by Doug Raber
“Let me have the laptop back. I’ll send the file of my draft story to Sue, and then we can get the hell out of here.” Less than a minute later, Jake heard an emphatic “Okay,” as Sarah made a pronounced motion with her right index finger to hit the enter key. This was followed by five seconds of silence before Sarah spoke again. “It’s gone. Let’s go, Jake.”
Jake put the truck in gear and headed down the street. “Where to?”
“We need to find a compromise. It would be nice to be really close to Jennings’ house. But we don’t want to be so close that someone might spot us. So I think we should probably keep the truck on this side of the river rather than bringing it into D.C. or up to Maryland. That’s probably where they’ll be looking hardest for us. Do you know the parking area by Roosevelt Island?”
“I don’t think so. It’s right across from Georgetown, isn’t it?”
“Right. Take Arlington Boulevard, over to the GW Parkway. There’s a turnoff into the parking area just past the Roosevelt Bridge. There aren’t many parking spaces, but there aren’t usually very many cars there. It’s one of those National Parks that nobody knows about.”
* * *
Chapter 34
Intelligence
It is clear from the legislative history of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1385 and the above cases, the intent of Congress in enacting this statute and by using the clause ‘uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise,’ was to prevent the direct active use of federal troops, one soldier or many, to execute the laws.
—U.S. District Court, U.S. v. Red Feather, 1975‡
Day 33: Key Bridge
“I’m not sure what it means, Colonel.” Parsons had told Zaborsky about the new activity on Sarah Wallingford’s credit card. “It was at Reagan National, 11:15 this morning. Maybe a half hour before we spotted her. She bought a ticket to Cincinnati, leaving at noon and returning Monday.”
“But you saw her outside security at noon. She should have been on her plane by then. The ticket was a diversion, Parsons. She was meeting somebody at the airport, and she needed a ticket to get through security. Either that, or she was just trying to throw us off track. We need to find out who she was meeting there.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t think we’ll be able to. It would take weeks to sort through all the passenger lists for flights using that concourse today. And we still might not even recognize the name of whoever she was meeting.”
“Stop making excuses, Parsons. Just get the goddamn passenger lists, and have your people start looking through them.”
“Yes sir.”
Parsons stood up to leave and then sat down again. “Almost forgot. There was another purchase on the credit card this afternoon. She bought a bicycle.”
“Maybe she damaged the one she was using at the airport.”
“I don’t think so. She also bought two helmets. We found one at the airport, right where she was running away from Tarkington. This looks like she and Overman are both going biking. The cashier at the store confirmed that it was a man and a woman.”
“They’re not going biking for exercise. They’ve figured out that we may be looking for their truck, and they’re trying to avoid us.”
“Shit, that’ll make things even tougher.”
“Maybe so, Parsons, but alert your people. In addition to the pickup truck, they’re looking for two people on bikes. The temperature is dropping, so there won’t be as many bikes out there.”
“Yes sir. I’ll get back to you with any developments.”
It was just about five o’clock when Parsons frantically called Zaborsky. “We’ve spotted their truck. One of our guys saw it driving right past us, right in front of the Pentagon. Can you believe those dumb shits? They got onto the GW Parkway going north. They’re trying to get into D.C., and we’ll be waiting for them. We have all the bridges covered. Two of our cars are following, but they haven’t made visual contact yet.”
“Don’t forget the bicycles, Parsons.”
“Even if they have the bikes in the back of the truck, there’s no way to use them. They’d have to park, and there’s no place to park along the GW.”
“Jesus Christ, Parsons! Of course there are parking places. If you ever got off your lazy ass to exercise, you’d know about them. There’s the Lady Bird Johnson Park just north of here. Have your cars swing through that first. Then check by Theodore Roosevelt Island. There’s another parking area there. And stay in your office, Parsons. I’m going to double-time over there to make sure you don’t screw this up any worse.”
By the time Zaborsky reached Parsons’ office, two technicians were already there. They had to squeeze together to make room for the Colonel. Parsons and the technicians had been listening to a two-way radio.
“Tarkington found the truck, Colonel. The subjects were already on bikes, and they left just as he got there. They rode across a pedestrian overpass before he could stop them. They were headed toward Key Bridge.”
“Have you alerted your man up there?”
“Yes sir. Harkness was in his car near the woman’s apartment. He’s pursuing them across Key Bridge now. At least we think they’ve gone across the bridge.”
The radio squawked. “Silver, this is Steele. We have visual confirmation. They’re ahead of us on the bridge. They’re turning west onto Canal Road. Nichols and I are caught in traffic, but we’ll fight our way through it.” Sounds of angry honking could be heard on the radio.
“Steele, this is Silver. Stay on them. Don’t let them out of your sight. Take whatever action is necessary.”
* * *
Chapter 35
Sarah and Jake
… the lawyers said the change would merely give the Defense Intelligence Agency an authority already granted to the Central Intelligence Agency and law enforcement agencies for their intelligence-collection missions. They said the D.I.A. had no intention of spying on Americans, but needed the new authority to help identify and recruit sources knowledgeable about terrorist groups …
—New York Times, 2005‡
Day 33: Biking
Sarah and Jake parked the truck by Roosevelt Island at 5:00 p.m. Their meeting with Jennings wouldn’t be for three hours, but they wanted to get the truck out of sight and maintain a low profile. They were just about to get on their bikes, when they heard a screech of brakes on the parkway only 100 feet behind them. A car had come to almost a complete stop in the roadway, and it was starting to drive over the curb toward them.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here, Jake! There’s a ramp up there at the end of the parking lot. They can’t follow us.” Sarah led the way on another sprint.
When the car reached the bottom of the ramp, Sarah and Jake already were halfway up. In seconds, they were out of sight, as the ramp made a hairpin turn over the parkway. Sarah turned and shouted. “Stay low, just in case they start shooting.”
On the other side of the bridge, trees and bushes hid them from their pursuers, and they paused briefly. “Up here, a couple of hundred yards, Jake. Key Bridge. We can cross into the District.”
“They’ll follow us. We’ll be out in the open.”
“They can’t get there from the northbound lanes of the parkway.”
“They’ll just turn around, Sarah.”
“No. There’s a center barrier until farther up. We’ve got a couple of minutes. Not much more.”
“Then let’s get moving.”
Sarah led the way as they pedaled full speed along the sidewalk across Key Bridge. Georgetown was getting closer by the second. At the end of the bridge, the road was a dead end. They would have to turn right onto M Street or left onto Canal Road. They both were hoping that nobody was following. But their hopes were dashed, when they heard horns honking and brakes screeching. It was followed by a crunch of metal and more honking.
Their only hope would come from the traffic. Key Bridge was always congested. There had been times that it had taken Sarah a half hour to cross in
her car. She called back to Jake. “Get ahead of those cars and turn left at the end of the bridge. The traffic will provide a barrier. It’ll give us a couple of minutes before they get past the jam.”
They raced down the sidewalk along Canal Road, Sarah in the lead. Probably only a half mile.
She yelled over her shoulder. “The turnoff is close, Jake. Push!” Her words were almost drowned out by more honking. She looked back to see a car weaving through traffic at high speed. It was closing on them, and the driver could certainly see them in the overhead street lights. “Here it is!” she screamed, as she turned her bike off the sidewalk.
To Jake, following close behind, it looked as though Sarah had turned into the woods on the side of the road. But then he saw the narrow paved path. After just a few feet, it curved steeply downhill and turned hard to the left. To his surprise, they were riding through a short tunnel—a tunnel that was much too small for a car to follow. Sarah stopped at the other end, and he pulled up next to her. “Where the hell are we?”
“It’s a tunnel underneath the Canal. It’s how you get to the towpath on the canal from upper Georgetown. It’s been here forever, but almost nobody knows about it. I’m hoping that whoever is following us will think we went the other way, through the woods.”
“I hope you’re right, but just in case, let’s keep moving.”
They were on the Capital Crescent Trail, on the far side of the C&O Canal. “The towpath is right up there, but this is paved. And most of the way it’s not visible from Canal Road, so they won’t be able to see us. It takes us up to the tunnel under Macarthur Boulevard.”
“I can find Jennings’ house from there.”
They rode hard for ten minutes, trying to get as far as they could from Georgetown before anyone might figure out where they were. Then Sarah slowed down. “Let’s catch our breath for a minute, Jake. That’s the trestle over the canal and Canal Road up ahead. This whole trail was built on the old right of way for the Georgetown spur of the B&O railroad. If we turn of our lights and walk the bikes across, we’ll be pretty much invisible from the road below. After we get across, we should be home free.”
A mile later, they emerged from the tunnel beneath Macarthur Boulevard. “Just up ahead there, Sarah. There should a turnoff to the right.”
When they reached the turnoff to the other trail, Jake was excited. “We did it, Sarah! His house is just a couple of hundred yards up the path. But we’ve got almost two hours before we meet him.”
They found a place to sit down by the tunnel entrance with their backs to the wall. After a while, Jake put an arm around Sarah, and they leaned together to keep warm. She pulled his arm tighter around her. She found a couple of candy bars in her pack and handed one to Jake. “Raymond gave me these. It seems like a year ago.”
During their wait, they encountered only three people. Each of them asked if the couple needed help, and each was satisfied by their answer. “Thanks a lot, but a friend is meeting us. He’s supposed to be here soon.”
Finally, the time arrived. “It’s 7:50, Sarah. Let’s go. We’ll leave our bikes in the bushes at the side of the trail and walk up to his house from the back.”
Five minutes later, they were climbing a small hill leading from the edge of the park to the Jennings property. They went slowly, not wanting to use their lights. When they reached Jennings’ back yard, they stayed in the middle of the lawn to avoid being seen from the street. There was just enough light from an upstairs window to help them find their way.
Jake motioned for Sarah to follow him up to the back door. There was a small concrete pad, with a walkway leading to a raised deck on the side of the house. Just as Jake raised his hand to knock on the door, they were startled to find themselves suddenly bathed in light. Nearly blinded by the floodlight above the door, they heard a voice from behind. “Turn around slowly, and keep your hands in the air.”
* * *
Day 33: FBI
Sarah began to tremble as she and Jake turned around. Their eyes hadn’t adjusted to the sudden light, and they couldn’t see the man who had given the instruction. The only thing they could see was the .45 automatic that was pointing at them at chest level. Before they could do more than recognize the strange taste of fear in their mouths, the voice spoke again.
“Goddamn it! What are you two doing back here? My motion detectors went off, and I didn’t know what was going on. There have been three break-ins in our neighborhood the last month, and one was an armed robbery.”
“Mr. Jennings! Thank God, it’s you. We didn’t mean to cause trouble, but we had to come this way. We’re being followed. Actually we’re being chased. Someone even fired a shot at Sarah.”
A pause. Then a deep breath. “Get in the house.”
Jennings led them through a laundry room into the kitchen. Without turning on any lights in the kitchen, he said, “Wait here.” Sarah and Jake waited silently, while Jennings went to the front of the house and closed the drapes. Returning to the kitchen, he closed the blinds that hung from the kitchen windows before he turned on the overhead light. He spoke calmly. “It would be better if we stayed in this part of the house. Let’s sit down. We have a lot to discuss. I’ve learned a few things today that make me believe you two have been honest with me. But I still need to see some real evidence if we’re going to push this to the next level.”
Jennings suddenly noticed how disheveled they appeared. “You two look terrible. How did you get here?”
“The bike trail, sir. By bicycle. After we left here this morning, we were followed. Well, actually we think we were tracked with Sarah’s cell phone. She accidentally left it turned on after she sent you the photograph. Sarah went to National Airport to meet a friend, and they were there waiting. She barely got away.”
“I think they fired a shot at me, Mr. Jennings. I only got away because I cut through the pedestrian tunnel to Crystal City. I’m pretty sure their car crashed when they tried to follow me. It was too narrow for them.”
The intense, measured stare was interrupted, as Jennings’ eyebrows arched momentarily. “Sarah. I am correct that the full name is Sarah Lockford? I’m afraid we’ve never been fully introduced.” Jennings looked at Jake and then returned his attention to Sarah.
“Y… Yes sir.”
“I told you I’d learned a few things today. There aren’t that many people named Sarah at the Post. And the number gets smaller when you start looking at science reporters who could write a story about irregularities in new drug approvals at the FDA.”
Sarah relaxed slightly. “Yeah, I guess it was pretty obvious.”
“Maybe you were very lucky today, Sarah. I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but you are correct about one thing. That car did crash. The driver wasn’t injured severely, broken nose, I think. And he wasn’t available for questioning by the local authorities. The car was an unmarked police cruiser, and the airport police—they have jurisdiction—were unable to identify the agency it belonged to. It appears the driver was taken away in another unmarked car before he could be questioned.”
“But isn’t that …?”
Jennings put up a hand and continued calmly. “Please. I said the airport police couldn’t figure out what agency was responsible. My people have better resources. I didn’t know for certain until just now that you two were involved, but I was able to learn that it was DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. There are a half-dozen federal bodies with antiterrorism responsibilities, and they’re constantly fighting over jurisdiction. The FBI is has responsibility for all the domestic issues, but some of these other outfits have been running cowboy operations. In 2008, the Pentagon announced plans to have 20,000 uniformed troops stationed inside the United States* for possible response to terrorism.”
“That’s why you reacted the way you did, when I told you about the troops in Farmington?”
Again the eyebrows arched briefly. “You don’t miss much, do you Jake? Well, I always knew you were a smart kid. That’s g
ood. If we’re going to work together, I’d rather be working with smart people. There are limits on how much I can tell you. You understand that what we’re dealing with is highly classified?”
They nodded.
“I can say that we’ve had our eyes on the DIA for several years, especially since Robinson Edwards was appointed as Under Secretary for Intelligence at the Defense Department. Edwards is in a powerful position, and I think he’s been making an end run around official intelligence channels. The Under Secretary is required by law to be a civilian, but this guy is military through and through. He was on active duty in Air Force Intelligence as a general, two stars, until just before he was nominated.”
“So he’d be in a position to control the flow of information? And maybe to run, or at least condone, some kind of rogue operation?”
“I didn’t say that, Sarah. But you didn’t hear me argue with you either.”
She nodded.
“Today, I asked some of my top staff to see what they could learn about a possible smallpox outbreak. I told them to say our office had heard a report about a tourist out West. Most people were cooperative—Homeland Security, CIA, State Department—but they said they hadn’t heard anything. And then we have DIA. They weren’t cooperative at all. They claimed they didn’t know anything about any outbreak, but they were very uptight about it. They said if there was something about bioterrorism in Utah, we needed to give them all the details. They started talking about their biological defense systems at Dugway. My people couldn’t tell them much, because I hadn’t given them much. What we learned was that the DIA response was all wrong. They were stonewalling us.”
Sarah looked over at Jake and then back at Jennings. “Doesn’t that convince you we were telling the truth?”
“I know it’s the truth. At least the part about a smallpox outbreak. I finally got through to Attorney General Chernikov, and she told me that the National Security Council has been meeting over the last week to develop a response. She said the President decided to keep it secret, even from agencies like mine that would normally have a major role in the response.”
