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Hope appeared at the man’s side, talking fast. “Emma, this is the father of one of the operatives here at ASI, Jacko Jackman. Lauren’s husband. His name is Dante Jimenez.” Huh. He didn’t share a name with his son. Well, Emma was not one to question the way families worked. Her own was strange enough.
“How do you do,” she said politely.
Raul bent to the camera. “Dante, we are in a time crunch here…”
“I think I know what’s about to go down.” Dante’s deep voice was stark.
Everyone snapped to attention.
Raul leaned forward. “Talk. We don’t have much time.”
Hope made room for Jimenez in front of her computer monitor. Both their heads showed, Luke pacing in the background.
“Today there is a meeting, in a mansion that has been emptied, of all the heads of the security apparatus of the United States. It’s being held about twenty miles from San Francisco. Almost a thousand people, the men and women responsible for the safety of the country. It’s absolutely Top Secret. Apparently there’d been chatter of a biological attack, and a decision was made to address it and to use the meeting to coordinate the various agencies. I’m ex-DEA and I was asked to submit a report on the drug trade. But I’m retired and my granddaughter, Alice, is starting summer day camp. I want to be there.”
Silence.
Raul drummed his fingers once on the desktop. “All the agencies?”
“Every single one,” Jimenez answered grimly. “The principals alone are 300 strong. Each principal will bring at least two deputies. We’re talking the top tier of the entire intelligence and law enforcement community. All the three letter agencies and some five letter ones.”
“Haven’t heard anything about it,” Raul murmured.
“Me, either,” Luke said.
“No, you wouldn’t. A meeting like this has never been held before. The intel has been tightly compartmented. The mid-level officials of the agencies wouldn’t even know. They’d only know that their boss and his deputies were gone for the day.”
Emma was thinking furiously. “How – how much damage would there be if something happened at this meeting? Suppose an attack were to kill all the members at the meeting. What would happen? I mean all the agencies have plenty of personnel, right? Life would continue, right?”
The muscles of Jimenez’s jaw worked. “No, it wouldn’t. It would be devastating beyond words. The first thing would be to assume that it was an attack by one of our enemies, an act of war. Either by Russia or China or some second-tier state that had a stroke of luck and cut off the heads of our intelligence community. It would take some time to figure out whether this was an act of terrorism or of war. The country would come to a grinding halt.”
“How so?” Emma asked. A grinding halt. Perfect for a storm of short sales.
“Would it be as bad as after 9/11?”
“It would be worse. Much worse. All transportation would be stopped, immediately. All planes in the air rerouted to the nearest airport, no planes allowed to take off, no trains, no road transport. All banks would shut down immediately. Schools and shops closed and everyone sent home. Economic activity would cease. The National Guard would be called out and would patrol the streets. Posse Comitatus would be suspended. There would probably be a strict curfew. The military would definitely go to DEFCON 3, known as Round House. Air Force ready to mobilize in 15 minutes. They could go up to DEFCON 1 – known as Cocked Pistol.
Emma sat back, mind whirling. “If there was no follow up, how long would the emergency last?”
“You mean if there was no further attack?”
She nodded her head, throat tight.
“A week.”
“Tobe,” she murmured.
“Yeah.” The screen adjusted to include his tired face. “The shorts last about a week. And a lot of money will have been made and a lot of money will have been lost.”
“Oh,” Jimenez said. “The effects will last much, much longer than a week. Things will never go back to the way they were. When the military goes to DEFCON I – which it never has, by the way, but an assassination of the entirety of its intelligence community would qualify – it takes time to de-deploy. Not to mention the fact that if some lower-level grunts think one of our enemies is responsible, we might launch a few nuclear missiles and there is no coming back from that.”
“Worse than 9/11,” Hope whispered.
“It would make 9/11 look like a Sunday walk in the park.”
“When does the conference start?” Raul asked.
Jimenez turned his face and it looked as if he were addressing Raul directly. “It started an hour ago.”
