CHAPTER 102
The phones had started ringing at the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. Meetings were hastily convened and Agent Cerniga’s voice bounced by secure satellite into a room full of serious-looking men and women whose eyes were fixed on a series of projected maps and satellite images. Among them were photographs taken the day after the March thirteenth attack by a pair of rogue Predator drones on a remote fishing village in the Philippines. Most of the serious conversation went on after Cerniga’s call was politely concluded with a formal thank-you to him and his agency for their diligence.
“Well?” said the deputy director. “Anything to it?”
A black woman in glasses spoke up.
“If the incident was the result of computer malfeasance, it was cleverly concealed to look like a system failure,” she said.
“Is it possible, Janice?”
“It’s possible.”
“And had that possibility occurred to you before . . .” he checked his watch, “about a half hour ago?”
“Of course,” she answered, with a hint of defiance. “It’s my job to consider such possibilities.”
Someone gasped, and it was only then that she realized that she had said the wrong thing. The deputy director stared at her and she felt the tension in the room escalate, as if everyone were holding their breath. He held her eyes with his as he spoke:
“I was told it was a system malfunction,” he said. “No question. No doubt. Mechanical error.” He paused, but if there was a question there, no one answered it. He spelled it out. “So I’m hearing about this other possibility now because . . . ?”
Everyone shifted. The deputy director was not a man to be left out of the loop without all manner of stuff hitting the fan if said loop didn’t close satisfactorily. Janice removed her glasses and looked him in the face, conscious that her career might be about to take a punch from which it would never recover.
“We thought we could deal with the matter internally until we had some definitive sense of the chain of events, sir,” she said.
“But questions are already being raised external to the service, yes?” he said, his calm suspended by tightening steel cable.
“Apparently. Yes, sir.”
He watched her for a second without blinking.
“When this all blows over, Janice, you and I are going to talk,” he said, without malice or bluster.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“For now I need a list of possibilities as to how it could have been done, how many people would have been involved, and who those people would be,” said the deputy director. “I want that within the hour. Till then, I want all Predator flights grounded.”
“Sir,” said a middle-aged man with nicotine-stained fingers, “that might not be possible . . .”
“Make it possible,” said the deputy director. “Till the system gets a clean bill of health and we know it cannot be hacked, nothing goes up. Clear?”