But even now, in the midst of a major domestic crisis, the President hardly had time to worry about his wife. There were far bigger problems at hand for this poor boy from what many had laughingly called a hillbilly southern state. This current crisis might be the final straw for his Administration. Depending, of course, on how he handled it.
Joining the President, the ECT members, and Hardcastle were Colonel A1 Vincenti; Colonel Marc Sheehan, Hard- castle’s aide; and Deborah Harley, who was cleared to come to this meeting as an assistant to Hardcastle but who was in reality an executive assistant to Kevin Martindale— the former Vice President was not invited to attend this meeting, but he made sure he had his spy in place. If the President or his staff knew about Harley, they did not seem to care.
Vincenti’s face looked grim as Lani Wilkes, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began the briefing with a rundown of the attack on Memphis International Airport last evening. He could all-too-easily envision the two airliners barreling in toward the airport, then raining devastation on hundreds of innocent people below. Thankfully, the death toll was not as high as in San Francisco— over two hundred dead and over five hundred injured, mostly at the Universal Express super hub facility — but Vincenti felt responsible for each and every one of their deaths. When he looked up, he saw a few of the ECT members looking back at him, and he felt that they were silently accusing him of not stopping Cazaux when he had the chance.
Hardcastle looked at the oval cherry table, his hands folded in front of him, with a stony, neutral expression; Sheehan was watching the southern President (who was popping M&Ms into his mouth from ajar on the table) and Hardcastle, waiting for the sparks to fly. “We’re assisting the local authorities in hunting down the aircraft,” Judge Lani Wilkes was saying, “but the attack on the airport knocked out all the radar control centers in the entire region — both Approach and Center radar control centers are located at Memphis International — and we couldn’t track any of the aircraft.
“Our best lead right now circles on aircraft dealers in the south and southeast, particularly ones handling civil and military-surplus cargo aircraft. But there are two hundred and thirty such dealers and brokers in the region; plus, getting a plane from Central or South America flown into the southern U.S. is too easy. Getting warrants to search each establishment will take time. We—”
Hardcastle let out an exasperated sigh at the mention of warrants. A few eyes darted in his direction, but Hardcastle did not speak and no one else said a word. Wilkes, pretending she did not notice, continued, “Sir, I’ve said this before: we can’t let our concern over Cazaux’s attacks force us to degenerate into simply lashing out at every hint of criminal or suspected terrorist activities — it’s stretching my manpower too thin, and it’s creating more panic. We’ve got every available federal agent involved in this manhunt. I’ve got agents in Mexico and Canada. I’ve diverted extra agents to four different locations following up investigations on suspicious explosions, and each one has come up with nothing. The Bureau has investigated over one hundred bombings in the United States just last month, and none of them were tied in to Cazaux.”
“But now Cazaux’s finally gone over the edge, and I believe we’ve got to investigate each incident,” said Transportation Secretary Ralph Mersky. He turned to the President and said, “Mr. President, under the Federal Aviation Regulations, I’ve had the FAA close Tucson International Airport because a suspected terrorist incident is under investigation — we think Cazaux was flying on a commercial airliner, and he was afraid of getting caught and killed some airline service workers to make his escape. By. the law, I should close every other major airport near any of these other suspected terrorist incidents as well— whether or not Judge Wilkes believes they have anything to do with Cazaux. But I’ve had meetings with every major air carrier in the country, and to a man they’ve pleaded with me not to shut down the airports.”
“What in hell would you expect them to say?” Deputy Attorney General Lowe interjected. Under the National Security Act of 1949, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States was the most senior manager of any domestic terrorism crisis. Elizabeth Lowe was a hard-nosed Army veteran, attorney, and Washington lobbyist — perfectly suited for the job of dealing with the exclusive men’s domains of defense and antiterrorist strategy and response. “They need to keep making money, and they’re willing to bet other people’s lives on the long odds that Cazaux will strike anywhere else but their location or their planes.”
“I know that, Liz,” Mersky shot back, “but I need the White House’s direction on this one.” To the President, he continued: “We’ve already enacted Level Three security, which deals primarily with terrorist threats such as bombs in baggage, sabotaging planes at the gate, car bombs near terminals, that sort of thing. The law says I must enact Level Two security measures at all airports that carry more than eighteen passengers per plane if terrorist activity is suspected in the vicinity or on a national level, Mr. President.”
The President of the United States, sitting half-slouched at his big desk in the Cabinet Room, looked as if sleep and he were complete strangers. He was tall, young compared to recent Chief Executives, well-built and handsome, with prematurely gray hair that was thick and bushy. But the dark bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, and the wrinkles around the eyes caused by stress and squinting at reports and televisions without using his glasses, made him look considerably older. He wrapped his big hands around a coffee cup and took a sip — cold again. He let the cup rattle back onto its saucer, popped some more M&Ms into his mouth (his affection for junk food was legendary), then drawled, “Ralph, it doesn’t sound like this Level Three protects anyone if Cazaux drops a damned bomb on their heads. Why hasn’t stricter security been set up already?”
“Sir, the reason is that we have no procedures for dealing with air raids against major airports inside the United States except for closing them down,” Mersky said. “We have Civil Defense procedures drawn up thirty years ago for use in case of Soviet air raids, and even then they mostly deal with evacuation, medical care, restricting access to navigation facilities—”
“So the only option we have right now is to close the airports until we track this Cazaux down?” the President asked incredulously. God, how he hated these meetings without his wife present. That fucking real-estate deal was consuming all of her time, time that she could have been spending helping him. Damn her. They should have never invested in that fucking land in the first place. Oh, well. They’d just have to live with it. And he, unfortunately, was having to live without her at a time when he needed her most — like now. “Hey, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand what a disaster that would be. Remember how disrupted everything was when American Airlines’ flight attendants went on strike. Remember the panic? Jesus. I want to hear more options.” He turned to Hardcastle, Vincenti, and his Secretary of Defense, Dr. Donald Scheer, and said, “Admiral Hardcastle, I asked you to come down here because I’ve heard of your”—he took a moment to consider his next words, then decided to just say it—“genius, concerning this disaster.