One Rough Man

given was unique to his last unit, and was guaranteed to get attention. It was a verification, sometimes a distress code that allowed operators working in deep cover to send a message through “ordinary” CIA channels during extreme situations, when established communications had failed. It had never been used. It was designed to get attention, and within a second or two of Eric’s finger depressing the button on his computer’s mouse, it had done its job.

* * *

Inside Taskforce headquarters, the duty officer sat staring at a computer screen, bored out of his mind. The man was dressed in casual business attire, but like everyone else in the office, except the little old ladies downstairs, he looked like an athlete. He always wondered if maybe they shouldn’t change their cover to something with professional sports. Maybe be Jerry Maguire’s D.C. office or something. Maybe hire Kelly Preston to roam around here, solidifying the cover. Before his mind could wander to something less savory, the computer at his desk signaled an incoming message. He stood up and printed it out, giving a low whistle when he saw the crypt.

He took the cable directly to Kurt Hale’s office. He knew Kurt was in the process of packing up to go on a date night with his wife, something they hadn’t done in over six months. He saw Kurt’s expression change when he walked in, Kurt recognizing that his night might be shot.

“What’s up, Mike?”

“We got a Prometheus message five minutes ago.”

Kurt stopped what he was doing, running through his mind the two active operations currently ongoing. Only Knuckles was anywhere near an endgame. The other operation was still in the formative stages, laying the groundwork for execution two or three months from now. A Prometheus alert meant something had gone very badly for someone.

“Which Team?”

“Well, that’s what’s strange. I think it’s from Pike. It’s not from anyone active here.”

“Pike? Pike Logan?” Before Mike could respond, Kurt realized he was asking questions that Mike couldn’t possibly answer. He reversed himself and said, “Okay. Let me see the cable. And holler down the hall at George.”

“You got it. Here’s the message.”

Kurt read the cable, a short, simple paragraph. Skipping through the usual disclaimers about walk-ins, no established reporting record, and the ominous “Contact may have been attempting to influence as well as inform” trailer, he read:

Contact stated he had information regarding a potential WMD terrorist attack. Contact had no concrete information about the attack, but stated that he had intercepted Internet traffic implying an Al Qaeda involvement in procurement of WMD for the application against United States, Israeli, or Iranian interests. Contact stated that he believed the WMD was not radiological. Contact stated that two unknown subjects of Arabian descent were in the process of procuring the WMD. Contact became evasive when questioned on his knowledge of the aforementioned WMD, refusing to state how he knew this information. Contact firmly believes that the procurement is time sensitive, and that the AQ members are actively pursuing this aim.

It was impossible that anyone on earth would know the Prometheus alert crypt unless Pike had told them, and in Kurt’s mind, it was equally impossible that Pike would have told anyone such a secret. On the other hand, the Pike he knew might no longer exist. Maybe he’s slipped down completely, and is selling plasma on the street for his next bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, babbling secrets to anyone who will listen. Kurt rejected that, as it didn’t explain how a stranger was able to contact the CIA in an overseas embassy, then send the message. Everything pointed to its being Pike, however bizarre it appeared. Even so, they would need to confirm the identity before proceeding. Kurt turned at the knock on the door, seeing his friend and deputy commander.

“How long’s it been since you made a trip to Central America?”

George looked puzzled by the question. “Well, not since we were supporting the Contras back in the good ol’ days. Are they now the next terrorist threat? We going down to take them out?”

Kurt chuckled, filling him in on what he knew, then saying, “Call the station down there and let them know we’re coming. Tell them to contact whoever’s calling himself Pike. If it’s him, we’ll figure out what’s going on. If it’s not, we’ll figure out where the breach occurred. Either way, this is too big of a problem to ignore. We should be able to get down and back in one day, two at the most.”

“Easy enough. I assume we’re leaving tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a date tonight that I can’t miss.”

54

A few miles away, Harold Standish sat at his desk in the Old Executive Office Building, silently reading the Prometheus cable. He saw an opportunity. A way to get America back on war footing, and get control of the Taskforce at the same time. A way to strengthen the defense of the United States. If the whiners on the Oversight Council are too timid to preempt an attack, maybe they need to see one up close.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. America had lost its focus on terrorism precisely because it hadn’t been attacked in close to a decade. The stupid electorate had the memory of a bovine, conveniently forgetting the threat, instead lambasting the very government that provided their protection. A WMD going off would wake them the fuck up, that’s for sure. There would be a feeding frenzy just like 9/11. All the politicians would be screaming for action. The Oversight Council would have to bend with the pressure. The Taskforce would be turned loose. With any luck, the council will be too busy doing their day jobs to look closely at Taskforce activities. I’ll be the man left at the wheel. It’s not like my day job takes up a lot of time.

Standish paused, realizing he was thinking about the slaughter of untold innocent civilians, not simply numbers in a news report. He pondered the cost and benefits. He decided the deaths were necessary. Great leaders throughout history have had to make hard choices such as this. He knew that Truman himself had made the decision to drop the atomic bomb based on this very same principle. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians killed to save millions of Americans. This is no different. There’s a greater good here. He, of course, would need to go on vacation for about a month to ensure he was out of the blast radius, should Washington be in the crosshairs. This town could stand to lose a little deadweight anyway.

He called his in-staff intelligence officer and asked him to run down any “chatter” on terrorist threats within the last three days involving the words Israel, WMD, Iran, and poison weapons. Within thirty minutes, the man arrived with fourteen NSA reports that had some tangential relationship to the search criteria. Most were clearly not what Standish was looking for, only detailing vague information of little value. Using the Prometheus cable, he necked down the reports until he found a NSA cut describing a WMD attack against Israel. He didn’t have the background in terrorism to understand the reference to the far enemy, and was unsure why the intercept mentioned the historical state of Persia instead of the modern nomenclature of Iran, but since this was the only bit of intelligence that talked of pushing the Zionists into the sea via a single weapon — something that anyone could understand — he honed in on it, noting the reference to something called Operation Badr. He was pleased to see the intel was raw, meaning nobody had analyzed it yet, and thus nobody knew it existed.

“Ken, run a search on Operation Badr. Bring me what you find immediately.”

Five minutes later Ken returned with a single message. “This is the only thing that’s come in with those search terms.”

Standish read the report, which simply said that Operation Badr was progressing and that a device had been tested successfully. He connected the dots. “Okay, do an open-source search on anything strange happening in Belize. Focus on a group of unexplained deaths. See if anyone in the press has reported anything like that.”

After another wait, Ken returned, saying, “There was nothing in Belize. The only thing I could find was a bus crash on the border, but it was on the Guatemalan side.”

“What’s so fucking strange about that? I told you unexplained deaths.”