The room went deathly still again as Bill and Dorn glared at each other.
“There’s a town on the west bank of the Hudson River called Nyack,” Bill finally continued. “It’s about twenty-five miles north of New York City.”
“I’m familiar with it. Its nickname is ‘Your Gem of the Hudson,’ and it’s actually a village, Bill, not a town. It’s in the town of Orangetown.”
“Anyway,” Bill continued, “there’s a nuclear power plant north of there—”
“Which is actually in Clarkstown,” Dorn interrupted. “That’s the town north of Orangetown.”
“Thank you for the geography lesson, Mr. President, but—”
“Are you telling me terrorists were planning to attack the Nyack nuclear power facility?”
“And destroy it in a way that would have created an immense and deadly radiation cloud.”
“When was this attack supposed to have happened?”
“Two summers ago. If the terrorists had succeeded, they would have put twelve to fifteen million civilians at risk. It would have been far worse than the situation at the Fukushima plant in Japan in 2011 that was caused by the Tohoku earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. It would have been even worse than Chernobyl.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that—”
“In August of last year,” Bill interrupted, “seventeen Somalis were placed in solitary confinement at a top-secret prison the CIA maintains outside Athens, Greece. I know you’re familiar with that prison, sir. The Langley boys told you about it during your second meeting with them. That would have been the trip you took across the Potomac immediately after you were elected to ‘tour the CIA facility,’ as it was termed, I believe.” Bill gestured at the president. “Ask Wes Dolan about those Somalis. He’ll tell you. When he’s done confirming all that, ask him how I could know about those men being sent to Athens. They were the ones who were going to attack the nuclear plant.”
“That still doesn’t—”
“Last spring we discovered three nuclear silos in the Ukraine that still had active SS-19s in them. There was a plot under way to fire them. I know you heard about that.”
Troy’s gaze shifted to Dorn. He figured the president was going to come back at his father even more strongly on this one. Instead, Dorn slouched in the wheelchair, as if he were giving in.
“The Russians were supposed to have made certain the Ukrainians had all those nukes out of the silos and destroyed back in 1996,” Bill continued, “weren’t they, Mr. President?”
“Yes,” Dorn agreed quietly. “Red Cell Seven discovered those silos?”
“You’re damn right we did,” Bill said proudly. “And we kept it out of the press. If reporters had found out that several senior Ukraine officials had been bought off by certain wealthy rogue elements in the Middle East, we would have had a public relations nightmare on our hands.”
“And I would have had a political hurricane on my hands,” Dorn admitted. “It would have set U.S. — Russian relations back twenty years.”
“More like fifty.”
“Are those the two situations you were referring to earlier?” Dorn asked. “The attack on the Nyack nuclear facility and the issue with the SS-19s in the Ukraine?”
“Yes. Now, there have been other situations. Planes coming from Europe and Asia that were targeting skyscrapers and other facilities in the United States; embassy attacks; a dam on the Wind River in Wyoming that was going to be blown up and would have drowned an entire town. We took care of those situations as well as many others during the last decade. But none of them compare to what could have happened at Nyack and in the Ukraine.”
“For certain,” President Dorn agreed. “Of course, there was that LNG tanker headed for Norfolk as well.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed at Bill. “That would have been because of Red Cell Seven. That would have been on Shane Maddux’s shoulders.”
“Yes, it would have. But at least one good thing came out of that near-disaster.”
“Which was…?”
“No LNG tanker leaves any port in the world and heads for America without a United States naval escort. Not from Malaysia, not from Algeria, not from anywhere. And two hundred miles off the U.S. coast, all those ships are boarded by Marines. And they get fighter jet escorts from a hundred miles in, so nobody can fly a plane into the ship and blow it up. Rogue LNG tankers will never again be a threat to the United States.”
“Okay, I hear you.”
The room went quiet for a third time as everything Bill had described in the last few minutes sank in. It was the first time Troy had heard most of this. Information was disseminated only on a need-to-know basis within the cell.
“People think it’s just a coincidence that we haven’t had another terrorist attack inside our borders for more than a decade,” Bill spoke up after a few moments. “Well, it isn’t a coincidence, Mr. President. Not even close. And we must continue what we do exactly the way we do it, which is however we see fit without any interference. We can’t have our president trying to shut us down or limit our interrogation powers.”
“So you and the other associates provide the money.” Dorn’s voice was hushed.
“And the houses and the boats and the planes,” Bill explained, “along with doing our regular jobs.”
“My God,” the president whispered. “I had no idea this thing was so well organized.”
“It has to be.”
Dorn gestured at Bill. “Now that Roger is gone, are you effectively the leader of Red Cell Seven?”
Bill nodded deliberately after a few moments. “Yes.” He paused. “But I can’t keep doing it. I can’t lead RCS and be the CEO of First Manhattan. I don’t have the personal bandwidth, and worse, sooner or later someone’s going to figure out that I—”
“Mr. President!”
All three men flinched at the shout coming from the other side of the door and the loud knocking suddenly accompanying it.
“It’s Agent Radcliff, sir. I must see you right now.”
“Come in, come in,” the president called.
The Secret Service agent burst into the storage room, followed immediately by two more agents. All three men seemed distraught.
“For God’s sake, what is it, son?”
“There’s been an attack, Mr. President,” Radcliff explained. “It was out in northern Virginia, in McLean at that big Tysons One Mall.”
“What kind of attack?”
Troy heard footsteps running toward them.
“Shooters. Two to four of them, according to eyewitnesses at the scene. They had automatic weapons. Eight dead and twelve wounded so far. The men just walked through one entrance of the mall and opened fire. The place was jammed with people.”
Dorn cringed. “My God. Were they caught?”
“No, sir. Fairfax County Police and the state people found a couple of vehicles that were suspicious, but no persons in or around them.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Ten minutes.”
Stewart Baxter pushed his way past the agents into the middle of the room. “Mr. President, you need to get back to the Oval Office immediately.”
“Yes, of course, Stewart.”
Troy heard more footsteps hustling toward them.
“We don’t know if—”
“Mr. President!” Another agent burst into the room. “Sir, we have reports of more attacks. It’s the same thing as Tysons Corner. Huge malls. Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis. Shooters opening fire at crowds with automatic weapons. Seven attacks so far.”
The president glanced from Baxter to Bill and then back at Baxter. “Gentlemen, we are under attack.” He motioned to Radcliff. “Get me back to the Oval Office.”