Final Winter

The CIA man could see he was making progress. He pressed on. ‘Yeah, they got the job done. And then they got fat, slow, cautious. They became experts on filling out paperwork. Not experts on buying the right wrenches. We should have the stars-and-stripes flying on Mars right now. And we’re not going to do that, not in our lifetimes.’

The FBI man said, ‘What are you suggesting?’

The CIA man shifted in the seat, felt the ache in his hips. ‘We have a chance now, with everybody in shock, to set up what has to be set up. We’re going to need something new, something hungry, something that’s not going to fuck around with paperwork and procedures and making sure the right asses get kissed. We put something together tonight, the three of us, guaranteed, we’ll have the necessary Presidential and Congressional approvals, with the funding and mandate we need, within forty-eight hours. We wait another week or so, another month, and we’ll be screwed. They’ll reshuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic, that’s what’s going to be done, and we can’t afford it.’

The other two men nodded. The CIA man knew that he should have felt pleased at their reaction, but he was still too damn tired, too damn wired. ‘I’m thinking of setting up Tiger Teams. Know the phrase?’

‘Sure,’ the NSA man said. ‘Specialty teams, brought in from the outside, to review and attack a problem and present a solution. Military to industry to almost everything else. Sure. Tiger Teams.’

The CIA man said, ‘That’s what we’re going to do. Tiger Teams, recruited from our agencies, from outside, from colleges and media and think tanks and law enforcement. People who can think on their feet, poke and probe and not be satisfied with the ready answer. Tiger Teams for border control, bio-warfare, intelligence analysis, nuclear proliferation, everything and anything. We’ll draw up a list, get something on paper and over to Sixteen Hundred by morning.’

‘Think they’ll be receptive?’ asked the FBI man.

‘The other night the President and his wife were asked to sleep on a pull-out couch in a White House bomb shelter. He’ll be receptive. And both sides of the aisle in Congress, we can get them on board, too. The leaders in both parties, they were evacuated from the Capitol last week in helicopters and armored vehicles. That tends to focus one’s mind.’

‘What’s the oversight going to be?’ asked the NSA man.

‘Not sure yet,’ the CIA man admitted. ‘But it’ll be minimal. They’ll have the mandate to get the job done. Performance will be what counts.’

The NSA man grimaced. ‘I can see the Congressional hearings, decades down the road, where we’ll be brought before the panel in wheelchairs, testifying on why the hell we set up a rogue intelligence group like this. Green light for almost everything, no oversight. A hell of a thing.’

‘Sure is,’ the CIA man said. ‘And this is what we’ll show them.’

From inside his suitcoat pocket, he pulled out a thin metal object, tossed it down on the conference-room table, where it clattered to a stop. The other two men looked on. He said, ‘That’s all it took. Some box cutters and knives, nineteen airline tickets, and nineteen assholes ready to kill themselves. That’s all. And we lost several thousand people, four jet aircraft, the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and billions of dollars in our economy. For any other asshole out there thinking to do us harm, that sounds like a hell of a bargain.’

The two other men stared at the box cutter, and then looked up at the CIA man. He said, ‘And we’ll tell those investigators, that’s what we were up against. And why we had to do everything to make sure that the next nineteen guys from the Middle East who didn’t like us or Barbie or Coca-Cola didn’t come here carrying suitcase nukes.’

There was a pause. He said, ‘You on board?’

The FBI man looked at the NSA man and said. ‘Yeah.’

His companion nodded. ‘Yeah. Let’s get the fuckers.’

‘Sure,’ the CIA man said. ‘But first, we’ve got work to do.’

CHAPTER TWO

In Lahore, Pakistan, the wind was blowing down from the Hindu Kush, bringing with it the smell of dust, cooking fires and burning coal. Nineteen year-old Amil Zahrain paused in his quest for a moment, letting his left foot — the crippled one — rest some as it ached. He looked about the crowded sidewalks with wide brown eyes. This was the busiest place he had ever seen in his life, and he was quite scared, and quite lost.

A hand went into his thin cotton shirt, into the pocket his sister had secretly sewed for him, not more than a week ago. There, wrapped in paper, was his midday meal, a piece of flat bread, wrapping goat cheese and cabbage, and nestled next to his meal was a small fortune: one hundred Pakistani rupees, and an American twenty-dollar bill. And, between both of them, a thin piece of black plastic that was his weapon this day, to help kill the Jews and the infidels.

But he was lost!