Chapter 52 -- VVZGVEMWRGREPOEYRTORFJCAV
General Mark Anthony grunted irritably as the phone buzzed. The only phone he
kept by his bed was the presidential phone. It was the phone he didn't want
to hear ring. If the president was calling him something was wrong.
Actually something had been wrong for some time, and he often wished he hadn't
accepted the appointment. But the two generals ahead of him had retired
when the current chairman had indicated he was about to go, and
Anthony waited too long. If he didn't want the job he would have to decline
the appointment, instead of just not being there. He had cursed himself
numerous time over the past seven months.
"Mr. President," he said, and waited. Normally the calls came from a member of
the inner circle, and he wondered who had the unpleasant duty of being with
the president tonight. The man was little better than an idiot, like the one
before. A puppet, his every word and action was fed to him by someone in the
inner circle who ran the country. At least he was not yet senile.
"General Anthony. Here's the president." It was Jane Whittaker, the chief of
staff. He despised her, but then most of the staff did as well. He wondered
how she got there - someone, or more than one someone in the inner circle
would have selected her. She wasn't especially bright, and not even up to par
with the usual office politics.
"Anthony," he said.
"Hello. Sorry to disturb you." There was a pause, probably waiting for his next
words. He pictured someone whispering them to him. Who? Come on you old fool,
he thought.
"Mark, I'm going to put Harry on, this is important."
Harry Springfield was the Secretary of Defense. It figured. Some kind of
threat, or actual incident.
"General, we have a..." again a pause. What was he waiting for? He looked at
his watch. 0336. "General, sorry, but there's no sense in trying to even
start this on the phone. Get here as quickly as you can."
"Situation room?"
"Yes, please hurry."
'Please'? he thought. There was panic, Anthony thought. "Randy!" he called.
Master Sergeant Randall Bowie was his batman. The aide quickly entered from
the adjoining room where he slept, an old Colt .45 auto in his hand. He
quickly scanned the room for a possible threat before lowering the gun.
"White House," Anthony said. "Urgent. Give me a couple of minutes." He
disappeared into the bathroom while Bowie began laying out a fresh uniform. A
quick run of his electric razor and a rinse with mouthwash, followed by
several rinses with water - he didn't want the smell to advertise that he had
delayed for even a few minutes - and he was getting into the uniform. Bowie
helped him get make the necessary adjustments and they headed downstairs.
This must be big, he thought. Everyone he saw on the way to the situation
room looked tense, some even frightened. Inside, most of the staff and a
number of administration officials were already at the long conference table
that faced a wall of television screens. A quick glance as he approached
showed a number of news broadcasts underway.
"Mark." It was Springfield, motioning to a seat beside the president. The
head of Homeland Security sat in the next chair. He sat down.
"Mark, this looks serious," Springfield said, not waiting for the president to
say anything. Not that he would have anything useful to say anyway, Anthony
thought. If a decision had to be made they would make it and then tell him
what to say. Or load it on the teleprompter if there was time.
Springfield took the seat next to him and pointed towards the television screens.
"Mark, tonight around seven forty five we got a report of a shooting involving
a member of Congress. That would be alarming any time, but less that five
minutes later we got another call. We thought at first it was the same one,
but it wasn't. From that point on it was a stream of calls from all over the
city, one after another, congressmen and senators being shot at various places,
most of them leaving restaurants or other places."
He looked at Anthony, a look of fear, terror even. It's on me, he thought.
And look at what I've got to work with.
"All right, Harry," he said, pulling a notepad across the table and poising his
pen. "Start with the first call, who, when, where."
"At around 7:45, as I said, Dean at Homeland Security got a call from Metro.
A shooting at Benito's over off Maryland. They had tentatively identified the
two victims as.." he paused as if not wanting to believe what he was about to
say "Speaker of the House Harrison and Henry Wortman, chairman of the Ways and
Means committee."
Anthony almost let out a low whistle but silenced it. His heart had taken a
jump and didn't want to settle down. He invoked the controls he had learned
in his years of martial arts practice, controlling breathing, clearing and
ordering his mind as if for combat.
"OK," he said, making notes. "What next?"
"Here's a log of the calls so far," Springfield said, handing him some papers.
There were three pages. He began to scan them.
Springfield interrupted. "On the second page you'll find the one involving
Senate Majority Leader Colbert. And a junior senator named Erskine McCormick.
A new arrival from Missouri. We don't know if he was a target or just had the
bad luck to be with Senator Colbert. As with Harrison - we suspect she was the
primary target."
Anthony concentrated on control as he worked through the pages, tallying the
incidents and number of bodies for each one. He was unsure but it looked like
seventeen incidents, most with one or two victims, some uncertain. Someone
had just perpetrated a massive attack on the United States government, without
the slightest hint of warning from anywhere. And it did not appear to be over,
he saw as a fourth page was handed to him.
"What are we doing for the President's security?" he asked.
"We have about two dozen additional agents inside the White House," Dean
Jordan of Homeland Security replied, "and another thirty something more on the grounds.
We're prepared to go to the PEOC if necessary, and Marine One is standing by
to come in and get him out if we have to, to Raven Rock, we're thinking."
Anthony gave the president a brief glance as he turned back to Springfield.
"Good," he said. "At this point this is as safe as any. Has there been any
activity in this area or the Capitol."
"No," Jordan replied. "It's been almost unnaturally quite all summer in the area."
"Too quiet it seems," Anthony said. "Something like this will have been
cooking for a long time. All right, let's get a coherent assessment. Dean,
you and Harry, let's get a table where we can work, let's get some order to this."
He turned to look for Whittaker, then turned to the president.
"Mr. President, you might want to get some sleep. Whatever happens, by 0700
or so, at the latest, we're going to be covered up with news people. You'll
have to make an appearance fairly early - this is big, very big."
Whittaker moved toward the president, who stood and walked out with her. He
had never been anything but a mouthpiece - the least they could do was make
him look like he was alive and cognizant. Anthony didn't like giving orders
to the civilian staff, but he was the one they were all looking at for
salvation. The only man with any military experience was Jordan.
"Dean," he said, "can you get someone over here to keep us updated? Number of
incidents, number of casualties if known. Let's keep it as up to the minute
as we can."
Seated between the Defense and Homeland Security chiefs, Anthony began to
write on a notepad. He wrote '1945' and turned to the staffer sent over to
monitor updates. "What's the time on the latest incident?" he asked.
The young man, who looked as if he was barely out of college, shuffled several
pages, scanning them for a minute or so.
"Sir, the latest time we have at this point is about 10:15." He wrote '2215'
below the first entry. Right at three hours, and those were the times the
reports had arrived.
"What's the total number of incidents?" he asked.
"It looks like twenty-three, sir. That's based on the locations, twenty-three
different locations - there are multiple reports for most of them."
Anthony wrote '0336' under the other two numbers. The incidents appeared to have
occurred in three hours and ended five hours before they called him. He wrote
the number '23' to the side of the times.
"What's the casualty count," he asked. "Confirmed dead."
"I've got forty-eight, sir."
"And total casualties?"
"Forty-eight, sir."
He wished the kid would drop some of the superfluous 'sirs'. Two or three at the
beginning was sufficient, after that efficiency was more useful. He wrote the
number '48' with the others, beginning to feel uneasy. In about three hours
someone, a number of someones obviously, had killed forty-eight people.
Probably less than three hours, as it would taken some time to respond to all
he calls, call in reports. And every one a kill - it was done by
professionals.
And how many damned professionals would that take? Two or three per incident
most likely meant multiple shooters. And probably getaway cars, in this kind
of environment. That would mean drivers. Where did the money come from, for
an operation like that, assuming the number of suitably proficient shooters
were available. He didn't like where this was heading.
"Do we have IDs on all the casualties?" he asked.
"Not yet, sir. We've got about six, seven names missing. Shall I see if there's
anything new?"
"Please do," Anthony said "And where possible, their titles, job description,
whatever they have on them."
The kid scurried away. It was already ugly and he was fairly certain it was
about to get worse. The majority leaders of both houses of Congress had just
been done in, along with two additional legislators who may have been
collateral damage, or just bonus points. He suspected the later, and expected
most of the remaining identities to be those of their colleagues.
The cabinet secretaries beside him sat silently, waiting for his reaction. He
knew they had absolutely no ideas - while the military and intelligence
services routinely played every scenario they could conceive, this was not one.
The scenario of a presidential assassination was of course examined regularly,
as well as mass casualty events. But mass a casualty was usually played out
as something involving bombs, chemical agents, or perhaps mass shootings in
one or perhaps multiple locations. And those could be expected to leave some
traces, even in an armed attack it was likely some attackers would be
apprehended or killed. There were no traces here, yet.
The young man returned with some more papers, one of them a relatively
coherent list from a computer printer. He scanned it briefly.
"Make copies for the secretaries," he said.
As he waited for the copies, the gnawing unease in him continued to grow. He
wasn't familiar with a lot of the names, but he guessed they were mostly, or
all, of the party controlling the government. One of the reasons he regretted
he had not rejected the appointment was his contempt for the entirety of the
government. The complete control of the government, now beyond any
possibility of challenge, had accelerated the decay. He had wondered if in
his lifetime a purge of the armed forces, including former leaders, would be
undertaken. The past several administrations had accomplished it largely
through policies that led most of the decent leaders to retire, if they weren't
fired outright. He was one of the last, if not the last. And now the
government he had come to despise was looking to him for salvation.
The kid returned and handed over the copies, and he waited while the
secretaries read them. Eventually they looked over at him, expressions grim.
He wondered if he would even be able to get any productive reaction from them.
By now their only thoughts were for their own personal survival, political and
literal. He wasn't sure they realized yet how serious it was.
"Who else do we need?" he asked them. "Secretary of State, Attorney General?
We don't need the entire cabinet."
"Attorney General, certainly," Jordan replied. "And the DNI. And we should the
the chief of staff back in here so she knows what's going on. Someone will
have to prepare the president."
"All right, then. Let's get them and get started." He looked
at the kid. "And have an updated list for us."
After the others had arrived, Anthony sat facing the others in a circle. He
gave the newcomers an opportunity to review the information. When all of them
had stopped reading and looked at him, he began.
"This is probably going to be the most serious event ever to occur, including
9-11," he said. "Not as much death and destruction, yet, but this looks bad,
extremely bad. I hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't look good."
All of the faces were expressionless, but betraying signs of fear, near terror.
And well they should, he thought. He already had suspicions that worried
even him.
"As you can see," he said, "there are descriptions of twenty-three incidents,
with a total of forty-eight dead. Notice I did not say how many wounded. We
have, at this time, no reports of anyone shot and only wounded. Think about that
for a second. Forty-eight people killed in twenty-three incidents. While we
do not yet have descriptions of the perpetrators, I would guess that each one
required at least two shooters and at a minimum one getaway driver. In an
operation as precise as this, it was probably more. Possibly several hundred
were involved, not one has been caught.
"That suggests a considerable number of people, and almost certainly a
great deal of money was expended on this operation. The complete surprise,
precision, and as far as we can determine at this time, a clean getaway. Make
that getaways. A lot of them. In the past, perpetrators have usually been
caught rather easily for a variety of reasons - because they were amateurs,
were suicidal and didn't care if they were killed or caught, because they
talked about it before doing it. I suspect it will not be so easy this time."
He paused, still the circle of blank expressions remained. He was beginning
to wonder if he was ever going to get a response, even a foolish one, when the
Attorney General finally spoke. Attorney General Frank Simmons was not
someone he knew much about, his interest was in defense. He knew from the
usual gossip that he had been instrumental in prosecuting some enemies of a
powerful senator in whose state he resided, which seemed about right. They
were all here because of their connections, favors owed, or any of the other
usual reasons.
"First of all, General," he said, "we've all had time to go over the names, and
every one is a member of Congress. So at least the motive is no mystery."
"Is it?" Anthony asked. "Killing forty-eight members of Congress, was
obviously the objective, but why?"
"It can only be, as someone said, politics by other means."
"Clausewitz's definition of war," Anthony said. "What sort of war? Someone
kills a large number of members of Congress - not enough to change the balance
of power, by the way, even if all were replaced by members of the opposing
party - so what does that suggest?"
"If we presume the discontented groups that remain realize that," said Simmons,
"and I would think they do, it could be a final act of defiance, and revenge."
"Possibly," Anthony said, "but consider this. In the past such attacks, almost
always based on fringe politics, sometimes religion, whatever they may be, are
again always poorly planned and executed, and the usual reasons for getting
caught apply. This level of professionalism, the tight operation, the amount
of preparation that must have been necessary, argues against that."
"Anti-government types, especially white supremacists, we still have those on
the radar," said Simmons.
I'm sure you do, Anthony thought. Anti-government could include half the
population, and he knew that white racist groups were so few and small they
couldn't finance a decent beer bash. The FBI occasionally found a few rustic types
with bad attitudes and encouraged them to act out one of their fantasies,
invariably having to infiltrate an agent provocateur or two to get them to
actually go through with it. He sometimes cringed inwardly at the things people like
Simmons said, in part because of the stupidity and partly because he might actually
believe it. He took a diplomatic approach. He had an idea, one he didn't like, but
feared it might be correct, and it was saving these people wasn't going to be easy.
"I doubt one of them could pull off anything like this," he said. "Those are
small, not very organized, certainly not well funded. I'm not certain that we
have yet conceptualized what sort of operation this might be."
"You don't think someone has pulled some of them together?" Simmons asked.
"Perhaps several groups, possibly allied with some of the fundamentalist cults.
Those people are always thinking the end of the world is coming, and they have
nothing to lose."
I'd like nothing better than to throttle you right now, Anthony thought. But
for now at least, I do still have something to lose. The chief of staff was
blankly staring randomly at the others for a few seconds at a time, the
movement of her eyes and occasionally her head the only indication she was
conscious.
The Director of National Intelligence came to his rescue. Alice Lawson was
not someone he had ever crossed paths with before taking the job. Now it was
a frequent, and unpleasant duty. She had been a professor of international
studies at one of the ivy league schools and he never could remember which one.
He didn't especially care as long as the subject never came up in conversation.
He always ended up dealing with one of her underlings anyway. Now she was on
the hot seat, as were the others, and if the situation was not so serious he
would have enjoyed their discomfort.
"This would seem to be a strictly domestic matter," she said, "but the
possibility of foreign actors cannot be overlooked. We should have brought
Bob in on this."
Bob was Robert Barwick, Secretary of State since the beginning of the president's
first term. He was a crony of several of the senior members of Congress, some
of whom were now dead, Anthony realized. This was going to be interesting.
"Should we call him in now?" Anthony asked. "Does anyone know if he's here?"
"I don't believe he is," Simmons replied. "We should alert him, at least."
The chief of staff used her phone to call him. They waited until the
conversation was done before continuing.
"He's on the way," she said. It was getting near the time most of them get up
anyway.
"Do we treat this as a domestic matter for now?" Anthony asked. "Pending the
State Department investigation getting underway." He wanted this to be a full
scale operation under the direction of whomever the president, or his handlers,
selected as soon as possible. It should start out under the Justice
Department anyway, and if it later involved international players the State
Department and intelligence agencies could be brought in. He wanted no part
of shepherding this affair.
"I believe so," Simmons said. "It involves crimes against the federal
government. "Jane, I believe it's in the president's hands. It's already
past five. And the news people have been all over it all night. When the
country wakes up it will be pandemonium. We've got a busy day ahead."
If only you knew, Anthony thought. You've got a lot of busy days ahead. Interesting
days for all of us.