Chapter 22 Director Lincoln Daniels was sitting stonefaced at his desk, while in two chairs arrayed around him were Keith Axe, his deputy director, and Hubert Myers, Director, FBI. Axe rose from his chair, set a CD player on Daniels's desk, then turned it on. A pair of disembodied, computer-generated voices began to speak. "Who's speaking, please?" "HYDRA." "I'll be brief. You may want to cancel the mission. It's why we haven't sent the money yet." "Why? What's happened?" "GERALD's under surveillance." "When did you find this out?" "Earlier today." "I'll call you back in ten minutes." Woodring glanced at Hockaday in horror, the words "Consult T-COM for decrypt approval" mixed with the text of HYDRA's message swimming in his head. Axe hit the button a second time. "Who's speaking, please?" "It's HYDRA. If you take care of GERALD, I'm still in." "Done." A temporary silence gripped the room, the terrible reality of HYDRA's message holding them in its thrall. Woodring looked from face to face, but no one returned his gaze. Axe walked to the windows and started shutting all the blinds, then the room went dark, and a silent film began to play on a small screen behind Daniels's head. "I'd like each of you to watch this," Daniels spoke in the dark. "The film you're about to see was taken on the afternoon of Chauncey Laudon's death." Laudon had been CIA Deputy Director of Operations under Kennedy, and later became DCI himself. He had perished in a mysterious fire at his home over a dozen years ago. On the screen a grim-faced man in overalls suddenly appeared, jabbing a crowbar into the living room wall of Laudon's house, until he applied enough pressure to rip the panel from the wall. A second man immediately took the broken slab and passed an oval- shaped wand across it, repeating the process several times until he was satisfied it didn't contain any hidden bugs. Behind both men sat a six-foot-high metal rack of sensitive electronic equipment, blinking silently as they went about their work. The scene abruptly switched to an oak-paneled study, where another pair of investigators was busying themselves by pulling every volume off the shelves of Loudon's extensive personal library and passing them through a small pair of stainless steel metal bars, similar to those found at airport security checkpoints. If nothing unusual was found, the book was unceremoniously tossed into a large black plastic lawn bag. Inside the upstairs bedroom, a third pair of technicians was sweeping every surface, while another tech monitored the results on a rack of equipment identical to the set being used downstairs. The picture suddenly jerked, racing towards the equipment rack. A bright red light was flashing on and off on one of the many amplifiers, then several more lights began to flash, and the first technician furiously gestured to his partner with the wand in his hand. The expression on the face of the man holding the wand froze in terror--the neutron scanner to which the wand was connected was frantically indicating the presence of a large concentration of the almost undetectable plastic explosive, Semtex. Daniels' audience watched in horror as one of the techs next threw himself head-first through the second story window and disappeared from view. Then the film went blank. "Jesus Christ," uttered Myers. His face covered by the frozen image of the fallen house, Daniels spoke, "Several months after the film was taken, an anonymous package, containing a small address book was received at the Hoover Building. It was addressed to me, Lincoln Daniels, Director. After further investigation we guessed the address book had most probably been sent by one of Laudon's neighbors, who had found it in his yard and correctly guessed its owner. "As I skimmed through its pages in my office, I immediately recognized several listings belonging to former agents of the Secret Service, CIA and the FBI . . . and listed right along with them were the names of several individuals who at one time or another had been logged into the FBI's national crime databank . . . Almost every one of the individuals in the databank had been prime suspects to one or more murder charges, most of which were never proven. "When I met with the President that evening and explained the situation to him, he immediately ordered this entire group to be eliminated, using whatever means were necessary . . . . . . Of the 15 individuals mentioned in the book, all of them were apprehended--except one." "My God," whispered Myers. "It took us some time to deduce how Laudon had managed to communicate with this group for such a long period and escape detection. We were a small team, but we checked hundreds of telephone logs, interviewed dozens of people, turned NSA upside down, until somebody came across an obscure memorandum from the Atlanta field office--" Suddenly Daniels's telephone rang, startling all of them. "Send him in," Daniels spoke into the receiver and hung up. A moment later, two security personnel escorted a tall black man with slightly gray hair in the door. For the next ten minutes a retired Atlanta police inspector told the astonished group how in 1980 he had interrupted an assassination in progress whose target had been Senator Edward Kennedy. "They all insisted they were federal agents and flashed valid ID at us." "Go on," Daniels urged. "Well, we just didn't buy it--but, then, we didn't have much choice--" "What do you mean 'much choice?'" Myers interrupted. "We, ah, sir, were ordered by both the FBI and CIA, or what we thought was the CIA and FBI, to free the prisoners." For the first time in his carrer the FBI Director felt goose bumps crawl across his skin. "Free the prisoners?" "Yes, sir, all three of them." "Lincoln?" "Neither our nor FBI's records have any mention of the event." "Lieutenant?" prompted Axe. "Yes, sir?" "Why don't you tell these men what happened next." "Well sir, to put it mildly, these boys were pretty well equipped. I mean they obviously came to do the a job--had everything--phony IDs, ski masks, ropes, government papers, pistols, thousands of dollars in hundred dollar bills, well, they even had commando daggers. Then I saw the box." Inspector Rainey abruptly ceased his dialogue and glanced at Daniels for permission to continue. "Tell them." "It was like a briefcase, and before I realized what I was doing, I had my men cover me while I opened it. I thought it was gonna be filled with drugs--it wasn't--it was a telephone." "Tell them what happened next," Axe urged. "Feds called Chief Clark and told him to give all the evidence back, even the diagram of Senator Kennedy's room--so we did. Except one thing, I kept the box. I'd left it at my home by mistake. Once I heard they told the chief to destroy all the evidence I just kept it. Put it in my attic and forgot about it. "Months later I woke up in the middle of the night--thought my house was on fire or something, cause I heard a beeping sound and I thought it was the smoke alert. Then I realized it was the briefcase phone--someone was calling me on the box." "Did you answer it?" Woodring asked. "Yes sir. The caller said 'This is Laudon.' When I said 'Laudon who?', he hung up." "The exact same box HYDRA's using," Axe stated with a grim finality. "9,600- bits-per-second, 30-kilohertz range, our software, our codes, the whole works." Each attendee turned his head as Keith Axe passed him a manila envelope, sealed in wax. Hubert Myers wordlessly began to tear open the seal on his envelope, while the others followed, one by one. No one in the room could believe the contents of the secret table enclosed inside the envelope. This one sheet of paper, seen on the front page of the New York Times would be enough to shake the government to its core, causing the collapse of the entire American intelligence community for decades. On the left side of the list were a series of names and dates, while on the right was a corresponding set of summarized telephone conversations, listed by caller, date, and telephone number. No one in the room needed any further explanation as to the table's relevance, the names in the left-hand column were all too familiar: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Federal Judge John Wood, Edward Kennedy. Edward Kennedy's name was listed with a corresponding set of HYDRA's telephone conversations to the right. "As you can see from the record of the telephone transcripts before each of you, whoever was using this device was present before, during, and immediately after each of these . . . events." "Hold on a second, Lincoln! You're saying this same type of device was used to make all these calls?" objected Myers. "Not quite," Daniels replied. "After Lieutenant Rainey sent me his telephone, at the President's request we flew it to Cheltenham and had GCHQ find out what codes it used, then run a non-treaty search on all U.S. telecoms, radio, satellite, everything, looking for any transmissions using these same codes." "You mean--" Myers began. "That's right," replied Daniels, "Laudon changed the equipment but he kept the same codes as he upgraded. Otherwise we would have never found out." For the second time the room fell into total silence. "Gentlemen, Chauncey Laudon was insane," Daniels continued. "We'll never know what his true motivations were, but these tables make clear the extent of the damage he and his band of renegades caused this country. And I don't think I have to tell you that if even a hint that Chauncey Laudon was operating his own personal band of assassins were to get out, the whole national security apparatus of this country would risk being dismantled. "Woody, starting now, you're in charge of tracking this man down and eliminating him," Daniels ordered, astonishing Woodring and the others by the ease with which he had just accepted the strong possibility that HYDRA was a former American intelligence officer. "I've already discussed this with the President and he's just signed an NSDD, which essentially strips any and all suspects in this case of their civil rights." At this point Axe handed each of Daniels's guests a copy of National Security Decision Directive No. 208, while Daniels continued speaking. "According to our in-house counsel, the Federal Emergency Management Act gives us the authority we need to support this, Woody. We've already gone to Judge Sachs and had him issue you enough blank warrants to tap any suspect's phones, read his mail, blackbag his house, hold him without a writ of habeas corpus or whatever else you feel you need to do." "Yes, sir," Woodring replied automatically, then startled everyone by asking, "Sir?" Daniels raised his eyebrows. "I just have one last question for the Lieutenant," Woodring pressed, and Daniels allowed him to continue. "Do you have any idea at this time where any of the three men you arrested might be?" "Yes, sir. I do." "Wait a minute!" Axe protested. "You told us before you let them all go!" "That's what I told you in 1980, Mr. Axe, but two years later I turned on my television set and saw Volz being taken into court by some Federal Marshalls--" "Into court! Jesus! What was he charged with?" "Murder. Harry Volz was charged with murdering a federal judge." "Where is he now?" demanded Woodring. "Volz's in Marion Penitentiary, sir," replied the police lieutenant. "Thank you, Lieutenant," Daniels sighed, then picked up his telephone. A moment later the same two security personnel escorted him out of Daniels's office. The limousine ride back to Washington with his superior, FBI Director Hubert Myers, was possibly the most uncomfortable trips in David Woodring's life. For even though Myers's limousine was swept daily to check for bugs, Woodring didn't think it prudent to discuss the subject of their recent meeting at CIA headquarters in the car, and he was a bit surprised when Myers abruptly broke the silence as they rushed along Shirley Memorial Highway. "Woody, I assume you're familiar with the Hostage Rescue Team?" Woodring nodded affirmatively. He knew the bureau's fifty-man Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) was the chief civilian counterterrorist team available to the executive branch. Members of the HRT normally trained with military counterterrorist units, including the Navy SEALs, Marines, 82nd Airborne, and Delta Force, each of them often engaged in spirited rivalries with their competitors to see who could "neutralize" a terrorist attack first. Like its competitors, the HRT had copied many of the original training procedures and tactics of Britain's Special Air Service, including the SAS's all- black uniforms and balaclava hoods to hide its members' identities. Myers informed Woodring that for the duration of the investigation he would be guarded day and night by a rotating force of twenty-four HRT agents in four six-hour- long shifts of six men each. On days when Woodring was inside the Hoover Building, his security force would be reduced to three men, with the remaining trio stationed at Woodring's house in Falls Church. Travel to cities outside Washington would be accomplished in a GSA-owned Learjet bearing civilian markings. It was understood that newly assigned security force would also accompany Woodring on any such trip. Over the Potomac River Myers also ordered Woodring to immediately move his office from the eleventh floor of the Hoover Building to the FBI's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) on the seventh floor. Originally established by the CIA under William Casey in response to the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, the CTC was the first time that CIA officers were ordered to cooperate with other government agencies in investigations of major terrorists. The CTC's formation almost caused a civil war between the analysts in the CIA's Directorate of Information and members of the clandestine service in the Directorate of Operations. Analysts in DI claimed their conclusions would be slanted or bypassed altogether if they proved to be unpopular, while covert operations staff in DO complained the formerly inviolate Chinese Wall between field operatives and headquarters was being torn asunder. All of which paled in importance, when, in the early evening of December 21, 1988, a single jet airplane, Pan Am 103, flying to New York from London's Heathrow Airport, exploded in the sky 30,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland. Suddenly, the overall agent in charge of the CTC was given unlimited access not only to resources within the CIA, but also at the State Department, Federal Aviation Administration, FBI, Secret Service, and Pentagon. In addition, the CIA's multi-parameter extensive database on terrorism, a system known in intelligence circles as DESIST, was made available. DESIST tracks hundreds of different terrorists and their associates, their sources of funding, and any known contacts between them and the various secret services. After ending the Lockerbie investigation, control of the CTC was passed from the CIA to the FBI, which was a more natural choice, due to the bureau's role as America's major counterintelligence agency. By placing Woodring temporarily in charge of CTC, Myers had cleverly positioned him to be able to request information from any of the CTC's member organizations without raising any eyebrows. Woodring's staff would be able to send cables to CIA offshore stations, liaise with friendly foreign intelligence agencies, demand access to desk officers and operatives at the FBI, FAA, State and the Pentagon, and instruct officers at the National Security Agency to perform communications intercepts. Some of which he might need to do, Woodring knew, if he were, in fact, trying to locate and neutralize a highly capable former American intelligence agent. Director Myers's armored car bounced over the threshold of the Hoover Building's underground garage and sailed down the driveway, stopping suddenly next to a guardpost in front of an elevator bank. Three plainclothesmen with unfamiliar faces and muscular builds who were standing next to the regular sentry approached the car and opened its doors, then followed Myers and Woodring into the director's private elevator. When the elevator stopped at the seventh floor where the CTC's headquarters were located, the three plainclothesmen followed him out. Two of the trio took up preassigned posts at each end of the hallway, while the third accompanied Woodring as he strode past a row of apprehensive analysts seated at their desks. Woodring entered the empty corner office and locked the door behind him, leaving the third agent stationed outside his door, then picked up the telephone and ordered the duty officer to ready his staff for an immediate flight to Marion, Illinois. Chapter 23 Less than fifteen minutes after he had received Woodring's call, Joss Hall, Resident-Agent-in-Charge of the Carbondale, Illinois FBI regional office, leapt in his Oldsmobile 88 with three other FBI agents and raced sixteen miles across State Highway 13, veering off an access road near a tall water tower. Hall swerved left at the water tower, roaring past the parking lot and slamming to a stop, where he and his men were met by a pair of startled guards. Directly behind them was a wall of razor wire which fully encircled the U.S. penitentiary at Marion. USP Marion is America's toughest lockup, the new Alcatraz for incorrigibles, prison gang leaders, escape artists and unmanageable felons so violent they must be separated from inmates in the nation's other prisons. Every one of its prisoners is in solitary confinement in an 8-by-8-by-6-foot cell 23 hours a day 365 days a year. Exercise is restricted to only an hour a day, during which each inmate is only allowed to walk along the corridor in his tier, before he is returned to his cell. Marion USP has no cafeteria, no prison industry, no group recreation, no visiting entertainment and no prison yard for inmates to mingle in. Prisoners amuse themselves by manufacturing alcohol from cornflakes dumped in toilets, carving miniature plastic knives out of toothbrushes, fashioning hacksaws from the metal frames of the air ducts, or by swallowing contraband and storing it inside their intestinal tracts. "FBI, we're here to see Warden Joiner," Hall announced. One of the corrections officers reached for a telephone, but Hall grabbed his wrist, holding it firmly. "We're unexpected," Hall whispered, motioning to the guard to hang up. After repeating the same performance at the security checkpoint in the lobby, the four FBI agents took the elevator to the warden's office on the sixth floor. A male secretary sitting next to a plate-glass window controlled the door with an automatic lock, separating the warden, Ed Joiner, from the outside. "FBI, we're here to see Warden Joiner," Hall announced. "Warden, there's a couple of men from the FBI out --" "Send 'em in!" the intercom blared back. Hall marched into a gold-carpeted room with a pair of green leather couches against the walls and an architectural model of the prison sat a coffee table in its center. "How can I help you?" Joiner's expression hardened when he noticed all his visitors were wearing pins on their lapels. "We have a National Security Intelligence Decision Directive regarding one of your prisoners," Hall responded immediately and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and set it on Joiner's desk. "Volz's in Control Unit--we were told to keep him there by Washington-- look this doesn't mean shit to me, we can't release people out of Marion without a judge's order . . . I've never seen one of these since--" the warden was interrupted by the telephone "--just a minute," At first all Joiner heard was static, then a special operator came back on the line and asked Joiner to hold a moment for Paul Henson, Director, U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Warden Joiner involuntarily cleared his throat every few seconds, while Henson patiently enumerated the legal ramifications of a classified National Security Directive to him. "Yes, sir, uh hmm, uh hmm, yes, sir, I'll have him released from solitary myself--. . . no, no, no. No, sir, if you don't wish me to go personally, I understand of course . . . sure, sure, we've got a couple of extra unif--" Joiner stopped short. "Right," he answered, then hung up. Beads of sweat slipped down his forehead and stung his eyes and his palms felt like sponges. He avoided looking Hall in the eye as he spoke, "O.K., he's yours." Outside the Warden's office, Hall and his men were met by a squad of corrections officers handpicked from the regular staff, who were members of the Strategic Operations Response Team, better known to the inmates as the Goon Squad. Each officer carried a black Lifetime riot bludgeon, a three-foot-long hardwood club with a steel ball on its top, designed especially to tear the intercostal muscles between the ribs without breaking them. Hall and his men followed directly behind, walking along the ranges filled with louvered concrete cells. Hall thought he noticed the smell of burning paint mixed in with general odor of human sweat. "What's that smell?" "Lock's being changed," snapped one of the guards. "Fuckers see the key more than once they go carve themselves a copy." A red-headed guard wearing the uniform of the prison's Strategic Operations Response Team swung Volz's cell door open, stood away from him, so Volz couldn't slam the door on him. Two FBI agents stood behind the guard looking like twins with the same height, same build, and similar impassive expressions. "Harold Volz?" Hall spoke. "I'm Harry Volz, yes." "O.K., let's move it." "Who are you guys?" "I'm Johnson and he's Johnson," Hall lied. "Right. Mind telling me where I'm going, Johnson and Johnson?" asked Volz, getting up off the bunk. "Yeah, Volz, we do mind." Hall motioned with his head towards the corridor then frowned at Volz as if he were wasting their time. Volz made no response. "You ready--or are we going to be here all night?" Volz warily got off his bunk and let Hall lead him up a concrete stairwell to the sixth floor, where they stopped right before the metal door. "Take off your shirt," ordered agent Hall. Volz did as he was told and a second FBI agent handed Volz some civilian clothes. "What are these for? What's going on here?" "Just put them on," snapped Hall, motioning Volz towards a small elevator. Volz entered the elevator to find a second pair of plainclothesmen inside, one holding the door- open button, while the other held a gun. After the elevator doors shut, Volz examined his new clothes. The FBI agents had put him in expensive business suit with a tight-fitting custom-made cotton shirt underneath. The moment the elevator door opened, the four FBI plainclothesmen duckwalked Volz across the asphalt- and gravel-covered roof, where the downwash of an incongruous Navy Sea King was blowing dirt in the air. When he leapt aboard, Volz caught a glimpse of Woodring's grim face through the open main rear door, realizing then what they must have come for. Chapter 24 When Harry Volz awoke everything around him was pitch black, and when he raised up his head it bumped into something. It also felt as if he had the worst hangover of his life. The memory of Woodring's face inside the Learjet, the two black men who had opened his cell door at Marion, the helicopter on the penitentiary's roof, seemed to possess him in some way, repeating over and over in his mind. His hand touched a flat surface, then his other hand felt the same thing. For a moment he panicked--he was dead- -it was over, the men who had picked him up had found out what they wanted and had disposed of him. Or else, he was about to die, but it was too hard to think about; memories flooded his mind without end. His father's fist flew straight at his helpless face inside a gymnasium, missing him, smashing into a wall, and a bathroom was filled with a roaring agony. Police! Police! Keep your hands up! Police! He was a prisoner now, a prisoner of his mind. The sluice gates opened and hundreds of visions rushed out. Hey! You don't have a warrant for that! "Come on, Lieutenant, we're on your team." Woodring watched the interrogator turn off the microphone and slump back in his swivel chair from exhaustion. Volz's incoherent animal groans and screams played over a monitor in a glassed-in room where several grim-faced men sat, waiting for him to break. "How much longer?" Woodring asked in disgust. "He's ready now," the interrogator answered. "Get him out. I want to get this over with." Woodring watched through the one-way glass as Volz was carried into the room with his feet dragging and strapped into what resembled an electric chair, while a specialist attached electrodes to his body. His tongue was slack and hung out his mouth like a dog's. Volz now faced a blank, mirrored wall, and the operator sat next to him at a wooden desk with a control board inserted in its top. A top-of-the-line, five-pen Lafayette polygraph would measure the response of Volz's respiration, blood pressure, heart rate, and electrodermal levels to the questions Woodring had instructed his team to ask. "What is your name?" "Volz . . . Harry Volz." "That's good. Are you happy to be outside?" "Yes, very hap-py." "Where do you live?" "I live in Marion . . . USP." "Good, Harry. That's very good. Do you have dreams?" Inside the hidden control room, a second pair of operators sat next to Woodring in swivel chairs, watching a duplicate set of pens march across the roll of polygraph paper. "EDR's good," murmured one. Two electrodes had been placed on the top of Volz's ring and index fingers to measure his skin's resistance to electricity by means of a galvanometer placed in the circuitry. The second operator busied himself leafing through Volz's extensive medical prison record, reconfirming that no conditions existed which would adversely affect the test. "Will you be telling me the truth today?" "Yes." "Good. Are you afraid I might ask you something you would prefer not to discuss?" "Yes." "That's alright. This won't take long." "Look at his toes." "What?" asked Woodring. "Look at his toes, he's pressing them to the floor," repeated the operator in the control room, pointing at a television camera which had been focused on Volz's bare feet. "Do you hear voices in your head?" "No." Woodring noticed the tip of Volz's big toe turn red as soon as the floor operator spoke. "Check his tongue." "You think he's biting it?" "Have you ever had convulsions?" "No." "Blackouts?" "No." The operator next to Woodring flipped a switch on his console and whispered something into his hands-free headset. The floor operator nodded slightly in response. "Harry, are you squeezing your toes when I ask you questions?" "No." "You're sure of that?" "Yes." "Would you like to see a film of your toes?" "No." "When I just asked you about the film, did you bite your tongue?" "No. Yes. No." "Asshole," Woodring muttered to himself in the control room. "Do you have dreams?" "Yes . . . many." "He's stopped using countermeasures." The control room operator touched the responding chart with his finger, indicating to Woodring where a pattern of jagged sine waves had levelled out to form a regular pattern. "Good. I have dreams, too. What did you dream about today, Harry?" "Sheraton." "The Sheraton Hotel?" "Yeah, the hotel . . . airport." Woodring slipped the small black address book Daniels had given him from his pocket and absentmindedly turned its pages, flattening it with his palm when he found Volz's name. "Were you there in your dream?" "Yeah, me and the others." "Who were the others? Were they your friends?" "Yeah, Colman and Bartel . . . old friends." Woodring found the names of Bartel and Colman next to each other on the page opposite Volz's, while the agent next to him marked the number on the taped transcript which corresponded to Volz's mention of the two names. "Harry, why did you and your friends go to the hotel?" "To kill him . . . to kill the senator . . ." The interrogator shot Woodring a glance, and he nodded for him to continue. Next to Woodring, sat Lieutenant Rainey, who looked on in horror. "Who told you to kill the senator, Harry?" "Bartel . . . Bartel got the job." "Is Bartel your friend's first name, Harry?" "No." "Is Bartel his last name?" "Yeah, Benn-ett. Bennett Bartel. Kinda rhymes." "Yes, it does, doesn't it?" During this exchange Woodring had picked up a headset to a secure telephone and began to issue a series of instructions in a soft voice. "Harry, is Bennett Bartel your friend's real name?" "No." As he spoke Volz's eyes focused and refocused on the plate glass window behind which sat Woodring's interrogation team. Sweat poured off the killer's brow and soaked through his shirt. Woodring noticed Volz was beginning to struggle with his bonds, hung up the telephone and whispered something in the ear of the tech next to him, who relayed the message to the operator on the floor. "Harry, do you know if Bartel was ever in the service?" "Who's back there?" "Back where, Harry?" "Who's behind that glass?" "Harry, do you know if Bartel ever served in the armed forces?" "I wanna know who's behind that window before I answer that." His eyes glistening like an animal's, Volz was now staring directly at the spot where Woodring was sitting. Woodring picked up the microphone in front of him and pressed the transmit switch. "Harry, this is Assistant Director Woodring. I'm sitting in the control room. What seems to be the problem?" "Come on out where I can see you." Woodring sighed and glanced at the operator next to him, then left his chair and made his way to the floor. The interrogator sitting next to Volz noticed Volz's lip was trembling, while the polygraph's five pens began to jump erratically. A door opened and Woodring stepped into the room without his jacket on, revealing a shoulder holster holding a .38. "Give me a pen," Volz demanded. Woodring nodded to the operator who in turn handed Volz a felt-tip pen and a single sheet of paper. Volz wrote out two words, then folded the paper in half and held it in his right hand. Woodring strode forward in three quick steps but Volz was too fast for him and yanked the paper back, holding it near his mouth, causing Woodring to stop short. "What do I get?" Woodring said nothing, but kept his gaze fixed squarely on Volz's hands. "Come on, what do I get?" Woodring remained frozen in place, shifting his glance almost imperceptibly towards the operator. Volz saw the motion out of the corner of his eye, but the electronic charge racing up his spine into his brain arrived at the speed of light. His right hand froze where it was, then shook violently as the slip of paper wafted to the floor. None of those present would ever forget the animal savagery of Volz's cry. "Get him out of here!" Woodring snarled, unfolding the paper in his hand. China Lake. Chapter 25 Lincoln Daniels suddenly glanced at his watch and set down the book he was reading, then picked up the telephone to talk with the sentry who was posted outside his house. "Yes, sir." "David Woodring is coming by with another man, and as far as you're concerned this visit is off the books. You know what Woody looks like, and as long as his guest isn't holding a gun to his back, let 'em pass," Daniels ordered. Inside the sentry's car the words, "WOODRING, DAVID, FBI, ADCI, CHEROKEE BLAZER, VA #555-573", flashed across a small CRT mounted in the dash. A moment later, the sentry saw a pair of headlights belonging to Woodring's Cherokee Blazer rounding the island to the north of Daniels' home. The sentry unsnapped the leather strap which held a mini-Uzi under his armpit, but stayed inside his car as he had just been ordered. He watched Woodring's Cherokee speed down the sidestreet and lurch to an abrupt halt in front of Daniels' white colonial. The ADCI sure seemed seemed to be in a hurry, the sentry thought. Woodring had just left his Blazer parked halfway up the curb and was jogging up the path to the DCI's front door. The second man was unable to maintain Woodring's pace and lagged behind the FBI Assistant Director. The sentry took careful note that both Woodring's and his companion's hands were outside their coats and empty. Lincoln Daniels opened the steel-reinforced front door without a word, let both men inside, and immediately slammed it shut behind them. Daniels had every motivation to keep the identity of Woodring's companion a secret, even from his own security staff, since the very existence of the third man was one of the administration's greatest secrets. The DCI's other visitor was a special White House courier, whose sole function was to relay urgent messages from the Commander in Chief to a restricted circle of individuals in the various intelligence services, usually regarding certain executive directives which specified an existing threat to the national security. In the trade he was known as the Messenger of Death. "Our stress analysis guys just finished looking at Volz's test," Woodring half- gasped, worried by the look on Daniels's face. "They say it's real." Daniels held a thick, spiral-bound notebook in his hand, whose cover read in red and black block letters: RAINBOW CLEARANCE, CHINA LAKE SPECIAL OPERATIONS WEAPONS FACILITY. "You'd better go to China Lake tonight, and take one of our planes. I've already called Andrews and made the arrangements." "Yes sir." Outside Daniels' home a small, red warning light appear on the sentry's dashboard, followed by an earsplitting tone which jolted him in his seat. Next, the words HOMESDALE ETA 1:00 MINUTE flashed across his CRT and the sentry felt his armpits grow moist. Translated into English, the message had just informed him that a helicopter would be landing in Lincoln Daniels's back yard in less than sixty seconds. The agent burst out his car door and shoved his suit coat aside as he ran around Daniels's house. He was just in time to catch Woodring and his two bodyguards jogging towards a HH-1H, which was hovering above the lawn. Chapter 26 Not many aircraft in the government's fleet of civilian transport were capable of making the 2,600-mile-long journey from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California nonstop. In fact, there were only two, the Gulfstream C-20A and the Boeing C-137. They were modified versions of the Gulfstream III executive jet and the Boeing 707-120 airliner, and had a range of 4,718 and 5,150 miles respectively. Upon boarding Daniels's helicopter, Woodring was informed that a Gulfstream C-20A had already been preflighted by the 89th Military Airlift Wing Command and was waiting for him and his men on the tarmac. When the HH-1H Huey arrived at Andrews' Heliport fifteen minutes later it was met by two vans filled with HRT agents who escorted Woodring to the end of runway 7 whereupon Woodring and his platoon of bodyguards boarded the C-20A. According to a hastily filed and false flight plan, United Airlines Flight No. 5575 from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles had just departed. The first five hours of the flight passed without incident; the Gulfstream passed from one Air Route Traffic Control Center to another, appearing all the while to be strictly maintaining the parameters of its flight plan. Woodring had ordered the HRT pilot to broadcast all radio contacts over the public address system in the cabin, so he would be immediately apprised of any change in the airplane's status, and right before Flight 5575 crossed the Nevada-California border, Los Angeles Center recontacted the plane. "Cherokee Six One Tango, squawk one two zero six and ident." "Cherokee Six One Tango, squawking one two zero six," repeated the Gulfstream's pilot. The controller inside the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center rechecked the position of the plus sign which represented Flight 5575 on his monitor. Below the plus sign, in addition to the jet's four-digit transponder code were two more numbers which indicated its altitude in feet and its speed in knots. Both readouts indicated that Flight 5575 was far north of Las Vegas, way out of its flight path for landing at LAX. The controller had just asked the pilot to push the IDENT button on his transponder to give the controller's radar beacon system more data. He did a double take when the standard 1200 transponder code was replaced with ID number 0101. ID 0101 was an unusual Federal Emergency Management Act code which meant: the flight you have just contacted doesn't exist. Meanwhile, an increasingly nervous controller at China Lake Naval Weapons Center was watching FEMA ID 0101 cross the Panamint Mountains at 500 miles per hour, heading directly into China Lake's 1,800-square mile restricted military operations area. He pressed the toggle switch on his console, then began to speak into his headset. "Aircraft on China Lake, descending to flight level two zero zero, squawk zero three one two." The familiar pattern of a short-range civilian radar transmitter suddenly expanded, indicating whoever was flying ID 0101 possessed unusually powerful transmitting equipment, but the analyst ignored it, he was busy rifling his desk for a special one-time code pad. He nervously flattened the code book in front of him, double checking the three-letter message he had just received. After deciphering Woodring's message, he punched a certain number into his telephone. "Base security," the operator responded. "Give me Sergeant Roberts." "Just a minute." "Roberts," the sergeant said, picking up his telephone. "We've got a zero-one flight ETA here in fifteen minutes and they want you on the tarmac with a ladder and three jeeps the moment they arrive." The sergeant slammed down the phone, jabbed three sentries who were asleep in the guard hut and ordered them to follow him out onto the runway each in a separate jeep. The C-20A roared past, its tires searing the runway as the tiny four-vehicle convoy raced after it. The pilot threw the pair of Rolls-Royce Fll1-RR-100 turbofans in reverse, drastically slowing his runway speed. The plane stopped and as Roberts neared the aircraft in his vehicle, its hatch flew open, framing a pair of plainclothesmen holding Heckler & Koch MP5-5D2 submachine guns. "Jesus," he muttered under his breath, hoping the base controller hadn't misinformed him about their new arrivals. The moment he lined up the ladder to the hatch, two plainclothesmen leapt down it two steps at a time and flashed their IDs in his face. "FBI. Stay where you are. You pull out a weapon and we'll shoot a hole through you." Roberts and his astonished ground crew watched as ten more plainclothesmen filed down the ladder, followed by Woodring, who ordered Robert's men out of the jeeps, leaving them under guard by a pair of agents, before Woodring raced across the runway into the gloom. The first security checkpoint Woodring encountered lay directly outside the airstrip. He raised his hand and the two jeeps behind him screeched to a halt. "My name is Dr. Holland," Woodring told the Marine in the guardhouse without emotion. The sentry jerked alert at the special name, instantly noticing the two plainclothesmen in Woodring's jeep had their hands on their holsters. The fourth passenger, sitting in the front seat next to Holland and dressed as a civilian, said nothing. "Yes, sir." Woodring's jeep sped through the gate, the two sentries watching the dust rise off the road in its wake. Woodring repeated the same procedure at the next four guardposts, until, finally, at the fifth, he handed a wary female sentry a copy of NSDD 208, waited for her to read it, then demanded she escort him to Dr. Brimbecombe's private residence. Dr. Ernest Brimbecombe was the civilian commander of the Special Operations Weapons Facility and also possessed a combined Ph.D. in nuclear physics and engineering. Caught totally unawares by Woodring's arrival, Brimbecombe came to the door of his ranch house in his robe and slippers, since no one in Washington had even called him about an unannounced visit. "Dr. Brimbecombe--" the sentry began to explain. "I know this man, thank you, corporal," muttered Brimbecombe, frightened by the name Holland on Woodring's plastic name tag. "I want my people around the house," Woodring spoke in no uncertain terms, startling Brimbecome even more. "All right," answered Brimbecombe, surprising the sentry with his immediate acquiescence. No one said anything until she left, leaving Brimbecombe alone with David Woodring and Detective Rainey. "Dr. Brimbecombe, I have come here under the authority of National Security Decision Directive No. 208, a copy of which I am allowed to show you before we begin our search," Woodring announced, then slipped the sheet of paper into Brimbecombe's hands. Brimbecombe read the document in shock, immediately recognizing the National Security Council crest and the texture of the special paper. "What is this? What do you want?" "We're looking for the man who used this box." Woodring handed the startled base commander a copy of HYDRA's transcript and a matching spec sheet for the spread spectrum multiplexer. "Who's GERALD?" "We're pretty sure it's a reference to Dr. Victor Saleh--" "Saleh? The one in La Jolla at FHI?" "Right." "You're saying one of our people's tied up in his--" "We think he might have worked here." "An employee of ours?" "Probably an ex-employee," Woodring relented a bit. "But since we don't know how far back we're going to have to look, I want to access to the records of everyone who's come through here for the last fifteen years." "The last fifteen years? You mean you don't know his name?" "No. We only have two individuals who may have seen his face. One is in detention, the other is standing right in front of you," responded Woodring, nodding towards Detective Rainey. "We'll have to go to the command center to get the files," sighed Brimbecombe. "Wait here a second while I put on my clothes." Woodring snapped his fingers and the FBI HRT plainclothesman stationed outside came to attention. "Yes, sir?" "I want an escort to the command center--ten men." "Yes, sir." Two jeeps, each packed with four heavily armed HRT agents, sandwiched Woodring and Brimbecombe as they sped to the command center in a third. Brimbecombe began to believe his life might really be at risk, but the short ride through the cold mountain air was uneventful. The column came to a halt outside a manned guard post protected by a twelve-foot-high chain link fence with floodlights on each corner. Woodring leapt out, shoving his ID in the sentry's face. "Bring those with us," Woodring commanded, and two FBI agents hefted two legal-sized record storage boxes from the back of their jeep, following Woodring inside past the startled guard. A second pair of agents motioned for Dr. Brimbecombe to follow them inside. "You've brought a duplicate set of records? Why was that necessary?" Brimbecombe gasped, watching Woodring's agents arrange stacks of yellowed files on the desks. "Doctor Brimbecombe, I'd like you to pull the names of everyone who had any type of disciplinary problem here whatsoever, can you do that on your computer?" "Yes." Ten minutes later the somewhat nonplussed base commander handed Woodring a short, one-page-long printout with ten names on it. "Great. Pull each of their files and give them to him, picture ID showing." Brimbecombe glanced at Rainey, then punched in a series of numbers on an electronic lock which opened the door of an inner room, and disappeared inside. "I want you to pull the same files he pulls and turn them so the picture IDs are showing and hand them to him with the one matching it from the safe," Woodring instructed the two agents. Brimbecome handed Lieutenant Rainey the file folders he had pulled from his safe, as did Woodring's man, and the police detective carefully examined the ID photographs of each pair, before setting them aside. "Nope. Not here," Rainey said, both his hands pressed against the desk. "Figures," muttered Woodring. "All right, hook that thing up and let's see what's next." One of the HRT agents slapped a small laptop computer on a desk, plugged a CD ROM unit into it attached to two small speakers, then inserted a floppy disk which contained the name of everyone who had ever been stationed at China Lake, and typed in a series of commands. The CD ROM contained a master list of death certificates which had been recently created by the Social Security Administration to guard against computer fraud, of which it had been a serious victim. Seconds later, the HRT agent handed Woodring a printout of over a score of names. Edwin D. Bailey had died on May 26, 1951, more than two decades before the Weapons Center had even been in existence. Inside the vault, Brimbecome quickly found Bailey's file and opened it, folding it back so that the ID photograph was revealed, then handed it to Woodring, who in turn handed it immediately to Detective Rainey. "That's him. But--" "But what?" demanded Woodring. "When I saw him in Atlanta he had red hair and a beard, like I told you." Woodring grabbed the file out of Rainey's hands. "Fax this to Daniels over CRITIC," Woodring ordered one of his men, "Then call and have the jet preflighted, we're going back." A quick look at the contents of Bailey's file had been enough. Chapter 27 Generally unknown to the American public is the fact that the White House office complex contains two Situation rooms instead of just one, the endless repetition by the media of the phrase "White House Situation Room" notwithstanding. The original, or older, Situation Room does, in fact, lie in the basement of the west wing of the White House. It is a traditional dark- wood-panelled conference room with a large oval table in the middle which seats twelve and is small enough so that all the participants can hear and speak to one another. Along the room's perimeter another fourteen chairs are arranged so each member of the President's National Security Council can bring along one of his staff for backup. Traditional access to the old Situation Room is through an entrance visible to the omnipresent White House press corps--and anyone else who might choose to make a study of the Executive branch's comings and goings. The second, more recently constructed Situation Room, or "Room 208" as it is known to the White House staff, is found in the Old Executive Office Building, which itself lies directly next to the White House. The Old Executive Office Building traditionally houses the President's National Security Council staff, the group responsible for keeping the chief executive informed on foreign policy (and not to be confused with the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, an intelligence organization). After a raft of terrorist incidents in the 1980s, a certain aggressive former NSC staffer in the Reagan Administration named Oliver North lobbied for and succeeded in having Room 208 outfitted with the latest electronic gadgetry, computers, visual display equipment, and a combination lock on the door. The "crisis center", as Room 208 is sometimes also called, also possesses a long wooden conference table situated in the middle of the room. Meetings of the President's national security advisers which, sometimes by their very nature sometimes demand a clandestine setting, are often held in the Situation Room in the Old Executive Office Building instead of in the White House basement in order both to avoid the prying eyes of the White House press corps and also to allow the participants to arrive at as many different entrances to the complex as possible. And, in fact, before dawn that morning several key members of the Executive branch had received an abrupt summons to do just that--each invitee was told to report to Room 208 at 7:00 a.m. sharp and given a specific entrance to use with no further explanation. And after each participant arrived inside the Old Executive Office Building, exited the elevator on the second floor and walked into the corridor, he found himself immediately surrounded by a full platoon of heavily armed Secret Service agents who, in a highly irregular fashion, were holding unsheathed automatic weapons at port arms. After passing through the throng of Secret Service and entering Room 208 each invitee immediately realized what he had already begun to suspect--that he had been called to an assembly of the President's national security high command: seeing each other in attendance were Al Gore, Vice President; Lawrence Maddox, the President's chief of staff; J. Mark McDowell, National Security Advisor; Lincoln Daniels, Director, Central Intelligence; Hubert Myers, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Frank Chalmers, Director, National Security Agency; Air Force General Haywood Ford, Commander, National Reconnaissance Office, Sunnyvale, California; Air Force General Olsen, Commander, Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DEFSMAC), NSA; General Praeger, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; and finally, Wesley Reynolds, the FBI official in charge of Command Black, a secret division of the bureau's Hostage Response Team which acts as the federal government's secret nuclear operations commando group. Each attendee was also immediately aware that the combined presence of such an unusual group could mean only one of a few things: either America was about to go to war, a remote possibility given the present geopolitical situation and the noticeable absence of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; or, secondly, a declaration of Condition STARE DECISIS under the Federal Emergency Management Act was about to be made due to an event which each invitee would have preferred to never have to contemplate, e.g., nationwide rioting; or, finally, some other emergency that directly affected the security of the nation. A small spotlight now illuminated the humorless face of Lincoln Daniels, and behind him a large area map of the world slowly revealed itself on a built-in movie screen. Major cities were noted by small red lights which blinked on and off. No one spoke a single word. There was a knock on the door, and Daniels checked his watch, then motioned to the Secret Service agent standing beside him to allow a second set of guests to enter. Each attendee at the table nervously shifted in his seat as a mixed crew of technicians, drawn from several different intelligence agencies, wheeled in several tall metal racks, each packed with obscure electronic instruments, and immediately went to work. "This will only take a moment," Daniels apologized to the group. Every square inch of every surface in Room 208 was subsequently swept and reswept by a range of devices, each one specifically designed to home in on different emanations across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. "Excuse me, General Ford, would you mind standing up?" one of the sweepers asked the Commander of the National Reconnaissance Office. The general grimaced, said nothing in response, and got out of his chair and faced the specialist. "Would you hand me your pen, please, sir?" "Here," Ford replied in open disgust. The specialist gingerly inserted the pen inside a hollow metal cylinder built into one of the devices on the rack. On the other side of the room one of the technicians winced as he passed his bizarrely shaped wand past the door of an innocent-looking console, stationed next to the south wall. "What is it?" muttered his superior, now hovering over his shoulder. "I'm getting something--several milliwatts--can't tell if it's the lamp or the table . . ." the specialist confessed. "Anybody know anything about this table?" the senior specialist suddenly asked the assembly in a loud voice. "This is ridiculous," groaned General Olsen. "I've never seen it in here before," answered McDowell, the National Security Advisor. "Get it out of here, pronto," ordered FBI Director Myers, motioning to two of his own people. The sudden sound of a powerful electric drill only served to heighten the unbearable level of tension in Room 208. Lincoln Daniels held his left index-finger to his lips to indicate that everyone should remain silent. The President's chief of staff bit his lower lip and stared straight into space. It was like a cancer, growing and gnawing at his insides. Specks of plaster flew into the air amidst the unholy racket--now several technicians had gathered about the gaping hole in the wall of the New Situation Room, one drilling, another pointing a long vacuum rod in the same direction, which resembled the shotgun microphone often used by the networks at football games, while a third man now scooped up the debris and fed it into a machine. A single light began to flash on the console of the amplifier which was analyzing the debris. "Bingo!" whispered the senior man. "Shit," Frank Chalmers, Director NSA. "Gentlemen." Lincoln Daniels had just called the meeting to order. The attendees who were sitting nearby noticed that as he broke the seal on the binder in front of him, the DCI's hands were shaking. "As Director of Central Intelligence of the United States, I feel compelled to inform you that a conspiracy involving one or more components of our strategic nuclear forces is believed to exist--" Daniels paused to clear his throat, it was already dry as a bone. Meanwhile each man looked at his neighbor with apprehension. Had the DCI just gone mad? "--each of you will find a summation of what we have found so far spelled out in his binder--" "Director Daniels!" "We believe that one or more Americans have been contracted," Daniels continued, ignoring the objection, "who has had previous involvement with one or more of our intelligence agencies." "Jesus!" "Director Dan--!" "I knew he should have never left that maniac in power," muttered Praeger, openly embarrassing Vice President Gore. "Silence! Gentlemen! Silence! There's no time for interruptions!" McDowell, the National Security Advisor, shouted. Lincoln Daniels took a deep breath, glanced at the Vice President, then sighed. "None of our intelligence regarding this, this--" Daniels stuttered, not wanting to give the incident a name "--all the evidence we have found supports the conclusion that this is much more than just a terrorist operation--" Outside Room 208 a pair of Secret Service agents holding Uzi submachine guns stopped David Woodring at the door. Woodring was holding a small CD player in his hand. "Just a minute, sir." "Excuse me?" Woodring asked. "What's that?" "Classified." "Sorry, sir. We're gonna have to have a look." "No way, pal. Call Daniels and tell him David Woodring's outside. Now!" "Just a minute." One of the Secret Service agents picked up a handset and murmured something into it. "O.K. Sorry, sir." The agent stepped aside and let Woodring enter the Situation Room. The Deputy Director blinked twice when he saw all the faces gathered around the table. "Thanks, Dave," his superior, FBI Director Myers told him and motioned for Woodring to hand the disk player to Lincoln Daniels. The telephone in front of Daniels rang, and he picked it up and grunted a response. A second later, two technicians the group hadn't seen before wheeled in a four-foot high metal rack. Without saying anything Daniels set the tape recorder on the table, then left his chair, so that one of the technicians could take his place. "Who are these guys, if you don't mind my asking, Lincoln?" asked the President's chief of staff. "They're ours," muttered General Praeger, Director DIA. "And ours," sighed Frank Chalmers, Director NSA. The tech in Daniels' chair ignored their conversation and busied himself typing in several commands on a keyboard. A screenful of diagnostics suddenly illuminated a large 27" monitor positioned on the metal rack. Next, his partner pulled a small gray box from the tray and set it next to the tape recorder and plugged it in its side. The diagnostics suddenly disappeared and were replaced by the single word, Ready. Woodring stood behind the tech in Daniels' seat and addressed the group. "The telephone conversation you're about to hear was deciphered last week at NSA. The two speakers were detected using a 9,600-bits-per-second, 30-kilohertz-range, spread-spectrum multiplexer telephone which broadcasts direct to satellite. The date of the transmission is January 15, 1993, the day before Dr. Victor Saleh was murdered at his home in California." Each attendee then turned his head as Woodring passed him a manila envelope, sealed in wax, then pressed the play button on the CD player, activating an artificial simulation of HYDRA's conversation with Sabawi Hussein. Listening in stunned silence, General Praeger wordlessly tore open the seal on his envelope, while the others followed suit, one by one. All eyes were riveted on the FBI Assistant Director, who was still speaking. "As you can see from the record of the telephone transcripts before you, neither speaker could be identified since actual voice transmission never occurred. The individual referred to as HYDRA in the text is believed to have obtained his transmitter from the Special Operations Weapons Facility in China Lake. The encryption method used matches that given to an Edwin D. Bailey in the base's files. "Edwin D. Bailey is a dangerous man--quite capable of carrying out any number of missions Iraqi intelligence may have hired him for. If you haven't done so already, I think if you take a quick look at his resume, you'll agree with me that this individual's received more than enough training to pose a significant threat, if, in fact, he's become involved in a conspiracy related to the death of the late Dr. Saleh." The room was totally silent except for the occasional rustling of paper; Anyone reading Bailey's resume could see how expert his qualifications were: June, 1972, Bailey enrolls in 4th Airbone Training Battalion, United States Army Infantry Center, Fort Benning, Georgia, then is posted to 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. A year later Bailey receives additional training Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, then sees duty in Guantanamo Bay, Panama and Honduras, after which he joins 5th Special Forces Group. Returns to Fort Bragg where he specializes in weaponry, operations and intelligence, in addition to taking 25-week-long signals course, after which Bailey becomes a member of the Blue Light Operations Group. Reader should note that Blue Light Operations Group is predecessor organization to Special Forces Group Delta, i.e., Delta Force. Reader is advised to refer to Central Intelligence, Langley, Virginia for list of any further activities. "Where's Bailey's DO file?" demanded Praeger, holding his copy of Bailey's resume in the air. Woodring nodded at the tech in Daniels chair, who replaced the disk in the CD player Woodring handed him from his briefcase, turned on the machine and the television monitor suddenly came to life, its screen filled with the same pattern of jagged lines. No transcripts were passed out for the conversations the group was about to hear. "FBI! Open up! " "Don't shoot. We're cops!" "Jesus." "Thank God, you guys ar--" "Shut the fuck up!" "He's got the book!" "Shutup, Bartel!" "What book?" "Inspector Rainey, I'm afraid you're going to have to hand over any evidence you may have gathered here today, including this man's appointment book." "Are you crazy? These men are about to kill Senator Edward Kennedy! This here is the floor plan of his hotel!" "Inspector, need I remind you that the Senator is in Washington, D.C., at this moment?" "Bullshit! Mr. FBI, or whoever you really are! We're booking these three right here and right now! And if you have a problem with that, I've got a problem with you, Mister!" "You can't let these cops--" "Shut the fuck up!" Daniels's sonorous voice now filled the darkened room. "The conversation you just heard was recorded by GCHQ in Cheltenham--we just got a copy of it yesterday. It apparently was transmitted accidentally and we wouldn't have even known to look for it, except that we have an eyewitness--" "Eyewitness to what, Lincoln?" demanded National Security Advisor McDowell. "What are you saying here?" "Edwin D. Bailey was attempting to assassinate Senator Edward Kennedy while in the employ of the United States government." "He what?" cried Vice President Gore. "Lincoln, what's going on here?" interrupted McDowell. "So whose side is he working for now?" shouted the chief of staff. Woodring nodded at the tech at Daniels' side who doused the lights, which had the immediate effect of quieting the room. "The film you're about to see was taken when I was Director of the FBI . . ." Daniels began to explain as the screen was filled with the picture of Chauncey Laudon's house. While the silent movie played, Daniels reiterated the story he'd told Woodring and Hockaday in his office about Laudon's secret band of assassins. Again the room fell into a stunned silence as each intelligence chief struggled with the implications of Bailey's role as a paid government assassin. If Bailey was indeed HYDRA, any investigation of his whereabouts would have to be managed with kid gloves, given the risk to the government of his involvement in an illegal assassination team run by the CIA. "This is blackmail! Sheer unadulterated blackmail!" spat out General Praeger after the film had ended. "That's right, gentlemen," agreed Hubert Myers. "That's exactly what this is. The message here is simple. We go public--he goes public." "And ruins all of us," grumbled Chalmers. "Not just us," muttered the chief of staff. Daniels took back control of the meeting with his next comment. "Before we met, I showed the film you just saw to the President at Camp David. His instructions were explicit: we are expressly forbidden from launching any raids into Iraq--since we have no way of knowing how much the Iraqis actually know about Bailey's past, we also obviously have no way to predict what Saddam's reactions would be after an attack. Obviously the President doesn't want to risk the almost certain chaos that would result if Hussein chose to make this thing public. "I also believe everyone in the room has seen a copy of NSDD 208 and is familiar with its contents, and after speaking with the President, he and I and Hubert all agreed that Assistant Director Woodring continue to run the investigation until Bailey is located and apprehended. NSDD 208 grants Mr. David Woodring full power to use whatever resources of the United States government to track Bailey down," here Daniels paused, "and let me emphasize to you, gentlemen, that, in this case, the rules of engagement are unlimited." All eyes returned to the Assistant Director, their new temporary superior. Woodring was the youngest man amongst them, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind what his fate would be if he failed to find HYDRA. Also, the last thing any of them wanted was to be charged with the task of investigating the remnants of Laudon's band of assassins, an investigation which had previously proven to be a fatal endeavor for those who had had the misfortune to be assigned it. Sitting next to Daniels with his hands flat on top of his attache case, Woodring stared straight ahead, avoiding looking at the others. Two HRT watchdogs stood against the wall behind him, increasing his isolation. Nothing in his career could have prepared Woodring for the position he found himself in now--busting up Mafia families and chasing spies could hardly approach being given absolute police power over the whole United States. Daniels paused a moment and took a drink of water, giving anyone who had a question time to ask it. No one did. The next meeting was scheduled at the NFIB offices on F Street two nights hence; all were expected to attend except General Ford who had to return to Sunnyvale. Woodring left the room first, followed by his pair of bodyguards. The platoon of Secret Service agents outside the door immediately parted way for them immediately in a mute demonstration of Woodring's new position. Chapter 28 Fishing boats rocked in the water next to busy crab stalls as Woodring's car limped along the Southwest Freeway in Washington's evening rush hour. Finally, after half an hour of waiting, he took the South Capitol Street exit past the empty Skyline Inn, then turned right, whizzing past the weed-filled junkyards of Anacostia. He skidded to a stop outside the Potomac Electric Power Company plant next to an area crisscrossed by abandoned railroad tracks, shoved open his door and disappeared into the ramshackle building opposite. Inside, he was met by a pair of plainclothesmen, and Woodring barely nodded as all three took the elevator to the eleventh floor. Thirty special agents, the entire membership of the CI-3 Division, breathlessly awaited Woodring's arrival. They were seated amongst ten rows of metal desks in a room whose only feature was an ancient wall map of the United States showing areas once off-limits to Soviet diplomats. Woodring swept into the room accompanied by several HRT agents who took up positions on its perimeter. He slapped Daniels's compact disk recorder on the nearest table, then spoke without introduction: "The pair of telephone conversations you're about to hear were deciphered two days ago at NSA. Transmission was made on a 9,600-bits-per-second, 30-kilohertz-range, spread-spectrum multiplexer telephone which broadcasts direct to satellite. We know a lot about it, because it was made by us. Only one thousand of them were ever produced, and they were then issued to Special Ops Command at China Lake, and whoever was assigned a box was also assigned his own personal code key. Records at China Lake indicate the key used to encrypt this transmission belonged to a certain Mr. Edwin D. Bailey. "This intercept was decoded strictly by accident--the only reason the techs at Ft. Meade did it was because whoever was using the box didn't know his broadcast was being encrypted by an old algorithm, called DES, which dates back to the seventies. DES's key length is only 56 bits, so it didn't take Allo Group that long to run all the possibilities. "One last item--the date of the transmission is January 15, the day before Dr. Victor Saleh was murdered at his home in California." Woodring snapped open a battered briefcase, extracting a set of copies of Bailey's resume, each with an 8 1/2-by 11-inch enlargement of his original ID photograph attached. After passing a set to each attendee, he pressed the play button on the CD recorder. "Who's speaking, please?" "HYDRA." "I'll be brief. You may want to cancel the mission. It's why we haven't sent the money yet." "Why? What's happened?" "GERALD's under surveillance." "When did you find this out?" "Earlier today." "I'll call you back in ten minutes." Woodring snapped off the CD player, pausing to inform his audience that the second conversation was recorded ten minutes after the first on the same night. "Who's speaking, please?" "It's HYDRA. If you take care of GERALD, I'm still in." "Done." The room was totally silent: each special agent was rereading Bailey's resume, already making the connection to Saleh's death. "If Dr. Saleh has, in fact, inserted a Trojan Horse into our command and control system," Woodring spoke, reading his agents' thoughts, "we believe Bailey's the one who's been recruited to activate it. Unfortunately, we also found a little problem with Bailey's records. When I cross-checked Edwin D. Bailey's ID number with the Social Security's master disk at China Lake, the Social Security disk said that Edwin D. Bailey of the same number had died at two months old on May 26, 1951. Then, when I checked with Daniels before I got here, I found out CIA had no Edwin D. Bailey in any of its files." Before anyone could ask a question, Woodring gave them their orders. "Until he is found, I want everyone in this room to drop whatever you're doing and think about nothing else than arresting the man known as Mr. Edwin D. Bailey. "You can go anywhere you want, interview anyone you want, stay at any hotel you want, detain anyone you want, tap any phone, black bag any house, follow any car, go to any military base--you name it, it's covered in this NSDD." Woodring slapped the directive on the table. "And if you find him, don't, I repeat, don't kill him." "Why not?" someone asked. "Because he may not be acting alone," Woodring snapped. After the meeting at CI-3, that morning Woodring returned to the Counterterrorism Center in the Hoover Building and made a routine request to the Pentagon for the records of the 4th Airborne Training Battalion U.S. Army Infantry Center, Fort Benning, Georgia and the records of 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg. Woodring also made a direct call to the commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, requesting records of the 5th Special Forces Group. His third call was to the Commander, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, North Carolina. JSOC is a combined services operation whose real purpose is the responsibility for Navy SEAL Team 6 and Special Forces Detachment Delta (better known as Delta Force), whose predecessor unit was Blue Light, of which Bailey had been a member. Within twenty-four hours over 2,000 computerized files were transferred by the respondents to the CTC over high-speed satellite data link which Woodring, in turn, parcelled out to the staff of CI-3 on Half Street. For the next ten days a team of twenty special agents worked the phones, setting up appointments for their associates, who, in turn, dispersed throughout the United States and its possessions to interview former members of Bailey's various military units. Meanwhile, Woodring decided to review the CTC's extensive files on America's Special Operations Forces, rereading a secret briefing paper on them which had been prepared for the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). The Delta Force, the successor unit to Bailey's Blue Light Group, was itself only a small part of the U.S. military's special operations structure which encompassed four separate commands, totaling over 45,000 men. As a result of the lack of inter-service cooperation in Operation URGENT FURY, the codename for the invasion of Grenada, the Joint Chiefs decided to unify all Army, Navy, and Air Force Special Operation forces seven years later in 1987 under a single entity, the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), headquartering it at Fort McDill, Florida. Under USSOCOM's umbrella are the Army's Special Operations Command, Air Force's Special Operations Command, the Navy's Special Operations Command, and a separate Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). USSOCOM's largest force is the Army's Special Operations Command (USA- SOC) based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. USA-SOC contains a diverse set of units, including the 74th Ranger Regiment, various Special Forces groups (better known as the Green Berets), 160th Army Aviation Regiment, and 96th Civil Affairs Battalion and 4th Psychological Operations Group. The 75th Ranger Regiment is essentially an elite infantry unit specializing in ambushes, urban warfare and lightning attacks, while the Green Berets and the 160th Aviation Regiment emphasize insertion, extraction, and infiltration behind enemy lines. The 75th Ranger Regiment is divided into three battalions, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, each of which has 606 personnel and is based at a separate location: 1/75 at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia; 2/75 at Fort Lewis, Washington; and 3/75 at Fort Benning, Georgia. Training begins with a ten-week-long course conducted at the Ranger School, also located at Fort Benning, Georgia, and students are usually U.S. Army officers and NCOs who have already undergone both Army and Air Force training. The Ranger course emphasizes mountaineering, patrolling, navigation, survival, weapons handling, ambushing, recon, and hand-to-hand combat. Before being allowed to join a Ranger unit, graduates from the school must pass an additional three-week Ranger Indoctrination Program, whose initials, RIP, Woodring suspected, were not entirely a coincidence. Emphasis of the Ranger Indoctrination Program is physical stamina and performance with constant monitoring and supervision. Only between fifty and seventy percent of the applicants survive the program. Graduates then spend 52 months with a Ranger Battalion in the field before returning to the Ranger School for final training. U.S. Army Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets, are essentially the Army's primary counter-insurgency, guerilla-warfare force. Candidates must possess "secret"-level security clearance to receive training, and volunteers are often typically former Rangers or members of 82nd Airborne. Emphasis of SF training is on the individual, with six basic qualification courses available for each man's occupation specialty. Each Green Beret must choose at least one of the qualification courses in order to graduate. The six specialties include: signals, a 25-week course in radiotele- communications and encryption; medicine, a 39-week course in preventative medicine and minor surgery; engineering, a 25-week course in demolition and construction; weapons, a 25-week course in all types of armaments; operations and intelligence, a 16- week course in intelligence techniques; and detachment officer, a required 19-week course for all future SF officers. USA-SOC trains its special forces with every imaginable type of weapon, sight, optics, communications gear, and vehicle which the Army has in its arsenal, essentially sparing nothing in the education of its troops. Special Forces' weapons training also includes the use of other nations' armaments, in case American weapons aren't available in a battle situation. Thus, SF commandos become expert with not only the standard- issue M6A2 assault rifle, but also the Russian AK-47, German G3 assault rifle, Israeli Uzi and the German Heckler & Koch MP5-SD2 submachine gun. Night operations are enhanced by the use of AN/PVS-7A night-vision goggles, AN/PAQ-4 laser aiming lights and AN-TAS-6 thermal acquisition sights. Navy Special Operations Command operates the Navy SEALs (Sea-Air-Land units) which were established in 1962 from a predecessor unit, the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs). Trained like the Green Berets to operate in groups of approximately a dozen men, the SEALs' primary mission is also infiltration behind enemy lines. Required courses, lasting up to two years, include a twenty-five-week-long marathon course, blandly entitled the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, whose rigor is unmatched in the American military. Basic UDT training begins at Coronado Naval Amphibious Base, California. Emphasis is put on physical conditioning, field exercises, boat handling, land-warfare tactics, hydrographic reconnaissance, weapons handling, demolitions and communications. Trainees are driven to learn to operate for days on end with a minimum of sleep, while performing exercises like carrying 300-pound boats on long beach runs. The fifty percent of the class who normally graduate go on to Fort Benning, Georgia, for a three-week course in basic static-line parachuting. After that, students return to Naval Amphibious School at Coronado where they are instructed in how to operate small, battery-powered, open submersible swimmer delivery vehicles (SDVs), an underwater version of a motorcycle. After ten weeks of SDV training, students are taught explosives handling and neutralization, and use of biological and chemical munitions in a thirty- three-week-long explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) course which takes place at either Huntsville, Alabama or Indian Head, Maryland. Like the Army, the Navy showers its special forces units with a wide variety of specialized equipment. Weapons used include the CAR-15 assault rifle, the Stoner M63A1 light machine gun, in addition to the more traditional Heckler & Koch MP5, McMillan 7.62mm M86 sniper rifle, and the older but highly accurate M-14. Besides the SDVs, SEALs are also trained to operate seven-man inflatable boats, open-and closed- scuba systems, hand-held sonar and other underwater communications devices. Air Force Special Operations Command's mission is to transport the men and equipment of the first two groups to their battle sites. Long-range transport is provided by the fixed-wing propeller-driven MC-130H Combat Talon II. On short-range hauls or where vertical landing's required, the 42,000-pound MH-53J Pave Low IIIE helicopter is used. Combat support is provided by the AC-130U Spectre gunship, equipped with computerized fire controls to allow its 150mm howitzer and its 25mm and 40mm cannons to saturate specified areas with projectiles. But what interested Woodring most was the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) headquartered at Pope Air Force Base which had the responsibility for Special Forces Group Delta, Navy SEAL Team 6, and the "Nightstalkers", a special operations helicopter unit that is part of 106th Aviation. The three units under JSOC's command constitute the U.S. military's prime counterterrorist force. Men chosen to serve in any of the three are culled from the best of the other special forces units, and recruits for each are required to endure additional rigorous retraining to qualify. JSOC, itself, was a bureaucratic stepchild of the Joint Task Force (JTF) organized by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown two days after the spectacular failure in April, 1980 of Operation EAGLE CLAW, the mission to rescue the hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Now, for the first time, elements of the three services were told to report outside their normal chain of command to a single Army general at Ft. Bragg. JTF's original command structure was drawn up by Colonel Charlie Beckwith and Commander Richard Marcinko, founders and commanders of Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team 6, respectively. Slow to respond to the terrorist threat and fearful of creating military units with police powers, America's military leadership changed its opinion on the need for counterterrorist units after witnessing events in Europe in the 1970s. In 1977 Colonel Charles "Black Beret" Morrell, Commander 5th Special Forces Group, was instructed by Major General Jack Mackmull, Commander of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, to create a stopgap unit until Delta Force could be certified for operations. Morrell selected forty men, including Edwin D. Bailey, from the 5th Special Forces Group and codenamed his temporary unit Blue Light. At the same time, Colonel "Chargin' Charlie" Beckwith, a gruff Vietnam SF veteran and commandant of the Special Forces School at Fort Bragg was charged by Army Chief of Staff General Bernard Rogers with the creation of a permanent counterterrorist unit, Special Forces Detachment Delta. Fearful that Morrell's temporary unit would derail Delta's formation, Rogers lent his full weight to the project and backed Beckwith to the hilt. As a result Delta was certified for operations on November 4, 1979. Delta Force recruits are usually senior non-commissioned officers (NCOs) drawn from Active Army, Army Reserve, or Army National Guard units. Training sessions are held only twice a year and are for 100 candidates each, each of whom must have passed stringent background security investigation, been screened for psychological abnormalities, and taken thorough physical and eye examinations. After passing the next stage of intensive physical testing, which includes an 18-mile-long speed march and a 40- mile land navigation exercise complete with 55-pound rucksack, the few remaining volunteers are sent to Fort Bragg to the high-security Special Operations Training Facility. A 19-week course reviews skills learned in former special forces units, plus teaches evasive and aggressive driving, how to manage hostage situations, lock picking, car theft, and weapons improvisation. Realizing that for it to be effective, the Joint Task Force would have to possess the capability to target maritime objectives, Navy action officer and former SEAL Richard Marcinko recommended to William Crowe, who was then deputy chief of naval operations, the formation of a separate SEAL Command, which Marcinko thereinafter referred to as Navy SEAL Team 6. (Confusingly at that time there were only two other SEAL teams in existence, Team 1 and Team 2, six of whose platoons had already received CT training; ergo, the number 6). Marcinko was given his command and went to work designing a special training cycle for volunteers to his unit, almost all of whom were picked from SEAL Teams 1 and 2 and therefore were already graduates of the BUD/S course at Coronado, the airborne course at Fort Benning, and the EOD course taught at Huntsville and Indian Head. Marcinko's recruits were divided into two teams of three platoons each, then ordered to undergo a nonstop schedule of shooting, jumping, diving and CT hostage-rescue exercises. The Navy's budget for SEAL Team 6 was even more liberal than for the other two teams combined, with Marcinko's men receiving more ammunition than that issued by the Navy for the entire Marine Corps. Equipment included rustproof stainless steel Smith & Wesson .357 revolvers, all-weather camouflage suits, Gore-Tex camouflage parkas, British-made reverse-weave nylon lines for fast roping, plus a pair of customized armored Mercedes 500-series sedans and four Mercedes jeeps for use in European operations. The Navy's Office of Security and Coordination had also instructed SEAL Team 6 to create "black hat" units to perform terrorism awareness exercises at U.S. Navy bases both in the U.S. and abroad. One such unit, known as the "Red Cell" according to an unattached report, tested how base personnel would respond to a terrorist threat by "penetrating base outer perimeters by climbing fencelines at day or night, using false ID at gates, commandeering gates, or running them. Terrorist tactics enacted on bases included the bombing of personnel, support assets, and critical strategic assets, and the taking of hostages and barricading within facilities on base." The report concluded: "Navy antiterrorism specialists demonstrated the vulnerability of installations to terrorist tactics at fourteen U.S. Navy bases." A dense footnote at the end of the briefing paper mentioned an Army Intelligence division called Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA. Woodring was astonished to find that ISA had 283 agents in over a score of offices and was designed to support both Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 in their intelligence gathering needs, filling in the gaps for CIA. He skimmed over the history of JSOC's third component, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), also called the Night Stalkers. Headquartered at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the regiment was equipped with the latest in special ops aviation equipment, including the AH & MH-6 Little Bird helicopters. SOAR had recently distinguished itself in operations against Iran in 1987-88, Operation Just Cause in Panama, and, finally in Desert Storm. The final section, which was also separately classified as "compartmentalized top secret", wasn't devoted to a military unit at all, but was a short exegesis on the Department of Energy's little known Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST). NEST is headquartered in Germantown, Maryland, but most of its equipment is based at offsite locations, including Nellis AFB, Nevada. NEST's task is to protect America's nuclear facilities and storage areas and to recover any nuclear material stolen by criminals or terrorists, or to otherwise counter any threat of nuclear terrorism. Created by President Ford during his administration, the unit was so secret Congress didn't learn of its existence until three years later. In case of a nuclear emergency the Nuclear Emergency Search Team has its own fleet of special aircraft, ground vehicles, and radiation detection equipment at its disposal. The unit's rules of engagement are essentially totally unlimited. But HYDRA isn't going to steal a bomb, Woodring thought, he doesn't have to. Now exhausted, Woodring absentmindedly leafed through the briefing paper's extensive bibliography. Endless government documents were cited: congressional reports, training manuals, mission statements, personnel evaluations, CTC profiles of foreign terrorists, basing requirements, and finally reports by various military investigative units, like the Army's CID and the Navy's NIS. He blinked; he didn't remember reading anything in the report which covered illegal improprieties. Flipping backwards in the text, he found mention of a separate document in an obscure footnote, entitled the Criminal Investigations Annex. Apparently, USSOCOM hadn't bothered to include it in its report to the HRT. Woodring grabbed his telephone, placed a direct call to the Special Classified Intelligence Group on the second floor of the Pentagon, and asked to speak to General Ronald Finley. Thirty minutes later the CTC computer operator notified Woodring he had received a transmission from the Pentagon which was over 2,500 pages long and would take twenty minutes to print out. Woodring redialed General Finley, asking him if he'd sent the correct file. Finley told him to read the summary introduction, pages one to seventy-five, then he'd understand. Woodring sighed, picked up his telephone again and instructed the computer operator to temporarily halt the mammoth printout and bring him the first seventy-five pages. Two minutes later the summary introduction to the Criminal Investigations Annex lay on Woodring's desk. After taking a quick glance at its contents, Woodring was surprised to find that all three of the elite CT units, the Delta Force, SEAL Team 6 and ISA, had each been the subject of a corruption probe. Department of Defense investigators had uncovered various instances in each unit of financial irregularities, lax discipline, and failed operations that sometimes even resulted in litigation: ISA Lieutenant Colonel Dryden, convicted in 1985 for fraud involving $90,000 in missing funds . . . security director of Naval Weapons Station, Seal Beach, California, kidnapped, beaten, stripped of his clothes by seven members of SEAL Team 6's Red Cell unit, sustains serious injuries, then sues . . . eighty-five members of Delta Force convicted filing false travel vouchers in Beirut . . . finally the founder of SEAL Team 6, Commander Richard Marcinko himself, was convicted for conspiracy and sentenced to twenty-one months at Petersburg. On the other hand there was never any mention of Bailey's old unit, Blue Light. While Woodring was rechecking the annex's table of contents, the computer room called again. The full 2,500-page-long printout was ready. After the six-inch-thick document was dropped on his desk, Woodring carefully lifted it up by the bottom, extracting the last twenty pages. Quickly checking the index he found no reference to the name Edwin D. Bailey. Woodring leaned back in his chair as far as possible, clasping his hands behind his head and yawned, then flipped forward and grabbed the telephone, dialing the extension of Charlie Thompson, CTC's computer programmer. "Chuck, can you come in here a second?" There was a brief knock on the door and Woodring told Thompson to come in and sit down. The analyst was in his late twenties, had big eyes and a friendly disposition. Woodring spoke slowly and calmly, "I want you to take this file and extract every name in it--" Woodring caught the look of concern on the programmer's face, and immediately qualified his request.--"I want only the file names, you understand, there's only about two hundred." Thompson grinned a bit. "Cross-file each subject with his social security number, then check the operational file and look for any cover names and ID and cross-file those. We may not have the ops files on a lot of these, so you'll have to make me a list of what you need and I'll wire Finley to get them." "Yes, sir." After Thompson left, Woodring returned to the next section of the executive summary of the investigations annex which was was entitled Psychological Profile--CT Operations Forces. "Army and Navy staff psychiatrists have found most CT operations forces to possess the following common characteristics: nonconformist, physically aggressive, outwardly tranquil, risk-prone. It should be noted by the reader that these same characteristics also fit the profile of the average criminal. Therefore, it should not have come as a great surprise to either JSOC or USSOCOM that a certain minority of applicants were discovered to have indulged in criminal acts." K/K-20B 93