Rodgers couldn’t help but think it had something to do with his friend, Marshall Hail. Could it merely be a coincidence? Any type of coincidence was nothing he would gamble on, because coincidences rarely took place. Unless North Korea just dropped a nuclear bomb on South Korea, Rodgers suspected this meeting had something to do with his friend’s recent uninvited visit to the White House.
There had been some prior history between the president and Marshall Hail. Rodgers wouldn’t characterize their relationship as hostile. Rather they were defiantly codependent. Hail absolutely needed the help of the president to continue tracking down and eliminating all the terrorists on the FBI’s Top Ten Terrorists list. And, the president needed Hail for several reasons not as nearly straightforward. For example, if Hail wanted to knock off a jihadi kingpin and collect the reward offered by the United States, it was essential the president and her intelligence agencies knew the who, where, and when. This information was vital because the CIA might already be working a covert angle to take out the same actor. Sharing information should prevent the debacle that occurred in Hail’s sanctioned mission, dubbed Operation Hail Storm.
Measures had been taken to bomb the warehouse housing ICBM missiles, in case Hail’s team was unable to successfully complete their mission. Hail’s
newest pilot and recruit, Foster Nolan, was an unintended consequence of miscommunication between the CIA and Marshall Hail. If the director of the CIA, Jarret Pepper, and Marshall Hail had been on the same page, the loss of a 337 million-dollar aircraft could have been avoided. And the future of one of their best pilots would not have been terminated. If they had trusted one another enough to compare notes, the plane would never have left the aircraft carrier.
The second reason the president needed Hail was the superiority of the technology he possessed. It was far better than anything the United States could get their hands on. The president was not a technical person, but her advisors had told her that Hail’s technology was lightyears ahead of what was being produced at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA was created by President Eisenhower in 1958—a direct response to the Soviets launching Sputnik 1 in 1957. Its mission was to ensure that the U.S. military would be more sophisticated than that of the nation’s potential enemies. But, there was no indication that DARPA was more sophisticated than those who the United States considered an ally. And, at least for the time being, Marshall Hail was still on that list. Rodgers shuddered when he considered what would happen if Hail made his way onto the other list — that list containing the names of those people Hail was trying to exterminate.
Nevertheless, there were some extremely brilliant engineers in DARPA creating some real science-fiction contraptions. But the amount of red tape involved with getting a weapon from a workable prototype to a weapon that could be utilized in the field took years. The full deployment of the Predator drone was delayed for years by bureaucratic infighting among the various military branches. The Air Force insisted only full-fledged pilots — or “real” pilots should be allowed to fly drone aircraft. It may take several years and $10 million to produce a combat-ready jet fighter pilot. In contrast, a Predator drone operator could be combat-ready within several months, and at a fraction of the cost of the jet pilot. With those types of bureaucratic roadblocks in place, by the time the Predator drone had made it from the DARPA laboratory to purgatory, ten times as much money and time was spent as was needed for Hail to create a more advanced model. It was simply the nature of the beast.
If the military required an eraser for a pencil, the different branches of the military would argue among themselves. One branch would insist it also erase pen marks; one would argue over the length of the eraser; another would demand it be able to operate at ten fathoms underwater. By the time all branches hammered out the specifications of the one-fits-all eraser, billions of dollars would have been spent in design. It would arrive five years later than build specs had outlined. And by that time, people were now only using electronic tablets — not pencils or pens.
The third reason the president needed Marshall Hail and his little circus was because she needed the cloak of plausible deniability. When these jihadis were killed or captured on foreign soils, she wanted―no—needed to assign blame on someone else. If Hail, with his drones, executed the kill shot, blame rested with him, not the United States. They could claim Marshall was a rogue civilian, thus an unsanctioned operation. Although, he had a CIA operative, and had now assimilated one of their best jet fighter pilots, onto his ship. The only significant point was that all military branches and offices within America had deniability. Their hands were clean.
Rodgers had cleared White House security and headed to the Oval Office. He saw no one in the corridor outside, so he walked into the big oval room. Four people looked in his direction, and he realized that he was the last to arrive.
The president said sarcastically, “Thank you for coming so quickly, Trevor.” She motioned for Rodgers to take a seat on the couch. The president was sitting in one of two pinkish, high-back chairs which sat at the end of the thick coffee table.
Sitting on the couch next to Trevor was Quentin Ford, a four-star general and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a large and imposing man. Today the general was not in full military dress, but instead he was wearing his ACUs (Army Combat Uniform). Rodgers couldn’t comprehend why the highest-ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces was dressed for the battlefield. Tiny specks of perspiration rested on Ford’s face. The general appeared quite wired, like he had one too many espressos. Or, maybe the general was going to have a heart attack. He was certainly at the age where those pesky ailments made unsolicited visits. The general’s thick cheeks sagged like a big old tired hound dog.
Seated on the couch, across the coffee table from the general, was the Director of National Intelligence, Eric Spearman. He had been sworn in four years earlier by the previous administration. Spearman wore glasses. He was a mild-mannered, bald and short man — the antithesis of the general sitting across from him. He seemed to wear a continual frown. Spearman was typically reserved, and Rodgers had great respect for him. The only time he talked was when it was necessary. Then whatever he said was so solid, compelling and logical, it either resolved an issue, or he introduced a new avenue to consider. Spearman looked smart. If instructed to choose five of the smartest men in a room, Eric probably would be chosen as one of the top five. They both were wearing similar dark blue suits, but Rodgers hoped he wore his suit better than Eric. His sad-looking face was buried in his iPad.
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Jarret Pepper, sat on the couch next to Spearman. Pepper’s gray hair always appeared unruly. Pepper could comb his hair; within ten seconds it would have returned to its naturally unkempt state. Pepper was wearing a gray suit, as per usual. Rodgers was as likely to ask the reason from Pepper why he only wore gray suits as he would ask the general why he had chosen to wear his ACUs.