Captain Rucker looked down again at the Planning Order. “Marines will assault Green Beach on 15 March.”
“The Ides of March. Guess somebody has a sense of humor, or history. That gives us some time to get ready… and to find out what’s really going on. Not much time, but some,” Adams said, smiling at Admiral Haggerty and Captain Rucker.
Vice Admiral Brad Adams drew a last puff. As he snubbed out his cigar in the big brass ashtray, an F-35 Enforcer executed a perfect nightime carrier landing. It hit the flight deck immediately above the Admiral’s Suite with a noise that the inexperienced would have thought was a crash. All three men’s eyes went to the video monitor hanging from the ceiling, to make sure that the jolt they had just felt was only an F-35 landing.
2
The lead and chase Chevy Suburbans pulled to the curb after being waved through the first checkpoint near the Ellipse. The black Chrysler 300M they had protected moved swiftly to the second guardhouse. The uniformed Secret Service officer dropped the metal V barrier designed to stop an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer.
MacIntyre watched his young analyst’s eyes grow big as they approached the fence line and the large gates that opened onto West Executive Avenue. “Ever been to the White House before, Susan?” he asked.
“Just on the tourist line in high school. Red Room, Blue Room, Green Room, but we never saw anything over here.” Susan Connor fumbled for her badge as MacIntyre showed his to the Secret Service officer through the car window.
“Well, the thing to remember is it’s just a government building filled with civil servants — and, of course, the guy who lives above
the shop.” The car stopped outside an awning-covered set of double doors that led to the basement, or ground level, of the West Wing. “You’ll be amazed at how small everything in the West Wing is. It’s a one-hundred-year-old building that hasn’t been enlarged in half a century.
“This street, West Executive Avenue? It’s the most sought-after parking lot in town. Tourists and local residents used to walk down it whenever they wanted to. Now it’s behind three layers of security. Most of the White House staff is actually in this big building behind us,” he said, pointing at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the EOB. “At one time, the entire Departments of War, Navy, and State fit into the EOB. That was when an Army general named Dwight Eisenhower would go get a voucher to pay for the trolley ride to Capitol Hill when he had to brief the Senate Armed Services Committee.”
As MacIntyre spoke of the military leadership of seventy-five years before, the motorcade of the current civilian leader of the Pentagon screeched to a halt in front of the West Wing awning. Surrounded by civilian and military aides with briefcases and binders, Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad alighted from his armored Lincoln Navigator and strode through the open doors with barely a glance at MacIntyre and Connor, all the while jabbing his finger at another man.
“Well, hello to you, too,” Susan snorted. “Who was the horse’s ass on the receiving end?”
“That was the go-to guy, by far the most important of the many faceless princelings who do the bidding of the great one,” MacIntyre said. “Sorry. I mean, that was Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Kashigian, getting reamed out for something by his highness, the National Command Authority.”
Connor shot her boss a glance. “I thought the President was the National Command Authority.”
“Half right. The President and the Secretary of Defense are both the NCA. Either can give orders for the use of force, including nuclear force.” Seeing Susan screw up her face in doubt, Rusty explained, “It’s meant to make a decapitation attack difficult, and also to prevent a slow response as someone tracks down the President while he’s getting his picture taken with the Red Sox again. Let’s go in.”
Once inside the ground level of the West Wing, Susan was surprised that the hallways were dark, with low ceilings. A Secret Service guard in a blue blazer asked to see their badges and checked their names on a computer as young White House staffers breezed by with food trays. MacIntyre continued his tour-guide role. “The White House Mess is down the hall. It’s a Navy-run restaurant that also does take-out for busy staffers who prove their importance by eating at their desks. Navy does the Mess, Air Force flies Air Force One, the Marines fly the chopper, and the Army runs the comms.”
“You worked here once, didn’t you?” Susan asked her boss.
“Clinton National Security Council Staff for three years,” Rusty whispered.
“I won’t tell a soul,” Susan whispered back.
They walked down a few steps and turned to face a wooden door, a television camera, and a telephone. On the door was a large colored plaster-of-paris Seal of the President of the United States and a brass plaque reading, “Situation Room, Restricted Access.” Rusty picked up the phone and looked into the camera. “MacIntyre plus one.” The door buzzed and they walked into a cramped anteroom.
Off the anteroom was a small, wood-paneled conference room. Ten large leather seats were forced in tightly around the solid, onepiece wooden table. A brass sign holder sat in front of every seat with a name of a principal, or member of the Cabinet-level National Security Council’s Principals Committee. A dozen smaller seats lined the walls. On the wall above the chair at the head of the table there was another presidential seal. In one corner Susan noticed a closed-circuit camera behind a darkened glass globe. A door with a peephole was in another corner. A large white phone console sat on a sideboard near the head of the table. The far wall had three digital clocks: “Baghdad,” “Zulu,” and “POTUS.” Zulu, Susan knew, was military speak for Greenwich Mean Time, or London. Doing the math quickly, she realized that today POTUS was Los Angeles time, the President of the United States was on a West Coast swing. POTUS time was whatever time zone the commander in chief occupied. “I never saw the final talking points for your boss’s meeting with the Chinese Premier,” Defense Secretary Conrad was complaining as he leaned over the table across from Deputy Secretary of State Rose Cohen. “You guys have to be tough with those bastards. They are after the same oil we are.” Cohen was sitting in for the Secretary of State, who was in Asia. Before she could even start to respond, Dr. William Caulder, the National Security Advisor, moved quickly into the room and sat at the head of the table, under the President’s seal.
“Let’s begin. This is mainly about China, but we will do some current odds and ends as well.” He opened a loose-leaf binder to the agenda. Reading aloud, he ticked off the business at hand. “China: strategic assessment and then Chinese missiles in Islamyah, MacIntyre, IAC; bombings in Bahrain, Peters, National Counterterrorism Center; Bright Star Exercise, General Burns, and then you wanted to raise a restricted item, Henry?” The National Security Advisor looked above his half-glasses at the Secretary of Defense, who nodded back.
Like Deputy Secretary of State Rose Cohen, MacIntyre was also standing in for his bosses, Sol Rubenstein at the IAC and Anthony Giambi, the Director of National Intelligence, both of whom had begun skipping more and more of the contentious sessions. Rusty had, therefore, briefed the Principals Committee many times before. The PC, as it was known, was all the National Security Council members except for the President and Vice President. If the national security departments and agencies made up one big conglomerate, then the PC was their board of directors.