House Divided

CHAPTER THREE

5:17 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

The Situation Room

The White House, Washington, DC

“I’ve already seen the photographs,” an intern said.

“Gruesome. Corpses and body parts strewn across the hillsides. To think that Marshall Dennis is one of them. God. We studied him in an entrepreneurship class when I was at Wharton. He was amazing – a real force of nature. You wouldn’t think a guy like that would ever die. Like, he wouldn’t allow it, or something.”

Luke was riding in an elevator packed with White House staffers and intelligence people. He glanced at the one who had spoken. The guy was very young, tall and fit, in a blue suit jacket and dress shirt with an open-throated collar, and a flop of blond hair nearly obscuring his face. He reminded Luke of New Wave rock bands from the 1980s.

The kid hadn’t been speaking to anyone specific, just all the elevator riders in general. He had made an announcement of sorts: he had seen the pictures already. Briefly – very briefly – Luke wondered which wealthy campaign donor the kid was the son or nephew of.

The elevator opened into the egg-shaped Situation Room. People who arrived there for the first time were often surprised at how small it was. When a crisis came, like now, for example, and the place started to get crowded, it could give a claustrophobic fits. It was hyper-modern and set up for maximum use of space, with large screens embedded in the walls every few feet, and a giant projection screen on the far wall at the end of the table. Tablet computers and slim microphones rose from slots out of the conference table in the center of the room – they could be dropped back into the table if the attendee wanted to use their own device.

Every plush leather seat at the table was already taken. The seats along the walls were filling up with young aides and assistants, most of them chatting among themselves, tapping messages into tablets, or speaking into telephones.

The young people were excited. Their futures were full of hope, and their eyes were bright with ambition. The fact that they had been awakened and summoned to an emergency meeting this early in the morning only underscored to them how important they were.

Down in the center of the room, where the actual decision-making would happen, the faces were decades older and the eyes were less bright. Susan Hopkins sat at the closest end of the oblong table, in a high-backed chair with the Seal of the President on it. At the far end stood big, chrome-domed Kurt Kimball, Susan’s National Security Advisor. A sprawl of tired-looking men and women took up the seats between them.

Susan and Luke always staggered their arrivals to emergency meetings like this. It was a tactic meant to obscure the fact that they had just awakened in bed together. One glance from Kurt told Luke all he needed to know: they weren’t fooling anyone – at least not anyone who mattered. Luke took a seat in the back row along the wall.

He watched Susan, just slightly below him and to his left. She held a large white coffee mug in one hand. She looked good – slim and fit in a dark blue pantsuit, her hair just a little bit wild. Susan could make the most conservative outfit look sexy. She was talking seriously to her chief-of-staff, Kat Lopez.

Stone looked Kat up and down. Long black hair, pretty face, dark almond eyes, and a tall, full-figured body hidden inside a blue business suit – she looked almost as good as Susan. Her eyes were tired, though, and were starting to show crow’s feet at the edges. Kat was not as young as she looked, and the demands of the job were putting some wear and tear on her.

Suddenly Kurt clapped his big stone hands. He had played basketball in college. His hands were enormous. Kurt himself was big, but his hands looked like they were on the wrong body.

“Order, everybody! Come to order, please.”

The place quieted down. A couple of aides continued to talk along the wall. It was early morning, people were drinking coffee, revving up, starting their day. This was a place for talkers. Quiet, introverted young people didn’t usually end up working at the White House.

Kurt clapped his hands again.

CLAP. CLAP.

CLAP.

The last one sounded like an unabridged dictionary slamming onto a marble floor.

The room went dead quiet.

“Good morning, everyone,” Kurt said. “Thank you for arriving quickly. You all know who you are, so we’re going to skip the introductions.” He paused and looked at Susan. “Madam President?”

“Mister National Security Advisor?” she said.

“Are we ready?”

Susan shook her head. “No. But that never stopped us before.”

Kurt glanced at the young woman sitting just to his left. Luke recognized her as Kurt’s long-time aide. She still wore her hair in the Hopkins Bob that Susan had recently abandoned. “Amy, let’s start with Sharm El Sheikh.”

On the large screen behind Kurt, and the smaller screens around the room, a photograph of an airport terminal appeared. The terminal’s roof was rounded and billowy, almost as though it were a tent. In the foreground of the photo was a ten-story control tower. In the background and fading into the distance were jagged red and brown mountains.

“This is Sharm El Sheikh International Airport,” Kurt said. “It’s the third busiest airport in Egypt, and serves the Sinai Peninsula, particularly the Red Sea tourist resorts located in the south. A little over an hour ago, it was the site of a devastating plane crash in which eighty-three people perished. This includes sixty-eight passengers, twelve cabin crew, and the three pilots on the flight deck – everyone on board the plane.

“Among the passengers were Sir Marshall Dennis, OBE, founder and chief executive of Dennis Hotels Worldwide, as well as the Loose Lips magazine publishing empire. Also on board were United States Representative from Texas Jack Butterfield, and Egyptian Consul-General to London Ahmet Anwar. The flight was a charter from London, carrying a group planning to celebrate the opening of a new Dennis Hotel on the Red Sea, a joint venture with the Texas-based Bonanza Hotel Group and the Egyptian government itself.”

Kurt paused for a moment and looked around the room. “The plane was arriving, and exploded in midair on its final approach to the runway. All indications are that it was foul play. The plane was three years old and had passed all recent safety inspections with no red flags. This suggests that either a bomb was planted on board, or the plane was hit by hostile fire, possibly a shoulder-fired rocket launched from the mountains you see in the photo. There were no Egyptian military in the vicinity at the time, and satellite footage shows no unauthorized use of Egyptian airspace. So there’s no chance someone fired on them by accident.”

“Which way are we leaning?” Susan said. “Bomb or rocket fire?”

“Rocket fire,” Kurt said without hesitation. “The plane was operated by TUI Airways, the largest charter flight company in the world, with an excellent safety record and a reputation for stringent background checks of employees. The flight departed from Gatwick Airport, which maintains tight security and has no history of lapses or breaches. Of course, the investigation into the personnel who loaded or were in contact with the plane before departure is just beginning. But for the moment, I am going to go out on a limb and say I have no reason to believe that a bomb was placed on board.”

Kurt looked at a man in military dress greens sitting at the conference table. He was thin and sinewy, square-jawed, with a gray flattop haircut. His hand was raised just slightly. Luke recognized him instantly.

“General?” Kurt said.

“Frank Loomis with Joint Special Operations Command,” the man said. “You’re not out on a limb. Without divulging too much, it’s safe to say we have people on the ground in Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Our early intelligence suggests that this was an attack by Wilayat Sinai, probably with an assist from out-of-towners. Maybe Al-Qaeda, maybe ISIS. Furthermore, we’re showing that…”

Kurt held up a big hand in a STOP gesture. Heavy hitters visited here a lot, and they were accustomed to running things. But they tended to find out that this was Kurt Kimball’s domain. He called the tune and you danced to it.

“Okay, General. Let’s take this one step at a time, and get everyone here on the same page. It’ll make life easier down the road.”

The general grunted, possibly in agreement, possibly in frustration.

“Amy, bring up the Sinai Peninsula, please.”

On screens all over the room, maps of the Sinai Peninsula appeared, sandwiched between the vast landscape of Egypt proper to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Israel to the northeast and the sliver of the Red Sea directly to the east. Luke knew the terrain well.

“The Sinai Peninsula is the upside-down triangle you see here. Nominally part of Egypt, it’s been a political football throughout human history. From 1968 until 1980, it was occupied by the Israelis in the aftermath of the Six Day War. Border tunnels are routinely discovered between the north of the peninsula and the Gaza Strip, suggesting steady movement of fighters and materials between those two places.

“The local population are nomadic Bedouins, Sunni Muslims, elements of whom have become increasingly radicalized in recent years, particularly as Red Sea tourism in the south and east has grown.”

A middle-aged woman in a business suit raised a hand. “Do you suppose this is because beach resorts bring Western culture, like alcohol, dancing, and women in bikinis?”

Kurt shrugged. “I’m sure that offends some sensibilities. And I believe that is probably the reason Marshall Dennis seems to have been targeted specifically. His resorts have a reputation for a certain brand of hedonism, and his magazines are known for salacious celebrity gossip and scantily clad young models.”

“Marshall Dennis was a pig,” the woman said.

A few people laughed. Luke rolled his eyes. It might be a little early in the morning to climb up on a soapbox. Anyway, the man was dead.

“People have strong opinions about Sir Dennis,” Kurt said. “But no matter his faults, to be clear, an element of this is economic as well. The Bedouins have been pushed off ancestral lands to make way for new development, and a class of well-paid Egyptian and international workers have been flying in to work at the resorts, causing an infrastructure building boom and driving up the prices of nearly everything. This is far from the first terrorist attack in that region.”

He glanced at his aide. “Amy, can we see the list?”

On the screens, a typed list appeared. There was very little graphic design. Each entry had a title in bold, and a brief description underneath. The list began to scroll down, giving a sense of its length – perhaps thirty or forty entries, all of them attacks.

“We won’t do this exhaustively,” Kurt said. “You can all see how many incidents there have been. We’ll just jump in here and there. December 2013 – an attack on an Egyptian police compound killed sixteen recruits. March 2014 – multiple cross-border rocket attacks on Eliat, Israel, activated the Israeli Iron Dome defense system. All but one rocket was intercepted, ten people were injured, and there was one death from a heart attack. February 2015 – a bus was bombed along the Red Sea coast, killing three Korean tourists and the Egyptian driver. A message afterwards warned all tourists to leave Egypt.”

Kurt sighed. “And of course, the big one. Metrojet flight 9268 exploded on October 31, 2015, soon after departing Sharm El Sheikh. The flight was full of Russian tourists, and two hundred twenty-four people died, which was everyone on board.”

He paused. “In part, the opening of a new Dennis Hotel was a demonstration by the Egyptian government that they had finally subdued the Wilayat Sinai, and the Red Sea resorts were open for business again.”

“I guess that theory is out the window,” someone said.

“At the risk of sounding ignorant,” Susan said, “who are these people, this… Wilayat?”

Kurt nodded. “Of course. Wilayat Sinai, or ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula, are the group formerly known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, or in English, the Supporters of the Holy House. Ansar was a loosely organized group of Salafist terrorist cells carrying out attacks in the region from the early 2000s. Since 2011, the Egyptian government has taken aggressive steps to eradicate those cells. In response, Ansar has affiliated itself with ISIS, making a formal oath of allegiance in 2014. We have widely corroborated intelligence that as ISIS loses the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, it sees the lawless tribal lands – mainly open desert and mountains – of the Sinai as an attractive possible base of operations.”

General Loomis interrupted. “Of course they do. Which I think brings me to my original point.”

“Yes, General,” Kurt said. “I think we’re ready for your input now.”

Loomis nodded. “Thank you. As much as this plane crash is a terrible thing, the chatter we’re privy to suggests that this isn’t the actual attack. It’s a magician’s sleight of hand, designed to get us looking in one direction, while the real trick takes place elsewhere.”

“What evidence do you have to support that?” Susan said.

The general shook his head. “Madam President, I’m not at liberty to discuss our top secret intelligence, or its sources, in a meeting like this one. I think you must know that.”

Susan looked sharply at the general. “General Loomis, as you must know, it’s my prerogative to declassify intelligence on a whim, if I so desire. I’m obviously not going to do that. But in the interest of getting people in this room moving, it might be helpful if you would at least share where and when the real attack might take place.”

The general shrugged. “Madam President, if I knew that, you’re the first person I would tell.”

CHAPTER FOUR

12:01 p.m. West Africa Time (6:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time)

125 Nautical Miles Southeast of Lagos, Nigeria

Gulf of Guinea

Atlantic Ocean

“It’s sitting up high, baby,” the gunman to Crazy Eddie’s left said.

“Yo, Killem, we gonna be eating good tonight,” the man to his right said. “Fine young chicken.” The men around them laughed.

Killem. That was one of Eddie’s nicknames. Short for Killem Dead – not just a nickname, but also his personal motto.

The men were riding in a small armada of speedboats – a dozen old go-fast Cigarettes. The boats were like something from a Mad Max movie, if it took place on the water. They were tricked out with racks of giant 350-horsepower outboard engines, and plated with welded-on scrap steel. There were no windshields – the driver of each boat watched the sea ahead through narrow slits cut in the metal. One of the boats, the slowest and biggest of the group, had a flying deck welded on above it – mounted on top was a heavy machine gun liberated from a Nigerian military depot.

The sun beat down, its harsh glare reflecting off the vast ocean waters.

“They gonna fight for it?” the first man said.

Eddie glanced around at his speedboats. Every one of them had six men on board, and every man was bristling with weapons – AK-47s and Uzis mostly, but also a couple of grenade launchers. Everyone had handguns, everyone had knives or machetes. The men themselves were rock stars, stone killers, and they looked the part. Kevlar body armor, wraparound aviator sunglasses, Stars & Stripes bandanas tied on their heads.

“Better not,” Eddie said.

Up ahead, maybe a mile away, was the object of their affection. An ancient freighter ship moved slowly, on a heading to the north and west. The thing was big, looming ten stories high, lumbering along like a derelict. It was an indeterminate color – mostly a mix of rust orange and the tattered remains of a dark green paint job it must have had decades ago. The speedboats approached from the rear, and thick white lettering was barely legible along the stern —LADY JANE.

Lady Jane was sitting up very high in the water indeed. To some, that would suggest the freighter was empty of cargo. But to others – people like Crazy Eddie Killem Dead – it suggested something else entirely. Lady Jane had been docked in an unregulated Congolese port for a long time. Now it was on the move with empty holds.

What was it carrying?

What sort of cargo found its way out of the lawless, war-torn bush in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and into the hands of smugglers on the coast? Precious metals like coltan and gold, certainly, but some things were even better than that.

“Diamonds,” Eddie said under his breath, not realizing he was going to speak at all.

“Yeah, baby!” the man next to him said. “Yeah!”

Diamonds were small, and they were light. A pocketful was worth a lot of money. A couple of pounds hidden inside a false wall on an old freight ship might be worth tens of millions of dollars. More than that? Eddie didn’t dream that big.

No. It would be a couple of pounds, if that. Getting the crew of the ship to show you where they were hidden – that was the trick, wasn’t it?

Eddie smiled. He had convinced people to talk before.

The ship loomed. Closer now, much closer. The speedboats slowed as they approached the massive freighter. The boat with the flying deck moved to the right, training the heavy machine gun on the upper decks of the Lady Jane. So far, there was no movement up there.

There was an emergency ladder bolted to the stern, about two stories above the water. Below there, the ladder had been cut away to discourage pirates – pirates like Eddie and his men. That was okay. Each one of these speedboats had an extendable aluminum ladder that would reach the bottom of the emergency ladder. From there, it was another two-story climb to the first deck. Easy, if the occupants were agreeable.

If not…

Eddie lifted a bullhorn to his lips. He flipped the ON switch with one finger, and a few seconds later, his voice boomed across the water.

“Lady Jane, Lady Jane, lay down your weapons and prepare for boarding.”

On the very top deck, two dark hands appeared from behind a metal parapet. The hands waved a large white fabric – maybe a piece of bed sheet – meant as a surrender flag. Eddie didn’t trust that flag. Not yet.

“All unarmed men will be spared,” he said into the bullhorn. “Anyone who fights will be killed. Do not test us.”

A voice boomed from the ship. They had a bullhorn of their own.

“We have nothing you want.”

Eddie grinned broadly. Nothing?

“We will see for ourselves.”

* * *

If there was going to be a problem, it would happen now.

The first speedboat had tied up to the ship. Eddie watched from about a hundred yards away. The speedboat looked like a children’s toy next to the freighter.

A silver aluminum ladder extended from the speedboat to the sheared-off bottom of the freighter’s emergency ladder. The seas were calm – bounding a little bit, but easy enough for climbing.

One man went up the silver ladder, then another, both moving like spiders. By the time the first man reached the emergency ladder, AK-47 strapped to his back, a third man had climbed onto the silver ladder, and was on his way up.

Three men high in the air. Three men out over nothing, perfectly exposed.

“Steady now,” Eddie said into the bullhorn. “Don’t do nothing stu – ”

Suddenly, a man popped up from behind the low metal wall ringing the lowest deck. He leaned over the top of it with a machine gun. The ugly blat of automatic gunfire ripped through the quiet of the day.

DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH. DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.

The two men on the silver ladder collapsed, their bodies falling to pieces. Their bloody remnants dropped into the ocean, food for the sharks.

The first man clung to the emergency ladder, trying to wedge his head and upper body beneath one of the iron rungs. So far he had been spared.

The man on the deck leaned way out, aiming to pick off the last climber.

Eddie pointed at the gunman.

“Kill that man,” he said into a black walkie-talkie.

Instantly, a burst from the heavy machine gun on the fishing boat shredded the man into Swiss cheese. No, that was too kind. It liquefied him. The recoil from the heavy gun made the fishing boat rock crazily, but the gunner was an expert. He tilted the gun up and down, training his fire on that deck. The metal of the low wall came apart like cardboard. Holes appeared in it, and an instant later, it crumpled like a tin can.

The first climber was still alive, once again inching his way to the top. Two more men had climbed from the speedboat onto the silver ladder.

“More!” Eddie shouted. “I want more men on that boat.”

Hell, he would go himself. Seeing his men murdered got his blood up. He shouted at his driver to approach the ship. The first speedboat was already pulling away. As his boat pulled in, the boat’s aluminum ladder began to extend. Eddie was on it before the boat was even tied up.

The ladder rose at a forty-five-degree angle to the freighter. He moved across it, climbing quick as a cat, even as the rickety ladder rattled and trembled. More guns sounded. He glanced to his right. The fishing boat was hosing the top decks of the ship with heavy machine gun fire.

“Good!” he shouted. “Rip them up.”

Eddie had almost reached the heavy steel emergency ladder. It was about four feet away, coming closer, then drifting away. He leapt across the gap, then started climbing again, this time straight up in a vertical line.

In less than a minute, he climbed two more stories. He took a deep breath and poked his head over the top. Three of his men were here – still alive and holding this corner of the deck. Very good. They could bring all the men up this way.

Eddie glanced down. Four more men were making their way up behind him. Eight heavily armed fighters would soon be on board, with more on the way. The smugglers on the ship probably never had more than a dozen men to begin with.

He slid over the railing.

His men were crouched at the edge where the walkway turned, staring back at him. Two smugglers lay on the catwalk, barely even corpses, their bodies eviscerated by machine gun fire.

Eddie barely glanced at them. Dark black men, small, Congolese, probably Hutus. Africans yes, but savages. Eddie Killem Dead was Kanuri. That was a heritage to be proud of. These men were trash.

“Let’s go,” he said to his own men. “Let’s finish it.”

He had an Uzi strapped to his back. He unslung it and turned the corner. Fifty yards ahead, a spray of bullets shredded the walls. The fishing boat was still strafing the side of the freighter. Two more men lay dead on the walkway. Beyond them was dizzying blue sky and dark sea.

Eddie and his men moved up the walkway, boots making a metallic sound on the steel mesh below them. The catwalk itself shuddered with each step they took – it felt like it might separate from its frame. This freighter was in bad shape.

Up ahead, a new white flag stuck out from a porthole and waved on a stick. Maybe this was the real surrender, maybe it wasn’t.

The bullhorn was strapped to Eddie’s shoulder. He pulled it down and held it to his lips. “Throw your weapons out!” he said. “All of them.”

An AK-47 slid out of the next porthole. Then a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. A machete. Another gun. They clanged and clattered as they hit the catwalk.

Eddie waved his men ahead.

“Blow it,” he said.

The first man took a grenade from his vest pocket, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the porthole. Frantic shouts came from inside. Eddie’s men ducked back. A second passed. Two.

BOOOOOM.

A flash of red and orange light came through the portholes. Now someone inside there was screaming. Eddie moved to the first porthole and glanced in. The cabin was on fire. Several bodies and body parts were strewn about the floor. Two men seemed to still be alive. One was quiet and breathing heavily, his chest heaving. He would be dead soon. The other one was shrieking, eyes wild.

Eddie looked at one of his men and made a slicing motion across his own throat. The man nodded and slid in through the ragged porthole. A moment later, the screaming stopped.

Eddie moved quickly, sprinting up a set of ironwork stairs. Eight men were with him now. The hostile boarding was complete. No one would hold this ship against them. He grinned at the thought of it.

His crew was efficient, man. Killers.

They came to the pilot house, which was all windows. There were three men inside. Eddie could look inside and see them clearly. They didn’t even try to keep Eddie and his boys out. What good would it do?

Eddie simply opened the door and walked in.

The men were small and middle-aged, each one wearing a tan uniform. They looked like government officials of some kind. It was a joke. They were smugglers, sailing an old, decrepit freighter, wearing stolen or fake uniforms. Most of the equipment in this pilot house seemed broken, useless. Eddie smiled at them.

“Who is the captain?”

The three men stared, uncertain.

“Tell me, or I will kill all three.”

The man in the middle, the smallest and oldest of the three, nodded. He was perfectly bald. His hands were large and his skin was dark black. His face was deeply lined. “I am the captain.”

Eddie nodded. He glanced at his own men.

Two gunshots rang out, and the men flanking the captain instantly sank to the floor, both dead before they reached it.

The smell of gunpowder rose in the room.

“Where are the diamonds?” Eddie said now.

The captain was calm. He hardly seemed surprised at the death all around him. By the looks of him, he had been alive, and at sea, a long time. He was probably accustomed to this sort of thing. He lowered his hands and shook his head.

“There are no diamonds.”

“No diamonds?” Eddie said, his grin broader than ever. “Are you certain?”

“Yes. There is nothing that you might want.”

“Why did you fight then? What were you trying to protect?”

The captain shrugged. “Ourselves. Because you are dirty Nigerian pirates. We knew you would slaughter us if you captured the ship.”

“What is on board here?” Eddie said. “Surely there is something.”

“I will say it again,” the captain said. “There is nothing here that you want. And you will be happier if you leave it where you found it. I assure you of this.”

Eddie laughed. “Something important, then. Show me.”

They went below decks. The captain walked Eddie and his men through hold after empty hold, moving ever downward into the bowels of the ship. There were no signs of life, not even rats. There were also no signs of cargo – just dark, rusty, empty holds swept clean.

Finally, they entered a large room. A tall bulk loomed in the darkness. Eddie’s men didn’t need to be told what to do. They put the flashlights on it.

As they approached, the thing became clearer. It was a large steel box, gunmetal gray. The edges were welded together. It wasn’t clear how to open it, other than perhaps cutting it with a blowtorch. There were Cyrillic markings on the outside – CCCP. That was interesting. The initials of the old Soviet Union. That meant this thing had been kicking around for more than twenty years. It towered above their heads.

“What is it?” Eddie said softly, his voice echoing through the cavernous hold. “A weapon of some kind?”

“I don’t know,” the captain said.

Eddie looked at him sharply. “You don’t know what it is?”

The man shook his head. “It is not my job to know. It’s none of my business.”

This thing had gotten everyone on his ship killed, and pretty soon, it would get him killed, too. But somehow it was none of his business.

“Who is your client?”

The man stared balefully, perhaps imagining the torture he would endure until he offered satisfactory answers.

“If I tell you, they will kill me.”

Eddie shrugged. “Yes, but if you don’t tell me…”

“You will also kill me.”

“I killed all your men,” Eddie said. “You are only alive because I say so. Your only hope is to tell me. Perhaps you can avoid your client. Maybe for a short while, maybe forever. But avoid me? It’s too late for that.”

“Your life will be forfeit if I tell you,” the man said.

Eddie smiled. How many times had his life been forfeit?

“Tell me anyway.”