The admiral tossed the report at Molina and said to me, “Tell us about it.”
“Jade Helm is an exercise about how the government will put down a right-wing uprising, or rebellion, and arrest everyone they think might be sympathetic with the rebels. They’ll use these paramilitary police they have tucked into every government alphabet agency as storm troopers and SS troops—”
That was as far as I got. Molina exploded. “Comparing the federal government to Nazis is unacceptable. I am not going to sit here listening to that kind of shit, Carmellini.”
I didn’t say anything. Sal Molina couldn’t fire me, and if Grafton did, I was ready to be on my way. Truth was, I had been in the belly of the beast for far too long.
“Go on, Tommy,” Grafton prompted, ignoring Molina.
“They’ll arrest every prominent Republican they can find and hold them in guarded camps, mainly at military bases. They have computer-generated lists. Gun owners, people who run their mouths on Facebook and Twitter, radio talk-show hosts, editors and publishers of Republican newspapers… you know, dangerous enemies of society.”
“Who ran the exercise?”
“A senior Homeland Security dude named Zag Lambert. Wore a uniform shirt and a belt with a holstered pistol. Honest to God, all he needed was a Hitler mustache. That guy should be kept in a padded room.”
Grafton sighed. Molina threw the report back onto the desk. Grafton picked it up and said to me, “I’ll read this. Thanks, Tommy.”
I got up and beat it.
Outside I rescued my cup, decided the coffee was still warm enough to be drinkable, punched the door code, and strolled into the executive assistants’ office. I worked with and liked both of them: Max Hurley, a skinny long-distance runner, and Anastasia Roberts, a black woman with a PhD whose IQ was probably up in the stratosphere.
“Hey.”
“Tommy,” Hurley acknowledged. “You were just in the pit — how is it going with Molina?”
I shrugged. “Tense.”
“They’ve been arguing for a week,” Roberts said. “These agency police forces and huge ammo buys. The White House wants the CIA to establish our own paramilitary force, and Grafton has said no. He’s defying the White House.”
They stared at me and I stared back. That meant Grafton was on the way out, and we probably were too. The new man, or woman, would bring his or her own management team.
“They don’t trust us,” Anastasia Roberts remarked, quite unnecessarily. I knew whom she meant. The brain trust at the White House, hunkered down on Pennsylvania Avenue ever since the Democrats lost control of the Senate in the last off-year election, two years ago. The Republicans already had the House. This was August. The presidential election was in November, and no matter which way it went, the current president, Barry Soetoro, was leaving on January 20. The Constitution limited the president to two terms, so the end of his eight-year occupation of the White House was in sight at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Only 151 days of Soetoro left to endure, according to the countdown counter on Fox News that one of the hosts opened his show with every day.
“You know I was out in Denver last week at the Jade Helm 16 exercise,” I remarked. “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, has their own private army, and some of the troopers were at the exercise. A couple dozen of them came down from Boulder, decked out in camo clothes and helmets and armed to the teeth. They bonded with the storm troopers from other agencies. In my opinion, if the water and air gurus need paramilitary police, this agency certainly does.”
“Boulder is a hotbed of sedition,” Max Hurley observed. “Washington is a hotbed of sheep.”
“The revolution will start there, no question,” I agreed. “The faculty of the University of Colorado is packed with dangerous right-wing fanatics who will lead their students in a wild charge against the Bureau of Standards, burn it down, then attack NOAA.”
“If they fire Grafton, will you stay with the agency?” Roberts asked me.
Needless to say, I hadn’t thought about that possibility. I had an apartment just up the road, my car was paid for, I was single, my mom was doing okay out in California. When I didn’t answer quickly enough, Roberts added, “I’m resigning. I’ve been offered a faculty position at the University of Chicago. If the job is still open, I can start when the new semester begins.”
I grunted. The University of Chicago was notoriously left-wing, very politically correct, and Roberts was a level-headed, pragmatic genius who had worked for Republicans on the Hill early in her career. On the other hand, she was a she, and black, and consequently could get away with a lot that would sink a white male faculty member.
Hurley admitted he was on the fence. He loved the game of analyzing raw intelligence. He said so now, and expressed the hope that he could return to the Middle East Desk.
“Nothing but bad news there,” I said, trying not to sound too downbeat.
“I think I can take it for a while longer,” he said. The cockeyed optimist.
“Negativity is the problem with this agency,” Anastasia Roberts declared. “Eventually it overwhelms you and your shit bucket overflows.”
“I wouldn’t express that opinion quite that bluntly in the faculty lounge in Chicago, if I were you,” I told her. “Clean it up for the civilians.”
We chuckled, locked up, and went to the cafeteria for lunch, where we discussed the weekend terror attacks.
I was working on a chicken salad sandwich with mustard and a slice of pickle on the side, plus a little bag of barbeque potato chips, when the televisions mounted high in the corner of the cafeteria broke away from their coverage of the investigation of the terrorist incidents to televise a live news conference with the president, Barry Soetoro. He had complete faith in the professionalism and competence of the FBI and Homeland Security Department. They were investigating. The terrorists were obviously criminals, he said, but they certainly didn’t represent the vast bulk of American Muslims or the refugees who had been admitted to the United States. He and his security team were reviewing the information the crime scene investigators were producing, and when more was known, they would be taking any steps called for.
“Does that mean you will reconsider your decision to admit Muslims to America?”
“We can’t classify people by their religion.”
“Obviously refugee screening was inadequate. What will the administration do to find the jihadists and keep them out?”
“We are looking at that.”
“A lot of people in Congress are saying your policies on illegal immigration and the admission of Middle Eastern refugees are abject failures, as proved by the events of the weekend. Would you comment on that?”
“My political enemies say a lot of things, every day. I haven’t the time or inclination to listen and comment.”
There was more, a lot more. The public was frightened and angry, and Barry Soetoro was defiant.
When the press conference was over, the cafeteria was quiet.
“It’s a miracle someone hasn’t shot at him before now,” Max Hurley observed, leaning forward at the waist and speaking softly.
But why shoot him? The Democratic nominee was Cynthia Hinton, who, according to the polls, was going to be the victim of a landslide. The Republican nominee was Jerry Duchene, the Wisconsin governor, and if the polls could be believed, he was going to be elected by a landslide. And the Congress would get a veto-proof Republican majority. The country had had more than enough of Barry Soetoro, his left-wing agenda, and his political allies, and was waiting, more or less patiently, for his final day in office. Yet the terror strikes had stirred the pot.
Back upstairs after lunch things began to pop. Were there any indications among the intelligence bits trapped in the intestines of our intelligence systems that some evil foreign power or narco-criminals or terrorist groups had plotted with or funded the Saturday monsters?