Use of Force

CHAPTER 54

“I got here as quickly as I could,” said Lydia Ryan as she entered the Director’s wood-paneled conference room. She had always been in awe of this space. It had a tremendous amount of history, not the least of which being that this was the room where the bin Laden raid had been run. All of the monitors were tuned to live feeds from Paris.

A group was seated at the end of the long conference table. Several rolling suitcases were lined up against the wall. The Director waved her over.

“We’re sending over a team?” she asked, as she removed a laptop from her briefcase.

“FBI too,” McGee replied. “They’re going to need all the help they can get.” He then turned to a young analyst and said, “Bring Deputy Director Ryan up to speed.”

The young man nodded and, picking up a remote, stated, “We got this video from French Intelligence twenty minutes ago. It was shot by one of their people, just after the bombs went off. I’ve got to warn you, it’s bad.”

All bombing aftermaths were bad, especially when civilians were involved. Either this person was new, or this really was on a different level. Taking a breath, she signaled for him to roll the footage.

As soon as the video started, she realized he had not been exaggerating. Amidst helicopters hovering overhead and the klaxons of emergency vehicles rushing to the scene, all you could hear were people screaming. The sound was horrible — like animals being slaughtered. The images were even worse.

Victims’ limbs had been sheared off. Bodies lay, missing heads. Torsos had been torn open, their internal organs spilling out. There was blood absolutely everywhere.

As the French Intelligence officer walked his camera through the carnage, Ryan noticed people at the conference table turn their eyes away. They had already viewed the video. She tried to steel herself for whatever was coming up.

In addition to ripping through people, the bombs had ripped through the carnival stalls. The destruction was unlike anything she had ever seen. But these weren’t the scenes her colleagues couldn’t bear to watch. As soon as she saw the smoldering carousel, she knew what was coming.

Ryan was reminded of how ISIS had attempted to detonate a suicide bomber inside Kidsville — the children and family camp at Burning Man.

Even though one bomber had detonated in another part of the festival, stopping the Kidsville attack had been considered the greatest win of the operation. But seeing what she now saw, none of that mattered anymore.

The tiny bodies lay everywhere. Their injuries were just as horrific as the adults’, but they were even more heart-wrenching due to their age.

The bomber had struck inside the part of the carnival geared toward the youngest attendees. Mixed with the wreckage of the carousel animals were actual ponies, some barely alive and still tethered to the rigging that allowed children to ride them in circles. Their screams of pain, mixed with those of parents and children, were unbearable.

A police officer could be seen approaching one of the animals and drawing his pistol, only to be stopped by a colleague for fear of creating a panic that a shooter was loose somewhere.

The French Intelligence officer seemed to have ice in his veins as he proceeded calmly through the rest of the carnival, documenting everything he could.

But when he reached the end, when there was nothing more to document, the phone dropped from his hand and the man could be heard throwing up.

The analyst paused the video there.

“Why don’t we take ten minutes,” Director McGee said. “I’d like to speak with the Deputy Director alone.”

As the attendees pushed back from the table and filed out of the room, he picked up the remote and turned off the monitors.

Once the last person had exited and the door had shut behind them, he turned to Ryan and said, “The death toll is going to exceed Spain.”

She shook her head at the grim news. “How many Americans?”

“We’ve got our people at the Embassy working on it. We know of eighteen already, but we expect the number to go higher.”

“Suicide bombers, or were the explosives planted?”

“We’re digging into the surrounding CCTV footage,” said McGee, “but the working hypothesis right now is suicide bombers. At least six. One appears to have gone off prematurely and the rest followed not long after.”

“Why do we think one went off prematurely?”

“Because it happened on the edge of the carnival, not inside, where the explosion would have done much more damage. French police reportedly approached a man in a soccer jersey shortly before the first explosion. We’re trying to run that down.”

“What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Get Harvath to move faster. Whatever it takes. I don’t care.”

“I’ll reach out to him. In the meantime, what about my request?”

McGee leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Access to the Malice program.”

“It’s a big ask. I under—”

“Especially right now.”

“I understand, but the more Reed and I have discussed this, the more concerned I’ve become. Somebody might be trying to smother us in the crib.”

The Director didn’t respond.

“The whole idea,” Ryan continued, “is for us to assemble a lifeboat for the Agency. If there are people out there attempting to drill holes in it, we have to know.”

He thought about it for a moment more before replying. “If I agreed, how would it play out?”

Ryan had wargamed it as best she could. Her plan wasn’t perfect, but she felt she had come up with a pretty good idea. Remaining as brief as possible, she laid it out for him.

McGee let it all sink in. It was a big ask. And it involved a lot of risk for the CIA. If it went sideways, even the President wouldn’t be able to save them.

Point by point, he went through his concerns. And point by point, she addressed them.

Finally, he only had one question left. “How are you going to get him in without anyone seeing him?”

Looking over at the suitcases along the wall, she replied, “I think I have an idea.”