Will Staeger - Public Enemy

What was certain, Laramie thought, was that neither she, her guide, nor Ebbers were “sending in” anyone directly to apprehend the sleepers. Something was beginning to taste fishy and she didn’t like the flavor one bit.

On the monitor, sleeper number six climbed back into his Explorer and, barely visible due to the distance the surveillance man was keeping, simply returned home. Once the sleeper tucked himself away inside his garage he did not reemerge.

“In a minute,” Knowles said, “we’ll get a text message report from the tail. He’ll probably tell us pretty much what we just watched.”

Laramie looked over at her guide.

“Call it in,” she said.

He nodded and retreated to the other room.

“I take it,” Laramie said to the others, “we’re stuck at six-that you haven’t found any others in the four hours we’ve been apart.”

Cole shook his head.

“We got lucky to get these guys,” he said. “It’s a pretty safe bet from the images Knowles dug up that most or all of the sleepers, whether it’s six, seven, or fifty, got dumped here the way Castro emptied his prisons into the state of Florida. They came by refugee boat. But no way were all of ’em photographed, let alone caught on tape. I think we’re tapped out.”

“Let’s hope it’s not fifty,” Rothgeb said.

Laramie nodded. She eyed the detailed topography map of El Salvador on the widescreen monitor. There was no sign of Cooper’s homing signal.

Decision made, Laramie strode into the room where her guide was on the phone. She didn’t like the way things were going at all, and it was time to pull this charade to a close.

She glared down at her guide until he looked up from the call he was making.

“I need to talk to Ebbers,” she said.

“This is bullshit, and you know it,” Laramie said.

The electronically garbled sound of Lou Ebbers chuckling came from the phone’s tinny speaker. Her guide had set up the spiderphone in her room again. She’d asked that he leave her alone this time and he had.

“At least this time around,” came Ebbers’s voice, “I know you’re not asking me whether it’s an exercise.”

“Oh, I have no doubt it’s real,” Laramie said. “It’s all too real. That’s why I’m calling you-or calling you out, I should say. You’ve been taking me for a ride, Lou. Answer me this: why aren’t we sending in FBI arrest teams directly? By our order? Controlled by us? By you? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ah,” came his reply.

“‘Ah’? Sir, with all due respect, please quit your ahing and give me an explanation. I just risked the life of a member of my team-a friend of mine, I might even say. In fact, I think there’s a pretty good chance I just got him killed, considering that he’s MIA as of nineteen seconds into his mission. Add to this the fact that the sleepers we’ve ID’d are kicking into gear. One of them, at any rate. The shit is hitting the fan. And I’m finally realizing you’re not being straight with me-about any of it. Please answer my question.”

More chuckling ensued.

After the easy chuckling subsided, Ebbers’s voice said, “I say ‘Ah,’ Miss Laramie, because of how well I realize that I know you.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I do. And I’ll tell you why: I predicted, even told our mutual friend the guide, that you would put it together quick.”

Laramie didn’t say anything in the brief pause that followed.

“The answer to your question,” Ebbers said, “is, first, that we would not want the FBI to know of our operation-our ‘cell’-because we are, as discussed, running a clandestine counterterror unit, one that by its definition must remain clandestine within and without government.”

“But there could be mistakes made by the law enforcement teams raiding the sleepers’ homes if they’re not supervised,” Laramie said. “Maintaining the unit’s cover is a trivial concern when you consider what’s at stake. Among other factors, an anonymous tip does not assure us that the FBI or the local-”

“Part two of the answer is that we do not have the authority,” Ebbers said.

As soon as Laramie had digested what Ebbers had just told her, she began nodding slowly, a quiet fury welling up within.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You don’t have the authority to tell the FBI to conduct a series of raids-you can only do so by phoning in an anonymous tip-but you can order the assassination of a sovereign head of state?”

In Ebbers’s silence, the rest of the puzzle came together for Laramie.

“You can’t order an assassination,” she said, answering her own question.

“Whether or not I can,” came Ebbers’s voice, “I did. Do you not believe it to be the correct strategy?”

“You did. That doesn’t mean the people you work for did. And I may believe it’s the correct strategy, but the people you work for may not. So if they haven’t been made aware-”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.”

Laramie took in some air.

“I assure you,” Ebbers said, “that the people I work for knew of my decision. And authorized it.”

Laramie said, “But it’s an illegal tactic, there is no way anyone in the federal government who…”

She stopped herself midsentence as the point that Ebbers was trying to express finally dawned on her.

A little too slowly, she thought. Very carefully, she said, “So all this time, you’re telling me you-and I-haven’t been working for the federal-”

“Some things are better left unsaid,” Ebbers said, managing to effectively interrupt her even over the encrypted phone line. “And as I told you, I had every confidence you would come around to this in due course. Now that we understand each other, I’ll repeat my question to you: do you agree we’re taking the appropriate measures?”

Laramie began counting out the Mississippis in her head. She got all the way to eight, rather than her usual three, before she’d sorted through all her potential follow-up questions-namely, Who the hell is it we’re working for then?-along with the accompanying concern of whether to ask such questions, and what the answers might possibly mean, presuming she’d even get any answers out of Ebbers if she asked. By the time she’d finished thinking these things through-by the time she hit eight-Mississippi-Laramie decided the wisest course was to zip it. She’d be better served by storing this knowledge for later. She could then use it, or make inquiries as she saw fit, to her advantage-rather than under the stress of the current crisis.

She’d ask her questions later-if and only if, she thought, they could figure out, down one operative, how in the world to stop multiple terrorist sleepers from dispersing clouds of an airborne filovirus certain to kill thousands of Americans, even with massive quarantining measures put into place. Which would need to be done immediately.

And we’re supposed to do all this, she thought, while keeping our own role in matters a state secret?

Or a non-state secret.

She decided to answer Ebbers’s question.

“So far, yes,” she said, “I believe we’re taking the appropriate measures. But we’ll need to change the strategy immediately. We haven’t identified any other sleepers-so for all we know there could be ten, or twenty, or fifty more set to go.”

“And you think you’ve lost your operative?”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “Not yet. But even if he succeeds, this morning’s activity from the Scarsdale sleeper means it’s likely the activation command has been sent to more than one of the bombers. How, by what means, in what form-as with the rest of this goddamn thing, we have no idea. Our private party is over, Lou. It’s out of our ‘cell’s’ hands, and that’s the understatement to top all understatements. We need to cause multiple agencies to immediately activate all the avian flu quarantine measures they’ve been rehearsing behind the scenes until now. We need to arrest and interrogate the six sleepers we have under surveillance. We need to bring the media up to speed-so that Mom and Pop in Tulsa can phone in a tip that somebody’s been stockpiling fertilizer in his garage in the house up the street. There’s no more time for this compartmentalized spy game you recruited me to play.”