Dick Couch: Out of the Ashes

“Yes, sir.”

The guard let the recessing barrier down as Harward drove into the White House complex. He turned left at Lower West Exec where another uniformed Secret Service guard opened a tall iron gate and waved his Mercedes through. There, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car, and made a beeline for the West Wing entrance. He left his wife sitting in the passenger seat. He never looked back as he ran, wheezing and coughing as he did.

His wife sat in the passenger seat, shaking and breathing heavily, looking like a shell-shocked soldier. After several minutes the color finally returned to her face and she got control of her shaking. Then with as much dignity as she could muster, she walked around the Mercedes, got into the driver’s seat, and slowly drove away.

Aboard Air Force One, President Wyatt Midkiff put the phone back into its receiver, hoping his chief of staff didn’t notice his hand trembling. He did, though, and Midkiff knew it. OK. Take a breath. Relax. You can manage this. Just breathe; just breathe . The physically imposing, polished, and measured Midkiff felt he might be losing it. God in heaven, how am I going to get through this?

Less than a year into his administration after four terms as the junior senator from Florida, Wyatt Midkiff had developed a well-deserved reputation as a smooth operator and for grace under pressure, but he was losing it now. “All I want is information, any information, and I’ve talked with my National Security Staff and with half my cabinet but no one knows squat. Where are we now?”

“Mr. President, we’re over Nebraska, and we should be landing at Andrews in a bit less than two hours,” his chief of staff replied. “That is, if we are still going to Washington—”

“‘If’? What do you mean, ‘if’?” the president interrupted.

“Mr. President, one of the attacks was at FedEx Field. There could still be a threat.”

“You’re my chief of staff, for God’s sake! Do you really want me to make up some lame excuse for why I was afraid to go back to the White House? That didn’t work out so good for George W. Bush in 2001, now, did it?” His chief of staff knew it was a rhetorical question, so no response was required, or desired. “The last report I got was there have been almost a thousand deaths. You hear anything more?”

“No, Mr. President. It’s predicted to go higher, though. Emergency services in all those cities are still taking victims to trauma centers.”

“And I’m told there were many victims at stadiums where there weren’t attacks, but just bogus announcements to evacuate the stadiums.”

“Yes, Mr. President, there were hundreds killed and injured in the stampedes to escape from those stadiums. The reports were that there was mass hysteria.”

“Well, I’m the president of the United States, and I’m going back to Washington immediately to end the hysteria, and to find out who did this.”

“Yes, Mr. President, I understand. Now, here’s the draft of your statement to the nation when you disembark at Andrews I had the press secretary put together—”

“I’m not ready for that yet. Get me the national security advisor on secure.”

Moments later, Trevor Harward was on the line. “Trevor, give me an update.” The president was now more settled and was all business.

“Mr. President. I’m here in the Situation Room. The vice president just arrived at his residence and he should be here shortly. Now, here’s what we know so far,” he replied, giving the president little more than he already knew.

Midkiff just shook his head. “We’ll be at Andrews in less than two hours. I want to meet with you and a small group from FBI, Homeland Security, and whoever else you need to assemble to help me sort this out. We’ll meet in the Situation Room.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Make this a small, select group, Trevor. I don’t need to see everybody who wants face time.”

Next he called his vice president, who had had his security detail take him from the Congressional Country Club to his quarters on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory on the southeast corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Street. Fastidious to a fault, the vice president had decided he needed to change out of his golf attire before heading to the Situation Room. Midkiff instructed him to make a brief statement and a plea for calm until he could get back to Washington and address the nation.

Only weeks earlier, he had told the vice president he thought the crisis-management exercises his staff had insisted on were a waste of time. Now he was glad they had persisted.

It was in the middle of the leg from San Francisco to Taipei that Azka Perkasa slowly awoke from a deep sleep. He sensed something was different. At once all his senses came alert, and then he relaxed. There was a general stir about the cabin as people logged onto their PCs, smart phones, or sat glued to the seat-back monitors, where news bulletins had replaced all in-flight programming.

“I can’t believe it,” the man sitting next to him said with a pronounced Australian accent. “Those fuckin’ towel heads are at it again!” A moment later he turned toward Azka. “Sorry mate, no offense meant.”

“None taken,” Azka said in his nearly flawless English. He flicked on his own small screen. He watched as the scenes went from news anchors to emergency crews at work to twisted concrete at several football stadiums. He permitted himself a grim smile when the vice president of the United States promised that those responsible would be brought to justice.

Azka Perkasa could imagine the multitiered security services of America and her allies looking for swarthy, dark-skinned men with shadowy beards or those dressed in non-Western clothing. It would be a difficult few days for those who were male and in their twenties or thirties from Mexico, Argentina, or India. Anyone traveling who seemed the least bit nervous, for reasons ranging from fear of flying to not having a green card, would be detained and questioned. He knew the American law enforcement and intelligence agencies, all capable at what they did, would soon know what had happened, but, he was equally confident, they would never know who .

His plan was simple in concept and not complex to execute, for a person with the right skills and resources. He had secured a truck and then applied the logo of the beer distributor that had the contract to supply beer to all thirty-two NFL teams. Over the course of the week, he had delivered kegs loaded with C4 and armed with a sophisticated timing device to selected concession stands, those that were tucked under higher level sections of seats, in the four NFL stadiums he selected. He took pains to ensure his special kegs were stored behind the ones that would be used first. He had then hacked into the PA systems of the stadiums he chose, timing his announcement to begin immediately after the explosions in four of the stadiums, and later in the five stadiums where no explosion occurred. His engineering training at the polytechnic, as well as all those years slaving away as a junior civil engineer working for peanuts compared to what the white expats working right beside him were making, was finally paying off.

The Aussie next to Azka glanced at his seatmate. The world is going to hell and this little wog has gone back to sleep. What he didn’t know, and couldn’t know, was that he was looking at the new face of terrorism.

After what he admitted was a less-than-inspiring address to the nation after he landed at Andrews the night before, and after only three hours of fitful sleep, the president met with a select group of his national security principals in one of the White House Situation Room’s two secure conference rooms. The three-letter agencies were well represented. After forty minutes of blank looks and little information, the president dismissed them abruptly — something the normally courteous Midkiff rarely did. Almost as an afterthought he asked Trevor Harward to remain behind.