Chasing echoes the falle.., p.31
Chasing Echoes (The Fallen Republic Book 3), page 31
Many of the Washington political A-listers were back in their home states, hiding from the virus and violence, if not sick or even dead. What few wheels of govt still turning seemed to be piloted by second- or third-stringers whose main quality seemed to be that they were still alive and willing to work. Eager interns and aides and assistants, who were willing to brave sickness or even death for a shot at the big time. And there were fewer and fewer of those, especially with the morning’s news that the Secretary of State had come down with the virus, although it was still too early to tell if she had a serious case. Today’s PDB seemed curated by someone who was barely out of college—an ivy league college, no doubt. Diaz himself had attended Colorado State University before entering local politics, eventually heading to D.C. Where he found himself surrounded by the ivy leaguers, who had a particular look, sound, even smell. The PDB always reeked of it, the male/pale/Yale mentality, but this one in particular seemed penned by the junior varsity team, the back benchers. No typos or grammatical errors, but the presentation was very…inconsistent and amateurish.
And for the second day in a row the PDB stated that Task Force November still had nothing to report. Forget the seeming waste of time reporting no news, if it was in the PDB he assumed it was important. With the state of the country, and the state of the government, November had to be working on something terrorist-related, didn’t it? Had he been briefed about the task force, and simply forgotten? Forgotten their mission? He didn’t think so, although his memory wasn’t getting any better with age, his wife was quick to point that out.
Chewing on the inside of his lip, he scowled at Michael. “Get me Herb Pringle on the phone.”
“Yes sir.” His assistant scurried out of the room. Five minutes later, when Diaz was digitally wading through more paperwork, his console beeped. “Mr. President, I have the Director of National Intelligence on the line.”
Diaz grabbed the handset and put it to his ear. “Herb, doing okay over there?” He heard Pringle give his fake hearty chuckle.
“Yes, Mr. President, making do, making do.”
“Good. Remind me again, what’s Task Force November?”
“I—er—what?” Pringle said, and Diaz noted what sounded almost like panic in the man’s voice, although he did his best to disguise it.
“Task Force November.”
“I, um, well, sir, I’m not quite sure. Where did you hear that name?”
“It was in my Daily Brief.”
“It was?” Pringle said incredulously. “No, I’m sure that—perhaps there was a typo. I don’t know why there would be any such thing in your Daily Brief.”
Diaz was leaning forward. The DNI sounded like he was scrambling. “Two days in a row,” the President said slowly. “Nothing to report, yet again. Reporting that there’s nothing to report seems like a waste of everyone’s time—”
“My thoughts exactly,” Pringle said.
“—but it has me curious. Every agency is on a skeleton crew due to manpower issues, or shut down entirely. But we’ve got a task force running? They must be working on something important if it is both running and getting an encore mention in the PDB. In the ‘domestic’ section, so it’s not overseas. What is it?”
“Well, Mr. President, offhand I couldn’t quite say. Task Force…?”
“November,” Diaz said, trying to keep his voice even. He was surprised. For the head of an intelligence agency, Pringle was an absolutely horrible liar. “It was in today’s PDB. Which is produced by your office. If anybody knows what it is, I would think it would be the Director of National Intelligence.”
Pringle cleared his throat. “Even with many of the agencies shut down, sir, it’s a big government, and every intelligence agency in it reports to us. But, I can be—I would be happy to look into it for you, sir.”
Initially it had been an idle question, born of simple curiosity as much as anything else. But the DNI’s barely constrained panic was quite concerning. Diaz wasn’t an idiot—at this point in the conversation he’d realized Task Force November must be sort of ongoing intelligence operation that they were (likely) trying to shield him from or (less likely) hide from him. But now that he knew about it, he needed to know about it. “That would be great, Herb. So I can expect a report by end of day?”
“Um, well…”
“End of day, Herb.”
“Yes, Mr. President, of course.”
* * *
Three hours later Michael knocked on his open door and stuck his head in. “Mr. President? Um…”
“Yes, what is it?” Michael still wasn’t used to working for “THE PRESIDENT”. But he’d done just fine when Diaz was just the VP, and more importantly, Diaz trusted him.
“Um, the Attorney General is requesting a meeting today, sir. This afternoon.”
“About?”
“She didn’t say, sir, but she did say she would be bringing Herb Pringle.”
Diaz leaned back in his chair. “Ah,” he said expansively, nodding. “So now we know who’s actually running that thing.”
“What thing?”
“The mysterious Task Force November.”
“Whatever it is, what she actually wants is your job,” Michael observed.
“That’s pretty obvious,” Diaz told the young man. “She’s never hid her ambition. If you know about it, that’s good, that’s fine. That’s what we call a known known. It’s the surprises that get you in this business.”
“Like the task force?”
“I guess we’ll see. Find a spot for them in my schedule. However much time they think they’ll need.”
* * *
“You understand, we were trying to insulate you from the situation, sir,” the Attorney General said.
“Which may be nothing,” Herb Pringle said helpfully. Johnson glanced at him, but didn’t say anything.
Diaz looked between the DNI and his Attorney General. “If it was likely to be nothing, you wouldn’t have an entire task force devoted to it. You wouldn’t be worried about insulating me from it.”
“We weren’t hiding it from you, Mr. President, just giving you plausible deniability,” Pringle said.
“Yes, well, that ship has sailed.”
“Are you sure, sir? We’ve got a lot of good people on top of this. Handling it. Briefing you might not be the wisest decision…”
“It was listed in my goddamn daily brief!” Diaz said, jabbing a finger at his computer. “So anyone reading that—and even though it’s classified the PDB gets more eyes on it than a Playboy centerfold—can only assume I know all about Task Force November.”
Pringle and Johnson traded a look. “Sir, we’re not even sure how November came to be mentioned in the PDB…”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it? And I’m not making accusations, I understand how the game is played. But now that I know about it… What exactly is Task Force November? And what are they doing? Do you have a briefing packet for me?”
Pringle cleared his throat, and deferred to the Attorney General. She flashed a smile at Diaz. “We thought, initially, a verbal briefing would be best. And afterward, we can provide a written summary, or detailed report, if you wish to have something in writing. Which you may not. Anyway…November is a multi-jurisdictional operation based out of Liberty Crossing. Their mission is to track down a group of suspected terrorists currently somewhere in the Midwest.”
“More of these al-Muthanna people? Foreign nationals?”
“No sir, American citizens.”
Diaz frowned, and leaned back. “Okay. Maybe you better start closer to the beginning.”
Johnson cleared her throat. “A small group of people—we’re not quite sure how many, at least four, maybe seven, are in the Midwest and in possession of classified information that we believe they are trying to pass to a foreign government. They have already killed one CIA Ground Branch team and narrowly evaded capture by another in a firefight that cost the lives of over a dozen American soldiers and federal agents. Currently their whereabouts are unknown, but we feel confident we will track them down very soon.”
“What classified information?”
Pringle and Johnson traded another look. Pringle looked ill at ease, and he spoke up. “Well, that’s just it, sir. We’re not sure. Exactly.”
At Diaz’ dark look Johnson leaned forward and spoke up. “They are working with, or perhaps kidnapped—but most likely working with—an intelligence specialist named Richard Richardson, who was in an off-site work group for USAMRIID, doing research on this virus. This work group sent an email to their supervisor that they’d made some sort of discovery…and then disappeared. This group we’re hunting seems to have killed the rest of the virus research team, killed a Ground Branch team trying to rescue them, evaded another, and with Richardson appear to be trying to pass classified information on the virus to foreign intelligence services. Possibly they’re trying to flee the country as well, but with all the flights grounded and borders between the states shut down, they’re likely finding that problematic. As to exactly what that information is, what the research team discovered…no one knows for sure. They were taken out before they could make a report to USAMRIID.”
“So Richardson is some sort of Edward Snowden type caught in a honeypot, or tilting at the wrong windmills? Or was he a foreign agent, a plant? D, none of the above?”
The DNI shook his head. “At this point we can’t say, sir. Which is why we wanted to wait to brief you on this. We’re honestly not sure what we’ve got.”
“Well, what can you say? What do we know about these terrorists? This group?”
“Well, as we said, sir, we’re not quite sure who all of them are, but their number seems to include a former U.S. special forces soldier and a journalist who has penned a book very critical of Hellar’s administration
“A journalist? A U.S. journalist? And a former commando? So you’re telling me they’re domestic right wing terrorists?”
“Yes sir, exactly so. At least, all the evidence we have so far points to that,” Johnson said, nodding and smiling. She tucked a thick lock of hair behind her ear, an earnest look on her face. “It’s very concerning. Whatever the intelligence is, it’s clearly valuable with how fiercely they’ve fought to keep it. We currently don’t know their exact location, but that’s the purpose of Task Force November—to track them down.”
“And send additional special forces teams after them, I presume, when you have their location?”
“Yes sir, exactly. We’ve got teams on standby.”
“What does the head of USAMRIID have to say about all this? Vasher? Vassar? Something like that.”
Pringle cleared his throat. “Well, sir, it was Commander Vassar’s people that went rogue. So he’s being kept in the dark about the hunt for them.”
“You think he’s involved somehow?”
“At this time we have no information on that. But there seemed to be no reason to read him in on the recovery efforts until Richardson and these terrorists were in custody and we sorted this out.”
Diaz looked at them for a few seconds, not saying anything, then nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m going to need a full report of everything that’s occurred with this so far, including any details you might have skipped over today, and I want one of you—I don’t care which—keeping me updated on any developments. I appreciate you coming in, I know how busy you both are in these trying times.”
Seeing as they’d been dismissed, Pringle and Johnson stood, nodded at the President, and exited the Oval Office. They waited until they were walking through the halls of the White House before they talked quietly, mouths hidden behind their masks.
“Who the fuck put November in the PDB?” the DNI hissed at the Attorney General. “Do you think it was an accident?”
She jerked her head side to side violently. “No way. There’s no way that ended up in the daily brief by accident. Somebody put it in there for Diaz to find. He wanted us called on the carpet.”
“He? You have an idea who?”
“I can make an educated guess,” Johnson growled.
“Cohen?”
“CIA Director? No. Ground Branch got their asses kicked, there’s no way he’d want to advertise that. And they’re knee-deep in this. If he’d wanted Diaz to know he’d have told him himself. I’m thinking Bill Dinan.”
“How would he have access to the intel? Know about November, I mean.”
Johnson refrained from rolling her eyes. “The FBI Director? It’s a multi-jurisdictional task force. I believe they’ve got FBI agents in with the ground teams.”
“Okay, but why?”
“Pick a reason. If the CIA gets stuck holding a shit sandwich, the FBI only looks better in comparison. And the FBI has had a bad month, after that raid on Campbell. Maybe Dinan somehow thinks he can keep his job by running games behind our backs with Diaz. Maybe he’s trying to position himself for some private sector job after he gets fired. So he includes a mention of November in the info meant for the PDB, and…here we are.”
“That’s great. Now…what about the report the President wants? A full report on this operation. What do we do about that? He hasn’t been read in on some very pertinent details regarding the virus. And this operation. I noticed what you didn’t tell him in there. Do we give him a full report, or something creatively edited? Do we bring him in? Do we trust him to follow the plan?”
“Hellar didn’t,” Johnson said decisively. “If we tell him everything that we’re doing, everything that we’ve done, there is no doubt in my mind that he will shut us down.”
“Would he go public?” Pringle asked.
“I don’t think so, but I don’t know,” the Attorney General admitted. “And we’re not done. Not by a long shot. Hellar wanted to make substantive, important changes to the election system in this country, using the National Emergency as an expedient excuse. Permanently reining in some of these ridiculous states’ rights. And we all signed on, because it’s the right thing to do.”
“And you don’t think Diaz would go along with that?”
“With no other factors in play, I was confident that I could push him in the right direction. Get him to see reason and make the right decisions,” the Attorney General said. “But if he learns about our involvement in the virus, well, I don’t know if he’d fire us, as short-handed as Washington is, but it would surely prejudice him against anything else we did or said. And further efforts we were wanting to take, given the opportunity.”
“What do you suggest?” Pringle asked her.
The Attorney General shrugged. “Bobby Burr. He’s always been dependable. Always shown that he will do the right thing when the time comes.”
“What does he have to do with this?”
The two of them stopped before the exit and waved at the nearby Secret Service agents to give them some space. They stood close and leaned in, foreheads nearly touching. Murmuring behind their masks. “With both the President and the Speaker of the House dead I’m sure a lot of people have been doing research into the line of succession,” the Attorney General said as casually as possible. “After the Vice President, it would be the President of the Senate.”
“Bobby Burr,” Pringle observed. The AG gave a small nod. “He’s older than God,” Pringle cautioned. “And we’ve got a deadly virus running through this town. I don’t know what kind of odds Vegas would give on him getting through this.”
“After him, it’s the Secretary of State. Who is wholeheartedly a team player. We can count on her for anything and everything.” The Secretary of State had just come down with the virus, but Johnson expected her to recover quickly.
Pringle grunted. “The virus provides an opportunity. Only problem is Diaz already had the virus. Wouldn’t that make him immune to it? He recovered.”
“Did he? Maybe it causes some sort of cardiac or central nervous system issues. Who’s to say? Wisniewski is malleable.” The Director of the CDC would say whatever they wanted her to.
“And you…?”
“Me?” The AG’s eyes widened above her mask. “Herb, are you going to tell me that you, as the Director of National Intelligence, you don’t know anyone who could arrange something for you? You’re literally running kill teams in November right now.”
“Kill teams are different than what we need. The…accident specialists.”
“And they work for you too.”
Pringle gave her a look, then, grudgingly, nodded. Even though most of his face was hidden by the mask, it was clear from his expression that he could take care of the problem, but it was also clear he’d been hoping that task would be taken out of his hands. They stood there silently for a while, looking at each other. “When?” Pringle said finally.
“The sooner the better,” the Attorney General told him.
* * *
Diaz sat in his chair, his arms crossed. He was thinking about the Attorney General brushing her hair back over her ear as she told him that the vaguely-identified people Task Force November were pursuing were domestic terrorists. He knew he wasn’t the smartest guy in politics. In fact, a lot of the infighting and political maneuverings were beyond him. Part of that, or maybe a large part of that, was because he just didn’t care for it. Politics and policy weren’t his thing.
But he knew people.
That was how he’d gotten elected in the first place, and continued to get reelected in the House of Representatives until being picked by Hellar as her running mate as he was a handsome relatively young guy who looked nearly white while still being ethnic and from the part of the country where she was weakest. He knew how to talk to people. He had an innate sense of how they were feeling and what they were thinking even if they weren’t saying it out loud. While he never really said much of anything in his speeches, by God did people love listening to him.
