Blowback

by Brad Thor

  “It was actually a kaffiyeh, sir, not a turban. There’s a difference.”

  “I know there’s a difference, and you don’t have to tell me,” barked Rutledge. “I saw the footage.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “My point is that we can’t just talk the talk. We have to walk that talk—all of us. From the lowliest buck private all the way to the people working in this building. Damn it. Just when it seemed we were getting some PR traction in that part of the world, this happens.”

  Anderson waited a moment for the president to cool down and said, “There may be a piece of information that could work to our favor in all of this.”

  Rutledge stopped pacing for a moment and raised his eyebrows. “Really? Like what? Are you going to tell me that the attack was self-defense somehow? Maybe the fruit vendor was selling bad dates, because if he was, then this whole thing is okay, isn’t it? I mean, if this guy had the balls to sell bad dates, then the gloves understandably come off. God knows we’re not a nation that stands for bad dates, and heaven help any fruit vendor who tries to sell them to us.”

  The chief of staff knew that the president was only one step away from blowing his stack and decided to tread very lightly. “The fruit vendor’s stall was nowhere near where this incident took place. In fact, it’s completely on the other side of Baghdad. He should have been manning his stall when this all went down, but it turns out he paid one of his cousins, and not a small amount of money, to man it for him.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because somebody paid him even more money to take the day off and hang out a couple of blocks from the al-Karim bazaar.”

  “Who? And why?”

  “The Iraqi Security Forces have been trying to get that out of him, but the man claims he doesn’t know,” said Anderson. “And before you make any remarks about the effectiveness of the Iraqi Security Forces, keep in mind that they were almost immediately on the scene at al-Karim and shut the al-Jazeera crew down before they could get our soldier’s face on tape. We’re lucky that it was all shot from behind.”

  “Who cares if they got his face? They got that little two-by-three-inch patch with the stars and stripes on his upper arm,” said the president, not at all convinced there was anything positive about this catastrophe. “That’s all they needed to get.”

  “True,” said Anderson, “but the fact that his face wasn’t shown will definitely help buy us a little more time.”

  “Time? Time for what? Time to hope this story will just fade away, because that’s not going to happen. This isn’t something we can claim ignorance of and quietly sweep under the rug. People are incensed, Chuck. The entire Muslim world is up in arms. They see this as a direct attack on Islam and are literally out for blood. I’ve been asked by no less than four governments in the region to hand the soldier over once he’s been ID’d so he can stand trial under Islamic law. Not only has every two-bit imam across the region issued a fatwa against him, the U.S. Military, and the United States in general, but some of these people are calling for a war crimes tribunal in the Hague.”

  “Well, if the Muslims want to try our soldier, they’ll have to take a number, because the Democrats on the Hill are already calling for their own hearings.”

  The president sat back down in his chair and massaged his temples with the heels of his hands. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “We are in an election year.”

  “Even if it weren’t an election year, it wouldn’t matter. Our side would be all over this as well if the situation was reversed. This is just too juicy to pass up. “Looking up, he asked, “Who’s leading the charge?”

  “Helen Carmichael,” replied Anderson. “And here’s the kicker—she wants the hearings televised.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me either?”

  “It shouldn’t. She’s looking to score major points with her party before Governor Farnsworth’s campaign team and the DNC nail down who the number two person on their ticket is going to be. What’s surprising, though, is that she’s launching the hearings from her own seat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.”

  That did surprise Rutledge. “The Intelligence Committee? What the hell for? This doesn’t have anything to do with them. Why isn’t she giving it to Armed Services?”

  “We think it’s because she smells blood in the water.”

  “Of course she smells blood in the water. We’re hemorrhaging. Islamic fundamentalists are going to use that al-Jazeera footage as a perpetual recruiting tool, and it’s going to work. Thousands of Muslim youth who might not otherwise have signed up are going to be asking themselves, What if that was someone I loved or cared about being beaten by an American soldier? We handed them this one on a silver platter. It’s going to take us decades to recover. But that still doesn’t explain what possible interest the Intelligence Committee could have in holding hearings on this.”

  “You might change your mind about the committee’s interest once you know who the American in the al-Jazeera footage is,” said Anderson.

  The president leaned forward in his chair. “Who’s got him? The Army? Do they know who he is?”

  “The Army doesn’t have him, and they don’t know who he is.”

  Rutledge waited for the other shoe to drop, but when Anderson didn’t say anything, his mind started turning. “I don’t suppose this guy is a private contractor we can plausibly disavow?”

  “We’re not going to be that lucky on this one. If it was a contractor, this entire thing would be over already.”

  “He’s an operator then, isn’t he?” said the president.

  Anderson nodded his head. “Part of one of the direct action teams authorized by the DOD and this office.”

  “Is he CIA?”

  “I don’t think you should know any more at this point. There’s a good chance Carmichael is going to be issuing subpoenas, and I don’t doubt there’ll be one with your name on it.”

  “My name? What the hell for?”

  “We’ve got him on a C130 en route to Andrews Air Force Base right now. He won’t be on the ground until much later tonight. In the morning, there’ll be a thorough debriefing, and afterwards I’ll come to you and we can talk. In the meantime, I’d rather you stay outside the loop on this.”

  Rutledge had known his chief of staff long enough to trust his judgment. Shielding the president from political fallout was part of Anderson’s job. “Until the morning, but that’s it,” said Rutledge. “Now, what about Carmichael? Does she know we’ve got him?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet,” replied Anderson.

  “Does she know who he is?”

  “She’s got her teeth into something, and she’s working around the clock turning over every rock in town.”

  “Well, if we’ve got him, then we have to get out in front of this story and control how it unfolds. I don’t care about the elections. They don’t supersede the sanctity of this office. We’re going to do the right thing on this, and if it means this operative has to take one for the team, then he’s going to have to take one for the team,” said the president.

  Anderson shook his head and reached for the BlackBerry device vibrating on his hip. “You might not feel that way once you know who we’re talking about.”

  “Are you saying I’m familiar with this person?” asked the president.

  Anderson didn’t respond. He was too busy reading the message he had just been sent.

  “Chuck, I’m asking you a question,” repeated the president. “Is this person someone I know?”

  The chief of staff looked up and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. President. We’ll have to take this up later. You’re needed in the situation room immediately.”

  EIGHT

  W HITE H OUSE SITUATION ROOM

  W ithin twenty minutes, the situation room was packed with bodies and the air was thick with tension. Based on an emerging terrorist threat, the White House had gone into full crash mod
e.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” called the president. “It appears we’ve got a lot to cover, and I’d like to get started, so if you’d all take your seats please.”

  The attendees did as they were instructed, and as a subdued hush fell over the room, the president nodded at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hank Currutt.

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” replied Currutt, who stood to address the room. “Two days ago, soldiers from the U.S. Army’s Third Arrowhead Brigade, Second Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Lewis, Washington—now based in Mosul, Iraq—responded to a call that three Christian aid workers had failed to check in with their organization and had gone missing. Traveling to the remote village near the Syrian border where the workers had been based, the soldiers uncovered something the likes of which we have never seen before.

  “To brief you on what exactly it is that they found, I’m going to turn the floor over to Colonel Michael Tranberg. For those of you not familiar with Colonel Tranberg, he is the commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. I have asked him here because USAMRIID is the Department of Defense’s lead laboratory for developing medical countermeasures, vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic tools to protect U.S. troops from biological warfare agents and naturally occurring infectious diseases. After the CDC in Atlanta, USAMRIID houses the only other Biosafety Level Four laboratory in the entire country, which allows Colonel Tranberg’s team to study highly hazardous viruses in maximum biological containment. I think that’s about it introduction-wise. Colonel Tranberg?”

  “Thank you, General Currutt,” said Tranberg, a tall, gray-haired man in his sixties. He picked up a digital remote from the conference table, pressed a button, and the two plasma monitors at the front of the room came to life with the revolving USAMRIID logo. “The footage you are about to view was shot a little over a week ago in northern Iraq by the aforementioned Christian humanitarian aid workers from a group called Mercy International out of Fresno, California. Three of Mercy International’s workers had been based in the remote village of Asalaam, about one hundred fifty kilometers southwest of Mosul. When they failed to check in with Mercy’s main Baghdad office, calls were made, and eventually soldiers from one of the U.S. Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team were sent to check up on them. It was these same soldiers who uncovered this footage. We’ve edited it down to the most important parts, but I have to warn you, it’s not easy to watch.”

  Tranberg pressed another button on the remote and sat down.

  Everyone in the room watched with rapt attention as a young female aid worker, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two years old, chronicled a strange flulike illness, which was sweeping through the village. By the second day, though, the woman, as well as her two colleagues, fell ill and quickly grew too sick to continue filming. “From this point on,” narrated Tranberg, “we believe it’s one of the villagers, maybe a local person who had been working with the aid workers, who continues the filming.”

  The group watched as the video further chronicled the sickness spreading throughout the village. Those who were infected needed to be physically restrained. All of the patients eventually exhibited extremely aggressive behavior, with many trying to bite their caregivers, or anyone who came across their path. In many of the afflicted, a bizarre state of heightened sexuality was also observable. Many of them complained of severe insomnia and headaches. They were hypersensitive to odors, particularly garlic, and couldn’t stand to see their reflection in anything from a mirror to a bedpan. In addition, they seemed to suffer from hydrophobia and had to be completely nourished intravenously, and even then, the few IV bags the village had available had to be hidden beneath towels, as patients who saw anything even remotely resembling water would fly into a rage and their throats would swell up, making it impossible for them to breathe. They were hypersensitive to light, and their skin had taken on a very strange pallor. The presentation cut to the final footage of the aid workers in the end stages of the illness.

  Everyone around the table watched in silence as the aid workers began convulsing. Soon a strange, dark fluid began to pour from their nostrils, and moments later they were dead.

  In the background of the video, villagers who had not yet become infected recoiled in horror.

  When the clip was over, the video footage was replaced once again by the spinning USAMRIID logos. For a moment, no one spoke. It was obvious from the faces around the table that the footage had scared the hell out of everyone, including the president.

  Dr. Donna Vennett, the surgeon general and a family medicine physician by trade, was the first to speak. “What is it? Some sort of Ebola strain? Hemorrhagic fever?”

  “No on both counts,” responded Tranberg. “This is not like anything we’ve seen before.”

  “What was that substance running out of the nasal passages before the victims died?”

  “That’s a mystery as well.”

  “Well, what do we know?” said Steve Plaisier, secretary of Health and Human Services. “We’ve obviously been called here for a reason. Is there a chance we might see an outbreak of this thing in the U.S.?”

  “There’s more than just a chance,” responded General Currutt. “We’re counting on it.”

  Homeland Security Secretary Alan Driehaus cleared his throat and said, “Why?”

  “Because the village of Asalaam wasn’t infected by chance. It was specifically targeted.”

  “Intentional infection?” said Plaisier.

  Currutt nodded his head.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  The General activated his own laptop and projected a series of photos via the monitors at the front of the room. “Not only were all communication lines into Asalaam taken out, but the handful of vehicles the villagers collectively owned had been sabotaged—tires slashed, things of that nature. No one was going anywhere. Someone wanted that village completely isolated.”

  “Who?”

  Now it was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency James Vaile’s turn to speak. “We have some parallel intelligence we think might answer part of that question. Over the last two months, a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative named Khalid Sheik Alomari has been sighted in Dubai, Amman, Damascus, Cairo, Tehran, Rabat, Lahore, and Baghdad. And while he was in each of those cities, a highly respected Muslim scientist died. On the surface, all of the deaths appeared to be accidents or the result of natural causes. Originally, we thought that Alomari was doing the Middle East circuit to either fund-raise or coordinate a multicity attack. We had no idea until one of our analysts started connecting the dots that the man was there committing assassinations.”

  “You said this Alomari was high-ranking,” stated Paul Jackson, the president’s National Security Advisor. “How high-ranking are we talking about?”

  “Alomari is bin Laden’s protégé—handpicked to handle only the most sensitive assignments. It’s exceptionally concerning that we’ve attached him to what happened in Asalaam because Alomari’s main responsibility for al-Qaeda is to help conceptualize and orchestrate the most devastating attacks he can think of against the United States. He’s the only person in al-Qaeda said to hate America even more than bin Laden himself.”

  “But how do we know Alomari and those dead scientists are connected to what happened in this village?” asked Secretary Driehaus.

  “Because, besides probably being killed by Alomari, the scientists were all working on a highly secretive project for something called the Islamic Institute for Science and Technology in Bangladesh. Its mission statement is to improve the lives of Muslims worldwide through advancements in science and technology, but we’ve suspected for some time those aren’t their true marching orders.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They get paid lots of visits by scientists from Islamic countries we believe are involved with covert chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs. One of the institute’s d
irectors, in fact, is especially fond of quoting Dr. Shiro Ishii, the head of Japan’s bioweapons program during World War II. Ishii was the one who said that if a weapon is important enough to be prohibited, it must be worth having in one’s arsenal.”

  The secretary of state, Jennifer Staley, replied, “Director Vaile, do we have any hard evidence connecting this institute with any covert weapons programs?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Jamal Mehmood.”

  “Who is Jamal Mehmood?” asked Driehaus.

  Vaile looked to the president, and when Rutledge nodded his head, Vaile explained, “He’s a Pakistani nuclear scientist. A couple of years ago, we found the schematics he designed for an anthrax-spreading device in an al-Qaeda training camp. The CIA was part of the team that helped track him down and detain him outside of Karachi. We were never able to substantiate his claims that the designs had been stolen.”

  “I still don’t see the connection.”

  “Both Mehmood and A.Q. Khan—the father of the Islamic bomb, who sold nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya—have not only been visiting professors but major fundraisers for the Islamic Institute for Science and Technology.”

  The secretary of state held out her hands in front of her, as if balancing what she’d been listening to, and said, “So we have a serious mystery illness seen only in some remote Iraqi village on one hand and a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative who killed a bunch of scientists tied to some Islamic research group on the other. I’m still not seeing any connection here.”

  General Currutt advanced to the next slide on his laptop and responded, “A few days before the people in Asalaam started becoming sick, Khalid Sheik Alomari was spotted crossing the Iraqi-Syrian border less than forty-five kilometers from the village. We believe Asalaam was a live test site for the virus.”

  That was all it took. There wasn’t a single person in the situation room who could ignore the al-Qaeda link.