The AG went on. “If they are coming here, they’ll split up, obviously, groups of four to eight, I’d guess, but the good news is it’s not a compartmentalized operation. If we take down one of these terrorists, they will have knowledge of members from other cells.”
“Why would they train them together?” Ryan asked.
Mary Pat jumped in now. “That’s a good question. It flies in the face of normal practice. But al-Matari is a smart man. This wasn’t a mistake. He had an operational reason for putting everyone in the same place.”
Dan Murray said, “I widened the scope of my original investigation. Anybody who had been on the terror watch list in the past five years, men and women who were no longer under scrutiny, we checked out again.
“Almost immediately something popped up. A guy we had looked at once before was murdered last month in Hallandale Beach, Florida. He ran a 7-Eleven, was working at the counter with his wife when they were both shot to death. But nothing was stolen. Local police saw it as a robbery gone wrong, but we put men on it, interviewed the other employees. One of them said his boss had been talking about taking some time off to go to a language school in Guatemala. Right before he was murdered, he told his employee that his wife put the kibosh on the trip.”
Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed, but not from interest. He was an intelligence man himself, and this wasn’t much to go on, at all.
Murray knew Ryan wouldn’t be impressed by that alone. “We found another guy”—he looked down at his iPad—“named Kateb Albaf, a Turkish national who’d been in school at UC Santa Clara we’d had on the watch list a couple of years ago due to some of his radical statements to a reporter at a rally. We interviewed him, put a soft surveillance package on him for a couple of months two years ago, and determined he was just a student. He never knew we were interested in him.”
“Where is he now?” asked Ryan.
“Up until a month ago, he was back in California right where he was when we last saw him, but we found out he just went on a trip to Honduras.” Murray looked up from his iPad and to the President. “According to a classmate, he was going to spend six weeks at a language school—claimed a newfound interest in learning Spanish. We looked into his airline travel and they match the dates the Guatemalan commandos were away from home.”
Ryan said, “Wonder how good his Spanish is now?”
Dan Murray grumbled, “Probably not as good as his ability to build an S-vest.”
Ryan looked back and forth between Mary Pat and Dan. “C’mon. Tell me you have more than this.”
Mary Pat said, “We do. A second man formerly on the watch list, a twenty-six-year-old used-car salesman from Atlanta named Mustafa Harak, also told associates he was going to Central America to a language school. He says to Guatemala. The dates match up very closely to the Turkish national.”
Ryan rolled his head back and forth. He was seeing some distinct lines between all the dots. “Guatemala and Honduras both border El Sal. They flew into these other nations, bussed over into El Salvador, and learned how to shoot people and blow things up. You’re probably right, we should tail these men carefully now.”
Murray said, “Unfortunately, we cannot tail either Albaf or Harak, because neither of them are home. Their cars are there. But they are not.”
Ryan asked, “Credit cards?”
“Neither man’s cards have been used since before they went to Central America. Kateb, the Turk in California—his wife, Aza, has disappeared, too.”
Ryan said, “Shit. They’ve got tradecraft, and they are already pre-positioning.”
Foley nodded. “That’s right.”
Ryan said, “We managed to stop Abu Musa al-Matari’s first attack against the United States when his training camp was discovered on sat photos over Syria. This time he moves the training to El Salvador.”
Mary Pat said, “We’re looking into boats out of La Libertad, the closest port, just fifteen miles away. Of course flights out of San Salvador, too. Charters, cargo, anything that came up to the States in the past ten days.”
Murray added to this. “They could have flown out of somewhere else, stopped and transferred along the way. But it’s all we have to go on.”
Ryan said, “There have to have been hundreds of planes that fit that description just landing at Miami International. Throw in Houston, L.A., Atlanta . . . Good Lord.”
Mary Pat said, “Jay and I will keep at it on our end, and Dan will keep the heat up on the domestic side. We’ve already notified Homeland Security to BOLO these guys.”
Ryan looked down to the artist’s rendering made from the recollection of the Yazidi girl. “It’s time to put Musa al-Matari’s face out there.”
Murray said, “I agree. We’ll say we think he’s here in the U.S., and he’s dangerous, tied to ISIS. It will get the coverage we need, although it’s not going to be hard for this guy to alter his appearance.”
Secretary of State Scott Adler had been quiet for the past few minutes, but he spoke up again now. “Mister President, back to the attack at Sigonella. There is something else you need to know. This might be a bad time to bring this up, but you will be questioned about it in the news conference when you land.”
When Adler said this, SecDef Bob Burgess visibly snarled. The two men could not see each other on the monitors, but Ryan noted Burgess’s reaction to the secretary of state, and this told him Burgess knew about the matter Adler was bringing up, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“What is it, Scott?” Ryan asked.
“One of the naval officers murdered apparently had his sidearm with him.” A pause. “Off base. Which is against Italian regs. Our regs, too.” Another pause. “It was found at the scene. One of the terrorists was shot by it.”
Ryan shook his head. “Scott . . .”
“Sir, I’m just the messenger. The Italians are pissed off, but I will tell them, very quietly, to kiss my ass. If they can’t protect our military in their country, then our military has to protect itself.”
This relaxed Burgess some, Ryan saw immediately.
The President held up a hand to his secretary of state. “No, Scott. Thanks for saying what I’m thinking, but no. You have to be the chief diplomat. I’ll talk to President Morello, smooth that over. If a reporter asks me about it I’ll say I can’t comment on the investigation.” He shrugged. “And then I’ll say I’m personally glad our Navy flier shot one of the bastards.”
Ryan looked over to Arnie Van Damm, who said nothing.
Burgess said, “Obviously, Mr. President, our concern now is for other military personnel at off-base housing around Sigonella.”
Ryan said, “And other locations involved with the actions against ISIS. Bahrain, Frankfurt. Incirlik. Shit . . . We’ve got bases all over Europe, and in some degree or another, they all have some involvement with our actions in the Middle East.”
Burgess said, “That’s right. And we don’t have the space on base to hold everyone and their families. Off-base housing is a necessity.”
Ryan said, “As far as I’m concerned, pilots are on the front lines. I want them on base. Special operations forces, all senior officers, too. As far as Sigonella goes, I’ll get President Morello to allow us to post guards off base, MPs, for the short term, while we try to get all our men and women inside the wire.”
Burgess said, “Sorry, sir, but that sounds like a capitulation to terrorists.”
Ryan said, “It’s not a capitulation to terrorists. It’s a capitulation to this damn intel leak that’s causing all this! We don’t know how big or wide this goes, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for our servicemen and -women to get nailed again by something we clearly don’t understand.”
Burgess nodded on the monitor. “Yes, sir.”
The videoconference ended a moment later, and immediately Arnie Van Damm slid his chair closer to Ryan’s.
/> “This is going to rekindle a lot of hostility to the policy in the Middle East.”
Ryan nodded. “A couple years ago nobody wanted another land invasion of Iraq. And nobody has ever wanted our troops in Syria. Fighting this war with special operations forces and airpower, along with the Kurds and the Iraqi Army, is getting the job done.”
Arnie said, “I agree, but if ISIS targets our bases in Europe or, God forbid, in the U.S., then you’ll get hit from the right to do more, and to do it faster. You’ll get hit from the left as well, who see it as an opening, although they’ve got nothing to fill it with.”
Jack nodded. “I believe in our policy. The price of my belief is taking those hits.” The President took a moment to look out the window down at Iowa as it slipped slowly by. He fought the anger welling inside him, born from the frustration that he could not fight that which he did not understand, and so far no one had been able to make sense of the seemingly random scope of the new threats to his nation. It was as if a cancer had crept in, slowly at first, but metastasizing and growing in speed.
He worried that Sigonella was just the next phase of the sickness, and if he and his people didn’t get a handle on this soon, this cancer would spread uncontrollably. Knowing that Musa al-Matari was somewhere out there, in play, made him wonder if Iowa itself could be the next front line in this fight.
24
Jack Ryan, Jr., had arrived to work early this morning for the team run, and like the day before, he was quiet and reserved around the others. His mind was still on Indonesia and everything that had happened there, and what had happened because of everything that had happened there.
Midas ran along next to him for a while and tried to get a conversation started. The ex–Delta operator was several years older than Jack, but Jack had no problem seeing the man was obviously in peak physical condition, considering how he could run multiple eight-minute miles back-to-back and still keep up a conversation that made him sound like he was chatting over cocktails in a hotel lounge.
But Jack wasn’t in a chatty mood. His mind was on what he saw as his responsibility for the woman he’d never met who died alone and horribly in Minsk.
Jack barely paid attention to Midas, and finally Midas pushed ahead and ran on alone.
After morning PT, Jack showered and went into his office, where he started going through some e-mails while keeping an eye on the news out of Italy this morning. Of course he experienced all the anger and sadness most Americans felt when learning about this attack, but on top of this he couldn’t help thinking about what his father had said about the rash of leaks of unknown nature going on at the moment, and the possibility that one of these had led to the death of Jennifer Kincaid. Still, Jack had no inside information about the events at Sigonella; and though the attack on the U.S. Navy personnel was being reported as a terrorist incident, CNN had not reported that anyone had been specifically targeted. Instead, the reports so far had all framed it as if anti-American terrorists had shot up and blown up some rental property near the base, making the reasonable assumption they might kill some Americans in the process.
At eight-thirty a.m. Jack was called into Gerry Hendley’s office, where he found Gerry waiting with a small tray of coffee, pastries, and fresh fruit. Also present and sitting at the table across from Hendley’s desk was the IT director for The Campus, Gavin Biery. Gavin was a portly and rumpled man approaching sixty, and he was known around the office for never passing a box of donuts without picking one out, so Jack was surprised to see him with a bottle of water and a half-eaten orange in front of him for today’s breakfast-time meeting.
Jack said nothing, he just raised an eyebrow as he poured himself a cup of black coffee.
Gavin, however, was a perceptive guy. “It’s a diet, Ryan. Not all of us have four hours a day to work out.”
It was true Ryan was in great shape, and he worked out regularly, but he’d never worked out four hours in a single day in his life, and he didn’t bother to point out to Gavin that he hadn’t had time to go to the gym all week. Instead, he replied, “Good for you, Gav. I want you to live forever.”
“Only because I’m the guy who solves all your technological problems, of which you have many.”
Jack sat down. “Actually, it’s your great interpersonal skills that I’d miss most.”
Gerry Hendley had the TV on his wall tuned to CNN, and the daytime live feed out of Sigonella showed a smoldering house with a dozen emergency vehicles parked down the street in front of it. The sound was muted, but the chyron at the bottom of the screen read: TWELVE DEAD, FIVE INJURED IN U.S. NAVY ATTACK. Gerry and Gavin had been looking at it while they waited for Jack, but now Gerry turned away, picked up his coffee, and moved over to the table, where he sat down with the two men.
“Gavin, Jack asked me yesterday to reach out to the DNI and offer our help in locating some sort of security breach in the U.S. government. I spoke with Mary Pat Foley last night and offered any assistance with the analytics in the search for whatever leak was responsible for the horrible exposure and murder of Jennifer Kincaid.”
Gavin had been told of the events in Indonesia and the tragic fallout of those events.
“What did Foley say?” Gavin asked, picking at his orange.
“She’s agreed to bring us into this informally.”
Jack squeezed his fists in satisfaction. “That’s great, Gerry. Thank you.”
Gavin Biery added, “It sounds like an interesting puzzle. But what do you mean, informally?”
“There are those at NSA and other places who know what our analysts have pulled off in the past.” When Gavin raised an eyebrow, Gerry clarified quickly, “Not just our analysts, our tech side as well. That thing that happened with China a few years back, specifically.”
Gavin nodded. “Yes, I sort of saved the world on that one, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Jack said quickly. “You saved us all. Gerry, you were saying?”
“Dan Murray is having a package of details sent over regarding the widespread intelligence leak that has come to light in the past couple of weeks. It should be on our server by now. You guys can see all the data they have on it. If you happen to find something, we’ll let Murray or Foley know.”
Gavin Biery said, “You told me about the thing involving the poor CIA officer in Minsk. But what’s the scope of the breach?”
“From what I heard from Mary Pat, at this point, nobody knows how deep and wide this goes. They are getting burned by new compromises every couple of days.”
Gavin asked, “Could this, in some way, be related to that thing the Chinese did a couple of years ago? Remember, they got onto JWICS.” Early in President Ryan’s latest term, Chinese computer hackers accessed intel from the U.S. intelligence community’s Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. It had compromised communications between America’s spies and created a brief moment of panic around the IC. Fortunately for all, The Campus, led by MIT-trained genius Gavin Biery, had located the culprit of the hack and ended the crisis.
Gerry said, “That was the first question I asked. Mary Pat said this situation couldn’t possibly be related to that intrusion. This breach has compromised people at DoJ, the State Department, the U.S. Navy, and the CIA. Most of them are men and women with identities that would have no reason to be transmitted in JWICS comms.”
Jack said, “How could it just be one breach, then? All those branches and services you mentioned. They don’t pass classified intel on the same network. On top of that, those different networks have to be viewed in SCIFs.” A SCIF was a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a secure location designated for the storage and processing of classified information.
Gavin said nothing, which was a surprise to Jack, because he always seemed to be ready with some sort of an answer. The man was brilliant, he was arguably the most important person in the entire Campus, and he’d be t
he first to let others know.
Gerry noticed Gavin looking off into space. “Gavin, is something wrong?”
“Just processing Ryan’s question. I’d like to look at the specs of this leak, or at least what the DoJ has managed to discern from the compromises you mentioned. Jack and I will put our heads together and try to work out how the intel was obtained. How many cases are we going to be looking at?”
“DoJ isn’t even certain of that. There is the Kincaid incident, plus the FBI officers who first responded to Jakarta in response to it, a CIA officer detained in Iran, and a U.S. Navy commander targeted with what looks like specific information, but it might not have been anything classified.”
Jack said, “So either three or four.”
“That they know of. These are the incidents that have come to light in the past couple of weeks, but there could have been others, or there yet might be more to this.”
As he said this, Gerry’s secretary’s voice came over his phone’s speaker. “Director Hendley? AG Murray for you.”
The director of The Campus knew the attorney general was one of the busiest people in the world this morning, so he snatched the phone off the cradle quickly. “Hi, Dan.”
Jack and Gavin looked on while Gerry listened to his caller for a few moments.
He said, “Yes, I saw it.” Then, “How certain are you?”
When he hung up the phone a minute later, he looked to the two men in front of him. “Sigonella, Italy, this morning. The terrorists had access to specific intelligence regarding their targets. Dan says this might be part of the same ongoing and unknown intelligence leak.”
Gavin mumbled, “The hits just keep on coming.”
“I guess we’d better get started,” Jack said.
Gerry looked at Jack now. “I know this is very personal to you, because of what happened after Jakarta the other day.”