The first person to go live with the news was a shock jock named Ivan Teretsky at WFQL Radio. “Esteemed” for his bombastic political pronouncements and on-air stunts, which once included the playing of a tape-recording of a prominent governor and a prostitute while they were going at it, he was best known to New Yorkers as “Ivan the Terrible.”
Gallagher was now winding his way through miserable traffic to interview the radio host at his station on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He steered through Columbus Circle and drove along the park to 66th, then pulled into an underground parking garage a block before the street turned onto Riverside Drive.
In the elevator, Gallagher steeled himself for the interview. He was well aware of the kind of stunts this nutcase could pull. Teretsky might try to put him on the air, turn the whole thing into one big joke. But Gallagher wasn’t laughing. People had died, and somebody was responsible.
He gave his name to a pretty receptionist at the front desk and was told to wait. “Mr. Teretsky is just finishing up his show.”
Good, thought Gallagher. At least I know this interview won’t be going out over the airwaves. He sat down on the couch to wait. A television hanging from the ceiling played silently overhead. It was flashing images from Washington, D.C., with a heading underneath that read, “Joint Congressional Committee Probes Return-to-Sender Weapon.”
The camera landed briefly on Joshua Jordan and his wife, Abigail, as they made their way up the Capitol steps flanked by a swarming army of reporters. Gallagher was hit with a sudden wave of anger.
This guy was an American hero, and now these idiots on Capitol Hill were going to barbecue him for their own selfish political agendas. Why? Because he’d single-handedly saved New York with a weapons system they hadn’t approved. Were they crazy? They should be giving him the Congressional Medal of Honor, a Nobel Peace Prize, an Academy Award, maybe even the Heisman Trophy—anything he wants.
Yes, Gallagher was ticked off. The receptionist told him to go in; Mr. Teretsky was ready for him. No, he isn’t, thought Gallagher, not even close. He was in no mood for Teretsky now; in fact, he almost felt sorry for him. “Ivan the Terrible” was about to have a very bad day.
NINE
As Joshua Jordan strode through the halls of Congress on his way to the hearing, Abigail held tightly to his arm. For over twenty years she had been by his side, whether stationed at a military base in Europe, teaching at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, working while he studied at MIT in Boston, or moving their young family to New York City to start a new life. Even when he was away flying missions in the Middle East during the war, she’d always been there after every flight, waiting for his call. Jordan knew she didn’t have to choose this life. She’d been a highly successful attorney at a prestigious Washington law firm when they first met. He had been immediately taken by her beauty, dark hair, green eyes, and athlete’s tall tanned body, but he was ultimately knocked out by her brains. She never forgot a face or a fact, could cite football stats, particularly for the Denver Broncos, her favorite team, with the same ease as citing Constitutional law cases or federal statutes. She never made a bet she didn’t win and was an absolute killer at Scrabble.
Today, though, she wasn’t going to be by his side the whole time. He was going into a closed-door hearing with only his wits and his attorney to help him take on the full power of the U.S. Congress. He’d wanted Abby to be there, but she convinced him it was better to have an objective advocate instead of a loving and biased spouse to counsel him. Besides, she added, she hadn’t been in a courtroom, let alone a congressional hearing room, in years.
The lawyer she’d recommended was Harry Smythe, a mentor and colleague of hers from her Washington days. He was a legal fixture in D.C. and had made quite a name for himself advising a former president and arguing, and winning, several cases before the Supreme Court. Jordan glanced over at the balding, sixty-year-old man walking next to him. Impeccably dressed, with small round glasses, sporting his famous bowtie, he was vaguely reminiscent of the old silent screen comic Harold Lloyd, yet he had a reputation as a cobra. He wasn’t Abby, but he’d have to do.
As they approached the final security checkpoint, only those going into the classified hearing could pass any farther. Joshua pulled Abby aside and gave her a hug. It was amazing, even after all this time, the charge he got just being near her.
“I wish you were going in with me.”
“I know,” she smiled, “you’ll do fine, you always do.” She gave his hand one last squeeze. “I’ll be praying for you; don’t forget that.”
Joshua was going to say something back, but squeezed her hand in return and headed toward the hearing room door.
As Joshua disappeared beyond the door with his attorney, Abigail couldn’t help but let a few doubts creep in. After the euphoria of that day when the missiles were turned back, questions had started to pop up. First it was just a low murmur in the background, but now that murmur had turned into a steady stream of acrimonious questions. Who authorized the use of an untested system like the RTS-RGS? Why were the bombs retargeted to a live target? Why weren’t they destroyed harmlessly in midair over the Atlantic? Why weren’t the intelligence and defense committees of Congress even aware of this system? Who did Joshua Jordan think he was to make these decisions? As a private military contractor, was he making national defense policy for the whole country?
Abigail had lived in this town long enough to know that it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk for her husband today. Careers were made out of crushing the bones of honorable men like him. It was a zero-sum game. Any advantage you could take, any weakness you could find, any crack you could pry open and exploit was counted as a political notch on your belt. She’d tried to prepare her husband for what he might expect, but he seemed confident he had right on his side. And Harry Smythe. Thank goodness for Harry. He was an old hand who knew his way around the political cloakrooms and brass-railed bars where most of the work in Washington really gets done. He wouldn’t let Joshua step on any landmines these senators and congressmen might strew in his path.
But the real question was whether he could save Joshua from himself. When Joshua got an idea in his head, he was like a dog with a bone; there was no getting it away from him. It’s what made him so brilliant, so successful, but it could also make him infuriating. Joshua knew no compromise. It was the biggest problem between father and son. Joshua had expectations that Cal would never be able to meet.
Abigail hadn’t told Joshua what really happened to Cal on the evening of the attack. She found out herself a few days later when Cal confided his terror to her. Joshua had assumed Cal was on a train, well out of New York City, when the panic hit; but he was right in the middle of it. She didn’t like holding things back from her husband, but he was so preoccupied with the hearing in Washington. Besides, things had been touchy between him and Cal before he’d left for college. Now everything seemed better. The near tragedy had brought the family together. Debbie had been like a rock for her younger brother, and Joshua seemed at least to be trying to understand Cal’s decision to study art at Liberty. She didn’t want to take that away from them. Not now. Not yet.
But as she walked down the hall, she promised herself, after this was all over and things had died down, she’d tell her husband the truth. He deserved it and so did Cal.
TEN
The public was barred from the closed-door, high-level security hearing, but the press was allowed in to take photos for a few minutes before the session started. Joshua was seated at a long, green clothdraped table, looking uncomfortable while cameras clicked and strobes flashed in his face. He didn’t like having his picture taken, and he didn’t try to hide it as he leaned over to his lawyer seated next to him.
“I’d take any amount of grilling from a senator over this form of torture.”
With a wry smile the lawyer shot back, “I hope you still feel that way after the hearing.”
Then, as if on some hidden cue, th
e photographers stopped, packed up their cameras, and walked out. Joshua wondered, chuckling to himself, if there had been some sort of high-pitched dog whistle calling them off that only the news hounds could hear. Whatever it was, he was happy to be spared any more embarrassing attention from the press.
He looked around the room. Even though the public wasn’t allowed in, some pretty heavyweight bystanders sat in the mostly vacant audience section behind him: the president’s national security advisor, the chief of staff to the vice president, an aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff he’d met once but whose name he couldn’t remember, and various other high-level advisors and military personnel. It was a pretty heady peanut gallery.
The senators and representatives began to file into the chamber in ones and twos, taking their places at the raised dais at the front. A few came over to shake Joshua’s hand enthusiastically, but most just took their seats and looked over their notes or conferred with their aides. They were a select group of experienced lawmakers, the so-called gang-of-eight, as they were commonly referred to in Washington political parlance: those members of Congress with whom the president traditionally conferred in times of grave national security, the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, and the chairs and ranking members of their respective intelligence committees.
The chairman of this select committee, Senator Wendell Straworth, was a powerful veteran of Washington politics. He was seated in the middle of the dais in a high-backed chair that set him apart from the others. A large, imposing man, with a shiny bald head and thick, tangled eyebrows, he took a minute to survey the room, peeking out over the reading glasses perched at the end of his nose.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the senator began, “this will be a closed and confidential session of this special committee…created to investigate what I consider to be one of the most shocking and disturbing national security events in the history of this great nation,”
Senator Straworth took a long pause before he continued. “Now we are all painfully aware that this committee has issued letter requests for various documents pertinent to this investigation. Letter requests sent to Mr. Joshua Jordan, a private weapons contractor, as well as to his counsel. To date, Mr. Jordan has refused to produce a single document. I note that Mr. Jordan is present in this hearing room, along with his counsel, Mr. Harry Smythe.”
Senator Straworth slowly turned his gaze to Joshua. “This committee,” he announced with a booming voice, “calls as its first witness Mr. Joshua Jordan.”
Joshua stood up from the table and raised his right hand. He then took the oath and swore to tell the truth under the federal penalties of perjury. “…So help me God.”
Then he sat down.
Joshua was not a religious man, not in the way Abigail was. But just then, as he looked out over the congressional panel assembled in front of him, knowing as he did, the political and legal quicksand that lay all around him, he was happy about one thing: he knew Abigail was praying for him.
ELEVEN
Senator Straworth was anxious to rip into Joshua Jordan. The North Korean nuke incident and Jordan’s RTS antimissile system had spawned a growing media storm. There were allegations that the experimental system was too risky to have been tried and that the missiles could have been disarmed by conventional means that were already at the Pentagon’s disposal. Several major media outlets were beginning to call the incident “lasergate,” and the blogosphere was spinning out of control with an avalanche of conspiracy theories.
In the midst of this media firefight, Senator Straworth had maintained a public face of disturbed concern mixed with strained neutrality. After all, it was an undeniable political reality that the City of New York and its residents had been saved.
But those who knew the senator understood that beneath his cautiously managed exterior was an attack dog straining at its leash. In the congressional cloakrooms he had made his position clear. The North Korean incident had been mishandled by the Pentagon. White House policy and usual Pentagon procedures had been, in his view, arrogantly disregarded. Not to mention the question of whether the military’s choice of antimissile response, lobbing the two nukes back where they had come from, had actually violated international antimissile defense treaties. Because Straworth had personally championed those treaties in the Senate, the use of Joshua’s RTS weapons technology was viewed by the senator as a political knife in his own back.
But Straworth had to follow senatorial protocol first. After that, he could start his well-honed political grandstanding.
Straworth smiled, turning to the man seated next to him. “First order of business, the chair will recognize the honorable senator from Wyoming. Now, I understand, Senator Hewbright, that you have some other business you must attend to in another committee you chair. So, Senator, as ranking member, I’ll yield, and you may proceed first today.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.” Senator Hewbright, a square-faced man with his dark hair cut short, almost military-short, turned to face the witness, Joshua Jordan. “Colonel Jordan, let me say, sir, that I consider you a true American hero. I know your stellar military record as an Air Force pilot. I’m aware of the great risks you took to fly secret intel missions over Iran to help us determine the extent of their nuclear ambitions. We all have a copy of your impressive resumé: your activities after leaving active military duty, your graduate degree from MIT in applied physics, and your brilliant work as a defense contractor. So let me say thank you, sir, for your courage and your service to this nation.”
Joshua nodded politely, bent forward slightly to the microphone, and answered with a simple “Thank you.”
Senator Hewbright continued, but as he did, his tone changed. “However, not everyone is as enthusiastic about your recent weapons achievements as I am. As I see it, this special committee is tasked to address several questions. First, there’s concern about the use of so-called Return-to-Sender weapons technology, especially when it involves reversing the trajectory of a nuclear warhead, and whether that violates the Six-Party Missile-Defense Treaty, a treaty I personally opposed, and vehemently, I might add. The treaty didn’t include, as signers, the world’s biggest nuclear threats, namely North Korea, Iran, India, and Pakistan. On the other hand, it did include nonstate entities like the United Nations and the European Union, which I didn’t think was appropriate. But worse yet, to me that treaty represents just one more major erosion of American national sovereignty—”
“With all due respect,” Senator Straworth interjected with only a thin veneer of restraint, “I’m going to ask the senator to stick to the issue at hand. Namely, the use of Mr. Jordan’s weapons technology, which was unauthorized by the White House on the day it was used, and which had not been properly approved through the appropriate congressional channels or through the Defense Department’s own vetting. In short it was completely untested and frankly dangerous—”
“Mr. Chairman,” Senator Hewbright shot back, “this man’s technology saved the City of New York and its inhabitants from a nuclear holocaust—”
“Senator,” Straworth cut in, “I believe that this hearing is going to show that the Air Force jets dispatched that day were quite capable of stopping those warheads in midair, without detonating them, without using Mr. Jordan’s highly experimental Return-to-Sender laser weapon, without any loss of life, I might add, and without creating an international crisis—”
“May I continue?” Senator Hewbright stopped Straworth’s speech dead in its tracks. “I was under the assumption I had the floor…”
Straworth’s eyes flashed, and he squared his shoulders like a boxer. “You do, provided that you give deference to this committee by staying on track.”
Senator Hewbright had won that round but just barely. His voice was firm but measured. “As I was saying, I’m concerned less about any perceived chain-of-command issues and more about our loss of national sovereignty, and with it, a large measure of our national defense. This incident with the N
orth Koreans should force us to evaluate where our nation is right now. How did we find ourselves in such dire straits? How? Well, I have a pretty good idea, and it didn’t start with foreign policy or military defense. No. It began as a matter of simple economics. When OPEC decided to cut our oil imports so that India and China could get increased allotments, we all know how that caused an energy crisis here at home. We had failed to make sufficient gains in alternate energy sources so we had to go crawling on our knees around the globe searching for other sources from equally unsavory providers: Russia, Venezuela, Brazil. Now I suppose we could have weathered all of that, but the fates, or the hand of Providence, or Mother Nature, whatever you want to call it, had other plans. A twoyear drought in the Midwest, together with devastating livestock diseases, have had a catastrophic impact on our agriculture. And we’ve all seen the Dow, the tumbling numbers on the Standard & Poor’s index, the closest thing to a stock-market crash since the Great Crash of—”
“Senator,” Chairman Straworth interrupted, “I’ve extended you the courtesy of being taken out of order for your comments; now, do me the same favor by concluding your speech on the United States economy and please get back to the point at hand.”
Senator Hewbright’s face was slightly scarlet now. “The point, ladies and gentlemen, is that America’s catastrophic financial problems, the ruined dollar on the international monetary market, our loss of credit globally, the fifteen percent domestic unemployment rate—all of this, if I can put it bluntly, simply scared us stupid—stupid enough to sign off on disastrous treaties in exchange for the promise of more favorable trading and credit terms with the European Union, China, and other nations who are now holding us economically hostage. Our freedom and security in exchange for a little more cash in our pocket, a little more oil, and a whole lot more debt—”