Black Flagged Apex

Chapter 47





8:11 PM

National Counterterrorism Center

Washington, D.C.



Traffic in and out of the Operations Center was nonexistent at this point. The administrative section of the building had cleared out by six-o'clock, leaving either NCTC personnel assigned to support the ongoing task force or authorized task force members. The Operations Center kept a three-section, eight-hour rotation, fully staffed twenty-four hours a day to support Task Force Scorpion. He wasn't supposed to know the name of the task force, but everybody working security knew more than they should about what was happening in "Ops."

Reggie Taylor glanced around at his colleagues. A total of nine security officers had been assigned to the Operations Center entrance. Two for each of the three checkpoints, and one search team comprised of two officers. The supervisor sat in a glass-encased office directly behind Taylor, but he knew from experience that the supervisor's desk didn't provide the proper angle to see his screen from a seated position. Standing up was a different story. He'd told the Jamaican that their inside man needed to back off if anyone was standing in the supervisor's office. Taylor's screen would clearly indicate that James Fitch was not authorized to access the Operations Center.

He'd been slightly relieved to learn that Fitch was their man. Fitch had worked at the Liberty Crossing building since its inception as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in 2003, along with Taylor. They had both been present for its renaming as the National Counterterrorism Center one year later in 2004. Fitch had accessed "Ops" to do network repairs or related IT work several dozen times during Taylor's daytime shifts, so his presence wasn't unusual. At 8:00 PM on a Saturday night, though, he wasn't sure. Still, it was better than dressing someone up in a colonel's uniform and trying to squeeze them through the Operations Center's dedicated personnel entrance.

The dedicated personnel entry gave permanent Ops analysts, technicians and managers quick access from the parking lot. This group comprised the majority of traffic handled by these checkpoints, usually around shift changes. Anyone using that entrance would raise an immediate alarm trying to use his checkpoint. They had chosen wisely with Fitch. Better yet, Fitch had chosen wisely. There was little doubt in Taylor's mind that this son-of-a-bitch IT f*cker had specifically targeted him because of his young children. He had to remind himself to push these thoughts aside. They would serve him no purpose tonight. He couldn't afford to screw this up. All he had to do was let Fitch pass.

He'd be fine. Fitch would very likely attract no attention at all. When Ops needed server-related support, the Operation Center's deputy supervisor authorized access through the system, without notifying security. The whole process was transparent to the guards. When Fitch or any of the NCTC personnel swiped their card, it would either permit or deny access. The security officers simply enforced the system's output, which completely eliminated the human factor at the gate. Guards couldn't be sweet-talked, rushed or intimidated into letting someone through, regardless of their rank or importance…unless someone was holding a knife to your child's throat.

He glanced down the hallway leading into the general administrative building, trying not to look anxious. The Jamaican told him to expect Fitch around 8:15 PM. He was thankful for that. He wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Taylor glanced calmly at his watch.

"Long way to go, Reggie," said one of the guards seated across from him at another checkpoint.

"I know. These longer shifts are killing me. I get antsy as soon as I put the uniform on," he replied, not knowing if what he just said made any sense.

He was scared out of his mind. Movement in his peripheral vision brought his attention back to the hallway. A figure moved through the automatic doors, walking briskly toward the security station. He recognized Fitch immediately. Short brown hair, glasses, khaki pants, white button-down shirt covered by an NCTC windbreaker. He thought the jacket was an odd choice for someone trying to avoid attention, but this small observation was drowned out by his relief that the guy wasn't carrying a briefcase or anything that would guarantee that he would be stopped. He should sail right through, if he wasn't carrying anything that triggered the metal detector. Something as stupid as a cell phone or a screwdriver would set the damn thing off, and he didn't control the metal detector.

Fitch approached Taylor's checkpoint and sailed through the metal detector without an issue. Almost there. Come on, baby. He fought the urge to look over his shoulder. He was told that Fitch would abandon the run if Taylor's supervisor stood in a position to see the security monitor. Fitch's eyes furtively shifted in the direction of the supervisor's office behind Taylor. He kept walking. The two men never made eye contact, but Taylor could tell that Fitch was under considerable strain from the one brief glance he stole. Taylor wondered what the Jamaican might be holding over Fitch's head. He didn't know a single fact about the IT guy's personal life.

Fitch swiped his card and waited. Taylor pretended that he didn't see the "access denied" box appear next to Fitch's picture and data profile. He nodded and pressed the green button mounted at his station, which opened the small gate and admitted Fitch, exposing the single greatest flaw in the Operations Center security system. Instead of linking the gate directly to the system, designers had opted to keep the gate operation in human hands. They had their reasons. If the automatic security system interface crashed at the wrong time, Ops personnel could be denied entry during a critical operation. They thought of several additional scenarios to justify the decision, all of which made sense.

Fitch nodded at one of the guards who had taken an interest in his arrival. Taylor held his breath in terror, depriving his limbs and brain of the oxygen-rich blood it desperately needed to support his sympathetic nervous system's activation. He started to experience tunnel vision, which triggered panic. Doubt filled his mind, causing his index finger to stray toward the red alarm button. There was no way they would let his family go. What was he thinking! He had no idea what they had convinced Fitch to do in there. He had to stop this. His family was already dead. He knew it.

"Taylor. You all right?" someone said.

He turned his head toward the voice, and his vision expanded. He was breathing again.

"Yeah. I'm fine," he responded.

"You look like shit, brother. Eating at Long John Silver's again? That place will turn your stomach upside down," his friend at the next checkpoint said.

"I can't resist the popcorn shrimp. Melt in your mouth goodness," he mumbled blankly.

"Yeah, until it comes out the other end a few seconds later." The security officer laughed.

Taylor couldn't have recited his friend's name if his life depended on it, because it didn't. Everything depended on Fitch getting inside Ops. He smiled and faked a short laugh, glancing in Fitch's direction. Taylor watched the technician open the door leading into the Operations Center's blackout vestibule, disappearing inside. He'd done it. He just hoped that Fitch would go about his nefarious business quickly. The Jamaican said that his family would be back in their apartment by 9:00 PM if Fitch gained access to the Operations Center. His watch read 8:16 PM. He settled in for the longest forty-four minutes of his life.


**

Callie Stewart had grown tired of observing the watch floor from her usual perch on the catwalk, so she had taken to mingling with the military liaisons on the left side of the watch floor. Admiral DeSantos had introduced her to Colonel Hanson, SOCOM's liaison, who accepted her based on the SEAL's word. She had been able to spread her influence to a few of the technicians, even managing to cozy up to NCTC's assistant director, Karen Wilhelm. She had little ulterior motive beyond making her time in the Operations Center a little more tolerable. Of course, her eyes and ears were always open for new intelligence. Old habits were hard to break.

Over the past three days, she had mapped out the relationships between everyone on the floor, paying close attention to mannerism, posture, glances…all of the subtle, below-the-surface connections that defined the true essence of the microcosm surrounding her. She was less interested in the overt drama, since most of it was window dressing. Once she had mapped out this web of connections, she could anticipate and predict their behavior based on something as innocuous as a pair of folded arms or a stolen glance. Right now, Karen Wilhelm was annoyed. She had just placed her hands on her hips, which was one of her many "tells."

Stewart followed her glare and settled on a man she had never seen before in the Operations Center. He wore a loose blue windbreaker with some kind of yellow logo on the front. She could only read "N" from her angle, but she assumed it read NCTC. He glanced around stiffly as he tentatively approached the other side of the watch floor and started to navigate the cluster of workstations that housed most of the FBI's task force. Karen Wilhelm started walking in his direction from her desk on Stewart's side of the center. When Stewart turned her head to examine the object of Wilhelm's curiosity, she noticed that his left hand was inserted into the left bottom pocket of the windbreaker. Purely out of instinct, she started to walk briskly toward the man. Something was off.


**

Special Agent Mendoza prepared another cup of burnt coffee and diluted it with three Coffee-mate creamers. He figured this cup would probably give him heart palpitations, but at least that would keep him awake. The day had dragged on forever after Sharpe's revelation about cooperating with Sanderson. Knowing that they were possibly pursuing false leads, while Sanderson's people assembled in Pennsylvania, had made the exhausting process nearly unbearable. It reached a boiling point when Sharpe finally confirmed that Sergeant Osborne's past few vacation periods matched up with vacations taken by operatives killed or captured in Brooklyn. Julius Grimes, the operative caught on camera near one of the Al Qaeda safe houses, fit the same pattern. Sharpe twisted some arms behind the scenes to get Laurel's chief of police to cooperate, without drawing attention within the task force. They still wanted to keep this a secret while Sanderson's crew pursued the next lead.

He walked out of the small break room, intending to step into Sharpe's office for a few minutes, when he noticed a man wearing an NCTC windbreaker walking toward O'Reilly and Hesterman's workstation. The guy looked lost, edging his way forward. When the man reached into his left pocket, Mendoza placed his coffee on the edge of the nearest workstation desk.

What he saw next left him with little time to make an impossible decision. When the dark-haired man removed his hand from the pocket, he clutched a small, highlighter-sized object in his fist. A thin black wire extended from the bottom of the black device back into his pocket. There was little doubt in Mendoza's mind about what was hidden under the man's windbreaker. He didn't hesitate. Mendoza's Glock 23 flashed out of its holster and centered on the man's head. He heard a female voice scream "no" and something about a "dead man" right before he fired. The .40-caliber bullet struck the man at the very top of his spine, exiting through his right eye socket and turning him off like a light switch. Callie Stewart flew into view, screaming, "Don't shoot!" as the man's body crumpled to the floor. She wrapped both of her hands tightly around the limp hand holding the detonator, pulling it inward to her chest and dropping to the floor next to him. Instinctively, Mendoza aligned the Glock's sights on Stewart's head. She had her hands on the detonator.

"Drop the detonator!" he screamed.

If she didn't separate her hands immediately, he'd kill her. He only hesitated for this long because Sharpe trusted her.

"It's a dead-man switch. Don't shoot!" she screamed.

He processed her statement, wasting precious milliseconds evaluating the variables. If she was telling the truth, Callie Stewart had just saved the Operations Center from a suicide bombing. If she was lying, she had just bought herself enough time to finish the job. He had hesitated long enough for her to set off the explosives, but she didn't move. She'd been telling the truth. He started to lower his pistol. Three rapid gunshots erupted at point-blank range from the workstation next to her. The bullets struck her in the upper back and neck, spraying blood onto the dead man at her knees. He lurched forward in horror as her body wavered and fell. He never saw her hands come apart.


**

Special Agent O'Reilly had figuratively hit a wall with her research into the backgrounds of the eighty-five men and women they had identified from the compound raid. She didn't see any point in continuing to try to find a pattern that might help forward the investigation. Most of them had recently participated in some kind of anti-government survivalist activity, running the spectrum from bravado forum posts on anti-government-slanted websites to misdemeanor criminal harassment charges for threatening elected officials.

She didn't believe that True America would round up over a hundred of these nut jobs for a weekend recruitment drive in the middle of one of the deadliest domestic terrorist plots in U.S. history. Sergeant Osborne's vacation schedule sealed it for her. She was going through the motions until Sanderson's people gave them something substantive to investigate. All indicators pointed to Pennsylvania as their best hope of stopping True America, or at least moving the investigation closer. Unfortunately, there was little to do on their end, especially given the methods and personnel used to obtain the information. Not to mention the possibility of a True America sympathizer within the task force or NCTC. For the first time in years, she was truly frustrated by their inability to take action. She started to type a message to Sharpe on her computer, but stopped. She'd brainstormed every possible way around this and ended up empty handed. It was time to give it a rest.

She noticed Karen Wilhelm walking in her direction at an unusually fast pace. Her peripheral vision detected another rapidly moving object, which turned out to be Callie Stewart in full sprint. O'Reilly twisted her head and torso far enough around to see one of the IT guys standing less than ten feet behind her, wearing an NCTC windbreaker. She recognized the guy. Fitch. Stewart screamed, still barreling through the workstations, when Fitch's head suddenly exploded. Her face was hit by warm splatter, causing her to close her eyes and raise her hands. She heard Mendoza's voice over the deafening echo of a single gunshot, followed immediately by Stewart's frantic voice, screaming something about a dead-man switch. Three rapid gunshots drowned out Stewart's desperate plea, causing O'Reilly to reach for her own weapon. She swiveled her chair and opened her eyes. All she saw was Hesterman's massive form bent over her.


**

Special Agent Sharpe finished reading the last few lines of O'Reilly's initial report regarding the suspects found at the Hacker Valley compound. He completely agreed with her assessment that something didn't add up. A figure loomed in his doorway for a moment, causing him to look up from the computer screen. He saw Mendoza hover near his door with a cup of coffee and walk away. He needed to talk to Mendoza about finding a way to slip a portion of Benjamin Young's information into their investigation. He'd asked O'Reilly to come up with a few ideas, but even the craftiest agent in the building couldn't conceive of a way to do it covertly. Mendoza was his last hope.

A single gunshot shattered his train of thought, and he leapt up from his chair, drew his service weapon, and rushed to the door. He had a clear line of sight to Mendoza and observed him locked into a firing stance with both hands on his gun. Stewart was on her knees past Mendoza, with her hands clasped tightly around something he couldn't quite see. As he neared the door, he saw an arm extended downward from her grip. Mendoza and Stewart yelled at each other, and he immediately understood what had happened.

His moment of clarity was interrupted by three rapid gunshots that hit Stewart. He reached the doorway, only to be blown back into his office by an incredible force that shattered the entire office. If he had been sitting at his desk, he would have been shredded by the floor-to-ceiling glass that was blown inward by the initial shockwave. Instead, he was thrown onto his back, next to his desk, hit by four ceramic ball bearings; none of which severed an artery or punctured a critical organ. Mendoza had been standing directly between Sharpe and the suicide vest, absorbing most of the fragments headed in his direction. He stared upward at the ceiling, unable to hear a sound or utter a word. A few seconds passed before he tried to raise himself onto one elbow. The pain in his shoulder was unbearable, and he collapsed back to the glass-covered floor. He felt the entire office shake beneath him and wondered if the building was about to collapse.


**

Major Hillary Carson witnessed the bizarre events unfold on the Operation Center's watch floor before she was tossed like a rag doll into the concrete wall behind her. She had just stepped onto the raised catwalk from the spiral staircase embedded within the wall and leaned over the railing to look down at her workstation. She worked with the deputy assistant secretary of defense's liaison group, spending most of her time on the floor, wishing they had something valuable to contribute to the investigation. She quickly realized why the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and America's Security Affairs was never present in the Operations Center. Their group served no functional role on the task force, other than to allow someone somewhere to check off the box requiring her office to be included in any task force investigating an active threat to homeland security.

She had been headed to their small office on the second level with the intention of lying down on the couch for a few hours. She'd send whomever she found in the office to the watch floor. She was the senior-ranking member of their contingency when the deputy assistant secretary's own assistant wasn't present. He'd left around 7:00 PM, presumably to have dinner, and she didn't expect to see him for a few hours.

When she leaned against the railing and surveyed the watch floor, she immediately noticed the creepy-looking guy in the NCTC windbreaker. She'd been assigned to NCTC for nine months and had never seen one of these jackets, not that it was truly unusual or out of place. Every agency in D.C. seemed to have an exclusive line of dark blue, yellow-stenciled outerwear. From her bird's-eye view, she could see that three people had taken an active interest in the same guy. Karen Wilhelm and Special Agent Mendoza started to converge on his location, along with Callie Stewart, the sharply dressed woman that everyone seemed to despise.

Stewart's arrival at the Operations Center had sparked a flurry of whispers and controversy among the FBI agents. She quickly came to understand why they were so uncomfortable with her presence. Stewart worked for the formerly disgraced General Terrence Sanderson, and everyone in D.C. knew that story. Stewart's presence was an enigma to everyone but Special Agents Sharpe and Mendoza, who looked like they had been forced to swallow some bitter medicine when she arrived. As soon as Carson learned of Stewart's affiliation with Sanderson, she checked the FBI's wanted lists. Sanderson had disappeared from both the Top Ten and Most Wanted Terrorists lists, along with his associates, Daniel Petrovich and Jeffrey Munoz. Formerly disgraced was the operative term.

Callie Stewart broke into a sprint when Agent Mendoza drew his pistol and fired. The man in the windbreaker dropped to the deck just as Stewart dove at him. She grabbed the man's hand, and a quick argument ensued with Mendoza. She couldn't hear what they were yelling, but Mendoza turned the gun on Stewart. Before he could fire his weapon, one of the agents seated at a workstation directly behind her fired three quick shots that killed her instantly. Carson heard one of the bullets strike the glass to her left, distracting her for a moment. She never saw the explosion that destroyed the Operations Center and slammed her against the wall next to the stairwell opening. If the blast had flung her two feet to the left, she might have been tossed down the metal staircase.

Dazed by the blast, she crawled over to the edge of the catwalk, unable to stand, and stared at the destruction. A few of the hanging pendant lights still functioned, swaying back and forth and competing with the inadequate emergency lighting to create dancing shadows among the smoldering wreckage. The FBI's side of the watch floor had been leveled, leaving toppled desks and a tangle of chairs. She couldn't make out too many details through the smoke and paper debris raining down, but she could see that the blast had cleared everything within a twenty-foot radius of the suicide vest and ignited small fires nearby.

She saw bodies slumped over desks in contorted positions or lying twisted on the floor. A few of them still moved. Sparks showered down onto the carnage from the damaged video displays lining the floor, mounted to the bottom of the catwalk. A lone workstation caught her eye on the other side of the Operations Center, where the damage had not been as severe. A man appeared to remain upright in his chair, as if nothing had happened. There was no way for Carson to know that the NCTC analyst had been instantly killed by a ball bearing that had punctured his skull.

Security personnel started to pour into the center a few seconds later. She could see that they were paralyzed by the utter devastation that lay before them. They paused upon entry, clearly debating where to start. One of the men motioned the sign of the cross and dropped to one knee. Just as his knee touched the floor, the Operations Center rumbled, and the catwalk lurched two feet downward. Carson clung to the railing until it stabilized, quickly deciding that she had to get out of here.

She crawled into the stairwell just as the catwalk dropped a few more feet and broke free from the bolts that kept it fastened to the wall. The metal supports directly underneath that section of the catwalk had been critically weakened by the blast, putting incredible downward strain on the bolts. When one bolt failed, the rest followed, snapping that corner of the catwalk free from the wall. Instead of dropping directly onto the floor below, it careened outward into the middle of the Operations Center, tearing one section after the other free from the wall, as it swung toward the security guards and finally slammed into the office next to the security doors.

The stairwell felt stable for now, so she decided to stay in place and wait for emergency responders. She remained conscious the entire time, listening to the groans and wails of survivors. In her mind, she kept replaying what she had seen before the explosion. Mendoza had almost stopped Stewart from detonating the bomb.


**

Reggie Taylor nearly released his bladder when the frosted glass doors leading into the Operations Center vestibule exploded, showering the security checkpoint with glass fragments. The inner vestibule door had resisted the initial blast of the shockwave, absorbing a significant portion of its energy, which saved their lives. The glass left most of them with multiple lacerations, but lacked the speed necessary to deeply penetrate their bodies. He froze at his station, unwilling to process what had just happened. As most of his colleagues raced toward the source of the explosion, Taylor couldn't move.

He couldn't believe this was happening to him. He had unwittingly allowed a suicide bomber into the Operations Center. Fitch's windbreaker made sense now, along with the Jamaican's assurances that they would know if Fitch got into Ops unhindered. He no longer had any doubt that they planned to release his family. Their operation within NCTC wasn't a covert data theft or file corruption that needed to remain a secret. There was no reason to hold them any longer. He briefly considered fleeing the building, but couldn't bring himself to turn his back on the wounded survivors he had just helped to maim.

He stood up from his seat and checked on one of the guards, who had propped himself against the opposite wall. His leg looked badly shredded, bleeding profusely onto the floor.

"Go help the others. I'll be fine," the man said.

Taylor looked down the hallway toward the administrative building and saw the automatic doors open. Security personnel poured through the doorway, sprinting in his direction.

"All right. Make sure one of them gets you out of here. You're losing a lot of blood," Taylor said, before proceeding to the shattered vestibule.

He stepped through the newly created openings and stopped with the rest of the security team just inside the vast space. What he saw caused him to drop to one knee and cross himself.

"Father, Son and the Holy Spirit," he muttered in disbelief.

A muffled explosion shook the room, bringing him to his feet just as a section of the catwalk disengaged from the wall near the far right stairwell. The metal creaked and screamed for a few seconds, before the entire catwalk structure on the right side of the Operations Center swung across the room, gaining momentum as more sections separated. The guards scurried back toward the security checkpoint, clearing the vestibule as a massive collision rattled the floor. Once the catwalk settled, they hesitantly walked back into the apocalyptic nightmare that had just minutes ago been the world's most technologically advanced counterterrorism center.

As the desperate cries for help and deep moaning finally reached Taylor's ears, he wished he had been crushed by the twisted metal catwalk.