“There is one more thing …,” the man on the screen added.
There was a pause. Leander said, “We’re waiting.”
“That Kyrgyzstan site is being monitored. A North Korean nuclear expert attended a meeting there. But we have intelligence that Iran is also involved.”
“So you think Iran is in on this nuclear plot?”
“Exactly.”
“Against the U.S.?”
“Iran may have a role, but their main interest is Israel. As we know, Iranian leaders have long harbored the desire to obliterate Israel. The other player, North Korea, has long despised our nation and wants to retaliate against the United States for destroying one of their navy vessels with the successful use of Mr. Jordan’s RTS system. So, that’s the playbook and the players.”
Retired general “Rocky” Bridger, a stocky man with short salt-and-pepper hair, jumped in. He took off his reading glasses and tapped them on the table. “What’s the operational plan for the attack?”
“We don’t have anything definitive yet, but some data indicate that portable nuclear devices are involved.”
Bridger followed up. “Have you shared this with our government?”
“Of course. Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the FBI. I’ve sent this to all of my contacts.”
“And?” Bridger wondered out loud.
“At first, some interest. But as time goes on, we have no assurances that our leads will be followed up on — and some evidence that they never will.”
“How would you know if they had or hadn’t? You don’t have the same resources as the government.”
“I can’t reveal sources, General, but we have friends in critical positions along the chain of command. They report that the data we shared with key federal agencies was … well … treated like a patient declared DOA in an emergency room.”
Now Gallagher piped up. “Are you saying there’s a cancer in the government?”
“Mr. Gallagher, I’m not at liberty to speculate. That’s one thing we don’t do. I’m tempted … but just can’t go any further. The new consolidation of national security agencies, while that has had some advantages, has one big disadvantage: there are now fewer people at the top who have the power to decide when to pursue and when not to pursue a threat.”
Gallagher wouldn’t let up. “Well, let’s assume that there’s something rotten. How high? Attorney General? Higher than that?”
Now Joshua turned to the former FBI special agent and had to draw the line. “John, our contact said he won’t speculate. We have to leave it at that.”
Gallagher shrugged with obvious displeasure.
“I have a question,” Joshua said. “You said portable nuclear devices. How do you know?”
“The device that triggers a nuclear bomb is called a neutron initiator. Now Russia’s always known how to make them. They were in the nuke race with us for years. Supposedly, since the New START Treaty with the U.S. under President Obama, they were going to stop further testing and development of offensive nuclear weapons, but we know differently. And at the same time, we were hampered in developing antimissile defenses. Even your own RTS is arguably forbidden under the START treaty, at least according to the Russians. But Russia started partnering with North Korea and Iran to get them to do Russia’s bidding in the nuclear race. That way they could look clean but act dirty. Years ago, all the way back in 2009, everybody — U.S. intelligence, the Brits, the International Atomic Energy Agency — all had evidence that Iran was experimenting with uranium deuteride, used as a neutron source for the trigger system for nukes. But now, one of our contacts in Kyrgyzstan tells us he’s seen documents passed between the Russian nuclear scientists and the North Koreans, and between the Russians and the Iranians. These papers show plans for the manufacture of very small neutron initiator systems, so small that the entire nuclear weapon could fit into the size of, say, a funeral coffin or the bed of a small pickup truck. We’ve also been told something else — and this is critical — that there was some kind of transportation timetable.”
Joshua zeroed in on that. “You’re talking transportation of a weapon?”
“No. Weapons. Plural. Two of them.”
The next question was the most important one, and everyone in the room knew it. Gallagher leaned forward, his hands flat on the conference table as if he was going to vault off a gymnastic side horse at the Olympics.
Joshua asked, “What’s the timetable?”
The man on the screen leaned back in his chair and delivered the bad news.
“The clock’s already ticking.”
EIGHTEEN
There was no tidy ending to the Roundtable meeting. It was the only time that Joshua had failed to forge some kind of consensus before adjourning. Pack McHenry, behind his scrambled image on the screen, ended the session by indicating that his volunteer agents would be at the disposal of the Roundtable, but if no coordination could be forged with Joshua’s group, he said his people would be forced to go it alone.
“The only problem,” the Patriot explained, “is that we lack the resources and political clout of your group. I’m not sure my group of former intel operatives, acting alone, could stop this thing.”
“What do you want from us?” Senator Leander blurted out. “You’re telling us our nation’s going to be blown up with nuclear weapons and that the government isn’t heeding your warnings. So tell us straight … what do you want us to do?”
McHenry didn’t hesitate. “We need you to take the lead. You’ve got a retired four-star general and a former FBI terrorism expert right there in the room with you. Your group is led by an Air Force flying ace who has given the Pentagon the cleverest antimissile device in military history. You’ve got a former U.S. senator and a retired federal judge. We need you to coordinate this, make the judgment calls, forge the plan, and we’ll give you all the assistance we can.” Having turned the responsibility over to the Roundtable, the Patriot signed off.
Senator Leander, as usual, was cynical. After the video was turned off, he complained, “I think the Patriot wants us to take the rap for this little adventure if his intel turns out to be bad. If we go cowboy on this thing, chasing down and harassing some guys who turn out to be vacuum-cleaner salesmen rather than terrorists with a suitcase bomb, who do you think the Department of Justice is going to go after? We’ll all end up serving jail time.”
Phil Rankowitz was astonished. “Alvin, for crying out loud, you know this Patriot group worked with Joshua and Rocky during that Grand Central Station incident. They saved the day. Joshua and his son Cal are both alive because of them — and, of course, because of John Gallagher here sticking his neck out.”
Gallagher looked away. He didn’t handle commendations well.
Beverley Rose Cortez, a self-made billionaire, pledged five million dollars payable immediately as a down payment to “stop these bloodthirsty terrorists.” But just as soon as she said that, she hedged. “But only if you can tell me exactly who the people are, the ones in this nuclear plot … can anyone tell me that?”
As usual, Judge “Fort” Rice had hung back, weighing things. When Joshua asked for his opinion, Rice just shook his head. “I keep going back to what the Patriot said — I jotted it down — he has ‘no assurances’ that the government had followed up on these leads … For me, that’s too vague. I need more. How can he be sure? This is where we have to decide who we trust and who we believe. I can’t accept the notion that the CIA and the FBI would just disregard a threat like this — if in fact it’s a credible one. And that’s a big if.”
Rankowitz wanted Abigail’s take on the judge’s comment. She tried to be diplomatic. “I respect your analytical approach, Judge, your desire for some kind of legal certainty, but I’m not sure that’s the right approach. If this really is an imminent threat, we have to make judgments on the facts as they are presented, not as we wish they were.”
The judge wouldn’t shift. “Burden of proof. That?
??s the legal standard we ought to use, Abby. For me, legal analysis is all we have to rely on. Bottom line is that he didn’t meet my burden of proof. It was his job to convince me of the facts … and he didn’t.”
Gallagher tried to choose his words carefully. “Judge, remember one thing. This is not the same CIA and FBI that I joined years ago. A lot of it has to do with all the political ropes and chains that have been looped around everything they do now. They’re men and women, brave ones too, working in unbelievably dangerous situations, but now they have to do it in a crazy political and legal straightjacket. The people at the top are the ones responsible for that. Plus, you heard what the Patriot said about the dangerous downside of this new consolidation of the security agencies at the top — fewer people make the decisions. I agree one-hundred percent.”
Joshua suggested that they carry the meeting over to a second day, but people had other commitments. Instead they would link up by encrypted conference call in seventy-two hours. Joshua and Gallagher resisted the delay, but the rest wouldn’t budge. Joshua got the feeling that, as much as the group wanted to believe the threat was both real and imminent, they had too many lingering doubts and that clouded everything.
That night, as Joshua and Abigail sat alone on the back porch outside their bedroom suite, looking at the stars, he expressed his own doubts. “Maybe I should have pushed harder.”
“That isn’t your job.”
“No?”
“Of course not. You chair the Roundtable, you lead the discussion, but these are accomplished men and women. They’re not junior staffers you can order around. They have to make up their own minds.”
“Listen to us … talking as if this was some bad policy in Washington that we want changed. This is a nuclear strike against our nation!”
“I was there, dear, remember?”
“Well, it surprises me you aren’t as agitated as I am … hours are ticking by … men coming after our cities with weapons of mass destruction, and what are we doing? Wasting three days till we meet again by phone.”
“What would you suggest?”
“Something. Anything. Seventy-two hours is an eternity when national security is on the line.”
“What then?”
“I’m calling Pack McHenry, putting together a tighter plan. Then when we have our conference call I’ll lay it all out. An up-or-down vote.”
“A plan in three days to stop a nuclear attack? You don’t even know the target or how the nukes will come into the country … Josh, how are you going to do that?”
He had no idea, but he wasn’t going to admit it.
They fell silent. He looked up and recognized one of the constellations. Up in the black void of the sky were the cold, twinkling lights of Orion. Suddenly he felt tired, but his mind kept clicking and churning.
He changed the subject. “I want to talk to Cal tomorrow.”
“He wanted to see you today, but the minute you got back from New York you buried yourself in your study … then into the Roundtable …”
“Why does that sound a little like an indictment?”
“No. Just a wifely observation. Talk to him, Josh.”
“I will. In fact, I told him as soon as I was done with the Roundtable we’d get together. He seemed okay with that.”
The phone rang. Joshua got up and trotted into the bedroom to catch it.
Abigail could hear his voice growing more animated as he talked.
After he hung up, he came back out to the porch. But he had a startled look on his face. “Abby, guess who that was? Patsy. From the office.”
“The Jordan Technologies Patsy? The new receptionist?”
“Yes.”
“A little late, isn’t it?”
Joshua flopped back down on the chair next to Abigail. A smile was spreading on his face. “You know how you asked me a minute ago how I could pull all this together … a plan to stop this horrendous thing from happening?”
He answered his own question.
“I just got an idea.”
NINETEEN
There were catcalls and shouts from the curb in downtown Manhattan and they threatened to drown out the proceedings. A handful of reporters and a dozen onlookers had gathered in a semicircle around the front steps of the Eternity Church for a press conference, but the noise across the street forced everyone to strain to hear what the pastor was saying as he stood outside the old, brown-brick cathedral.
Several NYPD cops kept the small mob of protesters from getting out of hand. Most of them had wandered down from an unrelated demonstration on Wall Street a few blocks away. With the unemployment rate at seventeen percent, and eleven states on the verge of bankruptcy, the public was in full-blown panic. The protesters had hit the streets to blame the “robber-baron capitalists” for the nation’s financial woes. But when they heard that a Bible-toting pastor was preaching about the “end of America” a few blocks away, some of them decided to head over to the church and redirect their fury.
A bearded man in a dirty sweatshirt shouted over to the press conference from the opposite curb. “Hey, quit bringing God into this, you idiot! It’s the capitalist system that’s rotten. My kids don’t have any food. You can take your Bible and — ”
A cop grabbed both ends of his nightstick and blocked the man at the chest from walking in the direction of Rev. Peter Campbell, who was standing on the top step in front of the church. Two members of the pastor’s Bible-prophecy group were standing behind him.
A female reporter with a wireless microphone took a step toward Campbell. Her cameraman, who had a quikcam linked to a satellite feed, was right behind her. “What do you say, Reverend Campbell, to that man who can’t feed his family? You talk about God’s coming judgment, but with our economic problems, do you think people are listening to your message?”
Campbell had to raise his voice to be heard. “Our message today isn’t just about God’s judgment; it’s also about God’s grace and His plan for redemption. We want people to see the signs of the times and realize that the coming of Jesus Christ is imminent. We can’t tell you the day or the hour, but it is very clear as we speak that Jesus is once again approaching the door of human history — ”
“What kinds of signs?” another reporter shouted.
“As mentioned by Jesus in the gospel of Matthew: earthquakes. We’ve seen fourteen major earthquakes around the world in the last twelve months, and now the volcanic eruption in Saudi Arabia. Jesus predicted these things would be the ‘birth pangs’ of the cataclysm to come. The book of Job says that God ‘shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble.’ These signs are reminders that the Lord has something He wants to tell us.”
“And what about our national financial mess?” a man from an Internet news service asked. “Are you saying that’s from the hand of God?”
“I am saying — the Bible is saying — watch for the signs. Jesus also predicted famine. Here in the United States, we haven’t pulled out of the dust-bowl effects of this drought we are seeing in the Midwest, or from the virus that has been killing off our livestock, or the collapse of many of our financial institutions. The dollar is plunging. We have to get the big picture. Think back to some history. The BP oil disaster along the Gulf Coast. Remember that? Resulting in the halting of offshore drilling. Then promises of renewed drilling. Administrative delays. Another spill. Another shutdown of drilling. Then our government dives into our strategic oil reserves, which become depleted. And when that happened, and when OPEC refused to supply us, where did we turn? To Russia. Why is that important? Because in Ezekiel …”
But Campbell was interrupted by a volley of eggs. He was hit in the head and face.
The reporters and cameras immediately whirled around to take in the scene across the street, where cops were zip-tying the hands of a few of the egg throwers. More screaming and scuffling.
Pastor Campbell’s press conference had disintegrated.
A young Asian man in a T-shirt and baggy
cargo pants stood on the sidewalk. He had been walking by but stopped when he heard the pastor’s comments. As he walked up the stairs, Campbell was still wiping his face as two of his friends helped him into the church.
“Hey,” the Asian man shouted.
The other two men held their hands out to block his way, but Campbell turned toward the Asian man. “So what do we do?” the young man asked. “What now?”
Campbell smiled. “Come inside. Let’s talk.”
In the lobby of the Climate Change Office of the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington, D.C., Dr. Robert Hamilton had been waiting for nearly two hours. He was usually a patient man, but his foot was tapping incessantly. His patience had just run out. The papers on his lap were important — more important than his own battle with cancer and the ill effects of the chemo he’d endured. After a long and undistinguished career, Hamilton had stumbled on a discovery so stunning that it’s magnitude almost defied quantification. He had his hands on a devastating assessment of an impending geological crisis. He ran through his vocabulary: apocalyptic, disastrous, catastrophic. All those words fit. It went far beyond his original thesis — simply that global warming trends had been spiked because of increased volcanic activity. Now the government scientists needed to know it too.