Michael Walsh - Early Warning

“So,” Tyler concluded, “what are we going to do? And don’t give me any bullshit. Give me your best recommendations and make sure they’re good, because if they aren’t I am going down. But before I do, I am taking you all with me.”

The usual boilerplate. Homeland Security wanted to send in the Army. General Higgins pointed out that sending in the Army was basically unconstitutional. The Director of National Intelligence had no particular intelligence. Defense Secretary Johnson kept her mouth shut, waiting for Seelye’s turn. But Tyler turned to Byrne first.

“Deputy Director Byrne, what do you say?”

Tom Byrne looked around the room. He’d had long experience with the Soviets and their surrogates and cutouts, and while everybody else’s attention was directed to the Arab world by the spectacular example of the crashing Twin Towers, Tom had kept his eye on the ball. He knew that the old enemy was not really dead, just sleeping, reconstituting, lying in wait. The Soviets had had extensive dealings in the Islamic world. People forgot that the Tudeh Party, Iran ’s communists, had allied themselves with the Ayatollah against the Shah as the Soviets sought hegemony both in the Iranian oil fields and in the Caspian Sea -only to see the whole thing fall apart in the wake of mass executions as Khomeini turned on his erstwhile allies and liquidated them.

All this Tom Byrne laid out in a calm and rational voice. He had always been the calculating one; emotion he left to his brother, Frankie, the hotheaded cop, who at least once too often had shot first and asked questions later. Frankie still had plenty on him, but in this world, where every e-mail was read and every phone conversation was recorded, who didn’t? Lack of privacy was just something the world had to live with. Brass balls would have to see him through.

“So what’s your recommendation, Director Byrne?” asked Tyler, who seemed impressed. If Byrne’s reputation as a major-league asshole had preceded him, today’s appearance severely diminished it.

Tom welcomed the attention. It wasn’t often he got to tell off the brass, and he was going to make the most of his moment. And get back at his brother, although that was incidental at this point. “My recommendation is nothing,” he began. “First, you can’t send in the Army, not just for legal reasons but for political ones. You send in the Army and it tells the country that you’ve lost all control of our borders. You think that fight over illegal immigration was bad? It was nothing.

“Second, you have to let NYPD handle this. We don’t know how many gunmen there are, or-”

“What the hell difference does it make?” shouted Colangelo, manning up. “We’ve already lost Times Square and the Holland Tunnel, and for all we know they might have smuggled a nuke or two into the city while our pants were down, so-”

“That’s precisely correct, Mr. Secretary. We don’t know. We should but we don’t. You send troops in there and you’re going to have an even bigger catastrophe on your hands.” Byrne wished he could light a cigarette, but in the new fascist-friendly America, everything that was not expressly allowed was forbidden. “I grew up in New York. The city’s never been part of America, not really. We rooted for the Brits during the Revolution, faked patriotism during World War II, when half my Irish people were working for the Germans, and have supported every commie notion since before they fried the Rosenbergs. A lot of New Yorkers hate America, more or less, which is why God gave us the New York Yankees to beat the crap out of the rest of the American League. Whatever happens, happens. But let them handle it.”

“Director Byrne’s bother, Francis, is the head of the CTU of NYPD,” interjected Seelye, hoping to sound like the voice of reason. For his own purposes, he had no desire to see Tyler send in the caissons; as bad as this thing was, they had to let it unfold, to find out who was behind it. Not that he had much doubt and neither, he suspected, did Tyler. “I think we should listen to him.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Shalika Johnson. Over the past few months, Seelye had gradually been sizing her up, and he liked what he saw. He could work with her. “You’re telling me that the National Security Agency is seconding the motion to let New York fry?”

“‘Fry’ is not the way I’d put it, but-”

“Well, how do you put it?” retorted Johnson. “I mean, it’s your agency that’s supposed to ensure cyber-security. It’s your agency that reads every e-mail, listens in to every phone conversation. It’s your agency that’s supposed to-”

“You’re talking about classified information, Madame Secretary,” responded Seelye, coolly.

“I’m talking about the damn Black Widow,” said Johnson. “That’s what I’m talking about. And I want to know why it didn’t work, why it failed us at this crucial moment and why New York City ’s on fire right now.” She gestured empathically toward the televisions and then turned back to Tyler. “With all due respect, Mr. President, please don’t give us some song and dance about the Kaypros in the Commerce Department and the Trash-80s at IRS. We all know that NSA gets whatever it wants, and a lot of times it gets it under the table, off-budget and off the books. That’s why NSA has stuff like the Black Widow while we make do with whatever.” She paused, and then, almost as an afterthought, added: “And God only knows what CSS gets.”

Well, there it was: the Central Security Service. Tyler wondered if she knew; certainly he had never told her. He glanced over at Seelye, but the longtime NSA chief was his usual impassive self. Well, if the Sec Def was ignorant, she wouldn’t be for long. He would see to that, right after this meeting was adjourned. Which would be very soon, since he had made up his mind.

He liked this Tom Byrne character, found him a man after his own heart. Sure, he’d made his career faking both sympathy and empathy, whereas Byrne had clawed his way to the top despite everybody’s loathing of him at nearly every step. To get that far, Byrne either had to be ruthless, or have something on everybody in town or, more likely, both. In any case, they could do business together.

Why Byrne seemed to want to abandon Manhattan to its fate was still a little puzzling, but he assumed the man had his reasons. Being from Louisiana, Tyler only knew New York the way the rest of the nation knew it, as a tourist. Byrne was the genuine article.

Which meant his brother was likely to be as well. In fact, if what he’d read and been told was true, his brother was even tougher than he was. Frankie Byrne was nobody’s idea of the kindly cop on the beat, but he’d caught the nastiest assignments on the force and distinguished himself in every one. Oh, there’d been trouble along the way, but F. X. Byrne-the altar boy’s name hardly seemed suitable-had been both tough and smart, tough enough to get out of tight spots, with firepower when necessary, and smart enough to hitch his wagon to the only star brighter than his in the department when they came up together: to J. Arness White, the Commissioner of Police. The man who sat where O’Ryan and TR once sat, the man who was the odds-on favorite to be the next Mayor of the City of New York and was goddamn sure to be even now figuring out a way to salvage this situation from the shit. What Tom Byrne knew, what he felt, Frankie Byrne knew and felt, too. They’d been through too much together, and Tyler instinctively grasped that neither of them was likely to let the other go down, and sure as hell not without a fight. If he’d had a brother, he’d want their relationship to be exactly the same.

“Cut off the island of Manhattan,” said Tyler. “Seal all the tunnels and blockade the bridges-all of them, not just the toll roads. Railroad bridges, too. Nothing and nobody goes in or out of the island until we get our arms around this thing.” He had to pretend to get the others involved and so he looked at Colangelo and Sutton. “Keep your ears to the ground. Use every asset you have, HUMINT or ELINT. I want to know what the world is thinking and saying about this. Every little detail, no matter how innocuous, could potentially be helpful. And, for God’s sake, keep NORTHCOM out of this until I say so.” That would keep them busy for a while.