Into the Fire

CHAPTER THREE

Chase Williams pulled into an unmarked parking space at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency — the NGA — at Fort Belvoir near Springfield, Virginia. The parking lot had been expanded when the location for the revived Op-Center was installed in the basement levels of the NGA. The new lot still had reserved, close-in parking spaces clearly marked for senior NGA staffers. Yet at Williams’s insistence, there were none for Op-Center personnel, nor was there any Op-Center logo seen anywhere on the building’s exterior signage. A directory of tenant commands at Fort Belvoir did not mention anything about Op-Center. It was still early, and Williams had but a short walk to the main entrance of the building.

There was a reason why Op-Center’s very presence at Fort Belvoir was kept secret and why it was housed in a sub-basement of NGA, not in its own gleaming building. Op-Center was a national asset and its director reported directly to the president. It was called into action only when the normal levers of U.S. national security — the military, the intelligence agencies, the many organizations making up the nation’s homeland security bureaucracy, or others — could not move quickly enough or were forced by statute or oversight to operate within strict legal protocols. The president had called on Op-Center recently, and they had done just that: operated with speed and precision and well outside legal channels. And they had saved American lives.

Williams made his way through the double glass doors, showed his NGA badge to the guard at the counter, and continued on to a single elevator at the end of a bank of elevators. Just another faceless staffer with a security clearance trudging in to work, which was as Williams wanted it. He punched in his personal access code, and the elevator door hissed open to allow him entry. Following a noiseless, three-level descent, he was deposited in a small antechamber with a single door. After submitting to a retinal scan, he was admitted to the subterranean warren that was Op-Center’s main compound.

Williams was sixty-three, six foot tall, and carried himself in a lean, distinguished manner. Yet he was understated and moved with a quiet efficiency that attracted little attention. His dress was closely tailored but conservative, and only the white handkerchief peeking from the pocket of his suit coat suggested a hint of style. A great many senior people in and out of government knew and respected Williams. But no one underestimated him or the confidence President Midkiff now vested in him and his organization.

“Morning, boss.”

“Good morning, Anne.” Anne Sullivan was waiting for him at the door to his office. It was adjacent to hers, which was larger and better appointed than his own small office. This arrangement was at Williams’s insistence. He was the director of Op-Center, but she, as deputy director, ran Op-Center. As a good Navy man, he knew the value of a strong executive officer.

Anne Sullivan was a former GSA supergrade and the embodiment of a Washington insider. Williams counted on her, and she quietly managed the day-to-day administration of Op-Center with dedication, organizational skill, and a certain amount of intimidation. She also knew where all the bodies were buried around Capitol Hill. Op-Center had its enemies, particularly in the Department of Defense. If there were ever a politically motivated campaign mounted to discredit Op-Center, then the ever-vigilant Anne Sullivan would sniff it out early on.

It was Williams’s practice to arrive at Op-Center at 0645 sharp, about five minutes after his drip coffeemaker had delivered a strong, full pot of his special Sumatra dark roast. Sullivan was always in the office ahead of him. Following the ritual morning greeting, it was her practice to wait for ten minutes to allow her director to check his messages and e-mail. Then she knocked lightly on his door and stepped inside. Williams handed her an antique porcelain cup and saucer that had been his grandmother’s. She took it black, as did he. He then topped off his own Navy messdecks mug, and they got down to business. He thought staff meetings were a waste of time and elected to take the pulse of his organization with a morning briefing from his deputy director. She sipped the coffee appreciatively and tapped on the screen of the security-protected iPad on her lap, then proceeded to brief him on the activity of each Op-Center senior operative.

First there was Roger McCord, Op-Center’s director of intelligence and perhaps the most valuable and essential member in the organization. He was fit, bright, and a devoted family man. McCord was highly regarded within the tight-knit intelligence community, and Williams trusted him without question. Op-Center was built on a corporate model where the intelligence and analytic functions were to be kept in house and bolstered by the most advanced technology and capable brains available. This was why McCord’s intel shop looked more like a think tank at Google or Amazon than a department of an obscure government agency. On the other end of the Op-Center corporate model was the direct-action component — which was all outsourced. Op-Center had capable and experienced operational planners and logisticians, but they relied on the U.S. Special Operations command or some other DoD or government-strike element when a military or paramilitary response was needed.

Then there were Dawson and Rodriguez. The heart of the operations team were the absent Brian Dawson and Hector Rodriguez. It was their job to contact, nominate, test, evaluate, and interface with these non-Op-Center action entities and to hold periodic training sessions with them to ensure Op-Center and strike-element interoperability. This kept them out of the office and out from under the direct supervision of Anne Sullivan for several days at a time. Williams knew that in the special-operations-warrior brotherhood they had to mingle. This meant they might even have to linger over a beer at the Green Beret Club at Fort Bragg or over a pile of blue crab at a tavern near Quantico. Williams understood this, even if Anne Sullivan did not.

Sullivan moved on to Jim Wright, a former member of the bureau’s hostage-rescue team. His last bureau assignment was with the Special Activities Division at CIA. Normally, the men from the Hoover Building and the men from Langley didn’t get on, but Jim Wright was the exception. He got on with everyone, and his contacts in the law enforcement and intelligence agencies were legion. At Op-Center, he was known as Mister Inside.

Duncan Sutherland was the Op-Center supply officer. He was to logistics what Fred Astaire was to dance. The Op-Center plans department was in the capable hands of Richard Middleton. And there was Laura Beall, who, along with Anne Sullivan, served Chase Williams as a political advisor — more specifically, a political spy. What Anne Sullivan may have missed through her former official contacts, Laura Beall picked up at the coffee shops from the congressional staffers and bottom-feeders who swum in and among the power brokers. She was attractive, successful, and very expensive.

Sullivan completed her briefing and looked up. Williams nodded. “Anything else?”

“Just one thing,” Sullivan replied. “Since Roger is out of the office, Aaron has asked to be put on your schedule. He says it may be important and asked to see you as soon as it’s convenient.”

Williams hesitated, but only for a moment. “Tell him it’s convenient right now. If he thinks it’s important, then it probably is.”

Bleich worked directly for Roger McCord, and Williams suspected that had McCord been in that morning, both of them would want to see him. That Bleich did not want to wait until McCord returned to the office told Williams this might indeed be something important.

Aaron Bleich’s official title was intelligence directorate, networks assistant, but that was not the half of it. Bleich, at thirty-three, was one of the younger staffers at Op-Center, and his salary was three times that of anyone else in the organization. He was arguably the top video-gaming talent in the nation, which meant in the world. On McCord’s recommendation, he was hired at a salary the Government Accountability Office would have considered obscene and illegal. Bleich designed the automated collection algorithms and high-speed data-sorting protocols that set Op-Center apart from other intelligence-collection efforts in or out of government. Through working agreements and occasional outright hacking, Op-Center was privy to the entire spectrum of information collected by the U.S. intelligence agencies. Such a mountain of data would clog all but the most skillful and selective segregation and collation programs. But the computing resources, which amounted to sixty percent of Op-Center’s budget, and talents of Bleich’s people, the Geek Tank, as they called themselves, made it all possible.

“On second thought,” Williams said as Sullivan rose to leave, “tell Aaron I’ll be in to see him.” He topped off his coffee mug and followed her out.

The door to the Geek Tank section in Op-Center’s warren of subterranean offices was monitored by a palm-print reader and a moniker over the door: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. It was a cultural barrier as well as a physical one. The space was a large open area, with low-walled cubicles, as many as five flat screens per work station, and cables running everywhere. There were posters of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and RG III on the walls. Among the wall art was a periodic table of the elements and movie posters of Avatar and 2001: A Space Odyssey. A John Legend song drifted across the room. The flat surfaces were cluttered with pizza boxes, empty Slurpee containers, and iPhones and iPads and were punctuated by eclectically dressed, twenty- and thirty-somethings, seemingly lounging and talking rather than working. Most Op-Center staffers seldom entered the space they called the Geek Tank. There was an energy here unlike any other space at Op-Center and unlike anything Williams had experienced in his military or government service. He’d made it his business to know everyone in his organization, so as he made his way through the area to the single glass-enclosed corner office that was Aaron Bleich’s, he was able to greet each intel staffer by name. Yet he felt conspicuous and out of place in his starched white shirt and club tie. The dozen or so members of the Geek Tank who were present were attired in blue jeans and T-shirts, with an occasional collared shirt or a pair of polished cottons. Bleich was waiting for him. He was dressed in Dockers and a Family Guy sweatshirt and looking a little uncomfortable. The sign over his door read SENIOR HALL MONITOR. “My apologies for my attire, sir. Had I known I needed to see you, I’d not have been so casual.”

“Aaron, it’s your work we count on here, not how you dress. This is your world, and if you’re comfortable, I’m comfortable. Now, what have you got for me?”

Bleich closed the door as Williams took a seat and the Geek Tank leader became all business. “I started to notice things yesterday afternoon,” he began. “It’s North Korea again, and something’s up. It’s, well, do you want me to build the watch or do you want to know the time?”

“For now, let’s just stick with the time.”

Bleich nodded. “As you know, with a few exceptions, they have a pretty inept blue-water navy. Yet they’ve moved some of their more serviceable vessels from their fleet headquarters at Wonsan on the east coast around the peninsula to the west coast. Over the past two weeks, there has been a slow migration of units south to the DMZ — mostly armor and special-operations units. And there’s been an alteration in the frequency and pattern of the testing of their coastal defense and missile guidance radars. There are other indicators as well. On balance, this is nothing new. They’re always moving units around, seemingly with no purpose. But this time, we’re picking up none of the normal command and control chatter. Between us, the South Koreans, and the Japanese, we have an effective electronic blanket over the North. We generally know about these movements from electronic intercepts, Web-based traffic, and cell-phone activity. This time, there was none of that. It’s as if they’re using only shielded hard-line communications or couriers. They seem to be prepositioning assets, which we can easily track by satellite, but they’re going to great lengths not to broadcast it. It’s really weird. If it were business as usual, they’d use the normal communications channels, but they’re not.”

Williams thought about this a moment. “Is this coming up on anyone else’s radar — CIA, DIA, NSA?”

“No, sir. If it were, then they’d at least be talking about it in house.”

“And you would know this?”

“Trust me, sir, if there’s something being talked about among the analysts at CIA, NSA, the Pentagon, or anywhere else, we’d know about it.”

“You mean you’ve hacked in their internal, in-house communications?”

“Ah, we’re starting to get into watch parts here, boss, and well beyond the time of day. But I can go into it if you’d like.”

Williams could tell Bleich really would like to go into it; it was what he did, and he could do it better than anyone else in or out of government. He demurred but made a mental note to bring it up with Roger McCord.

“Maybe some other time. Is there anything special going on in or around the Korean Peninsula?”

Bleich was expecting this. “We have a major naval exercise with the South Koreans and the Japanese scheduled to begin in a few days. Most of the activity is in the Sea of Japan with a shallow-water mine exercise to take place in the Yellow Sea.”

“And you think something’s wrong.”

Bleich shrugged. “I’m saying this time they’re doing something different with the flow of their command and control traffic. We did an electronic look-back, and this is something they’ve never done before.”

Williams was silent for close to a minute. Then he said, “Aaron, forget about the electronic and communications intelligence, or lack of it, for a moment. What do you think? What does your gut tell you?”

Now it was Bleich’s turn to pause. Aaron Bleich was an empirical person; seldom did someone ask him for how he felt about something. “Well, sir, this is a little off point for me. I mean, I’m just a techie.”

“And a very good techie,” Williams interjected, “but what do you think?”

“I think they’re up to no good, and maybe even something that’s not good on a large scale.”