Uncivil Liberties (30 page)

“I said I would close with another Winston Churchill quote. What we are proposing to discuss these next several days is not really difficult. It closely follows, in my opinion, Churchill’s greatest and most important quote:  ‘
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.’

“May God guide our hand in this endeavor.”

Four days later, as Dan and Nicole waited at the Mazatlan airport for their Alaska Airlines flight to San Francisco, Dan received a text on his Blackberry from Joyce Jefferson.

President Snow has invited us to Camp David next Monday. Call this evening when you return. Joyce

Dan showed it to Nicole. “The plot thickens,” he said.

“Or the first team has taken the field,” she replied.

Benton County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Rex Clinton departed the Richland Sub-Station where he had conducted his shift briefing, having advised the six deputy sheriff patrol officers of the operational orders for the upcoming twelve-hour patrol. At 6:20 PM on a cool May evening, he began to traverse his route, signaling his on-duty status with the joint dispatch center which controlled operations for the police and sheriff for the Tri-Cities area of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, Washington.

A few miles west of the Tri-Cities was the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, a nuclear research and waste disposal facility, one of the original sites from which the World War II Manhattan Project had derived some of its plutonium. The Hanford nuclear facility was on the government’s critical watch list in the current crisis. Since the terrorist attacks had started, Lieutenant Clinton had made it a point to patrol the facility several times on each shift.

Four weeks earlier in Spokane, along with about two hundred law enforcement officers from the northwestern states, Clinton had attended a briefing by the Homeland Security Department. A man named Pádraig Connor and several other personnel from HSD had spent the entire day informing the gathering of what little was known of the terrorists that now roamed America. Most of the law enforcement officers were unimpressed with the lack of intelligence and felt the federal government had done little to prevent the current situation. The further up the chain of command the police and sheriff’s officers were, with some holding responsibility for budget considerations, the more mollified they were when Connor announced that the federal government would pick up the tab for overtime and extra patrols. At the end of the meeting, most left with a feeling of helplessness, having gained little actual information from which to formulate a plan of action.

The one bright spot on the horizon was the impact of the congressionally approved enhancements to the Patriot Act, which authorized search of suspicious persons without the need for reasonable cause—a long-standing requirement of liberals opposed to any authority for the police—and retention of those who were deemed persons of interest, both of which gave law enforcement a far broader ability to investigate. A detention period of 96 hours had been agreed to by the joint House and Senate Intelligence committee as part of the temporary revisions to the Patriot Act.

Taking up a favorite spot along State Highway 240, a strategic position which allowed observation of traffic flow near the entrance to the DOE Hanford Site facility, yet kept his cruiser out of public view, Lieutenant Clinton settled down to watch the evening commuter traffic heading west from the Tri-Cities. By eight, it was full dark, although the passing vehicles were required to traverse under a bright set of highway lamp posts placed near the entrance and were easily visible from his vantage point.

A muted gray Toyota Corolla with two men in the front seat drew no particular attention until the third time Clinton saw it. Using a pair of Zeis binoculars, he read the Oregon license plate number and ran a registration, bringing up a Budget Car Rental ownership. The two male occupants and the rental status brought to mind two of the criteria Homeland Security had listed as watch points.

When the vehicle appeared a fourth time about twenty minutes later, Clinton pulled out onto the highway and from a loose tail, followed it. He notified dispatch of his observation, citing the license number again, and maintained a distant vigil. After about ten minutes, the vehicle left the rural highway and headed up Highway 395 to the north, toward Spokane. Clinton did not pursue and gave it no further thought, returning to his normal evening routine.

At 1:15 AM, after four traffic violations, two drunken drivers, and a domestic dispute, Clinton met with two of his fellow officers at the local Denny’s to break for dinner. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and corn, followed by a piece of German chocolate cake, completed the stop. Good-natured ribbing from his fellow officers regarding the amount of food he had consumed at dinner was not unusual, but was offset by the fact that he remained trim and fit at six feet, one inch, and 195 pounds, and had recently won, at the age of 41, the department-wide physical readiness profile which included five physical agility and endurance tests, plus a body fat analysis where he had scored less than 8 percent. As a result, Lieutenant Clinton was easily able to take such ribbing in good stead.

As the trio exited Denny’s toward their respective patrol cars, Clinton glanced across the street at the 7-11 convenience store. Parked to the front of the building in the end slot, he saw the gray Toyota Corolla, the Oregon license plate matching his earlier query. The driver was in the car, but the other man was either in the store or using the restroom facility. Clinton quickly walked to his closest fellow officer’s vehicle and motioned for the third officer to join them. He explained the situation, including the two matching profile issues, the vehicle’s previous proximity to Hanford, and advised that he was going across the street to speak with the occupants of the vehicle, but that he was going to time it to coincide with the return of the passenger. He instructed the other two officers to pull around behind Denny’s to take their patrol cars out of view and to watch as the situation developed.

Clinton pulled his vehicle into the entrance to the 7-11, holding place to the far right of the parking area, near the air pump and away from either the suspect vehicle or the several cars that were being fueled near the pump islands. Simultaneous with his arrival, the Toyota’s passenger exited the convenience store, and Clinton could see that the man was startled by the sheriff’s vehicle parked nearby. His step quickened toward the Toyota and he averted his eyes. In that instant, fifteen years of law enforcement instinct told Clinton that his suspicions were correct. Terrorist or not, the two individuals had reason to fear the law. Clinton stepped out of his vehicle and slowly approached the Toyota. Before he had taken three steps, the man who had exited the store ran around the front of his car, pulled a small caliber pistol, and fired a shot at Clinton, missing and hitting the patrol vehicle, shattering the windshield. Lieutenant Clinton retreated behind his driver’s side door and pulled his primary weapon, a 9mm Glock. Careful not to fire and risk injury to someone inside the store, he held fire as the passenger quickly entered the car and the driver reversed out of the parking spot, tires squealing as they began to flee the area. Clinton stood, taking careful aim over the top of his driver’s side door, and fired one round, striking the driver of the vehicle. The man slumped over the steering wheel and the Toyota impacted a Ford that was fueling at the nearest island. The passenger jumped out of the Toyota, gun in hand, and began to run for the darker area behind the 7-11, loosing off another
wild shot toward Clinton. With a carefully aimed shot, Clinton brought the man down, causing him to drop his weapon, which went skidding along the pavement. Both sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene with their weapons at the ready, having run across the street. One of them kicked the assailant’s weapon further from his hand and knelt down to place handcuffs on the prostrate man, who now was screaming in pain from his gunshot wound.

Clinton approached the driver’s side of the Toyota, backed by Officer Talmadge, and slowly opened the door, observing the head wound of the driver. He reached in and felt for a carotid pulse.

“He’s dead,” Clinton reported to his two companions.

“This one took it in the shoulder, Lieutenant,” the second officer said.

Two additional people exited the 7-11, and a small crowd of what Clinton had come to call ‘night people,’ because of their unusual dress and aberrant behavior, began to gather to see what had happened. Clinton returned to his vehicle and called dispatch, reporting the incident and calling for an ambulance. He then returned to the crashed vehicle and began to examine the interior, retrieving the keys from the ignition and opening the trunk, where he visually observed an assortment of small-arms weapons, including a rifle equipped with a scope. A box of flares and a plastic-wrapped block of what appeared to be individual lumps of clay were also visible. From prior training, Clinton recognized it as plastic explosive material. Lieutenant Clinton was careful not to disturb any of the physical evidence and assured that no one else had access to the subject vehicle.

Deputy Talmadge, at Clinton’s direction, began to cordon off the area with yellow plastic crime scene tape and to initiate crowd control. Two additional sheriff’s vehicles arrived, and a City of Richland police cruiser. Within thirty minutes, Augustus County Sheriff William Huntley was on the scene and assumed command. By 6:00 AM, the normal time for the end of Clinton’s shift, two FBI agents from Spokane had arrived and assumed command and control from Sheriff Huntley. The wounded gunman had been taken to a nearby hospital, under armed guard, and was undergoing surgery as the FBI arrived on scene.

At 1:30 PM, Lieutenant Clinton was still on duty, having completed a debriefing with the FBI and was working on his written reports. Just after 2:00, an Air Force helicopter landed in the sheriff’s sub-station parking area and General Pádraig Connor and Carlos Castro, dressed in civilian clothes with Homeland Security badges prominent, arrived on scene, having flown directly from Andrews AFB, Maryland, to Fairchild AFB, west of Spokane, where they transferred to an Air Force helicopter for the ride southwest to the Tri-Cities area.

Upon initial investigation, the dead suspect was unidentifiable but was assumed from his physical characteristics to be either an Indonesian or from the Philippines. From the documents found in the luggage in the vehicle, the wounded suspect was determined to be an American from the Seattle area.

The first break in the national tragedy had been obtained as a result of Benton County Sheriff’s Lieutenant, Rex Clinton, and his astute observation of the recurrent visits of the gray Toyota. The limited result of the investigation would prove that tracking the remaining terrorist teams was as difficult as General Austin had assumed, with one exception. The American terrorist had a Blackberry concealed among his luggage found at the Motel 6 where the two men had booked a room for the night. The Blackberry, with Internet history recorded internally, provided some clue as to the method of communication, but as quickly as the primary website was discovered, it had closed down.

Neither Dan Rawlings nor Joyce Jefferson had ever been to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, a short helicopter flight from the White House. It was President Snow’s second trip, the first having been Easter Sunday weekend when he had been interrupted by the events in Australia and the shootings at American baseball stadiums. His wife, Helen, had remained with her daughter and grandchildren, while President Snow had returned to immediately meet with Secretary Austin and the Trojan team.

Today’s meeting was about the other war in America, the secessionist movement in the west. Following the president’s briefing on the meeting in Mexico, provided by General Robert Del Valle, Snow was determined to make a further attempt to dissuade his former associate, Joyce Jefferson, and the younger legislator, Daniel Rawlings, from continuing down that path.

When Dan and Joyce entered the largest of the cabins, it was not a conference room at all, but set up in the form of a large living room, with couches, overstuffed leather chairs, and a homey atmosphere. Homey, if you didn’t take into consideration the stern faces of those seated around the room. It was evident that the earlier meeting had been ongoing for some time before they arrived.

Dan recognized the principals in the room. In a large, brown leather chair with an ottoman to the side sat President William Snow. To his right, moving counter-clockwise around the room, was Secretary of Homeland Security, William Austin. Next sat General Pug Connor. The next person was personally unknown to Dan, but he recognized him as Patrick Collins, newly confirmed Secretary of Defense. Closest to Dan as they entered the room was his former National Guard commanding officer, Lieutenant General Robert Del Valle. Two empty chairs remained. President Snow motioned to the one on his left and smiled at Joyce Jefferson.

“Joyce, very glad you could join us. Have a seat, please,” the president said. “Mr. Rawlings, have a seat beside Governor Jefferson. Welcome to Camp David. I think everyone knows everyone else. If not, we can get further acquainted during lunch break. We’ve been meeting since eight this morning. I have to return to Washington about three this afternoon, so we have a short time frame to reach some resolution of our differences, if, in fact that can be accomplished. Joyce, are you and Mr. Rawlings prepared to speak for your constituents? Your political allies, I mean, not the general public.”