Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“Prime time,” Dox observed, his tone disgusted. “Likely a coincidence.”

At Buckingham, Virginia, we left Route 15 and started tracking west. When we were just outside Appomattox, the president went live.

“We all know what happened tonight,” he said. “A cowardly individual blew himself up outside the White House, murdering and injuring many scores of innocent civilians. No one in the White House itself was injured, and, other than some damage to a fence, the building’s security was not compromised.

“What we don’t yet know precisely is who committed this atrocity, or why. But rest assured, our nation’s military, law enforcement, and intelligence services are assembling answers to those questions now. And when they have completed their task, justice will be done to the perpetrators.”

“That’s what they’re calling military action these days,” Dox said. “Justice. I guess it has a better ring to it than invasion, bombardment, and slaughter.”

“Shh.”

“Now, I want to address a rumor,” the president went on. “First, that before blowing himself up, the terrorist shouted, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ which means ‘God is great’ in Arabic, and is a common Islamic invocation and sometimes a war cry. We don’t have confirmation of this, and it is irresponsible of the media to report it as though it has in fact been confirmed.”

“Rumor?” Dox said. “Who started the rumor? Sounds like the president is starting it himself!”

“That’s exactly what he’s doing, either deliberately, or because it’s being fed to him.”

“Well, how the hell-”

“Shh. He’s talking again.”

“Our task tonight,” the president went on, “is to pray for the victims and their families. And to thank the men and women of our armed forces and intelligence services, who, even as I speak, are risking their lives to protect our homeland and our liberties. Let us pray for them, as well.”

There was the clamor of reporters trying to ask questions, and then the announcer was back on, explaining that the president had left the briefing room.

Dox glanced over at me, then back to the road. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean it, John. I mean…this is some top level shit we’re mixed up in here.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, false flag terror attacks? And we’ve been fingered for it? Forgive me if I sound gloomy, but I don’t see a clear way out of this.”

“You do sound gloomy.”

He laughed softly. “Well, cheer me up then.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Not to mention-”

“I know. We cleared the way for it.”

We didn’t stop again until Roanoke. It was nearly midnight and we’d been driving for over eight hours. Dox and I briefed Treven and Larison about the incident outside the White House. No one said anything, but I knew we were all thinking the same thing: we were fucked.

We picked up fast food, gassed up again, and agreed to change positions. “It’s not that bad,” Treven said. “A lot cooler than before, and your friend was smart to pick up that bubble wrap. It’s actually pretty comfortable, if you’re lying down on it.”

Dox and I had discussed our discomfort at the prospect of being closed up in the cargo area, helpless and blind, while Treven and Larison drove. If someone put a lock on the exterior, the truck would be turned into a prison. Not that anyone was carrying a lock or had time to buy one, but still. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because what choice did we have? None of us could risk public transportation. Dox had been right about our odds of hiding from the modern surveillance state. And Larison had been right when he’d told Treven that going off alone meant being the first one picked off. If we were going to resolve this, our best chance was to stick together, and to find a way to attack back.

Treven and Larison were indifferent about what we ate, so I was glad when, on the morning of the second day, Dox insisted we stop at a Whole Foods outside Nashville. We loaded up with enough chow to see us comfortably all the way to the Pacific, then found a Wal-Mart and threw a couple futons and sleeping bags in the back. The futons were something, but Dox had been right, it was a damn sauna back there when the sun was high, and there wasn’t any good way to cool it down. We considered buying bags of ice but then decided against it. We didn’t want to take a chance on the melting runoff attracting the attention of some highway patrol.

We also stopped at a Starbucks so I could access their free Wi-Fi, and I checked the secure site. I half-expected a message from Horton, trying to explain away the unexplainable. But he must have known how useless that would be under the circumstances. He’d used us, then tried to clip us like the loose end we now represented. We knew he would try again, just as he knew we’d be gunning to get to him first. The state of play was so clear that anything anyone might have said would have been useless, even absurd.

There was a message from Kanezaki, though. He described the attack at the White House, which the media had gotten more or less right after the initial, confused reports. And he said the NSA was picking up chatter about more attacks coming. There were rumors about the president considering a major response. Kanezaki wanted me to call him, and I wrote that I couldn’t, not for another day or two. After the ambush at the hotel, my paranoia was at a full simmer. Maybe Horton had managed to stitch together enough data from airport surveillance cameras and satellite imagery to track us to the Hilton. He’d been expecting us in the city, after all. If so, and if he’d lost track of us after the hotel, then even with all the technology in the world, for the time being we’d be the proverbial needle in a haystack. I didn’t want to take any chance at all about a call being traced to a location this far west, from which the opposition might predict our further trajectory. From which Horton might even guess where we were ultimately heading, and why.

On the afternoon of the second day, Treven was driving while I rode shotgun. Mostly the roads were eerily quiet, but periodically, the quiet would be shattered by a passing military convoy, after which, the absence of traffic would be more spooky still.

I asked Treven the same security questions I had put to Dox, but got no additional insights. If he was hiding something, he was hiding it well. He told me a little about himself. Cut his teeth in Mogadishu. Climbed the ops ladder from Airborne to SF to ISA. A very competent man, no doubt, both from the resume and from what I’d seen at the hotel. But I didn’t feel the kind of connection with him that I’d started to feel with Larison. In Larison, I sensed turmoil, but also purpose. In Treven, what I sensed felt more like…confusion. And compensation. For what, I didn’t know.

We were listening to a country music station when, just as a day before, the deejay’s typically smooth and soothing voice cut in high-pitched and earnest after a song.

“Following on yesterday’s attack on the White House,” he said, “we have another horrifying report. A suicide bombing in the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Reports of a truck driven into the building, and a partial structural collapse. I know you can’t see it, this is radio, but I’m watching the video now and I have to tell you, my God, my God, it’s unspeakable. It’s like the twin towers again…Folks, I’m sorry to tell you, but yesterday was not a one-off. These have got to be coordinated. Let’s pray the government is doing something to protect us.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Treven said, and that was all, there was nothing else to say. We drove grimly on, listening for more, dreading that we’d hear it.