determined to give the guy the legroom with which to do it. Only one of them was faced with a personal loss, but both were processing the shock of another homeland assault.
“I appreciate your concern, sir,” Harper said, with deeper gratitude than the president might have realized. “It’s funny. I was talking to her when it happened, telling her I felt bad about missing her big dinner. She was telling me I shouldn’t.” He looked down. “What were we here to talk about, Mr. President? God, it seems so long ago.”
“It was the CIA,” the president said. “The Coyote. It was important.”
Harper nodded, his mouth tense, despising his show of weakness.
“Jon, listen to me,” Brenneman said, sensing Harper’s anger and jumping into the pause. “You have every reason to be excused from the meeting-”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“No, but it may be advisable,” Brenneman said. “There are plenty of good heads here to keep mine straight. I promise you’ll be fully briefed.”
“Sir, I prefer to stay involved. It’s really the best thing I can do in every respect. When the rescue workers have news…” His voice trailed off.
“Of course,” the president replied.
What Harper told Brenneman was the truth. As he’d risen through the Company’s organizational hierarchy, his functions had become increasingly administrative. But intel gathering was his area of special expertise, and it was hardwired so that he could process critical events quickly, accurately, and intuitively through the rapid assembly and cataloguing of information. Personal or professional crises, they were alike in how he dealt with them. In this case the two were sadly inseparable.
“Who’s with us via video linkup?” he asked, wanting to shift the focus of their discussion from himself. The only way he could function was to actually start doing it. To turn his mind toward the tasks that lay right in front of him. “Sandy Mathis insisted he’d be glued to his desk at Quantico this weekend, so I’m assuming he was easy enough to find?”
Brenneman’s twisted expression indicated that Harper’s taut sarcasm had registered loud and clear.
“Sandy was coming online as we stepped in here. But I’ve left overall coordination of our remote participants up to SIOC,” he said.
That was a good call. The president was referring to the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center at the bureau’s Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters. There the data pouring in from the nation’s one hundred independent Joint Terrorism Task Forces was merged into a single shared pool-a common watering hole that could be tapped by the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies. A spin-off, SIOC–I-from which particularly sensitive information was withheld-was for the country’s international allies to draw on. SIOC–I also had access to similarly redacted documents from thirty-two other nations.
Brenneman had kept his eyes on Harper’s face, reading the determination there.
“Okay,” he said finally. “We’d better rejoin everyone before they feel neglected.”
It was a joke, but just barely. People whose job it was to be paranoid found it difficult to keep that out of their own intra- and interdepartmental dealings.
The president went to the door and opened it, politely gesturing for Harper to precede him into the next room.
Its six large flat-panel wall displays situated around a rectangular conference table, the ECR had been designed to conform with other presidential chambers at sites inside and beyond the capital, including Camp David, Air Force One, and the top secret bunker installations in Mount Weather and elsewhere. The goal being to enhance the commander in chief ’s familiarity with and instant comfort in his surroundings at times of critical deliberation and national emergency.
The president’s closest advisors on matters of security and intelligence sat in six big black leather chairs around the table. Among them were two members of his cabinet, Secretary of Homeland Security Max Carlson and the newly ratified secretary of state, Jeff Dryfoos, the latter taking the place of the vice president, who was in Asia. Dryfoos was a newbie, having assumed the post after Brynn Fitzgerald’s recent resignation and formal announcement of her presidential bid. Her run had surprised no one less than Brenneman, who’d encouraged her to enter the heated race as his preferred successor.
Also, there in person as Harper entered were CIA director Andrews and the director of National Intelligence, Shirley Choate. If the full fifteen-member cabinet had convened, they and all other non-cabinet officials except the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have sat in a row of chairs along the wall. With only two executive departmental heads in attendance, there was ample room for everyone at the table.
Harper took his place next to Andrews, saying nothing, having gotten his preliminaries out of the way before the president pulled him aside. That consisted primarily of learning that no one knew very much about the attack, and even less about the situation in the ballroom.
There were laptops in front of each seat. As Harper sat, Andrews turned his own monitor toward his colleague.
Harper recognized the familiar box in the center of the screen. It was from TA, the Company’s Tech Analysis division-findings from the Iridium 11 geosynchronous satellite that scanned the Baltimore to Philadelphia corridor:
NUMBER: 202-Private
USER: Harper, Julie
STATUS: Blocked
BASELINE: Operational
Harper drew breath sharply. He had to struggle to keep from showing any emotion when he read the last line. It meant that while Julie’s phone could not be accessed, the number was still online.
Her phone had not been destroyed. That was the first positive sign he’d had since they were cut off.
“Thanks,” he whispered to Andrews.
The director nodded once and turned the monitor back.
Breathing steadily to calm himself, reminding himself that this was only the faintest positive sign, Harper turned his gaze to the wall monitor opposite him. He saw Mathis waiting quietly behind his desk 100 miles to the east. With his wire spectacles and horseshoe pattern baldness, he looked very much the part of the career administrator, which would accurately describe his resume.
As the president took his seat, a voice came over the multidirectional PA in the center of the table. It was one of the watch officers in the next room.
“Mr. President, we have SIOC online. It will be up on screen four whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you.” Brenneman settled into his chair. “Let’s roll.”
The presidential-seal wallpaper on the indicated video panel vanished and was replaced by the image of a short-haired man in his forties with heavy features and a thick, fleshy neck that looked as if it had been uncomfortably mashed into the starched collar of his button-down shirt. His hands folded on a desktop, his sleeves rolled to just below his elbows, he sat amid computer banks, monitors, and circulating facility personnel. Save for the missing crawl and the time stamp in the lower right corner, it could have been a feed from Fox News.
“President Brenneman, introducing assistant director of the FBI Joseph Ferrara,” said the watch officer.
Brenneman looked at the display. “Joe, let’s get right to it. What’s the latest?”
“Sir, in the last twenty minutes the Maryland state police have gotten an AW139 helicopter into the air over the center,” Ferrara said in his thick voice. “It’s streaming video, including thermal infrared imagery.” The SIOC chief glanced at a laptop. “The feed is being sent to you, File Code CC-A.”
That was the first feed from the convention center. The group all looked at their laptops. They clicked on the box in the center of the screen to access the image. It showed mostly smoke and chunks of concrete, moving from left to right, with batches of red and yellow shapes scattered throughout.
The shifting red shapes were people. The stationary yellow shapes were also people-those who were losing heat.
Dead bodies.
“Our field units from Baltimore have established a perimeter control and have agents outside the building-”
“What about the hostage situation?” Andrews asked. “Our I-eleven has intercepted tweets from several
