02 Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel Page 11

  Corland asked her to elaborate.

  “The BIDTag idea.”

  “The Biological Identification Tag?”

  “Exactly. For the last eighteen months, the EU has required every citizen in Europe to have one — and they haven’t had a single incident. It’s an effective way to screen out the bad apples. We can do longdistance targeting of every human almost anywhere. And if someone doesn’t have a biotag tattoo, the screen will show that, and we know we have a suspicious individual right away. And when they do have a biotag imprint on their body, we can immediately tell who the person is, any arrest record, travel history, their home address, telephone numbers, social security number, blood type, marital status, religion, everything. All their pertinent data. Screening devices can be set up at the entrances of shopping malls, theaters, every soft target. We now know that the woman who detonated the bomb at the Mall of America had ties to a terror group. A screening device would have picked up her BIDTag — or her lack of one — and either way she would have been spotted. A terror matrix would have been instantly sent to the mall security office and local police. She’d have been stopped within minutes.”

  Corland said, “Civil-liberties groups like the ACLU have been screaming bloody murder about this, haven’t they?”

  Attorney General Cory Hamburg leaned forward. He had a neatly prepared defense for the vice president’s proposal. “That was before the mall disaster and the Chicago shootdown. Mr. President, the polls are clear. Americans are feeling desperate. After all, there’s a basic right not to be blown up. Because the BIDTag isn’t inserted into the body, but is just imprinted on the skin, painless and invisible to the eye, and can only be illuminated by our government screening devices, there is really no Fourth Amendment unlawful search-or-seizure argument. Besides, we’re close to a compromise with the civil-liberties groups. In the BIDTag bill we’ve got in Congress right now, federal agencies would still have to obtain a warrant before we targeted someone for the more enhanced screening that would reveal things like home address, religion, that kind of thing. But no warrant would be necessary for picking up terror-matrix information where there’s a serious threat to personal safety or national security.”

  “Privacy?” Corland asked. “What about that?”

  The attorney general grinned. “I think the probable-cause legal test we’re proposing fully accounts for your concerns, Mr. President.”

  As the rest of the council debated the issue, Jessica Tulrude settled back in her chair. She had managed to get her bio-identification idea front and center. The international community loved her for actively promoting it in the U.S., and when the bombings stopped, and the terror level dropped, she would be the champion. Now all she had to do was get Hank Strand alone and hammer him good. No more holding out on her. He needed to tell her everything about his boss, Corland … that is, if he ever wanted to serve in Jessica Tulrude’s cabinet when she finally pushed Virgil Corland out of the White House.

  But then something grabbed her attention like a slap in the face. After closing the BIDTag discussion by saying he wanted more time to think about it, Corland said, “One last item, not on the agenda. Last night I asked our intelligence agencies to round up the best information we have to date on any coordinated efforts between the Russian Federation, Iran, and North Korea in terms of an offensive against the United States.”

  The look on Hank Strand’s face showed that this too was something he hadn’t known about.

  Corland steamed ahead. “They’re getting me that assessment. Some of you may already know about my directive, some may not.”

  The attorney general put a finger in the air. “If I could ask, Mr. President, what’s the source of this concern?”

  “Someone who is now a little outside of the Beltway. But former U.S. military. Let’s just say he is a fairly trustworthy source.”

  The assistant secretary of state shook his head, apparently sharing the attorney general’s skepticism. He knew that he had his boss’s proxy on this one. “Mr. President, I second Attorney General Hamburg’s surprise that you are implicating Russia in some kind of operational plot against us. Obviously North Korea has been a high-risk state. That’s nothing new. Iran, well, a perennial problem, though the risk is overstated. But the Russians? They sold us oil supplies when our strategic reserves dipped drastically low. We’ve got good trade relations. Our diplomatic relations have never been better.”

  Corland was about to respond when the director of the FBI jumped in. “We’ve heard this rumor before, Mr. President. We chased it down awhile back and were satisfied that it was nothing but a tall tale.”

  “I’ll leave it at that. No more comments ‘til I get the reports.” Corland had effectively closed the meeting.

  Jessica Tulrude glanced at her e-pad digital appointment calendar. Her next meeting was with Attorney General Hamburg. In the previous months she had managed to recruit him to her side. The year before, her control over him had fallen apart after she’d asked him to order a temporary stand-down on efforts to locate Algerian assassin Atta Zimler inside the U.S. Her request, which Hamburg reluctantly granted, was a favor to Tulrude’s good friend Caesar Demas. It was a favor she quickly regretted. Zimler ended up slithering into the United States, murdering a few folks along the East Coast, and causing havoc at Grand Central Station. But in the end, Zimler’s official connection to the murders was covered up, so no harm, no foul. Anyway, when Hamburg threatened to blame Tulrude for the Zimler debacle, Tulrude, red-faced, dressed him down.

  “Hamburg, you’re the attorney general,” she had said. “It’s probably an impeachable offense, maybe even criminal, for you to take your law-enforcement orders from the vice president. And if you cause problems, I’ll make sure the media splatters that fact over every Internet news service in America.”

  Ever since, Hamburg had been a pussycat. Her appointment with him in forty minutes would be a good chance to remind him how much she still needed his support. She’d also remind him that if anyone challenged either of them on the Atta Zimler matter, they had a retort for that too: If America had had the BIDTag system in place back then, Zimler wouldn’t have been able to enter the U.S. Problem solved.

  After Hamburg, Tulrude was scheduled to have a long meeting with some of the president’s economic advisors on the disastrous unemployment numbers to discuss how to stave off riots. Tulrude was trying to figure out exactly how quickly she could grab Hank Strand in between her meetings. She needed to know everything that Corland was up to.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Pack McHenry strolled at a leisurely pace between Joshua and Abigail as they walked around the Lincoln Memorial, keeping their distance from the tourists and cameras. Joshua had arranged the meeting on the fly, immediately after his conversation with President Corland. McHenry was in Rhode Island when he got the call and flew to D.C. the next day. He sounded skeptical about Joshua’s meeting with the president.

  “I don’t mean to downplay your talk with Corland, but I should have been born in Missouri. Translated, show me.”

  Joshua admitted that Corland hadn’t made any promises. “I’m not naive. The commander in chief’s not about to treat me like a cabinet member just because he gives me a medal during an election year.”

  “Who else was in the room?” McHenry asked.

  “The president’s chief of staff.”

  “Hank Strand?”

  By the way McHenry spoke the name, Joshua could tell that McHenry knew something about Strand and that it wasn’t good.

  “Look, Josh, as I explained, we ran this through the right channels. We have pretty good evidence that our government is failing to treat this as an authentic threat. And nothing you’ve told me about your meeting with President Corland changes that.”

  Abigail chimed in. “What if you’re wrong, Pack? What if your intel is from unreliable leads, misinterpreted data?”

  “Like another Iraq WMD intelligence mistake? Abby, I wish we were wrong on this. It wo
uld make everything easier, wouldn’t it? But we’re not. We’ve triangulated it. We have multiple sources, and they all fit together. Just yesterday, before your call, I received an eDatFile showing a flurry of activity in Kyrgyzstan, at a museum that’s been converted into an operations center. We’ve tracked communications between that command center and operatives in Russia, North Korea, and Iran.”

  “So you have surveillance?” Abby asked. “You know the content of those communications?”

  “No. Just the fact that messages were sent, and there’s some kind of tracking going on. It seems they’re following an airplane or a ship, not sure which. My guess is a shipping vessel, probably commercial. They’re easier to hide in the expanse of the ocean. And easier to disguise. You can change flags, captains, vessel names pretty easily.”

  Joshua was struck by Pack’s candor. His friend was usually tight-lipped about details, but not now. As Joshua started to piece together the picture, Pack McHenry’s real position suddenly became clear. He was not really retired from “the Company.” It seemed clear that he was still employed as a private subcontractor for the CIA, which explained his access to this kind of intelligence. If that were the case, and federal officials were ignoring his pleas, what did that mean about the attitude of the government toward provable threats?

  “What’s going on here, Pack?” Joshua asked. “You’re still connected, aren’t you? You’re still deep inside — and somebody isn’t listening. Somehow the chain of command has been compromised.”

  Pack McHenry stopped in his tracks. At first he didn’t say anything. His eyes searched the ground. “I’m not saying that the president is unconcerned. I’m saying … that it just may not matter.”

  Joshua continued to push him. “So are you saying that the president is unable to use his executive powers? That Corland is blocked from executing certain commands … orders having to do with national defense, intelligence?”

  McHenry looked off toward the memorial. Then he took something out of his pocket and held it up. Joshua and Abigail were looking at the profile of Lincoln on a penny.

  Pack asked, “A little quiz. What’s on the flip side of this penny?”

  Joshua hesitated but Abigail didn’t. “The Lincoln Memorial.”

  “And the inscription above it?”

  “E Pluribus Unum.”

  Joshua smiled. “Now you know why I won’t play Trivial Pursuit with her.”

  “So what are you telling us to do?” Abigail asked.

  “To figure it out,” he replied.

  Pack McHenry began to walk away. When he was almost out of hearing, Abigail shouted out to him, “E Pluribus Unum … ‘out of many, one.’”

  McHenry didn’t turn around; he simply held his hand up and gave a sort of salute.

  Abigail looked at Joshua. “Out of many, one. The need for American unity. That’s his point. Things are unraveling at the top …”

  Then she had another thought, but it sickened her as she said it. “Josh, I think there may be a silent coup going on in our government.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The two containers had arrived in the Port of Philadelphia on the Danish-flagged ship, along with a hold full of other shipping goods, mostly boxes of machine parts from Germany. The radiation-detecting instruments installed by Homeland Security hadn’t picked up the shipments. The newest generation of synthetic lead linings had done their job.

  The two containers were loaded onto two trucks as planned, one corrugated steel container on each truck. The two truck drivers headed in opposite directions, each with a partner. One was driving to a warehouse outside of the little town of Clifton, New York, situated on Staten Island across the bay. The deadly container was buried beneath a load of crates containing medical supplies. Some of them had radioactive isotopes used for radiation therapy. The plan was that if the truck was stopped and the driver questioned, and if someone detected low-level radiation emissions in the shipment, the driver would have an easy explanation. He carried a forged trucking bill of lading showing that he was carrying radioactive isotopes for cancer treatments, destined for the Richmond Medical Center near Clifton.

  The other trucker and his partner were driving south to Virginia. He had the same kind of load and the same answer prepared if a curious state patrol officer pulled him over. His papers showed he had medical supplies for the hospital complex in Winchester, in the northwest corner of Virginia.

  The trucks disappeared into the slowly moving traffic as they traveled to their staging destinations. An army of drivers, coming home from work, were oblivious to the two trucks on the highway next to them. Just more traffic in the middle of congestion. Nothing more.

  University of Hawaii, on the Big Island

  “You talk about power? I’ll tell you about power.”

  Dr. Robert Hamilton stood at the front of the lecture hall. He had momentarily forgotten about the phone call he’d received before class — from his oncologist. Instead, he was now in the happy oblivion of his favorite class: introduction to geology.

  The students gazed numbly into the distance or doodled in their notebooks. Dr. Hamilton paced around the podium, his eyes glued to the floor, as if he were lecturing to no one but himself.

  “And I’m not referring to nuclear fission. The physicists can tell you about that. I’m talking about something else altogether.” He clicked a button on the video control. The big screen lit up behind him and showed a photo of Mount St. Helens exploding. “Look at that volcanic plume,” he said, “that column of ash, gas, and pumice fragments reaching high into the atmosphere!”

  After gazing at it for a moment, Hamilton wheeled around and continued, “The volcano in Iceland in 2010 paralyzed air travel around the world. And now consider this year’s record number of eruptions, more than any time in recorded human history. I was at the Saudi Arabian site recently, just after an eruption at Harrat-Ithnayn out in the western desert, which reminds me …”

  He pulled out a sheet of paper and scanned it. “What number is that … the map … oh, yes, here it is.” He pushed that number on his control. A world map appeared on the screen. Small colored circles dotted parts of Asia, India, and the Middle East. “Look at the circles — areas where it is estimated that the most volcanic activity, with the highest fatalities, is predicted to occur. Some of this data is from the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Now, here’s something interesting …” Hamilton took his laser pointer and put a red dot on the circles in the Middle East, running from Turkey in the north, through Syria, through Israel, and down to Cairo. “Look at this … this is ground zero for the most massive volcanic activity … right here.”

  He stopped and looked out at the class as if suddenly remembering where he was. “But I was talking about power, wasn’t I?” His gaze was met by a sea of vacant stares, but something else caught his eye … an unfamiliar face, someone out of place. In the very last row sat a middle-aged man in a short-sleeve white shirt and a tie, which was loose at the neck.

  Hamilton refocused on his lecture. “Power. Yes. Volcanoes and earthquakes are intimately related. They can cause tsunamis at sea …” He noticed a hand go up from a student. At last, he thought, someone was awake; Hamilton nodded for him to ask his question.

  “Can a tsunami swallow up a ship out in the sea, like an ocean liner or something like that?”

  “The simple answer is no,” Hamilton replied. “Because of the geophysics of the tsunami wave. In open ocean the depth of the seafloor keeps the wave down to a short height but spreading it over a huge distance in its length so it’s hardly noticeable. But when the surge of water hits a shallow sea floor, as you have when you approach the shallows of a harbor, that’s when the top of the wave mounds up over the bottom part, and you have wave shoaling. Creating a wall of water. In fact, the word tsumani is a Japanese word, meaning ‘harbor wave.’ ”

  Another student’s hand shot up. “The textbook showed pictures from the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami back in 2011. T
he waves didn’t seem that tall.”

  Hamilton smiled at the sudden interest. “They didn’t have to be, yet they created widespread damage. On the other hand, geological events can create colossal tidal waves. Volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes. And those in turn can cause monster walls of water. In 1958 in Lituya Bay in Alaska a landslide created a tidal wave that was seventeen hundred feet high.”

  The classroom exploded with a chorus of disbelief. Professor Hamilton was energized.

  “Students, that’s what I am talking about when I talk about the raw power of physical events in the earth. The 9.0 earthquake in Japan actually accelerated the earth’s rotation slightly. Take another comparison. Take a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. The bombs tested in the Nevada desert in the 1950s sent mushroom clouds about seven miles into the sky. Compare that with Mount St. Helens, whose plume reached fifteen miles high.

  “Volcanoes can spit out pyroclastic flows at fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, full of rock, hot ash, and gas. The movement of these flows has been clocked at a hundred and fifty miles per hour, mudslides at forty miles per hour, searing hot lava flows at thirty miles per hour. The effects of a volcano can cover up to eight hundred thousand square miles, like the one at Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883. And a volcano can fire off natural bombs called tephra — huge pieces of rock propelled outward in a diameter of up to fifty miles. Can you imagine one-ton boulders being flung into the air for miles? Then there are the other effects: disruption of electronic transmissions, clogging the jet engines of aircraft, jammed radio and television signals. When you’re in the middle of one of these, it’s the closest thing imaginable to the end of the world. That’s what the survivors of the ancient eruption at Vesuvius must have thought. They must have wept and declared that their gods had betrayed them.”