Chapter 64 -- XFQYOFXMYFOGNOJ
General Anthony watched the screens for alerts that might signal a coming
summons to the White House. Earlier in the week he had met with Major General
Myles Talbot. He confided his suspicions to Talbot and laid out he likely
scenarios they could face. Talbot was equally pessimistic about the future,
and was considering retirement if things got much worse.
They were in a rented car in the countryside outside DC - Anthony trusted
no one, and was having to tread carefully. If he had a sufficient cadre of
general officers the upper reaches of the army, with the ear of the chief of
staff, he might be able to make something happen.
"General Burbank is a reasonable man," Talbot said when Anthony asked for his
assessment. "What he will do if put in that position, of imposing martial law,
or attempting to, I don't know. He could be planning to retire even now, like
some of the others. I'm almost certain that he would, if given that order."
"That what's I fear," Anthony said. "And in the end the only ones left will be
the ones who will do their bidding, and there are too many of those already.
The only question is when to approach him on the matter. He's the one who
will have to give the orders - I'm just the chairman, with no direct control.
"I suspect it will be a while before it happens, but if this continues to grow
the inner circle will panic. And since martial law over a country this size,
even if they could double, or triple, the size of the army overnight is just
not possible. It would only take us further down the path to complete chaos,
maybe even a breakup of the country."
"I believe you're right, Sir," Talbot said. "Even though you're on the inside
and know a lot more than I do, I can see it."
"You may have to make a hard decision soon, if something can't be done. Do
you know Arthur Harris?"
"Not well, but my assessment is that he's a lot like me. Which means he has
no future in this army."
"You think he'd be in our corner?"
"No doubt, sir."
"That's what I was hoping. I've got probably five or six more candidates, you
can probably guess who some of them are. I'll try to get to each of them, see where
they stand, in the next few days. We'll have to work out a way to communicate
outside official channels. I'd like to have a backup plan in place well
before we need it."
"You can count on me, sir. I believe if you have the level below General
Talley, he'll listen to any reasonable proposal."
"Thanks, Myles," Anthony said. "Let's get you back to the airport."
He went by his office before going home, sat down at his desk looking at the
three large screens in front of him. He left them on all them time these days.
It was looking like a slow news day, and he hoped it would be. He looked at
the list of names on his computer screen.
He would call Arthur Harris on Monday morning and set up a meeting. He hoped
it would be as simple as getting together a cadre of officers who reported to
the chief of staff to make the move when it was necessary. There was still
time to get it done before the inner circle went mad with fear and did the
unthinkable.
Unthinkable to him, at least, or any sane person. He had the feeling that the
people over him were not sane.
He should take advantage of the slow day and get home, and spend some quiet
time with his wife. Until a year or two ago he had entertained the idea of
retiring and spending his days with his family, visiting old friends, and a
lot of doing nothing. That no longer seemed likely.
One of the screens suddenly went completely red for a couple of seconds,
followed by the inevitable 'BREAKING NEWS' banner. He increased the volume
and watched. The scene could have been any street in any city.
"...this is the scene on Montgomery Avenue where a little over an hour ago a
vehicle was demolished by an explosion, the nature of which is not yet known.
As you can see, the vehicle is not only damaged as by an explosion but
continued burning for some time, and some parts of were still burning and took
some time to extinguish when the fire department arrived."
It looked like many other car bombings he had seen photographs or videos of,
crumpled metal, paint burned away, glass blown out. He suspected
he would not be going home for a while. Sure enough, his phone rang.
"General, Dean here. Are you watching television?"
Great, he thought. Homeland Security.
"I am. What's the situation?"
"If you're looking at a burning car, it's what's left of Kenneth Mason. Know
who that is?"
"No, but I suspect you're about to tell me."
"He's.. he was the ATF Director. He was in that car."
"I see."
And indeed he did. The ATF, or the BATF as it had been called for most of his
life - he didn't know when or why it was changed, and didn't really care.
Probably the most disreputable of federal agencies, it seemed to be him little
more than a political tool. At least for those administrations determined to
disarm the population. No need to wonder who or why.
"You'd better get over here."
"On my way."
He went straight over to the White House, and was ushered to a conference room
that had been set up as a regular meeting place for whichever of the team
happened to be working on the 'problem', as it was now called.
Jordan was there, with Simmons and the FBI Director, Robert Boling.
"I'll get started," said Simmons. "We're still trying to run down the others."
Anthony was fairly certain few if any of them had been in their offices,
including Jordan and Simmons. He was also fairly certain he didn't need to be
at a lot of these meetings. Something about him seemed to give them a feeling
of security, and no matter the occasion he usually ended up having to explain
something or make a suggestion to move the conversation along.
"ATF Director Mason was driving on Montgomery, typical Saturday afternoon
traffic, when he stopped for a minor traffic jam ahead of him. We have very
little to work with at this time, but we do have something. The driver of a car
behind him, said that he saw someone walking between the rows of cars, carrying
a pizza, or what looked like a pizza box. The guy disappeared further up the street,
and a few seconds later Mason's car blew up. ATF thinks something like a
sheet of HE with a layer of thermite on top may have been used.
"So someone blocked the traffic, had a guy with a bomb go up and slide it
under the car," Boling said.
"It seems so," said Jordan. "That was over an hour ago. We haven't heard of
any other incidents so far. I called a meeting in case this starts to look
like Black Friday. Let's pray it isn't."
Strange choice of words, Anthony thought. I wonder if he, or any else in this
outfit actually prays. And if so to whom and what for. It was more likely
each was his, or her, own personal deity. Never especially religious himself,
he had married a girl he had gone to church with as a youth, and while she was
what he supposed was devoted to her faith, he had long ago let his career
overcome all else. He thought now about the idea, what it actually meant to a
person who practiced it. And if these people worshipped themselves, who or
what was his god?
"And if it is," he said, "what are we prepared to do? And is it the same people?
Is there any progress on the investigation?"
"We have a lot of leads, suspects, tips, and theories," Jordan replied. "And we're
wading through them as fast as we can. At this point we're following those
leads, investigating those suspects, and doing everything else possible to
identify the perpetrators."
"I'm not trying to be combative, Dean," Anthony said. "But if, and I hope it
doesn't, if this turns into a replay of Black Friday, we've got real trouble. If
these events, Kansas, Arizona, are related, and we don't even have anything.
We're falling behind fast."
"Would it help to know who they are and what they want?" Anthony asked.
"Are you suggesting we negotiate with terrorists?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of trying to find out who they are," said
Anthony. I have to be careful here, he thought. The slightest suspicion that
I'm not on board and I'm gone, probably replaced by a yes man. He wished he
had had time to check out General Talley, his likely replacement if he was booted.
"That would help," Dean admitted. Somewhat grudgingly, he thought. "So how
would we go about that?
"Good question," Anthony replied. "Until we have in our hands someone
connected with this People's Liberation Army, we don't know how to even
communicate with them. And I would guess that at this point, our only chance
to find them is to see where the trail leads, if we do have some method of
contacting them."
"The only clue we have is the letter, the statement that they could call the
White House if we agreed to talk. Since the phone number was only in the
letter to the White House - it was redacted in the other copies - they
apparently took our response as not agreeing to negotiate. Which was what we
intended."
"Well," Anthony said, "that was the only method they gave us. The question is,
first, do we want to establish communications with them?"
Jane Whittaker entered with Frank Simmons, and by the time they were seated
Alice Lawson had arrived. Jordan updated them on the situation.
"As I told Mark," he said, "we cannot be seen as negotiating with terrorists.
That has been our policy and must not change now. Especially now."
"What? Negotiating or being seen as negotiating?" Lawson asked. "We've done
plenty of negotiating in the past, and denied it, even when everyone knew we
did it."
Anthony was glad the green light was coming from one of them. He had no
doubts as to the outcome of this meeting.
"I mean having it seen that way," Jordan said. "We're running out of options."
"That's easy enough," Lawson said. "Now, just how out of options are we? We've
got one person in custody who is apparently connected, and who knows when we'll
get anything out of him. And that's all? Absolutely nothing?"
"Nothing that tells us who is doing it," Boling replied.
"Nothing," said Jordan.
"We'll clear it with Harry and Robert when they arrive," said Jordan. "But we
had better get started. What happened today may be an isolated incident, but
I wouldn't count on it."
"Robert," Jordan said, "the FBI is the most involved on the ground. You've
got a handle on who's who in terms of the actors. Any ideas?"
Boling was silent for as long as he dared be. He had to say something,
anything to avoid appearing helpless. Which was exactly how he felt. He
performed a hand steeple, buying a few extra seconds.
"We will have to find a way to have them contact us, and be able to verify
that it is them when they do. We have considerable evidence that there are
already unrelated actions occurring. Freelancers you might say, taking
advantage of the confusion. We can't just put the word out on the underground
networks that we want to talk to the perpetrators of Black Friday. Or, we might..."
He paused as if thinking.
"Perhaps we can use their network," he said. "Put the word out. We're the
only ones, I hope, that know the phone number and the code word in our copy of
that letter." He looked around the table.
"I'll take that as affirmative," he continued when no one responded. "So, it's
a unique word, it won't show up anywhere by chance. We put it out there on
the subversive networks, have some of our agents plant it in the chats, as if
asking what it means. They're certain to see it, and they may take it as an
invitation to call. We'll see if we can trace the call, or what other
information we can get from it."
"Anyone got a better idea?" Lawson asked.
"Let's brief Harry and Robert, then, and form a plan. We'll need to be
prepared."
"A couple of things to consider," Anthony said, "is that they will almost
certainly bounce calls around through numerous relays, some of them dead ends
due to using VPNs. We need to have some sophisticated analysis to get an idea
of where they are, and we may end up with nothing. So forensic analysis will
be important. It may be our only chance to get something useful."
"We'll need an enormous amount of data capture going on everywhere we have the
ability to catch the call," said Boling. "Say the call is ten minutes - ten
minutes of data capture of literally thousands of simultaneous calls, just to
find that call will take a while. And as Mark said, if it gets bounced around
through maybe dozens of relays, it will take a while to trace if. If it's
even possible."
"All right, then," said Jordan, "if Harry and Robert are on board, then let's
get started. Robert, you're best positioned to get this moving, and to handle
the setup on the call, if and when there is one. Anything else?"