Whiplash d-11

by Dale Brown

  Black, sitting in the passenger seat, fidgeted silently the entire way. He longed to ask Zen some questions about his days at Dreamland, but was afraid of offending him. The senator could often be heard complaining to Delanie and others about how boring and stale those stories had become.

  A security guard tried to wave them away from the staff parking area as they pulled up.

  “That’s for staff,” shouted the man, running over as Zen backed from the wheel and pushed the wheelchair into the lift next to the door. “You have to move!”

  The door opened. The forklift-like elevator pulled Zen out of the van and began lowering him to the curb. The appearance of an obviously handicapped man gave the guard pause — but only for a second.

  “Sir, I’m sorry. You can’t park here,” said the guard, toning his voice down. “It’s for doctors and nurses.”

  “I outrank them,” Zen barked, rolling toward the door.

  “Now listen,” blustered the guard. “I don’t care if you are handicapped. That’s not where you park.”

  Black had to run to catch up to his boss. Zen reached into his pocket as he caught up with him and grabbed his keys.

  “Move the van so Barney Fife over there doesn’t have a heart attack. I’d hate for Pete to lose another constituent.”

  The electric doors opened and Zen glided inside the emergency room. One thing about hospitals — they were generally easy to get in and out of if you were in a wheelchair.

  That was about the only nice thing Zen could ever say about them.

  “I’m Senator Stockard,” he announced to the nurse at the desk. “You have my daughter here for X rays.”

  The word “senator” jarred the nurse, and for a second she wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. Before she could say anything, a doctor came out from the office area.

  “Senator Stockard, I’m glad you could get here so quickly,” he said as he walked over. “I’m Mike Watson. Dr. Bozzone called me and asked if I’d come down and check out your daughter personally.”

  “Who called Billy?”

  “Might’ve been your wife, Senator.”

  “She’s always a step ahead of me. Where’s Teri?”

  Dr. Watson — his name had been a source of jokes since med school — led Zen back through the halls to the X-ray department. Teri was sitting on an examining table, waiting as one of the techs readied the machine. A member of her school staff was sitting in the corner, a magazine on her lap.

  “Daddy, what are you doing here?”

  “Hey, angel. I was looking for someone to play golf with. The doctors mentioned you were here, so I postponed the game.”

  “You don’t play golf.” Teri gave him a mock frown, then leaned down from the table to give him a kiss. “Where’s Mom?”

  “With the President.”

  Teri frowned. She had expected her mother, not her father. She loved them both, but it was her mother who always showed up at times like this.

  Plus, she had said she would.

  Zen read the disappointment in her face. “Mom’s working hard,” he told her. “She had something very important today.”

  “I know.”

  He decided it was better to change the subject. “What, are you bucking for a chair like mine?”

  “Oh get out.” She hopped down from the table and began dancing around. “See? I’m fine.”

  “Probably, but let’s let the X ray determine that,” said Dr. Watson.

  * * *

  The National Security Council met in a secure conference room well below ground level in the White House “basement,” but the room was bathed in what to the naked eye seemed like perfect daylight. The environmental controls kept the room precisely at 68 degrees, a fact that occasionally irked the President, who preferred a slightly cooler temperature, but allowed it to remain there out of deference to her aides and cabinet members’ comfort.

  A rectangular table sat at the center of the large room. A video screen tilted upward in front of each of the thirty-six places; the screens were tied into a conferencing system as well as the secure intelligence intranet. Each seat was equipped with a bank of secure communication lines, allowing text and e-mail as well as scrambled voice and video.

  Best of all, the coffee and tea were world-class.

  Breanna took her seat near the center of the far side, next to Reid and two spots from the Secretary of Defense, Charles Lovel.

  Lovel nodded as she sat. He had started out as an enthusiastic supporter of the program, but lately had been rethinking its direction because of budget pressures. A relatively small part of the Pentagon’s so-called “black budget,” it still represented hundreds of millions of dollars, with the potential to consume much more. Lovel had bought the “multiplier effect” that Whiplash allowed — the idea that the program would pay for itself by encouraging more research and development, implementing high-tech tools faster and cheaper, and saving on manpower costs down the line. But the program was still so new that cutting it would not raise much of an outcry — far less, say, than lopping something like a destroyer out of the budget.

  Lovel would have been the first to admit that counting angry heads was a terrible way to set government policy. But he called himself a “big picture” guy, and in the big picture he saw, some terrible decisions had to be made to support the overall agenda.

  Breanna sat down and took a small memory card from her pocket. When she slipped it into the slot in the table before her, a keyboard appeared on the screen. She touch-typed her encryption code, enabling access to the files of her presentation, along with additional background and documentation.

  She was worried about her daughter. She knew Zen could handle whatever came up — he was always taking care of them somehow. But still, she felt she should be there, reassuring Teri that everything was fine.

  The attendant brought Breanna a cup of coffee. As she started to stir it, everyone in the room rose. The President had arrived.

  “All right, let’s get to work,” said Christine Mary Todd. A tall woman, she moved with quick strides, shoulders back and head high. In a man, her quick gait might have been considered brisk, her physical style assertive. As a woman, they gave visual ammunition to critics who found her abrupt and distant.

  “Ms. Stockard, Mr. Reid. Very good of you two to come on such short notice,” she said as she sat. The President did not attend every National Security meeting, but had planned on coming to this one for other reasons. News of the nuclear network made her attendance even more critical today. “Who’s going first?”

  That was the President’s style — plunge right into the situation without too much fuss. Breanna glanced around, waiting for everyone to settle into their seats before beginning.

  “Some months ago, we initiated a joint program between the CIA and Defense that allows us to test and implement new technologies on an advanced basis,” she said. Her voice was stiff, as was her prose. “The program is still in its very early stages, literally only a few weeks old, but we already have important results to share with you. Alarming results. Some of you have received some information already, so I will be brief.”

  Breanna looked down at her presentation. She’d lost her place, but decided she didn’t need to read the words. She knew what she wanted to say.

  “My associate, Mr. Reid, represents the CIA. We work together. I’m going to very briefly talk about some of our technology and the unit involved, just to give you background on our capabilities. And then Jonathon — Mr. Reid — is going to talk about what we’ve found.”

  Breanna described MY-PID in simplistic terms, saying that it was a networked computer system that could be used by operatives in the field. Her description was intentionally bland; the few people in the room with a need to know the specifics already knew them. She then mentioned the Whiplash team, again in very general terms, noting that its full complement had not even been recruited yet.

  She made a point of mentioning that Danny Freah was heading
the team. His name was familiar to most if not all of the people in the room, adding credibility to the program.

  Reid sat quietly, waiting for his turn to speak. Even now, he hadn’t decided what he would recommend as the next step. His boss, mentor, and friend, CIA Director Herman Edmund, had made it clear that he wanted the entire project under CIA direction. Reid had been swayed, at least to some extent, by Breanna’s arguments in the car.

  “Excuse me,” said Secretary of State Alistair Newhaven. “Is Whiplash intended as a strike team, or as an espionage unit?”

  “A little of both,” said Reid. He turned to Breanna, realizing he’d cut her off. “Sorry.”

  “Jonathon is right. It can be both, depending on what the situation requires. In this instance, I’d say the operation leaned toward — is leaning, I mean — toward espionage.”

  She paused and looked around the room. A few aides and staffers, lined up along the wall, were brimming with questions, but unless their bosses specifically asked for their input, none would dare ask them. Breanna turned and looked at Lovel, who nodded, then at Michael Bacon, the national security director. Bacon, sitting next to the President, nodded as well, indicating she should continue.

  “Our first mission began with a single agent, who was attempting to gather information on an arms network, known as Jasmine, operating in the Sudan,” said Breanna. “The operation — and the CIA officer, for that matter — were chosen primarily because of considerations with the systems we were testing and implementing. We wanted a real-world, real-time situation. After a few weeks we found it necessary to back him up, and so the agenda for the Whiplash team was moved ahead. And that’s where things got interesting.”

  She turned to Reid.

  “Yes, interesting. My colleague has a way with understatement,” said Reid. He flashed a smile. “Let me give you the headline first: Iran, or perhaps some element of its government, is refining nuclear material in Sudan, we believe in preparation for constructing a bomb.”

  If the room had been silent while Breanna spoke, now it was an absolute vacuum, all potential for sound pumped out of it. Reid briefly sketched what they had found, emphasizing that though the intelligence was still very preliminary, it was nonetheless very good.

  “We’re not relying on spies here, agents who have an interest in leading us on. These are our own people,” Reid said. “We have radiation sniffers that have data for us. We have purchases. We are still pulling everything together, and admittedly there is much that we don’t know. But the basic finding is unassailable — there is an operation here to refine nuclear material that can be used in a bomb.”

  “But Iran has just eliminated all of its nuclear weapons,” said the Secretary of State. “And dismantled its weapons program. We’ve inspected it. We know this is true.”

  “They showed us what they wanted to show us.”

  “They showed us what we asked for — what the CIA told us to ask for,” said Newhaven pointedly.

  “I would note that our estimates show there is a potential for several pounds of material to be missing from the official count,” said Dr. Bacon, who’d consistently been a stickler on this point. The missing material — if it was missing — was not quite enough for a bomb, but it was close.

  “We don’t need to debate whether the material is there or not,” said the head of the CIA. “Obviously, we need more information. And quickly. The Iranian president is due here next week.”

  This wasn’t news to most of the people in the room, but it was to Breanna and Reid, along with some of the lower-level staff people.

  “Yes, Mr. Reid, Ms. Stockard, it’s true,” said the President. “We’ve kept it a secret because he doesn’t want a backlash in his country. But the Iranian president will be here one week from tomorrow.”

  “Maybe he plans on bringing a bomb with him,” quipped Bacon as the meeting continued.

  Reid pressed his lips together and wondered if that might be more than just a joke.

  33

  Base Camp Alpha

  While the President was meeting with her advisors, Danny and Nuri were trying to figure out what had happened to Tarid. The biomarker was still active and showed that he was moving, indicating he was alive. That in itself was a minor miracle — from the looks of the video shot by the Owl, the Sudanese army had overwhelmed Colonel Zsar’s force near the road, killing nearly all of the men there. A much larger force of rebels, arriving after the battle was finished, had been repulsed with light losses, leaving the body of their leader behind.

  Tarid and the other rebels had been rounded up and driven about a hundred miles to an outpost near the village named Al-Quazi. The camp wasn’t much — a few buildings inside a minefield about a half mile from the outskirts of the village. But it was the most secure spot the army had in the area.

  Shortly after dawn, an American ferret satellite picked up a Sudanese transmission indicating that the prisoners were to be taken to Khartoum for interrogation as soon as possible. The commander replied that he would set out the following day.

  “Gives us a little time to rescue him,” said Nuri, reading the message with Danny not ten minutes after it had been sent. Neither man had gotten much sleep.

  Danny Freah furled his arms and rested his elbows on the top of the table. He leaned closer to the computer screen, staring at a satellite image of the camp area.

  “Can we get them out?” asked Nuri. He unpacked a bagel from its vacuum-packed container and put the two halves on the camp stove to toast. The bagels came preslit, but tended to be a little mushy.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Danny. He sat back. “There are a lot of troops. I’m not sure we have enough firepower.”

  “We can hire more mercenaries.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know that we can trust them if things get tough.”

  “I can ask Reid for more people.”

  “I have the military end,” said Danny, only to emphasize the point; there was not enough time for reinforcements to arrive. “I’ll ask.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Danny flipped through the satellite images, examining the defenses at the post. The pictures had been made over a period of several days, but the defensive posture was always the same. A pair of soldiers manned a single checkpoint on the road between the village and the camp, blocking the road with a large troop truck. They had a sandbagged position nearby where they could retreat to if necessary. Their job was to check traffic and provide a warning for the fort in the unlikely event that rebels decided to move up the road in a column.

  The road swept toward the camp, veering south about a hundred yards from the gate. A Chinese-made Hummer knockoff sat blocking the turnoff. It wasn’t clear from the photos how many soldiers were in the vehicle, or even if there were any inside, but Danny assumed at least two men would be posted. A simple wooden gate barred the entrance. This was flanked by a pair of sandbagged gun positions and patrolled by four or five men.

  Machine guns were located at the four corners of the camp in sandbagged positions. With the exception of the machine-gun nest on the southwest corner, they were all elevated about four feet above ground level, giving the occupants a better view of the distance and excellent firing lines, but also making them easier targets. The post at the southwest was heavier than the others, angled differently, and a little farther from the base perimeter. It appeared to be a cement bunker left over from an earlier camp and incorporated into the new defenses.

  The gun posts were connected to trenches that zigged backward through a minefield surrounding the perimeter, allowing the soldiers and any reinforcements to get there without going through the minefield. A single fence topped by barbed wire surrounded the perimeter of the camp. This was not guarded, the commander either short of men or trusting to the machine guns and mines to keep the base safe.

  There were several sandbagged walls along the sides of the rectangular camp, which could be used for cover if the outer defenses were breached,
but there were no prepositioned guns behind any of them. However, there were six pickup trucks with weapons mounted in the back bed — five of them were machine guns, the last a grenade launcher. These could easily be rallied if the camp were attacked, and Danny saw them as potentially the most difficult obstacle to an assault.

  The camp itself measured hardly more than an acre and a half. There were two buildings on the north: a barracks, where the soldiers who had taken part in the raid the night before were staying, and a smaller headquarters building adjacent to it. A large pair of gasoline tanks sat in the southeast corner, not far from the entrance. Next to them was a large open pen where the prisoners were being kept. The prisoners had no shelter from the sun or elements except for a small tarp strung at one side.

  “No helipad,” said Danny.

  “No, the choppers would have come from further west and north,” said Nuri. “They’re part of an Egyptian-funded initiative. They wouldn’t risk them on the ground here where they’d be potential targets.”

  Danny stared at the screen.

  “So can we do it?” Nuri asked.

  “Maybe. We better ask for permission first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re not at war with Sudan.”

  “You shot down two of their helicopters last night.”

  “Only because they were going to kill me if I didn’t.”

  “I think we just do it if we can do it,” said Nuri. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “We’ll ask anyway,” said Danny.

  34

  Washington, D.C.

  “If Iran is trying to circumvent the agreement they just signed, we should hit them hard with everything we’ve got,” said Secretary of Defense Charles Lovel as the debate about the uranium finding continued. “We should obliterate these weapons plants.”