John Ringo: A Deeper Blue

“One hell of a PR nightmare,” Fisher said, watching the dead bodies being loaded.

“Why?” Mike asked. “I mean, assuming all the tangos were for real. You just stopped, pretty much butt-cold, a terrorist attack. There’s nine dead terrorists and, as far as I can see, zero dead guests. You should come out smelling like a rose. That is, assuming no more got into the park. You shutting down?”

“That’s my next call,” Fisher said. “I want to. God I want to shut down. But that’s up to park operations. What’s your call?”

“This was a back-up attack,” Mike said. “The main attack is still to come. I’m actually of two minds. One says that to save lives, you shut down. The other says that we want to find the other VX. If they’re aiming for Disney, and I’m pretty sure they are, now, then if you shut down they just lay low and either hit another day or hit another target.”

“So you’re saying you want sixty thousand people to act as bait ?” Fisher asked. “Jesus Christ. That’s cold .”

“I keep repeating myself and nobody listens,” Mike replied. “I am not a nice guy. Want a suggestion?”

“Right now my brain’s sort of shut down,” Fisher admitted. “So, sure.”

“Ask them,” Mike said.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Fisher said over the announcement system. “I’ll explain what just happened. Disney was informed that there might be an attack using disguised poison gas. But we weren’t sure that would occur until just a moment ago, when the first can was discovered. When that happened, terrorists in the crowd attempted to use their cans to attack, well, you people.”

He paused as the crowd, which was back on its feet, sorted through that.

“By checking the contents of their bags, we can now definitely state that all the men just shot by snipers were terrorists. And that should be most of them. But I cannot, and Disney cannot, guarantee that another attack will not take place. I have spoken to the head of park operations and we are trying to decide whether or not to shut down. If we do, all of you will be given a voucher for another day at the park. But I also know that some of you are here on tight schedules and this may be the only day you have this trip. So I have been authorized to ask you what you think Disney should do. I’d like a show of hands of everyone who is still willing to risk going to Disney today.”

At first none of the multicolored throng reacted, then a little girl down front raised her hand. After a brief discussion, her brother, sister and then parents raised theirs.

Before long just about everyone in the slightly diminished crowd had their hands up. The few that didn’t were headed for the exits anyway.

“Okay, folks, we’re still running the security check, but… Welcome to Disney World.”

When Will and his family reached the security station, the checker waved them through.

“You’re not going to check our bags?” Will asked, holding out his backpack.

“If you’re terrorists, I’m a Nazi,” the old woman who looked vaguely Jewish said, holding out a sheaf of tickets. “Everybody gets a three-day pass, by the way. They’re useable any time in the future. Please stay alert, though. We really are expecting another attack. The terrorists had the gas in those orange OFF cans. So if you have one, I’d suggest getting rid of it to prevent getting mistaken for terrorists by the men with guns. Other than that, have a good time.”

Mike was not having a good time. Honestly, picking out people who were of “Middle Eastern” extraction was more art than science. For various historical reasons, many Hispanics had similar facial features. And there were huge numbers of groups in the Middle East that didn’t support Islamic terrorism, Lebanese Christians being the first that came to mind and descending through a list that included Druze and actual “moderate” Islamics. The guy at Wet and Wild had been one of those, pretty obviously. Mike made a mental note to ensure he wasn’t thrown in jail; he’d acted damned decently, all things considered.

But there were various cultural clues. Mostly they were the way that a person walked and body language. Most terrorists had not been in Western societies enough to have those clues completely erased. The 9/11 attackers had been smart in that they had worked, very hard, to eliminate all trace of such cultural clues. Mohammed Atta had been one smart SOB.

So far, however, every one of the tangos they’d taken down had been pretty clearly right off the boat. They still had the Islamic Shuffle that came from always using slippers or pushing down the backs of their shoes. It just made sense when you were taking them off five times a day to pray. It was one of the things that Mike was looking for, pushed-down shoes. Such a person was not, definitively, a terrorist. It just meant they were ardent Islamics and the second did not equal the first. But it was more than worthwhile to watch any such person.

He was looking for other things, though. He was certain the third attack was going to be airborne. It was the best way to kill the most people with VX. So while he wasn’t watching the sky, he was looking for people who were . People in Disney didn’t spend a lot of time looking up; they were looking at the rides, at the shops, at maps. Anybody who was occasionally glancing at the sky was a potential terrorist. And if he found a guy with a canister in his backpack who had been looking at the sky, well…

So far, though, no joy. He’d walked down Main Street, turned through Future Land and headed back on the loop through Fantasyland and up through Adventureland. In all that walking he hadn’t seen anyone who really twigged his jitter meter. There were a fair number of Muslim-looking people, including women in dhimmie scarves and men with the shuffle. But all of them were accompanied by kids. While it was conceivable that a terrorist would use kids for cover, so far none of the ones they’d taken down had been so accompanied.

Pity that Orange County had collected the one terrorist they’d found. He could have gotten everything they needed out of the guy. So far, Orange County was getting nada. But he was pretty sure there was at least one that had gotten through. And he was going to find him.

Jamal sipped a cup of Coke in the Main Street Café, trying to look inconspicuous. He’d picked up enough of the conversation around him to know that most of the rest of the team had been taken down at security.

He glanced at his watch, knowing that it made him slightly conspicuous, and wished the time would go faster. Another forty minutes.

Farzad checked the connections again then nodded at the two fedayeen at the pumps. They turned on the pumps and started filling the converted Piper Cub.

Farzad had chosen the plane because it was ground transportable. It had been purchased in North Florida and driven to the industrial building near Eva where it had been parked for the last week. The doors of the building were large enough that the wings would clear when they were rolled up and there was a straight stretch of little used road in the industrial park. As soon as the plane was filled he could take off. But he was going to wait just a little longer. Everything wasn’t in place, yet.

Joe Pallozzi had been a security guard at the Clearwater Air Park for about three months.

A former deputy sheriff from New York, he had come down to Florida hoping to get a job with either the State Patrol or one of the local departments. But a lot of cops got tired of the winters up north and the waiting list for slots was pretty long. While waiting for something to open up, he pulled down various security gigs working an average of sixty hours a week to keep ahead of the bills. He’d thought that upstate New York had a pretty bad cost of living until he’d moved to Florida. All sorts of people drifted to the Sunshine State expecting every day to be the beach. And a lot of them were young people willing to work for peanuts if they didn’t have to go back to Bumfuck, Missouri. So wages were low unless you had a serious degree, while the cost of living was awful .