Out of the Ashes

CHAPTER ONE

He didn’t particularly like being in America, and especially didn’t enjoy being in New York City. However, Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif was above all else a businessman and this was business.

Kashif was Arab, wealthy, and, from outward appearances, quite Westernized. He was in his midfifties, slim, fit, well-educated, and sophisticated. His eyes were alert but not predatory, and he had a disarming smile. Kashif wore his hair stylishly long but well barbered and kept his goatee and mustache neatly trimmed. He was Kuwaiti by birth and citizenship, but he kept elegant, if not lavish, homes in Paris, London, and Mumbai as well as a primary residence in Kuwait City. He had but a single wife and three children, all girls, who he shamelessly spoiled. He read the Koran often and found the teachings of the Prophet made for an ideal guide for a good and productive life, yet, by and large, he rejected any literal interpretation of the book. Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif was one of those men who his London and Parisian acquaintances never seemed to see as an Arab or a Muslim. If they did, they were quick to comment, “That Abdul, what a splendid fellow. Why can’t more of them be like him?”

He permitted himself the indulgence of bringing his wife, Jumana, along on this short, three-day, business trip. It hadn’t been his idea. Somehow she found the shopping in New York superior to that of even London. What harm could come from making her happy by allowing her to busy herself trolling through the high-end boutiques on Fifth Avenue while he hammered out a business deal? Her chauffeur and escort would look out for her.

That same chauffeur had delivered them from their hotel, the Intercontinental New York Barclay, to the penthouse condo of his new business associate, who was hosting a small dinner party in their honor. They had bid their host good-bye and were riding in the swiftly descending elevator when Jumana turned to Kashif.

“My husband, it is such a beautiful night, and our hotel is only a short walk away. Would you just dismiss the chauffeur? We can enjoy an evening stroll together.”

Kashif did some quick mental calculations. It was a mere eight blocks walk to East 48th Street where the Intercontinental enjoyed a prominent location between Park and Lexington Avenues. What harm was there if it pleased her? She had, as she always did, charmed his new business associates. It was their last night in New York, a beautiful Sunday night with a full summer moon, and he was feeling exceptionally good about the deal he had struck. Perhaps being in America wasn’t so bad after all.

“Of course, my dear. It is a lovely evening.”

As they exited the building Kashif dismissed his driver and they set out walking south on Seventh Avenue. Jumana pulled her hijab tightly around her head, feeling the need for more modesty walking the streets in an American city than she might elsewhere. Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif was happy they had left the dinner party a bit early. The oafish American men there talked about little else than the opening of their football season that weekend. They were even rude enough to keep incessantly checking their smart phones for the progress of one of their hometown teams, the “Giants,” who, apparently, would have to save the city’s honor that evening in their Sunday night game. Their other team, the “Jets,” had lost badly earlier in the day.

As they approached 48th Street and prepared to turn east to reach the Intercontinental, Kashif saw commotion ahead as a number of men poured out of a sports bar. The sign on the bar read TONIC. How apt, he thought as he pulled Jumana close to him. They quickened their pace.

Then he heard them.

“He choked! They had them. Then he throws an interception. What a piece of meat. They need to get rid of him.”

“He’s a complete fraud. God, this is going to be a long season.”

“What a punk.”

“The Giants suck so bad!”

More men tumbled out of the bar, all obviously inebriated and clearly angry their team had lost.

He pulled Jumana closer and accelerated their pace even more, intending to give the swelling crowd of men a wide berth. Their language was growing fouler and they were now pushing and jostling each other. What juveniles. America is as decadent as many of my friends say it is.

Kashif thought about crossing 7th Avenue to avoid these contemptible men entirely, but the traffic was heavy even at this time of night. Turning around and walking back north was not an option he considered. He didn’t run from scum.

As they walked close to the curb to avoid the crowd of agitated fans, a large man on the outside of the pack bumped into Jumana.

“Ouch,” she said instinctively as she fought to keep her balance, still clutching her hijab.

Reflexively, Kashif stuck out his left hand to fend the man off as he tried to steady his wife with his right.

In his drunken stupor the man fell to the ground. “Shit,” he cried.

That got the attention of some of the other men and they tried to pick him up. Instinctively, Kashif attempted to go around the crowd, but instead he bumped into another man.

The man pushed back at him, looked at Jumana, and shouted, “Hey, watch it, you fucking ragheads.”

“You watch your mouth,” Kashif protested.

By now, the other men had been attracted to the commotion and surrounded Kashif and Jumana.

“Back off! You’re in our country, you stinking Arab. She part of your harem?”

“Get out of our way or I’ll call the police,” Kashif yelled as he pulled Jumana in a tight grip and he tried to push their way through the now roused pack of men.

“Good luck with that, camel jockey,” another man shouted.

From behind Jumana, a man grabbed her hijab. “So, let’s see what’s under here. What you hiding there, bitch?”

Kashif wheeled and threw a right roundhouse punch and staggered the man.

That was all it took. With one blow another man knocked Kashif to the ground. Jumana tumbled down with him. The enraged mass of men began stomping the two Kuwaitis. Fit and agile, Kashif was able to fend off many of the blows with his arms. Jumana was not so lucky. The men continued to stomp them, cursing and swearing at the two now-helpless people.

Suddenly, one of New York’s ever-present yellow cabs screeched to a stop right at the curb and the driver began honking his horn while shouting, “Hey, stop. Get the hell away from them.”

“Mind your own business,” one of the men shot back.

“I said, stop it!” the cabbie replied as he emerged from the cab, a gun in his right hand and a cell phone in his left. That he was white and overweight, and wore a Jets sweatshirt, meant nothing; all they saw was the big automatic. That was all it took for the men to turn and run.

The Good Samaritan rushed over and helped Kashif lift himself up. Jumana remained inert on the ground, a pool of blood spreading from under her head.

It had all been a blur for Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif. A New York Police Department cruiser had appeared minutes after the cabbie had called 911. Shortly after that, an ambulance had arrived. The EMTs placed Jumana on a gurney, started an IV, and put her in the ambulance. Lights flashing and siren blaring they raced south on 7th Avenue and east on 31st Street to reach the New York University Langone urgent care center on 1st Avenue.

Despite his protests, the doctors would not let him in the OR. He was put in a waiting room for those who were with critically injured patients. There he sat for over three hours, the worst three hours of his life, but the next few minutes were about to be more awful than those hours.

“Mr. Kashif?” the man with the green scrubs asked softly. He had coal black hair, soft brown eyes, the smooth olive skin and broad handsome features that marked him as of the upper caste. It was 0430, and in his state Kashif saw only the physician.

“Yes, yes, Doctor?”

“Sir, your wife will be wheeled into ICU recovery in a bit, but it may be some time before you can see her. Does she have an advanced directive?”

“Advanced directive?”

“Yes, an advanced directive. Sir, your wife has severe internal injuries and major head trauma. We’ve already removed her spleen and she has at least four broken ribs. I’m sorry, sir, but you must be prepared for the worst.”

Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif just gasped, but what would follow would be worse.

“Sir, would you sit down, please?” the doctor asked, gently taking Kashif’s arm and helping him into a chair.

“Mr. Kashif, I’m sorry to say your wife has suffered major head trauma and is in a deep coma. We have taken an initial MRI and based on those results we’ve woken up our chief neurologist and he’ll be arriving in less than an hour. We’ll know more then, but I can’t tell you with certainty your wife will ever wake up. That’s why I asked you if she had an advanced directive — in the event her injuries are irreversible.”

“I want to see her.”

“Sir, you can’t see her. She wouldn’t know you were there anyway, and she’s surrounded by doctors, nurses, and life-support equipment.”

“Please, I want to see her,” Kashif implored.

Something in his pleading eyes moved the doctor. “Only through the ICU glass, all right?”

“Yes.”

Kashif hardly even remembered the doctor steadying him as if he were a tottering old man as they walked the short distance to the ICU room that contained his once-vibrant wife.

His eyes went wide with horror at the sight of Jumana. He broke free from the doctor and ran back the way he had come, weeping bitterly. The doctor followed closely behind.

Kashif collapsed in a chair in the waiting room, still sobbing openly, as the doctor sat down with him, putting his steady hand on his shoulder. “Sir, is there someone we can call for you?”

“No.”

“Are you staying nearby?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, can I get you something; a sedative perhaps?”

“No. No. I just need to make some calls. You’ve been very kind. I will be all right here.”

Reluctantly, the doctor had left Kashif alone in the waiting area. An hour had passed and Kashif had sat doing nothing but thinking. He knew he should call his oldest daughter, now sixteen, back in Kuwait City, tell her what had happened, and have her break the news to her two younger sisters. Yet what news? That their mother might be a vegetable for the rest of her life? He couldn’t find the right words, so that call would have to wait.

Kashif felt the bile building and his rage simmering. He had led a good and righteous life and followed the teachings of the Prophet — to a point. What had just happened to them would not stand. Their life had been so blessed. Now it was all but ended and ended by drunken Americans angered by nothing more than the fact their sports team had lost. This was worse than Europe and their stupid soccer! They needed to pay and they needed to pay as dearly as he was now paying.

Most Americans shared the misconception that all Arabs who had wealth were distant cousins of some Middle East monarch, but Abdul Kashif was more than just another wealthy Arab, though few who knew him thought of him as anything more. He was too quiet, too reserved, and not showy as were most Arabs who had money. Kashif had taken his family’s modest funds, his degree in finance from the London School of Economics, a work ethic that would have won approval from Warren Buffett, and the underworld connections of an unsavory uncle from his wife’s side of the family, and had amassed a considerable fortune. It now amounted to several hundred million dollars. He was wealthy and now, for the first time in his life, he was consumed with rage — rage and the desire for revenge.

Some Arabs with the financial resources of Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif contributed to radical Arab causes. Those who did secreted these funds to Arab charities from which a good portion of the money found its way into the offshore accounts of those who ran the charities. Those monies that did find their way to a serious terrorist organization like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were used by Arabs aligned with AQAP to kill other Arabs. Kashif had no intention of spending his hard-earned money that way.

While he was consumed by rage and the need for revenge, he was not blinded by it. If America was to be punished for what had just happened to him and his beloved Jumana, then it needed to be done professionally and with some precision. A strike like the one Osama bin Laden and Mohammad Atta had brought about on 9/11 was no longer possible. The Americans were too well prepared to allow a repeat of that event. However, there had to be a way, Kashif thought. He was a businessman, and there was always a way.

He picked up his cell phone and called a particularly capable and discreet Lebanese who sometimes worked for his wife’s uncle and arranged for him to fly to New York. With that single call, he had set in motion the events that would once again bring America to its knees.

CHAPTER TWO

Azka Perkasa sat in the midlevel comfort of his business-class accommodations. When the flight attendant came by with the drink cart, he asked for tea. The attendant was polite and demure, and he lowered his head in thanks for her kind attention and service. He had left Washington’s Dulles Airport early Sunday morning on a direct flight to San Francisco. Now he was flying on an Eva Air 747–400 that would take him from San Francisco to Taipei and then on to Kuala Lumpur. He was glad to be on a Taiwanese carrier and even more glad to be out of American airspace. He almost always flew coach class, as his current occupation dictated that he keep a low profile, but after what he had just accomplished, he felt that just this once he could allow himself a small pleasure.

Perkasa was Indonesian by birth, Chinese by ethnicity, and Christian in his upbringing and education. His paternal grandfather had left Hong Kong under a cloud of shame his parents refused to talk about. They settled first in Jakarta, but following yet another business reversal, moved to the West Java city of Bandung. His family was poor to the point of despair, and Perkasa and his three sisters had grown up with barely enough to eat. Being both poor and Chinese caused his family to be shunned by both the small but affluent Chinese minority and the Javanese majority.

At the mission school, he proved to be an exceedingly bright student. He studied hard, kept to himself, and vowed that he would someday not be poor and hungry. When a typhoon destroyed their home, he left without a word and headed back to Jakarta. There he found work as a janitor for an American firm of consulting engineers who designed the skyscrapers that seemed to be springing up everywhere in the capital city. There he was noticed, trained as a clerk, then as a draftsman. Finally, one of the senior engineers said, “This Azka is a bright lad. Let’s get him to the polytechnic. Might even put us in a good light with the locals come contract time.”

He again excelled in school, but he would always be one of them, a token local; he would never be a partner and never see the inside of the boardroom. He wanted more, much more. One day, seemingly out of the blue, a rival firm just down the street from his approached him with an offer of cash for information about a bid his firm was about to submit on another high rise; specifically, the amount of the bribe his firm had offered to the building authority. He gave them the information without hesitation and pocketed the money.

Shortly thereafter, the same firm came to him demanding more information. This time, instead of offering payment, they said they would inform on him if he did not comply. Azka reluctantly agreed to do their bidding, but before he did what they asked, a large explosion ripped through the offices of that firm during working hours, causing great loss of life. When the blast took place, he was in his cubicle, calculating the load bearing of the I-beams on one of his firm’s projects. He felt the slight movement as the pressure wave passed, smiled to himself, and continued with his calculations. Later that month, he resigned his position with the American engineering firm; he had found a new calling.

The life of an ethnic Chinese in Jakarta with no family was an isolated and lonely existence. Yet Azka didn’t mind; he had his work, although that work took only one or two weeks every few months. He had discretely made contact with an element of a Singapore triad operating in Jakarta. With only a post office box that served the interests of all concerned, Azka had a new employer, and one that paid well.

Azka was physically a slight man, partly from his ancestry and partly from his lack of a proper diet when he was a child. He had regular features, a pronounced overbite, and a lazy left eye that was the result of a bout with scarlet fever that had gone untreated. One day soon, Azka told himself, I will be wealthy enough to leave this place and purchase a better life. Aside from his intellect and training, he had another advantage to aid in his new calling. He was a man totally devoid of compassion or conscience. Finally, his day had arrived and he would be wealthy.

When Azka took the job, Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif, through his Lebanese intermediary, had assured him US$10,000 for every American life he took. He hoped to earn close to US$20 million from this venture. It was not as much as the Americans paid to their contractors, like Blackwater and Triple Canopy, but it was still a tidy sum. The contracting of mercenaries had worked well for the United States. Was he not entitled to his share in this killing-for-hire business?

Azka looked at his watch; it would not be long now, minutes perhaps.

CHAPTER THREE

Meagan Phillips didn’t really like football, but her father had taken each of her two older brothers to Eagles games before, and now it was her turn. Her daddy was taking her! A high school history teacher, Charlie Phillips couldn’t afford to buy Eagles football tickets often, but when he could, he had always taken one of his boys. Now he was finally taking Meagan. She was ecstatic.

“Meagan, do you see that big board up there with all the lights?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s the scoreboard. It tells us what the score is, how long there is to go in the game, who has the ball, and things like that.”

“Does it say who is going to win, Daddy?”

“No, Meagan, it doesn’t. We don’t know who is going to win. That’s why we cheer so hard for the Eagles, because we want them to win.”

“Uh-huh.”

Charlie’s two sons both played Pop Warner football, and they had coached Meagan on how much fun she’d have at the game with her daddy. Charlie was making it fun. It was barely into the second quarter, and they’d been to the concession stand fifty feet behind them twice and to the potty once, and had bought pink cotton candy from a roving vender. Charlie hadn’t fussed at Meagan because she had spent most of the game hunched down in her seat playing a video game and munching her goodies. After all, she was only five.

“Now, Meagan, when everyone gets up and cheers, you wave that big foam finger I bought you.”

“Like this, Daddy?” Meagan replied as she waved the midnight-green Eagles finger from side to side.

“That’s it, Meagan! I know the Eagles are going to win now,” Charlie replied with a chuckle.

They divided their attention as they had before — Charlie to the Eagles, down a touchdown but driving toward the end zone, and Meagan to her video game.

Minutes later, Charlie Phillips leapt to his feet as the Eagles receiver snared the pass in the corner of the end zone. “Touchdown, Meagan!”

Meagan stood up and started to wave her foam finger, but then dropped it and whipped her tiny hands over her ears. “Daddy, it’s so loud. Everyone is yelling.”

“It’s OK, Meagan,” Charlie replied, bending down and cuddling his daughter. “Everyone is just so excited, that’s all. Tell you what. Next Eagles touchdown we’ll celebrate and buy some more cotton candy.”

“I want blue this time, Daddy.”

“Blue it is.”

Meagan returned to her video game and her Twix bar as the Eagles kicker punched the ball through the uprights for the extra point. Charlie Phillips sat back down and congratulated himself on his decision to bring Meagan to a game. She was having fun.

“Daddy?”

Meagan felt her seat vibrating, then shuddering, then heard the sound. Her senses were alert. Something was different, something was wrong. The sound was louder, much louder, than when the people were cheering a few moments ago, and now the stadium was shaking.

“Daddy?”

The sound was deafening, more like a thunderstorm than an explosion, more like a subway entering a station than a bomb, piercing the air above the cheers of sixty-five thousand fans.

“Daddy!”

Meagan’s senses caused her to finally look up. She followed the turned heads of the people around her as they looked back behind them. There they saw smoke, flame, and debris as an entire section of seats in the deck above and behind them collapsed, raining down concrete, seats, other debris, and people!

“Daddy!” Meagan shouted as she reached for her father’s arm, not knowing what was happening. Her brain was in sensory overload with the acrid smells of fire and chemical accelerants now overwhelming her.

A split second later, Meagan’s world was destroyed.

A large piece of concrete smashed into the top of Charlie Phillips’s head, shattering his skull. Her daddy’s blood, tissue, and brain matter flew over Meagan’s head. Then he collapsed on top of Meagan.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Meagan cried as she shook her father’s inert body, squirming to try to free herself, his weight crushing her.

New sounds, the screams and shrieks of the wounded and dying, pierced the air. Then it was the increasing crescendo, feet stomping on concrete, fans stampeding toward the exit tunnels, their frantic footfalls growing ever louder.

Panicked fans near them pushed, shoved, and stepped on each other, their panic rising. The dust still had not settled from the collapsed section of the upper deck of the stadium that had fallen onto the section below. It was right behind where Megan Phillips now lay trapped underneath her father’s lifeless body, sobbing inconsolably, the smell and stench of death overwhelming her, her father’s own blood now oozing onto her.

“Little girl, come on, it’s not safe, we have to go!” said a young woman as she lifted Charlie Phillips’s limp body off of Meagan. The Good Samaritan grabbed the little girl’s left forearm and tried to lead her away.

“NO! My daddy, my daddy!” Meagan cried as she tried to pull her father upright, her efforts futile, the blood pooling up, the life already drained from him.

The woman was torn; her two friends were shoving their way toward the exits, stepping over many bodies like those of Charlie Phillips who had been killed by falling debris. She was scared beyond words, but she didn’t want this little girl crushed in the stampede.

“Please, we’ll come back for him,” she said as she knelt down and tried to coax Megan to come with her.

“My daddy, my daddy,” Meagan wailed.

Suddenly, there was deafening noise from across the stadium. The young woman looked up to see a section of upper-deck seats collapsing onto the lower section, raining concrete, seats, and people, scores of people, down onto the section below.

“There has been a terrorist attack. There may be more attacks. Please evacuate the stadium now. More attacks are imminent. Please leave the stadium. There has been a terrorist attack. There may be more attacks. Please evacuate the stadium now. More attacks are imminent. Please leave the stadium…”

The announcement droned on and on, and as it did, more fans fled toward the exits.

A big man stampeding for the exits knocked down the young woman and Meagan with her. As Meagan looked down, she saw a severed hand covered in blood, like that of a mangled store mannequin. She began to shriek uncontrollably, now clutching the woman beside her.

“There has been a terrorist attack. There may be more attacks. Please evacuate the stadium now. More attacks are imminent. Please leave the stadium. There has been a terrorist attack. There may be more attacks. Please evacuate the stadium now. More attacks are imminent. Please leave the stadium…”

The woman scooped Megan up in her arms and joined the thousands of panicked fans as they continued to empty out of Lincoln Financial Field. They were running for their lives, running for their cars, running anywhere away from what had just happened.

This deadly scene played out not just at the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field, but nearly simultaneously in three other NFL football stadiums on that Sunday afternoon in November. The final attack, one that went down as planned about ten minutes after all the others, occurred at FedEx Field in suburban Landover, Maryland, home of the Washington Redskins.

Yet, while numerous panicked fans made for the exits thinking only of themselves, there were also heroics. At the Meadowlands, a biker covered with tats and dressed in Harley leather carried a bleeding woman toward the exit, moving only as fast as his heavy load would let him. At the M&T Bank Stadium, a Ravens fan used her scarf as a makeshift tourniquet to stanch the bleeding of a severely injured fan’s leg. At FedEx Field, a Redskin fan in full “Hog” regalia threw an injured teenager over his shoulder and slowly carried him to the exit.

The explosions were restricted to just those four stadiums, but not the panic. In five other stadiums across the nation, there was nothing but panic. Once the people in the stadiums where the explosions occurred reached safety, they tweeted about the attacks, and fans in other stadiums picked up these tweets. Then the announcing systems in those stadiums began to drone, “There have been terrorist attacks in several NFL stadiums. An attack in this stadium is imminent. Please evacuate the stadium now. There have been terrorist attacks in several NFL stadiums. An attack in this stadium is imminent. Please evacuate the stadium now.” Fans immediately rushed for the exits, and many were trampled in the process.

The death toll was substantial, and while not rivaling the numbers killed on 9/11, the fact that Americans were attacked in multiple cities, and simultaneously, in many ways induced a new, and in some ways deeper, angst. The nation was shocked and gripped with fear.

Throughout the nation, but especially in the national capital region, watchstanders in the White House Situation Room, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the various three-letter agencies, and elsewhere attempted to make sense of the attacks and deal with the ensuing chaos. They all sought to take action. But for the moment, there was nothing to do.

Trevor Harward, the president’s national security advisor, stood outside the Cosmos Club on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest Washington, D.C., waiting impatiently for the valet to bring his car around. He and his wife had been having brunch with friends in the club’s elegant main dining room when the watchstander in the Situation Room had called him. The conversation lasted no more than 30 seconds, time enough for him to turn white as he rose from his chair. “I’ve got to go. Please excuse us,” was all he said as he headed for the door with his wife in tow.

“I need to get to the Situation Room now,” he said to his wife as he looked right toward 22nd Street Northwest, craning his neck searching for his black Mercedes E550 4Matic sedan to come into view. “I’ll drive, jump out, and then you take the car home. I’m going to be there a while.”

Harward jerked the driver’s door open before the valet could open it himself and shouted to his wife, “Get in.” The tires squealed as Harward mashed the gas pedal and the car bolted away from the curb and headed southeast toward DuPont Circle. He had the Mercedes going seventy by the time they passed the Embassy Row Hotel, just a block and a half from the Cosmos Club.

“Slow down, you’re going to kill us,” his wife shouted as she clutched the car’s dashboard.

“Slow down — I wish! We’ve just been attacked, the president’s on the West Coast, and the fucking vice president is playing golf at the Congressional Country Club way the hell up in Potomac. I’m it for now!”

Harward powered the car into DuPont Circle’s inner loop at breakneck speed, simultaneously punching the accelerator and riding the brake, the Mercedes’ squealing tires startling the small groups of men playing checkers in the shadow of the fountain on this mild fall Sunday. Suddenly, he realized he was in the inner loop and couldn’t turn down Connecticut Avenue. “Hold on,” he yelled to his now panicked wife as he jerked the car’s wheel and lumbered over the curbed barrier separating the circle’s inner and outer loops.

The Mercedes thudded over the barrier and came down hard on its shocks. Horns blared and Harward narrowly missed a minivan.

“Slow down, Trevor; slow down for God’s sake.”

Harward ignored her and stared straight ahead as he pointed the car down Connecticut Avenue. Now sweating profusely and cursing at the cars he had to maneuver around, he barreled ahead at close to ninety miles per hour. Harward slowed, but didn’t stop, as he blew through a red light.

“Trevor, you’re going to kill us. Damn it!”

He continued to stare straight ahead. The sixty-year-old Harward looked the part of a creature of Washington who’d been beat down into submission after decades of too much responsibility and not enough control over policy or his life. Packing 230 pounds on his five-foot eight-inch frame, he was obese. His fashion sense was decades in the past; he was prepped out in his Brooks Brothers blue sport coat, tan cuffed pants, crisp white polo button-down, and blue club tie.

“Get on your iPhone and try to find out something, anything!” he shouted at his wife.

His wife refused to release her death grip on the car’s dash to look into her lap, convinced Harward was going to kill them both.

Harward slowed only slightly as he passed the Farragut North Metro station, and turned right onto 17th Street, now heading due south. He was almost there, only a few blocks from the White House and the West Wing.

As he approached the Corcoran Gallery on his right, Harward slowed and turned hard left on E Street Northwest. He screeched to a halt at the security checkpoint. The uniformed Secret Service guards had been alerted he was coming. He flashed his creds.

“Mr. Harward.”

“She’s with me,” he snapped at the guard, jerking his head toward his ashen-faced wife. “She’ll drop me here at West Exec and then take the car away.”

“Yes, sir.”

The guard let the recessing barrier down as Harward drove into the White House complex. He turned left at Lower West Exec where another uniformed Secret Service guard opened a tall iron gate and waved his Mercedes through. There, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car, and made a beeline for the West Wing entrance. He left his wife sitting in the passenger seat. He never looked back as he ran, wheezing and coughing as he did.

His wife sat in the passenger seat, shaking and breathing heavily, looking like a shell-shocked soldier. After several minutes the color finally returned to her face and she got control of her shaking. Then with as much dignity as she could muster, she walked around the Mercedes, got into the driver’s seat, and slowly drove away.

Aboard Air Force One, President Wyatt Midkiff put the phone back into its receiver, hoping his chief of staff didn’t notice his hand trembling. He did, though, and Midkiff knew it. OK. Take a breath. Relax. You can manage this. Just breathe; just breathe. The physically imposing, polished, and measured Midkiff felt he might be losing it. God in heaven, how am I going to get through this?

Less than a year into his administration after four terms as the junior senator from Florida, Wyatt Midkiff had developed a well-deserved reputation as a smooth operator and for grace under pressure, but he was losing it now. “All I want is information, any information, and I’ve talked with my National Security Staff and with half my cabinet but no one knows squat. Where are we now?”

“Mr. President, we’re over Nebraska, and we should be landing at Andrews in a bit less than two hours,” his chief of staff replied. “That is, if we are still going to Washington—”

“‘If’? What do you mean, ‘if’?” the president interrupted.

“Mr. President, one of the attacks was at FedEx Field. There could still be a threat.”

“You’re my chief of staff, for God’s sake! Do you really want me to make up some lame excuse for why I was afraid to go back to the White House? That didn’t work out so good for George W. Bush in 2001, now, did it?” His chief of staff knew it was a rhetorical question, so no response was required, or desired. “The last report I got was there have been almost a thousand deaths. You hear anything more?”

“No, Mr. President. It’s predicted to go higher, though. Emergency services in all those cities are still taking victims to trauma centers.”

“And I’m told there were many victims at stadiums where there weren’t attacks, but just bogus announcements to evacuate the stadiums.”

“Yes, Mr. President, there were hundreds killed and injured in the stampedes to escape from those stadiums. The reports were that there was mass hysteria.”

“Well, I’m the president of the United States, and I’m going back to Washington immediately to end the hysteria, and to find out who did this.”

“Yes, Mr. President, I understand. Now, here’s the draft of your statement to the nation when you disembark at Andrews I had the press secretary put together—”

“I’m not ready for that yet. Get me the national security advisor on secure.”

Moments later, Trevor Harward was on the line. “Trevor, give me an update.” The president was now more settled and was all business.

“Mr. President. I’m here in the Situation Room. The vice president just arrived at his residence and he should be here shortly. Now, here’s what we know so far,” he replied, giving the president little more than he already knew.

Midkiff just shook his head. “We’ll be at Andrews in less than two hours. I want to meet with you and a small group from FBI, Homeland Security, and whoever else you need to assemble to help me sort this out. We’ll meet in the Situation Room.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Make this a small, select group, Trevor. I don’t need to see everybody who wants face time.”

Next he called his vice president, who had had his security detail take him from the Congressional Country Club to his quarters on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory on the southeast corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Street. Fastidious to a fault, the vice president had decided he needed to change out of his golf attire before heading to the Situation Room. Midkiff instructed him to make a brief statement and a plea for calm until he could get back to Washington and address the nation.

Only weeks earlier, he had told the vice president he thought the crisis-management exercises his staff had insisted on were a waste of time. Now he was glad they had persisted.

It was in the middle of the leg from San Francisco to Taipei that Azka Perkasa slowly awoke from a deep sleep. He sensed something was different. At once all his senses came alert, and then he relaxed. There was a general stir about the cabin as people logged onto their PCs, smart phones, or sat glued to the seat-back monitors, where news bulletins had replaced all in-flight programming.

“I can’t believe it,” the man sitting next to him said with a pronounced Australian accent. “Those fuckin’ towel heads are at it again!” A moment later he turned toward Azka. “Sorry mate, no offense meant.”

“None taken,” Azka said in his nearly flawless English. He flicked on his own small screen. He watched as the scenes went from news anchors to emergency crews at work to twisted concrete at several football stadiums. He permitted himself a grim smile when the vice president of the United States promised that those responsible would be brought to justice.

Azka Perkasa could imagine the multitiered security services of America and her allies looking for swarthy, dark-skinned men with shadowy beards or those dressed in non-Western clothing. It would be a difficult few days for those who were male and in their twenties or thirties from Mexico, Argentina, or India. Anyone traveling who seemed the least bit nervous, for reasons ranging from fear of flying to not having a green card, would be detained and questioned. He knew the American law enforcement and intelligence agencies, all capable at what they did, would soon know what had happened, but, he was equally confident, they would never know who.

His plan was simple in concept and not complex to execute, for a person with the right skills and resources. He had secured a truck and then applied the logo of the beer distributor that had the contract to supply beer to all thirty-two NFL teams. Over the course of the week, he had delivered kegs loaded with C4 and armed with a sophisticated timing device to selected concession stands, those that were tucked under higher level sections of seats, in the four NFL stadiums he selected. He took pains to ensure his special kegs were stored behind the ones that would be used first. He had then hacked into the PA systems of the stadiums he chose, timing his announcement to begin immediately after the explosions in four of the stadiums, and later in the five stadiums where no explosion occurred. His engineering training at the polytechnic, as well as all those years slaving away as a junior civil engineer working for peanuts compared to what the white expats working right beside him were making, was finally paying off.

The Aussie next to Azka glanced at his seatmate. The world is going to hell and this little wog has gone back to sleep. What he didn’t know, and couldn’t know, was that he was looking at the new face of terrorism.

CHAPTER FOUR

After what he admitted was a less-than-inspiring address to the nation after he landed at Andrews the night before, and after only three hours of fitful sleep, the president met with a select group of his national security principals in one of the White House Situation Room’s two secure conference rooms. The three-letter agencies were well represented. After forty minutes of blank looks and little information, the president dismissed them abruptly — something the normally courteous Midkiff rarely did. Almost as an afterthought he asked Trevor Harward to remain behind.

“Trevor, am I being too rough on them?”

“No, Mr. President. We all let the nation down. We need to fix what’s broken.”

“But what I heard was we had bits and pieces of this information but no way to collate it so we could take action. In essence we were too slow. Is our system broken that badly?”

Trevor Harward had spent his life in the national security world. He knew the president counted on him for answers. This wasn’t the time to dance around the issues.

“Mr. President, the system works, but it just doesn’t work fast enough. The intel part works pretty well, given all the humans in the loop, but there’s a lot more that could be done with automation, high-power computing, smart digital agents, and decision-support algorithms. We also need an operations-response element that can work quicker, across all rice bowls, and that can break through choke points. This entity would need to be able to work internationally and nationally, and probably outside of legal channels when necessary.”

“Then it’s not an issue of just telling everyone to ‘work harder’ or ‘do better,’ is it?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. President.”

“All right, Trevor. You briefed me on this when we started this journey together. I didn’t think we’d ever be here, but we are. Get me the Op-Center file.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. President, but you do know what that might entail and where it could take us?”

“I do, but do you feel we have an alternative?”

“I don’t, Mr. President. I’ll have it on your desk within the hour.”

Half a world away, Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif waited impatiently. He had instructed the Lebanese to have Azka Perkasa call him on a disposable cell phone once he reached his final destination. He had never met Perkasa, nor did he want to. The Lebanese had found him and negotiated his price, but Kashif wanted the first-person assurance, to say nothing of the satisfaction, that the deed was done. He also wanted to be certain Perkasa was well away from America and from American authorities. As agreed, just a few words would be exchanged.

“I am home,” Perkasa said.

“Just so,” the voice at the other end replied.

“Have you wired the funds yet?”

“I have instructed my agent to do so, as was agreed,” Kashif said, making no attempt to hide the annoyance in his voice. Who was this … this … hired man to question him?

The line went dead as Kashif clicked off his cell phone and climbed the steps to look in on his wife, now monitored by one of their full-time, in-home, caretakers.

“How is she?”

“No change, but she’s resting comfortably,” the woman said as she stood next to the hospital bed where the unmoving Jumana lay.

Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif walked back downstairs and turned on a news channel. The news was the same as on all channels — the attack on America. He felt no joy, just sadness for his wife, for those who would have to tend to what was left of their shattered families as he was doing, and for himself. He felt sadness, but no regret.

CHAPTER FIVE

Much had changed in the wake of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and then the Arab Spring. While there was some general stability in the Middle East in the twentieth century, that had changed dramatically in the twenty-first century. In retrospect, one would have thought the ouster of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadhafi, and Hosni Mubarak would have created a more stable region. But it hadn’t. There were new leaders with new agendas, but there was still revenge, religious tension, and greed. The only true winners in this new order were the transnational terrorist groups, which now operated openly and often with near-impunity. The national intelligence community’s job was to ensure one of these groups didn’t attack America. They had failed.

The director of national intelligence, Adam Putnam, strode into his conference room at the National Counterterrorism Center, the NCTC, at Liberty Crossing in McLean, Virginia. The leaders of the nation’s intelligence agencies were assembled in the director’s conference room on the first floor of the NCTC. His job was to coordinate the efforts of these sixteen diverse agencies. The president didn’t say it in so many words in the Situation Room, but Putnam knew the score. He had failed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you all know why you are here. We’ve been attacked again. I brought you here because I want to hear directly from each of you. Nine-eleven was clearly a one-of-a-kind attack unlikely to be repeated in the short term. Not so this time; our nation is gripped with fear, wondering when, not if, the next attacks will occur.”

The men and women arrayed around the table were weary; they had been searching for answers but had none. Putnam listened, his impatience growing. He’d heard from everyone. He still knew nothing and he knew that wouldn’t be good enough for the president.

“Look, folks, our fellow citizens spend well north of $80 billion on intelligence every year. We’ve just endured attacks in several American cities that have killed well over a thousand of those citizens. The nation is in a virtual fetal position bracing for the next attack. There will not be another attack. Are we clear on that?”

Less than fifty miles due east of the National Counterterrorism Center, at a corner table in Miss Shirley’s café in Annapolis, Maryland, Paul Hood, former director of Op-Center, and General Mike Rodgers, his deputy director, met for breakfast. Hood was living in a waterfront home on Weems Creek near Annapolis and consulting for senior officials in several U.S. intelligence agencies. Rodgers was living on Capitol Hill and was vice president of a successful international business consultancy.

The two men were a study in contrasts. Paul Hood wore a smart, but inexpensive, blue blazer, tan pants, a buttoned-down blue shirt, a Talbot’s club tie, and tassel loafers. His outfit was often jokingly called the “uniform” in the typically anonymous intelligence community. Rogers, in contrast, was attired in an expensive blue suit, a crisp white shirt, an Ermenegildo Zegna woven silk tie, and Tanino Crisci black wingtips. Rogers was at home in the corporate boardrooms he now frequented.

Both men were plugged into the intelligence and defense communities sufficiently to know what the president and his advisors were wrestling with. It didn’t take an epiphany for them to understand why these attacks had not been prevented.

“Hell of a thing, these attacks,” Hood began.

“Yeah, to say the least.”

“You know anyone personally who died at FedEx Field?”

“Yes, actually two people,” Rodgers replied. “Good friends. Both former general officers. One working for General Dynamics and one for Northrop Grumman. Tragic. You?”

“No. No one, thank God.”

“Good.”

“Thanks for coming all the way out here, Mike. I needed to talk with you in person. Your consultancy still going well?”

“Yeah, but it’s too much damn traveling. I don’t care how you slice it, even in business class, the red-eye sucks. I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“No, Mike, you’re a warrior. You could do it in a troop seat on a C-130.”

Rodgers just shook his head and smiled. It had been years since they worked together, leading Op-Center. Both men were quietly proud of what they had accomplished. They had saved lives. Hell, they may have even saved the nation.

“Mike, I got a call from the president’s national security advisor yesterday evening. It wasn’t a secure line so he was couching what he said, but he wants me to come in and talk to the president. He hinted they’re thinking about standing up Op-Center again.”

“Whew,” Rodgers exhaled. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him what you’d tell him. If the president wants to talk with me I’m happy to do my duty.”

“We did our duty, Paul, but they shut us down.”

“They did, Mike. Now these are different times and different dangers. I need to at least talk with him, but I wanted to get your counsel first.”

Both men knew it wasn’t in anyone’s interest to slam the prior administration that had disestablished Op-Center. For the two of them, as well as for their loyal staff, it was a cataclysmic event when Op-Center was stood down. For Hood, it was a professional body blow, and one he didn’t see coming.

Both Hood and Rogers had bitter feelings toward the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense who conspired to have the previous president close down Op-Center. And they also recognized more than a decade without any attacks on the American homeland, along with the nation’s economic crisis, made Op-Center a budgetary target. However, that was in the past.

It took a while for Rodgers to frame his thoughts. He knew even talking about reestablishing Op-Center wasn’t a trivial thing, and he understood Paul Hood well enough to read his former boss’s body language — he was conflicted.

“Sure, boss. I’d talk with the president, but I’d lay out all the facts as to why and how they shut us down last time and then I’d get ironclad assurance that he and his successors will never let that happen again. I’d make them court you big time.”

“That’s good advice, Mike, and goes with my line of thinking.”

“How soon are you going in?”

“Next day or two, I think.”

The two men continued to talk and as they did, Mike Rodgers helped Paul Hood weigh the issues that would be involved in recreating Op-Center. What Hood didn’t tell him, wouldn’t tell him, was that if there was going to be a new Op-Center, he couldn’t lead it.

Later that day, Trevor Harward sat at his desk in the West Wing. He had slept barely four hours in two days. His shirt was rumpled and his finely tailored suit trousers looked like sweat pants. It was a few minutes before noon and he had been in meetings for most of the last seven hours — and all for nothing. He had met with his core National Security Staff and ranking officials from State, CIA, FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center—the best of the best. All of them had theories; none of them had a shred of proof of who had done this or why. We know nothing more now, Harward had to admit, than we did just after the attack. They were beginning to piece together the how, but not the why or the who. The national security advisor was frustrated beyond all measure.

The meetings had all been videotaped and in some cases monitored by selected military and civilian officials who could not be present. This encrypted video feed had also found its way to a study in a small but tasteful brownstone in Georgetown. It was the study of Gamal Haaziq. Haaziq was cleared for this information; in fact, his security clearances were about as high as was possible for an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen who was a tenured PhD in Middle Eastern Studies at American University and a practicing Muslim. Beyond all that, he was the most informed individual Harward knew in or out of government — and the smartest. Harward’s reverie was broken by the buzz of his intercom.

It was one of his senior aides. “Sir, Dr. Haaziq is on the line for your twelve o’clock VTC.”

“Thank you,” he replied into the desk speaker. “Tell him I’ll be just a minute.”

Harward glanced at his watch and saw the digital readout was exactly 1200. On his other wrist, his heart monitor said 130. It was the stress. He cinched up his tie, smoothed his hair, and clicked on the desk screen that opened the secure video-teleconference channel to connect him with Haaziq.

“Gamal, good morning, or rather good afternoon. Thanks for meeting with me.”

“Good afternoon, Trevor,” Haaziq replied with only a trace of an accent. In contrast to the disheveled Harward, the Egyptian was the picture of an urbane Arab, with strong dark features, full lips, and thick, well-cut silver hair. “Forgive me an observation, my friend, but you look terrible. Even in these times, you must attend to yourself.”

Despite his state, Harward was touched by his concern. “Thank you, Gamal. Perhaps the best medicine for me is for you to tell me something useful — something I can pass along to the president. I assume you VTCed into this morning’s meetings?”

“I did. Your excellent staff, and the others, they are all good people, but as you know, they have not a clue about who did this or why they did it.”

Harward nodded wearily. “Nor do I. That’s why I hope you can help us, for we seem to be at an impasse.”

Gamal Haaziq had extensive contacts throughout the Middle East. He had been an outspoken critic of the policies of the United States and of the moderates in the Muslim world who refused to condemn acts of terror or to denounce the extremists who committed them. Both, he maintained, were responsible for the cycle of distrust and violence. Yet he was an American citizen and a patriot. Harward had come to like and trust the man. If there was a group or entity responsible for the stadium bombings, Haaziq’s contacts might have that information.

“I’m sorry not to be able to help you with this, Trevor, but I can tell you nothing. I wish I could. I’ve spoken with those who would know if there were an organization or splinter group responsible. They have said nothing and I believe they know nothing.”

Harward sighed and visibly slumped in his chair. “So can you tell me anything?”

“Only that this is nothing like 9/11. This is very different, and in my opinion, has nothing to do with al Qaeda or one of the al Qaeda Central franchisees. Given the sophistication of this attack and the lack of information out there, I think you are dealing with a very small group or even with only one or two individuals. I also think whoever did this is extremely well resourced. I recommend that you follow the money behind the act and that you look at revenge as motive for this.”

Revenge, mused Harward. He thanked Haaziq and broke the connection.

CHAPTER SIX

Half a world away, while the forces unleashed by the Arab Spring had significant impact, and that effect was still playing out, one thing that hadn’t changed was the developed and developing world’s thirst for oil. Deep in the vast Syrian Desert, massive vehicles of all kinds kicked up a tsunami of sand and dust as they maneuvered over the flat and rocky desert surface and an army of workers of multiple nationalities labored under the supervision of a small team of Saudi engineers.

It was barely organized chaos as the polyglot of foreign nationals driving the trucks, cranes, bulldozers, and other huge vehicles had no common language so they maneuvered around each other as best they could by liberally using their horns and flashing their headlamps. The pace wasn’t just intense; it was frenetic and even manic.

The Saudi foreman managing the work crew putting the enormous pipes on their mountings urged his work crew on. “You can do it! The prince was here two days ago and promised us a bonus if we got just two kilometers ahead of schedule. We can get that far ahead by tomorrow morning if we just keep at it for another four or five hours.”

The weary men bent to their task. They had been working hellish hours in the desert sun for months with little respite. Yet the money was good and the Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, and Indonesians who formed the bulk of the labor crew needed the money, so they said little, continued to work, and sent the majority of their earnings home. They didn’t understand why the Saudis were building this pipeline, or why there was so much urgency to construct it so quickly, nor did they care. However, those in Saudi Arabia’s elite understood why.

Saudi Arabia had long been the kingpin in the oil world, but that was changing. The United States had helped rebuild Iraq, and that nation was now a major oil producer, as were Iran, Kuwait, and Russia. Saudi Arabia was no longer the big kid on the block, just one of many. Even the United States, thanks to shale oil gas, was predicted to be a net oil exporter as early as 2020.

Saudi Arabia had a unique disadvantage in that all of her oil went to ports on either the Red Sea or the Arabian Gulf. Intermittent violence over the years, and especially the uncertainties the popular uprisings of 2011 unleashed, had made it too risky to depend solely on getting her oil through the narrow choke points of the Strait of Hormuz, the southern terminus of the Red Sea, or the Suez Canal. Additionally, the Saudis recognized if Iran ever followed through on its frequent threats to mine the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia’s economy would be crippled.

So the Saudis had made a decision to construct a multibillion dollar pipeline through Jordan and Syria to get their oil to the Mediterranean to meet the energy demands of Europe, especially the now-recovering economies of Eastern Europe. Saudi Arabia had paid Jordan and Syria a fortune up front to allow construction of a pipeline and passage of oil.

Now, in one of the biggest energy construction projects ever, the Saudis were building a massive pipeline from their richest fields in the eastern part of their country across their nation, through Jordan and Syria, and to the Mediterranean. Saudi prince Ali al-Wandi, the nation’s deputy oil minister, was personally supervising all aspects of the pipeline’s construction. His executive helicopter was a frequent sight along the pipeline route and he made it well known to the managers, foremen, and workers he was the one who approved performance bonuses.

“As soon as we finish this section, we’ll set the pipe on the foundations we’ve already put in place up that berm,” the foreman said to his Filipino crew chief.

As the foreman spoke, an eighteen-wheeler with oversized tires drove up the berm with its burden of large-diameter pipes strapped one on top of the other. The driver downshifted as he neared the top of the berm, but as he did he turned the wheel ever so slightly to the left. The wheels of the big rig started to lose purchase, then spin. Two hundred yards away, on the rocky desert floor below, the foreman saw it first and shouted into his hand-held radio.

“Turn right; turn right, you’re in danger of tipping over!”

In the cab of his truck, the panicked driver tried to comply. He jerked the wheel to the right and downshifted again, but the wheels just spun more rapidly, gravity took over, and the overloaded truck reached the tipping point.

“Get out of the way, get out of the way now!” the foreman shouted at the workers setting the pipe on its mountings below where the truck was now tipping over.

Slowly, then more rapidly, like a mortally wounded ship slipping beneath the waves, the truck crashed over on its left side. As it did, the straps holding the pipes on its back gave way and the pipes started tumbling down the hill.

Below, the dozens of men in the panicked work crew began to run. It was no use. The massive pipes crushed man after man as they cascaded down the hill and across the flat desert floor.

When all motion had finally stopped, a half dozen workers lay dead and many more were crying out in agony. Throughout the work camp alarms went off and others rushed to help the wounded.

The foreman, who had taken shelter behind a small dune and was unharmed, reached into his pocket and pulled out his Thuraya XT-Dual Satellite Phone and called Prince Ali al-Wandi.

Paul Hood sat on his back porch looking out onto Weems Creek, wearing a North Face fleece vest to ward off the November chill. He considered his upcoming meeting with the president. He knew he couldn’t lead the new Op-Center and he also knew Mike Rodgers’s complex business connections meant he couldn’t lead it, either.

Hood was enough of a patriot that he knew he needed to do more than just validate what Trevor Harward had hinted at, that the president thought he needed to reconstitute Op-Center. He knew he needed to come up with a leader to recommend to the president. As he searched his mental Rolodex one name rose to the top.

Five days later, on Monday morning, the NFL commissioner assembled his core staff in his expansive office at the NFL headquarters on Park Avenue in New York. They had braced for the impact of canceling all NFL games the day before. The commissioner anticipated an angry backlash from disappointed fans. However, as his staff briefed him, he was surprised to learn that far from a backlash, fans were e-mailing and tweeting the NFL, thanking the league for canceling Sunday’s games. Nevertheless, what his director of operations was about to tell him would shock him even more.

“Morning, Commissioner.”

“What ya got, Ops?”

“This started last Monday, but has accelerated over the past week. Our owners are reporting their season ticket holders are dumping their tickets on sites like eBay and StubHub as fast as they can. Not only that, but they’re offering them at a discount, often a deep discount.”

“And are people buying them?” he asked.

“No, not really. Legal has more.”

“Judge?” he said, turning to his senior in-house lawyer.

“Not sure how to tell you this, but we’ve sniffed out at least two, and maybe three, class-action suits that are signing up people as fast as they can. They plan to sue us for failing to provide adequate security at our stadiums.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“Wish I was.”

His number two, the deputy commissioner, chimed in. “Look, all this got worse last Wednesday night, right after the president addressed the nation in prime time. Everyone was frightened before that, but after his address the entire country is waiting for the other shoe to drop and the next attack to happen. We need to talk about canceling the rest of the season.”

“I know, I know … but not yet. Yeah, I’ll say he bumbled questions. What the hell was he thinking telling the nation not only that we weren’t sure who was behind these attacks, but we also didn’t have a clue about where they came from? One of our interns could have handled that better!”

“We all know that, Commissioner, but what do we do now?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Paul Hood stepped out of the presidential limousine that had brought him from his home in Annapolis. It had been years since he had walked on the White House grounds, and a sea of memories washed over him. The national security advisor’s assistant had cleared Hood, as well as another visitor, onto the White House compound. That visitor was now waiting in a small office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

He was as prepared for this meeting as he possibly could be. At the last minute, he had learned the national security advisor would sit in on their meeting.

“Paul, thank you for coming,” Wyatt Midkiff said as the president’s secretary ushered Hood into the Oval Office.

“Mr. President, thank you for asking me to come in.”

“I’m eager for this meeting, Paul. I believe you know my national security advisor, Trevor Harward.”

“Yes, it’s been years, but nice to see you again.”

The pleasantries over, the three men sat down in the Oval Office’s conversational area. The president spoke first.

“Paul, we all know why we’re here. We’ve had a terrible national tragedy. Trevor’s staff has given me a thick file on Op-Center, but I have to tell you, I haven’t yet decided what to do. I wanted to hear your thoughts and then perhaps the three of us could consider how we might move forward.” The president paused, searching for just the right words.

“Our entire intelligence and national security communities seem to agree on but one issue: No one agency is at fault. So, by that, I’ve had to conclude they all are at fault. These attacks go well beyond any failures by a single individual or institution, and there’s more to this than just failing to connect the dots.” Midkiff paused for emphasis. “And God knows, Congress has raked me and my national security leadership over the coals over these attacks. And they may be right. If no one failed to do their job, and if the system doesn’t work, then I am to blame. I’m the president, and so it’s up to me to get it fixed. It seems we just didn’t have the … have the … how do you phrase it, Trevor?”

“We didn’t have the predictive intelligence and the ops-intel fusion, Mr. President.”

“Ah, thank you. Yes, terms I’ve become increasingly familiar with over the past several weeks. Do you agree with me thus far, Paul?”

“Absolutely, Mr. President.”

“And I think, as Trevor and my director of national intelligence have suggested, while our systems may have worked in the past, they didn’t work fast enough to stop these recent attacks. We’ve got large, capable organizations staffed by hardworking professionals doing their best to ensure our national security. Yet they all have their limits, to say nothing of their statutory and legal frameworks. Have I put this about right, Trevor?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“So I think we generally agree we need something new, and someone I can call on when the normal instruments of national security can’t move fast enough or in the right legal channels to get the job done. We probably need a more alert, anticipatory, and predictive system that can see these things coming so we have the time to take action. I think that’s where you come in, Paul.”

“I’m at your service, Mr. President.”

“Thank you. The national security advisor and I have reviewed the Op-Center file and discussed the possibility of reestablishing Op-Center, or something like Op-Center. I think we are of the opinion that if Op-Center had been around these attacks might have been prevented. Of course, we’ll never know for sure, and hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but we are of a mind to consider standing up an Op-Center-like organization.”

Midkiff paused and measured Hood carefully. “In addition to reviewing the file, I’ve had my staff give me a crash course on Op-Center’s history and especially its past successes. As you probably know, in my years in the Senate, national security wasn’t my primary focus, so I really didn’t fully know what you and your organization accomplished over those years. Now I feel I’m at least a bit caught up. If we believe it might be advisable to re-create an Op-Center organization, how should we move forward?”

The three men embarked on an earnest discussion focused on reestablishing Op-Center to deal with just the sort of between-the-seams challenges and intelligence shortcomings that had failed to anticipate and prevent the attacks on the NFL stadiums. The men agreed it was the right thing to do.

The president was of a mind-set, and Paul Hood found it difficult to disagree, the new Op-Center would need to have a new look and function differently than the old one. The objectives of its operation would remain the same: It had to take on issues and challenges no other agency or agencies could, but there would be substantial differences. These differences had to do with speed and execution. The goal was the same: to protect American citizens at home as well as American interests around the world. The men discussed a host of details, and after almost an hour of intense discussion, they had resolved most of the hard spots and agreed in principle on their plan.

“So, Paul, the next question is who should lead Op-Center? As you might imagine, this is a huge assignment, and having the right Op-Center director stand it up again can make or break our efforts. We have discussed this in great detail here, and I think — we think — you’re the right man for this assignment.”

There was a long pause, and the president could see Paul Hood was struggling with what he was about to say.

“Mr. President, I’m honored, first of all, by your commitment to reestablish Op-Center, and second, by the high honor of offering me this position.” Hood was silent for several moments. Finally, and a bit abruptly, he said, “Sir, may we have a moment alone?”

Trevor Harward had been around the block, and he saw Wyatt Midkiff was struggling with how to respond. He offered a way out. “Mr. President, we’re running a bit over time, so I’ll just step out and ask your secretary to adjust your calendar.”

“Yes, Trevor, thank you.”

When the door closed, the president stared at Paul Hood.

“Paul?”

“Mr. President, again, I am honored by your confidence in me. However, I cannot accept this assignment.”

“Paul, I’m not offering this to you to make you feel good. Believe me, we discussed this at length before you arrived. My national security advisor and I have vetted several potential candidates, and I assure you that you are our consensus choice. We need you, Paul.”

There was again a long silence before Hood continued. “Mr. President, I would like to do this, believe me. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’ve recently been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”

Now it was Midkiff’s turn to pause as he digested what Hood had just told him. ALS — or Lou Gehrig’s disease — had no cure, and people with this condition deteriorated rapidly and often quite dramatically. “Oh, Paul, I am so sorry!”

“Thank you, Mr. President. At the moment I seem to be doing just fine, but there’s just too much at stake if I’m not a hundred percent tomorrow, next week, or a month from now. As I suspect you might know — and trust me, Mr. President, I now know vastly more about this condition than I ever wanted to know — the problems arise when your physical abilities begin to degrade. The difficulty is, they degrade rapidly and often unpredictably. I’m afraid I need to give this condition my full attention.”

The president searched for something soothing to say. “Paul, perhaps you could just get things moving, gather a strong cast around you, and then hand over the reins to someone else later.”

“Thank you, Mr. President, but as I said, there’s too much at stake here, and right now my attention is on coping with this condition as best I can.”

The president paused again. “Paul, I know you’re a patriot; this difficult decision you’ve just made only confirms that. If there were any way that you thought you could do this, I know you would. So I respect your decision.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“But to be honest with you, we were counting on you doing this. I don’t know how else to ask this, but if not you, who?”

“Mr. President, I hope you don’t think this is too forward of me, but I may have just the right man for this assignment. And he’s right across the street waiting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Do you have time to meet him right now?”

Wyatt Midkiff sat back and considered for a long moment the need to move and move quickly, Paul Hood’s condition, and the nation’s vulnerabilities. Then he stood up, walked to his desk, and punched the button on his phone that connected him to his secretary.

“Alice, clear my calendar for the rest of the afternoon and ask Mr. Harward to come back in here.”

The president turned back to Hood. “All right, then, Paul, let’s meet your man.”

“I’ll have him here in a moment, Mr. President.”

Trevor Harward rejoined the president and Paul Hood. Midkiff sought to skate around the issue of Hood’s condition, but he would have none of that. He restated the reasons for his inability to serve and moved on to his nominee for Op-Center director. Hood assured both men the individual he had sought out was eminently and uniquely qualified to lead a reconstituted Op-Center. He handed the president and Harward a brief biographical sketch. They discussed the Op-Center designee’s qualifications, and neither the president nor his national security advisor could fault Hood’s logic, or the man’s qualifications.

The president did recall the man, if a bit vaguely, from his time in the Senate. A four-star Navy admiral leading first the United States Pacific Command, and subsequently the United States Central Command, could never operate completely below the radar of a U.S. senator, even one who was not focused directly on foreign policy or defense matters.

“I do recall the admiral had impressive credentials and was always well thought of. I seem to remember his name being mentioned as a candidate for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Midkiff offered.

“He was,” Hood replied, “but your predecessor chose someone else.”

“Was that all there was to it?” the president asked.

“There was an issue when he was Central Command commander,” Trevor Harward added.

“Mr. Harward has it right, Mr. President,” Hood replied. “There was an incident, one not well publicized, where he was ordered to conduct a strike on a small city in Afghanistan because al Qaeda operatives were thought to have seized control of the city. He told the president and his secretary of defense the strike would cause massive civilian casualties but was ordered to do the strike anyway. He refused.”

“Bet that went over well with my predecessor,” the president said.

“I’ve never asked him to tell me the full story, Mr. President, but from what I hear the president finally recognized the wisdom of what the admiral recommended and never found cause to relieve him of his duties. Still, his secretary of defense never got over it and did everything he could to sandbag the admiral’s candidacy for the chairmanship. He was eased out of his tour as Central Command commander five months early and retired as one of the most accomplished, and honored, flag or general officers I’ve known in my lifetime.” Hood paused before continuing. “I trust him, Mr. President. Along with his leadership and managerial qualities, he’s a man of immense integrity. I think that’s an important attribute for the man to whom you will be delegating this much power.”

“That’s a strong endorsement, Paul,” the president replied, “and a sobering one. But tell me this. What qualities do you think he has that make him the right fit for Op-Center?”

“Mr. President, he puts service above self, will do what is right for the nation, and will never lie to power. I will submit to you, sir, this relationship between you and your new Op-Center director has to be built on trust. He may often have to move quickly, do what he feels needs to be done, and inform you or Mr. Harward after the fact. For this to work, you will have to trust him.”

Chase Williams waited at the secretary’s desk, anticipating the doors to the Oval Office would open at any moment. He had surrendered his cell phone at the entry of the West Wing and held only a thin Bosca black leather portfolio.

“Admiral, the president will see you now,” the president’s secretary said. “You can go right in.”

Williams opened the door to the Oval Office and strode toward the president’s desk. Wyatt Midkiff was already out in front of his desk to greet him.

Midkiff immediately sized Williams up as a man who didn’t appear intimidated walking into the Oval Office. The six-foot-tall, 170-pound Williams was attired in a Brooks Brothers blue suit and a red and white club tie. Fashionable, but not trendy, Midkiff found himself thinking, and noted Williams didn’t carry himself in the rigid way some former military officers did.

The president prided himself on his ability to size people up quickly and accurately. Confident, self-assured, but not full of himself was his initial assessment.

“Admiral, welcome,” Midkiff began. “I know you know Paul, but I don’t believe you’ve met my national security advisor, Trevor Harward.”

“A pleasure, Mr. Harward.”

“Likewise, Admiral.”

“Well, let’s get to it, shall we?” the president said as he gestured for the three men to sit in the conversational area in the center of the Oval Office. “Admiral, candidly, I have to tell you this is quite a surprise. Other than a brief biographical sketch Mr. Hood provided us, we don’t know a lot about you. Can we assume you’re here because you might be interested in the job as Op-Center director?”

“A job,” Williams said reflectively. “I think we all agree that what we’re talking about is something more than a job. If there is a way I can continue to serve my country, then I’d like to learn more. I have Paul’s perspective on this. Now I’m here to listen to what you have in mind.”

Midkiff considered this. The man had said it without flourish or smugness; it was an honest statement of his position. “Yes, well, Admiral, as you probably know, our analysis of recent events has convinced me we have a missing piece in our national security apparatus. We believe we need to reconstitute something like Op-Center that Paul here used to run.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Williams replied neutrally.

“Paul has told me he’s not the right person to lead this new entity, but he recommends we consider you for the, ah, the position. Are we all on the same page thus far?”

“I believe we are, Mr. President.”

“Good. As you know, I was a bit surprised when Paul declined the job and then had you waiting, ready to meet with me. What are your thoughts about how we should proceed?”

“To begin with, Mr. President, I think you should tell me what your expectations are,” Williams replied. “In the military, we always begin with a clear understanding of the commander’s intent, and I should like to know what that is.”

Wyatt Midkiff had been a politician for more than three decades. Almost without conscious thought, he continued to size up Williams. Outwardly, the admiral was disarmingly average and would not stand out in a group of senior executives or government officials. Yet it was impossible to miss the man’s focus and strength. Above all else, the president was immediately taken by his quiet intensity and especially his ability to listen. To his surprise and chagrin, Midkiff felt Williams could almost anticipate what he was thinking — his concerns, his apprehensions, and even his reservations. By any measure, Midkiff sensed, this was a formidable individual, one not to be underestimated, and certainly not one to be misled or toyed with.

“Yes, all right then,” Midkiff replied. “I think we agree our current organizations are unable to anticipate and, more importantly, prevent attacks like the ones that occurred earlier this month. And Trevor here and his staff have suggested we reconstitute something like Op-Center to work in those areas where our current organizations can’t often go or can’t be effective. Trevor, do you want to jump in?”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Harward replied. Turning to Williams, the national security advisor was now equally direct. “Admiral, Mr. Hood and I thought it best if at some point we left you and the president alone to have this important conversation one-on-one, but first, I wanted to weigh in as national security advisor.”

“Yes, Mr. Harward, I’m listening.”

“We’re all familiar with Op-Center’s enviable record under Paul’s guidance. Yet all institutions have their successes and failures. I think we’d all be naive to think the organizations involved didn’t sometimes get into turf wars. Those turf wars did arise between the intelligence community, Defense, and the old Op-Center. Would you agree with me on that, Paul?”

Hood’s antennae were up; he didn’t know where Harward was going with this.

“I think that’s fair, though as I recall, you may not have been privy to all that went on when Op-Center was called on,” Hood offered.

“All right, I may not have, but my point, gentlemen, is as the president’s national security advisor, I and my staff have the primary responsibility to advise the president on all matters impacting the security of our nation. While the president will always have the final call, I would hope we use Op-Center only in those special circumstances where it’s specifically appropriate, within its charter. I would hope you don’t have in mind that Op-Center would be the first responder every time there’s a national crisis.”

The president didn’t mind his national security advisor standing his ground, but he didn’t want this to start out as an adversarial relationship.

“Trevor,” Midkiff said, “you know we’ll be mindful of that. I’m certain the admiral’s thirty-five years of military service have left him with a well-nuanced view of when the normal levers of national power are sufficient and when we need to turn to Op-Center in a crunch. Admiral?”

“You are both right, Mr. President. I think we all recognize and respect Mr. Harward’s position as your primary advisor on all national security matters. I agree with him and believe we all view a reconstituted Op-Center as an instrument you would use only when the situation called for it.” Williams paused for a long moment, and then continued. “So I’ll say this carefully, Mr. President, and forgive me for being so blunt, but if I take this assignment, I work for you, period. I respect your position as national security advisor, Mr. Harward, but if I think there is an issue for the president’s attention and his attention alone, I will make that known to him — directly, and only to him.”

Trevor Harward, normally quite good at concealing his emotions, was visibly taken aback. He had not expected this. He sat forward, clearly taking issue with what Williams was proposing.

“Mr. President,” Williams continued, “if you wish to put the national security advisor in the picture, I will accept that, but I want to make it crystal clear that I won’t work through Mr. Harward. I have no issue in working with him, but only at your direction.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, and Wyatt Midkiff knew he was the only one who could break it.

“Yes, well, I think that captures it appropriately, Admiral. I would expect you to come directly to me, and I’ll make the call when Mr. Harward and his capable staff need to become involved.” The president knew his national security advisor’s feathers were ruffled, but at the same time he was becoming increasingly comfortable with Williams. “Gentlemen, as you suggested earlier, Admiral Williams and I need to spend a few moments one-on-one while I consider him for this assignment. Let’s table this, and other agency relationships, until the two of us have had a chance to talk.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Harward and Hood said nearly simultaneously as they rose and left the Oval Office.

The president waited several moments after the door to the Oval Office closed. Wyatt Midkiff’s initial assessment of Chase Williams had left him with a positive impression. Now it was time to dig deeper.

“Admiral, well, here we are, alone at last. A meeting I didn’t anticipate but one you clearly did. I must confess I feel you have me at a disadvantage.”

“I assure you, Mr. President, I didn’t come in here with an elaborate pitch for why you should select me to lead Op-Center. I came here to listen. I’m sure you have a long list of exceptionally well-qualified candidates who could serve in this capacity.”

“Perhaps so, but none of them have Paul Hood’s recommendation. Paul’s not a politician; he’s a patriot. He says the same of you. Tell me, Admiral, have you and Paul known each other professionally?”

“No, Mr. President. I was aware of Mr. Hood’s service as Op-Center director years ago when I was serving on the National Security Staff as a Navy captain. But I was pretty far down the food chain then, so we had no direct interaction.”

“I see. So because you’ve served on the National Security Staff before, I’m sure you appreciate Mr. Harward’s position.”

“I do, Mr. President. For my money, he’s got one of the toughest jobs in government, especially during these challenging times.”

The conversation continued for forty-five minutes, the two men measuring each other, discussing national security, sharing ideas regarding what Op-Center should look like, and when it should and should not be called into action. They talked about issues from staff size to possible locations for Op-Center to relationships with the rest of the executive branch. They also were in general agreement Op-Center’s initial focus should be to deal with international crises, nipping potential attacks on the United States far from America’s shores.

The president wanted to know more about Williams’s background and he learned a great deal. Chase Williams was a military brat, the son of a career Marine Corps officer and a schoolteacher. He was a middle child with one older brother and one younger sister. He chose the Naval Academy and graduated third in his class. His class standing afforded him immediate graduate-education opportunities, but he turned them down. Instead, he chose to go directly to sea duty because, for Williams, going to sea and leading sailors on a Navy destroyer was the purest form of naval service. More than that, he understood the privilege of service; this was where he felt he could serve best. He loved his nation, his Navy, and his enlisted sailors. Those priorities guided him as a young ensign and as a four-star admiral.

Their discussion ranged from the professional into the personal. Though Williams was a widower, he and Midkiff both were grounded in traditional marriage, had grown children, and relished the prospect of grandchildren. Neither played golf, and both were voracious readers of historical biography.

The longer the conversation went, the more Wyatt Midkiff came to recognize the qualities Chase Williams brought to the table and could bring to Op-Center. Yet while the conversation was amiable and professional, the two men had not addressed some thorny and difficult questions.

“Admiral, I understand that you crossed swords with my predecessor while you were at Central Command. I know the barest outlines of that incident. Is there anything more you’d like to add?”

“What happened is a matter of record, Mr. President. I was given what I judged to be an unlawful order. I refused to carry it out. That’s part of my officer’s oath.”

“Your officer’s oath?”

“Yes, Mr. President. As you probably remember from your naval service, when enlisted men or women join our military, reenlist, or get promoted, they take an oath, part of which includes ‘and obey the orders of the president of the United States and the officers appointed over me.’”

“Yes, well, that sounds reasonable,” Midkiff replied, doing nothing more than trying to be an active listener.

“It does, Mr. President. However, as you also likely recall, the officers’ oath contains no such language, only that the officer will ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’”

“And I suspect you’re going to tell me why, Admiral.”

“Two words, Mr. President. My Lai. Vietnam in 1968. Soldiers of Charlie Company murdered more than three hundred Vietnamese villagers. Their company commander was Captain William Calley. At his trial, Calley’s defense was he was just following orders.”

“Yes, Admiral, I’m aware of that history. And so you refused to follow your president’s orders?”

“I did.”

“In hindsight, was there anything either of you could have done to defuse that situation? I’m asking not out of curiosity, but just to be sure we begin our relationship on the right foot.”

Williams paused to carefully frame his words. “Sir, some things can be anticipated in advance, others not. They have to be defined in practice. Like William Calley’s platoon sergeant, I was given an order to kill civilians — a large number of civilians. Not without some serious consideration, I felt was the order was unlawful. I did what was required in such situations. I first respectfully and privately pointed out that this was, in fact, an unlawful order. I then tried to get the order rescinded. When that was unsuccessful, I had but one option: I refused, openly and respectfully, to carry out the order.”

“And that’s why you’re being as blunt as you are in this office, especially with my national security advisor?”

“I don’t intend to be blunt, Mr. President. I’m respectful of your office and of the tough job your national security advisor has. But, Mr. President, if I may be direct.”

“By all means.”

“What happened to me notwithstanding, the U.S. military has centuries of tradition. It also has an enormous body of directives spelling out roles and responsibilities, command relationships, statutory and regulatory rules, and authorities laid out in the U.S. Code and military regulations. Other than on the battlefield, there is little that is opaque.”

“Yes, I’m following you, Admiral. I’ve learned a great deal about the military as commander in chief.”

Chase Williams couldn’t miss the fact that the president was sounding a bit wounded. He softened his tone. “I know you have, Mr. President. As an outsider looking in, it appears to me you have a strong and professional working relationship with our military leadership. And I would offer that part of what makes that all work are the clear-cut roles and responsibilities I just mentioned. So all I’m saying, Mr. President, is that before you and I embark on a mission to reconstitute Op-Center, the most important thing we need to do is to clarify our relationship, even to the point of where we may find ourselves in disagreement.”

“In protecting our nation, we may have to kill people. There may be collateral damage and unintended consequences to our actions. There will always be three considerations on the table. The first is the safety of America — the mission. The second is the lives of innocents and those affected if and when we take action. And, finally, the lives of those who will go into harm’s way in our service. Regarding the role of Op-Center, you and I, Mr. President, will be responsible for balancing those three things within the bounds of our duty, our judgment, and the constraints of the Constitution.”

In that instant, President Midkiff knew what Paul Hood had known all along. This was the right man for the job. Williams’s reference to “when we take action” and “our duty” were not lost on him. He and Chase Williams were entering a partnership and a course of action that was at once dangerous, uncertain, and necessary. The president also now knew what Paul Hood had meant when he had talked about trust.

Midkiff exhaled deeply. “Admiral, I understand and I agree. We should have no confusion regarding what I expect of you, what you expect of me, and what we both expect of Op-Center. I know we’ll have further discussions like this, but if we move forward with this understanding, then I think we can both carry out our duties.”

Without conscious thought, both men extended their hands. Their eyes met as each gripped the other’s hand firmly.

After a comfortable silence, Williams spoke first. “Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate your understanding and your confidence. With your permission, I do have one remaining order of business.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t need anything in writing, although I suspect there are others who will. So I’ll leave that to you. What I’d like from you is a simple statement of what you want me to do. What is your command guidance, or, as my Army and Marine Corps colleagues would say, what is the commander’s intent?”

Midkiff could now answer without hesitation. “Admiral, I want you to lead Op-Center, and I want you to be single-minded in your devotion to protecting this nation and its citizens. I can’t put it more plainly than that. And as you stated, you will report directly to me.”

“Very well, Mr. President. Is there anything else?” Williams asked with just a touch of finality in his voice.

Wyatt Midkiff paused to study the man. Is it really that simple for him? he found himself thinking. Protect the nation. No agenda. No maneuvering. No power play. For the president, it was rare in his political experience. It was, Midkiff reflected, most refreshing. “There is just one thing, Admiral. Will there be a role for Paul Hood in your organization?”

“When Paul first sought me out for this role, I asked him if he would be willing to serve as a consultant. He has assured me he would, as long as”—here Williams permitted himself a slight smile—“it was as an unpaid consultant. He has also made me fully aware of his condition, and we both feel it should not prevent him, at least for now, from serving in that capacity.”

Midkiff nodded. “How long will it take you to get Op-Center up and running?”

“Mr. President, I would like to give you a definitive answer right now, but I do need to study this and get back to you. Can you allow me four to six weeks to give this the care and attention it deserves? Then I can give you a plan and the way ahead.”

“That’s more than fair, Admiral,” the president said as he rose. “Let’s invite the others back in. They’ve been standing out there, no doubt keeping my secretary from doing her work.”

Harward and Hood were anticipating the president would evaluate Williams and agree to consider him to lead Op-Center. Both were surprised when the president himself pulled open the door to the Oval Office and said, “Gentlemen, meet the new Op-Center director. Let’s get to work.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

It had been three weeks since the NFL stadium attacks, and the nation was slowly returning to normalcy. In the wake of the president’s ineffective news conference, the White House had worked tirelessly, and with some success, to put the nation at ease. The run-up to the Thanksgiving holiday helped. Americans can stay away from the malls only so long, and the retailers began to welcome the Christmas shoppers. If there was any beneficiary of the attacks, it was online merchants. A great many Americans still felt safest in their homes. Enhanced security at places where the public gathered was having a positive impact. The NBA was moving forward with its season, and the NFL had reached a tentative decision to resume the season this month, but with greater visible security at its stadiums.

On Capitol Hill, Congress continued the inevitable hunt for the guilty. The administration controlled neither house of Congress, and it was open season on the president’s national security leadership. Top leaders from the intelligence community, Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Justice were called before a wide array of committees, thoroughly grilled, and sent away to “clean things up.” Then, with the committee leaders’ posturing complete, as suddenly as they had begun, the hearings played themselves out. While the nation and Congress were moving on, the executive branch remained on point with a single message: This would not happen again.

Three hundred miles south-southwest of Capitol Hill, two men were focused on their mission and on their men. Major Michael Volner, United States Army, and Master Gunnery Sergeant Charles Moore, United States Marine Corps, had been together for close to three years. Volner was young for a major and old for a troop commander at the Joint Special Operations Command. Moore was a seasoned veteran of indeterminable age. Volner came to JSOC from the 75th Rangers; Moore from the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. The two stood together on the catwalk of one of the shoot houses at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

This shoot house was a single-story facility with walls and movable partitions of heavy-rubber, bullet-absorbent material. Below Volner and Moore on the catwalk, their special operations troop ran standard room-clearing drills, moving from room to room like laboratory mice in a maze.

“Clear left!”

“Moving!”

“Clear right!

“Moving!”

“I’m down!”

“Coming up!”

The work in the house was proficiency drill for these veteran shooters. The game was initiative-based tactics or IBTs — moving and shooting, or not shooting, depending on the threat and the target. The teams progressed like members of a ballet company as they went from one room to the next, adjusting and readjusting their formations as needed. Down on the floor of the house, paper targets depicting swarthy men holding guns, or coffee cups, were shot or not shot depending on the threat posed. The troop worked in fire teams of four to six shooters. It was primarily a drill for the team leaders, but depending on the flow of the action, anyone on the team could be the lead shooter through any given door. It was full-on, close-quarter, live fire and movement.

“They’ve done this dozens of times,” Moore observed, “but they never seem to get tired of it.” Thanks to their Peltor Tactical Pro MT15H7B sound-canceling headphones the two senior leaders could speak in normal conversation in spite of the shouting and shooting below.

“That’s a good thing, because there’s a strong chance we’ll be doing a lot more training and a lot less operating. We’re just not the flavor of the month — and may not be for some time.”

Volner was referring to the shift in the focus of special operations to indirect action — the training of foreign soldiers and the embedding of American special operators with partner-nation forces. Volner’s troop, like all of the JSOC strike elements, was a direct-action team. If a good direct-action mission did come along, it could easily go to another troop, although Volner knew, as did his Master Guns, theirs was the top-rated troop among the JSOC special mission elements. That might count for something, Volner reasoned, but probably not.

“Of course,” Volner continued, “I’m kinda stuck here. You, on the other hand, could always get out and write a book. I can see it on the shelves, Master Guns Moore Tells It like It Was.” Master Gunnery Sergeant Moore was also a tactical intelligence specialist and had been on the raid into Pakistan that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. He led the site exploitation effort on that famous SEAL raid.

Moore rolled his quid from one side of his mouth to the other and considered this. “Sir, if I write a book, you have my standing permission to kick my ass up between my shoulder blades and then shoot me. I’m not some blabby-mouthed Navy SEAL.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Master Guns.”

“You do that, sir. Meanwhile, let’s go down and see if one or two of those fire team leaders will let us in the stack. We got nothin’ else to do.”

Volner grinned. “Maybe, if we ask them politely.”

In a special operations assault, the key kinetic leaders were the fire team leads. The troop commander and the troop senior sergeant seldom had their guns in the fight. The troop sergeant managed the fight and coordinated the movement of his fire teams and the blocking elements. His troop commander was on two, and sometimes three, radios. He monitored the fight, coordinated the air assets, and kept higher headquarters informed. Both carried the responsibility for the fight, but they were seldom directly engaged. They ran the radios and stayed with the big picture. They could make adjustments and give direction, as a fight seldom goes as planned. Volner and Moore made their way down from the catwalk, each to a different fire team.

“Sergeant First Class Jamison,” Volner said to his alpha team leader. “Mind if I jump into the stack for a run or two?”

Jamison, a lanky former Special Forces A-Team sergeant, pursed his lips as he thought about his major’s request for a moment. “OK, Charlie, take a break.” Turning to Volner, he continued. “Major, you’ll be number four on the first door for this pass. And sir, I’d consider it a personal favor if you didn’t shoot one of my men.”

“Roger that, Sergeant,” Volner replied as he took his place in the file.

CHAPTER NINE

The president was not surprised, but his confidence was validated, when Chase Williams contacted him six weeks to the day after their initial meeting. He had cleared his calendar and waited for their early afternoon meeting. It was a blustery January day, yet the president, as was his custom, was in a crisp white shirt, tie loosened, and his sleeves rolled to his forearms.

“Admiral, welcome.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I trust you and your family had a wonderful Christmas holiday.”

“We did manage to break away and spend some time at Camp David. I know your wife passed away some years ago, but were you able to spend some time with your children?”

“Yes, thank you for asking. Our daughter invited us to her home in the Hollywood Hills. Our son managed to wrangle a week off from Goldman Sachs and got out of Boston just hours ahead of the blizzard that hit the Northeast days before Christmas.”

“Good, that’s great to hear. So here we both are, Admiral, reasonably relaxed and refreshed.”

“Yes, Mr. President. And sir, if I may, can I ask that you call me Chase? Some people like to wear their former military rank to the grave. I’m not one of them. If you’re OK with it, Chase would be better.”

“Fair enough. Chase, then. So how should we proceed?”

“Mr. President, I’ve studied the issues we discussed and consulted with a small circle of friends and associates I trust implicitly and have come to some tentative conclusions. I think what I’m about to present to you will both frame our concept of operations for Op-Center and provide you with the confidence it can serve you and our nation’s interests.”

“I’m eager to hear what you have to say.”

“Thank you. First of all, Mr. Harward was right in what he said when we met here six weeks ago. Op-Center shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when there is a crisis.”

“Good. I’m glad we agree on that.”

“I think, Mr. President, it’s important to give credit where credit is due. In the decade following 9/11, our traditional intelligence and security services became superb at finding and killing terrorists. Our conventional intelligence collectors and military capability were up to the task of containing the threats from Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia as they made attempts to export militarism or expand their spheres of influence, but things have changed.”

“I know they have, but how do we deal with these new threats?”

“As a start, Mr. President, we identify them for what they are. The available evidence we have thus far strongly suggests these stadium attacks weren’t the work of some agitated jihadists. This was a professional hit. The terrorists have taken a page from our use of contractors to support the U.S. military and have begun to contract out terrorism. Our current intelligence agencies and our military are superb at what they do. However, a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus on counterinsurgency, and the major budget cuts to our military capabilities have left us a step behind today’s emerging threats. This is especially true when it essentially becomes terror for hire.”

“So how do we get ahead of the power curve?”

“Do you remember the movie Top Gun, Mr. President?”

“Do I ever.”

“Remember Maverick’s saying, ‘I feel the need — the need for speed’?”

“Yes. That was kind of an unforgettable line.”

“That’s what we need. More speed. We need to turn inside the new threat’s OODA loop.”

“OODA loop?”

“Sorry, Mr. President. I’m still excising military acronyms from my vocabulary. OODA stands for ‘observe, orient, decide, and act.’ It was a brainchild of Air Force Colonel John Boyd, and, as you might guess, its first application was to fighter tactics.”

“Come to think of it, I believe I’ve at least heard the term before.”

“I suspect you don’t need or want a full tutorial on this, Mr. President, but boiled down to its basics, the OODA loop concept says all decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. Any entity, whether an individual or an organization, that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby ‘get inside’ the opponent’s decision cycle, get inside their OODA loop, and gain the advantage.”

“I think I see that. It’s a simple but elegant concept. So how do you see it applying to Op-Center?”

“It’s just this. As superb as our intelligence and military organizations are, there are several problems that come with their territory.”

“Go on.”

“First, there’s our intelligence community, our IC. It does a fine job in many areas, but it’s just not structured for rapid intelligence collation. It can’t get inside the new, professional terrorists’ OODA loop. There is simply too much lag time between when the information is collected as raw intelligence, analyzed, and converted into actionable intelligence. We collect plenty of intelligence; we can and do capture almost everything we need to take action. The problem lies in speedy processing of that information and focusing on anticipatory intelligence.”

“Anticipatory intelligence?”

“Yes. We need to build intelligence algorithms that use what we know or can surmise to anticipate what might happen next. To use a well-known sports metaphor, it’s roughly analogous to ‘skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’”

“So are you proposing we restructure our intelligence community? I know Adam Putnam is a good man, and he’ll be responsive.”

“No, I’m not. The IC does so many things well that you’ll lose far more than you gain if you turn them upside down and shake them real hard.”

“I see. So what are you proposing?”

“I’ll get to that in a moment, Mr. President, but there are two parts to this, and we need to discuss the military side also.”

“Fine.”

“Again, in the same vein as what I just said about the intelligence community, our military is the finest in the world and it is battle-hardened. There are so many things it does superbly; we should not fiddle with what it does.”

Williams paused for a moment.

“However, Mr. President, there is a problem with how we conduct proportional military response today. Even our Tier One special operations elements need time, permissions, and information before they go out the door. Quite often tactical, theater, congressional, and even political issues get in the way, and it takes time to go up the line for a launch-the-strike order. This also applies to the prepositioning of forces early on in anticipation of a strike. Unfortunately, the way our military must work prevents them from getting inside these new, professional terrorists’ OODA loop.”

“So how do you see Op-Center moving faster than the terrorists?”

“The concept of operations I have for Op-Center is structured to get inside the new professional terrorist threat. I’ll ask just two things from you, Mr. President, and I think these are things on which you’ll want to get buy-in from your intelligence community and your military leadership.”

“What are they?”

“First, I’ll need Op-Center to have access to all intelligence feeds, and in real time. I’ll need unimpeded access. If it flows to Mr. Putnam’s National Counterterrorism Center, it flows to Op-Center.”

“If we agree to do that, what will you do differently than what they do at the NCTC?”

“Mr. President, we’re facing a situation where, as good as the intelligence community analysts are, a human in the loop actually slows things down and all but guarantees failure. To make Op-Center work to defeat today’s threat, I need to hire bright minds from Silicon Valley. Then I have to have them build collation architecture with the right sensitivities and algorithms that can electronically filter all raw intelligence data and distill a problem faster than even the best analysts. It’s the only way we can generate the anticipatory intelligence we need to get inside any plotters’ OODA loop.”

“You’re not talking about ‘automating’ our intelligence, are you?”

“No, I’m not. There will always be a human at the end of the process. We just need to adapt what Google, Amazon, and eBay do so well. I can build a ‘Geek Tank’ that can get us anticipatory and actionable intelligence quickly enough so we can respond before a terrorist strikes. I’ll have to hire the best talent available and we’ll need to pay them what they’re worth in the competitive marketplace. I don’t anticipate it will be cheap.”

“I expect it won’t be, however, it sounds like it’s worth a try and we do need the best minds we can bring to the problem. Yet how will you solve the issue you described regarding how fast our military can respond?”

“I know our military is stretched thin as it is, so I need to be economical with what I request. I propose that Op-Center have a dedicated Joint Special Operations Command element that will allow it to conduct platoon-sized operations supported by ground enablers and aviation components that are completely under expeditionary command of Op-Center. If the Special Operations Command commander can put this in place, and brief all combatant commanders that when this special JSOC unit is operating in their area it must receive the appropriate amount of support and operational security it needs, I think we can have a military unit that can get inside the enemy’s OODA loop.”

“That sounds like a reasonable request.”

“Nevertheless, there’s one more thing. I will need to have authority to surge this group into theater when there is even a hint they may be needed. There will be false alarms, and we may well surge this unit a half dozen times without having them see action, but that’s the only way they can be on-scene to deal with a short-fused crisis.”

“If it’s a small enough footprint, I think we can make that work.”

“Thank you, Mr. President, and per what we discussed during our initial meeting, my primary focus with Op-Center will be on external dangers, reaching out beyond our shores to nip the threat in the bud before it reaches our soil. In the military we call this ‘shooting the archer instead of the arrow.’”

“Yes, I’m familiar with that term.”

“As you know all too well, sir, the prohibitions against using military forces on U.S. territory are well established in law and practice. However, if we get actionable intelligence on a threat within our borders we will pass that to the attorney general and the FBI director and they can bring their Critical Incident Response Group to bear. I’ve already established a dialogue with both your AG and FBI director and they are receptive to this.”

“Good, Chase. I appreciate you taking that on. And I agree, let’s have Op-Center focus outward for now.”

“Then my final request is this, and I’ll say this carefully, sir. I have picked Paul Hood’s brain extensively, and part of the reason the old Op-Center ultimately failed was, personalities aside, it presented a threat to the intelligence community and to the Pentagon. You have the authority to revive Op-Center. However, if you want it to succeed, you’re going to have to get your national security team, your intelligence community, and your military chiefs on board. I can’t do that, sir. Only you can.”

Midkiff considered this. He knew Williams was right, but it was easier said than done, even for the commander in chief. “I think you’re on the right track, but give me some time to think about just how to go about this.”

“I understand, Mr. President. Here is a memo that captures the concept of operations for Op-Center. It contains everything we just discussed, and the mechanics for putting these procedures into place.”

“Thank you for this. I’m virtually certain we’ll get the kind of buy-in you want. Once we do, how soon do you think you can get Op-Center up and running?”

“If you have the resources, give me just three months and I can have a skeleton organization going. In eight to ten months we can be fully functioning.”

“I know this is an ambitious undertaking. I’ve already consulted with the House and Senate majority and minority leadership. None of them want to see attacks like these happen again. You won’t have a blank check, but move forward aggressively and let us worry about resourcing Op-Center.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate your vote of confidence. It’s three months and eight to ten months, then — less if I can make it work. And I’ll try not to give you sticker-shock over my hires for the Geek Tank.”

“That’s an ambitious timeline, Chase, and I’ll hold you to it. As for your Geek Tank, get the best minds you can working on this. We can’t give them stock options, so pay what you must to get them on board.”

Their meeting complete, the president walked Chase Williams to the door of the Oval Office. Williams had done his part. Now it was up to Wyatt Midkiff to do his.

Late that night, forty miles southeast of the White House, near Mechanicsville, Maryland, there was no moon, few stars, and enough low fog to obscure almost everything on the ground.

“Altitude, altitude!” the crew chief shouted to her pilot as he brought their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter into a hover over the warehouse. She was a veteran with thousands of hours in the air, yet her voice had an urgent screech to it.

“Got it,” the pilot replied into his lip mic as he pulled collective and stabilized the bird in an eighty-foot hover over the roof of the massive building. Stay on the instruments, he said to himself, willing himself not to look out into the inky blackness surrounding their helicopter. Don’t fight the controls. EASY with it.

“Now!” he said, working to keep the emotion from his voice.

The crew chief turned in her seat and looked back into the cabin where eight members of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group waited for the signal. The HRT — Hostage Rescue Team — all wore black coveralls, Kevlar helmets, and their faces were either blackened or hidden by balaclavas. The team’s primary weapons were the same, the Special Operations Peculiar Modification M4 carbines with SU-231 EO Tech holographic sights and LA-5 IR lasers/pointers. The FBI armory had newer rifles, but most on the HRT team were former special operators or SWAT veterans, and the SOPMOD M-4 was what they were used to and what they were comfortable with. Their secondary weapons strapped to their thighs ranged from Glocks to SIG SAUERs to a 1911.45. They wore body armor and Rhodesian vests with an impressive array of urban assault gear. All had PSC-15 night vision goggles.

She pulled an infrared light from her torso harness and, leaning from her cabin perch, signaled the ground, moving the light in a circular motion. As she did, the assault team in the back of the Black Hawk kicked out two hundred-foot-long, four-inch-thick braided nylon fast-ropes. Seconds later, four HRT members slid down each length of rope and landed on top of the warehouse. They were like drops of oil coming down a string. The last man down brought a section of climbing rope.

As the team on the roof signaled all clear, the pilot pulled collective and lifted the Black Hawk into the dark sky above.

On the roof, the team leader split his men into two groups. He took four other men with him as they scrambled down the climbing rope to the ground while his number two led two other men to the one skylight on the roof.

On the deck, the team leader positioned two of his men in front of the main warehouse door. A third man put a small explosive strip-charge on the door, ready to breach the door at his leader’s command. When the two men nodded they were ready, he whispered into the boom mic of his squad radio, “Now.”

“Now,” repeated his number two on the roof.

On the ground level, the door blew back into the building. The team poured into the room, sweeping the interior with their M4 rifles. They then began the well-choreographed actions of clearing the first room and moving on to the next, and the next.

On the roof, the number two man lifted the skylight and tossed in two flash-bang stun grenades. Immediately following the explosions, the second team kipped through the opening and dropped to the floor of the room below.

Inside the warehouse it was twenty seconds of measured violence as the teams moved from room to room — shooting, clearing, and marking bodies of the fallen. Then calls of “clear” came from various points inside the building.

The chattering of the rotor blades grew louder as the Black Hawk descended into the vacant parking lot adjacent to the building. As the crew shut down the bird’s engines and the blades began to coast to a stop, shrill whistles blew from inside and outside the building. Then came the loud announcement, “Exercise over — EndEx, EndEx.”

The exercise coordinator walked up to the team lead. “Congratulations, you killed the terrorists and also half the hostages.”

They all knew it would be a long debrief back at the Quantico CIRG team facility.

CHAPTER TEN

Wyatt Midkiff sat in the Oval Office. He was anticipating a meeting he knew he needed to have, but one he was not looking forward to.

He had used his considerable political and social skills over the past six weeks to calm his national security advisor’s concerns. Yet he knew Trevor Harward was still anxious about this new venture. Punctual to the minute, Harward entered the president’s office at precisely 0900.

“Morning, Mr. President. How did your meeting with Admiral Williams go?”

“It went well, Trevor; actually, better than expected. I asked the admiral — and by the way, he prefers being addressed as Chase — to draft up a memo capturing what we discussed and get it to you by the end of the week. I think we are ready to move forward with Op-Center.”

“That’s good, Mr. President. I think it’s something we both believe the nation needs.”

“I agree, Trevor. However, you’re my national security advisor, and I want to ensure we both come to an understanding regarding the way we want to use Op-Center and the relationship I’ll have with Chase Williams.”

“Mr. President, I appreciate you raising this. I admit I initially found Chase’s directness and insistence that he come directly to you when he felt the need a bit off-putting. However, as you and I have talked about this over the past six weeks, I recognize you should have the option of communicating with him, and only him, directly if the situation demands it.”

“Give it to me straight, Trevor; I sense you still have reservations.”

“Mr. President, I’ve served in this town for a long time. As you know, I have considerable experience in national security matters from tours in the Pentagon, State, the National Security Council, and elsewhere. I was pretty well plugged into some of the missions the old Op-Center was called on to do.”

Harward paused to frame his next words carefully.

“When you recruited me, Mr. President, we agreed that due to the stakes involved, there had to be complete trust between us in all we did—”

“And we have had that in our time together, haven’t we?” Midkiff interrupted.

“Absolutely, Mr. President, and I’m honored by the trust you’ve placed in me. Yet I’m your national security advisor. At the end of the day, all I bring you is advice — well-reasoned and well-staffed advice — but advice nonetheless. In the final analysis, that’s all it is.”

“But Trevor, don’t minimize your importance to my administration.”

“I’m not, Mr. President, but I am most certainly motivated to protect you as well as advise you. Once you put Op-Center in motion, it will begin to do things I believe we both want done. When needed, you will likely give Chase Williams broad discretion and freedom of action. That authority will sometimes allow him to act first and inform you after the fact.”

“Well, yes, I think we agree on that.”

“Then that becomes the critical question. Do you, as president, trust Chase Williams with the broad discretion and freedom of action he needs to have as Op-Center director? Are you certain he will be thoughtful and discreet as he takes action? This is important, Mr. President, because without putting too fine a point on it, his actions could make or break your presidency.”

There was a long silence, and Harward could tell the president needed a moment to weigh the full import of what he had just told him. As for Midkiff, he was moved. As with all good politicians, he was inspired by the loyalty and selflessness of a hardworking subordinate.

“Trevor, first of all, thank you for that courageous and forthright analysis, and while I have never framed it the way you just did, I have indeed thought about this and thought about it deeply. I do trust the man. I trust him to do the right thing for our nation.”

“And for your presidency?” Harward asked.

Midkiff smiled. “Can the two be separated?”

“Then let’s move forward, Mr. President.”

The call between the secretary of defense and the commander of the United States Special Operations Command had been brief and to the point. It had not been preceded by the countless hours of staff work by each of the respective staffs that typically lead up to such calls between two senior national security principals.

The president had directed his SECDEF to deliver a measured, but firm, message to the SOCOM commander. Op-Center was being put back into operation and the new Op-Center director needed one of SOCOM’s JSOC teams under his exclusive operational control. The secretary of defense told him the Op-Center director would visit him at SOCOM headquarters in Tampa within the week and that the president expected him to have a JSOC team ready to second to Op-Center by then.

Armed with his mandate from the president, Chase Williams sat at his desk in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with an Excel spreadsheet in front of him.

In the six weeks since the initial meeting with the president, Williams had worked nearly around the clock. In addition to developing an operational blueprint for Op-Center, he had been working on a short list of the talent he would need for the new organization.

He had promised the president he would have a skeleton organization up and running in three months. He had some phone calls to make.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Would you like some more coffee, Admiral?”

“Thank you, but I’m just fine.”

Chase Williams had been waiting in the outer office of the Commander, United States Special Operations Command for just under twenty minutes. It was unacceptable by any standard, but the SOCOM commander was making a point. So be it, Williams thought. I’ve certainly come down here to make mine. After a few more minutes, the attractive and aloof gatekeeper lifted the receiver. She listened for a few seconds and then replaced it.

“The commander will see you now.”

Williams rose and made his way into the general’s office. He stepped inside just as General Mark Patrick eased himself from his chair and walked around the desk to greet him.

“Admiral Williams, sorry to keep you waiting. Welcome and please have a seat.” He returned to his desk and picked up the phone. “Tracy, please hold all calls with the exception of the Southern Command commander. I’ll speak with him.” He glanced over at Williams. “That’s a call I have to take.” He replaced the receiver and took a seat, seemingly to now afford his guest his full attention. “Now, Admiral, what can I do for you — oh, and can I get you some more coffee?”

Williams leveled his gaze at the SOCOM commander for a full twenty seconds before he replied. “First of all, General, I’ve had quite enough coffee. Secondly, you may call me Mr. Williams. Unlike you, I’m no longer on active duty, and it’s a title I relinquished when I left active service. Thirdly, when this meeting was scheduled, I asked that your Joint Special Operations Command commander be present. I see he’s not here.” Patrick moved to speak, but Williams forestalled him with a raised hand. “And finally, you know exactly why I’m here. I sent you a service support request that was explicit and detailed, both in the force composition and the command relationships that will govern my operational control of these assets. Are you telling me you don’t have that request or are not prepared to discuss it?”

“Well, Admiral, or Mr. Williams, if you prefer, this is highly irregular. My JSOC commander had a previous engagement, so I took the liberty of excusing him from this meeting. As for the transfer of operational control of SOCOM and JSOC assets to you that’s, ah, well, I’m not sure that’s advisable, or if it’s even legal.”

This time, Williams waited even longer before speaking. When he did, he seemed to soften. “General, I’ve been a type commander and a geographic combatant commander — twice. So I can understand the parochial and even the personal issues that go with releasing your people to the authority of someone else who intends to put them in harm’s way. And I have great respect for your position and your time; that’s why I sent that request, which is nothing short of a formal operational tasker, to you personally. Also, General, I didn’t summon you to Washington; I came to you.”

Williams leaned in toward Patrick and hardened his tone. “As a direct representative of the president and in keeping with current executive practice that is well within the guidelines of congressional oversight, I think you know I’m on firm legal ground. As for the ‘advisability’ you referred to, that is noted, and with due respect, it’s above your pay grade. Now, per the request you’ve had for a week and that I know you’ve read thoroughly, I want a full troop of JSOC commandos put solely under my direction with the orders and authorization to train and act exclusively at my discretion. I will want those designated assets at the 160th Special Operations Aviation Squadron and the 1st Special Operations Wing also fenced so they come under my authority and mine alone.” There was another long pause while the two men stared at each other. “Now, I understand this is an unusual request, but when you give it consideration, it’s not unlike the arrangements you have with the geographic combatant commanders and your theater special operations commanders. You send them assets, you support those assets in theater, and they, not you, employ them in accordance with standing theater guidelines and host-nation agreements. With the exception of stateside training authority, I’m simply another end user.”

The SOCOM commander had turned several shades darker and started to speak, but again, Williams silenced him with a raised hand. “Now, sir,” he continued with more steel in his voice, “you have two choices here. You can comply with this request and we can discuss how you would like me to deal with your subordinate commanders for the transfer of these assets, and we’ll do this with no interruptions, from the Southern Command commander or anyone else. Or, if you feel this is simply beyond your statutory or moral obligations as the SOCOM commander, you can resign. It’s not an easy thing, I assure you, but we all have to act within the constraints of our conscience and how we see our duty. There is a third alternative; I can simply have you relieved, but that serves neither your nor my interests, or our obligations. So, General, what’s it going to be?”

After a long moment, Patrick picked up the sheet of paper lying on his blotter and studied it. “You feel you need a full troop?”

“I do,” Williams said politely. “I will need a platoon-sized element on immediate standby and a second element in a lesser recall status. You know better than I the toll it takes on men and their families if they are kept on immediate flyaway status. So yes, I’ll need a full troop.”

“You’ll get what you need, Mr. Williams,” Patrick said, the tension in his voice palpable. “And I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” he continued as he rose abruptly, walked to the door, and opened it.

Williams walked out without another word, and no handshakes were exchanged.

A week later, Chase Williams handed the guard his credentials at the gate of the National Counterterrorism Center compound at Liberty Crossing, near McLean, Virginia. He had been here many times during his years in uniform, and he declined the guard’s offer of directions. Inside the compound, he drove the short distance to NCTC’s headquarters building and parked in a space marked “Op-Center Director.” Nice touch, he thought.

NCTC’s deputy director was on the curb to greet him. “Admiral, welcome. Mr. Putnam is expecting you. I’ll escort you to his office.” Better touch.

“You all have been a bit busy over the past several months, haven’t you?” Williams asked the deputy director as they entered the imposing six-story building.

“We’re up for the challenge, Admiral. Mr. Putnam has had the intelligence community in overdrive working to get to the bottom of who did this to us.”

Built on the foundations of the CIA’s Terrorist Threat Integration Center, with bullet- and blast-proof external windows cast to standards set after the Oklahoma City bombing, the NCTC looked like a fortress, and it was. The deputy director led Chase Williams past office after office with coded locks, each office essentially a vault, where the NCTC staff worked to fulfill its mission to lead the nation’s effort to combat terrorism at home and abroad. That was their mission, but they had failed.

As Chase Williams entered Adam Putnam’s spacious office, the director of national intelligence rose to greet him as the deputy director closed the door, leaving the two men alone.

“Chase, it’s nice to see you again.”

“Likewise, Adam.”

“The president’s given you a huge assignment, and we’re here to help in every way we can.”

“Appreciate that.”

Chase Williams reflected on his years-long relationship with Adam Putnam. When he had heard Putnam was selected as director of national intelligence he was cheered that the intelligence community — the IC — had gotten it right. Putnam was one of the most capable and least territorial professionals he knew. He understood Putnam was doing all he could to ensure the nation’s intelligence agencies sniffed out potential attacks on Americans at home or abroad and he also knew he felt a sense of professional failure over the “NFL attacks.”

“You mentioned you’d met with Trevor Harward and the national security staff,” Putnam continued. “They think they’ve teased out a motive for these attacks?”

“They may well have. First, I’d like to thank you for putting Op-Center on all your intelligence feeds. We’re still getting staffed and organized, and truth be known we don’t yet have the capacity to use all you’re providing, but we will in time. In the meantime, I appreciate your willingness to make our endeavor to track down whoever attacked us a team effort.”

“I didn’t anticipate we’d have any issues, Chase. We in the intelligence community let the nation down. You and your organization will go a long way to ensuring this doesn’t happen again.”

With that, the two men embarked on an extended conversation regarding what they knew and what they still didn’t know. Williams shared what he had gleaned from Trevor Harward and what the national security advisor had learned from Gamal Haaziq. They were in general agreement to focus their efforts in keeping with a motive of revenge, a line of investigation they had yet to mine. Putnam agreed to have his analysts take the lead on running this to ground while Williams got his Geek Tank up and running on all cylinders. While they both recognized that the nation, and especially the president, wanted answers and wanted to avenge the NFL attacks as soon as possible, they both knew they would embark on work that was often painfully slow and deliberate.

The meeting complete, Williams rose to leave. “Adam, we’re going to get this done.”

“We will, Chase. I know we will.”

Twenty miles due south of where Chase Williams and Adam Putnam were hammering out their long-term working relationships, two other men were also trying to make things happen — and just as quickly. “I want your two bulldozers down there. Trench it out another four to five feet and then we can pour the next two columns we need to build.”

“Got it,” the foreman said to the project manager.

“Will your team have any problem working overtime for a few hours? We’re paying time and a half.”

“I think they’ll go for it. But I’m kinda worried they’ll burn out and somebody will make a dumb-ass mistake and get someone hurt or killed. This pace has been kind of brutal.”

“That’s why we pay up for foremen with your experience,” the project manager replied, raising his voice to be heard as the massive dump truck thundered by.

The foreman grinned. “Thanks, but it’s still not an easy build. I’ll keep a sharp eye out, and we’ll do our best to balance the schedule and safety.”

“That’s the Hitte spirit!”

Hitte Construction had secured a lucrative contract to build a basement under the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the NGA, in Fort Belvoir North and the project manager would receive a substantial bonus if the massive construction project was completed early. He needed to push his team and push them hard. They hadn’t told him why they were building this basement under the NGA. All he had heard were rumors it was for an “important new organization.”

“So why the hell is this such a rush job? This is the government, after all, isn’t it,” the foreman asked.

“Hey, that’s way above my pay grade,” the project manager replied. “They don’t pay us to worry about that shit.”

Two days after his meeting with the director of national intelligence, Chase Williams sat in a small meeting room on the JSOC compound at Fort Bragg. He felt his business with JSOC called for a personal visit. The first of his two scheduled meetings had gone far better than the one with General Patrick at SOCOM headquarters just a few days before. The JSOC commander, a former 75th Ranger regimental commander and now a lieutenant general, had known exactly why Williams had come and what he needed. Far more than the SOCOM commander, he knew what it was to send men into dangerous and difficult situations. That was his job — had been his job. He also knew his primary role now was to assess, select, and train men for this most difficult of direct special operations tasks, not to command them in combat or even to select their missions. This didn’t mean he didn’t have his concerns. “I’ve given you one of my best troops, Admiral,” he told Williams. “If you get them hurt or killed, I will be the one to break the news to the families. I’ve had to call on recent widows and it’s something I’d like to avoid. You have your responsibilities, sir, as do I. So please, take care of our men.”

Now Williams waited for the troop commander and his senior enlisted advisor. The room was Spartan, just a small conference table, padded chairs but not comfy swivels, and a complex ceiling-mounted audio-visual projector. The coffee was in a plastic foam cup and it was lukewarm, but for the new Op-Center director, it somehow felt just right. The door opened and two men of medium height and starched battledress utilities stepped into the room. Williams himself was dressed in chinos and an open-collared Oxford shirt. He rose to meet them. Once introductions were made, the three seated themselves at the table.

“I understand you may have some work for us,” Major Mike Volner began.

“I just may,” Williams replied. “Tell me, have you been briefed on my organization or why you were seconded to me?” Volner glanced at his senior sergeant and both men shook their heads. Williams smiled. “Well, this will take a bit of explaining. Before we get to that, I’d like to learn more about each of you. If you would, Major, perhaps you could tell me something about yourself.”

Williams had been the given the files on these men, as well as the rest of the troop, but he wanted to hear it directly from them. Major Michael Volner was five feet ten inches tall and weighed 160 pounds, trim but not noticeably athletically built, with brown hair and brown eyes. If unremarkable in appearance, his background was anything but that.

Following the bitter divorce of his parents when he was twelve his father, a college professor, left the country only to be killed as a bystander of a car bomb four years later while teaching in Pakistan. His mother, a stay-at-home mom, fell prey to the ravages of solitary drinking and prescription pain killers to the point of being institutionalized. Raised from fourteen on by his maternal grandmother, he felt adrift and alone. His grandmother recognized his keen intelligence and little need of others and decided not to change him, but strengthen his existing traits. She taught him contract bridge at an early age and played with him as her partner in regional tournaments. He became a prodigy, able to accurately assess multiple possibilities, gifted with unbelievably quick decision-making abilities, and an almost unbeatable opponent. He also learned to read people as well as cards.

At sixteen he became fascinated with free-form rock climbing. He frequented various climbing sites and he watched and learned without formal training. Every weekend he climbed alone, perfecting his technique and building tremendous core strength. He trained and taught his body to perform remarkable feats. Volner attended Brown University on a scholarship and entered the Army right out of college. He was not a born leader, but became a leader by example. He readily took to military life and made the most of the professional and tactical training the Army afforded its infantry officers. The Army also taught him what his grandmother did not: To be a leader, you must first be a team player, and you must care for the men you lead. Volner had been both a platoon commander and a company commander with the 82nd Airborne and the 75th Rangers. Now he was a JSOC troop commander, or what in previous times had been called a Delta Force Team Leader.

If the major was something of a smooth article, his senior sergeant was not. Master Gunnery Sergeant Moore was similar in stature, but thicker. He was older and his craggy features were capped with a dense thatch of salt-and-pepper. He bore an uncanny resemblance to the late actor Dennis Farina, something he quietly cultivated. Moore was bred for the Marine Corps. He was born at the Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and shuffled from one Marine base to another until he was old enough to enlist. His father waded ashore with the 7th Marines of the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam in 1965. His grandfather was wounded twice at Guadalcanal and killed in action on Saipan. Two of his great uncles were at the Chosin Reservoir; one made it back. His great-grandfather was with Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daily at Belleau Wood. Moore’s Marine roots were in Battalion and Force Recon, and he was one of the plank holders of the Marine Special Operations Command he helped to establish in 2006. After five combat deployments with MARSOC, he migrated to JSOC. In one capacity or another, Master Guns Moore had been in continuous combat rotation for over a decade and a half. He was fluent in Arabic and Farsi.

Most field and senior grade officers in the Army or Marine Corps found it hard to contemplate an officer and an enlisted man with this seniority leading a combat unit that was barely half the size of a company. Yet, as Williams had recently come to understand, all that seniority and experience came into play when planning a special operations, direct-action mission. When the need arose, he would task these men with just such a mission. They would study the task given them, then plan and carry out the operation. Careful attention to training and tactical execution helped; combat experience in special operations was essential.

These were men who were not comfortable talking about themselves, but Williams drew them out. It was Moore who finally brought up the task ahead.

“Sir, I appreciate your interest in us, but can you tell us something about what you have for us, and how you think we can be of service?”

So Williams did. He gave them a short version of the old Op-Center, which they had heard about but knew little of, and a complete breakdown of what he envisioned for the future. “There may be long periods training and operational inactivity,” he concluded, “but when the call comes from Op-Center to you, you will have to be quick, professional, and I can assure you, it will be important — and most probably, dangerous. There may be a great many flyaways and prepositioning with no action. Each time you will have to move out smartly and come up with a workable plan in short order. Yet, when you are committed to an operation, it will likely be of crisis proportions. Sound fair enough?”

The two veteran warriors exchanged a glance and nodded in unison.

“Your primary liaison with Op-Center will be a retired Army man named Hector Rodriquez.” At the mention of this name, both men paused, then broke into broad smiles.

“Sergeant Major Rodriquez is on your team?” Moore blurted.

“He is,” Williams said with a straight face. It was a card he had waited to play until now. Rodriquez was a former JSOC command sergeant major. This drew a low whistle from Moore, and both men seemed to visibly relax at the mention of his name.

“Uh, I don’t know about your schedule, sir,” Volner said, “but would you like to meet the rest of the troop?”

Williams looked at his watch and took out his cell phone. He hit the speed dial and it was answered immediately. “Captain, I’m going to be a little longer than planned. Can you delay our take off for another hour or so?… Excellent … I’ll let you know and thank you.” Then, turning to Volner, he said, “Major, I’d be honored to meet your men.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was late summer, and Azka Perkasa was at his computer in the home office of his Kuala Lumpur high-rise condo, surfing the Web. He was looking at vacation rentals in Bali. He had recently found some joy in the purchase of relationships from an upscale, discreet service he used on occasion. Once he had confirmed a property on Bali and rented the time and space on Net Jets, he would contact the service and rent a woman for the week. If she didn’t work out, he would simply send her home on a commercial flight. The engineer in Perkasa liked both the impersonal nature and privacy this kind of arrangement afforded him. Like any man he had needs, but no one needed to know of his personal life or how he made his living — certainly not some woman retained only for pleasure. Be that as it may, this was not entirely the case.

Someone did, in fact, know about Azka Perkasa and his personal life — and a great deal more. Over the course of the past several weeks, he had come to the attention of a bespectacled man in a small, sparsely appointed office crammed with computers, cables, and keyboards. The office was in the basement of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and still smelled of fresh paint and drywall paste. It was Op-Center’s new, but still under-construction, headquarters, and the man’s name was Aaron Bleich. He had been one of Op-Center’s first hires, and his services cost the new organization more in annual salary than the president, with a substantial up-front signing bonus. Yet in the multifaceted world of information, Aaron Bleich was worth his weight in gold — literally — and he was the first of his kind to be hired by Op-Center. He was given the equipment he demanded and put in a room with a single mission: Find who was responsible for the stadium bombings. This he had done. With official, and some nonofficial, access to law enforcement and intelligence-agency databases, he had, in his words, “laid hands on” his beloved suite of computers and found Azka Perkasa. Next, he traced and documented his movements back to and before the bombings. Just as soon as he knew, Chase Williams knew.

Perkasa’s condo was on the forty-fourth floor and looked out over the expanse of the extended port area and the Strait of Malacca. There was a smog-induced haze that partially obscured the Aerospatiale helicopter that was hovering a half mile offshore. The helo was draped in civilian markings, but it was the property of the Grup Gerak Khas — the 10th Paratroop Brigade of the Indonesian Special Forces. It was a crack force trained in part by the 1st Special Forces Group. The Grup Gerak Khas was partial to the Green Berets from Fort Lewis in Washington State, and posed no questions when asked if a sanitized helicopter could be made available for a few hours. Earlier that day, an unmarked, extended range Gulfstream V had landed at Kuala Lumpur International and taxied to a remote hangar. Two pilots from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and two snipers from the Op-Center JSOC troop stepped from the Gulfstream and quickly boarded the fully fueled French helicopter. They took off immediately.

If Azka did not clearly see the helo from the perch in his condo, the shooter behind the stabilized optics saw him. The optics were married to a CheyTac.408 rifle with a point-designated sighting system. After the target had been identified by the system’s laser range finder and target designator, the weapon would not fire unless the gun was on target — precisely on target. Once the shooter had identified his target, Azka’s head, and pressed the trigger, he wavered around a bit until the crosshairs momentarily rested on the Azka’s lazy left eye. The CheyTac bucked, and two seconds later a 210-grain round came through the plate glass and into Azka’s right nostril. Still traveling at twenty-four hundred feet per second, the heavy slug tore into his skull, causing it to explode and paint the inside of his home office with cranial tissue and brain matter.

His body was found later that day. By that time, the Gulfstream, the two shooters, and the two pilots were out over the Indian Ocean, well on their way to a fueling stop at Diego Garcia.

Chase Williams was standing on the tarmac at Pope Air Force Base shortly after sunrise when the JSOC team emerged from their aircraft. Major Mike Volner let his weary troop disembark first and was last off the plane. While only a portion of the team were used to make the airborne hit on Perkasa, Volner had taken his entire troop downrange to set up the necessary coordination and command and control

Williams shook hands with each of the team members, and then paused to speak with Volner. “Well done, Major. I read your reports but am looking forward to you debriefing my staff in person. You carried this out superbly and we’re all enormously proud of you.”

“Thank you, Admiral. It was a great team effort. The intel your Geek Tank provided was spot on, the Pacific combatant commander gave us everything we needed, and we couldn’t have asked for better support. We’ll be standing by for our next assignment. And sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, thank you for coming all the way down from Washington to meet us. I know you’re busy and this was an unexpected surprise.”

“I’m never too busy to recognize a job well done, Major. We may not be far from pinning down the location of the bastard who perpetrated these attacks. I’d like to give your boys the R&R they deserve after what you’ve just accomplished, but I’m going to have to ask you to keep them on twenty-four-hour standby.”

“We can do that, Admiral. I’ll give them the afternoon and evening off once we get back to Fort Bragg. Any idea where we’ll be heading for our next mission, sir?”

“I can’t tell you for sure, but I think you might want to break out your desert camis.”

“Works for me, Admiral. We’ll be ready when you call us.”

The next day, Chase Williams assembled his skeleton staff in the basement of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He complimented them on their efforts in orchestrating the hit on Azka Perkasa and thanked them for how quickly they had gotten Op-Center up and running.

That done, his face hardened, and he was all business. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to give it to you right between the running lights. Our JSOC team performed superbly and did everything we expected of them. We all should be proud to work with pros like Major Volner and his troop.”

Williams paused to frame his thoughts.

“That said, we need to mine the lessons learned from what just happened. Getting our team surged into theater was not a smooth operation. Not all the gear they needed got to them in time and they had to do work-arounds to make their mission succeed. Getting them back here wasn’t much better, and we could have reunited them with their families a day sooner if we’d been on the ball.”

Heads nodded. The staff knew where they had fallen short.

“I think we’re finding the limits of the talent we have onboard Op-Center right now,” Williams continued, his tone softening. “There are certainly areas where I’m out of my depth, and I think it’s also clear the kind of folks we should hire as we continue to staff up. Now, here’s what we need to do to get ready for our next mission.”

Once Aaron Bleich had a complete profile of Azka Perkasa, it did not take him long to connect him to Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif — and Kashif’s role in financing the bombings. There were just enough phone calls and money wire transfers to connect Kashif, the Lebanese, and Perkasa. As good as he was, Bleich had to admit that luck did play a part in his success. While Kashif and Perkasa had been circumspect and careful to a fault, save for the short phone call between Perkasa and Kashif, their Lebanese intermediary had been sloppy, even cavalier, with his phone and e-mail communications. It was just enough to finger Kashif.

Shortly following the death of Perkasa, of which he had no knowledge, Kashif was with his wife’s father’s brother in a warehouse outside Beirut. He was checking the false loading documents for a shipment of goods from Marseilles that would arrive by shipboard container the following day. Kashif normally did his best to stay away from the working end of this part of his business, but sometimes he had to make himself visible for the sake of appearances.

This uncle was a scoundrel by any measurement, yet Kashif genuinely liked the old smuggler. He had a sense of himself and of their enterprise he found refreshing. The old man was smart, and Kashif knew no small amount of what he had accomplished financially was due to the help and guidance of this wily relative.

Kashif was impressed by the way his uncle worked the dozen men in the warehouse, giving his foreman suggestions rather than orders. He sensed these men had worked for his uncle for quite some time. Suddenly, the old man cocked his head, as if he sensed something rather than heard it. He turned to the foreman.

“What is that truck doing there in the back, behind that stack of lumber?”

“Ah,” the man replied, “it’s the consignment of fertilizer that was delivered this morning.”

“I didn’t order any—”

It wasn’t a blinding flash, and the sound was more of an angry gray WHUMP than an explosion. Yet, it leveled the building. Surprisingly, there was only minor damage done to the surrounding structures. Yet, everyone in the warehouse perished. Some fourteen men were killed, but only those few with dental records were identified. One was a wealthy Arab businessman, and the authorities wondered just what he might have been doing there.

At Rafic Hariri International Airport outside Beirut, two men with impeccable Canadian passports boarded a flight for Cairo. One of them was a middle-aged man who bore a striking resemblance to Dennis Farina. In the troop commander’s office at Fort Bragg, an anxious Major Mike Volner waited, cell phone in hand. It was a throwaway and untraceable, except for the likes of someone like Aaron Bleich. He did not have to wait long.

“Yes,” he said after the first ring.

“It would seem the flight is on time.”

“Fine, and thanks for the call.”

Volner closed the phone and took a deep breath. Then he dialed a number on the secure phone on his desk. Chase Williams was sitting in his new office, which was still under construction, and answered immediately. He, too, had been waiting by the phone. The Op-Center director listened a moment, then permitted himself a smile — one of satisfaction and relief.

The elimination of Azka Perkasa and Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif was still a well-kept secret in government in the few weeks since Op-Center had made their two surgical hits. The Op-Center staff and their JSOC team had been asked not to reveal the hits had been made — that would be done “at the national level” in short order.

As with the hit on Perkasa, the takedown of Kashif had generated more lessons learned that Chase Williams and his team were still digesting as they continued to build up the Op-Center staff. These two hits had been done essentially “on the fly” by leveraging the intelligence Adam Putnam and his National Counterterrorism Center were able to provide, by turning loose Aaron Bleich, and by employing the JSOC team with the talent they brought to the table.

While Williams was proud of what both teams had accomplished, he knew it would not be good enough to carry out the Op-Center mission for the long haul. They weren’t there yet, not by a long shot. He had to keep recruiting, he had to keep building, and he had to keep training. However, for now, he had a memo to write to the president.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chase Williams reported the deaths of Perkasa and Kashif in a short, cryptic memo to the president. It was in the format and protocol of Williams’s own design for communications that were to be strictly between him and the president, and no one else. The infrequent communiqués were coded simply “POTUS/OC Eyes Only.” These memos were never more than a single page, as was this one, and omitted nothing.

President Midkiff, in his reply, offered that strikes like these into foreign nations, and with the accompanying collateral damage, might be called to his attention before such events took place.

The next POTUS/OC Eyes Only from Williams was short and to the point. “Mr. President: There is no sense in both of us losing sleep over the innocent loss of life in doing what has to be done. Unless you direct otherwise, I will proceed as before unless there are strategic implications. CW.”

Midkiff pondered Williams’s reply. After a few moments he raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and slid the memo into the shredder.

Several days later, on September 9, a day selected because it was ten months to the day since the NFL attacks, President Midkiff sat in the Oval Office under the hot tungsten-halogen lamps as cameras rolled for his address to the nation. The Washington press corps had not been able to sniff out the reason for the prime-time address, and the White House press secretary had been vague, saying only that it was a national security matter.

“Three, two, one … rolling, Mr. President.”

“My fellow Americans, good evening. Tonight I can tell you that the perpetrators of the unprovoked attacks against our citizens on November 9 of last year have been brought to swift justice. There has been no internment in prison, there will be no trial. We will not have to listen to them hold forth about their ‘cause’ or their attempt to justify what they did. They have simply been identified, and we have eliminated them.”

The president was all business, not a hint of a smile or any other emotion other than purpose on his face. He went on to tell the American people in graphic detail just who was responsible and the violence that accompanied their summary judgment.

“Tonight we are serving notice to anyone, or any nation, who would cause our citizens harm. We have no patience, no compassion, and are not interested in whatever sick purpose might propel you to attack us. If you hurt our citizens, we will chase you to the ends of the earth and hunt you down and kill you. And it won’t take us a decade to do it.”

“This closes a tragic chapter for America that began exactly ten months ago. We have made substantial changes to our national security structure to ensure this does not happen again. May God bless our citizens killed on November 9, may God bless their grieving families, and may God bless America.”

As the cameras faded out on the president and the network talking heads took over, America, and the world, recognized a new chapter had begun. What they didn’t know, nor would ever know, was that Op-Center was up and running. Azka Perkasa and Abdul-Muqtadir Kashif had thought they had moved on from the events of November 9, but a team of bright and persistent analysts had carefully sifted through the e-mails, voice mails, and fund transfers to link them with the date and the crime. They were the first to feel the reach and finality of the new Op-Center. As the president got up from his chair after his announcement the first hand he shook belonged to Chase Williams.