The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  “You’ve got both presidents held at the Capitol?”

  “Their doubles anyway,” Hallory said. “The real deals might have actually been here in the White House, with the real chief justice.”

  Another muted cheer sounded from the Situation Room. McNamara slipped out to find out what was going on.

  Swamp’s head was spinning with the sheer scale of it. The whole damn thing would depend on the feds being able to totally isolate Washington electronically. Landline telephones, radios, cell phones, satellite phones, microwave links. And most of all, the media sources—which depended on these means of communication. Show them pictures, cut off the sound. Hell yes, that would work. They only had to do it for about twelve hours, too. And after that…

  McNamara came back into the room. “They’ve loaded and launched eight C-seventeens so far. The Saudi secret police are bringing people in by the truckload and in helicopters from places all around the country. We’re talking bankers, bureaucrats, clerics, students, and not a few senior military officers. Not to mention over a thousand detainees, and that many again are expected shortly. A second wave of C-seventeens is leaving Dee-Gar right now for Sultan. And, best of all, the OPEC deal is confirmed.”

  “What OPEC deal?” Swamp asked.

  Hallory hesitated for a moment. “This is what makes the thing really worth doing: The Saudis have agreed to opt out of OPEC. From now on, they will sell oil as an independent producer—at prices within a range acceptable to the United States, at least for a while anyway.”

  Swamp thought about it. “I can see us being able to force them to do that now, but when they find out the attack was a fake…”

  “The results of the attack were fake,” Hallory said. “But the plot to make the attack itself was not. That faction hired the German. He did fire those mortar rounds. The original plot was not a fake—that was entirely their idea. The deception today nets us the heart and brains of Al Qaeda. The fact that they started it in the first place will net us the destruction of OPEC as an effective cartel. Which is going to dampen a lot of the outrage from our Western brethren, once they understand OPEC has been gutted.”

  “And how does this collection of prisoners square with our own suspect lists?” Swamp asked.

  Bertie smiled. “An amazing congruence of suspected Al Qaeda supporters to actual detainees has been achieved,” he announced in his best PR voice. “Of course, we knew who they were all along, you understand.”

  “Yeah right,” Swamp said.

  Bertie just grinned.

  “They just showed the Saudis some footage of a Trident submarine surfacing in the vicinity of Dee-Gar and opening its missile tubes,” McNamara said. “Just in case any of the top-echelon princes start to lose focus now that they’ve been up most of the night.”

  “I thought those things launch from underwater,” Hallory said.

  “Well, yeah, but you can see the palm trees on Dee-Gar behind the sub, and British patrol boats providing security. They shot it earlier from a helicopter, and you can see down into the missile tubes. Scary shit.”

  “They really believe we’d nuke the oil fields, too?”

  “They were told we’d use neutron bombs. High-altitude detonations that kill all living things but do almost no physical damage. No sense in losing a big chunk of the world’s supply of oil just because its owners went extinct.”

  Swamp watched the excited confusion in the Situation Room through the open door, and he marveled at the pictures streaming in from the other, now-dark side of the world. On one screen, there was file footage rolling of two American aircraft carriers plowing through cobalt seas, pushing up house-size bow waves, their flight decks bristling with fighter-bombers. On another, three busloads of American citizens carrying bags were debarking from buses in front of a C-5 transport, obviously bound out of a country that was now square in the crosshairs of an aroused nuclear-armed state. That footage was replaced with some of an entire field of ICBM silos with their armored caps rolled aside, showing glistening ten-story high missiles connected to umbilicals and venting oxygen. A third screen showed an entire flight line of huge Air Force transports glinting dangerously in white sodium-vapor lights at the Saudi air base as streams of captives, bound and hooded, were channeled up into ominously dark aluminum wombs by American military police.

  The dark side of the world, it occurred to him, in more ways than one. “How’d you get all the American businessmen and contractors out before this went down?” he asked.

  “Christmas,” Hallory said. “We made damn near everyone come home for Christmas home leave, or they’d lose their passports. Only a select few went back. They were all ordered to be at Sultan this morning, our time, including the diplomatic staff. Supposedly to watch the inauguration on a special American television channel. We’ve had people leaving for many hours.”

  “So where’s the German?” he asked.

  Hallory shook his head. “We don’t know. The first responders at the duplex reported a nearly naked woman running out of the other side of the duplex, screaming hysterically about some guy being up there where the fire was.”

  “Sure she was a woman? Sure it wasn’t Heismann dressing up again?”

  “Guys swore she was real. Naked from the waist up. No Wonderbra or falsies. A full rack, and they were real. Female underwear on the bottom, and no compromising equipment in view. The neighbors reported that a middle-aged woman did live in the other half of the duplex, so now the cops’re looking for her.”

  “Was this running woman middle-aged?”

  “She was mostly naked, Swamp. That’s what the cops remember. Naked and hysterical. They probably weren’t looking at her face.”

  “So where’s the German?” Swamp asked again.

  “We’ve given that problem to the District cops,” Hallory said. “And, of course, we have some of our own assets looking, too. But we almost don’t care now. If they find him, he’s probably not going to survive the arrest. Thanks to you, they want him for a cop killing, plus we kept the District cops, and everyone else in the city, at arm’s length from the Capitol. The folks looking for the German don’t know this wasn’t real.”

  Swamp saw Lucy giving him a cool, appraising look through the partially opened door. He wasn’t sure he cared for that look. “And if he does survive the arrest?” he asked.

  “Then he’s also an eyewitness. You make a pretty good one, but the shooter himself?”

  Another pawn, Swamp thought. Just like me. Who’s probably going to get dead before morning. Just like me?

  Heismann retraced his original route down into Rock Creek Park, where he had begun his frustrating campaign to tie off the loose end named Connie Wall. It took him forty-five minutes to reach the stone bridge, from which he could see the bluff on which the nurse’s house stood. He’d attracted some curious looks from passing cars while walking down the hill road, which had no sidewalks, toward the bridge, a man in a raincoat and suit, carrying a briefcase. But most people seemed to be intensely interested in getting home. It was getting darker as the winter sun gave up on the day. There had been no police cars. Probably all still downtown, he thought. Sometime in the next few hours or so, if they didn’t already know it, the disaster would be pinned on his former employers, whether by the pensioner, if he survived, or by the documents he’d put in the mailbox. The mailbox decals said they emptied those boxes six days a week, rain or shine. Then the world might get to see some real fireworks.

  No great loss, he told himself as he left the road and merged into the underbrush near the stone bridge. The Arab States had stopped evolving somewhere back in the 1500s and offered nothing but religious barbarism these days. And oil, of course. Fortunately, the precious oil was all safely thousands of feet below ground. He wondered if you could burn radioactive oil as easily as the original stuff. Probably. The hard part would be drilling through all that crusty sand.

  He took a quick look in both directions along the road and then slipped deeper in
to the woods.

  Swamp was stiffening happily in a corner chair, dozing while Bertie and Hallory worked separate phones, coordinating the cleanup at the bank and steering assets toward the growing logistics problems up on Capitol Hill. The airlift operation was about two-thirds complete on the other side of the world, and the controlling factor now was how many hours of darkness remained in Washington. The consensus in the room seemed to be that the hoax would be sustainable only until daylight returned to Washington. The major Western governments and permanent members of the UN Security Council had already been briefed secretly that both presidents were alive and well and that the American government was intact. They’d also been told that what had been shown on global television might not be entirely accurate, except for one solid fact: There had been a Saudi plot. The only place the faked attack itself had to be believed was in Riyadh, and that only until all the prisoners were out of the country.

  A Uniformed Division officer pushed the side conference room door fully open and told Hallory that they were ready. Hallory terminated his phone conversation and motioned for Swamp to go with him. Swamp rubbed his eyes and then rose carefully out of the comfortable chair, checking all his major joints for full range of motion before actually trying to walk. He felt pretty scruffy compared to everyone else in the Situation Room, some of whom stared at him as he was led out of the conference room.

  The officer took them past the Navy mess, the Secret Service command post, upstairs to the foyer coming off the West Wing colonnade, and into the staff office outside the Oval Office. Whoa, Swamp thought, thinking about how he looked, but Hallory was guiding him through the ornate doors. The new president was sitting behind the famous desk, and he got up to come over and shake Swamp’s hand.

  “Mr. Eyewitness,” he said with a tired smile.

  “Mr. President,” Swamp croaked out. He hadn’t voted for this man, but that invisible presidential mantle was fully in place, and Swamp was suitably awed. The president had them both sit down and asked if they wanted coffee. Following Hallory’s lead, Swamp shook his head. It hurt when he did it, and the president noticed.

  “Mr. Morgan, you’ve done the country a significant service. I apologize that you weren’t exactly given a lot of choice in the matter.”

  Swamp thought for a couple of seconds. “Well, Mr. President, did we get what we wanted out of this?”

  “Oh yes, I think we absolutely did. You’ve been down in the Situation Room, so you know what’s been going on. It’s a pretty amazing bag. Plus, there’s the OPEC arrangement.”

  “As I understand it, sir, Al Qaeda is a lot more than Saudis,” Swamp said. “Those bastards are everywhere.”

  “They are indeed, but their heart and soul, not to mention their principal funding source, has always been Saudi. We’ve known that for a long time. And right now, the bulk of that cancer is being transported to a special internment camp on Diego Garcia, courtesy of our British allies. More permanent facilities are being readied at an air base in Texas. I suspect my predecessor is looking forward to seeing some of them up close and personal.”

  “You took some big chances today, sir,” Swamp said.

  “So did you, from what I’ve been told. Again, I apologize for not giving you a vote.”

  “I take the king’s shilling,” Swamp said. “But won’t there be pandemonium in the rest of the world?”

  “For the most part, our real friends have been put into the picture, Mr. Morgan. And our sometime friends might prosper from a little pandemonium these days.”

  “And the world financial markets?”

  “All the New York markets are closed, tomorrow begins the weekend, and the after-market operations are experiencing some significant communications problems. The ‘disaster’ will be exposed tomorrow, and the money guys will have two days to think about it. If the premarkets still seem to be unstable by Sunday night, we’ll announce the new OPEC situation.”

  “What will happen when the Saudis find out they’ve been duped, if I may ask?”

  “The plot to decapitate the government was real, Mr. Morgan,” the president said. “Right now, the principals in the Kingdom are fairly quivering with gratitude that they’re not all in low earth orbit. We had two objectives: To eviscerate Al Qaeda. We won’t kill it, but we’ve hurt it grievously, and to achieve that, we needed blood and gore on the Capitol steps. Those pictures are what’s driving them to fill those transports, before we change our minds.”

  “And the second objective was the OPEC concession.”

  “Correct.” The president was looking at him with speculative eyes, and Swamp wondered if he wasn’t getting out of his depth asking these questions.

  “Will they hold to that OPEC agreement, sir? After they discover the hoax?”

  “You mean might they get angry and slap a Persian Gulf oil embargo on the West again?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The president sighed. “You can’t quote me on this, Mr. Morgan, but the mirror image of an embargo is a blockade. They slap an embargo on us, we’ll put the fleet across the Straits of Hormuz, take out every facility that makes or pumps water over there, and then wait for the hammer of Allah to work. In the meantime, nobody will get Persian Gulf oil. Maybe some genius will find a way to drink it.”

  Swamp nodded, suddenly awed by this glimpse of absolute power. “I assume we’re looking for Heismann or Hodler, whatever his real name is,” he said, glancing at Hallory. “I wouldn’t mind joining that hunt.”

  “First, we need you to make an appearance before the Joint Committee on Intelligence, Mr. Morgan. Up on the Hill.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand.”

  “Do you?” he asked, his eyes boring into Swamp’s. “The entire free world has a lot to gain tonight. You’ll be given a briefing paper before you go before the committee. At this juncture, it’s supremely important that you adhere to that paper.”

  Swamp frowned. He was tired and beat up after his experience in the town house. The president was trying to tell him something, but without coming right out and saying it.

  “What is the official line, sir?” he asked.

  “You recognized the terrorist who fired the mortar,” Hallory prompted. “You pursued him to the bank, where you made a positive identification that this was the man. When he attempted to escape, with the aid of armed accomplices in the bank, you shot him and them dead.”

  “And that’s the end of the story, Mr. Morgan,” the president said.

  “Ah,” Swamp said.

  “We didn’t start this,” the president said as he stood up. “They did. But you personally can go a long way toward finishing it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Swamp said again, beginning now to understand fully what was expected of him. Both he and Hallory rose, as well.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Hallory said.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” the president replied. “Thanks to the three of you, and my predecessor’s huge cojones, America struck a real blow for freedom today. Everyone involved will be suitably recognized once the dust settles.”

  An officer opened the doors to the Oval Office and they went out into the secretarial area. Lucy was waiting for them there. She handed Hallory a piece of paper and then turned aside to answer her cell phone.

  “Aha,” he said.

  “Find him?” Swamp asked.

  “His trail, maybe,” Hallory said. He looked at his watch. “We’ve got time before your briefing. Up to a little ride in the dark?”

  Lucy was looking his way again as she talked on her cell phone. “Am I going to survive this one?” Swamp asked.

  Hallory blinked but then smiled. “That game’s over, actually,” he said.

  “Just checking,” said Swamp.

  The director of the Secret Service appeared and signaled Hallory that he wanted a word, which left Swamp standing alone with Lucy. She had cleaned herself up a bit, fixed up that golden hair, but she still looked like she’d been on the losing end of a domestic dis
pute. She closed the cell phone and gave Swamp her full attention.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked. Her expression was fathomless.

  “Like a puppet who’s just had all his strings cut,” Swamp said. “Now I’m supposed to walk on my own again.”

  “You were very lucky back there, in that bank.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Two on one at close range. Assuming they were trained security guards, one of them should have hit you.”

  “I did a Marco Polo. Dropped flat and looked for China. I wish I could say that was due to years of great tactical training, but the truth is, I think I was looking for China. They went rapid-fire. Which usually means high.”

  She nodded. “And you?” she asked. “You went rapid-fire, too?”

  “Yeah. But of course for me, being down on the floor, shooting high was good.”

  “And the Arab? The scene report said you fired just once?”

  “Only had one round left,” he said. “Although I didn’t know that at the time. I was just bound and determined that he wasn’t going to get away, not after what I’d seen him do. Hitting him was pure luck.” He stopped, regretting his words. “Or maybe not, as the case might be, I suppose.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, suddenly preoccupied again, and then Hallory was back. As they headed for the east entrance, Swamp wondered about Lucy’s sudden interest in his tactical ability. And also why the president had mentioned three of them as being responsible for this amazing caper. His joints were still aching after being zapped by that Taser, and it was an effort just to keep up with them.

  Connie collapsed back into the bed, her heart pounding and her breathing ragged. She’d just managed a halting tour of the entire ground floor, checking windows, pulling drapes and lowering venetian blinds, and making sure the doors were all locked. She’d used the wheelchair and the walker to get around, but it had been much harder than she’d anticipated. She had no reserve of strength. She’d thought about going upstairs, but stairs were clearly out of the question. Besides, the danger, if it came, would come from ground level.