Hoya Chapter 1
Potomac Paths
“Brilliant!” he said in his best British accent imitation.
“Simply, brilliant.”
Brilliant was his favorite Anglo word, and he loved to use it when he had the opportunity, frequently with a little bit of linguistic relish applied.
0514 GMT
“The bloody fools went and blew themselves up,” marveled Jackson Hughes, a product of the Bayou country in coastal Mississippi.
Hughes, who hails from Ocean Springs, an idyllic little town next to Biloxi on the Gulf Coast, where he grew up eating at Frenchy’s seafood bar on the bay, is one of the foremost Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts. Few analysts better understand the Middle East culture and issues, expressly counterterrorism tactics.
Jackson is a favorite in CIA briefings because he is very original and spot-on in the reports he writes for his superiors, penning his missives mostly late evenings and early mornings, as was his habit.
Not many CIA analysts were getting such rave reviews for their briefings these days.
On first blush, you would not expect a top CIA analyst to hail from Ocean Springs, a picturesque little town of about 18,000 residents known in recent years for its mom-and-pop-style art galleries and many ethnic restaurants. The main road through the historic village lay at the intersection of U.S. Highway 90 about two miles to the east of Biloxi and a similar two miles to the west of Gautier, for all practical purposes itself an amiable suburb of nearby Pascagoula.
Digging deeper you would find clues that the CIA did find these hunting grounds attractive because of the area’s pro-military heritage. Pascagoula is home to Ingalls Shipbuilding, which the Navy heavily relies upon for its new and refurbished ships, and the once proud Naval Station Pascagoula that was decommissioned by the Base Relocation and Closure Act of 1990 (BRAC) in 2005.
More than 350 military installations in the United States had been closed under BRAC in six controversial rounds in 1988, 1991, 1993, 1995, 2005, and the last one in 2021, when nobody thought more closings would occur. Congress and the Defense Department had used BRAC, mainly in the last round of closings, as a useful cloak for approving base closures in politically influential communities like Biloxi-Pascagoula without directly having to take the electoral heat for having done so.
So effective was the political shroud known as BRAC that even the former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, whose father had once worked at Ingalls, could not stop the closures in his former congressional district back to when he served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Lott was such the master parliamentarian that it was said if, “Trent can’t do it, nobody in Congress can do it.”
Biloxi to the west was home to Keesler Air Force Base, a renowned training base where even the famed Tuskegee Airmen trained at one time.
The Biloxi-Ocean Springs-Pascagoula area has known its fair share of disaster, too. Hurricane Camille devastated the area in 1969 when the August Category 5 storm blew through flooding much of the region. The Biloxi Bay Bridge that ran from the shores along Ocean Springs over to the city of Biloxi was heavily damaged. Another 28-foot storm surge in August 2005, during Hurricane Katrina, nearly wiped out the nearby Crescent City also known as New Orleans. The old Biloxi Bay Bridge was finished once-and-for-all when the area was flooded upending the lives of many once more.
Although Naval Station Pascagoula remains closed, Ingalls Shipbuilding thrives today. So do Keesler Air Force Base and the damaged Biloxi Bay Bridge that was replaced by a more storm-resistant version 95-feet high at its greatest span above the bay.
“JSOC said it might happen. I can’t believe that it did,” said Hughes, pointing to his CIA boss, Steve Myerson, who was lingering over another talented analyst nearby. They were together rapidly scanning the data banks trying to confirm what their eyes were reporting. Verification and re-verification of the data, as well as real-time observations, was the rule in Myerson’s shop.
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Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
Mission: To identify and potentially eliminate terror cells using
joint special operations tactics performed through
highly-classified activities.
Publicly-disclosed units: Army’s Delta Force, Navy’s SEAL Team Six,
Air Forces’ Special Tactics Squadron.
Headquarters: Fort Bragg, North Carolina &
Liberty Crossing, Arlington, VA.
Size: Estimated 7,500 (2028 figure) employees.
FY 2028 Budget: Estimated US$ 4.33 billion.
______________________________________
“These yahoos were trying to annihilate us, and they did themselves instead.
“Brilliant,” repeated Hughes, smiling. “Brilliant.”
The room, predictably, was in chaos. The room did not quite know what to make of this niggling situation, either.
It had long been rumored that Western governments might try to stage an accidental nuclear explosion somewhere in the Islamic east, some covert operation designed to undermine the more radical elements of Islam. The Americans had collectively come to refer to these efforts as the “War on Terror.” At least that was what Hughes was trying to remind himself of as quickly as he could rationalize what he had just witnessed.
On the other side of the planet, three brothers from Aleppo were trying to figure out in their minds who detonated the nuclear device in Pakistan when they knew full well that they did not quite have the capacity to do so. They were close to figuring it out, they thought, but they had to actively remind themselves that they were now certain it was not them.
“We have the ability,” Saleem Abu Said assured his youngest brother, Wahlid. Wahlid is a wickedly smart teen his family and friends have nicknamed “Khass,” which combined with his true name, in Arabic, roughly translates into “Special One.”
Khass agreed, alleging that it had to have been the Americans themselves who detonated the bomb. “The one they call Lancer must have done it,” Khass argued. “They have tried many times to get us to do this, but we have our plan, brother, and I have told them no so many times. The money they have offered is much but our purpose, our reason for Jihad, is much greater.”
It had to have been the Americans,” Khass reasoned. “They want it to look like we did this,” he rationalized again, more calmly this time. “They will target the Allamah for revenge.”
The Allamah, an honored leader who had spent decades working with Khass’ family to strike the West, hiding in the meantime behind very significant scholarly work on Islam and comparative Middle Eastern governments that he had been conducting for a Washington-based think tank, was in the next village when the Pakistan explosion occurred.
“We must warn the Allamah, Saleem. There are eyes in the sky that will seek him out. To lose the Allamah would be to lose an essential ingredient of our Jihad.”
The American intelligence community desperately wanted the latest Jihadist leader dead and preferably not alive. Intel had nicknamed him, “bin Laden II.” But they had scruples to grapple with, and they knew it.
Head of state assassinations, even if bin Laden II was not technically recognized a head of state, had been formally outlawed since right after the days of President Richard M. Nixon. As a consequence, nobody wanted the white-hot glare of attention that would undoubtedly come if they were caught doing such an unauthorized deed, let alone even thinking about it.
Congress had long struggled with the issue of assassinations related to defending U.S. national security. Gerald Ford was the first to ban political assassinations through an executive order he issued, EO 11905, as it was officially known when questions were raised that perhaps there had been too many such “head of state hits” by previous presidents. In essence, the law had come to mean that no person employed or acting on behalf of the United States government could or should engage in, conspire, or assassinate, any top official.
“Top official” was a term open for debate within the United States intelligence services. It even inspired a few heated debates in the West Wing, too.
Of course, from time-to-time, presidential administrations have relaxed or even “re-interpreted” which targets these executive orders ban, principally when it comes to terrorism. Ronald Reagan needed it to address the Beirut Marine Barracks bombings in April 1983. Sixty-three people died in that attack, many of whom were intelligence and embassy employees.
The attack was very simple in its execution. We, as a country, had never before seen or experienced this type of an operation. A delivery van packed with some 2,000 pounds of explosives was detonated by a suicide bomber who drove the vehicle under the portico of the horseshoe-designed building and blew it up. The driver was never effectively challenged by U.S. security.
The entire central facade of the embassy in Beirut collapsed, leaving a pile of former balconies and offices in heaped tiers of rubble that emergency personnel would have to navigate for weeks in the aftermath of the blast.
Many to this day point to the Beirut Marines incident as being the first of the Islamist-inspired terror attacks on the United States and the dawning of a new era for which the United States of America has at times been unprepared to deal with effectively.
Attempts were made, however, to strengthen America’s hands against terror. For example, George W. Bush solidified the role of his Director of National Intelligence, the DNI, in 2008, a position that was officially formed in 2005. Barack Obama did the same, but critics believed he weakened the rules somewhat, too. That is debatable but debatable is currency in the nation’s capital. And other amendments by other presidents followed.
Regardless, the DNI since 2008, has been the lead official in the United States responsible for coordinating and managing our nation’s intelligence services. The DNI reports directly to the President and serves on the President’s National Security Council (NSC) working directly with all of the relevant agencies of our federal government.
There are those who believe the DNI is too weak, conversely, to be fully effective on behalf of the United States. Such opinions often fall along party lines. Democrats do not like strong DNI’s while Republicans generally adore them. In either case, arguments had long been made in official Washington that too many intelligence services, including at the Defense and Homeland Security departments, only made intelligence less intelligent.
Anyone involved with national security in the United States knew the stories of CIA targets on the other end of the sniper rifle who knowingly dared our guy to pull the trigger. A shutter shot would be laughingly dismissed by our adversaries when the photo of the surprised but unharmed target showed up, as it inevitably always did. A specific tap-tap to the same spot marked a kill.
Many in the clandestine service to our nation remembered well the story of Ollie North and Admiral John Poindexter, the alleged rogue team who thumbed their noses at Congress and ran their secret missions to Nicaragua on behalf of the vastly underfunded and outmanned rebel Contras.
If not familiar, service members were certainly told about the Iran-Contra Affair, over and over and over again, by instructors and advisors alike who wanted them to avoid the same political landmines. Congressional inquiries, televised live to a captivated and disbelieving audience, had skewered the two officers’ reputations, whether deservedly or not. Even President Reagan would later admit that he felt misled by his wayward aides. Many conservatives in Congress would eventually no longer openly support the two former aides either, despite great public fanfare in political circles for the former presidential aides.
Still, more students of intelligence marveled at how SEAL Team Six had surprised bin Laden I on May 1, 2011, in his lair, tapping him twice on the left side of his face, without hesitation or remorse. No trial for him and he wasn’t even a head of state. “Justice,” President Obama once mused, which the American public seemed to agree with as well.
If the bin Laden escapade did not captivate one, maybe the Delta Force Team story about corralling the fugitive former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein from his hiding hole on an isolated Iraqi farm, almost literally by his matted hair, got your attention. No trial there either. New Iraq would see to it that Saddam, too, was executed in short order.
Now that this had happened, nobody, it seemed, quite believed it. In fact, few suspected yet that the United States might be involved in voluntarily detonating a nuclear device in the first place.
Or maybe, it should be said, somebody in the United States might have been involved, but probably not the White House. It would not have been President Stone’s style.
The White House Situation Room could not quite figure out what reality was at this moment in time. That is hardly a criticism. “Situations” are very difficult to assess as they are unfolding in real time.
Even though a president and his or her national security team often have the technological benefit of real-time audio and video feeds of the event, making sense of what you were hearing, seeing, and thinking, added new dynamics – and tensions - to the already confusing situation.
Situations today come with too much information, if you can believe it.
The President, seated at the end of the long mahogany table closest to the door, was rubbing the presidential right temple rather vigorously. The other hand was left free to twirl a set of car keys, almost as if the President was Freudianly thinking of escaping the tense station deep within the White House confines. Not many presidents of the United States had the ability or opportunity to get in a car and drive anywhere. It was a habit, a quirk, the President had, to carry her car keys even though she was not planning or permitted to drive anywhere.
Admiral John Wilson Lynce, III, the four-star Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the great state of Georgia, Kings Bay, in fact, sat next to the President wondering if POTUS’ temple-rubbing meant that his Commander-in-Chief did indeed have a headache from the turmoil unfolding on the screen in front of her. Or, Admiral Lynce conjectured, was the President about to explode because no one seemed to have an answer as to what was going on?
“Let me ask the question again. What the hell just happened?” the President asked calmly, but clearly emphatically.
“What we know right now is that an atomic-grade bomb detonated over Western Pakistan,” began Rear Admiral Steve Myerson. Myerson was a ship-ho career naval officer who had served three deployments to the Middle East himself since graduating from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He had also earned a prestigious doctorate in International Relations from Georgetown University, learning to speak three languages besides English in that period; Arabic, Russian, and Mandarin.
“The wave,” he continued, “has rippled across the country, infecting territory and populations we cannot even calculate at this time.
“Madam President, there has been an incident of unprecedented proportions,” said Myerson understatedly. “It will take some time to accurately assess the situation, I believe. For the moment, we do not see any direct threat to the United States or her allies.
“In the meantime, I can confirm for you what we do know. We know that Pakistan is officially known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” Myerson plodded through. “Her population is 180 million. We believe the affected area is some 20 million souls involved. We have not been able to communicate with President Hussain, as of this hour. President Hussain was in the area of the detonation, but that fact is not yet confirmed by any of our intelligence services.
“Prime Minister Sharif is also missing, we believe.”
Mamnoon Hussain has been President of Pakistan since 2013. A textile businessman, he had been a relatively successful leader during the intervening years. Sometimes Hussain was seen as a friend of the United States, and at other times has been seen an antagonist, depending on the circumstances. Born in India during British colonial rule, he was a little unpredictable to the American intelligence community, but then again, he had some unique experiences governing him from that background.
Many referred to President Hussain as a polite Islamist.
President Stone believed President Hussain was someone she could work with reasonably. Their relationship, thus far, had been very cordial and productive.
Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister under Hussain, is known as the Lion of Punjab. One of Pakistan’s wealthiest citizens, Sharif is a veteran politician who comes from the country’s largest political party. He has a lot of experience in managing a rough-and-tumble country.
According to U.S. intelligence sources: He, Sharif, successfully ousted Pervez Musharraf, the thorny prime minister who preceded him. Musharraf was not one of the United States’ most trusted allies. Sharif had long been credited with holding his country together politically in the days following Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s stunning 2007 assassination. He had been the Prime Minister from 1990 to 1993, and again from 1997 to 1999, before coming back yet again, remarkably, in 2013.
“We did not have contact with either leader before the explosion, so we do not know what to make of the situation as of now,” Myerson continued. “India has gone on high alert, and we are concerned about their reaction. The Omanis have also alerted their forces but appear to be calm at this hour.
“I wish I could report more solid information, Madam President, but we cannot,” Myerson audibly sighed.
“We can add, Madam President, that it appears that the affected area is principally the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Tribal Areas lie to the northwest and include the Frontier Regions.”
Myerson continued: “The territory is almost exclusively inhabited by the Pashtuns. Roughly two percent of Pakistan’s population, some 3.4 million people live in this area. The Pashtuns are historically a warrior class of citizens.
“There are some 400 Pashtun tribes or clans making this an exceedingly difficult task to classify and identify, Madam President,” Myerson stated matter-of-factly.
Our work is cut out for us, he thought but did not say.
“Since the late 1990’s, the Pashtuns have been known for being the primary ethnic group comprising the Taliban. How is that for making things more complicated?” The Taliban, of course, had been one of America’s most annoying nemeses since the days of the Twin Tower attacks in New York City.
Pakistan is a uniquely challenging country for the world’s powers to influence. Pakistan itself has been managed over the centuries by various empires including the Persians, the Sikhs, the Mongols, and the British, to name just a few. She shares borders with arch-rival and fellow nuclear power India to the east and China to the northeast. Nuclear-equipped Iran is to the southwest and Afghanistan is to the far west. The Gulf of Oman is to the south.
A civil war in 1947 saw Pakistan cede territory for the country now called, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. She was left with four provinces and four federal territories to govern, and a very intense and complicated mix of religions and political attitudes making the country, said charitably, seem a little unstable at times.
DNI
Myerson, President Stone’s Director of National Intelligence, a very studious looking foreign policy expert who once tutored under the famed Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, was looking on in disbelief at the full-wall monitors. His green eyes were deeply analyzing for himself what was unfolding before him with each frame of the digital footprint. And yet, here he was, trying to calmly explain to the President what he knew when he knew he truly knew nothing at all. Yet.
The intelligence services’ monitors were replaying the massive nuclear explosion that had now enveloped the western mountain range area in Pakistan. Even on color monitors, it was horrific. The shock wave looked as if it was exploring each and every cave as it spiraled into all openings without knocking first.
The reality was beginning to set in for the still remarkably young DNI, who nonetheless had more than twenty-five years of experience working as a skilled diplomat. A Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University’s legendary School of Advanced International Studies and the Georgetown doctorate left him at a distinct disadvantage in this case, at least. Surprisingly. Numbingly.
The tale-tale mushroom cloud was eerily reminiscent of those he had seen at testing grounds in the Sahara Desert not ten years earlier. He was Black Ops then, part of the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC to bureaucrats. JSOC was a great invention of the post-9/11 world, where various elements of America’s intelligence community had realized that to win the War on Terror, we had to learn how to work with – not against – one another.
Active since late 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president, and Ronald Reagan was about to enter office, JSOC now had seventy-five hundred civilian and military personnel working to protect the homeland from threats abroad and within.
JSOC’s mission was and is to identify and eliminate wherever and whenever possible terror cells globally. The Army’s Rangers and Delta Force, as well as the Navy’s SEAL Team Six, and the U.S. Air Force’s Special Tactics Squadron, are all part of JSOC’s authorized operations, at least as far as the public knows currently.
What we do know about JSOC is that they run deep into the Pentagon machinery and have been controversial to those who oppose a strong military and intelligence community in America. JSOC’s advocates believe them to be a saving grace, a critical component for the national security of which America’s strength depends upon such services. For example, some have referred to JSOC and its parent authority, the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, as representing the end of military accountability. They have also been called “secret assassins” and “shadow warriors,” for instance. On the flip side of the coin, JSOC has been conversely labeled, “America’s archangels.”
USSOCOM is structured into four primary service units that JSOC works closely with: The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC); the Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWARCOM); the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC); and, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC). Some “in theater” commands exist at Homestead Air Force Base South of Miami, Florida; Stuttgart in Germany; Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado; Yongsan in Korea; and, Camp Smith in Hawaii.
Noted JSOC operations over the years have been revealed at Desert One in Iran (President Carter, 1980); Grenada (President Reagan, 1983); the Achille Lauro civilian passenger cruise ship hijacking in the Mediterranean Sea (President Reagan, 1985); Panama (President Bush 41, 1989); Gulf War (President Bush 41, 1991); Somalia (President Clinton, 1993); Haiti (President Clinton, 1994); Balkans (President Clinton and President Bush 43, 1996-2001/02); Afghanistan (Presidents Bush 43 and Obama forward, 2001 to present); and, Iraq (Presidents Bush and Obama forward, 2003 to present).
The Yemeni-American terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a JSOC target as well and was assassinated in September 2011 by American drones and Hellfire missiles for his leadership role in terror against the West.
Two senior Somali members of Al-Shabaab were killed in October 2013, by JSOC missions as well, one of whom was Ibrahim Ali, an explosives specialist known for his skill in building and using homemade bombs and suicide vests to kill his Western targets. Traces of JSOC were also found in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran, on occasion.
The Sahara tests had gone undetected for the most part by our foreign adversaries because of the way in which they did their damage. They called them dirty bombs. Dirty or not, they were lethal, but it did not take a rocket scientist to recognize their unique signature. Or, their deadly results.
People had died in the Pashtun incident. Maybe only hundreds. Certainly not thousands. If they were indeed the enemy, few in the West would care. The angst would be among the nation states that constantly monitor each other from space-borne satellites, training lenses on the other.
Russia would express alarm to the United States. The United States would express concern to China. China would ask its member states if they were responsible for this exchange even though they would suspect Israel or some other Western wayward player.
For the moment, at least, however fleeting that moment of secrecy might be, the President was happy to hear that no media had yet interrupted their daily routines to break in with red-bannered news alerts announcing that something extraordinary, something very unprecedented, had just happened in the Middle East.
Not many people live in the rugged and practically inaccessible mountains of this region, she rationalized. Doubtful anyone had a PDA camera on hand to record the event.
It was highly unlikely that many people were within the compact crush zones that dirty bombs emit, she thought to herself. “If they were there, they deserved it,” she found herself concluding rather surprisingly out loud to no one in particular. “We will find the responsible party,” she said again out loud.
Al-Qaeda’s notorious leader, Osama bin Laden, eluded capture for nearly ten years. The George W. Bush Administration, fondly remembered as “43,” never found him, but they certainly turned over a lot of stones looking for him. It would be a trusted courier who would do bin Laden in in the end but in the Obama era.
Enhanced interrogation, it had been rumored led to our knowledge about the courier, and while it is a nasty business, it is fruitless to argue with results, thought the President. “Waterboarding worked.” They found their man then, too.
46
Jennifer Mason Stone, the 46th President of the United States, was nearing the end of one harrowing term in office, self-limited because of an impulsive pledge she had made in her original campaign for office nearly four years ago now. It was a novel pronouncement by modern political standards.
But then again, Jennifer Stone was re-thinking this promise. After all, Barack Obama had been re-elected, not too long ago, and his staunch Republican rivals thought he was a one-termer for certain. Without question, they had thought.
Though immensely popular even now, up until this point, it looked like President Stone was going to be unsuccessful in tracking down and bringing to justice the man who the world agreed had killed nearly 5,000 more unsuspecting Americans on that other September morning three years before.
It just might be that returning to a quiet life in her native Ohio might be in order, and not so bad really.
A competitive tennis player, very fit by any standard, President Stone was full of what one would call Midwestern sensibilities. She had been elected four years before because of her focus on balancing the budget and getting the United States out of the Middle East. Obama would have done it during his terms in office, but ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, had dragged him into another unending ground war, despite his best efforts to avoid one.
President Obama and her predecessor had also failed to get out, but people were willing to give her one last try. They trusted President Stone but she appeared to have failed them, too, the opinion polls now said of late.
After bin Laden had been executed, everyone had thought that Al-Qaeda was relegated to the trash pile of history. It was a mistake to have thought the War on Terror was over. Who knew they would strike again in 2025, so convincingly?
Now, maybe someone had finally succeeded in finding the intelligence community’s bin Laden II. Perhaps, Al Qaeda itself? Coups after all, were not uncommon among terrorists, despots, and dictators.
The President’s vice president, Morgan Staples, a Congressman from New Jersey, had been defeated very early in the primary season by Governor Thomas. That did not bode well for President Stone’s legacy, and Thomas reveled in the thought.
It was good that Staples, who always seemed to be very wimpish on matters of national security, had been dispatched so effortlessly. What Thomas and others did not know is that the Vice President was connected friends with one Stan Montgomery, going back to early childhood.
Kirkpatrick had been Steve Myerson’s most remarkable professor at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Government when he was a member of the prestigious University Fellows program and working hard on his Ph.D. in International Relations.
There had been many remarkable and accomplished professors at Georgetown, but Dr. Kirkpatrick was unquestionably first among equals in his opinion. Kirkpatrick was in a very Hoya-hallowed group. Madeline Albright had been Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State; Donald McHenry had been Jimmy Carter’s UN Ambassador; and, John Roberts had been a law professor before becoming George Bush 43’s designated Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Georgetown was a breeding ground for the politically elite and the politically talented.
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The Presidential Medal of Freedom
Purpose: The highest civilian award authorized by an Act of Congress
and bestowed upon by the president of the United States to recognize
the recipient for contributions made to world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors that in the nation’s best interests.
First established and awarded: 1960.
Past recipients: The crew of Apollo 13; Humanitarian Mother Teresa;
former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; former U.S. President Ronald Reagan; performing artist Aretha Franklin; and,
Scientist Stephen Hawking, among many others.
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The conservative icon and lioness of the political right, who later was also Steve’s valued mentor at the prolific Heritage Foundation, had been at one time Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to the United Nations. He had watched her hobnob with Reagan, Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev, England’s Margaret Thatcher, and many more global dignitaries. In fact, he once turned on the news after class one night, in which she was dressed very elegantly, only to see her sitting amongst those three same heads of state. Her dedication to teaching was never questioned by him or his fellow Ph.D. students after that evening having realized that she was dressed not for them, nor understandably absent, but uniquely outfitted for yet another world event that was of equal importance to her.
People on both sides of Washington’s political aisle loved Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s intellect and brashness, even if some of them disagreed vehemently with her politics. Steve soaked up everything the mesmerizing Kirkpatrick had to teach him in the confines of their many one-on-one lecture sessions, both pre- and post-doctoral.
A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Ambassador Kirkpatrick was a Francophile. She loved anything French: policy, history, culture, cuisine, language, jokes. She loved it all. As America’s first female U.N. Ambassador, she was decidedly anti-communist and highly outspoken. The Kirkpatrick Doctrine believed that anybody, communists and dictators included, could be led into democracy and Reagan himself subscribed to her theory, too.
Steve just shook his head.
“We knew this was coming, but I would never have imagined that Al Qaeda, or ISIL, or their now merged group, the MBA, would be this careless,” he mused.
In Arabic, the MBA designated the “Maharib Bilad Alshsham.”
The English translation?
“The Levant Warrior.”
“That place will be radioactive for decades to come.”
Myerson knew that he had to be very careful at this point not to let on to his more junior colleagues that he had abundant suspicions about who might have exploded this particular bomb in Pakistan.
“Director,” said Jackson, “nobody is going to wonder if Al-Qaeda, or ISIL, or whoever they are these days is hanging out in those mountains.”
“Is it possible?” Myerson wondered. “Did we do it?” Worse yet, he asked himself, “Did someone else we know, do it, without sanction?”
Hoya
He knew then, as he knew now, that he was looking forward to seeing that old clock tower at Healy Hall. The great spire, rising high over the rapidly approaching 300-year-old-plus administration building with the most scenic views of Washington’s Potomac River to the west, was just coming into view.
Georgetown University sits on a bluff just west of Washington’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, a vital structure commemorating the author of America’s National Anthem.
Key Bridge connects the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia at Rosslyn, not far from JSOC’s headquarters. The George Washington Parkway runs the course of the riverbank on the other side of the Potomac. Looking down from Georgetown toward the river, the iconic John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts sits to the left, with the White House and Congress in the distance beyond invisible from the campus.
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Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Founded: 1789.
School nickname & yell: The Hoyas and “Hoya Saxa.”
Affiliation: Jesuit (Catholic) & non-profit.
Core subjects: American government and international relations,
foreign service, law, religion, business, and medicine.
2028 Population: 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
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More than 21,000 students attend classes at the 104-acre storybook campus, the majority of whom are in graduate level studies and live offsite, commuting in from several directions after work. The university has a law campus on the Senate side of the Capitol and affiliated programs in the Middle East and Italy.
Jesuit settlers from England, who helped found the area that is now part of the state of Maryland to the west, north, and northeast, operated Catholic schools in the region in secret during the Colonial years before the American Revolution.
The American Revolution settled the question on whether or not one could practice religion freely in the new world so Georgetown was founded by John Carroll in 1789, himself a former Jesuit order priest. On the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, Pope Pius VI selected Carroll to be the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in America and as such he also became America’s first Catholic Bishop.
Congress granted Georgetown the first federal university charter in the United States in 1815. Its medical school was founded in 1851. The school’s blue and gray colors were inspired by the Civil War era when Union troops were housed on campus, in a building that President Abraham Lincoln spoke at in 1861. The colors were adopted in the late 1870’s by the university to show unity among its students in the aftermath of that tragic national clash. A plaque noting President Lincoln’s appearance on the porch overlooking Dahlgren Chapel still stands in silent testimony today.
The architecture of the campus, which has its main gates at the intersection of 37th and O Streets, Northwest, is decidedly Gothic and Georgian. The campus, over the past few decades has undergone some very dramatic changes. The most evident is the McDonough School of Business which is housed in a modern four-story glass and steel structure that sits atop land that once hosted the baseball fields.
Above it, built into a hillside that gives the university its informal nickname, The Hilltop, is the Conference Center and Guest House, a sprawling brick structure that serves as the student center for the university. The Walsh School of Foreign Service is among the best in the world and sits just outside the main gate of the university, in the main building on campus that was named after another prominent president of the university, Father Patrick Healy, along an old residential street in Georgetown itself.
On that same street, is Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where John F. Kennedy attended mass the morning of his inauguration as well as The Tombs, a famous student-friendly restaurant that serves as an unofficial gathering place for Hoya alum, too.
One of the more visible venues on the campus is Gaston Hall, a 700-seat theater where seats are arranged in escalating horseshoe-shaped rows that have been seen on many a news channel. National and international dignitaries have used Gaston Hall since the days of Teddy Roosevelt to deliver highly anticipated policy addresses. Gaston Hall is also used to host university convocations, honorary degree ceremonies, and artistic performances.
It was at Gaston Hall that Zack Greyson came to deliver his first foreign policy address of the 2028 campaign season.
Not more than seven hours ago, Zack was sitting next to the old lighthouse at Anglesey that his great, great-grandfather had helped build many, many years before. Another great, great grandfather had been an early settler of the area around Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg having come over to America in the mid-1620s before the United States became the United States.
Zack Greyson was proud of his heritage.
It used to be that few people knew about Anglesey or its biggest town, Holyhead. But that changed when then-Prince William and Princess Catherine, who were quietly loving their lives as a young RAF family stationed on the rugged Welsh coast. They had become King William and Queen Catherine, in an extraordinary period of time following the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge’s grandmother, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and the subsequent retirement of his father, King Charles II.
Anglesey is an island off the northwestern coast of Wales. The island itself is connected by two bridges to the mainland. A majority of her people still speak Welsh, a remarkably difficult language to remember, he thought, but romantic nonetheless to those who know from where they come. In fact, Greyson thought it funny that the Vikings, the Normans, and the Druids, all called Anglesey home at one time, something he could identify with for a variety of reasons.
Greyson was basking in a post-convention planning session for what might be his presidency ahead. He had long wanted to make a pilgrimage to the old family homestead in Wales. He had heard the stories of his Welsh heritage from his mother and father, himself a proud Georgetown graduate. Now, in Zack’s opinion, had been the time to make that long-delayed visit to his ancestral home before things got even crazier than ever before.
There is nothing like Washington in the fall. Maple leaves take on remarkable gold, red and orange hues. Students returning and new are full of energy, enthusiasm, and anxiety. He was then, too.
Joggers of all experience levels were running up and down the National Mall, just as they had when he made his first trip to our nation’s capital as a teenager. The George Washington and Georgetown University rowers were plying the river near the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a personal favorite.
Makeshift baseball diamonds ringed the gravel pathways on either side of the green strip running from the U.S. Capitol building to the east and Abraham Lincoln’s throne to the west. Here and there you could see a pickup game of football or lacrosse as well. After all, it was that time of year when baseball season and football season collide.
The campaign plane with Greyson for America draped all over its sides in classic Hoya blue and gray, with ’28 painted in dramatic red for its accent impact, was weaving itself down the Potomac River. The crew was racing to get their novel, interestingly, and surprisingly competitive Independent Party nominee for President of the United States to his emergency meeting with the woman who he is now proposing to replace in just a little more than two months.
The old USA Today building on the Virginia side of the river, cantilevered in a silver skin and darkened glass, towered to the right.
He was following the same “s” shaped flight paths planes always take when they make a southerly approach to Reagan National Airport. And true to order, his plane, like all planes, was making what seemed like a fast, steep drive right into the banks of the Potomac.
Official Washington would be racing toward the Labor Day recess. Members of Congress want to go home in time to campaign for re-election. And knowing, too, that he wanted to get back on the campaign trail himself as quickly as possible, Hoya was gathering up the special briefing papers the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the CIA provide all nominees in their final push to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Nonetheless, Zack could not help but to glance out the window of his cabin between scooped up stacks of paper at the promising city rising up to meet him from below.
No doubt a lot of political leaders did have to make new plans now that a nuclear exchange had occurred over Pakistan, a member itself of the world’s shakiest nuclear powers. His briefing papers contained a lot of policy and debating scenarios to consider.
The old campus, in the upscale Georgetown section of town, is neatly woven into the newer more modern campus that the university has become in the city’s desirable Northwest quadrant. More than one Hoya had been president, Zack Greyson was imagining. “Naturally,” he was thinking and now saying privately.
No doubt he was a proud Hoya, at that. He still knew the old Georgetown fight song and loved the newer, We Are Georgetown chant, but he could not help but push back his wiry, dark auburn hair in a nervous gesture that reminded many of another youthful candidate, John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
The young Governor Greyson was going to be tested, unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
“Hoya on final approach,” cracked Secret Service earpieces at the southern-most end of the tarmac just a stone’s throw from the Potomac Marina’s sailboats cruising off the rocky banks of the same river that George Washington once navigated. He could see one lone sailor waving to the plane as if Zack Greyson would soon have a private audience with her.
The Secret Service code word, Hoya, for Zack Greyson, seemed natural to everyone. Zack liked it for obvious reasons.
The media awaiting Greyson’s 778 Star Glancer II rivaled anything the two-term governor of Florida had ever seen. Even at the Independent Party’s convention in his hometown of Orlando at Walt’s house.
It had been a grand political coronation. In fact, as when he ran for governor, very few people had given him a chance of winning. He was an Independent after all. The political machinery of federal, state, and local elections worked against him.
And, yet, he was winning. People loved that he had a vision for what he wanted to accomplish. They loved that he said what was on his mind, and not necessarily what was on script at the moment. They loved that he appeared to them to be genuine and determined. That he was clear on the issues and without fail told people what he thought, not what he thought they wanted to hear necessarily, was a big bonus to those he met.
The forward cabin, where Governor Greyson was sitting, had been reconfigured for the candidate to be a small flying apartment, with all of the creature comforts a non-candidate for office might find at home on the ground. His campaign manager, Jay Tolchin, was exceptionally nervous.
Jay did not like that his meteoric candidate for president was about to wade neck-deep into foreign and defense quagmires that few other politicians might navigate themselves out of without using up the valuable political capital that would be needed to win a presidential election.
Greyson’s national security briefing team, which he inherited the day after his nomination was official, fortunately, included a trusted friend, Joana Laird, from JSOC. JSOC, Greyson knew from his work with the U.S. Senate Budget Committee on Florida defense issues, was costing the United States nearly $9.5 billion a year to maintain.
“I will be happy to pay three times that rate for my JOSC,” thought Greyson to himself, as his briefing began, “just as soon as I get the chance to submit my budget recommendation.”
Monty
Georgetown University was the epitome of what Monty thought a world-class graduate education might entail.
Monty’s professors had also been secretaries of state, U.N. ambassadors, senators, and governors. Two Presidents of the United States, one former and one soon-to-be current he thought, were now his friends. That was the benefit of being a very wealthy and successful businessman.
Stanford had been a superb place to get his undergraduate degree in International Finance. The laid-back lifestyle of Northern California was a great respite from the East Coast upbringing Stan had in elite Rhode Island.
The flat coastline along the Atlantic was an inviting place to have a clambake but nothing in comparison to the fogged-in rocky shoals of the Pacific Coast Highway.
His Catholic mother was very happy to learn that the Jesuits would have their crack at her prodigal son, even if she were not the practicing Catholic she should be. After all, a quality Catholic education is every traditional hard-core Catholic family’s dream. And, Georgetown was the best in her opinion. The oldest even.
She would have settled for Notre Dame if it had come to that.
But sitting there in that tree decades before his first big move to Washington, Monty was more concerned about the heat and the mosquitoes. The dog days of summer in DC would have nothing on this place. People would laugh if they knew that by day he was an international assets trader at a big San Francisco-based venture capital firm.
“What a cover,” he smirked.
Today, his colleagues had this little competition going. To see who could hit their mark the most cleanly. Two near perfect shots right between the eyes of the Nicaraguan Contras. It was their calling card for the naysayers back in Washington to see.
Snipers took pride in their craft and their mission. No questions asked of their superiors. Only flawless professional execution was demanded of them.
Monty loved being a hired hit man by trade. The Marine Corps had trained him well, and he loved taking matters into his hands. He would do it more than once; you can be sure. Being rich from business let him operate as an independent contractor, when and where he wanted to, under whatever circumstances he was willing to accept. He had even risen to the rank of Colonel in the Marine Corps. A lofty position to be sure. Much like his hero, Oliver North.
There had been many cases where he had sent in his teams, financed out of his pocket, on missions that liberated American and Western captives.
Monty despised what had happened to Jihadist captives like journalists Daniel Pearl, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. He agonized over photos of the ISIL leader, Khaled Sharrouf, picturing his seven-year-old son holding the decapitated head of a Syrian soldier in his hands.
The humanitarians David Haines and Alan Henning had suffered undeserved similar fates. ISIL, or ISIS, or whatever they were called now, had even beheaded a young man, Peter Kassig, who had converted to Islam.
Where was the justice in that? Did they kill a fellow Islamist? It was too much for him and others like him to stand.
Of course, he had heard of the reasons for the beheadings, but he did not accept those reasons nonetheless. It was according to the Qur’an, he was told, that those who commit beheadings point to one very specific passage, which says that when you encounter unbelievers on the battlefield, “strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely; then bind the prisoners tightly."
It was barbaric, in Monty’s opinion. It was designed to intimidate. It was designed to take advantage of a weakened state of resolve. It was designed to disgrace those who did not subscribe to Sharia Law. It was unacceptable under any circumstances, Monty believed.
Monty had performed some of these missions for President Stone, and many others, of course, he would argue.
And it justified, he thought, his actions in response, whether an American president agreed or not.
