One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [90]
Standish paused, realizing he was thinking about the slaughter of untold innocent civilians, not simply numbers in a news report. He pondered the cost and benefits. He decided the deaths were necessary. Great leaders throughout history have had to make hard choices such as this. He knew that Truman himself had made the decision to drop the atomic bomb based on this very same principle. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians killed to save millions of Americans. This is no different. There’s a greater good here. He, of course, would need to go on vacation for about a month to ensure he was out of the blast radius, should Washington be in the crosshairs. This town could stand to lose a little deadweight anyway.
He called his in-staff intelligence officer and asked him to run down any “chatter” on terrorist threats within the last three days involving the words Israel, WMD, Iran, and poison weapons. Within thirty minutes, the man arrived with fourteen NSA reports that had some tangential relationship to the search criteria. Most were clearly not what Standish was looking for, only detailing vague information of little value. Using the Prometheus cable, he necked down the reports until he found a NSA cut describing a WMD attack against Israel. He didn’t have the background in terrorism to understand the reference to the far enemy, and was unsure why the intercept mentioned the historical state of Persia instead of the modern nomenclature of Iran, but since this was the only bit of intelligence that talked of pushing the Zionists into the sea via a single weapon—something that anyone could understand—he honed in on it, noting the reference to something called Operation Badr. He was pleased to see the intel was raw, meaning nobody had analyzed it yet, and thus nobody knew it existed.
“Ken, run a search on Operation Badr. Bring me what you find immediately.”
Five minutes later Ken returned with a single message. “This is the only thing that’s come in with those search terms.”
Standish read the report, which simply said that Operation Badr was progressing and that a device had been tested successfully. He connected the dots. “Okay, do an open-source search on anything strange happening in Belize. Focus on a group of unexplained deaths. See if anyone in the press has reported anything like that.”
After another wait, Ken returned, saying, “There was nothing in Belize. The only thing I could find was a bus crash on the border, but it was on the Guatemalan side.”
“What’s so fucking strange about that? I told you unexplained deaths.”
“Well, everyone on the bus died, but nobody died from the crash.” He handed the press report to Standish. “Apparently, they all died of some strange illness.”
Standish read the news report and smiled. The weapon’s real. “Ken, I want you to destroy any mention of these two intercepts about Operation Badr. Figure out who else got them, and erase them. Do it without their knowledge. Those reports never existed. Understand?”
Ken, a sycophant cut from Standish’s mold, didn’t question the directive. “Easy enough. I’ll do it as soon as I get back to my office.”
“Good. In addition, I got a cable from Belize today. Rescind that cable as well. Ensure it also doesn’t exist.” He gave the intelligence officer the cable cite number.
Ken asked, “What about the station in Belize? Won’t they ask why it was rescinded?”
“I’ll handle the station when they come in to work tomorrow. Just get rid of the cable right now.”
“Okay—I’m on it.”
Standish reflected on what he knew. On the one hand, it was a golden opportunity to accomplish exactly what he believed was necessary. On the other, while not out of control yet, it was an opportunity that had quite a few leaks. He had managed to stop the raw intel from being spread but couldn’t be sure about the Prometheus cable. If that thing’s not rescinded in time, I’ll never be able to deny I knew about it. Luckily, it had come from