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The icon indicates aFLASH PRIORITYmessage is coming his way, and he double-clicks the icon, and waits.
And waits.
This may be the most powerful and well-funded intelligence agency in the world, but bureaucrats and the lengthy budget-appropriation process means it has an IT system that was cutting-edge when Bush was president—and Ernest isn’t thinking of the man’s son.
Still, he loves computers, loves information, loves being tied into a worldwide internet and a surveillance state.
The icon is still blinking at him.
Ernest likes keeping his office clear of plants, books, plaques, and photos. All of those personal items are bits of intelligence, allowing visitors to his remote and obscure office a way to gather information about who he is.
And he will never allow that to happen.
Ernest picks up his teacup. The truth is, he shouldn’t be here, overseeing a section of the Company’s Special Activities Division. His only battle experience is one quiet and unremarkable tour as an Army infantry officer during the Iraq mess, and his battles since then have all been of the bureaucratic sort. During one of the great upheavals the CIA experiences every few years, his division commander in Iraq was picked to head the Special Operations Group, and in turn plucked Ernest out of an analysis section in the CIA’s Asian Bureau.
The gunslingers in his section resent his position, Ernest knows. He had joined the CIA only after a drawdown that essentially kicked Ernest and hundreds of fellow Army officers from active duty. But he knows how to manage, how to operate, how to navigate among the bureaucratic shoals that can rip apart someone’s career in an instant.
The blinking icon sayingFLASH PRIORITYis frozen.
He allows himself to say “Damn,” then picks up his telephone—whose buttons indicate inside call, outside call, or encrypted call—and makes a quick inside call to his assistant, Tyler Pope. Ernest knows he could just get up and walk six feet to Tyler’s office next door, but why not use available technology to do the job?
Tyler crisply answers the phone on the first ring. “I’ve got a Flash Priority message indicator,” Ernest tells him, “and now my system is frozen. Get me what I need.”
“Right away, sir,” and there’s a race to see who can hang up first. Ernest is sure he’s the winner.
Of such little victories a career is made.
There’s a knock at his door.
“Come in,” he announces, checking the little digital clock on his desk. One minute and five seconds. Not bad.
Tyler is short and pudgy, with brown hair and a rapidly spreading bald patch that he’s been artfully but unsuccessfully trying to conceal ever since he started working for Ernest. He has on khaki slacks, a blue button-down shirt, and a plain red necktie.
Tyler says, “There’s been a foul-up in Operation Stunner.”
“Which one is that?”
“The team working with the Brits in the Lebanese mountains, near Syria.”
He remembers now. “Right. Two Abu Sayyaf leaders, heading to a summit in Syria. The one led by Captain Cornwall. That…difficult woman. Well?”
“The mission was a success,” Tyler says. “Both targets eliminated. But it looks like the British team has been captured, possibly by a Hezbollah-related militia.”
Ernest doesn’t like the sound of that. “I thought our latest intel was that the place had been swept. No hostiles in the area.”
“Obviously an error somewhere.”
“Obviously,” Ernest says. “Our folks?”
“Sir, that’s where it gets…odd.”
“Defineodd.”
“A stealth air platform from the Night Stalkers was at the rendezvous point to exfil both teams. Our crew showed up, but they didn’t board the helicopter.”
“How do we know our folks were there? Was there radio traffic?”
“No, sir. The Night Stalkers saw them.”
