A great deal of intelligence can be invested
in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow (1914-2005), American novelist
Charlie Bird studied his C-130 manual and tried to cram his head full of Hercules facts, but he wasn’t succeeding. He’d gotten a cryptic official email from his government contract administrator to stand by, but the message had no mission profiles or timing attached. “More follows” was all it promised.
Could be a mission, could be an inspection. Could be about any damned thing. This was vague even by government standards of vagary.
He fervently hoped whatever was coming down the pike wasn’t going to interfere with his plans to work with Tiger Baseball on the World Series opening ceremonies. He looked up from daydreaming over the flight manual and saw behind him a classic—and familiar—silhouette outlined in the harsh backlight reflecting from his rear glass office wall.
Charlie spun in his office chair to face the grinning countenance of General John Glenn McCandless.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Charlie said, springing up from behind his desk. “Could you give a guy some warning?” Charlie and the general exchanged enthusiastic hugs.
“Well bubba, y’neva know when some itinerant military officer is going to show up on your doorstep,” McCandless said. “That’s why you must remain ready at all times.” He slapped his former subordinate on his back. “How the hell are you, Birdman?”
“I’m damned good, sir, thanks in no small part to you.” McCandless had vouched for Charlie and his enterprise in the run-up to the IDIQ contract award. “We’ve done a few things since signing our contract, training mostly. But we’re rockin’ on ready, and those retainer checks keep coming in like clockwork.”
Charlie thought about what he’d just said.
“Hey … you aren’t my warning order, are you? Air Mobility Command said we should get ready to get ready for something, but they didn’t say what. And then here you are.”
“Yeah, I might be,” McCandless said, grinning. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t off on some other thing when I got here, so I had AMC send you that WARNORD.”
Charlie was visibly disappointed. The Tigers thing probably would have to wait on the next World Series in Detroit. And good luck on that. But his contract with the government came first.
“Good thing you pinged us when you did,” Charlie said. “We are just about to sign a big contract with the Tigers to play a role in the World Series opening ceremonies. That was going to be a big deal for us—but you come first, boss. Always.”
McCandless said, “And your nation is grateful, colonel. I know about that Tigers deal, though. In fact, that is precisely why I’m here.”
“You do?” Charlie’s confusion was plain on his warrior’s face. “You are?
“I’ll bring you up to combat speed, brother,” McCandless said. He motioned to the people who had accompanied him. “Do you know Paul Benedict, CIA?”
“Pleasure,” Charlie said, shaking hands.
“Same here, colonel. You can call me Poppy, though. I only get Paul when I’m in trouble with my mother or my ex-wives.” The men laughed appreciatively.
“Poppy it is,” Charlie said. “Charlie for me, please. I only get ‘colonel’ when the general wants something from me.”
He craned his neck around General McCandless to see a short, blonde woman standing timidly in the doorway.
“And who is this?” Charlie asked.
“Charlie, meet Deb Hemme, SIGINT superstar,” Poppy said. He stepped slightly aside and Hemme strode forward with a measure of confidence that she wasn’t feeling inside. Charlie and the CIA analyst also shook hands.
“She is kind of the reason why we are here.”
Out in the lobby, McCandless’s aide, Major Tommy Crosby, was already in laughing flirtation with MDZ’s highly attractive chief operating officer, Kathie Murphy. McCandless pointed at him.
“You know Tommy Crosby.”
Crosby heard his name, looked up and waved at Charlie, then leaned back onto the tall lobby counter to continue flirting.
“Well, general,” Charlie said. “What is it we can do for you?”
“Birdman, let us tell you a war story you haven’t heard yet,” McCandless said. He turned and closed Charlie’s office door. “You probably want to sit down for this.”
Forty-five minutes later, General McCandless and Poppy had briefed Charlie in on the full World Series terror attack profile that depended on MDZ’s cherished C-130H to succeed. At the end of the briefing, Poppy asked Deb Hemme to play the cellphone recording the ECHELON surveillance system had made.
“… I also will arrange to leave behind a special present in the aircraft that will make it part of the celebrations. That part of the mission is a no-charge bonus. The airplane people, they are all former American military, enemies of Islam. Wait one.”
“I bet that’s us, right? ‘All former military, enemies of Islam.’ What’s the ‘wait one’ for, do you know? Sounds like trained military to me.”
Charlie Bird had more time in intelligence briefings than some soldiers had in the Army, but the incredible idea being floated here still struck him with its utter bravado, cunning—and sheer creativity.
No one in the Tigers, he knew, had even asked one question of the mysterious skydiving marketing scheme, beyond ensuring the skydivers had current jump licenses. And my bad, Charlie thought. Because the idea came from my battle buddy, I didn’t ask enough questions, either.
It would be far-fetched except for one thing—MDZ already had the contract with the Tigers, ready to sign, to provide the HALO drop and ceremonial fly-by. To hear that his passengers intended to ensure the plane and its crew would be destroyed as part of the attack was additionally chilling. And enraging.
“We weren’t their enemies before, but by God, we are now,” Charlie said. “They killed that Detroit policeman, and defiled his corpse? How did you match the DNA to Saladin?”
“We have considerable resources,” Poppy said. “It was obvious O’Brien had been spit on, and we collected that for analysis. It even surprised us when we got the match to DNA taken from a weapon Saladin dropped on his way out of a prison he escaped from in 2005. He’d been grabbed by Mossad after a Tel Aviv bus bombing, but he fled back to Iran after his escape.”
General McCandless just nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we thought the voice showed a military background in the recording, based on that ‘wait one.’ That says he was talking to someone and didn’t hang up, though we determined the call was interrupted by a signal failure. Much as I want to roll these pricks up right now, there are larger related issues we’re contending with, too. We want you to continue to play ball with these guys”—Charlie shot McCandless a look, but the general just smiled—“pardon the expression. We want to catch them all at once to make damned sure we can neutralize them all before I shoot them in their fucking heads.”
Charlie flipped open a manila file folder on his desk and pulled out a stapled pack of papers. He turned to the last page where Kathie Murphy had affixed a red sticky tab imprinted SIGN HERE. He took a jet-black Mont Blanc fountain pen, a retirement gift to himself, and signed the Tigers World Series contract with a flourish in wet black ink.
“Okay. We are literally in business with terrorists. Let’s get this party started.”