The Shadows of Power

by James W. Huston

  François was trying to translate and explain, but Lew and Patricia were lost. François leaned over and said to Lew quietly, “The biggest question everyone has is whether these Algerians are after only the Americans. If they are, then the consensus is to simply ask—or tell—them not to fly. But there is a building consensus that Algerians with surface-to-air missiles in Paris are dangerous no matter what. We may think they’re after the Blue Angels, but what if they change their mind? What if the Blue Angels decide not to fly, so they decide to shoot at someone else? This is unacceptable. So this debate now goes on, as to whether,” he struggled for the English, “whether to cancel the entire air show. If we do, we are giving in. But if we don’t, they may create quite a disaster. So we find ourselves where you did when you got here. Trying to move forward with very good decisions and try to keep everything as close to normal as possible.”

  Lew nodded. He was impressed. But he also realized they didn’t have any magic answers.

  “We are going to concentrate our initial efforts on the Algerian community in Paris. We expect it to be a rich area for information.”

  Lew tried to turn his head to look at him, to thank him for including the FBI, and to thank him for translating some of the conversation. But he couldn’t turn his head at all. He felt terrible, and the pain medication hadn’t cut the edge off the nearly unbearable pain that he was usually able to control. It was all he needed, he thought. For his neck to start taking over his life again just when he needed to be doing a million other things. He took a deep breath against the pain and fought back a grimace. “I hope you’re right.”

  Ismael and Madani walked into the back room of an apartment above a discount camera store. What could not be seen from the street was the substantial security that protected the nondescript apartment. Members of the security detail were placed in various positions around the block. And there was the ever-present Hafiz, posing as a street beggar, kneeling on the sidewalk watching passersby, the same man who had looked Rat in the eye twelve hours before.

  The early morning meeting was as unusual as it was important. It was the first time Ismael had been to this apartment; he felt privileged to be in the planning session. There were four others he had never seen before. They greeted Madani and Khalida warmly, and everyone gathered around the table. Ismael crossed to the table and stood between two of the men he had only just been introduced to. He was shocked to see what sat on the table—a scale model of the airport that covered the entire table. The runways crossed in the middle in an odd shape, with the tower and passenger terminal clear on one side. Even the roads leading to the airport were obvious on the model. Buildings stood two or three inches up from the base; every building was shown out to three miles.

  “Where did you get this?” Ismael exclaimed, his eyes trying to take in the entire model at once.

  Madani glanced at him but didn’t respond. “Before we discuss the plan, you said you had something to report, Hafiz.”

  Hafiz glanced around anxiously. His life was that of an informant. His nervousness manifested his constant discomfort and insecurity. “Someone is here. They are looking for us.”

  “French?”

  He shrugged. “Of course. They are doing their usual search. They have their agents out looking, but we know most of them and are quite sure they are not close.”

  “Someone else?”

  Hafiz nodded. His eyes were wider than usual. “He is different. American.”

  Madani nodded and looked at Ismael, who was growing concerned. “So the Americans have arrived. FBI, no doubt.”

  “I don’t think so, but maybe.”

  “CIA?”

  “This one is . . . different. An intelligence operative of some kind. He looks dangerous. I am . . .” He was about to tell the others that he was afraid of this American, but he knew he would get not sympathy but ridicule for having such fears.

  “You had an idea?” Madani interrupted his thoughts.

  “Yes. But I do not feel free to discuss it,” he said, moving his hands awkwardly as he glanced at Ismael.

  “He is one of us. Speak freely.”

  “I do not speak in front of anyone I do not know. I have never worked with him.”

  “It is all right. It was his brother that was killed by the Americans.”

  Hafiz quickly understood. “I think you should allow me to take care of this in my own way, to cause the circles to . . . overlap.”

  “You can do this?”

  “I am confident.”

  “Then do it.”

  Ismael was confused. “Do what?”

  Madani looked at him. “It does not concern you. He uses information as a weapon. He is very effective.”

  Ismael was put off. “Tell me the plan for the airport.”

  Madani nodded. “It will be difficult, but it can be done. Here is what we will do.” He pointed to places at the airport. “We will have five independent shooters. We will not talk with each other after the night before. We pick up our missiles in our vans, drive independently to our positions, and fire at the same time. You,” he said to Ismael, “have given us a chart that shows exactly when that will be, and it is based on when the four American jets take off. Start your watches then. As you can see from the time marked, it is at that time we shoot. It’s not based on the clock but the air show. It’s up to each of you to get there, get in position, and fire. They may change the time of the air show, they may change everything. But once those four airplanes take off together, start counting.” He took a deep breath, envisioning the event. “We will shoot the two solos as they approach the crowd. If we succeed, the Americans will crash in fire into thousands of spectators for the whole world to see.” He stopped and lay the pointer down on the model. “Any questions?”

  * * *

  “Yes, sir?” Sarah St. John asked as she stepped into the family quarters of the White House, a place where she was rarely invited. The Secret Service agent looked at her quickly and looked away.

  “Hi, Sarah. How are you?”

  “Fine, sir,” she said. She nodded at the First Lady, who looked at her with some content that St. John didn’t immediately translate. “Good evening,” she said to her.

  “Hello,” the First Lady replied. They both stood up from the beautifully set dinner table.

  “I’m sorry. I’m interrupting your dinner. My timing is horrible. I just received your message and came right away.”

  “No problem. We were just finishing,” President Kendrick replied, glancing at his wife. “Come in, come in.”

  The First Lady disappeared into the family room two rooms away. “Sit down,” Kendrick said pointing to the dinner table. Two men had removed the dishes and the tablecloth.

  St. John sat. “What can I do for you?”

  Kendrick looked at her and frowned. “I was answering your message. You said you had something to tell me.”

  “Oh, of course. Sorry.”

  “So what is it?” Kendrick asked, clearly intent on going on to something else quickly.

  She reached into the pocket of her suit coat and handed him the digital camera screen Rat had left with her. “Here.”

  He took the small LCD screen and looked at it. “What is this?”

  “Turn it on.” She reached over and showed him the button.

  The first picture came on. Two men sitting in a car in front of her house. The camera angle showed the men and the house. He recognized the house immediately. He had been there several times. “What’s this?”

  “Look at the others. That button . . . there.”

  He went through the photos, then looked at her. “When were these taken?”

  “Just the other night.”

  “Who are these men?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but I am confident that they’ve been placed there by Howard. He doesn’t trust me. He has tapped my phones, followed me, and taken illegal steps to—”

  Kendrick tossed the screen over to her. “Why is it you t
wo can’t be on the same team? Why this lack of trust? He thinks you’re running some private intelligence operation.” He paused. “Are you?”

  She sat silently for too long.

  Kendrick leaned forward. “What is going on?” he asked quietly. “I haven’t raised it, but it’s time. Tell me about the encrypted e-mails Walker gets and gives to you. Who is sending them?”

  “It’s not what you think. I get some information from friends in the government that is probably unorthodox. I’m a believer in raw intelligence.” Her eyes grew intense. “That’s why I don’t completely trust the CIA, or the DIA, or the NSA, or much of anyone else. They always have their own agendas. I don’t try to get everything, and I do listen to the intelligence agencies.” She leaned forward. “But haven’t you ever wondered what they’re doing that even you and I don’t know about? Because they don’t want us to know, and because it allows them to build their own little empires? Well, I do have a few . . . friends in certain places that give me information. Straight information. Direct information. It’s the best stuff out there. And I use that information. And we’re better off because of it. My friends are very well placed. Nothing major happens that they don’t know about.”

  He pointed at the small screen on the table in front of her. “One of your friends?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kendrick stared at her. She had never felt this scrutiny from him. It was usually directed at others. It was unsettling. He asked her, “How much confidence do you have in your friends?”

  “A lot.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I promised him I wouldn’t reveal it. There’s nothing wrong or illegal about it, but it might be contrary to the chain of command.”

  Kendrick waited, letting her consider the implications of not telling him. “Who?”

  “It’s a Navy SEAL, a member of DEVGRU who is TAD to the Agency, working with the SAS. A Lieutenant.”

  “Kent Rathman.”

  She was stunned. “How did you know?”

  “Stuntz told me. Those guys he photographed also photographed him in his pizza outfit. Once they knew who it was, they backed off.”

  She looked down at the carpet, feeling small. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thought I could do this well. I just wanted good information, not just the things some agency wanted me to know.”

  Kendrick gave a small, ironic smile. “Perhaps you should let me know what your friends say, when it seems important to you.”

  Her relief showed immediately in her face. “I’d be happy to, sir.”

  * * *

  The six Blue Angel pilots sat in their jets on the deck of the Truman, surrounded by numerous Navy planes painted flat gray, waiting for the first launch of the morning. The Blues were to be the first airplanes off the carrier. The day was chilly, which gladdened the hearts of the aviators. Planes flew better in colder air—more “lifties,” as they said. Lieutenant Ed Stovic lined up behind the No.2 catapult in Blue Angel #6. The Boss was on the No. 1 catapult in front of him and to his right, with Oden right behind the Jet Blast Deflector—the JBD—for cat one. The other three Blues were on the other bow cat, number two, and the two waist cats, three and four.

  Everything was ready. They waited for the clock to hit 0600, when the Boss would be thrown down the catapult and into the sky, with number two following four or five seconds behind him. The team was excited. The other members of the traveling Blue Angels team were aboard the COD, the Carrier Onboard Delivery plane—the Greyhound, as it was called—to fly directly to Le Bourget. Most of the other normal Blue Angels supplies had been flown by C-17 cargo plane from Pensacola to Paris. The usual transport for the Blue Angels, their C-130—Fat Albert—had been left at home.

  The catapult officer stood on the deck between the two Blue Angel F/A-18s. Although he wouldn’t admit it, he was excited about launching the Blue Angels. He usually stayed inside the glass bubble buried in the deck and launched from its warmth with a cup of coffee in hand. But when the Blue Angels were around, everybody raised their game to a different level.

  Stovic had been in this position hundreds of times before. He sat on the catapult with all the hot jet engines screaming around him. Steam swirled through the turbulent air over the flight deck. The bow of the carrier moved down toward the ocean two hundred feet in front of him, stopped, then headed back up toward the horizon. Thirty knots of wind raced down the flight deck forcing the men and women on the deck to lean forward fifteen degrees to avoid being blown over. It was the most exciting place on earth. He loved sitting there on top of the largest warship ever built, piercing the Atlantic as they headed east.

  Against all the grayness of the carrier, the ocean, the sky, and the Navy gray airplanes all around, the Blue Angel planes stood out with their high-gloss royal blue and yellow paint schemes. Unlike everyone else in naval aviation, they wanted to be seen.

  Stovic’s attention was drawn toward the Boss as the JBD, with its large steel deflectors, was raised up behind his jet to deflect his jet exhaust skyward instead of into Oden sitting right behind him. He could hear and feel the Boss’s engines as they went to military power, then afterburner. The catapult officer pointed toward the bow and rotated his hand above his head to tell the Boss to keep his engine at its highest power. He looked at everyone involved and received a thumbs-up from each of them. He looked back at the Boss, received a sharp salute, returned it, and watched the bow of the ship. He leaned forward hard in a near crouch with his left hand extended, like a fencer piercing his target, and watched the bow of the carrier move back up. At exactly the right moment he leaned forward and touched the deck with his left hand. The petty officer on the side, watching him like a hawk, pushed the button and the catapult fired. The Boss’s Hornet raced down the catapult track, taking it to one hundred forty knots—one hundred fifty-nine miles per hour—in just over two seconds. The huge ship shuddered slightly as the catapult piston slammed into the water-break at the end of its stroke. Steam rose out of the catapult track as the Boss raised his landing gear and accelerated over the water away from the carrier in a right-hand clearing turn.

  The same sequence was repeated for Blue Angel #2, and the yellow shirt motioned to Stovic to taxi forward. He released his parking brake and taxied toward the catapult, steering the nose of the Hornet with the rudder pedals. The double nosewheel straddled the slots in the deck where the shuttle ran. The yellow shirt straddled the slot and motioned Stovic forward. The steam rose up between his legs and engulfed him, almost rendering him invisible. A young sailor ran up to Stovic’s aircraft on the side and held up the weight board that showed the weight of the Hornet. It was correct. Stovic gave him a thumbs-up, and the sailor showed the weight to the catapult officer and to the petty officer sitting inside the bubble, who would set the catapult for the right weight.

  As Stovic approached the shuttle he lowered his launch bar. The yellow shirt brought his hands together slowly, and Stovic moved into position. His launch bar dropped across the shuttle, and a petty officer scurried under the nose of the Hornet to attach the holdback bar. As the quality assurance people scrambled around the jet to ensure he didn’t have any leaks or other obvious problems, Stovic ran through his cockpit checks. He checked his caution and warning lights, circuit breakers, and engine instruments. Everything was on line and working. He looked up at the catapult officer, who was waiting for him.

  Stovic was struck with how safe he felt. Flying off carriers might be among the most difficult and dangerous flying there was, but at least no one could get to him there. There was no Ismael under the bow in a rowboat with a shoulder-fired missile. There was no Ismael flying toward the carrier in a Cessna loaded with explosives, or aiming a rifle at him from some stationary position nearby. The entire battle group was designed to keep the carrier’s planes secure and ready to strike out. Anyone trying to approach the battle group to do the Air Wing harm, or Stovic, as he saw it, or his stereo, as they had often joked in the staterooms, would have to com
e through a multilayered defense of fighters, surface-to-air-missile–firing destroyers and cruisers, and guns before ultimately facing the enemy it sought—a Navy F/A-18, one of the most difficult fighters in the world to attack successfully. It was a good feeling to have that kind of protection and security. It was how the entire system of naval aviation was designed. To protect the tip of the spear.

  But the Blues were different. They were exposed. As soon as they launched off the carrier and headed east to Paris, they would fly out from under the umbrella. All this protection would be left hundreds of miles behind. No cruisers, no surface-to-air missiles to defeat his enemies, no guns to stop low-flying missiles, no electronic warfare black boxes operated by specialists, no Air Wing or other armed aircraft to help. Just the unarmed shiny blue jets in their “Hey! Over HERE!” paint scheme, exposed before the whole world to convey the nature of naval aviation and the skill and precision it required. It was like a President in an armored limousine, surrounded by Secret Service, stopping along a motorcade and stepping into the crowd with a big smile and a distinctive hat.

  The catapult officer turned two fingers over his head as he slid his right hand forward, facing Stovic on the right side of the plane. Stovic felt the pull of the shuttle against the launch bar on the nose gear of the Hornet, ready to pull it off the deck. He checked his flight controls, took a deep breath, said a prayer, gave the catapult a crisp Blue Angel salute, and put his head back against the headrest. The catapult fired, and his Hornet flew down the catapult track and off the deck.

  As soon as the acceleration stopped, Stovic raised his landing gear and flaps and did his clearing turn. He climbed to five hundred feet and leveled off.

  He waited until seven miles, pulled up to six thousand feet, and came back over the carrier to rendezvous. They were flying in a tight formation—not as tight as they would at an air show but much tighter than any other group of F-18s might even think of flying.