10
Jon Smith leaned over the wheel of his 1968 Triumph, bringing his face close enough to the windshield that a bank of well-hidden cameras could ID him. A moment later a gate designed to look much less formidable than it really was swung inward, allowing him to idle onto the lush grounds of what the sign said was the Anacostia Seagoing Yacht Club.
He weaved through the utilitarian buildings, finally turning to parallel a lengthy dock full of what appeared to be well-maintained boats. In truth, they were unused boats — brought in and out at intervals designed to make things look credible to the other marinas in the area.
It was hard for him to get used to the fact that Covert-One had grown to the point that it rated an honest- to-God headquarters. When the president had first authorized it, they’d been nothing but a loose collection of independent operators with complementary areas of expertise and a convenient lack of personal entanglements. Funding had been — and still was — completely black, consisting of tax dollars quietly diverted from much more mundane government projects and agencies.
Covert-One was partially a victim of its own success and partially a victim of the failures of the traditional intel agencies. The creation of Homeland Security, which was supposed to streamline communication between critical branches of government, had instead created a battleship of a bureaucracy paralyzed with turf wars, politics, and ass covering.
C1’s unique ability to move quickly and decisively, unfettered by the normal approval process and administrative battles, made it a formidable, if entirely illegal, weapon in the president’s arsenal.
“Jon,” Fred Klein said, standing and extending a hand over his simple desk. “I’m sorry to take you away from those kids.”
“No problem. They’re all out of the woods, and a friend of mine at the CDC agreed to keep an eye on things for me. So what’s up?”
Klein looked strangely uncertain as he sat, pulling a pipe from his drawer and lighting it. An overhead fan started automatically, drawing the smoke upward.
“I’m honestly not sure we should be getting involved in this at all, Jon. As you know, I spend a lot of time finding ways
Smith nodded. The secrecy surrounding the organization was both ridiculously oppressive and entirely necessary. Every time Klein unleashed his people, he risked exposure — something that would be a disaster for both the administration and the country as a whole.
“I take it the president wouldn’t agree to keep us out of it?”
“He has his teeth into this thing and we’ve been friends long enough for me to know when I’m not going to be able to change his mind. My hope is that this will turn into a very quick and very quiet wild-goose chase.” He paused for a moment. “Have you ever heard the name Caleb Bahame?”
“Guerrilla leader with delusions of godhood,” Smith responded. “He’s got a force of mostly child soldiers that he’s using to create a lot of chaos in northern Uganda.”
“I’m impressed. What you don’t know is that we recently sent a special ops team after him.”
“Good,” Smith said. “That guy’s a nasty piece of work. Did they get him?”
Klein took a deep drag on his pipe and let the smoke roll slowly from his mouth. “The team was wiped out over the course of a few minutes. Their leader, a SEAL named Rivera, managed to escape and spent two days crawling through jungle to get to an extraction point.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“Neither has anyone else. The president is exposed politically on this. People are getting tired of watching our boys die in fighting that never seems to get us anywhere. And as hopeless as the Middle East is, sub-Saharan Africa is seen as being ten times worse.”
“If it’s so unpopular, what were we doing there?”
“Bahame’s become more effective lately. His forces are overrunning villages almost daily — completely wiping them out. There’s a panic starting that could destabilize not only Uganda but Kenya and the DRC. We’re talking about a humanitarian nightmare that’s hard to imagine, and the president felt we had a moral obligation to step in.”
“I can’t say I disagree with him,” Smith said. “But how does Covert-One fit in? This seems more like a UN or AU issue.”
Klein tapped a few keys on his laptop and then turned it so Smith could see the five separate videos starting to play.
He watched intently until they all went dark and then slid his chair back, feeling the need for a little distance between himself and the screen. He’d spent half his life getting into situations that he didn’t have much chance of getting out of, but in all those years, he’d never seen anything like what those soldiers had come up against.
“Jesus,” he muttered finally.
“Thoughts?”
“I’m still processing.”
Klein nodded knowingly. “I’ve probably watched it twenty times and I can tell you it doesn’t get any easier. My initial thought was mass hypnosis. By all reports, Bahame makes Charles Manson look like an amateur. I figured some kind of ritual sacrifice to get everyone riled up; then he paints them with blood and turns them loose. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Why not?”
“I put our research people on it and they came across some chatter in Iran about Bahame. Something about a new weapon.”
“Is it solid?” Smith asked.
“No. High-level, but brief and ambiguous. We dug deeper and found another comment from a less reliable Iranian source — it mentioned Bahame and the possibility of some kind of compensation or negotiation.”
“Does the CIA or NSA have anything?”
“No indication that they’re aware of the connection. Or, if they are, it’s not something they’re pursuing.”
Smith looked past Klein at an antique globe positioned to display the continent of Africa. The strange reality of the intelligence business wasn’t that there was too little data; it was that there was too much. Limited manpower forced you to prioritize, and it was easy to see how a few quick mentions of an African guerrilla leader could get shoved to the bottom of the pile. Something crazy was always happening in Africa.
“Have any experts looked at that video?” Smith asked.
“Just you.”
“I’m a microbiologist, Fred, not a psychologist. What I don’t know about mass hysteria is a lot.”
“But based on what little you
Smith shrugged. “Occam’s razor — the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It doesn’t take a very hard look at history to realize just what human beings are capable of. It’s why you and I have jobs.”
“Okay, but I want you to do a little digging,” Klein said. “Hopefully, you’ll just confirm the psychological hypothesis and that will be the end of it.”
“Can I get a copy of the video?”
“I’ll have Maggie get you one before you leave for the airport.”
“Airport?”
“The surviving SEAL is in the hospital at Camp Lejeune. I assumed you’d want to talk to him.”
“My CO’s expecting me back at Fort Detrick, Fred. People are aware that I left South Dakota, and you know how the army is about people showing up for work.”
Klein’s expression turned a little bored, and he leaned far enough right to see through the open door to his office. “Maggie!”
Maggie Templeton, his longtime assistant and the only other person who understood the entire scope of Covert-One, appeared a moment later carrying a large manila envelope.
