On Scope

22

Nearing the end of another hectic day, activity had slowed down enough at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to allow Air France flight 007 an early pushback from the gate, almost ten minutes ahead of its normal 8:05 P.M. takeoff time. The white, double-deck Airbus A380 taxied out of the parking ramp, moved into final position, and braked for a short time to receive clearance, then the pilot opened the throttles on the four giant engines and the plane thundered down the 10,000-foot-long Runway 13L. The big wings flexed, and it lifted out over water, starting the all-night haul back to Paris, the arrival time almost exactly twelve hours away.

There was some low-level turbulence as the commercial airliner climbed higher, and Yasim Rebiane unconsciously fingered his seat belt in the first-class cabin. Djahid was next to him, unbothered by the chop and watching the mass of lights that was Manhattan fade into the gathering darkness. They had made it safely out of the United States, and Yasim doubted if they would ever return. America had overreacted after 9/11 to the actual security threats it faced at the time, and billions of dollars had been spent since then to give law enforcement and federal intelligence agencies all of the tools they needed, and then even more. With the McNamara incident, it was clear that the U.S. authorities already had a photo of Yasim, and since the country was the most plugged-in and heavily armed society on earth, it was only a matter of time before he triggered some electronic database tripwire they did not even know existed.

FinCEN, the financial crimes enforcement network, was certain to be examining the records of the two murdered New York brokers. Perhaps the woman and girl in Missouri had talked to the police, despite the threats. One of the senator’s office workers might have entered something on a computer that could have compromised security. He believed that eventually, the infamous PROMIS network would tie it all together. The Prosecutor’s Management Information System was the world’s best electronic detective, able to sift through millions of pieces of information ranging from credit card receipts to CIA database notes, and from specific cell phone tower usage to utility bills and fingerprints, eventually finding links and tying the lines of code together enough to provide names and locations. Worse, PROMIS never took a day off, not even a minute. There were no more secrets.

Once it recognized a specific identification, the game was usually over. The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) network and the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems (NLETS) would kick into real-time response, and when a cop or an agent named a suspect, the system would spit out the entire life story. The identification could be confirmed with a response time of no more than twelve seconds. That was what America did with its own citizens every day, and Yasim mused that there was no telling what was at work trailing a couple of international terrorists like himself and his son.

He could not guess why his picture and name had not been added to the no-fly list, but felt confident that the pursuing agency was not sharing its information as it was supposed to do. If they had stretched their time in country, Yasim and Djahid Rebiane might never have been able to get out. Better to leave now with safe passports before any alerts were issued or facial recognition software made escape impossible.

Senator Monroe did not even know they were gone, and would not be told. He had a private telephone number to call when he got the needed information and also could contact Yasim through the false-front agriculture conglomerate in his state of Missouri. Prior to that, the big man could just sweat with the memory of what had happened to his whore and their bastard love child. Yasim planned to check in with the powerful member of Congress in two days if he had not heard anything more. The threat had worked; at least Rebiane had a scent of the enemy now, where before there was nothing.

Djahid pulled down the plastic shade over the small window, kicked back the seat, doused the overhead light, and closed his eyes, already drifting into sleep. Yasim cast a glance at his son, knowing that the young man had been disappointed at not being given permission to harm and kill either the woman or the girl who had been his prisoners in Missouri. Djahid was a creature of the hunt and yearned for blood to mark his victories, particularly when he worked in the United States. He was obedient only to his father; Yasim could control him, but Djahid was always tugging at the reins. It was just the way he was, the way he had been carefully constructed since boyhood.

The leash would be very briefly removed in France, just a single feeding that might be a prelude to others, depending on what had happened with this one man who had broken secrecy. Djahid would find out and take care of it. Then the two Rebianes would drive out of France all the way down to Seville for an emergency gathering of the remaining members of the Group. Djahid would be in charge of overall security for the unusual gathering, which would keep his mind occupied after Paris. Hired mercenaries were notoriously unreliable, even to the people who paid them, but the Rebianes had long ago established their own Warsaw-based private security company with a roster of rough men who were more interested in women and drink than in ideology. They were a pack of wolves, and only the fear of a bigger wolf kept them in line. Yasim saw that big wolf sleeping soundly in the airline seat beside him. He opened a new book he had purchased before boarding.

Air Force Brigadier General Alfred Coleman had listened carefully to the follow-up telephone call from Captain Howell Andrews, the lawyer he had left to deal with the senator’s brusque point man. Coleman was still in a bad mood at being snubbed, left waiting at the curb by the senator, and was in no mood to do any favors. Captain Andrews advised Coleman that it had all the earmarks of a fishing expedition and the senator was trying to put some hard meat on a couple of scraps of information he had picked up. The general complimented the captain on the good job and said he should take the rest of the day off and file a formal report the next day that could be sent up the chain of command. No, don’t bother to investigate on your own, Andrews was told. They just needed to prove to the senator, if ever asked, that they were doing something about the guy’s repeated request. Take your time, General Coleman said, as long as I have your report by the end of the day tomorrow.

The captain put it out of his mind as he started thinking instead about getting a half day and a whole night free. He called his wife with the good news and told her to find a babysitter so they could go to the steakhouse for dinner and then to a movie, preferably a comedy. On a captain’s salary, they could not afford an evening at the Kennedy Center, but they managed to have a great night together all the same. He got up the next morning, went for a three-mile run along the Tidal Basin, showered, dressed, and was at his cubicle in the JAG offices by nine o’clock. He typed up his notes, plus his impressions, listened to the audio recording he had made and wrote some quotes, and then shaped it all into a terse two-page document that included the names of Task Force Trident and Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson of the Marines. He figured that was one page too many. There was nothing there but some implied threats of a congressional hearing.

The captain logged on to a secure server and transmitted his brief report to General Coleman, then left for a quick lunch before moving on to his next case. It was a review of the charges against an AWOL eighteen-year-old airman who ran away from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, during his second week of basic training. He was homesick for his mother in Minnesota, who loved him, while the snarling sergeants at Lackland plainly did not. An Air Police investigator arrested him at home within a week of his getting on a bus in San Antonio.

Andrews wanted to knock the charges down enough for the kid to just face an Article 15 hearing, not much more than a verbal spanking, although there would be a lot of shouting about deserting his post in time of war. They could not take away his rank and privileges, because he did not have any. Andrews believed the youngster should just stay behind bars for a few more weeks, then rotate back into a new training squadron to try again, starting in July. Drilling on the concrete formation pads in the wilting heat of a Texas summer was a sweaty business. If the airman acted up again, he would incur some more brig time and be kicked out of the service for being more trouble than he was worth. Not everybody was cut out to be a hero. The captain preferred simple cases with a guaranteed win to delving into some international conspiracy that could sink a career before it even got under way.

The captain’s digital report to the general was routed routinely through a Pentagon computer database that was for routine use and not encoded as classified or secret. As soon as the document entered the system, a powerful software program that was a secret military version on the level of PROMIS plucked it from the electronic stack and promptly delivered it to one of the computer monitors on the desk of Navy Commander Benton Freedman in Trident.

No one could possibly keep up with all of the material being swept up every hour by various intelligence services, so the Lizard had implanted key words that would automatically break them out of the nets of the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, and a few of the other major players, including links overseas. It seemed these days that everybody was being tracked. PROMIS was primarily for use against crooks, while the bigger computer guns were saved for terrorists and military contingencies. Among his trigger words were “Task Force Trident” and the names of everyone on the Trident roster. His goal was to never see any of those terms pop up, and now they were both flashing in highlighted red boxes in one corner, along with an audible alert, a pleasant female voice that repeated, “Commander, please look at this. Urgent. Commander, please look at this. Urgent.”

Freeman muttered a rare obscenity—“Heck!”—beneath his breath, chewed on the tooth-cracked cover of a plastic ballpoint pen, and started digging into the databases. He transferred a copy over to another computer and was rewarded with a loud “Oh shit” howl from the office of Major General Bradley Middleton. In another moment, the Trident leader was standing behind Freedman.

“OK, Liz. What’s going on?”

The general was aware that the big bulk of Master Gunny Dawson had moved in beside him. “Just in case you need a translator with the commander’s dialogue, sir,” Dawson said.

This time, no translator was needed. Freedman removed the pen from his mouth. “Somebody’s cracked us,” he said.