by Doug Raber
4.20. Perform such other duties as the Secretary may prescribe.
Edwards punched a button on his phone, and his assistant responded. “Yes sir?”
“Please have Colonel Zaborsky from DJ report to me ASAP. I spoke with him earlier, and he expects your call.”
* * *
Day 22: Questions
“Come in, Bob, and shut the door, please.” Edwards motioned to the table in his office.
Colonel Robert Zaborsky served in the Defense Intelligence Agency, where Edwards had recently appointed him as his primary military liaison. The position ordinarily would have been filled by a higher ranking officer, but Edwards wanted Zaborsky, even at the rank of Colonel. If he did his job, the stars would come soon enough.
The two men met when both served in DIA in the South Pacific in 1999. Zaborsky had been a junior officer reporting to Edwards, a Colonel at the time. After September 11, 2001, they worked jointly with Philippine military forces in a series of special operations to hunt down members of a terrorist group. Their efforts led to a promotion for Zaborsky and earned Edwards his first star. Zaborsky continued to work in covert operations in DIA until Edwards got him to run the coordinating center for intelligence operations.
“We’ve got a situation. A terrorist attack. Farmington, New Mexico. Smallpox. I think it may be a trial run for a massive biological attack on the U.S.”
Zaborsky was stunned. “Smallpox? I thought that didn’t exist anymore. It was wiped out. Except for research. The Russians?”
“No idea. None at all. We don’t know who, and we can only guess why.” Edwards went on to tell him the sketchy details he did have. What he had first heard from Bradshaw and what he, Colonel Bradshaw, and Secretary Walker had discussed in their conference call that morning.
“Bob, this operation will run out of your shop. You will bypass Counterintelligence completely. You’ll get whatever help you need from the Directorate for Human Intelligence. I want to go right to the operational level. Nobody, repeat, nobody outside DJ is to know anything about this. As far as anybody else is concerned, it’s just a training exercise. It’s fully authorized by the Secretary. Your ass is completely covered. Just try not to piss off too many people unnecessarily, especially the ones that outrank you. Any questions, just tell them to call me. If they’re stupid enough to go right to the Secretary, they’ll get the same answer, and Walker will tear them a new one while he’s at it.”
Edwards retrieved his yellow pad from his desk and began making a list as he spoke.
Who?
“You’ve got to check out the Russians. And the former Soviet states. All those countries that end in –stan. You need to check our existing databases. There may be entries that are significant today, even though they weren’t yesterday. We need to reach any agents we have in place. And sources in the expatriate community. The expats always have good information from the old country.”
“What about CIA and the other agencies, General?” Even though Edwards was now a civilian, Zaborsky still called him “General,” when they were alone.
“No other agencies. This has to stay completely under wraps, or we’ll have mass panic in the streets. The Secretary agrees. Until we find out what’s going on, any inquiry you make has to be disguised by treating this whole thing as a planning exercise. A secret planning exercise. The situation may change, but right now you just make sure that even the people working for you don’t know what’s really going on.”
“Yes sir. I’ll check out the Russian side and the former Soviet states, as well. Anything else?”
“Yes. We also need to look into the possibility of state sponsors of terrorism. Some of the countries on that list have a long history of dealing with the Russians. Iran is one of them, and they could very well turn out to be our number one candidate. I’ll bet the Vice President is thinking along those lines. He hates those bastards.”
“Got it, sir. Russia, former Soviets, and state sponsors. Especially places like Iran that have Russian ties.”
“Another thing, Bob. As crazy as it sounds, we can’t rule out domestic terrorism. Don’t forget McVeigh. He was willing to kill a lot of people. Everything related to smallpox in the United States is supposed to be held at CDC in Atlanta, so start there. Then check on the other level-4 laboratories. Remember that nutcase with anthrax. The FBI said he used samples that he cooked up at Fort Detrick.”
Edwards now had three bullet points under his main entry.
Who?— • russia • rogue states • domestic
“What about the other two questions, General? Why? and How?”
“We can wait on those. Whoever it was, they wanted to hurt us. Once we find out who they are, we’ll know why. Whether it a radical Muslim group trying to kill the Great Satan or some local nut job that’s unhappy about income taxes. And as for how it was done, we’ll have to leave that to people on the ground out in New Mexico. But to be on the safe side, send a few of your guys out there to make sure that Bradshaw keeps pushing on that part of the investigation.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“CDC is sending out a medical and scientific team, but those people may not be much help to us unless we push them. Otherwise they’ll just focus on treating the locals—the Indians. The smallpox is mostly on the Navajo Reservation. If they can give us an idea of how the attack was launched, we’ll be able to wrap up some of the details, and maybe even find the guys who did it. I say guys, but I suppose there could be women, too. Those assholes over in the Middle East have been letting women blow themselves up for a few years already. No reason why they wouldn’t use them for smallpox.”
The list now had two more entries:
Who?— • russia • rogue states • domestic
Why?— later
How?— wait on new mexico
Edwards turned the legal pad toward his subordinate but didn’t give it to him. His hand rested across the top of the pad, unambiguously conveying the message that the paper itself was not going anywhere. “All right, Colonel, here are your orders. We need these answers yesterday. So use people you can trust, just like back in the Philippines, and get to work. I want to be briefed by you and you alone. At least twice a day. This counts as one, but I’ll expect an update by the end of the day.”
As Zaborsky stood up to leave the office, Edwards spoke softly. “Bob, you’ll probably want to set up a cot in your office. I don’t expect you’ll have time to go home and sleep anytime soon. Same thing for your staff. Tomorrow may be a holiday, but you’ll have to explain that we’re trying to simulate reality. When this is all over? If they do it right, that’s when they’ll be able to give thanks. We all will.”
* * *
Day 22: New Teams
At nine o’clock on Wednesday evening, Edwards looked up from his desk in response to the light knock on the door. “Come in Bob. What’ve you got for me?”
Zaborsky was beat. “Preliminary stuff, nothing definitive. I’ve got all my teams in place. First off, I was able to reach Colonel Bradshaw in Farmington. His troops can provide security. And he’s okay with having our people run the intelligence interface.”
“That’s good. Bradshaw is first rate.”
“I’ve got a team heading out West. They’ll hit the ground running first thing in the morning, assuming that they know how to sleep on a plane. There are six of them, and I briefed them personally. So far, they think this is an exercise. They’ll find out about the smallpox when they get there, but then they’ll get zero information from anyone but me. Four of them, two men and two women, have backgrounds in surveillance. The other two are tech guys who will take control of communications out there. Basically, that means they’ll shut things down. No telephone, no cell phone, no Internet. They’ll set up secure lines of communication for official purposes, and all of that will go through us.
“What about roads?”
“Bradshaw will handle all the physical controls. He’s shutting down the local airport and closing
the roads. That’s air and land, and there’s no sea. There’s a couple of small rivers that go through Farmington, but I don’t guess we’ll need to bother with that.”
“What other personnel have you assigned?”
“We’ve got four other teams headed out to check up on the level-4 laboratories around the country. The labs have got a history of poor security, and that’s worrisome. In addition to CDC, itself, we’re checking out five others. That includes the Army lab at Fort Detrick and the lab at Georgia State University. Some of these places could work with smallpox. We just need to verify that they never actually did.”
“So you’re going to send a team of investigators to each site?”
“No, sir. At least, not all at once. The first four teams will do the initial screening, which should be relatively easy. We’re pretty sure most of the labs never actually had access to smallpox. The Fort Detrick team will be larger because they’ll have to deal with a long history that includes the old biological weapons program. But it’s an Army lab, so they’ll cooperate. I’ve got someone preparing a memo for your signature.”
“Make sure the memo makes it clear that we’re not asking. We’re telling.”
“Absolutely. And we’re sending the largest team—five investigators—down to Atlanta. They’ll check out Georgia State University and then dig in hard at CDC. I’ve been back in touch with that guy Rasmussen at CDC who first called Colonel Bradshaw, and he understands that he has to work with us. I guess you made it clear to him from the beginning about the need for complete secrecy. In addition to checking anyone who might ever have had access to the smallpox virus, we’ll set up surveillance and controls on all members of the CDC team that was deployed to New Mexico. It would be an easy place for an accidental leak, so we’ve really got to put a lid on things.”
“Sounds like you’re making progress, Colonel. What are you proposing if there’s any sort of leak and we need to do damage control?”
“I talked with Dr. Rasmussen about that. If anything happens, or if anybody gets too nosy, we say that there’s an outbreak of chickenpox. But I think we’ll be able to control this completely. Bradshaw will have Farmington sealed off by the end of the day, and the people there already think it’s chickenpox. The symptoms are similar, and you can even die of chickenpox, so people out there should believe what we tell them. And remember—this isn’t a big city with a lot of doctors and lawyers. It’s only a damn Indian reservation.”
“What about questions from people at the biological laboratories? Won’t they get suspicious?”
“We have that covered too. We’ll tell them we’re running a surprise inspection as part of an anti-terrorism planning exercise. All classified. Nobody is going to object to questions about whether they’ve ever had smallpox virus in their lab. If they’ve never had samples of the virus, it’s over and done with. And if they have studied the virus, they’ll understand how important it is to cooperate with us.”
“They’ll remember the anthrax.”
“Exactly. Nobody wants another snafu like the one at Fort Detrick. But you know what, General? I don’t think we’re going to find anything wrong at any of these labs. This is America. Sure, maybe some crackpot like McVeigh had a beef with the government. That kind of bozo might attack a federal building. But biological weapons against innocent civilians? That’s got to be from the fucking Arabs. We’ll find out and we’ll nail the bastards.”
“The nailing will be up to others, Bob. You just need to find out who attacked us. What have you got on that front? I mean with regard to Russia and the other countries we discussed?”
“Nothing yet, but we’ve started making inquiries. The hardest part was finding a cover story for why we’re asking questions. We can’t just walk up to the head of the FSB—I still have trouble calling those guys anything but KGB—and ask politely if they just carried out a smallpox attack on the U.S. They know damn well what our policy is for responding to a WMD attack. If they thought we suspected them, there’s a good chance that they’d launch their missiles before we ever heard an answer to our question. So we’re saying that this is all an anti-terrorism planning activity. We’re trying to get updated information on anybody that might ever have had access to the Soviet smallpox samples. And we explain the urgency by saying that our exercise is being done just like military war games. That we have a red team and a blue team competing against each other. Each side wants to win the game.”
“I like that, Bob. Especially the chickenpox as a backup cover. Just make sure your own people understand that everything is top secret. They can’t even talk about chickenpox to anyone who isn’t fully briefed into the mission, not even their own families.”
“Will do, General. And it’s not just Russia. We’ve also got sources for other countries that are potential sources of an attack. That includes Syria, Pakistan, and Iran. For Iran, we also have the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. That’s the MEK.* They’ve been working against the regime for decades, and they gave us the information that helped us show that Iran was lying about its nuclear programs back in 2007. It may take a few days, but we’ll get some good information back.”
“We don’t have too many days to work with, Bob. No matter how well you control the information coming out of Farmington, we have to worry about one other person besides us. And by us, I mean our entire team. You, me, your team, the CDC in Atlanta, and all of Bradshaw’s people out in New Mexico. There’s one other person who knows about the smallpox attack.”
“I don’t understand …”
“Think about it Colonel. The person who carried out this damn attack. He’s out there somewhere—monitoring what we’re doing. He probably got out of Farmington at least a week ago—it takes more than a week for smallpox symptoms to even begin developing. So he’s sitting out there somewhere waiting to see what we do. Just the fact that there’s no news coming out of Farmington may tell him he was successful.
“If you don’t get the answer soon, he’s going to conclude that the first part of his attack worked. And then we’ll be facing the second wave. Armageddon. You can’t let that happen, Bob. We need to know who did it. What country did it. And then they’ll pay. They’ll pay before they ever get a chance to start the second wave. They’ll never have the chance to launch another attack. Never.”
* * *
Day 23: Looking for Leaks
Zaborsky sat at his desk in his office in the B ring of the Pentagon on Thanksgiving morning, finishing his fifth cup of coffee. He had managed to sleep for a couple of hours after he found a folding cot, which now sat in his office, fully made up and ready for inspection. He’d risen at 6:30 a.m., showered, and shaved. The Pentagon had all the facilities. One of the things he’d learned from all his years in the Army, was to be ready to travel at the drop of a hat, and he kept a change of clothes in his office. Crisis or not, he took great pride in maintaining control of both his appearance and his actions.
Edwards was pacing in the hallway in front of his office when Zaborsky rounded the corner of the hallway at 11:00 a.m. “Morning, Bob. I’m just stretching my legs a little. It’s been a long night. Were you able to get any sleep?”
“A little. You?”
“The same. It’s just like our operations down in the Philippines. The adrenaline kicks in, and sleep doesn’t matter quite so much anymore. Let’s go inside where we can talk. I assume you have a few things to show me?”
“Yes sir. I think you’ll be pleased. Maybe not pleased—that’s the wrong word for this situation. But I think you’ll agree that we’ve been able to make some progress. We’ve heard back from all four of our field teams. As of now, there’s no indication that any of them, except for CDC and Fort Detrick, have ever had actual smallpox samples on site. Ever since the anthrax thing, their security and record keeping has been pretty good. Everything is pointing to this being a foreign operation.”
“I agree that it all fits. It probably wasn’t somebody from one of the American laboratories. But don�
�t come to your conclusions too quickly. You’ll probably be able to refocus your assets on more probable targets, but have some of your people keep looking. Have them look deeper—for anything that could be any sort of irregularity. I keep coming back to the anthrax attacks, when the FBI jumped the gun* and named the wrong person as their suspect. As a result, the guy that they later identified as the culprit went around free as a bird for seven years. We sure as hell don’t want another fuck-up like that.”
“No sir. No question about that. I’ll make sure that my teams continue putting pressure on all the labs. We’ll tell them it’s just for record-keeping, to be sure we haven’t missed something important. Unless you object, I’m going to keep the original Fort Detrick team in place and merge the other two field teams into the one at CDC. First, we need to keep searching at both locations for any possibility that a smallpox sample might have been moved off site. The second reason may be more important: we want to put an emphasis on Atlanta, so our people keep an eye on communications in and out of CDC. We don’t want any leaks about the Farmington task force.”
“How many people did CDC send out there?”
“So far, it looks like about a dozen—all M.D.s or scientists. Colonel Bradshaw is providing support staff, so CDC only needs technical and medical people. Bradshaw said we could slip in a couple of people from DIA. The CDC guys won’t know the difference, and we’ll be able to keep an eye on them more easily.”
“Good thinking. Go back to Atlanta for a minute. What will your team be doing there?”
“Reorganizing the original four teams will give us nine people at CDC. Two of them will be assigned to CDC’s Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. That’s COTPER—the office that sent the medical team out to New Mexico. They’ll monitor any visitors or incoming telephone calls. They’ll switch off working 12-hour days. During CDC working hours, they’ll act as receptionists and screen all incoming telephone contacts.”
