Blue Warrior (30 page)

49

The Office of the Vice President
The White House, Washington, D.C.

11 May

S
enator Fiero picked up a photograph from the fireplace mantel. It was a picture of Vice President Diele leaning against the Oval Office desk, talking down to President Greyhill seated on the couch. Very telling.

“You’re confusing the hell out of me, Barbara. Yesterday, you were busting our balls on national television about our failure to address the terrorism threat, and now you’re here asking us for a favor.”

Diele poured himself a scotch from a crystal decanter. The cold ice cracked beneath the warm liquor. He didn’t offer her one.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure why that’s confusing to you. You’ve read the same reports I have. This terrorist Mossa is a dangerous new threat in the region. I want him stopped. So do you.” She set the photo back on the mantel. “I know you, Gary. You want this guy’s scalp as badly as I do.” Diele and Fiero had served together in the Senate for years.

Diele took a thoughtful sip of scotch. “You’re right, I do. He’s Asshole Numero Uno, as far as I’m concerned.”

Jasmine Bath had done a brilliant job seeding the various jihadi websites—legit and NSA-managed—with the uploaded war footage supplied by Zhao. Dead bodies, flaming vehicles, Tuaregs firing machine guns. A real horror show. Her automated systems also planted
hundreds of fake comments on those sites in support of Mossa, linking him and the Tuaregs with al-Qaeda,
jihad
, and every other hot-button word flags that lit up the NSA algorithms. Within forty-eight hours of the first upload, Bath had transformed the obscure Tuareg chieftain into a worldwide villain. Carefully leaked “anonymous government sources” also put Mossa and his “AQ-affiliated terror group” on the front pages of the leading mainstream media sites, always scrambling to fill the insatiable twenty-four-hour news cycle.

“Terrorists like this Mossa character are Whac-A-Moles. You smash one down, three more jump up.” Diele took a sip. He was starting to look his age, Fiero thought. His famous mane of silver hair had receded in recent years and his pinkish-gray scalp was really starting to show. He needed a good set of hair plugs if he ever hoped to make a presidential run.

“Who said ‘The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance’?”

“Does it matter?” Diele asked.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

“And you probably know the answer anyway. You always did like to show off.” Diele fell into an upholstered chair. He pointed at the empty one next to him. “Take a seat.”

“Thank you.” She sat.

“You still haven’t answered my question. Why not go running to another talk show this Sunday and decry this administration’s failure to deal with the Tuareg threat? Isn’t that your strategy? I bet Fowler is behind all of that.”

Just like Diele to give credit to a man, Fiero thought. She bit her tongue.

“I did answer you. I really do think this Mossa sonofabitch needs to be taken out, quickly, before he causes real damage over there—or over here.” She smiled demurely. “You and I have worked together well in the past on the issues that mattered most, wouldn’t you agree?”

Diele nodded thoughtfully. Fiero had always voted the right way when it came to the War on Terror. She’d supported all of the NSA
spying stuff that even he felt a little uncomfortable with, at least privately. Diele loved crossing the aisle and cutting good deals with reasonable people. What most voters didn’t understand was that mainstream Republicans and Democrats in Congress shared nearly identical values. They only kicked up a big stink about the other side to keep their voters in line. But the truth of the matter was that Washington was perfectly content with itself, even if the American public loathed it.

Diele’s father had taught him years before that every system was perfectly designed to get the results it achieves. Congress was no different. Congress wasn’t broken. Congress was perfect, as far as most congressmen were concerned. It gave them wealth, power, and privilege.

“Yes, I’d agree with that. You’ve always been reasonable on the issues that mattered most.”

“This one matters, Gary. You know it does. I don’t want another 9/11 on my conscience. Do you?”

“God knows I’m not opposed to a drone strike. You know my record on that. It’s just that Greyhill is scared shitless to pull the trigger. He’s enjoying the highest approval ratings he’s ever had. He won’t want to rock the boat.”

“Why does it have to be public knowledge?”

Diele leaned forward, raised a silver eyebrow. “You’re telling me you’d keep quiet about this? It would be a helluva feather in your cap to claim you provoked us into a drone strike. At the very least, you could say Greyhill had broken his promise to keep us out of any new wars.”

“A drone strike isn’t ‘boots on the ground,’ and it’s hardly a war. Presidents Bush, Obama, and Myers all saw to that. But, yes, formally I am promising you, Scout’s honor, that I will keep my mouth shut.” She ran two slender fingers across her chest, then held them high, like a Boy Scout pledge. “That’s how serious I am about this.” She wasn’t kidding.

After Guo’s report of the failed battle, Zhao contacted Anthony Fiero and made an offer. If his wife would help take out Mossa, then he could make arrangements to supply his consortium with rare earth elements. If she couldn’t show Zhao at least a good-faith effort with a
drone strike, there was no way he’d keep his promise and she and her husband would go bankrupt. Worse, a bankruptcy would be a financial scandal that would ruin her chances in the election.

“And if Greyhill refuses to launch the drone strike?”

“Then it will be one more albatross I’ll hang around his neck come election time. Don’t forget how JFK beat Nixon like a drum by mocking the Republicans for being weak on defense.”

Fiero saw the calculations spinning in Diele’s eyes. Her threat to campaign against Greyhill made the unlikely promise that she wouldn’t blow the whistle on this meeting seem more credible to the old fox. The best lies always contained the most truth.

“One last thing, Barbara. How is it you came by this intel? Thirteen intelligence agencies have tried and failed to find this guy, and you waltz into this office with the goods quicker than a hooker at a Shriners convention.”

“I happen to believe that the private sector is almost always more efficient than the public sector, even when it comes to intelligence gathering. After all, look how heavily dependent the NSA has been on the good graces of Google, Verizon, and all of the other big data corporations.”

“Your source?”

Fiero didn’t dare tell Diele that her source was a Chinese operative who had eyes on Mossa in the desert. Of course, neither had Zhao told her it was actually an AQS operative by the name of Al Rus who was actually conveying the intel.

“My husband does quite a bit of work with a private security company called CIOS. They specialize in searches like this. They’re rather lean and nimble, not some ossified government bureaucracy. They’ve located Mossa with an RFID chip.”

“Who managed to plant that on him?”

“No telling. But the intel is good.”

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes.” That was only half true. She was certain that Troy Pearce
carried a rifle embedded with an RFID chip. She just assumed he’d be standing next to Mossa when a Hellfire missile came crashing down.

“Worse-case scenario? It’s a signature strike. You take out a few bad guys, even if it’s not the right bad guy.”

Fiero was referring to the latest iteration of drone strike policy. Originally, the president or some member of the national security staff targeted specific individuals after some kind of official vetting. President Obama was famous for his regular “Terror Tuesday” meetings where he personally selected individuals for death by drone, weighing carefully the evidence presented to him by various agencies.

But such procedures became ponderous and time-consuming. By the time a target was vetted they often had already disappeared. Also, the “evidence” presented was sometimes of dubious origin anyway. The current policy was far more efficient. Anonymous individuals—no names, no discernible identification—who fit the “signature” of a terrorist—for example, a young man armed with a rifle on the road to a known terrorist village—could be killed under the presumption that he was probably a terrorist anyway. After all, if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it must be a duck.

“Easy enough to confirm,” Fiero said. “Dispatch a Reaper out of Niamey. Put him on camera, run it through your database, and if he’s the target, pull the trigger.” She smile-frowned. “Gee, Gary, do you want me to go over there and do it myself?”

Diele laughed, standing. “You’re something else, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told.” Fiero locked eyes with Diele. Saw the bolt of electricity that coursed through him. Better than Viagra for most of these old guys, she’d been told.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“That would be delightful. Bourbon, neat, if you don’t mind.” She didn’t want Diele’s grubby hands touching her ice.

“Lime or lemon?”

“Neither, thank you.”

Diele splashed a couple of fingers of Maker’s Mark into a glass.

“Now that we’re being so chummy, let me throw you a couple of bones,” Fiero said. “First of all, Myers is tied up in this somehow.”

Diele twisted a lemon slice and hung it on the rim of the glass. “How?”

“Remember Mike Early? He was one of her special assistants for security.”

“Vaguely.” He refilled his own glass.

“He’s over there with this Mossa character. She also dispatched Troy Pearce over there to be with him.” Fiero was careful to leave out the fact that Pearce was sent to get Early out of there. “You do remember Troy Pearce?”

She knew, of course, that he did. Diele hated Myers’s guts and had learned after the fact the vital role Pearce had played in the drone counterterror operations she had launched against the Mexican drug cartels. That put Pearce on Diele’s shit list, too. But since Greyhill had extended blanket immunities to Myers and anyone she named in exchange for her resignation, Diele was never able to get even with Myers or Pearce.

Diele handed Fiero her drink, his face flushed with anger.

“Thank you, Gary.”

“Pearce, eh?”

“And Myers.”

“How is Myers connected to all of this?”

Fiero was careful with her answer. She’d seen a copy of that morning’s PDB. She knew Diele had seen it, too. Thanks to CIOS, Myers and Pearce had been effectively linked to Mossa and AQS, but not in any concrete manner. It wasn’t conclusive, but it was good enough to raise eyebrows around the room, she was certain.

“Not sure, but does it really matter?” Fiero said. “She clearly wants something over there. For all I know, she’s cooking up some sort of deal with the Chinese. Mossa is key to the whole region. Take him out and likely you’ll be screwing Myers in the process. How’s that for a bonus?”

Fiero had chosen her words carefully. Diele had been a famous cocksman in his day, and his lust knew no bounds. She’d seen the way
Diele had leered at the first female president whenever they were in the room together, much the same way he leered at her when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“Greyhill is still smarting from the ass-whipping she gave him in the primaries,” Diele said, which was true enough, but getting even with that bitch Myers was okay by him, too. “I’m sure he’ll be on board with this.”

“How sure?”

“He’s got his head so far up his ass he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on around here. He’s more interested in playing golf with some ambassador or sitting in on policy briefings than actually running things. I do most of the day-to-day around here. I’ll give the order, and if he ever gets wind of it, I’ll sell it to him.” He took a long sip of scotch. The ice tinkled as he drained the glass. His eyes brightened. “Myers will seal the deal.”

“One more thing, Gary, in the spirit of full disclosure.”

“What?”

“If Pearce and Early are running around with Mossa in the desert, they’re going to be collateral damage in a drone strike.”

“Fuck ’em. If they don’t want to get blistered, they shouldn’t put their dicks in the toaster.”