Red Deception Read online

  Flanders waited while the program ran through millions of images culled from news stories and photo archives. Nothing. Even the best of the video wasn’t good enough for the newspaper’s version of facial recognition to produce a match.

  After more than an hour trying to enhance the images herself, she sent the footage to the New York Times graphics department.

  “Need better,” she was told.

  Flanders took that as a challenge. She’d find better by tracking down Mr. Late 30s to Early 40s herself.

  OVER THE ATLANTIC

  Dan Reilly read his six-year-old report on the plane. Most of his conclusions came right back to him. What differentiated his analysis from other Homeland Security and most government reports was the way he portrayed America’s vulnerability. He’d not only identified targets, he painted vivid descriptions of what things would look like the day after an attack, and more days, weeks, and even months later. He described faces of parents as they carried the bodies of their children away from horrific blasts, and children who had to be torn from their mothers and fathers by strangers and would never be able to forget the anguish.

  Reilly had gathered pictures of terrorist attacks in mosques and cafes, explosions in hotel lobbies, and the aftermath of gunmen in movie theaters. No one above him understood why he needed this kind of research to prepare what was supposed to be a clinical white paper about America’s vulnerability. At least, not until they read his report. It was impossible not to be moved. Reilly’s paper gave government readers a visceral reason to fortify infrastructure and identify vulnerabilities.

  Its emotional tone was a sharp warning, and dramatically different than previous studies. That’s why it was broadly circulated, and apparently leaked. On top of the human toll, Reilly’s full report identified nearly 77,000 targets that could strategically hurt America, and some 600 that were so critical that life could be turned upside down. “If attacked in the manner outlined,” Reilly noted, “the United States should brace for a catastrophic loss of life as well as catastrophic economic losses.”

  He remembered writing those words, stopping at the keyboard, and envisioning the horror to America’s infrastructure. Dams no longer holding back mighty rivers and huge lakes; nuclear utilities adjacent to major cities leaking radioactive materials; airports, bridges, and tunnels shut down. He detailed smaller targets as well, from local gas stations and county fairs to petting zoos. The common denominator: places where people congregate, where press coverage carried weight, and where normal routines could be disrupted.

  Reilly’s report flagged oil refineries, which produced in excess of 225,000 barrels per day; electrical grids that, if pulled offline, could affect upwards of 35,000 citizens; and mega-corporations where immediate losses would be in excess of 10 billion dollars. Reilly’s research carried dire individual warnings about Washington, D.C.’s Metro area, the entire San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system, New York City’s 472 separate subway stations, and Los Angeles’s most important interconnecting freeway overpasses.

  Midway through reading, Reilly put the report on his lap. He closed his eyes and went back to his harrowing escape from the 14th Street Bridge. The fire. The smoke. The screams. The dead. His thoughts turned to his experience in Afghanistan: bombs and snipers. More dead. And then he saw himself walking through the rubble of the terrorist attack on the Kensington Royal Hotel bombing in Tokyo a few months ago: the smell, the godawful smell. The images were seared in his consciousness. The absolute loss. Not the building, he thought. Buildings can be rebuilt. But all those lives. And now that horror had come back to the U.S., just as he’d predicted.

  Reilly was tired, but he forced himself to read on through the list of likely targets by category. His paper rightly suggested that America could more easily recover from individual attacks. But as multiple locations were hit in a coordinated effort, the impact would echo through small towns all the way to Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Reilly expected there was already a run on ATMs for cash, a record number of guns and bullets sold, and the hoarding of supplies, especially water, sanitizers, and toilet paper.

  After another thirty minutes of re-reading, he came to his recommendations:

  Further review of significant targets and development of strategic, coordinated crisis plans to better secure them.

  Provide state homeland security offices with directives as they evaluate vulnerabilities and defense measures.

  Prioritize needs and risk assessments, analyzing human and vehicular traffic flow, access to airports, and critical stress points on bridges and within tunnels.

  Develop budgets with state homeland security administrators and the Department of Homeland Security to support local private businesses with basic, visible deterrents such as bollards, security cameras, and secured entrances.

  Establish a review timeline to correct immediate deficiencies.

  What Reilly didn’t know was whether anything positive had been done. Very little, he suspected. What he’d intended as a study to lead to proactive defensive measures had instead, apparently, become a shopping list for—

  For whom?

  Thinking about what he’d told Moore, governments were top of the list. Strategically, Russia. Economically, China. Politically, North Korea and Iran. Reilly wrote each down along with homegrown domestic terrorists as a category, which he quickly crossed out. Too complicated. Required too much expertise, he reasoned.

  Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were within the range of possibility until it came to the autonomous driving cars in the Lincoln Tunnel. Out of their realm.

  China? No, he reasoned. Too many self-inflicted economic wounds. They need American trade.

  Iran? Too risky given their own internal instability.

  Two left.

  North Korea. No known sleeper structure inside the United States to carry out an operation of this size.

  One suspect remained: Russia. But even Russia might need cover. He thought for a moment. Who better to enlist than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? Russia could maintain deniability. If discovered, then Moscow denies everything yet creates further instability with a U.S./North Korean conflict.

  He closed his eyes and adjusted his First-Class seat into a full recline. Russia. Russia and North Korea. He had an idea that lacked all proof. He had nothing to make a convincing argument.

  Reilly soon fell asleep. He slept through the president’s televised press conference, watched live by others en route.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “Good evening.” President Alexander Crowe sat stoically at his desk in the Oval Office. He looked tired and somber. His voice was low.

  “Today America was attacked. Brutally and cruelly. Without warning, hundreds of citizens—men, women, and children—died at the hands of terrorists. Hundreds more were injured. Thousands of families are directly affected, and many will never hear the voices or feel the touches of loved ones again. Many are tonight looking at empty beds or across the dinner table for missing children.”

  The camera slowly zoomed in.

  “Tonight, we remember Jean Seymour, a mother and schoolteacher on her way to work. A victim of the bombing on the 14th Street Bridge here in Washington.”

  The video cut to a photograph of the victim lying face down, and then pictures of others Crowe referenced.

  “LaMarr Brown, his wife Justine, their two children Raff and Diana, killed in the Lincoln Tunnel explosion. Miguel Carrera, returning home from his overnight shift as a guard at Walmart, his body just recovered and identified after his car went into the Mississippi in St. Louis. You’ll hear about more in the days to come, hundreds more. Read about them, remember them. Mourn them.”

  The president came back on camera. His tone changed.

  “I promise you, as President of the United States, that we will honor their deaths by tracking down the criminals who attacked America. We will bring them to justice or bring them to their deaths. No matter what cracks they cr
awl into, no matter where they run. And if they’re watching tonight, as they probably are—” the camera zoomed in tighter, “you will suddenly find the world is too small to escape from this hunt. We will find you.”

  Crowe read off the teleprompter, but he could have given the address without one. Anger fueled him. And although he didn’t talk about revenge, Americans heard it between the lines.

  “For those who seek to break us, we will not be broken. For your cowardly acts of terrorism, you will suffer. And if we should determine that you have acted under the authority of another government, that government, its leaders and its military will face the consequences with extreme prejudice.”

  Crowe wanted his message to hit near and far. He ended it in under three minutes with “God Bless America,” but no mention of NATO’s worries or invoking Article 5 of the NATO Charter.

  15

  NATO HEADQUARTERS

  Representatives of the twelve Eastern European nations that had formerly been part of Soviet Russia’s buffer zone from the West watched the American president’s speech live. There was nothing in it for them: no words of consolation, no offers of protection. The Russian Federation was threatening two of the twelve. If two could fall, all could fall. The clock would be reset to Cold War standard time. Each of them knew their own country’s brutal history, and that of their neighbors: invasion and oppression. The past suddenly appeared all too present.

  After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world seemed a safer place. Many of the nations turned to the West and opened their previously closed society to democratic elections. The threat against the existing North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries lessened. Moreover, as NATO redefined its mission, it pushed eastward, signing former Soviet satellites into the alliance.

  Assurances were made that the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 was not an attempt to undermine the Kremlin. The agreement stipulated that NATO would not permanently place combat forces in Eastern Europe or deploy nuclear weapons in new member nations. Nevertheless, the fact was that Russia’s thousand-mile protective border was gone. It was a map that Nikolai Gorshkov’s predecessor, and now Gorshkov himself, vowed to redraw.

  And why wouldn’t he?

  Years earlier, the West did little after the Kremlin took back two former Soviet territories, Georgia and Crimea, by force. American and European leaders had ruled out any direct military response then, and now Latvia and Ukraine were in Russia’s crosshairs.

  “Gentlemen, I move that we invoke the Readiness Action Plan,” NATO military commander Jules Rother stated. The plan, established in recent years, acknowledged that the Russia of today was acting differently than the Russia of the mid-1990s. The Baltic States were increasingly anxious about Russia’s nation-grabbing appetites. During a NATO summit in Wales, the alliance had even approved a rapid-reaction force that would include 4,000 troops.

  “Four thousand against—?” the Secretary General Phillipe asked.

  Rother sighed.

  “Forty-thousand. A suicide mission.”

  16

  THE WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE

  AN HOUR LATER

  “Copycats. Completely predictable,” FBI Director McCafferty said as he slid three summaries across the coffee table to the President.

  “They’re coming out of the woodwork. Lone wolves across the country, disenfranchised sickos. We caught one on the Seven Mile Bridge to Key West. His car died and his bomb was shit. Another at Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Dorney Park. That could have been devastating. The guy’s gun wouldn’t fire. But they’re upping security anyway. And LAPD really got lucky, damned lucky taking down a guy with a box of flares. His plan was to light up the Hollywood Hills.”

  “God Almighty,” President Crowe exclaimed. “What a world it’s become.”

  “They’re out there, Mr. President. Inept, but deadly. We’ve notified local police to put every mall and theater and other large gathering places on high alert, and to constantly surveil bridges and tunnels. There’ll be lots of overtime. But big events empower little people.”

  “Little people who want to kill.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Conversation stopped while the President considered his options. After a deep breath, which he audibly exhaled, he said, “Time for General Chase to activate the Guard.”

  Crowe referred to General Ellis Chase, Secretary of Defense. “He can notify the Governors on my order. I want them visible everywhere.” Of course, in reality he knew that everywhere was impossible.

  He made the call and returned to Director McCafferty.

  “Now tell me you have some leads, Reese.”

  The FBI chief shook his head.

  17

  CHESTER, VA

  Julia Jackson had one room left to clean—one room until she could finally take a break after a long day as a housekeeper at the Quality Inn on Old Stage Road. But her day would not be over. She still had to study for a test at John Tyler Community College, where she was pulling straight As in the school’s nursing program. Another test and one step closer to her dream job at Richmond’s Johnston-Willis Hospital.

  She didn’t really care about her housekeeping job. She worked for the money and the tips that were all too infrequent. That didn’t mean she wasn’t diligent; Julia Jackson was good at it. She’d be good at anything, and even better as a nurse.

  The routine never changed; order was important. Turn on the TV, usually daytime talk shows, but today the news. The awful news. She watched for a few minutes and imagined what D.C. hospitals were dealing with—what she’d be doing if something like this occurred when she was on nursing duty. Could she even handle it?

  Yes, she said to herself. But she was not a nurse. Not yet. So the 22-year-old housekeeper returned to her routine: vacuum. Clean the toilets. Put out new glasses with pleated paper covers (something not everyone did). Bag the old towels and replace them. Strip and make the bed. Dump the trash cans. This took 20 minutes. She ended with the rubbish. The bedroom trash can was filled with cardboard and plastic wrapping. She’d seen the same in the bathroom container.

  Julia Jackson was a good student. She remembered something her day manager had mentioned during training her first week on the job; he’d said it more as a required throwaway line, a list he was told to read. One of many. Most didn’t seem important. Even this one, until today.

  She turned back to the news coverage. The bodies on the bridge. Cars still hanging precariously over the edge. The helicopters whirling overhead, the last of the ambulances leaving. She heard the death count. Higher in the last hour and with only estimates on the numbers of those who’d drowned.

  The smoke had cleared, and the live footage showed investigators working the scene into the late afternoon. This wasn’t a world away. The 24th Street Bridge was a direct shot north on 95. Less than two hours away.

  Then Julia looked down.

  The trash can.

  Jackson thought about dialing the front desk, but stopped inches from it. She remembered another thing. If you see something, say something.

  She backed away from the phone. Don’t touch it. Don’t touch anything. She left the hotel room, placed a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and took the elevator to the security office.

  “Hey Alfredo, I need your opinion,” she said to the front desk clerk. “But first let me borrow your computer.”

  “Oh?”

  Julia hadn’t talked much to Alfredo Jimarez, but she was always pleasant to him. Like a nurse would be.

  “Nothing personal,” he said. “You’ll get me in trouble.”

  She was already typing key words into Google and not focused on his comment. Her search took her from one extract to another.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Uh huh.” She continued to type.

  “Rooms all done?” he asked after a minute.

  Julia Jackson shushed him.

  “Really, if anyone sees—”

  She leaned back, satisfied with what s
he found.

  “There,” she exclaimed.

  “There? There what?”

  She stood.

  “Come with me. Room 312.”

  In the room, Jimarez looked into the wastebasket filled with AAA and AA battery wrappers.

  “It’s just trash from some tourist. Dump it.” He began to reach down.

  “No!” she shouted. It was so loud and so unusual a command from the typically quiet housekeeper that Jimarez froze.

  “Who uses so many batteries?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Tourists. Photographers.”

  “Right, but who else?” she asked.

  “Julia, enough! You’re going to get us both in trouble.”

  “I’ll tell you.” She pointed to the still turned on TV set. Now she wished she hadn’t touched the remote. Fingerprints, she thought. Jimarez still didn’t get it.

  “The attack, Alfredo. They say terrorists need batteries. That’s what I Googled.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Jackson stood eye to eye with Jimarez.

  “For bombs, goddammit.”

  “Jesus, you’ve been watching too much crap. Just clean the room.”

  She ignored him. “Depending on what they planned, they’d need lots of batteries. That’s what I see.”

  “No way. We’re not anywhere near….”

  “Wrong. We’re close to Washington. Now go look up who was in this room last night and what time he checked out.”