Regardless of the veracity of Hatfield’s statement, everyone at the table commenced a slow squirm. Almost everyone. Matt McColm casually removed a stick of gum from its wrapper, and giving it his full attention, slid it into his mouth and began a leisurely chew. He was using the most powerful weapon he had to counteract an overbearing authority figure. Apathy. He wasn’t about to give Hatfield the satisfaction.
Nick understood the move. Everyone knew the Chief of Staff had the President’s ear, but he wasn’t Matt’s boss. Matt’s boss sat directly across from him, and by the look on his face, Jackson was enjoying every minute of it.
Hatfield glared at Matt. “Do you understand me?”
Matt folded his gum wrapper with methodical precision.
“I’m talking to you, Mr. Sharpshooter.”
Nick braced himself for the collision.
Matt took the empty wrapper, folded it, and carefully placed it in his breast pocket like it was a rare jewel. “Tell me something, Bill,” he said. “When are you going to show us how to wipe our ass?”
The table smoldered with stifled laughter.
Hatfield’s eyes tightened into penetrating beams of malevolence. He pointed a manicured finger at Matt. “Start reading the classifieds, asshole.”
Matt leaned into Hatfield’s finger. “What the fuck do you know about-”
“That’s enough!” a voice boomed from behind them. Defense Secretary Martin Riggs loomed over the table. He still had on his suit jacket, but his tie was pulled down, and a portion of his collar was stuck on the outside of his jacket. Even though the ex-Marine looked as if he hadn’t seen a bed in a week, his stature alone made you think twice before challenging him. Riggs dropped a large stack of manila files onto the table and strategically sandwiched himself in a seat between Matt and Hatfield. “After this is over they’ll be plenty of blame to go around. Right now we need to focus on the enemy.”
Matt and Hatfield gave each other malicious glares, but nothing more.
Riggs thumbed through his stack of files. Without looking up he said, “To answer your question, Mr. Chief of Staff,” he glanced at Matt for effect, “there is no guarantee we can shoot this missile down whether it’s inside or outside the perimeter.”
Hatfield folded his arms. Riggs opened a file marked, “Classified” and continued. “We have twenty F-16’s armed with the newest generation of Sidewinders dedicated to safeguard the White House. Even so, hitting a missile with a Sidewinder is tantamount to a bullet hitting a bullet. It’s not easy.”
Riggs placed the file on the table in front of him and addressed Hatfield. “There’s also the issue of countermeasures. Our intelligence tells us that if Kharrazi does have missiles off of our shore, they’ll almost definitely be Russian technology. If that’s true, the missile will come supplied with decoys.”
Hatfield had a confused look on his face, so Riggs took a deep breath. “Decoys, Mr. Hatfield. Sometime during the flight the missile will drop off large aluminum coated balloons. To our laser-guided radar system they will appear as metal objects, no different than the missile itself. It will give us too many targets to choose from. Mistakes will be made, I assure you.”
“Still,” Riggs said, turning back to his file, “with the amount of ground troops roaming the vicinity, and the Sentinels and fighters flanking the zone, I’d give a rouge missile one chance in three of making it through. And that’s only if there’s one missile deployed.” He gave Hatfield a long look. “That good enough for you, Bill?”
Hatfield allowed a deep breath to convert itself into the tiniest of nods. “If that’s the best we can do.”
Matt looked away from Hatfield and shook his head, fighting to maintain control.
“You got those reports?” Jackson asked.
“Right here,” Riggs said, sliding a large folded piece of paper from the file and opening it all the way. He moved the stack of files to the side and laid the paper across the middle of the table. As Riggs leaned over the paper, Nick could see that it was a map of the United States.
Riggs removed a pencil from his breast pocket and hovered over the map. With millions of dollars worth of computer technology surrounding him, Riggs was going with his strength; a pencil and a piece of paper. He drew a straight line from Hoover Dam to Las Vegas. “Three-thirty this morning an operative in Nevada made an ID on a KSF soldier traveling from Arizona to Las Vegas.”
“What happened with him?” Hatfield asked.
Nick winced. Hatfield had obviously never been to a Riggs briefing before. Riggs didn’t tolerate interruptions when he was disseminating intelligence. He would almost always answer your question at some point during the briefing, and the ones he didn’t answer usually weren’t pertinent enough to warrant an explanation.
Riggs simply gave Hatfield his game face. The Chief of Staff developed a sudden fascination with the diagram of Hoover Dam. Riggs returned his attention to the map.
“Now then,” he continued. Drawing a line from Flagstaff, Arizona to Santa Fe, New Mexico, he added, “Four-fifteen this morning, an experienced trucker traveling east on Interstate 40 near Flagstaff noticed a truck pulling a trailer that didn’t match the markings on the cab. He called DPS and they discovered two KSF soldiers transporting explosives.” He looked up at Hatfield. “They made the arrest without incident.”
Drawing another line from Yuma, Arizona to San Diego, California, he said, “At five-twenty AM, a highway patrol officer discovered a car making a U-turn on a grass median, trying to avoid a road block on Interstate 8 west. He called for backup and they arrested two more KSF soldiers with a trunk full of explosives.”
Riggs pointed to Jackson, “I assume you have the samples back.”
Jackson nodded, taking his cue to finish the intelligence report. “Yes, we took soil samples from all of the captured soldier’s shoes. There’s trace of Pinyon Juniper present in each of their samples. This particular type of plant is most commonly found in higher elevation. In the four to seven thousand foot range.”
Jackson took the pencil from Riggs’ hand and traced a serpentine oval around the northern Arizona portion of the map. “This puts them either up here in the Flagstaff, Prescott, Payson area, or down here around the outskirts of the Tucson. It’s a large region to cover in such a short time, but we should focus in or around the small towns. They need supplies, so we have to gamble a little here.”
Riggs stood upright from his hunched position, as if to get a better perspective of the markings. He looked around the table, while pointing to the areas Jackson just circled. “Gentlemen, the enemy is here somewhere. We just need good old fashioned investigative skills to sniff them out.”
Walt must have read Nick’s face because he looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You have something to add, Nick?”
Nick looked up at Matt, but his partner’s face was shut tight. This was Nick’s call and he knew it.
“Nick?”
Nick looked at his watch, then back to Jackson. There wasn’t time for the usual political dance. He either opened up and risked a scandal that made Watergate look like misdemeanor trespassing, or keep quiet and possibly watch the White House light up the night sky. He thought about Julie, and how desperate she looked when she pleaded for him to keep going. To find Kharrazi and kill him.
“Something wrong, Nick?” Ken Morris said.
Nick felt a drop of sweat tickle the back of his neck. “They’re in Payson,” he said.
“Is that a hunch?” Riggs asked.
Nick shook his head. “I have an informant.”
“Who?”
Nick shrugged, but before he could pry open the can of worms, Matt stepped into the fire. “It’s an operative we have working undercover,” Matt said.
Hatfield glanced at Matt for a brief moment, then back to Nick. “Is that true, Nick?”
It was almost true, but not quite. He felt his stomach move ever so slightly upward. He was now in a corner. If he gave up Sal, then Hatfield would have questions. Questions that he couldn’t be allowed to have the answers to. And if he contradicted his partner. .well, he couldn’t do that either. His brain swelled with frustration.