“All right, Mac,” Prost finally said. “That would be great.”
The president lit his cigar and began puffing away, and Prost borrowed his lighter.
Macklin took a long pull on his cigar and blew three smoke rings in quick succession.
“About the strikes, sir… you don’t want to wait until Brad addresses the UN?”
“Hell no,” Macklin said flatly. “When terrorists attack us, we’re going to counterattack as rapidly as possible, UN-sanctioned or not.”
Leaning forward in his chair and talking around the cigar, Macklin spoke plainly. “You realize, of course, that no matter how many of the assholes we take out with our missile and drone strikes, we’re still not making any headway. And it’s killing us, both as a country and as a party. The American people didn’t sign up for a ‘forever war.’ They want a victory and to be done with it, which was what we accomplished in World War II. But we’ve never done it since. Korea was a stalemate; Vietnam was a pathetic loss. I was there. We got our asses kicked. And Iraq and Afghanistan are royal clusterfucks. We made life in Iraq worse for most of the people living there and allowed tribal and religious conflicts that had been held in check for decades to flare right up.
“Bottom line is that our strategy isn’t working. Sure, we’ve spent decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we spent — when you really think about it — over half a century in Europe and Japan. And we’re still there. Sure, it’s not a shooting war, but our presence in those countries has been a deterrent that we simply don’t have in the Middle East. They don’t want us there, and we can’t make them let us stay there. Sure, they’ll cry for help when shit hits the fan and we’ll come running, but we just aren’t there to stabilize and influence things the way we are in other countries. We’re just slapping Band-Aids on things and hoping the locals can keep them on long enough to stop the bleeding. But it isn’t working and really has never worked.”
Prost sat quietly, contemplating the president’s candid evaluation. “Hell, it’s not even just al-Qaeda and ISIS. Half the Saudi royal family is up to their necks in supporting terrorism, the Iranians are backing Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority is too busy trying to figure out how to steal the aid we give them rather than finding ways to actually make peace with Israel. Shit, if the Israelis weren’t in the middle of it all, giving the Arabs all a common point to focus their hatred on, the tribes and factions would have torn each other apart by now.”
Prost raised his eyebrows and glanced over at the nearby Secret Service agents.
The president turned to face his senior agent. “Hey, Oki,” he said, “give us more space for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Okimoto replied before speaking into his mic. “Big Mac’s requesting a little elbow room. Back out a hundred feet.” Like true samurais, the agents soon blended into the wooded surroundings.
“Look, Hart,” he added. “My dad fought in World War Two. Pacific Theater. He was on a ship that got hit by a kamikaze. When the troops hit the islands, the Japanese fought to the last man. On Iwo Jima, they had to use flamethrowers to burn them out of the caves they’d holed up in. To defeat them, it took a level of violence and cruelty that our generation can’t even start to conceive yet. The Battle of Okinawa resulted in almost 78,000 Japanese dead — over 100,000 if you count the natives they’d conscripted. Can you imagine if any one battle in the modern age resulted in that number of dead? But that’s what it took.
“Defeating terrorism worldwide has to go beyond Tomahawks and bombing compounds. My dad had to chase the bastards all over the Pacific islands. We have to stop being so damn surgical and figure out how to cut the head off the snake and kill the body so two new ones don’t grow.”
Macklin paused to smoke and stare at the stream.
“I think there might be a way,” Prost said, leaning forward. “Which is what I wanted to discuss.”
The cigar hanging from the edge of his mouth, the president regarded him for a moment before saying, “All right. You have my undivided attention.”
“Less than an hour ago, we received confirmation that the DC-9 airliner had been at La Aurora Airport in Guatemala City for the past four or five weeks. Ditto for the C-46.
“My people in Langley dubbed the DC-9 a phantom flyer, an illusory threat. A State Department official and scores of pilots, five of them Americans, said the planes had been there for a month. A local maintenance manager confirmed his company installed extra fuel tanks while the planes were there.”
The president stared at the burning end of his cigar. “Do you know anything about the pilots, where they came from?”
“No names yet, but one of the mechanics said they had Syrian passports and regularly prayed together. He said they were obviously Muslims.
“The pilots departed at night on what was reported to be a medical emergency flight.” Prost paused.
“And?” asked Macklin.
“There are two more planes, one at a second hangar at La Aurora, and another at a nearby private airstrip. Reports are that both have been fitted with extra fuel tanks.”
“Motherfu—”
“The planes are included in the strike package,” Prost said. “But there’s more. We’ve tracked ownership of the planes to an imports-exports company out of Panama that’s part of a Venezuelan oil consortium. After that, the money trail gets a little fuzzy but good enough for my analysts to follow the scent to a shipping company named Sino-Eastern Group, or SEG. And guess which real-estate mogul used to be its major shareholder?”
Macklin shrugged. “Donald Trump?”
Prost grinned. “Funny, but no. It was Saeed Shayhidi.”
Macklin lowered his cigar, and his brow furrowed in confusion. “What?”
“The planes tie back to a company that was created and used as a front by Shayhidi, the same terrorist mastermind we killed last year.”
“So, you’re saying he’s back from the dead?”
Prost shook his head. “Not unless he walks on water.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“Well, I think it’s what you just said. It’s a hydra effect.”
“Cut off a head and two more appear?”
“Something like that.” Prost took a drag and exhaled skyward. “After Shayhidi’s death, we dismantled his worldwide operation, froze assets, confiscated bank accounts, you name it. But only so far as we could reach. There were other holdings in the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and France, where we left it to those governments to act.
“And they did. But physical assets are harder to deal with than money. The real estate and the companies he used as covers had to be sold.
“And as far as we can tell, whoever acquired SEG also backed the attack on Truman and is retrofitting two more planes.”
“And who’s that?”
“Don’t know yet, but will soon.”
“So, what do you know, Hart?”
“Well, for starters, that the NSA is currently decrypting a flurry of communications it intercepted on the dark web between the companies I’ve just mentioned. Like I said, we’ll know something concrete very soon.”
“So, let me see if I get this. We took down a major terrorist who used real companies as a front. Then we let the Brits or Swiss or whomever, dispose of those companies, and what happened is that they were simply bought by someone who has now attacked us? Is that accurate.”
Prost nodded. “Apparently.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Macklin stood up, waving his cigar, and asked angrily, “Didn’t anyone vet the buyers?”
Prost shrugged. “It was out of our hands.”