They were tuned to CNN and the network news. The nation was in shock at the four assassinations. People were fearing an attempt to topple the government altogether, and they spoke of potential anarchy and despair. President Larkin was due to speak to the country in less than an hour.
I spotted Keith Karl Rawlins, and then I saw Mahoney talking to a trim, fit woman in a business suit. I vaguely recognized her as a high-ranking FBI official. She didn’t look happy and seemed to find my arrival a cause for more sourness.
Mahoney introduced her as Susan Carstensen, the Bureau’s deputy director for investigations. Carstensen shook my hand and said, “We won’t be jetting about at supersonic speeds like that again unless I give the go, are we clear, Dr. Cross?”
“Director Sanford ordered us to go,” I said.
“Just the same. I won’t have this spin out of control with cowboys riding off on a whim.”
Mahoney gritted his teeth. “With all due respect, ma’am, that was no whim, and we’re hardly cowboys. We were able to see the entire crime scene as well as find the odor destroyers I described, a signal jammer, and the tire prints.”
Carstensen lost the attitude, became all business. “The jamming device. Russian-made?”
“On its way to Quantico for testing,” Mahoney said. “Kasimov?”
“Nothing,” she said. “But you should know that NSA is reporting we’re getting scores of attempts to hack us coming out of Russia, China, and North Korea.”
“You mean they’re trying to hack us in here?” I said.
“The word is out. They seem to know this is the center of the investigation.”
“Feeling us out,” Mahoney said. “Seeing if we can be compromised.”
“What’s Larkin going to say tonight?”
“We don’t know.”
An agent rushed up. “Sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but we’ve got a positive ID on the treasury secretary’s killer.”
Ten minutes later, on all four screens, a photograph went up of a burly man with a shock of unruly dark hair, a thick beard, and sunglasses. He was standing on a high point somewhere, rock and desert behind him. He wore faded military camouflage and a black-and-white-checked scarf around his neck. A black assault rifle hung from his chest harness, and he was smiling over ten dead bodies at his feet.
“Martin Franks,” Carstensen said through a microphone so everyone in the hangar could hear. “Former U.S. JSOC operator, former Marine MARSOC operator, honorably discharged under an odious plea agreement four years ago. His COs came to suspect Franks had psychopathic tendencies. He liked to kill.
“This picture shows the result of his unauthorized one-man foray into a suspected Taliban village. He claimed he was discovered and had to fight his way out. There was an investigation, but it was one live man versus ten dead, and it had happened at night. No one else in the village could say exactly what had happened. Or would. The JAGs cut a deal to let him walk out and save the country further embarrassment.”
The screen split, and a photo appeared showing an older man among saguaro cacti. He wore green work clothes and carried an AK-47.
“This is Morris ‘Moe’ Franks,” she went on. “Martin Franks’s father. Moe has been on and off our watch list for more than two decades. Lives off the grid in southwest Arizona. Been involved in various militia groups over the years and has published tracts espousing anti-globalist views and stating his belief that only an armed uprising will cure the country’s ills.”
“So Moe is alive?” an analyst asked.
“Far as we know,” Carstensen said. “I’ve dispatched a team to his compound. In the meantime, I want everything you can find about his son’s activities since his discharge. You have an open warrant to search. Dismissed.”
She turned to me and Mahoney. “Thoughts?”
“I think homing in on Franks and squeezing the old man are smart moves,” Mahoney said.
“I’m sensing a but coming,” she said, crossing her arms.
Ned said, “We just can’t lose track of the big picture in all this. The assassinations. The hacks. This all could be provocation to war.”
“I think President Larkin has that covered.”
I cleared my throat. “I think there’s also the possibility that this is not state-sanctioned, that we have a single, ruthless Machiavellian mind at work behind the scenes. In light of that, I keep asking myself, Who benefits here? ”
“And?” Carstensen said.
“There’s no way around it,” I said, lowering my voice. “Who benefits? Larkin. He most certainly benefits.”
Carstensen shook her head, incredulous, and laughed. “You think Sam Larkin orchestrated the assassination of all the people above him in the succession chain so he could take over the country?”
“I think we have a duty to investigate that possibility, don’t you?”
Chapter 71
President Larkin spoke to the nation from Air Force One at nine p.m. eastern time.
Mahoney and I watched it on the big screens in the hangar. In the immediate run-up to the speech, the media noted that in city after city across America and despite the imposition of martial law, tens of thousands of young people had shown up in public places carrying flags and waiting to watch Larkin on their mobile devices.
When Larkin came on, he was grave, not at all the crusader he’d once been.
“My fellow Americans,” he began. “I come to you in a time of peril. We have been attacked in an effort to destabilize our great nation. The assassinations of our president, Speaker of the House, the secretaries of state and the treasury, and the assassination attempt on the secretary of defense are acts of war on America and its people, and those acts will not go unanswered.”
Larkin said this last with such deep intensity and resolve that I was having trouble seeing him as part of a great plot to take power. But he’d been such a brash and ambitious man when he was younger. Could leopards change their spots?
The acting president went on, outlining the steps being taken to identify the assassins and the people behind them. He asked for calm while the investigative team did its business.
“I know the idea of martial law in the United States is a frightening one,” Larkin said. “But I believe it is necessary if we are to get to the heart of the matter fast and understand the identity of our common enemy. Until then, we cannot respond. Until then, we are in pure defensive and investigative modes.
“I never sought this office. I believed I had reached the pinnacle of my career as your attorney general, and I was proud of my performance there. But now this responsibility has come to me, and I promise each and every one of you that I will try to make the best decisions for the survival of our great nation and our way of life.”
He paused to smile a bit and nod his head. “Now, I’m not saying I won’t make mistakes or act in ways that you disagree with. But if I make a mistake, I’ll take responsibility, and if I act in ways that you don’t agree with, I’d ask you to give me a little time. There’s a method to my madness.
“Good night, and God bless the United States of America.”
The screens went dark and then jumped to various anchors and commentators, who were quick to describe the nation as being “under siege” and “ramping up for combat.”
“What’d you think?” Mahoney asked.
“I thought it was a little odd that he said there was a method to his madness, but otherwise, it was calming. I felt like the guy was trying to do what he said he would.”
Ned glanced up at the screens, where pieces of Larkin’s short speech were being replayed. “I hope you’re right, Alex,” he said. “Because if you’re wrong, whatever trust people have left in Washington will evaporate, and God only knows what could happen after that. Riots. Chaos. Lawlessness.”