Ian Slater: Darpa Alpha

On NBC there was yet another story about a series of terrorist alerts throughout the world. In London, a taxi bombing at Heathrow Airport had killed eight — twenty-three injured, six critically — and there was a threat in Washington state, but no reference to a West Coast naval base. Mention of Washington, however, reminded him that the U.S. Navy did have several highly sensitive installations up in Washington state.

Taking his coffee into the hallway, the general, who had been retired by a White House that hadn’t appreciated his blunt public description of jihad, studied his wall map of Cascadia, the Pacific Northwest made up of British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state. First there was the extensive sub base on the stunningly beautiful Hood Canal, surely at the top of any terrorist’s list. And then there was the huge naval air station on Whidbey Island east of the Canadian-U.S. Strait of Juan de Fuca. The latter, usually mispronounced by Aussie in crude allusions, was the egress channel for the big American Trident boomers and the hunter-killer attack subs out of Bangor, Washington. Then there was the huge Cold War SAC — Strategic Air Command — bomber base at Fairchild near Spokane way out in eastern Washington in the sagebrush country where the gargantuan B-52s flew over the sun-twinkling sprinklers that appeared like white lace across the irrigated farms and dry, coulee-rutted earth. Closer to the coast there was the army’s Fort Lewis near Tacoma. It was here on this enormous base that Freeman had last attended a DARPA demonstration, having been accidentally invited by a Pentagon clerk who hadn’t realized that the general was now on the “has-been” list.

But, according to Aussie, it hadn’t been an army barracks that had been hit but a naval base. He knew there were naval, civilian-staffed bases, secret research stations, tucked away along the coast from San Diego to San Francisco. And there were, since 9/11, several other locations on the West Coast with its thousands of inlets and bays. These mostly consisted of cutting-edge university labs with minimum, if any, real security, the academic community not naturally disposed to the presence of armed guards, arguing, with a good deal of merit, that low profiles in fact afforded more real security than any official display of armed security and high-profile signage, the latter best exemplified by the “Use of Deadly Force Authorized” sign at the entrance to the secret Bangor sub base that everyone knew about.

Freeman thought, as he sipped the strong, black coffee, that right then he couldn’t have given Aussie, Margaret, or anyone else a good, rational argument for his suspicion that it was probably the DARPA installation outside Bangor on Puget Sound’s Hood Canal or the naval testing lab near Keyport, thirty-five miles west of Hood Canal in Puget Sound, but he felt it in his gut. He called one of his many contacts in the Puget Sound area and discovered that his hunch was, as Aussie would have said, as useful as “tits on a bull.” Completely off track.

He did a computer news search of all the major naval establishments on the West Coast. Nothing. Next, he did a specific search on the Net for any current media mention of naval establishments on the East Coast. None had been referred to by either the networks’ anchors or their affiliates in the last twenty-four hours, and there was nothing on the main blogs. Of course, he reminded himself, these days the government, citing the Patriot Act in this long war against terror, had annoyingly, if understandably, shut down thousands of Internet sites with hitherto available defense-related information and links. The American Civil Liberties Union was particularly vexed by FBI and Homeland Security “visits” to any blogger who persisted in Internet searches vis-à-vis classified defense establishments.

In frustration, Douglas Freeman decided to call Marte Price. Surely his occasional trysts with her after Catherine died, when Marte was embedded with various units of his overseas, ought to be worth something. Besides, he had never been cavalier with Marte, never treated her as a “ready lay” but as a good-looking, savvy newswoman who, on tough, life-endangering assignments, needed the same kind of sexual release he did. It had been discreet — or as discreet as any liaison can be in the field. It had, of course, been strictly against army rules and regulations, but the war had slammed peacetime propriety hard up against the certainty of their own mortality. He had seen her a few times since and spoken with her on the phone. But now that he was remarried, he knew that a call to an old flame from his own house would not be a good tactical move. And the call would have to be made on a land line. Anyone who used a cellphone these days for anything confidential had no idea of just how pervasive the National Security Agency phone taps were, especially since 9/11. Not even Voice Over Internet Protocol-encrypted phone data was being respected by the NSA.

“I’m going down to the 7-Eleven for the Times ,” he told Margaret as she walked into the living room.

He’d always preferred the feel of a good newspaper, such as the old International Herald Tribune that he used to scan every day in Heidelberg during his Cold War posting in Germany. A good newspaper with a second cup of coffee was one of the great pleasures in life, and something he usually enjoyed after each morning’s ten-mile run, fantasies of coming in first in the Olympic marathon in his head, the crowd on its feet for his sensational last-minute dash to victory. Well, hell, Georgie Patton had made it to the 1912 Olympics.

“You haven’t been for your run,” she said at the very moment he’d thought it.

He smiled at the synchronicity. Here was a marriage, he hoped, that would last.

“Ah, I’ll run later.”

“Oh? This DARPA thing must be important then.”

“Well, I don’t like stories that are aired once then die, especially given that this is an election year. Something’s fishy. Might be something in the papers, though.”

“Douglas?”

“Yes?”

“While you’re on the phone with her, why don’t you invite the old tart around for dinner? I’d love to see the competition.”

He stood there stunned, as if a grenade had exploded nearby. Speechless.

“Oh,” said Margaret, her arms akimbo, smile gone, her tone acidic. “Why so shocked, Douglas? You two were very chatty last time there was a terrorist attack. I assume you want to chat again.”

“Margaret,” Freeman began, “I didn’t want you to think—”

“I’m already thinking it.”

“I’m sorry,” said the general. “Honey, honest to God, Margaret, there is no subterfuge in this. I just thought it more—”

“Discreet?” she proffered angrily. “To contact your tart from the 7-Eleven?”

“Don’t call her that. She’s just an old—”

“Tart,” said Margaret. “I know. I have the misfortune to see her regularly on the boob tube because my legendary general of a husband just happens to be obsessed with watching CNN. And guess who is one of the anchors?”

“Margaret, stop it! That’s enough, dammit. I merely want to know what happened to a story that was alive and well one moment and dead the next. Smells fishy, and I want to get to the bottom of it. You know as well as I do that I’m still on a Special Forces advisory retainer for the White House. The president himself wanted retirees kept on a potential call-up basis. We’re spread — our forces are spread too thinly all over the world. And seeing they’ve put me on retainer, small though it is, at least they’ve given me something after pushing me out, and the way I keep that unofficial job, with entrée to the national security adviser, I might add, is to stay current. It’s like anything else. If you’re not current, you’re dead.”