by Sam Powers
And so he paced the room, unsure of how to direct his energies, tempted to insult both the Prophet and his God by having several stiff drinks, keenly aware that he already had ample reason to pray for guidance.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come.”
It opened and Faisal entered the room, typically dapper in a light grey suit. “Your highness,” he said with a short bow. He made a sweeping motion with his arm, and a young soldier in tan-colored army garb followed him into the room. He was perhaps eighteen, with a narrow face and a wispy moustache. “This is Private Aboud.”
“What is this, Faisal,” Khalidi asked wearily. “You had best have some information…”
“Be quiet,” Faisal said. “Old fool.” He reached inside his suit jacket and removed a nine millimeter; he took a small suppressor out of his side pocket and screwed it onto the barrel.
Khalidi was flabbergasted. His face turned red with embarrassment. “Faisal! How dare you speak to me thusly! I shall have you flogged, you Egyptian dog…wait…what are you doing?”
“Private Aboud is a simple boy, recruited for this task specifically from an institution in Aqaba, where he was committed for being unable to care for himself,” Faisal said. As if to confirm the statement, the private said nothing, staring ahead wide-eyed and glassy, oblivious to what was going on around him.
“I don’t understand…” Khalidi managed to say, before Faisal held the barrel up to the boy’s forehead, and pulled the trigger, killing him instantly.
Faisal walked towards his shocked employer. “Initially, the news reports sent out by the state press agency will merely confirm you were killed by an assassin but that you heroically took his life in the process,” he said. “It will not be until later that they find the evidence among his belongings, implicating you in the explosion that reigned Hell upon America, that they realize young Private Aboud died a hero, trying to prevent a tragedy.”
The wealthy Jordanian’s mouth dropped open. “My God, Faisal…” he said. “You cannot mean this. What have you done?”
“Me?” Faisal said. “Don’t worry about me, sir.” He raised the gun and shot Khalidi through the mouth. The chairman dropped to his knees, eyes instantly distant and confused. Faisal walked over and kicked him over. “I’m nobody.”
He took his phone from his pocket and dialed a number.
“Yes?” A man’s voice replied.
“It’s done. The official statement will go out in two days. You have until then. The remainder will be dealt with after everything has been taken care of on your end.”
“Your task is complete,” the voice said. “The money will be wired by noon.”
“I hope never to hear from you again,” Faisal said.
“You won’t.”
The line went dead.
Faisal looked down at Khalidi’s prone body. Ultimately, he knew, people would suspect his involvement; he had rarely left Khalidi’s side in a decade. But memories are short, Faisal knew, and the money would last a very long time.
JULY 3, 2016, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The President wanted it to be over.
On one level, anyway. Really, he wanted another four years, another eight, another twelve; whatever it took to help build a stronger country. He had at least that much faith in himself.
But facing a grave national security threat, declining popularity numbers and a lame duck administration, paused in time by the inertia of career fear? He just wanted it to be over.
Four more months, he told himself as he twiddled his ballpoint pen, sitting behind the Resolute Desk while some of his top advisors sat in front of it and fidgeted, each trying to look less guilty than the next.
“Would perhaps one of you gentlemen like to explain to me how deputy director Fenton-Wright managed to so thoroughly evade our internal screening and policies? Our own security? Anyone?”
Fitzpatrick was there as a courtesy; the NSA had a direct interest, and he had a personal one, even though forensics had shown it was Jonah Tarrant’s shot that had killed the rogue spy. But Wilkie, the Colonel and the Defense Secretary knew they were all seen as complicit, given that they’d all promoted and supported Fenton-Wright’s role on the National Security Council. They’d treated him like the golden boy for the president’s entire final term.
Eventually, though, the director knew it fell to him. Wilkie cleared his throat then said, “I will, of course, offer my resignation…”
The president rolled his eyes. “Give it a rest, Nick, okay? I’ve known you for twenty years. I don’t want your resignation. I want a genuine answer. Do we even know who was paying him?”
“We suspect the Russians, Mr. President,” the defense secretary interjected.
“We’ve just gotten a lead to trace on that today sir,” Wilkie said. “When he died, Fenton-Wright had an unlisted cell phone on him. We’ve run back several of the calls made from it in the months prior, and he took part in some telebanking with an outfit in Switzerland. Now, as you know, the Swiss are much more amenable these days to working with us…”
“Bottom line it, please,” the President said.
“Money was transferred into accounts held by Fenton-Wright in Zurich. Given the routing, they suspect the transaction originated in the Middle East. But by tomorrow we’ll have a definitive answer.”
That was one issue potentially resolved, the president thought. “What about your other rogue agent, the asset in Europe?”
“Agent Brennan is still out of touch, unfortunately sir,” Wilkie said. “But we’re taking steps to track him down and assure him that he is very much back in the fold. It’s our understanding sir, per our briefing note to you, that he is at this present time working on a case of grave urgency involving a potential weapon of mass destruction.”
“Weapons of… English, please, Nicholas.”
“Mr. President, there’s a stray nuclear warhead out there somewhere. But as you know, that’s nothing new; in the wake of the Soviet empire crumbling, all sorts of things went unaccounted for. This one, by contrast, originated in South Africa, built before the fall of Apartheid. But the truth of the matter, sir, is that we need to know why this one is being discussed in vague intelligence whispers everywhere, why it just hit the open market and, according to our intelligence, may be in play somewhere right now.”
The president got up and stood in front of the window, looking out at the drizzle that covered the Rose garden. Four more months of this lunacy, he told himself. Then I can take a break, do some writing. Watch the kids grow up. Maybe do some lecturing on public policy. He turned back to the room. “Well, gentlemen, I don’t envy him. Wherever your agent is, let’s all wish him luck.”
46./
PEEKSKILL, NEW YORK
Malone sat on the edge of the motel double bed and watched Brennan going through the small collection of weapons and useful items he’d borrowed from Ed. He had a grapple and rope, wire cutters, plastic explosive, a pistol, wrist ties and more.
The television on the bureau was turned to a national newscast, Washington figures reacting to the apparent suicide in Memphis of Addison March’s press agent, Christopher Enright. It was sad, Alex thought; she’d barely known him, even though she’d spent several long, heated discussions on the phone with him. The story about the donation might even have pushed him over the edge, she thought. It had definitely shaken him.
She pushed the idea away. “You look like you’re loading up for trouble. I have to ask you again: can’t we just go in, at this point? We know what the target is…”
“We think we know,” he said. “We have no evidence of anything. No bomb, no confirmation – and no guarantee after Europe that I won’t be shot on sight if I let them know where I am.”
“So we…”
“We do nothing. I’m going to do some recon around the facility while you lay low.”
“Oh come on…”
“If you have to go out, grab us a couple of days’ worth of supplies and
two new prepaid phones. If -- or when -- I confirm anything is up, we call in the cavalry.”
“Fair enough. If I go with you,” Alex said, “chances are I’ll just get shot at again.”
The asset had picked up the small convoy just outside the city, trailing it in a black Range Rover he’d rented for the occasion.
It wasn’t just a flight of fancy; his employer wanted him to test the situational awareness of his hired guns, see if they stopped to find out who was so interested. Sure enough, he’d been on them for maybe twenty minutes when the line of three trucks and a car pulled over and waited for him to pass. Once he’d done so, he gave them a wave to let them know he was the friendly they’d expected then dropped back in behind them, watching the scenery slip into the blackness of the night and the road pass under the car’s headlights.
It only took an hour to reach the small town. At night, it looked like every other small town he’d been to, a handful of houses and stores, a handful of small streets, nothing over three stories tall. And like the others, it seemed more or less to just be a place where people could hang their hats, a town without a purpose…
And then he noticed it, a glow through the tree line as if something large were being illuminated by the moon. They passed a mesh-fenced main gate, where twin sentry boxes and razor wire kept the right people in and out. Opposite it, a cemetery on a hillside cast an appropriately grim pall over the place.
It was huge, and even hidden by the trees and a line of local homes, the glow continued for close to a mile before the road slipped back into the dimness of the hour and the occasional street light.
The final stage of his mission made the asset nervous, because he didn’t understand it. Taking out the ACF members had been a simple act of humanity, given how much suffering they’d caused, and had fulfilled his personal objectives. But babysitting a group of engineers felt like a waste of his time.
Plus, there was the general lack of detail, aside from his final assignment. He’d been treated as a valued asset to that point, given his targets and allowed to operate with a free hand. But this was guard duty, about as thrilling as washing dishes on KP. There were some specific instructions about where to set up and who to keep his eye on, but for the most part it would be hours lying in wait, then one kill, easy as fish in a barrel.
It wasn’t the asset’s style.
They’d told him about Khalidi during his flight in; that he’d already been taken care of. The asset felt empty about it, as if something had been taken away from him. The chairman was the last link between the ACF and Sarah’s death. Avenging her had been his real mission; working with his handlers had just been a means to an end. But his sense of duty wouldn’t allow him to just walk.
In the end, he’d agreed to a few more days on the road, away from his family, away from happier times and places. The asset was tired of it all, shaken sometimes by the sense that, no matter how unfair Sarah’s lot had been, he would never be able to bring her real peace.
Maybe it was because he knew she would have disapproved; but then, that was part of what made her a wonderful sister. She held fast to her principles, including her belief in the sanctity of life.
And they killed her anyway, the asset thought. He gripped the wheel more tightly, staying focused on the road. A few days in a small town wouldn’t change that.
But the job wasn’t done yet.
The tree line ended, but the series of low-level industrial buildings behind barbed wire continued, the roadside lit bright without the trees to interfere. A few more hours, the asset told himself. A few more hours, and I can go home.
Brennan sat on the hill across the road from the Indian Point Energy Center, watching it through Ed’s thermographic goggles. There were two guards at the front gate, but also what appeared to be regular patrols along the razor wire fence that ran for more than a mile in each direction. Within a few dozen yards of entering, there was a parking area and the faint outline of a pair of buildings and, even at night, the area was heavy with foot traffic.
Indian Point was euphemistically named for a three-unit nuclear power plant. It was one of the oldest still operating in the world, only surviving because of a pair of extensions to its operating license, approved until local grid contributors introduced new sources to replace its two thousand megawatts of daily electricity production
The tree line kept most motorists from seeing it unless they were on the opposite bank of the Hudson River. But they weren’t missing much: a pair of long red brick buildings containing the generators, a pair of cooling towers that looked like grain silos cut down to half-size and made of concrete, a giant red-and-white banded smoke stack. Indian Point was a relic; one of its three reactors had been shut down for years but never decommissioned and the other two had long histories of safety violations. Locals supported it for its employment and reviled it for its dangers. But after a half century, it was still operating, feeding the growing need for power among the connected generation.
It had been studied as a potential terrorist attack site for years, Brennan knew. But the six-foot thick reactor containment walls and forty-foot deep spent fuel pools, it was believed, could withstand even an airliner crashing into them.
They’d been thinking too small, he knew. A nuclear blast in the plant’s proximity? That would make it the ultimate secondary target, taking even the smallest dirty bomb and turn it into a contamination nightmare, spreading decades’ worth of stored radioactive material through the environment. The initial heat and shockwave at ground zero might kill a few hundred thousand but the heat and force would easily breach the power plant’s containment areas; the magnified contamination and proximity to the Hudson River would pollute water along the eastern seaboard for generations, and the airborne toxic ash would spread the radioactive devastation to neighboring states.
He raised the goggles. Talk about overkill, Brennan thought wryly. For most in the state, it would be worse than if they’d been quickly and mercifully evaporated at ground zero. A bomb planted directly in New York might have wiped out a few million more, and much more quickly; but the half-century of stored contaminants at Indian Point could render much of the Eastern U.S. uninhabitable for decades.
There was an army base nearby, and West Point Military Academy was just up the road. Both would be next-to-useless once a device was set up somewhere within the community; the troops would be vaporized along with everyone else in the twin towns of Buchanan and Peekskill. He put the goggles back on and scanned the area, changing settings and magnification until he was familiar with the outline of the plant property.
The South African device was supposed to be small, less than five kilotons. To ensure its blast radius destroyed the storage pools and vaporized the reinforced brick structures, it would have to be set off less than a mile from the plant.
That limited their options. Brennan took out his phone and looked at the area on the map again. There was a public park adjacent to the property, just up the road. But it would have eyes all over it, he thought. There was a dead-end road just south of there, off of Bleakley Avenue. He pulled up an overhead photo on the satellite app. What was that, a school? No, a warehouse of some kind.
He turned his head and magnified the goggles, scanning the horizon, slowly panning back towards the property. The distances looked right.
Brennan took the goggles off and stored them in their case, which he then slung over his shoulder using a thin leather strap, before setting off on foot. His car was already parked past the potential target site, at a fast-food restaurant parking lot in the adjacent neighborhood. No sense ignoring the opportunity to take a look, he thought.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Carolyn was so nervous her knees felt weak. She’d worn a dark blue power suit for the day and was trying to muster up as much courage as possible; but she hadn’t heard from Joe in so long, and every time the phone rang she thought it might be terrible news.
When the director called her in for the second time i
n a week, her stomach did a back flip. She sat in the waiting room for what seemed like ages but amounted to ten minutes, before Jonah left his office and joined her, sitting quietly across from her, fingers pursed together, leaning forward. Another couple of minutes went by with the secretary’s tapping at her keyboard the only background noise.
What would she tell the kids? They’d discussed it, briefly, when they were a young couple and felt so impervious to the whims of the future. If he went missing, they’d joked, they could tell the kids he’d taken on the challenge of being the next great astronaut, and was somewhere up in space, getting the lay of the universe. They’d wait until the kids were old enough to tell them the truth: that they’d lost their father in the line of duty.
The secretary picked up her phone. “Yes sir,” she said. She hung up. “You can both go in now.”
The director sat rigidly behind his desk and waited until they’d taken the seats across from him. “Thank you, both, for coming in. I wanted to update you both on the situation with respect to Deputy Director Fenton-Wright and Agent Brennan. Carolyn, we need to track Joe down; he’s been completely exonerated by the evidence found in David’s apartment, and we need to know the status of his current mission. Can you find him?”
Carolyn was relieved it wasn’t bad news. “Sir, I’m not sure how you want me to help. I imagine Joe’s changed phones and identities a half-dozen times by now. The one thing I could suggest…”
“Yes?”
“Well, before he was… before the incident, David mentioned that he’d been working with Alex Malone, the News Now reporter who broke the Khalidi arms scandal story. I’m sure she has people she contacts; an editor, perhaps?”
“Go on.”
“We appeal to the magazine’s greater sense of national security. If the briefing notes are correct and he’s pursuing a weapon of mass destruction, they’ll get a message through to her, and consequently to him.”
