True Faith and Allegiance

30

Jack Ryan, Jr., had worked till midnight analyzing the private-actor angle of the U.S. intelligence data breach, but he forced himself to roll out of bed the next morning at five, slip on his summer running gear, and stagger down his condo stairs in the Oronoco Waterfront Residences.

It was less than a five-minute jog to the Hendley Associates building, but Jack walked it, using the ten minutes to wake up a little, to allow some heat to build in his muscles, and to give him time to win the little mental fight he was having with himself. Most of him wanted to go back to bed for a couple more hours, but enough of him wanted to get some PT in this morning, knowing that it would make his brain work better during the day, that he kept putting one leg in front of the other until the next thing he knew, he was in the parking garage under his office giving tired but uplifting fist bumps to his cousin and Domingo Chavez.

A minute later Midas and Adara stepped out of the stairwell; from the sweat on their clothing it was clear Clark had already been working the two new recruits out in the gym there in the building. This made Jack smile; he knew Clark would be tough on the two newcomers to the operational team, but he also knew the two newcomers would have no problems making it.

There was a brief delay as Clark stopped to take an early-morning phone call. Jack listened at first to see if it was related to the intelligence compromise, but apparently he was talking to an old friend to help with a role-playing exercise for the two new trainees. He tuned out of Clark’s call, and while everyone was standing around the lighted parking garage stretching for this morning’s run, Jack walked over to Midas, who was a few feet away from the others.

“Hey, man, how’s the training going?”

Midas seemed surprised to be spoken to by Jack, which made Jack feel like shit. He’d been in a bad mood all week, and he’d been so damn focused on this intelligence leak that he’d been distant to pretty much everyone in the building except for Gavin.

Midas said, “I’ve learned one thing so far.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I want to be Mr. C. when I grow up. That guy is a machine. My old man’s heart blew up at fifty-five while he was watching a game show. Mr. C. looks like he’s got another sixty years in him.”

Jack smiled. “Sorry about your dad, but I bet he wasn’t in Delta.”

“Sold carpet during the day and drank cheap scotch all night. He was surprisingly good at doing both.”

Jack glanced to Clark. “Yeah, Clark keeps us younger guys on our toes, for sure.” Now he turned back to Midas. “Look. I’m not usually such an asshole. It’s been a really hard week, and—”

Midas reached out and slapped Jack on the arm. A show of kindness that nevertheless unsteadied him. “No worries. I heard about what happened. Well… in a general sense, anyway.”

“Really?”

“I heard you and your mates did your jobs and did them well, but still something bad happened.”

Jack said, “Something bad happened. I don’t know that I did my job well.”

Midas said, “There’s an old saying you’d hear around Delta. All skill is in vain when an angel pisses in the flintlock of your musket.”

Jack cracked a smile at this. “Yeah… I guess that’s true.”

“I personally know some great dudes spending eternity napping just up the road at Arlington Cemetery. They didn’t do a damn thing wrong other than pick a profession that kills the exceptional just the same as it kills the unexceptional. Whatever happened, you did your best on the day, and you survived, which means someday you’ll be around to have the opportunity to do even better. I hope you can shake it off.” Midas did a neck roll, then spoke with nonchalance. “Because you’re right, you’ve been acting like a little bit of a tight-ass.”

It was a weird pep talk, Jack acknowledged, but it was exactly what he needed to hear. He laughed and the two men shook hands, and seconds later Clark sent everyone on a four-mile run.

As Jack Junior ran in the predawn along the Potomac River, his father was getting dressed just a couple miles to the north in the White House. Jack Senior had been woken an hour before usual this morning to take a call from Dan Murray. After their quick conversation, the President asked for his senior national security staff to be contacted and summoned for a seven a.m. meeting in the Situation Room.

The President arrived in the underground conference room at exactly seven to find everyone else already seated. Though they stood at his appearance, he immediately motioned for them to sit back down, and he turned the floor over to Dan.

The attorney general stood and walked to the end of the conference table, where a large screen on the wall displayed the presidential seal. He said, “It appears Islamic State operatives have been conducting attacks in America for thirty-six hours.”

There was a murmur of confusion at the table, although many of those seated, the President included, knew about some of the incidents already. Murray clicked a button on a remote control and the DIA departmental headshot of Barbara Pineda appeared on one of the screens. “As I’m sure you all know, a young woman was murdered with a bomb the night before last in Falls Church. She was, in fact, an analyst for the DIA, working against Islamic State as an area officer.”

Everyone knew about the incident, but the fact the police had not immediately identified her as the actual target of the bomb had slowed down associating her with her work against ISIS.

Murray clicked the button again. The picture of Barbara Pineda was replaced by the image of U.S. Navy SEAL Todd Braxton wearing his khaki and black service dress uniform and his black garrison cap. Everyone in the room knew Braxton instantly. There wasn’t a bigger American celebrity to come out of the military in a decade. He made the rounds on the news as a talking head, and on adventure reality shows, and his book had been at the top of the bestseller lists. There were gasps of surprise around the table, because no one had heard anything about his death. “Some of you might be aware that yesterday morning in Los Angeles, the television actor Danny Phillips was shot dead along with his bodyguard. What has not been widely reported is that Phillips was with former Naval Special Warfare Chief Petty Officer Todd Braxton at the time of the assault. The two were making a film version of Braxton’s book. Even though Braxton was uninjured in the attack, we are confident he was, in fact, the intended victim. We think the assailants mistook Phillips for Braxton, which would have been easy to do because Phillips was playing Braxton, and Braxton himself had adopted a different appearance to play in the same film.”

The secretary of homeland security said, “How do we know that—”

Dan Murray held a polite hand up. “Andy, just a second and I’ll answer that.”

Now Murray clicked his remote again, and a Department of the Army image of a clean-shaven man in his twenties appeared. “Last night, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Michael Robert Wayne was shot dead at the front door to his private residence.”

Some in the room had been up late and seen news of the shooting and police chase on CNN, although neither the victim nor the perpetrators had been identified.

Murray turned to Bob Burgess, the secretary of defense. “Bob, Staff Sergeant Wayne was…”

Burgess spoke with sadness tinged with unmistakable anger as he turned to the President. “He was Delta, assigned to Charlie Squadron. They just got back from ops in Turkey and Syria eleven days ago.”

No one in the room had ever seen the President’s nostrils flare in anger like they did now. Ryan said, “And the killers?”

Murray answered. “The assassins were stopped on the highway twenty minutes after the first nine-one-one call described their vehicle. They were heading north, out of Fayetteville. Like they were going to Virginia, up to the D.C. area, but that’s just speculation. Their vehicle was rented in Baltimore, so it’s possible they were heading there. Both of the killers detonated suicide vests, killing two North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers in the process, and injuring four more.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ryan said.

Now Murray turned back to the secretary of homeland security, Andrew Zilko. “Three incidents in the three states over twenty-six hours. How do we connect the dots? How do we know this was part of a coordinated ISIS operation?” He nodded to the monitor. “This was broadcast less than two hours ago on an ISIS Global Islamic Media Front website.” Murray took a chest-filling breath and then let it out. “I warn you in advance… this will be hard to watch.”

Again he tapped the remote operating the audiovisual equipment, and a video began playing on the monitor. The setup was familiar to all in the room. It was an Islamic State — produced video; a recruiting plea dressed up like news. But as ISIS PR devices went, this one wasn’t particularly slick, well scored, or cleverly edited. It appeared to be something of a rush job.

But there was no question about it. What it lacked in polish, it more than made up for in raw, authentic content.

There was some music at the beginning, a title card wholly in Arabic, then the footage, clearly taken from a medium-quality camera zoomed in to the point of distortion. Still, anyone watching would be able to identify a woman with dark hair pulled back in a bun wearing business attire. She walked down a short driveway as she dug through her purse. She opened a mailbox, and then the entire conference room recoiled in shock at the sight of her death. Some words were superimposed over the frozen image of the carnage in Arabic, English, and French. In English it said, BARBARA PINEDA. AMERICAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AGENT SUPPORTING THE BOMBING OPERATIONS AGAINST THE MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN OF THE CALIPHATE. NOT ANYMORE.

The image switched to a dimly lit Starbucks counter and a large group of individuals there. The video wasn’t well centered, so a circle had been superimposed on one man standing in the group off to the side as he stirred sugar into his coffee.

Suddenly the shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” and two figures armed with pistols opened fire, their faces shaded out electronically. The man indicated by the animated circle stood flat-footed, and a large black man tackled him to the ground and began pulling him out of the way, but the two of them were riddled with gunfire.

More men and women cowered in terror, and a white man dove over the counter and out of view.

The video froze over the bodies, and writing, again in French, Arabic, and English, said, AMERICAN ACTOR DANNY PHILLIPS. PORTRAYING IN A MOVIE THE INFIDEL NAVY SEAL TODD BRAXTON WHO KILLED HUNDREDS OF THE FAITHFUL. NOT ANYMORE.

The next video was of a little street at nighttime with small homes at the end of long driveways. An armed man fired a rifle out of the passenger side of an SUV; the camera was right behind his head, so it was impossible to see either his face or what he was shooting at.

The audio cut out for several seconds, then the scene cut to the moving image of a dead man in a pool of blood lying on his back in a tiny kitchen. A voice spoke over the music.

“Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”

The English caption read, DELTA FORCE OFFICER MICHAEL WAYNE, MURDERER OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN OF THE CALIPHATE. NOT ANYMORE.

A man with a British accent spoke off screen as the video images showed stock photos of U.S. soldiers, tanks, aircraft carriers, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. “America. You have been fighting us from afar. But now the war has lost its distance for you. Your soldiers and spies can die at home as easily as they can abroad.

“You think you are strong because you attack women and children in Iraq and Syria and North Africa. You wear your body armor, and your machine guns, and you surround yourself with the protection of your fellow killers. But back home you are weak, vulnerable.

“We know who you are, where you are. And now we are here, and we will come for you.

“War, total and complete. Everywhere. At all times. You are too afraid to confront us with numbers on the field of battle, so we will confront you with righteousness, wherever we can find you. And believe me, we do have the power to find you. Where you work, where you train, where you relax, where you play, where you sleep at night.

“We call on all other brave Muslim lions here in America, or those with the ability to travel to America. Now is the time. Now is the opportunity.

“The United States Army. The United States Navy. The United States Air Force. The United States Marine Corps. The FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security.” More stock photos, following along with the narrator.

“If you cannot find access to any of these forces, we call on you to attack state and local law enforcement. Your efforts, while seemingly small, will inspire others to join with you. If you are martyred, your martyrdom will be remembered. You will be at the vanguard of the war in America that we swear is soon to come.”

Again the images of the three dead. “The Prophet, peace be unto him, said our caliphate would reach Rome and Constantinople. This is true. But it will also reach Washington. New York. Los Angeles. This is only the beginning. Our soldiers are preparing more attacks against greater targets. Keep watching, and join the fight.”

A series of URLs appeared on the screen, and the screen went to black.

Dan Murray said, “Despite how they try to justify the killing on here, we feel certain Braxton was the intended victim. They screwed up but are glossing over it. Why would they let him live other than the fact they didn’t know he was there?”

Jay Canfield nodded. “ISIS is a death cult, and they killed someone. That’s good enough for them.”

Ryan asked, “How widely has this video been distributed?”

Mary Pat answered. “We saw it instantly, but twenty minutes ago I was told it’s been picked up by media all over the world. Suffice it to say that by the time we walk out of this meeting, this will be the biggest news in America, so there is no getting out in front of this.”

It was quiet for a moment, all eyes on the President. Finally Ryan said, “If ISIS has the home address of a Delta Force assaulter, then they could have anything.”

“Agreed,” answered Burgess. “Obviously the word will get out that Wayne was Army, at Fort Bragg. We can hide the fact he was a JSOC operator, maybe, but I’m not sure we want to get caught covering that up.”

Homeland Security Secretary Zilko said, “Killing America’s best paramilitary officers at the front door of their homes is a level of sophistication from ISIS that we did not think they had.”

Ryan shrugged. “Since we are flying blind on the assumption this is related to al-Matari and the ongoing multipronged intel leak of unknown proportions going on right now, I don’t think we can make any good judgments about how sophisticated ISIS is. Until someone in this room brings in actionable intel, either in the form of the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’ of the military and intelligence compromise, or the ‘wheres’ in the case of Abu Musa al-Matari, we are going to sit here every damn morning and just talk about whoever has been murdered the day before.”

Bob Burgess said, “Mr. President, if ISIS is doing this, coming here with a few dozen operatives to kill our employees, I have to ask the question… Why? This isn’t a viable strategy. Nor is it tactically effective. No offense meant to Ms. Pineda, who I am told was doing a fine job, but there are thousands of other analysts of her rank and access or higher around the intelligence community. Why her? What makes ISIS think they can have any effect on the war in the Middle East by coming over here and targeting her, a single Delta sergeant, and a former SEAL? It doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

Mary Pat Foley spoke up now. “It’s for recruitment. They aren’t going to defeat us with mail bombs, but they might get enough copycats to be an important force multiplier.”

Ryan said, “I think Mary Pat is correct, but I think it’s possible something else is going on here.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “The Islamic State wants a massive overreaction from the U.S. A hundred thousand American troops in Iraq would be the single most effective way for them to grow as an organization. Sure, they’d lose Mosul, and maybe even territory in Syria, but they are losing that anyway, and they know it.”

Mary Pat said, “Are you suggesting al-Matari is over here trying to drum up your anger?”

Ryan said, “My anger, the military’s anger, the voting public’s anger. It’s a shrewd move if I’m correct. Think how many in Congress are getting phone calls right now from constituents saying how mad they are about this. How weak America looks. Think how many enemies this administration has in the press who will say ISIS is now beating our government in street battles in America.”

Mary Pat said, “If I thought for a second al-Matari’s operation was complete now after these three incidents, I’d frankly be thrilled. But I don’t. Not by a long shot.”

Ryan agreed. “He’s got twenty-five to fifty trained operatives, minus the two who were killed in North Carolina. They are here in America, and they are spread out from one coast to the other. They have guns and bombs and suicide vests that we know of, and they are targeting military and intelligence personnel.”

Ryan looked around the table. “This is just the beginning, and it will go on until we stop it.” He set his gaze on Dan Murray. “Dan, you and Andy are in charge of protecting the homeland. The enemy is inside the wire, so you are the front lines now.”