had a tiny gold American flag pinned to her jacket pocket. She was not a young woman and allowed the streaks of grey to live within her brown hair. She felt it elegantly reflected her age and gave her a unique appearance. Her hair was shoulder length, not long enough where her constituents would consider her to be overly concerned with it, and not short enough to where they would think she was gay. She had been unmarried a long time; divorced years after the kids had gone away to college. Being the first woman President of the United States came with more baggage than her male predecessors had to contend with. Being a woman was one big bag. Being a divorced woman was another load to bear. Being a single, divorced woman was yet another suitcase. And being a woman who was quickly approaching that “hell no” age of fifty completed her luggage collection. Now she had to deal with this very weird, yet intriguing situation with Marshall Hail. Probably never before had a president been confronted with such a state of affairs.
Joanna Weston stuck out her hand to lightly shake Marshall Hail’s hand.
“Thank you for responding so quickly,” she said. But she didn’t mean it. Hail had more or less barged into her schedule, forcing her to cancel a day with the Mayor of Mumbai.
Hail took her tiny hand in his big hand and didn’t know if he should shake it or kiss it. He had no idea what the protocol was for a woman president. The president must have sensed his dilemma. She clutched Hail’s hand and gave it a firm shake.
“It is very nice to meet you, Madam President,” Hail said.
“Please call me Joanna. Madam President makes me sound old.”
Hail saw a sparkle in the woman, a glow that transcended age and appearance. He assumed that this quality must have made a positive impact on other people. Millions to be exact. Specifically, everyone who had voted for her. It was a subtle feature, maybe the way she smiled or the way she held herself. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Her eyes were inquisitive, like radar scanners that assessed people from afar. And then her eyes seemed to scan even deeper when she spoke. It was a quality that projected intellect and superiority.
After their walk from The Five Memorial, Rodgers had led Hail up to the security shack where they had been checked off the list and escorted to the White House. Rodgers told Hail that he would see him later, and then Hail had been shown the way to the Rose Garden where the president had been waiting for him.
“Please sit down, won’t you?” the president motioned with her hand toward the table.
Hail released the president’s hand and waited for her to position herself behind one of the cast iron chairs. The president made her selection, and Hail pulled out the chair for her. He made sure the president was pushed in snugly, and then he sat down in the only other chair at the small table. A White House server appeared from nowhere, poured water into glasses, and then disappeared back into the rose bushes.
“How was your trip from -?” The president waited for Hail to fill in the blank.
“Madagascar,” Hail lied. He saw no advantage in revealing his movements or positions in the world.
“That was a long way to go in such a short time.”
“That’s why God invented jets,” Hail said playfully.
“I must have missed that in The Bible,” the president responded with a laugh.
The president was silent for a moment. This was her show, and Hail was going to let her run it.
The woman’s smile faded into a more serious expression.
“I was hoping we could discuss a little business while we eat, considering that we won’t have much time together.”
“Certainly,” Hail said.
A waiter appeared, put napkins in their laps, put bread on the table and was gone in a flash.
“I have your check right here,” the president said, pointing to an envelope sitting under her three forks. The silverware tinkled as she removed the envelope and handed it to Hail.
Hail accepted it with a thank you.
Without opening it, he slid the envelope into his inside coat pocket.
“You don’t want to check it?” the president asked with a curious expression.
“No, that’s OK. I know where you live,” Hail smiled.
The woman looked a little unnerved at Hail’s comment and quickly changed the subject.
“I think the question on everyone’s mind is how?”
“Excuse me?” Hail said. He was hungry and wanted a piece of bread, but he wasn’t going to be the first one to grab a piece and start buttering it up.
“How did you kill Kim?”
The president’s bluntness caught Hail off guard.
Hail was quiet for a moment as he decided how to respond to the question. He toyed with the old expression; well if I told you I would have to kill you, but thought that was totally inappropriate considering his new pastime.
So, he decided on, “I think that’s another conversation for another time.”
The president looked disappointed.
The round lunch table had a simple white linen tablecloth covering its metal and glass frame. Hail noticed that there were no sharp knives on the table. Butter knives, yes. Steak knives, no. Therefore, he assumed that beef wasn’t on the menu, or they didn’t make a habit of putting items on the table that could be used to kill the president in short order.
Hail looked at the bread and he found himself salivating.
The president must have sensed his longing.
“Please,” she said, making a gesture toward the bread. “I think I’ll wait for the salad.”
Hail didn’t have to be told twice. He retrieved a piece of bread from the basket and used the dull butter knife to make it taste better. He took a big bite.
While Hail was chewing, the president asked him
another truncated question.
“Why?”
“Excuse me,” Hail responded, taking a moment to swallow.
“Why did you want the money?”
“Everyone wants money,” Hail replied as if it were a silly question.
“Everyone isn’t a billionaire. You are.” So, let me rephrase the question, “What do you want from us? You certainly don’t need the money, so the only reason you’re here is because you want something else. What is it?”
“Are you always this direct, Madam President?” Hail asked.
“Please call me Joanna, and I didn’t make it this far up the flag pole by beating around the bush.”
“This woman was very intuitive,” Hail thought. She was right on all counts. Hail had surmised that his request for the money would be seen as a ploy to start a dialogue, but he didn’t expect the rubber to hit the road this quickly. But Hail was happy with how things were unfolding. Time was his enemy, so the faster the better was his frame of mind.
“I need intelligence,” he told the president. “I need to know where they are. I need to know where they will be.”
“And that is something beyond your means?” the president inquired.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Hail replied in a businesslike tone. “I have MIT bit-heads that could hack into your systems, but it would take hundreds, maybe thousands of them to sift through the data to find out what I need to know. You already have thousands of them. Well, to be exact, you employ 35,000 people in the FBI alone. And even though you don’t disclose the number of people who work in the CIA, your exposed budget is $35 billion, so I would suspect a few people in that agency could help out as well. If you were to lean on the hundreds of thousands that work under the umbrella of the NSA, then you have a lot of hands on deck that could help me out.”
Choosing not to directly respond to Hail’s request, the president asked, “What’s your goal, Mr. Hail? What are you trying to accomplish? I can’t tell you how sorry I’m for your loss, and I can’t even begin to imagine the trauma you have suffered with regard to your family, but is that what this is all about? A revenge thing?”
Hail was taken aback by the introduction of his family into the conversation and had to take a moment to compose himself.
“I tend to think of it as retribution,” he said with an edge of defiance in his tone.
“Potatoes, potátoes,” the president said softly, almost to herself.
There was a long silence as the president decided how to proceed.
She gave a tiny nod toward someone behind Hail and two salads appeared and were placed on the table.
“So, who do you need help finding?” she asked.
“All the terrorists on your Top Ten Terrorist list,” Hail said directly.
“And that’s it? After the top ten are dead then you close up shop?”
Hail didn’t respond. Instead he looked down at his salad, thinking it looked like they had picked leaves and weeds out of the Rose Garden and had placed them in the bowl along with nuts, seeds and mandarin orange slices. Hoping he didn’t offend, Hail let the salad stand and plucked another piece of bread from the basket.
The president picked up a salad fork, stabbed it into the greenery and took a bite.
They both chewed and looked at one another.
After they were done masticating, the president asked, “And what do we get out of this? And when I say we, I mean the American people.”
Hail thought that was an easy question to answer. He would give her the answer that she wanted to hear.
“The American people get a safer world.”
“Do they?” the woman asked. “Let’s say that you kill all the terrorists on the Top Ten list. You appear to be a smart man, Mr. Hail.”
“Call me Marshall,” Hail interrupted.
“You appear to be a smart man, Marshall,” the president continued. “Surely you’re not naive enough to believe that this killing spree of yours will end the world’s terrorist problems.”
“I don’t think it’s an ending, but I think it’s a start,” Hail countered.
“A start of what exactly?”
Hail looked at her as if she already knew the answer to her own question.
“A start to putting these scumbags, these murderers, these cockroaches on notice. If you’re a bad guy and want to run a terrorist organization, then your days are numbered.”
The president let out a short mocking laugh.
“And don’t you think that will just drive these cockroaches, as you refer to them, deeper into the cracks and crevices, making them even harder to find?”
“That makes them ineffectual,” Hail responded. “Take Osama bin Laden for example. Once the heat was turned up on that cockroach, he was forced to live in a cement compound in Pakistan, and he was relegated to the nonessential list. He was a nobody that ran nothing at that point.”
“So, a new cockroach took over? Is that what you’re implying?”
“Pretty much,” Hail agreed.
“So, you don’t see that as a problem?”
“Hey, it’s your list. You’re the one that makes it the Top Ten or the Top Hundred or the Top Thousand list. But if you believe that terror is a numbers game, then you’re dead wrong.”
“How do you mean?” the president asked.
“Terrorism is an unwinnable war.” Hail said. “It’s not about countries or groups or religion; it’s about social outcasts that are hungry, bored and have no future and no prospects. So along comes a member of some terrorist organization and finds these poor guys sitting on the curb on a street corner, out of work, with no hope, no future. He hands them a brand-new AK-47 and makes them a member of their little killing club. And what choice do they have? The curb is hard and their ass hurts and they have seen that same depressing curb for years, every morning. They have never had sex and they are young and all of their natural hormones are going off the charts. But still, they hesitate to accept that AK-47 gift and all the nastiness that goes along with it. Why? Because they know that killing is wrong; as is stealing and raping and pillaging. So, to make it right, make it acceptable, the terrorist leaders wrap it all up in a pretty little bow that they call religion. Even the poorest Muslim knows that warping the content of the Quran into a free pass to kill is wrong. The current estimate is there are 1.8 million actual Islamic jihadists on the planet today. So, the new guy with the new AK-47 thinks with that many people doing it, how can it be wrong?”
The president paused for a second before responding.
“So, you don’t think that terrorism has anything to do with religion?”
“Not at all,” Hail said, dropping the crust from his bread into his uneaten weed salad. “Religion is an excuse. It’s a tool they use to entice more downtrodden to join the club. You know, let’s go rob and rape and kill some people, but it’s cool because Allah says it is. It’s a holy war!”
The president didn’t respond.
Hail continued, “So what it comes down to is human nature. People have been killing people since they discovered the rock. It’s human nature. Survival of the fittest and all that stuff. I intend to do the exact same thing; the difference is that my rocks are much more sophisticated.”
The president finished her salad and left her utensil in the glass bowl.
“So, you just told me, in so many words, that killing all these terrorists is futile. There will always be more. So why do it?”
“Retribution,” Hail said.
“Retribution, retaliation, revenge, vengeance—really? In two seconds my smartphone can pull up a dozen more synonyms. Sounds like you have your own little killing club put together, and you’re trying to wrap it up in a neat bow of your own, a doctrine that you feel is more justifiable than all the others.”
Hail smiled. He was enjoying this back and forth.
“These days,” Hail responded, “just about every large organized mass of humanity has a killing club. You would refer to yours as your army, your
navy or your air force. Then of course you have your CIA, your FBI and more black ops stuff that isn’t even on the books. So what bow do you wrap your killing club in? How do you justify your actions, Joanna?”
“I don’t,” the president responded with a coy smile. “That’s why God created the Congress.”
Hail laughed.
The president laughed.
And they finished their lunch.
The White House Oval Office—Washington, D.C.
“T
hese are the people I wanted you to meet,” the president said as she and Hail entered the round room from the east door of the Rose Garden.
Hail saw a smiling Trevor Rodgers to his right, standing in front of a well-worn leather chair. Trevor gave Hail a I told you I would see you again nod and smile.
Standing in the middle of the room was a big man. He was wearing a dark uniform and just about every inch of the material was embellished with a colorful doo-dad or shining medal. The grey-haired man held out his hand toward Hail.
“Hi, Marshall. My name is Quentin Ford. You probably don’t know me, but I knew your dad. He was a good man.”
“Well, at least someone thought he was a good something because he sucked as a dad,” Hail thought. He allowed his hand to be crushed by the general. He smiled and silently thanked the man for nerve damage.
There were two couches in the room that faced one another, and two men were standing in front of each one. Hail thought it looked territorial, like if they moved to greet him they might lose their place on the couch and then have to stand the rest of the day.
Therefore, Hail walked over and stuck out his hand to a tall man who had grey hair, good bones, and wore a grey suit. The man shook Hail’s hand almost reluctantly, as if Hail had cooties.
“Jarret Pepper, director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” the man said sternly.
Hail felt like saying, Marshall Hail, King of the World, or some such nonsense, but decided on “Marshall Hail.” Hail took an immediate dislike to the CIA guy, but that was easy because the man was already trying to be disliked.
Operation Hail Storm Page 18
