Camp Edwards improved on earlier versions.
The interrogation unit remained unused for the first week after the detainees arrived. One day, however, a De Havilland C-7A Caribou transport aircraft bearing no markings but painted in Army olive drab landed at Otis Air Base next to Camp Edwards. Twenty men and women in jeans and T-shirts walked down the stairway rolled up to the twin-engine aircraft. They assembled in the mess hall, which was cleared of both detainees and the Massachusetts National Guards troops who staffed the camp.
Dancer gave a short speech welcoming the young men and women to Camp Edwards, careful to casually drop a reference to his time at Guantanamo to let them know he’d paid his dues.
The next person who stood in front of the group looked decidedly nonmilitary. His posture, his physique, the very way he walked and stood and carried himself showed he spent his days at a desk or, more likely, hunched over a computer. Besides, although he wore a suit and a tie, his shoes looked like they’d last been polished in whatever Chinese shoe factory manufactured them.
“My name is Wilson Harrison,” the man said. The twenty men and women were casually draped around wooden chairs dragged into a rough semicircle in front of him.
“I am a deputy United States attorney general. More importantly, I am temporary special legal assistant to the president. I am told that you were each hand-selected from the Military Intelligence Corps, that you are the cream of the crop from Huachuca.” He was referring to the Army Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where Army interrogators were trained.
“You have not been told why you’ve been brought here, although I suspect you have a good idea, right?” He was met with grins and nods. “Here is what you don’t know.” He reached into his briefcase and dropped a handful of gold-colored objects on the table behind him, stepping aside so they could be seen.
“These are Israel Defense Forces dog tags. They were found on the bottom of Boston Harbor, directly underneath where the two ships that carried the detainees of this facility were anchored. Somebody from those ships fired rocket-propelled grenades at two United States Coast Guard vessels, sinking both vessels and killing ten people, ten American military personnel.
“We believe that the people who did this wore these dog tags and that they threw them overboard before fleeing from the ships, along with all the other people held at this camp. We’ve separated all the men and women of military age. They are in this portion of the camp, which we’ve called Camp Echo.” He noticed smiles on several faces and knowing nods on others.
Echo was military slang for an interrogator. Each person in the room was an echo, and they understood that this part of the camp was built for their use.
“Your job is to determine which of the detainees at Camp Echo belong to these dog tags. The president has determined that every detainee at this camp is an enemy combatant. Some of them may hold dual US-Israeli citizenship. That doesn’t matter.”
Dancer interrupted. The major knew how to address soldiers.
“He means that it don’t mean shit if somebody was born in the US of A. We treat ’em all the same. Nobody gets special treatment—that is, unless they earn it. Got that?”
He was met with smiles and a few raised fists, plus a few scattered shouted HOO-AHs.
Harrison nodded and continued.
“These detainees, these foreign military personnel, are the first soldiers of any other nation to kill American military personnel on American soil—well, technically on American waters—since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812. The president views this conduct as an act of war, even though the country these people are from no longer technically exists.”
He held the dog tags in front of his chest, jingling them. “Your job is to identify these people, these murderers. Once that is done, they will be given hearings and, if you do your jobs properly, will be found guilty.”
Again Dancer interrupted. “And shot. Nobody kills American soldiers and lives to brag about it. Right?”
This time every person in the room rose to his or her feet. Fists pumped in the air. “USA, USA, USA” broke out. When they returned to their seats, Harrison spoke again.
“There’s more. Major, the doors and windows are sealed, correct? The perimeter of this building is patrolled? There is nobody outside the building who can hear what we say, correct?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Harrison. Just as I was ordered to do. This building is tight. What gets said here stays here. And every soldier in this room knows that, knows that damn abso-fucking-lutely. Am I correct?”
This time he was met with stern, serious expressions and a roomful of “yes sirs.”
Harrison turned to the soldiers again.
“You have to do more than identify the people who wore these dog tags,” he said, now speaking quietly and seriously. “Once you find them, you must, and I emphasize the word must, meaning that you have no choice, you must find out everything they know about another Israeli soldier. This man.” He held up the photograph of Chaim Levi.
“His name is Chaim Levi. He is a lieutenant in the Israeli Navy. He made his way into this country. We don’t know exactly where he is, although the FBI has determined how he entered this country. It was on a boat, a sailboat that he sailed from somewhere in the Middle East all the way across the ocean to this country, to New England, probably to Maine.
“We don’t know who was on this boat with him. Most likely other military personnel were with him, probably a highly trained team. We don’t know that, but it only makes sense. We also don’t know for certain that this Lt. Levi was coordinating with the military personnel on those freighters, the ones who are among the detainees in this camp. But that, too, only makes sense. Two units from the same country’s military are infiltrated into this country at roughly the same time in roughly the same area, both by sea. It only makes sense they are working together. The people on the freighters had military weapons with them and didn’t hesitate to use them.” Harrison paused again, looking around the room. Every face was staring at him.
“What I am about to tell you is known by only a few people. It will not go beyond you. The consequences of your breaching the confidential nature of this information are most serious.”
Dancer interrupted. “That means you tell anybody squat and your ass will fry in the sizzle seat at Leavenworth. And I’ll press the button to fry you myself. Is that understood?”
Twenty “yes sirs” rang out.
Dancer turned toward Harrison and said, “Go ahead, tell them the rest. Tell me the rest; nobody else has.”
“The president has reason to believe that this Lt. Levi smuggled into this country military weapons,” Harrison said. “The president has reason to believe that among those weapons was a quantity of uranium-235. That is a substance that has only one use. That use is to construct atomic bombs.
“We don’t know much more than that. We don’t know how much U-235 he had. We don’t even know whether it was in a functional bomb or just the material itself. We don’t know much of anything except that this Lt. Levi sailed a boat containing U-235 and removed that material somewhere along the Maine coast. You are going to wring every bit of information about that material and about this Lt. Levi from every person being held in this camp. The security of this nation depends on your skill in doing this job.”