Strike Force Charlie s-3

by Mack Maloney

  There was another gaggle of Marines here, and a few SEALs, too. All of them were excited and soaked. Conversation had been hopeless in the swift ride here; the wind and torrential rain did not help it now. The Marines yanked Apple out of the Hummer and into the isolated prisoner barracks.

  The interior was dark; only the beams from several flashlights broke through the fog that had seeped in here. The State Department rep, not used to all this excitement, nearly slipped three steps in. The floor was coated with something very sticky. A young Marine beside him directed his flashlight at the floor.

  “Be careful, sir,” he told Apple.

  That’s when Apple realized they were both standing in a pool of blood.

  More flashlights appeared and now they lit up the entire room. On the floor in front of him Apple saw the bodies of seven men lined up in a row. Clad only in their underwear, each had had his throat cut.

  Apple’s first thought was that these people were Marine guards — but actually the opposite was true. They were detainees, more specifically, the seven Iranian prisoners named Khameni. It took several long moments for this to sink into Apple’s brain. Then, through the blood and rain and wind and chaos around him, it hit like a lightning bolt. He grabbed the young Marine next to him.

  “Are these really K-One through — Seven?” he asked in astonishment.

  The man nodded blankly. “We’ve already ID’d them through photographs,” he said. “Those are them, sir.”

  Apple nearly slumped to the floor. He felt like he was suddenly living inside a ghastly dream. What his eyes were telling him simply seemed inconceivable. How? Why?

  Then another thought struck. This one even more troubling than the seven murdered prisoners.

  “But if these are the Iranians,” he mumbled, “then who the hell …?”

  “Got on that plane, sir?” the Marine finished his question for him. He just shrugged. “We have no idea.”

  Chapter 3

  Washington, D.C. The next night

  The MCI Arena was packed. Rock music was blasting. Strobe lights were flashing. The gigantic scoreboard was pumping out waves of virtual excitement. For the first time in a very long time the Washington Wizards pro basketball team was in the play-offs, the Finals no less. This was a very big deal in D.C., and the MCI was filled to the rafters for the occasion. When the home team ran onto the court, the crowd’s response was deafening.

  But Mary Li Cho was already bored. She knew nothing about basketball, didn’t know if the ball was filled with air or stuffed with feathers. She was here on a date — or she was supposed to be anyway. A guy she’d been seeing had called earlier in the week asking if she wanted to see the Wizzies play. She’d quickly accepted. He was all military, a captain at Army Special Operations Command, GI Joe handsome, and very unattached. He even had a soldierly name: Pershing Nash. Li got her fill of midlevel Army jerks at work, but she actually liked this one. Or at least, she had.

  So here she was, way, way up in the cheap seats, after picking up her ticket at the will-call window. But Nash was nowhere in sight. She’d been scanning the place for the last half hour, looking for him. She saw many military types walking around and politicians everywhere and lobbyists cluttering up the expensive boxes below. But so far, no Captain Nash.

  The people around her were the loudest and the drunkest in the arena. She was becoming uneasier by the minute. This would be the third time that Nash had stood her up. She realized he had a high-level job — he was attached to the National Security Council. He never missed a chance to tell her that. But she had an important job, too. And he knew all about it. And after two months she felt she deserved better from him than stranding her here in the Jerry Springer section.

  Li was Asian-American and very attractive. Nice hair, nice face. Nice everything. Even dressed in simple jeans and a bland top, she could feel many of her boozy neighbors locking in on her. It was not a pleasant feeling, though. She’d always been uncertain about her looks, never seeing what others saw. One of her ex-boyfriends once told her, You’re too good-looking; that’s the problem. She’d even been approached by Playboy to pose for a pictorial, “Secretaries of the Pentagon.” The offer both amused and horrified her. Even in her best moments, she tried not to think about it.

  Appearing in Playboy was something Li could never do even if she wanted to. She worked at the Pentagon; that much was true. And she went to the typing pool every morning and picked up piles of documents to be word-processed. But she was not a secretary. That was her cover. Actually, she worked for one of the most secret operations within the U.S. government. It was called the Defense Security Agency.

  Created after September 11th, the DSA’s mission was deceptively simple: “Maintain security within the ranks of the U.S. military.” Truth was, the cryptic agency played many roles. It sniffed out members of the U.S. military who might be terrorist agents in disguise — it had caught several in the past three years. It investigated unresolved disappearances of U.S. military weapons, from bullets to bombers. It watched over the Pentagon’s online security systems and its communications networks, another line of defense against would-be terro-hackers. It even monitored the Pentagon’s bank accounts, looking for any irregularities.

  The DSA was so classified, it was all but unknown to the other U.S. intelligence services. Even the Vice President was said to be unaware of its existence, as were 99.9 percent of the people who worked in the Pentagon. It was a secret unit hiding in plain sight.

  It was also a very small operation. Three people assigned here in D.C., just a half-dozen more serving overseas. Modest though it was, the DSA could throw some weight around. Not only did it have unfettered access to all intelligence gathered by every other U.S. spy agency, but it could also call on any number of U.S. special ops units to do its dirty work. It took its orders directly from the NSC and no one else. These days that was like getting the Word directly from God.

  As she was the daughter of a career military man — her father was a colonel in the Marines — and just eight months out of grad school at Georgetown, working for the DSA would have seemed the ideal job for Li. Though she was also a talented artist, her real talents lay in the newly birthed science of counterterrorism, and the DSA was certainly on the front lines for that. But lately, she felt more like the lookout on the Titanic, with the iceberg dead ahead. Many things were out of control in D.C. these days security-wise. Things she wished she knew nothing about.

  This was another reason she was feeling unsettled tonight. The terrorist chatter lately was not good; she knew this because she had access to every byte of information coming into the Pentagon about every known terrorist group around the world. Despite some recent setbacks, the lines in and out of Al Qaeda had been burning especially bright for the last month. Many of their key sleeper cells were being activated, a very bad sign. Their illegal money-laundering operations were also spiking, a sure indication funds were being passed down to their foot soldiers. The results so far: car bombings all across Europe, suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Israel. Plutonium missing in Pakistan. Smallpox found in Kenya. And everywhere rumors of nukes and dirty bombs about to go off.

  These things were a thumbprint strategy for Al Qaeda: start a lot of small actions and get U.S. intelligence people running this way and that, all as a diversion from the big hit to come. Something bad was going to happen soon. Li could feel it in her shoes, and she wasn’t the only one. The problem was, there were so many potential targets, it was impossible for anyone to even guess what might be hit and when. The FBI and the CIA were useless, the Department of Homeland Security a sad joke. So that iceberg kept getting closer every day.

  Yes, these were very strange times at work — but not just because of the uptick in terrorist activity. It was more personal than that. The small, secret DSA unit housed inside the Pentagon was now down to just one person: her. Why? Because her boss and his second-in-command had left on assignments two months before and neither had been heard fro
m since. Officially, they were TWA, as in Temporarily Without Assignment. But Li knew this was just spy talk for missing in action. Or worse.

  It was too bad. She really liked Ozzi and Fox. Ozzi was a Navy jg, midtwenties, a top graduate of Annapolis. Major Fox was a tall, handsome, dreamy but very married guy from Alabama, a retired CIA veteran lured back after September 11th. They’d made a great team, the three of them. Ozzi was the cyberspace guy, Fox was the CO, and Li fit nicely in between. As the system intelligence officer, she traffic-copped everything that came through the door. They were all easygoing, good at keeping secrets, and genuinely liked one another. Even now, her eyes misted over thinking about them. She missed them both terribly.

  This also meant she’d been without a boss for eight weeks. What does one do in such a case? The next level of command was the NSC itself, and she wasn’t about to go to them looking for help. She’d even asked Nash for advice. Again, because he was attached to the NSC, he was one of the few people in town who knew what she did, sort of. And they were both at the same security clearance level, so they could talk about such things. Sit tight, Nash had told her. That was the only thing to do when dealing with the military high command. Carry on as best as you can until someone tells you otherwise.

  Carrying on, to Li’s mind, was fulfilling the last assignment Fox had given her before he and Ozzi disappeared. But this was weird, too: check out every Defense Department employee named “Bobby Murphy.” She had no idea why, but in his last memo to her Fox asked that she cyberstalk anyone in the DoD by that name, even though there were no indications that any of them were criminals or moles or anything other than simple worker bees. Strange. The DoD was a big place. Li had already checked out several dozen people by that name, without finding anything unusual.

  So this whole Bobby Murphy thing was just another mystery to her.

  * * *

  The Wizards finished their shootarounds. The lights inside the MCI began to dim.

  Li checked her watch again. The only empty seat in the arena was the one next to her. How long should she wait for this human Ken doll? Why hadn’t he called her? Should she call him? Suddenly her cell phone began vibrating. She retrieved it from her ankle holster. A text message had blinked onto the screen. It was from Nash.

  It read: “Call me ASAP” But he had added: “MTSL first.” Li was surprised to see this. MTSL was spy talk for “Move To Secure Location,” a code used when sensitive or classified information was to be discussed. Why would Nash want her to take this unusual step if just to tell her why he wasn’t here?

  Whatever, she thought. At least she would not have to sit through a basketball game. She got up to leave.

  But then the lights in the arena dimmed even further, until there was just a single spotlight shining on center court. According to the PA announcer, “America the Beautiful” was about to be sung. Li couldn’t leave now. The way things were in D.C. these days, she’d probably be called a Taliban. So she sat back down but stayed poised on the edge of her seat. What happened next would stay with her for a very long time.

  Two young children walked onto the court. A boy and a girl, no more than eight years old, both dressed in their Sunday best. Both kids were holding microphones as big as they were. Both looked nervous. A recorded piece of music began to play, the opening notes to “America the Beautiful.”

  The kids started singing. Off-key but cute. The crowd warmed to them immediately. Even Li had to admit it was precious — for the first few seconds, anyway. Because when the part about the “fruited plain” came along, both kids froze solid. They’d forgotten the words.

  The music played on; the crowd became hushed. The kids began to cry, tears falling onto their microphones. The spotlight seemed to be burning holes in them now. No one knew what to do. Finally someone stopped the music and the lights came back on. Li just shook her head. What was happening to this country? We can’t even sing our favorite song anymore ….

  Suddenly, from across the court, a small, wiry man appeared. He was sixtyish and dressed plainly in slacks and a golf shirt. He was certainly not part of either team; nor was he wearing the red blazer sported by all arena employees. He had to be one of the spectators.

  The crowd went silent as this tiny man walked across the floor, approaching the children with a smile. The two kids stopped crying, looking up at him more curious than anything. He patted each one on the head, then took the boy’s microphone. Everyone in the arena heard him say, “OK, let’s try it again ….”

  A few uncomfortable seconds passed, but then the music recued and resumed playing. Very softly, the little man started singing the first verse to them. The kids got the idea. He would tell them the words, and the kids would sing them, somehow keeping pace with the recorded music. It became very awkward, though. The crowd began hooting; some were even mocking the unlikely trio. But the little man persisted, and so did the kids. They sang on, getting a bit louder, a bit more confident, with each note.

  And slowly … everything began to change. The crowd went quiet again as the three voices rose, shaky but oddly in tune. Li began to listen to the words of the song. They actually sounded beautiful, so much better than the screechy “Star Spangled Banner.” By the third line, the kids were really into it, the little stranger easing them along with every measure.

  Then came the chorus … and very unexpectedly other voices began to rise. First from the balconies. Then the loge. Then from the fat-cat seats way down front. Just like that, the entire MCI arena was singing. Li felt pins and needles from head to toe. What was happening here? She stole a glance at the father and young son beside her. The father was holding a cup of beer in one hand and hugging his son with the other. Tears were in the man’s eyes.

  Li spied other people around her. Many of them were crying, too. Crying and singing. The overhead scoreboard came to life: a moving digital image of the American flag, blowing in the wind above the wreckage of the World Trade Center. It was so sad yet beautiful at the same time. Li felt something wet fall on her own cheek. She thought it was beer. It wasn’t ….

  The kids, the little man, and the crowd soared into the big finish: “From sea to shining … sea!” Then, complete silence — for about two seconds. Then the cheering began. It washed through the arena like a giant wave. Louder and louder. Feet stomping, hands clapping, seats smashing. The building’s foundation began to shake. The crowd was delirious and the delirium seemed like it would never end. Finally, the little man drawled into the microphone, “Now, let’s play some ball ….”

  The crowd erupted again. Twice as long, twice as loud. The players took to the court. Someone secured the microphones and the kids were escorted off, waving and laughing and taking happy bows.

  As for the little man, he disappeared back into the crowd, leaving as quickly as he came.

  * * *

  Li drove to the most secure location she could find in a hurry, the top floor of a parking garage three blocks from the MCI Arena. Hers was the only car up here, and the other six levels below were practically empty. She was sure no one would intrude on her. She parked in the farthest corner and shut off her lights. The garage was so high, she could see almost all of Washington from here. The White House. The Lincoln Memorial. The Pentagon. The Potomac. All of them sparkling in the warm evening air.

  She speed-dialed Nash’s number more than 50 times in the next 10 minutes, and each time his phone was busy. She was quickly growing annoyed. What kind of game was he playing here? Why all the mystery and intrigue? She got enough of that at work.

  It was now 8:45. She tried Nash five more times. Still busy. This was bullshit. Seat back, she opened her moon roof and looked up to the stars. But instead, she saw the silhouettes of two fighter jets pass silently overhead. They were F-15s …. This was strange. Fighter overflights had not been seen in D.C. since the days immediately after 9/11. Yet these two were clearly circling the capital. Why?

  She tried Nash again. Finally, she heard ringing. He picked up rig
ht away.

  “It’s me,” she said sourly. “Your date ….”

  “I’m sorry,” he began in a hushed voice. “I’m still at work. And work just got nuts. Are you alone?”

  “You’re not here,” she shot back. “So I must be, right?”

  A short pause.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “It’s just …”

  But Li had already heard enough. He had to work late. OK. No big deal. Certainly no need for a song and dance.

  “Just call me then,” she told him coolly. “When you’re certain you can get away.”

  She started to hang up but then heard him say, “Wait. …”

  “Yes?”

  “I have something else I have to tell you,” he said. “And it’s disturbing news, I’m afraid. Some things that we just got in here at the office I think you should know about.”

  Li felt a chill go through her. This was unexpected.

  She asked, “What kind of ‘things’?”

  “Absolutely top-secret things,” he replied, his voice low. “NSC things. Are you sure you’re in a safe place?”

  “I am,” she insisted. “And frankly, you’re scaring me.”

  “Well, get used to it,” he said. “Because there’s some scary shit going on.” Another pause. Then he said, “What do you know about Hormuz and Singapore?”

  Li was speechless for a moment. This was not a geography question. Nash was referring to a pair of highly classified, highly mysterious incidents that had happened in the past few months.

  First, Hormuz. As in the Strait of Hormuz. What occurred there was nothing less than Al Qaeda trying to pull off an attack to rival 9/11 or anything since. They hijacked ten airliners and two military planes and attempted to crash them into the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln as it was moving through the narrow Persian Gulf waterway. The attack failed because every airliner was either forced to land before it reached the Lincoln or shot down by the Navy. The carrier made it through untouched. The 5,500 U.S. sailors aboard were saved.