2:55 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
The gathering was much smaller this time.
Haley Lawrence, the Secretary of Defense, was there, with two aides seated behind him. General Frank Loomis of JSOC was there again. Luke Stone was there, this time sitting in a leather chair at the conference table. Half a dozen others were there, along with a few aides and assistants sitting along the walls behind them.
Kurt Kimball was in his usual place at the head of the long conference table. It was a serious group. Kurt didn't need to perform his typical thunderclap for quiet. Everyone was ready when Susan walked in.
"Well, Kurt. Was this the best crowd you could get?"
He smiled and shook his large bald head. "We're restricting access to this meeting. There is some concern that classified information could be revealed."
"More than a concern," Frank Loomis said.
Susan slid into her tall leather chair. She placed her coffee on the table in front of her. She had been very tired earlier in the day, but she felt a second wind coming on.
"Hit me," she said.
Kurt nodded. "Amy?" he said.
His aide made a few taps on her tablet, and an aerial photograph of a large freight ship appeared on the main screen, and on the smaller screens around the room. The image was old and the color faded, with a solid white border around the edges-a scan of a photo that originally existed as a physical print.
Kurt pointed a red laser beam at the image. "An incident took place off the coast of Nigeria earlier today, involving the ship you see here. The ship is a Russian-made Soviet-era multipurpose vessel, an oceangoing freight ship that can carry a range of cargoes, from dry goods to liquids, including petroleum products. The ship was somewhat large for its time, more than two hundred meters long and approximately ten stories high. It was known as Znamya Oktyabra, or in English, The White Banner.
"In 2003, it was sold to a private corporation known as Night Wolf Lines, and was registered under the Liberian flag. At or around that time, the name of the ship was changed to Lady Jane. As far as we can tell, Lady Jane spent the next decade or more of her life engaged in criminal activity, smuggling in particular. She appears to have spent a great deal of time moving between Africa and South America, departing Africa with pillaged natural resources-diamonds, gold, conductive metals, illegally bunkered oil, as well as poached ivory-and returning with high-quality drugs, particularly cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, military-grade weapons to fuel Africa's various wars, and of course money."
Susan sometimes found herself frustrated by Kurt's roundabout way of getting to the meat of things. He was one of the most valuable people on her team-invaluable, really-but holy cow! Let's get on it with, Kurt!
"And this is relevant to a terrorist attack, how?"
Kurt raised a big hand.
"Night Wolf Lines is thought to be owned by Chechen warlord Ramzan Ashkedev. While visibly cooperating with the Kremlin on the one hand, on the other hand he is a devout Muslim and known by the CIA and the NSA to provide weapons and financing to Islamic militias and terror groups. If we know this, it's safe to assume the Russians also know and wink at it."
Kurt looked around the room. "Is everybody clear on this? We believe that Ramzan Ashkedev owns that ship. Or did, until earlier today."
Two new photos appeared on the screens. One was of what appeared to be a sleepy industrial port. The other was an aerial shot of a very large, sprawling metropolis.
"The photo on the left is Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Located about sixty miles up the Congo River from the Atlantic Ocean, it is the second largest port in that country. International corporations, criminal gangs, rebel militias, and members of the government of the DRC itself have all made use of the ongoing violence, chaos, and the collapse of oversight to loot natural resources from the interior and move them out of the country. More often, those assets travel overland to the east, through Rwanda and Burundi. But they also leave by ship from the Atlantic coast."
"In that regard, very little has changed in two hundred years," Haley Lawrence said.
Kurt nodded. "Yes, and Boma is one major transshipment point for looted raw materials. There are others. But Boma is important to us because Lady Jane frequented that port. In fact, she was docked there for the past several years. Our intelligence agencies monitor ship movements in that region, but usually don't intervene. Given her advanced age, her apparent lack of maintenance, and the fact that she hadn't left Boma for at least three years, there is a handwritten note in her CIA file from last year. It reads No longer seaworthy?"
"But she moved today," General Loomis said.
"That she did," Kurt said. "Satellite imagery indicates she left Boma three days ago. The other photo you see on the screen is Lagos, Nigeria, a vast megalopolis of perhaps twenty million people. Lady Jane was moving along the Atlantic coastline about a hundred nautical miles southeast of Lagos when she was attacked by pirates."
A new photo appeared. It was of a speedboat with aftermarket armor mounted on it. Half a dozen black men stood in the boat, all of them heavily armed.
"Nigerian pirates are not as well known as their Indian Ocean counterparts in Somalia. Their tactics are different, as are their targets. Like the Somalis, they have been known at times to attack large corporate oil tankers and container ships. But more often, they target smugglers. Smuggling is rife along the Atlantic coast of Africa, smuggling by definition is unregulated, and smugglers are much less likely to make distress calls or report being the victim of piracy to maritime authorities."
Susan sighed out loud. She wanted Kurt to get to his point.
"Lady Jane disappeared from satellite tracking this evening. All indications are that the pirates overwhelmed and probably killed the ship's crew, then brought the ship into port in Lagos."
Kurt looked at Frank Loomis. "General Loomis?"
The general nodded. "This is classified information, but I'm sure you're all well aware of it. The Joint Special Operations Command, in coordination with the CIA, the NSA, and a few other organizations, monitors the communications networks of certain Islamist groups throughout the world. One of these is Boko Haram, Nigeria's own home-grown Muslim terrorist group. Boko was nearly eradicated by the Nigerian military in recent years, with an entirely classified assist from the United States, and highly trained mercenaries out of South Africa. They've been making something of a comeback the past year or two, but they are still a shadow of their former selves.
"The pirates who stole Lady Jane contacted them. There was something on board that ship the pirates wanted to sell, and Boko suddenly became very eager to buy. Worse, it turns out the item in question either belongs to, or was intended for, Al-Qaeda. Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, once allies, have grown into bitter enemies. Boko Haram now has something that Al-Qaeda wants."
"What is it?" Susan said.
General Loomis raised his hands slightly and shook his head. "We don't know. It seems clear that it is probably a weapon of some sort, otherwise why all the fuss?"
"Has there been a fuss?"
Loomis nodded. "Very much so. Whatever the item is, its theft has led to increasingly histrionic threats and taunts being exchanged between the two sides for the past two hours. This leads us to believe it is a weapon, and it is a powerful weapon, potentially a game changer for either group."
"Jesus," Susan said. "A nuke?"
"Impossible to speculate at this moment," Kurt said. "It's too soon."
"Isn't that why we're here right now?" Susan said. "To speculate?"
Ahead and to her right, Luke raised his hand as if he were a child in school.
"Agent Stone?" Kurt said. "Do you have something to add?"
Luke nodded. "My agency detained an Algerian in Baltimore this morning, who we believe raises funds for extremist groups in the Middle East and North Africa, and who may have been in contact with the perpetrators of the attack in Egypt."
"Detained?" Kurt said. "What was his legal status during that time?"
Luke smiled and shrugged. "He was detained. He was preparing to leave the country tomorrow, and we wanted to speak to him before he did. Under questioning, he became very agitated, insisting that we were all dead men. He requested that we give a message to his family-if necessary, they should stick to the plan and leave the country without him. I've had trouble getting that out of my mind."
Luke took a breath. Susan noticed that everyone was staring at him now.
"What does that mean to you, Agent Stone?" Kurt said.
"My people are very good," Luke said. "I won't step on toes in here by saying they're the best, but I've trusted them with my life on many occasions. They tell me this man is well placed among terrorist networks, and I believe them. He is very eager to leave the country. He's worried. I believe he thinks an attack is coming."
"I thought we weren't speculating right now," General Loomis said.
Luke didn't respond.
Susan felt an urge to defend him, but checked herself. Luke was a big boy.
"Where is the prisoner now?" Kurt said.
"We have him in the SRT interrogation room. I anticipate releasing him this afternoon. We don't have a holding facility, and we have no hard evidence that he's committed any crime."
"So assume it's a weapon," Haley Lawrence said. "And they plan to use it to attack the United States."
"Whatever it is," General Loomis said, "it's on the move. Our intelligence suggests that the ship wasn't in port an hour before the transaction was carried out. Boko Haram is moving the item deep into Nigeria, in all likelihood bringing it towards their stronghold in the Sambisa Forest, near the borders with Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. From there, it could go anywhere. Chad in particular is a collapsed state, has dense forest cover on the border with Nigeria, and is wide open for moving personnel and equipment through."
"Can we ask the Nigerian military to intercept it before that happens?" Susan said.
"The Nigerian military doesn't work that way," Kurt said, frowning and shaking his head. "Nigeria doesn't work that way. Boko Haram has survived as long as it has, despite the unspeakable violence they've carried out, because Nigeria is a patronage system. It operates on graft and payoffs. If Boko is already moving the item in question, it's because they're confident they've paid off the right people to be able to do so."
"So what is our response?" Susan said.
"We have a drone base and Special Forces stationed in Niger at Agadez, about four hundred miles north of the border with Nigeria," General Loomis said. "We also have a forward operating base with a skeleton crew at Diffa, right on that border. I could literally put a hundred special operators inside Sambisa Forest four hours from now."
Kurt shook his head. "I hate to rain on your parade, General. We don't know where the weapon is, if it is indeed a weapon, or if it even exists. An incursion by our Special Forces would be seen by the Nigerians as an attack on their sovereignty. Rightly so, I'm afraid. And a hundred special operators crashing around Sambisa Forest, with no real intelligence, invites a disaster like the Tongo Tongo operation from a couple of years ago, along with the resulting publicity nightmare."
"And gives the tip-off to the bad guys that we're looking for them," Haley Lawrence said.
Loomis was clearly annoyed. Susan mused that General Loomis was like a little boy sometimes. He had his toys and he wanted to play with them. When the adults wouldn't let him, he put on his frowny face and balled his hands into tiny fists.
"What do you recommend, Kurt?" he said.
"Stealth," Luke said before Kurt could speak. He raised his index finger, almost as if he had seized the talking stick.
"We put a team of civilian covert operators on the ground. They collect intelligence on the border-maybe they don't even need to enter Nigeria. They discover the location of the missing item, whatever it is. Then, and only then, we launch a lightning raid into Nigeria, let's say three groups of four men, the best we have stationed over there. They secure the item, render it inoperable, and destroy it. If feasible, but only if absolutely necessary, they bring it back across the border into Niger for further analysis."
"I like it," Haley Lawrence said. "It maintains civilian control over the operation, it limits action until we have information, and if it goes as planned, it gives us plausible deniability."
Luke nodded. "The weapon is destroyed, and we were never there."
He seemed enthusiastic for the plan he had just hatched. That gave Susan a sinking feeling. "Sounds like a suicide mission to me," she said.
"Oh, I'm not sure about that," Kurt said. "With the right personnel, and near flawless execution, I'd say an operation like that…"
He trailed off and shrugged.
Haley Lawrence looked at Luke. "Agent Stone, do you have any thoughts on who we might send on a mission like that?"
Luke smiled. He very carefully did not look in Susan's direction. "I might have a couple. Yeah."