Fly by Wire: A Novel (16 page)

^{" You
," he said, cutting her off, "are the CIA. That's what you guys do, right? Find out about people?"}

^{Sorensen frowned.}

^{He said, "Besides, Jaber is a big wheel at CargoAir. If you people are really targeting that company, chances are you have a lot on him already."}

^{"You think he's involved?"}

^{"I don't know. I just want to know who I'm dealing with -- besides Langley. Once I know the teams, then I'll choose sides."}

^{"Just like on the playground."}

^{Davis didn't answer, and they stared at one another. Sorensen's displeasure shone through. Davis had been here less than twenty-four hours and he was already catching spears. Which put him about a day ahead of schedule.}

^{It was Sorensen who broke it off. She drained her cup, threw a few bills on the table, and walked off in a huff. She moved fast, like she had things to do. Phone calls to make. Davis knew she was pissed, and in a way he was glad. He didn't like people who just rolled over and took what came in life. She was saying,
If you won't help me, then to hell with you. I'll do it on my own.}

^{He watched her leave. Her slacks had a nice fit around her hips and waist, and she got the same looks every slim, pretty blonde got when she walked through a public room. Davis forced his eyes elsewhere.}

^{They went naturally to a television mounted over the bar on the far side of the room. The volume had been muted, but the flat screen flickered with life. This, he knew, was an essential human impulse, a proven quirk of the species. Bright lights, movement -- that's where the eye was naturally drawn. Light, color, and motion were integral to the design of aircraft flight decks. Green lights were good. Amber lights not good. Red lights bad. Flashing red lights -- real bad. In the last few moments of his life, Earl Moore had probably been looking at a Christmas tree. At least, Davis hoped that was the case.}

^{A scrolling red banner ran beneath the news commentator on TV. Breaking news. Davis thought,
Isn't all news breaking? That's why it's --
he dropped the line of thought. On the television screen he saw an industrial area on fire, a nighttime shot taken from what had to be a helicopter's perspective. Dancing orange flames licked at pipes and machinery, and smoke intermittently blotted out the lights of emergency vehicles. He wondered briefly what it was all about, but then decided he had enough fires of his own to put out.}

^{Davis signed his check and headed for the field.}

^{When Sorensen got back to her room, she threw her purse on the bed and booted up her computer. She sat behind the tiny hotel desk and tapped her nails impatiently on imitation hardwood. She was still ticked.}

^{When the screen came up, Sorensen fed in her password and checked her mail. It was a secure system, a satellite feed -- she'd had to move the desk near a window to get a good uplink. It wasn't the picture most people had when they thought about spy work, shoving around furniture to get good uplinks, but this was reality. There was still an occasional smoky room, a dark alley now and again. But the most useful information almost always came from file downloads, not fat men in white suits.}

^{She found one message from Langley. It was wordy, full of dubious speculation, but had one recurrent theme -- find Caliph. She read through once and filed it away. Her nails were still tapping. He had really gotten to her. She'd expected certain things about Jammer Davis. Some of them had held. Others felt wrong. Sorensen called up the saved file labeled
frank davis.}

^{She had read it once yesterday, and figured she'd known what to expect. Her favorite part was where they listed "Jammer" as an alias. Davis had gone into the Marine Corps right after high school, served one stint, then taken an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy. After graduating, he'd spent sixteen years on active duty flying fighters. He'd retired at the rank of major, then hired on with the NTSB.}

^{On paper, he was straightforward, even a cliche. She reread the part where Davis had gotten into trouble during his last Air Force assignment-- he'd punched a hole in the officer's club wall with his fist. The first time she'd read it, Sorensen remembered thinking,
And that's all I need to know about Jammer Davis.
Now she wondered.}

^{At the end of the file was a section labeled
personal
. His wife had died in a car crash almost two years ago. One daughter. And Jammer Davis played rugby. No surprise there. He was built for it.
Who digs this stuff up?
she wondered. Sorensen stared at the word
personal
and decided it was rubbish. You couldn't get to know somebody this way. She had gone in expecting a Neanderthal, but come out with something else. Something she couldn't quite peg.}

^{There was a picture in the file, an official portrait from somebody's archives. Again, the real thing was different. It was a classically handsome face in structure, square and angular, but rich with life's trials. Tousled brown hair, slightly crooked nose, a smattering of small scars -- a face that would look right at home with a butterfly bandage or two. The voice had been deep and loud, made for barking orders at Academy underclassmen. But it wasn't dim or brutish. There was an intelligence about Davis -- an intelligence he'd be happy to bash you over the head with.}

^{Sorensen's fingers moved up from the desk and momentarily stroked the keyboard. The machine's thought bubble asked,
are you sure you want to delete this file
? She moved the cursor over the y
es
option, paused for just a moment. Then she tapped down.}

^{The machine whirred faintly as it digested her command. Sorensen navigated elsewhere and typed in her request:}

^.

^{NEED ALL AVAILABLE INFORMATION}

^{ON EGYPTIAN NATIONAL DR. IBRAHIM}

^{JABER--EMPLOYED AS EXECUTIVE WITH}

^{CARGOAIR CORPORATION --HIGHEST}

^PRIORITY

^{Chapter FOURTEEN}

^{The White House Situation Room was living up to its moniker. There was indeed a situation.}

^{The president had been awakened at two-thirty in the morning, as soon as word of the third refinery disaster registered at the FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center, the country's one-stop repository for bad news. Given that the attacks came within minutes of one another, the tsunami hit shortly thereafter.}

^{Twenty-one attacks, clearly synchronized, had occurred on oil refineries across America. Details were still filtering in, but the newest reports were little more than battle damage assessments -- casualty counts, fire containment estimates, and bulletins detailing a handful of small-scale evacuations that had been ordered for hazardous material contamination.}

^{The atmosphere in the Situation Room was chaotic. The National Security Council had been called into emergency session. Staffers came and went in a constant flow, delivering spectacular details of the attacks. The reactions in the room were a predictable mix -- shock, outrage, calls for defensive action. The offense would come later. High on one wall, an array of televisions showed the major news networks. The volumes were muted, but each screen blazed with rotating video clips of smoking wreckage. CNN had a running casualty graph. The present score: twenty-one dead, forty injured. The televisions, in fact, were for more than visual affirmation of the scope of the strikes -- if anything further happened, this was where the national command structure would likely see it first.}

^{President Truett Townsend was trying to make sense of a Department of Homeland Security report in front of him. It was a load of bureaucratic gibberish explaining the legal ramifications of raising the national threat level. The noise in the room was deafening, and he had difficulty concentrating.}

^{"Mr. President--"}

^{Townsend looked up to see his chief of staff, Martin Spector. "Martin, this is chaos."}

^{"I realize that, sir, but this
is
the first crisis of our administration. In light of that, your address to the nation is critical. I have the first draft of your speech." He slid a six-page document in front of Townsend. "You're scheduled to come on at eight a. M. eastern. That's just over an hour from now. You'll have to edit--"}

^{"Not now!" Townsend shoved the draft aside. He looked up to see no fewer than thirty people. Half were yelling into cell phones, and the rest were arguing. This was not going well. He'd had all he could take. Townsend stood and yelled at the top of his lungs,
"Enough!"}

^{It did the job.}

^{The room went silent and everyone fell still -- Townsend thought they looked like a bunch of kids playing freeze tag. He pointed distinctly to the ones he wanted. "Martin. DNI. CIA. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Homeland Security. Everybody else, out!"}

^{The room parted, rearranged before him, and Truett Townsend took his seat at the head of the conference table. His five advisors followed suit without asking. It didn't show often, but Truett Townsend had a temper, and nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of it.}

^{"All right, everyone," the president said slowly, consciously trying to lighten his tone, "let's establish our priorities. Homeland Security, give me your best overview. How were these attacks undertaken?"}

^{A beleaguered director of Homeland Security said, "It seems to have been a painfully simple operation, sir. Some of these refineries had a respectable level of physical security -- motion sensors, vehicle barriers, low-light cameras. I expect we'll find that most of the security operation centers recognized the perimeter breach. Unfortunately, we are talking about tremendous facilities. The response times simply weren't fast enough. For the suicide bombers, once they'd breached a simple chain-link fence, all they were looking at was a hundred-yard dash with all the explosives they could carry. Twenty, thirty seconds. Maybe a minute at a few of the biggest targets."}

^{General Banks said, "This doesn't surprise me one bit. The more we rely on laser guided bombs, satellites, and unmanned aerial vehicles, the more our enemies rely on simple bullets, suicide attacks, and messages delivered by hand. Pretty soon they'll be using a match and a length of fuse cord like goddamn Wile E. Coyote."}

^{"And the problem," Darlene Graham fretted, "is that it'll work. At least for a time."}

^{Townsend said, "Let's move on. Has the immediate threat ended?"}

^{Homeland Security again, "We think so, Mr. President. All the attacks occurred within a window of no more than ten minutes. Chances are, they were supposed to be simultaneous. The news wires have reported subsequent explosions, but these are likely secondary -- at least half of the facilities struck are still battling uncontrolled fires. There's been the usual spree of copycat bomb threats, reports of suspicious packages and vehicles. So far it's all turned out to be spurious."}

^{"All right," said the president, "then let's assume the threat has ended for today. What can we do going forward?"}

^{Homeland Security said, "Our emergency response plan has been put into effect. The command center is fully staffed, coordinating with the first responders."}

^{Townsend gently pushed the six-page speech back toward his chief of staff. "All right, ladies and gentlemen. In a short time, I am going to talk to the American people. I will speak from my heart, tell them we've been attacked, but that the situation is under control. I'll briefly cover our response plan and make myself personally accountable for the nation's recovery. Having said that--" Truett Townsend paused for effect, "there is one very important question to be answered." The president let his words hang.}

^{General Banks piped in, "It has to be Caliph, Mr. President. Our intelligence told us something was coming."}

^{Graham added, "We've been able to track three of the rental cars so far. All were contracted to men with Arabic names, two of them here on student visas. We'll get more soon, but Caliph's fingerprints are all over this."}

^{Townsend looked to each of his advisors in turn. One by one, they nodded in agreement. He was convinced. "All right. We are going to make this guy the new Osama Bin Laden. That means you all need to clear the decks at your respective organizations. We have one mission." Townsend smacked his palm hard on the table. "Find this bastard!"}