Beneath the smoke pall, the kerosene-stained waters of the Potomac bubbled as debris from the sunken fragments of the airliner’s fuselage broke free and popped to the surface. Bright orange flotation seat cushions, jagged pieces of cabin ceiling insulation, and other unidentifiable odds and ends bobbed in the river.
Thorn came to the western end of the mangled bridge and stopped, staring downward into the black fog, straining to see clearly. Was that someone out in the water, drifting facedown in the midst of all the other debris? He caught a flash of long golden hair and made his decision without conscious thought. Nobody else was in a position to see what he saw or to act in time.
He stripped off his uniform jacket, kicked off his shoes, and dove straight into the Potomac~straight down into the black, icy waters.
For a terrible instant, Thorn feared the frigid cold had paralyzed him that he would never taste the air again. But a single frantic kick brought him to the surface. He sucked in a welcome lungful of oxygen and spat out the sickeningly sweet taste of the jet fuel clogging his mouth and nostrils. Then he started swimming, covering the distance toward the bobbing head he’d glimpsed so faintly with a powerful crawl stroke. As he swam, he tried to keep his bearings with quick glances toward the shattered bridge.
Twenty yards. Forty. He was starting to tire now, weighed down by the cold, the water saturating his shirt and trousers, and the kerosene burning its way down into his lungs. Where was she? Had she already been dragged under?
Thorn pushed a charred seat cushion out of his path and began treading water, pushing himself above the surface as he spun slowly, peering in all directions. There! He spotted the tangle of golden hair drifting just a few yards away.
He lunged out and grabbed the floating woman from behind. With his right arm locked around her chest to pull her face out of the water, he used his left to turn around and kicked out for shore, sculling vigorously against the slow current pushing him down toward the burning Fourteenth Street Bridge. The distance, the icy cold, and the weight dragging at his hip all fused in one long, nightmarish journey without a clear beginning and without a visible end.
Thorn could barely move by the time he reached the shallows. He was only dimly aware of the sudden rush of volunteers who came thrashing into the Potomac to help him out onto the long grass at the water’s edge. He lay shuddering for long moments, gasping for air. When an Air Force sergeant knelt down to drape a spare jacket over his shoulders, he recovered enough to lever himself to his knees.
“What about the woman? Is someone helping her?” he heard himself ask hoarsely.
The sergeant’s face fell and he looked away. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said softly. “It was no good, sir. You couldn’t have done anything for her. No one could have.”
Thorn stared past the noncom to where the blond-haired passenger lay faceup, staring blindly at the sky. She was quite young, he realized. And quite pretty. But there was nothing left below her thighs but a few dangling scraps of bloodless flesh.
On the Virginia shore, near the Fourteenth Street Bridge The rescue crews were still hard at it well into the night, working under hastily rigged floodlights to gather corpses and personal effects. Park Police and Coast Guard patrol boats motored back and forth across the searchlight-lit Potomac as they fished more bodies and more debris out of the river. Teams of divers in heavy wet suits were already conducting a coordinated search for the aircraft’s black boxes the 757’s flight data and voice recorders.
Helen Gray climbed wearily out of the official car she’d borrowed and made her way slowly down the steep embankment. The smell of burned metal and flesh hung everywhere in the air, on the roadway, on the grass, and in her clothes and hair. Earlier during that long, terrible day, she’d led a cadre of
FBI
volunteers in desperate rescue efforts on the D.C. side of the river. Now she’d taken the longer way around via the still-intact Memorial Bridge to find the man she loved.
Exhausted soldiers still plainly shaken by what they had witnessed directed her toward a small clump of senior officers gathered near the water’s edge.
One, a gray-haired Navy captain, nodded when she asked after Peter.
“Colonel Thorn? Yeah. He’s around here somewhere, ma’am.” He looked up, squinting further down the riverbank against the floodlights. Then he pointed toward a lone figure staring out across the water. “That’s him.”
Helen nodded her thanks and moved on.
Peter Thorn looked up at her approach. His drawn face held a look of anger and sorrow stronger than any she had ever seen before. “This was deliberate?” he asked grimly.
She nodded. “Several hundred eyewitnesses have reported seeing two or three distinct missile trails merging with the plane. And we know where the terrorists fired from. The canal park. They killed an innocent bystander there. We found the body this afternoon.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m afraid it gets worse, Peter,” she said gently. “Somebody blew up the main fuel storage tanks at Dallas/Fort Worth International two hours ago. Several hundred thousand gallons of jet fuel went up in seconds. They’re still trying to fight the fires and make some estimate of the damage and casualties, but it’s pretty bad.”
She paused briefly before delivering the rest of her news. “The local papers here and in Dallas have already had phone calls claiming responsibility for both attacks. They seem genuine.”
“From the god damned New Aryan Order?”
Helen shook her head. “No. These came from a group called the African Liberation Front. They claimed they were retaliating against the ‘Nazi white establishment.’ ”
“Christ. That’s all we need.” Peter looked away again, out toward the floodlit river. His eyes were full of pain. “I became a soldier to fight the kind of bastards who would do something like this. The kind who shoot down airliners full of women and kids just to make some lousy political point. But now it’s happening right here at home, and I can’t do a single thing to stop it.”
She moved closer, into the circle of his arms. “I know,” she said softly.
He held her tighter, softly stroking her hair taking what comfort he could from her presence and her warmth.
NOVEMBER
15
JSOC
headquarters, North Carolina.
Officers from three separate services and several different units filled the JSOC’s main conference room. Delta Force officers mingled with their counterparts from the Navy’s
SEAL
Team Six, the Air Force’s air commando units, the Army’s Ranger forces, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers. While they waited for Major General Sam Farrell to appear, they chatted quietly among themselves, exchanging theories about why they had been summoned on such short notice.
Colonel Peter Thorn finished talking to Bill Henderson, his successor at Delta’s A Squadron, and moved off toward the water cooler. His throat still hurt from the kerosene he’d swallowed in the Potomac, but the Pentagon doctors had cleared him for continued duty, with the sternly worded proviso that he significantly increase his fluid intake for the next seventy-two hours.
“Attention.”
The single, crisp order cut off every conversation in midsentence. Every man turned toward the entrance to the conference room and came to attention.
The commander of the
JSOC
appeared there suddenly, flanked by his top operations officer, Colonel Raymond Ziegler. The general had a grim, set expression on his face. Ziegler’s face was studiously blank.
Farrell waved them into the chairs surrounding a long, rectangular conference table. “Please take your seats, gentlemen. We have a lot of ground to cover this afternoon.”
The general strode to the head of the table while Thorn and the other officers found their assigned places. He didn’t waste any time on the regular briefing platitudes. “I just got off the phone with the Joint Chiefs. As of 1500 hours today, all elements of this command are on full alert. All leaves have been canceled, and my staff is already issuing an immediate recall order to all affected personnel.”
Despite the earlier speculation, Thorn was surprised. Before he’d flown down to Pope Air Force Base earlier that morning he’d seen no signs of unusual activity at the Pentagon that might explain this sudden order. Washington’s policy makers, the
FBI
, and the American people were still in a state of shock over the twin disasters at Dallas/Fort Worth and National Airport. Had someone stumbled across the headquarters of a terrorist cell big enough to warrant all this military attention?
Farrell’s next words dashed that faint hope. “Gentlemen, the President has authorized a number of emergency measures in a coordinated effort to safeguard air travel over the capital and this country’s other major cities. This operation has been designated
SAFE
SKIES
.”
The general was careful to keep his tone neutral, but Thorn could sense that he disagreed with aspects of the plan he was busy laying before them. He’d known Sam Farrell for too long to be taken in by his poker face. “As approved by the White House this morning, Operation
SAFE
SKIES
has several key provisions.
“First, effective immediately, the
FAA
has prohibited all private flights into and out of the Washington, D.C., area.
“Second, the government is exerting pressure on the airlines to sharply curtail the number of commercial flights in and out of both National and Dulles. Similar measures will be applied to all airports of significant size across the United States.”
Thorn and several other officers around the table whistled softly in amazement. Disrupting the normal flow of civilian air traffic to that extent for any length of time would seriously affect the national economy. Certainly, it would cost the airlines, commercial freight companies, and a host of other businesses dearly in lost revenue and efficiency.
“Third, the Air Force will begin an around-the-clock program to retrofit commercial jetliners with the jammer and flare dispenser systems already used by our military transport aircraft.”
That, too, was astounding. On a per-plane basis, the costs of such modifications were not exorbitant, Thorn knew, but the total cost of such a program would be enormous. The U.S. airlines alone operated around five thousand passenger jets.
Farrell paused to let the magnitude of the planned federal effort sink in before continuing. If anything, the expression on his face grew even more dour. “These measures are designed to make our job in this operation more manageable.”
Thorn shifted closer to the edge of his seat. What role could the military’s special forces possibly play in this expensive extravaganza? The steps the administration planned were reactive not proactive.
“The President signed a special National Security Action Directive this morning, gentlemen,” Farrell said with emphasis. “And authorises the use of the armed forces within the continental United States to carry out the objectives of Operation
SAFE
SKIES
. Under that directive, we have been ordered to deploy units of Delta Force,
SEAL
Team Six, and the Night Stalkers to northern Virginia, Maryland, and the Washington metropolitan region.”
Thorn glanced to the left and right. The faces of the officers in view all mirrored his own confusion. What the hell did the White House have in mind?
Farrell answered their unspoken questions in a flat, official voice.
“Using ground surveillance teams, helicopter sweeps, and quick-reaction forces, we will be responsible for securing designated air corridors into both Dulles and National airports.” He held up a hand to still the sudden buzz. “Units of the 101st Air Assault Division and the Army and Air National Guard will conduct similar security sweeps around all the other major airports Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago’s O’Hare,
LAX
, and the rest.
“That’s the short and sweet of it, gentlemen.” The general nodded to his chief operations officer. “Colonel Ziegler will brief you on the details in a moment. But before he begins, does anyone have any preliminary questions or comments?”
“I do, sir.” Thorn spoke up first. Unlike the other men in the room, he didn’t hold a field command not at the moment at least. He had less of immediate value to lose by speaking bluntly. “May I speak frankly?”
Farrell nodded. “Always, Pete.”
“Well, sir, first of all, this is not the right mission for our troops. Delta and the SEALs are trained as hard-hitting assault forces, not as glorified military police outfits. Using them this way does not make good military sense.”
The general’s face was impassive. “Anything else, Colonel Thorn?”
“Yes, sir. You know what the areas near most of those airports are like. Christ, around D.C., it’s a mix of heavily wooded countryside and heavily congested population centers.” Thorn shook his head decisively.
“Under those conditions, there’s no conceivable way that a few hundred soldiers and a few dozen helicopters can adequately secure enough ground against terrorists equipped with handheld SAMs. All we’ll succeed in doing is dispersing a large part of the troops and equipment we may need later somewhere else.”
There were mummurs of agreement from around the table.
“What’s worse, sir, is that I’m convinced this whole operation is way too late,” Thorn said flatly. “From what we’ve seen so far, the terrorists conducting these attacks are too damned good to risk sticking their necks into a highly publicized buzz saw. They’ll move on to safer targets instead. I’m afraid we’re going to wind up guarding the team door while these bastards are burning down the farmhouse!” Farrell said nothing for several seconds, leaving Thorn to wonder briefly whether he had finally gone too far. Delta and the other special forces units operated with a high degree of informality away from outsiders and behind closed doors, but a two-star was a two-star was a two-star.