This wasn’t the way I’d been planning to show Si Wilson around CSTC, but it was good to have the newest member of Team Rhino with us. The shit show—no better word for it—on the island had been surreal. Everything was still a little fuzzy. My pistol and my Rolex were the only personal pieces of gear I had on me. No clothes but the smelly rags on my body, no change of socks, no toothbrush.
Tristan, of course, was one step ahead, and the team houses were stocked with clean clothes and an ample supply of whiskey. While the others drifted off to get hot showers and fresh duds, I sat down on Tristan’s back porch and, over a steaming cup of coffee, filled him in on what I knew.
“You did well, Nat. Impossible challenge right out of the gate, and you guys did a great job. Starnes and CongressmanJennings are very pleased. They know the deal and wanted me to pass on their thanks.”
Tristan knew what I knew: Team Rhino was ready to go.
“Everyone did their job. No one hesitated for a second. But Tristan, it was fucking nuts. IEDs, in America? Who kidnaps and tortures, let alone kills, a sitting US senator?”
I was still in a bit of disbelief. Tristan let me talk it through for a while before bringing me back to the next phase of the plan.
“Team Rhino stays put here in Maryland,” he said. “Plow through the hotwash, connect the dots, and come up with our next course of action. This review is just the beginning, and ODS is ready to run this thing to ground.”
“Yeah, we’re good, man, but just one quick question: What the fuck is ODS?”
Tristan laughed “Sorry, Nat, while you were vacationing in Nantucket, they decided that the official cover for Rocket’s Red Glare will be to call it the Office of Domestic Strategy. That’s who you work for now.”
It made sense to me in a roundabout way. A paramilitary organization designed to operate outside the spotlight of the national mission should be made to sound as generic as possible. The initialsODSbrought to mind one of those ubiquitous government departments that could just as easily be rebuilding the railroads. Whatever it took to keep wandering oversight away from yours truly.
I shook Tristan’s hand and was starting to step off the porch when I turned and asked if there was any word on Rowan Anderson.
“Best I can tell is that she’s being benched, pending the outcome of the investigation. Basically, no gun and no fun for awhile, Nat. I gotta be honest, I don’t see how this works out for her. The president wants a pound of flesh—and not only from whatever group is behind the plot against Senator Harrison. Someone on her team has to pay. Wish I had better news to tell you, amigo.”
CHAPTER 66
CSTC Team Rhino Command Post
Navigating in the shadows of the federal government was a new play for all of us—exposure to an entirely different fight. But if I’m being honest here, I was troubled by the nagging thought that so far it felt like just another deployment, another mission against bad guys. I had no choice but to break it down, figure out where to go from here.
In this early phase of Rocket’s Red Glare, severe compartmentalization was required. CSTC typically enlisted the aid of another team’s intel officer and sometimes outside agencies. Going forward, nobody needed to know anybody else’s business unless invited. By design, we did not want any overlap between operational teams.
I called a Team Rhino meeting, including Si and three other team members: medic Rudy Martin, back from his trauma-medicine symposium in Dallas, plus Stu Arden and James Teagan, aka Jimmy T.
Jimmy was our Boston guy. His family ties to the city went back to 1860, when Thomas Teagan arrived from Belfast, Ireland and began to grow a family—and an empire. Even in the new millennium, they routinely sent funds home to help families affected by The Troubles. While not quite as powerful as Whitey Bulger, the Teagans had considerable influence when it came to running Irish interests in Boston. Everyone knew that if you fucked around with the Teagans, you were either mental or had a death wish.
Stu Arden was our team commo chief and a virtuoso of all things electronic. He came from Wyoming ranchers, and was “good timber.” Whenever he had downtime, you’d find Stu in Jackson Hole, looking for cowboy stuff to do on the family ranch.
Team Rhino and I talked late into the night, reviewing everything that had happened from when JP, Wolf, Oliver, and Meg landed on Nantucket up through my cup of coffee with Tristan. The process was beyond painful: necessary, but miserable.
For every pro, there were at least a couple of cons. We took every one of our actions, scrutinized and pulverized and spit them out like spoiled milk. I was starting to think I had fucked up more shit than was acceptable. Thankfully, when all was said and done, there was agreement that the wins far exceeded the losses.
Once we had exhausted the review of our techniques, tactics, and procedures, we shifted our focus to the forensics of all the intelligence we had gathered and observed so far.
It was Meg’s turn at the head of the class. The bulk of the analysis would fall to her.
“Okay, Meg, where do we start and what do you need?”
“Here’s where I think we get the most juice the quickest: I need to find the outside connection between all the dead people and the mainland. Nantucket is an island, so we need to find an intersection between there and someplace not surrounded by water. There has to be something, even a small thread gets us out the gate.”
She tapped a pen on the table. “Why Harrison?” she asked, “and what’s special about Nantucket? How did they get IEDs onto the island? Who were the kill teams? And who would have the ability—using what kind of explosives—to blow up and sink a hundred-ton ferry?”
While we theorized answers to her questions, Meg drew the highlights of the battle on a big whiteboard, creating a brilliant system of interconnected circles and squares of intelligence until they filled the board.
“I also need help with the phones and computers. I can’t sweep them all myself—it would take weeks. If we can paint a picture of how they communicated and controlled the actions, we can undoubtedly answer the most pressing question:Who the fuck did this?”
Stu would take the lead on the electronics sweep, while Si and Wolf would assist.
Like Oliver with guns, Stu just “got” communications. There was no doubt he could quarterback the dive into the sizable boxes of cell phones and laptops we had recovered from the island.
