CHAPTER 3
“…begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors.” Qur’an 002.190
The scene in God’s house- normally a place of beauty and of worship- was one of chaos with people not knowing exactly what had happened or what to do. Toby knew that there could be another bomb planted in the church, timed to go off as people fled or when first responders arrived to help. He immediately identified himself as an FBI agent and quickly recruited five uninjured worshipers to help search the large sanctuary- nearly two football fields in length- for more explosives. He also asked for any doctors and other health care workers to come to the north side of the nave where the bomb had exploded in order to treat and triage the most seriously injured people until the ambulances arrived. After rushing outside to make certain that there were no terrorists waiting to shoot down worshipers fleeing the church, Toby instructed everyone else, except for the clergy who were administering to the dying and the hysterical, to run outside, away from cars, dumpsters and buildings- away from any place that a bomb might have been hidden.
Sullivan stayed at the church for several hours doing as much as he could to assist health care personnel and help preserve the crime scene until Henry Nelson, one of the FBI’s forensic experts, arrived. Then, after taking some high-resolution digital videos with his p-Com, the latest in personal communications devices, he headed back to headquarters where he knew Rawlings and the rest of the taskforce were waiting.
The drive from the church to the headquarters, normally no more than 10-20 minutes, took nearly an hour because so many streets were blocked and he was in his personal car- a classic Jaguar- that had no GPS navigation system. Toby used the time trapped in his Jag to reflect on the many similarities between life and the game of craps. “When your number comes up in life,” he thought, “it’s really not much different than snake eyes coming up on a pair of dice- pure chance.” Fortunately for him, he had chosen to sit toward the rear of the church behind a column, and for that reason alone as far as he could determine, today was not the day for his number to come up. He had been one of the lucky ones.
After parking his car near the Joint Terrorism Taskforce headquarters, Toby walked quickly to the modern government building and took the elevator up to the third floor where the special unit was housed. As he entered the office, the scene in front of him was not nearly as chaotic as he imagined it would be. Although the noise level was quite high, people seemed to be going about their business in a purposeful and professional manner. “Maybe we are becoming too accustomed to bombs and death,” he thought.
The first person he encountered was Rawlings who was characteristically calm, even-tempered and filled with religious fervor. “Praise the Lord that you were not killed or injured. I was worried abote you,” Trey exclaimed in his UVA- and Yale-educated English that still bore a trace of his distinctive Virginia Piedmont dialect in which the “u” in “about” seemed to disappear.
Although Toby knew that his friend had only the best of intentions, at this particular moment he found Trey’s religious fervor both annoying and inappropriate. “Maybe you should give praise to the stonemasons who built the Cathedral,” Toby suggested. “If I hadn’t been sitting almost directly behind one of the giant columns, I don’t know what condition I would be in, but I bet it wouldn’t be very good. You should have seen the devastation- which reminds me, have you heard from Margaret? I never saw her today.”
“The Lord has blessed and watched over her, too,” Trey responded. “As faith would have it, she chose this weekend to visit her mother in Atlanta and is scheduled to fly back this evening. It is obvious that the Lord has something he wants you and Margaret to do on this earth, because he was watching over both of you.”
“Or maybe we were just lucky,” Sullivan suggested, somewhat skeptical of the idea that God gets involved in day-to-day happenings on earth, such as where people are sitting in church when a bomb explodes.
“There you go again,” Trey said with a touch of exasperation obvious in his voice. “Why can’t you just accept that the Lord loves you and has a plan for you? Is it really so hard to give your life over to Jesus?”
Sullivan paused before he spoke, watching as his partner unconsciously straightened his blue and gold striped bow tie. He knew that Trey, a graduate of Yale Law School, was both intelligent and completely sincere in his faith, and it was just impossible not to like the guy, because he almost always had a smile on his face and an unshakable belief that good would eventually triumph. On the other hand, Toby had just come from a house of worship- supposedly the Lord’s house- where scores of innocent and devout men, women and even children had been killed or seriously injured. “Just how did such an event demonstrate God’s love?” he wondered.
“Yes, it is hard, Trey, especially after witnessing what I saw this morning,” Toby said slowly and quietly. “It is very difficult to find love in a lot of what happens in this world.”
“That’s because the devil is also real,” Rawlings explained. “Until all people accept Jesus as their Savior, death, destruction and evil will continue to plague the world.”
“Does that go for our Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim friends, too?” Sullivan responded. “Do they have to accept Jesus as their Savior, too?”
“I know you find it simplistic,” said Trey, “but I happen to believe in what the Bible says. ‘There is no salvation except through Jesus.’ Why do I believe it? Because I believe the resurrection is a historical fact, and that pretty much makes the rest of Christianity a slam-dunk in my book.”
“I guess it would,” Sullivan said, “but I’m afraid I just can’t be as certain as you about the resurrection or a lot of what the Bible says- particularly after what I witnessed today. If, as you say, God purposely spared Margaret and me, then that must mean that He purposely allowed the others to die. Why would He do that? It makes no sense.”
“That’s because we don’t know yet what God’s plan for us is,” Trey said. “We won’t be able to completely understand His plan until we are with Him in Heaven.”
“Look, Trey, now is probably not a good time for us to have this conversation,” Toby said. “In spite of the fact that I should be thanking God that I am alive, I am more than a little pissed off at any God that would allow such a terrible thing to happen. I think we’ll just have to continue to agree to disagree about religion for the time being and focus our energies on finding the miserable people responsible for the bombings.”
“You mean the radical Muslims?” Trey said more as a statement than a question.
“We don’t know that for certain,” said Toby, “It was possibly Muslims who were responsible, but just possibly, it was someone else.”
“Possibly Muslims?” Rawlings asked incredulously. “I’d say the chances are about 99 percent, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not willing to go above 80 or 90 percent quite yet,” said Sullivan. “We have to keep our minds open at least a little. We want to make sure we catch the people who actually committed the crimes, not the ones that everyone assumes committed them.”
“Who else could be responsible?” asked Trey. “These are the only people I know who are so filled with hate that they would commit such horrific crimes.”
“What about the Ku Klux Klan, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Robert Rudolph, the White Christian Alliance, Raymond Collins and that guy John Chapman who shot those seven doctors about five years ago?” Sullivan reminded his partner. “We have had some homegrown kooks, too.”
“Maybe so, but Rudolph and Chapman, at least, were trying to save lives by stopping abortion,” said Rawlings. “You know as well as I do that most of the terrorist acts of the last few decades throughout the entire world have been the work of Muslim fanatics. The more democracy has threatened to spread in the Middle East, the more desperate the fanatics have become. They lash out without regard to whom they harm or where, all in the misguided belief that they will go to heaven if they kill a sufficient number of infidels.”
Toby looked at his partner with a slight scowl. “You don’t actually believe that Rudolph’s and Chapman’s actions were justified, do you, Trey?”
“I don’t believe that anyone has the right to kill innocent people unless the deaths are collateral, such as during warfare,” Trey responded, “but I also understand their desire to bring an end to the barbaric practice of abortion.”
“Under that philosophy, the Muslim terrorists can justify their actions as the only way to bring an end to what they see as the corruption and sinfulness of Western culture and government,” Sullivan answered.
Before Rawlings could respond, the taskforce leader, Associate Director Carl Drake, came to their door. Always a man of few words, he did not even ask Toby how he was doing after the explosion, but said bluntly, “Please move as quickly as possible into the conference room.”
Trey and Toby followed the ramrod straight, six-foot tall Drake to the meeting room, which contained a very long table, nearly two dozen leather swivel chairs and a large state-of-the-art interactive communications wall at one end of the room. The room was crowded and Sullivan and Rawlings took the only two remaining seats- the ones on either side of their boss. Other members of the taskforce from CIA, Homeland Security, the Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police and a few other agencies filled the rest of the chairs around the rectangular table. Toby instantly focused his eyes and attention on the woman who had just sat down at the far end of the table. It was Tad. She was dressed in a casual outfit of black pants, a black blouse and a soft black jacket with some kind of subdued print- very likely one of the many travel outfits she routinely purchased from Chico’s, her favorite clothing store.
Before Sullivan even had an opportunity to say hello to his former lover, Drake looked at the 14 men and two women and asked them to bow their heads.
More as a sign of respect (and conformity) than reverence, Toby bowed his head slightly, but kept his eyes open while his boss called for Divine guidance and intervention. Such a request by a government official would have been almost unthinkable a couple of decades earlier, but recent Supreme Court decisions and the newly-enacted Freedom to Practice Religion Act had made Christianity- the nation’s dominant religion- virtually a state religion.
“Dear Jesus, we know that we are unworthy and are being punished for not living the kind of lives that you want us to live. We know that promiscuous behavior and immorality permeate our society and that we have not followed your commandments and teachings…”
While Drake prayed, Toby noticed Lieutenant Johnson of the Metropolitan Police, who was rumored to be gay, and Steve Abronovitz of Homeland Security, the only Jewish member, open their eyes uncomfortably as the boss referred to society’s sins and evoked the name of “Jesus, our Savior” to help guide the taskforce in its duties. It obviously never dawned on Drake that some people might take offense at his prayer - or maybe it did dawn on him and he just didn’t care.
Mostly though, Sullivan focused his eyes on Tad. They had met nearly six years earlier at an antiterrorism training program that had brought together representatives from the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security and several other agencies to make sure that everyone was “on the same page” as the trainers had said over and over. He was in his mid-thirties at the time and Tad was just barely 30. He was attracted to her instantly. She was approximately 5’8” tall with medium brown hair, gorgeous blue eyes and what was in his perception, a perfect figure (not emaciated like some of the so-called super models). Looks, brains and brass- she had it all. And, as Toby saw her winking at him, he had no doubts that he had made the right decision to wait for her while she was on an undercover assignment of indeterminate length that had lasted five long years.
“…and this we ask in your name, Jesus, amen.” The taskforce leader paused for a moment and then, while looking around the room with his steel-grey eyes, spoke in a quiet, resolute voice, either forgetting or ignoring the women present. “Gentlemen, we are at war. In the last six days, terrorists have launched the most ferocious attacks on American soil in more than a decade. Let’s review what we know so far.”
Drake waited for a few seconds for a three-dimensional projection of a street in Georgetown to appear on the giant video screen.
“On Monday, a car bomb exploded at approximately 7:30 a.m., just as Senator Charles Madison of Oklahoma was approaching his car. The senator and two other people on the sidewalks were killed.”
Next, a projection of Union Station appeared on the communications wall.
“On Tuesday around noon, another car bomb exploded near Union Station just as Charles Rutherford, assistant secretary of Homeland Security was heading toward the station for a luncheon meeting. Rutherford and three other people were killed.”
And then, a projection of the Metro Center train station.
“On Wednesday, a bomb exploded in a Metro train near the Metro Center station. Five people, including Senator John Morgan of Virginia, were killed.”
The projection of the Metro station was replaced by a three-dimensional view of the interior of the National Cathedral.
“And earlier today, a bomb exploded in the National Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue. We have no firm casualty figures yet.”
Drake paused briefly before continuing. “We can’t officially say this, because it would compromise intelligence sources, but we have very good reason to believe that al-Qaida is responsible for all of these bombings.”
“That’s interesting,” Sullivan thought, although he said nothing. “How could anyone already know for certain who planted the bomb in the church just a few hours ago?” He anxiously awaited an explanation.
“In case you are wondering why I am so certain that al-Qaida is responsible for all of the bombings, including the one this morning, it is because we have an agent, whose code name is Desert Dan, working under cover in a terrorist sleeper cell in New Mexico. He has reason to believe that another sleeper cell in the Virginia or Maryland suburbs of D.C. has been activated and instructed to unleash a series of attacks in this area. Unless we find these people quickly and stop them, there will almost certainly be more attacks.”
“Do we have any leads as to where these people may be living?” Abronovitz asked.
“Nothing definite yet,” Drake responded. “Based on little bits of information he has gathered, Desert Dan believes that most or all of the cell members live outside of Washington in rural Virginia or Maryland.”
“If we have an agent under cover, how come we didn’t have any warning abote the attacks?” Rawlings asked.
“That’s a good question,” Drake responded. “These al-Qaida cells are completely independent. The New Mexico cell in which the agent is imbedded knows virtually nothing about the Virginia/Maryland cell, except that it exists. These are smart and devious people. In case one cell is discovered, they don’t want that discovery leading to other cells.”
“But what if this agent, Desert Dan, has bad information?” asked Davenport. “Shouldn’t we consider the possibility that these bombings may have been the work of some domestic terrorists- or some international terrorists unrelated to al-Qaida?”
“I think that would just be an unnecessary distraction,” Drake replied. “I have complete confidence in the information we have received.”
“And so what is the plan for finding these putative terrorists?” Tad followed with another question.
“That’s why I have called you all together Miss Davenport---to determine exactly how we should proceed,” Drake responded, obviously not appreciative of Tad’s questions. “I can tell you, however, that I have some special assignments here at headquarters for you and Miss Robinson. I feel confident that these assignments- as well as things that will come up to assist the men in the field- will keep you extremely busy and be of tremendous value to the investigation.”
“...assist the men in the field”? Had she really heard that correctly? Tad sat motionless trying to absorb what she thought she had just heard. As a recent undercover agent and an expert on Islamic and mid-eastern culture, she was unaccustomed to being treated as a “gofer.” Having been away for five years, she knew very little about Drake’s attitude about women, and she could never have imagined that he would be as blatantly sexist as he appeared, even in an age when fewer and fewer women were pursuing careers.
“Pardon me, Director Drake, but I would prefer “Doctor” or “Agent” instead of “Miss,” and I am not sure I understand what it is you just said,” Tad answered firmly as Toby winced and waited for Drake’s response.
“I’m sorry, Doctor Davenport,” Drake responded with a very heavy- and somewhat sarcastic- emphasis on the title, “but the people in the field will be in extreme danger, and I do not believe in putting women in that position. There will be plenty of important work to be done here in the office.”
Knowing Tad’s temperament as he did, Toby braced himself for a forceful reaction to Drake’s explanation, but, amazingly, she said nothing further, although he suspected she was very likely fuming inside.
The only other woman on the taskforce- other than Drake’s assistant Margaret Peabody who had not yet arrived from Georgia- was a Metropolitan Police lieutenant named Lucinda Robinson. It appeared to Toby that she was poised to respond to Drake’s remark as well, but he spoke before she could open her mouth.
“Sullivan, you were at the Cathedral when the bomb exploded. We are all very grateful that the Lord was with you and you were not injured. What can you tell us about the attack?”
“One thing I can tell you is that it could have been a lot worse,” Toby responded as he used a laser device that he borrowed from Drake to point to the three dimensional projection of the Cathedral. “All of us who escaped injury were probably saved by the fact that the bomb was attached to the underside of this seat on the north side of the nave and only a portion of the device exploded. If it had been located closer to the center aisle and exploded with its full force, there may have been many more people killed and injured.”
Sullivan hesitated and then continued. “We can also be grateful that Margaret was away for the weekend, because she usually sits close to the seat where the bomb was hidden. And another fortunate coincidence is that Senator Stevens and his wife were not there. When they are in town, they almost always attend that service and sit close to where Margaret sits.”
“Any ideas why the Cathedral was targeted?” Drake asked.
“If this was in fact the work of terrorists,” Toby hypothesized, “it could be that they were looking for a soft target that would produce the maximum amount of publicity and residual terror. After all, where can people feel safe if not in a house of worship?”
“Why that church?” Trey asked.
“My guess would be because it is such a prominent landmark in the city or because they were targeting Senator Stevens,” Sullivan speculated. “Terrorists usually attempt to get the most attention they can for each attack. It isn’t so much the number of people they kill, as it is the symbolism attached to their targets. For example, when Eric Rudolph set off the bomb during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, relatively few people were killed or injured, but the attack achieved enormous media coverage.”
“Which is yet another reason that al-Qaida is the group most likely responsible for the attacks this week,” Drake said. “A series of bombings; all in our capital city; aimed at government officials and one of our country’s most prominent religious symbols. It fits their M.O. perfectly.”
Drake stopped briefly and then continued. “And I agree with Sullivan that it is quite likely that Senator Stevens was a target. He has been a very outspoken supporter of our country’s antiterrorism efforts…just one more reason the terrorists may have chosen that particular church.”
Although Toby still had not seen any concrete evidence to link al-Qaida to the bombings, he had to admit that the radical Islamic terrorist organization was high on the list of suspects. And since no one had any better ideas, the members of the taskforce spent the next two hours discussing possible strategies for locating the members of the alleged metro D.C. cell. Obviously, they would rely heavily on the forensics team to find solid evidence to lead to the bombers, but until such evidence turned up, they had to pursue the leads they had, and at this point, the only lead was the New Mexico tip.
Drake divided the taskforce unit into teams of two men each and assigned each team a specific geographic area within which they would work with local law enforcement personnel to find evidence leading to the capture or death of the terrorists. Sullivan and Rawlings were assigned the Leesburg, Virginia area, and as the meeting adjourned- with another prayer- they quickly made arrangements to meet at headquarters early the next morning. “I’ll be here at 7:30,” said Trey.
After acknowledging Trey’s remarks- “May Christ be with you”- Toby wished his obsessively neat, spiritual and punctual partner a good evening and then caught up with Tad who was waiting for him at the elevator.
“For Christ sake, Tad, you might have let me know you were going to be here today. Do you have time to talk now?”
Tad grabbed Toby’s arm and pulled him into the elevator. “Yes, I have time to talk, but I need a drink first. I can’t believe what just happened.”