The Jungle

20

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS HAD PASSED SINCE THE FAX FIRST came through to the White House. More than eight thousand men and women were put to work trying to figure out who was behind it and how it had been accomplished. Agents from every department in the country were mobilized, even if some were kept in the dark as to the exact nature of their search because the incident had been classified above top secret.

Indecision gripped the Oval Office. The demonstration of the adversary’s power had been convincing, but his demands went too far. The president couldn’t meet any of them if he hoped to maintain national security and perhaps even keep his job. To his credit, the latter was a much lesser consideration.

He’d been given advice and speculation from across the spectrum. It was al-Qaeda. It was the Iranians. We should give in to the demands. We should ignore them. Ultimately it was his call, and no matter which way he looked at the ultimatum, he saw no viable exit strategy. He’d tried calling the Israeli prime minister to float a balloon about simply announcing the U.S. was suspending financial aid in the short term, but the call was mysteriously cut off as soon as it became clear that America would clandestinely still continue supporting the Jewish state. Somehow the most secure telephone in the world could be listened in on and disconnected at will.

A technician from the NSA had explained to him that it was impossible, but the evidence lay dead on his desk. He tried having the call come from another phone not connected to the White House switchboard and it too ended before anything substantive was said. His only option, however cumbersome and slow, was to send a diplomatic courier to Jerusalem to tell the prime minister what the United States intended to do.

He was behind his desk, staring off into middle space, when Lester Jackson knocked and entered without permission. The doors to the Oval Office were too thick for much sound to spill through, so the president hadn’t heard the fax behind Eunice Wosniak’s desk ring.

“Mr. President, this just came from them.” He carried a fax like it was a decomposing muskrat.

“What does it say?” he asked wearily. If they made it through this crisis, he’d already decided that this would be his one and only term. He felt like he’d aged a hundred years since yesterday morning.

“All it says is, ‘We meant immediately. Their blood is on your hands.’ ”

“Whose blood?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing much happening in the country, according to the major news outlets. Sir, this could still be an elaborate bluff. They could have inside people in Troy, New York, that killed the power, and there’s some powerful software that could hack our phone system.”

“Don’t you think I don’t know that?” he snapped. “But what if it isn’t? What if they carry out another attack? A lethal one? I’ve wasted enough time already.”

Stung, Jackson’s voice went formal. “What are your intentions, sir?”

The president knew he was taking out his frustration on one of his oldest friends. “I’m sorry, Les. It’s just ... I don’t know. Who could have ever foreseen something like this? It’s hard enough ordering men and women in uniform into harm’s way. Now our entire civilian population’s at risk.”

“That’s been our position for a number of years,” Jackson pointed out.

“Yeah, but we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping our shores safe.”

“We’ve been lucky as much as we’ve been good.”

“That hurts.”

“Because it’s the truth. There have been several public incidents, and some secret ones, where the terrorists were too incompetent to carry out their attack, attacks we had no idea were coming.”

“And now we know one might be heading straight at us but have no way of stopping it.”

Eunice burst into the room, her face ashen. She turned on the television over by a grouping of sofas. She left, weeping. A network anchor’s face loomed on the center of the TV screen.

“Authorities aren’t saying if this is a terror-related incident. To those of you just tuning in, a commuter train heading from Washington, D.C., to New York City, Amtrak’s high-speed Acela Express, collided head-on with a southbound freight train that had somehow gotten onto the wrong track.”

The image shifted to an aerial view of utter devastation. The trains looked like toys, but toys of a careless child. The lead locomotive was an unrecognizable lump of metal, while three of the train’s five passenger cars had accordioned to half their eighty-seven-foot length. The other two cars and the rear engine had been thrown off the tracks and into the back of a warehouse. The freight train’s two lead locomotives were hidden under a greasy ball of fire, as their thousands of gallons of diesel fuel cooked off. Behind them was a string of derailed boxcars, many of them smashed to scrap and lying at acute angles to the railbed.

“Amtrak officials have yet to release the number of passengers on board,” the anchor’s voice continued over the helicopter cam’s shot, “but the Acela Express is capable of carrying more than three hundred passengers, and, this being a busy commute time, it is expected that the train was near capacity. One official speaking on condition of anonymity has told us a computer switching system makes an accident of this kind nearly impossible and that the engineer of the freight train would have had to physically engage the switch to put his locomotive on the same line as the commuter.”

“Or someone overrode the computer,” the president said, his voice shaky.

“Maybe this is just a coincidence,” Jackson said hopefully.

“Let it rest, Lester. This is no coincidence, and we both know it. I didn’t do what he wanted so he crashed two trains. What will it be next time? Two planes in midflight? This guy obviously has control over every computer system in this country, and, so far, it seems there isn’t a damned thing we can do about it. Christ, the Army will have to go back to using signal mirrors and the Navy semaphore flags.” He blew a frustrated breath and made the only decision available. “Has the courier left for Israel yet?”

“He’s probably still at Andrews Air Force Base.”

“Recall him. There’s no point in subterfuge. I want to downplay this as much as possible. No press conference or prime-time speech, just put out the word that all aid to Israel is being suspended until further notice. Ditto military aid to Pakistan.”

“What about the detainees at Gitmo? That was another immediate demand.”

“We’ll release them, all right, but not to their home countries. Let’s ship them to the World Court in The Hague. If Fiona’s right and this guy is rational and reasoned, then I don’t think there will be a reprisal, and getting the Europeans to try them is better than nothing.”

“Dan”—it was the first time Jackson had used the president’s Christian name since he’d taken the oath of office—“I am sorry. I was one of the ones urging that we adopt a wait-and-see attitude.”

“But it was still my call,” the president said, the deaths on the trains preying heavily on his conscience.

“I know. That’s why I’m sorry.” He made for the door and was stopped momentarily.

“Les, make sure everyone keeps working at tracking this psycho and pray he has a weakness we haven’t thought of, because, right now, it feels like we’re facing off against God Himself.”