Michael Walsh - Early Warning

“Why hasn’t the National Guard been called in?”

“The president thinks the cops should handle it. And for what it’s worth, so does the DD of the FBI, Tom Byrne Seems his brother, Francis, is the chief of the CTU. One of the city’s top cops, and a real Irish warrior.”

“Great,” said Devlin. “We’ve got family pride being brought to bear on a major emergency.”

“Or family rivalry, I can’t tell. The point is that you’re to get in there, assess the situation for us without being made, take out as many of them as you can, and get the hell out. You know the drill.”

He knew the drill. As the lead operative of the Central Security Service’s Branch 4, Devlin lived a life on the edge, not simply of danger but of existence itself. Branch 4 ops were unknown to each other, and their existence was known only to three officers of the U.S. government: the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the director of the National Security Agency, or DIRNSA. A loss of anonymity was a death sentence, whether carried out by an enemy agent or, cruelly but necessarily, by a fellow member of Branch 4. That was the blow you would never see coming.

For a moment his mind flashed back to Milverton, the most potent adversary of his career, lying dead in his small house in London, put in his grave by Devlin himself, with both relief and regret.

“You want me to clean them all?”

“For starters.”

“But what you really need to know is who’s behind it. How much time have I got?”

“Not much. You can imagine the firestorm we’re in the middle of. The President’s-”

“-ass is in a sling, mostly of his own making. Hassett is going to hammer him no matter which way this thing shakes out, and he’ll have the faces of the dead staring at him right through the election. He doesn’t want to invoke the Posse Comitatus act and get the military involved if he doesn’t have to. This is law enforcement, not war. Otherwise it’s just what the terrorists want. If we call in the Marines, the terrorists win; if we don’t call in the Marines, the terrorists win. Who thought up that play? The Marx Brothers?” Devlin paused. He was urgently aware of the need to bring the situation under control as quickly as possible, but he couldn’t let himself be distracted by emotion. Somehow, he was going to have to get into Manhattan, identify this Byrne guy, and work with him without ever giving himself away. “What about NORTHCOM and the Rock of the Marne and the Sea Smurfs? The rules don’t apply to them.”

NORTHCOM-the United States Northern Command-was the Army command created after 9/11, and explicitly tasked with the defense of the homeland. Few Americans knew anything about NORTHCOM, and fewer still knew that since 2008 it had controlled the Third Infantry Division’s First Brigade Combat Team, which was charged with controlling the civilian population in the wake of civil unrest or a terrorist attack. Based in Fort Steward, Georgia, the Third Division, known as the “Rock of the Marne ” thanks to its valorous service in World War I, had seen its 1st Brigade essentially seconded to the feds to deal with domestic disturbances. The brigade, which now also included sailors, airmen, and Marines, had been renamed the “Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF), which was immediately dubbed the “Sea Smurfs.”

“So far they’re staying out of it. But if things go south…”

Now Devlin understood. He had to give it to the man: Tyler got smarter and more devious every day. “So you’re sending me in to keep Tyler looking good on his left while I’m supposed to keep him looking good on his right.”

“That’s about the size of it-secondarily speaking, of course.”

“I don’t know which of you I hate more.”

“It’s a tough choice, I’ll give you that. We can sort it out later. In the meantime-”

“They’re communicating by cell phone.”

“Were,” corrected Seelye. “We bubbled it down.”

“Then bubble it back up-we need to know where each of these clowns is, so locate them and start tracking them. In the meantime, they’re probably using something like BBM, so tap that net, too. I’ll want a real-time map once I’m in. Weapons?”

“Everything you can need, including a judge. Sending you the code now.” An instant, and then the unlocking codes for the armory appeared on his screen. “What about your partner?”

Not for the first time, Devlin felt like reaching through the ether and throttling Seelye. As secure as their communications were-and they were as secure as the best minds in NSA/CSS, including his, could make them-they were still not secure enough, could never be secure enough, for him to safeguard Maryam the way he wanted to. He had brought her into this, and she had willingly joined him, but her safety was now his prime concern-more so than his own and, God help him, maybe even more so than his country’s.

“Who?” he said. Point made.

Devlin glanced up and caught her look. Silently, he shook his head at her: it’s not what you think. Her eyes stayed liquid, reproachful as the voice went off inside Devlin’s head:

“Do you trust the bitch? I don’t see why you should. She was on to you in Paris before I was. You don’t even know her real name, do you?”

Devlin shook his head, trying to clear the webs, to get a dead man’s voice out of his consciousness, trying to ignore the question, the first question, the only question, about her that really mattered, and the one question he didn’t want an answer to: not because he didn’t want to know, but because he didn’t want to have to face the consequences of his knowledge.

“Right,” said Seelye. “So off you go. Good luck, son.” He rang off, if you could call disconnecting from a nearly infinite network “ringing off.”

Maryam looked away as he tried to meet her eyes. “Why don’t you trust me? I mean, what else do I have-”

“I do trust you. That’s just the problem. If I didn’t trust you I’d take you inside with me, and maybe get you killed. If I didn’t trust you, I’d miss you, I’d mourn you, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But I do trust you. I don’t know why, but I do.”

“Which is why-”

“Which is why I’m sending you elsewhere. Somewhere important. Somewhere where you can help me…”

“…find the source of the DoS attack.” She’d got it in one. That was another of the reasons why he loved her, and trusted her.

“We find that, we know who we’re up against.” She was already punching keys as he continued: “And that’s another reason why I have to go in and you have to get out. You’re never going to be able to hack into the CTU’s computers from here. Oh, you might be able to take them down for a stretch if you had enough typing robot monkeys, but they’re off our grid. So I’m going to have to find this Byrne character and check it from the inside.”

“Where should I go? I can’t stay here.”

For the first time, Devlin smiled. Outside, the world might be going to hell, but in this last quiet moment, it was just the two of them.

“We’ve got one clue.” Devlin punched some keys and then, to her astonishment, Maryam realized she was listening to conversations recorded inside the Counter-Terrorism Unit of the New York City Police Department that very day:

“Hard to tell until we take a closer look, but first guess is the Chinese.”

“First guess is always the Chinese. Another reason to hate Nixon…never mind. Continue.”

“But upon closer review, they might be Indians. There are some indications of a redirect via Mumbai-that’s Bombay to you, buddy-but now that I look at it, I think this is a flea flicker too. So I-we-are going with Azerbaijani. Baku, probably.”