Thriller (5 page)

die hard. Before sunrise, he’d already run two miles and peeled

off two hundred sit-ups. He was stepping out of the shower, dripping wet, when the telephone call had come from Fire Station

No. 1. An explosion at Camp Delta. Possible casualties. Fire/Rescue dispatched. No details as yet. Almost immediately, he was

fielding calls from his senior officers, including the brigadier general in charge of the entire detainee program, all of whom were

demanding a situation report,
pronto
.

A guard waved them through the Camp Delta checkpoint.

“Unbelievable.” The major was slightly embarrassed for having repeated himself, but it was involuntary, the only word that

seemed to fit.

The Humvee stopped, and the soldiers rushed to strap on

their gas masks as they jumped out of the vehicle. A wave of heat

assaulted the major immediately, a stifling blow, as if he’d carelessly tossed a match onto a pile of oversoaked charcoal briquettes. Instinctively he brought a hand to his face, even though

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he was protected by the mask. After a few moments, the burning sensation subsided, but the visibility was only getting worse.

Depending on the wind, it was like stepping into a foggy twilight,

the low morning sun unable to penetrate the smoke. He grabbed

a flashlight from the glove compartment.

Major Jorgenson walked briskly, stepping over rock-hard fire

hoses and fallen debris, eventually finding himself in the staging area for the firefighting team from Fire Station No. 2. Thick,

noxious smoke made it impossible to see beyond the three nearest fire trucks, though he was sure there were more, somewhere

in the darkness. At least he hoped there were more. Once again,

the heat was on him like a blanket, but even more stifling was

the noise all around him—radios crackling, sirens blaring, men

shouting. Loudest of all was the inferno itself, an endless surge

of flames emitting a noise that was peculiar to fires this overwhelming, a strange cross between a roaring tidal wave and a gigantic wet bedsheet flapping in the breeze.

“Watch it!”

Directly overhead, a stream of water arched from the turret of

a massive, yellow truck. It was one of several three-thousandgallon airport rescue and firefighting machines on the base, capable of dousing flames with 165 gallons of water per minute.

It wasn’t even close to being enough.

“Coming through!” A team of stretcher bearers streaked past.

Major Jorgenson caught a glimpse of the blackened shell of a man

on the gurney, his arms and legs twisted and shriveled like melted

plastic. On impulse, he ran alongside and then took up the rear

position, relieving one of the stretcher bearers who seemed to be

on the verge of collapse.

“Dear God,” he said. But his heart sank even further as the lead

man guided the stretcher right past the ambulance to a line of

human remains behind the emergency vehicles. The line was already too long to bear. They rolled the charred body onto the

pavement.

“Major, in here!”

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He turned and saw the fire chief waving him toward the side

of the fire truck. An enlisted man stepped in to relieve his commanding officer of stretcher duty. The major commended him

and then hurried over to join the chief inside the cab, pulling off

his mask as the door closed behind him.

The fire chief was covered with soot, his expression incredulous. “With all due respect, sir, what are you doing out here?”

“Same as you,” said the major. “Is it as bad as it looks?”

“Maybe worse, sir.”

“How many casualties?”

“Six marines unaccounted for so far. Eleven injured.”

“What about detainees?”

“Easier to count survivors at this point.”

“How many?”

“So far, none.”

The major felt his gut tighten. None. No survivors. A horrible result—even worse when you had to explain it to the rest of

the world.

The fire chief picked a flake of ash from his eye and said, “Sir,

we’re doing our best to fight this monster. But any insight you

can give me as to how this started could be a big help.”

“Plane crash,” the major reported. “That’s all we know now.

Civilian craft. Cessna.”

Just then, a team of F-16s roared across the skies overhead. Navy

fighter jets had been circling the base since the invasion of airspace.

“Civilian plane, huh? It may not be my place to ask, but how

did that happen?”

“You’re right. It’s not your place to ask.”

“Yes, sir. But for the safety of my own men, I guess what I’m

getting at is this: if there’s something inside this facility that we

should know about…I mean something of an explosive or incendiary nature—”

“This is a detention facility. Nothing more.”

“One heck of a blaze for a small civilian aircraft that crashed

into nothing more than a detention facility.”

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The major took another look through the windshield. He

couldn’t argue.

The chief said, “I may look like an old geezer, but I know a

thing or two about fires. A little private plane crashing into a

building doesn’t carry near enough fuel to start a fire like this.

These bodies we’re pulling out of here, we’re not talking thirddegree burns. Upward of eighty-five, ninety percent of them, it’s

fourth-and even fifth-degree, some of them cooked right down

to the bone. And that smell in the air, benzene all the way.”

“What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

“I know napalm when I see it.”

The major turned his gaze back toward the fire, then pulled

his encrypted cellular phone from his pocket and dialed the

naval station command suite.

7:02 a.m., Miami, Florida

Jack increased the volume to hear the rapid-fire cadence of an

anchorwoman struggling to make sense of the image on the TV

screen.

“You are looking at a live scene at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay,” said the newswoman. “We have no official confirmation, but CNN has obtained unofficial reports that, just after

sunrise, there was an explosion on the base. A large and intense

fire is still burning, but because both the United States and the

Cuban military enforce a buffer zone around the base, we cannot send in our own camera crew for a closer look.

“Joining me now live by telephone is CNN military analyst

David Polk, a retired naval officer who once served as base commander at Guantanamo. Mr. Polk, as you watch the television

screen along with us, can you tell us anything that might help

us better understand what we’re viewing?”

“As you can see, Deborah, the base is quite large, covering

about forty-five square miles on the far southeastern tip of

Cuba, about four hundred air miles from Miami. To give you

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a little history, the U.S. has controlled this territory since the

Spanish American War, and the very existence of a military

base there has been a source of friction in U.S./Cuba relations

since Fidel Castro took power. There is no denying that this is

Cuban soil. However, for strategic reasons, the U.S. has clung

to this very valuable turf, relying on a seventy-year-old treaty

that essentially allows the United States to stay as long as it

wishes.”

“We’ve heard reports of an explosion. Has anything of this nature ever happened before at Guantanamo?”

“No. Tensions have certainly run high over the years, spiking

in the early sixties with the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, and spiking again in 1994 when sixty-thousand Cuban and

Haitian refugees were detained at Guantanamo. But never anything like this.”

“What might cause an explosion and fire like this at the base?”

“That would be pure speculation at this juncture. We’ll have

to wait and see.”

“Can you pinpoint the location of the fire for me? What part

of the base appears to be affected?”

“It’s the main base. What I mean by that is that Guantanamo

is a bifurcated base. The airstrip is on the western or leeward

side. The main base is to the east, across the two-and-a-halfmile stretch of water that is Guantanamo Bay. You can see part

of the bay in the upper left-hand corner of your television

screen.”

“What part of the main base is burning?”

“It’s the southern tip, which is known as Radio Range because

of the towering radio antennae that you can see in your picture.

Interestingly enough, the fire is concentrated in what appears to

be Camp Delta, which is the new high-security detention facility.”

“Camp Delta was built to house suspected terrorists, am I

right?”

“The official terminology is ‘enemy combatant.’ Originally,

the only detainees there were the alleged members of the

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al-Qaeda terrorist network. In recent months, however, the

United States has broadened the definition of ‘enemy combatant.’

As a result, Camp Delta now houses drug lords and rebels from

South America, suspected war criminals from Chechnya, kidnappers and thugs from Cambodia and a host of others who meet

the Defense Department’s definition of ‘enemy combatant’ in the

ever-widening war on terrorism.”

“This whole issue of detainees—this has become quite an international sore spot for President Howe, has it not?”

“That’s an understatement. You have to remember that none

of the detainees at this facility has ever been charged with a

crime. This all goes back to what I said earlier—the base is on

Cuban soil. The Department of Defense has successfully argued

in the U.S. federal courts that the base is not ‘sovereign’ territory and that inmates therefore have no due-process rights under

the U.S. Constitution. The White House has taken the position

that the military can hold the prisoners indefinitely. But pressure has steadily risen in the international community to force

the U.S. either to charge the detainees with specific crimes or

release them.”

“Some of these detainees are quite dangerous, I’m sure.”

“Even the president’s toughest antiterrorism experts are beginning to worry about the growing clamor over holding prisoners indefinitely without formal charges. On the other hand,

you could probably make a pretty strong case that some of these

guys are among the most dangerous men in the world. So Camp

Delta is a bit of a steaming political hot potato.”

“Which has just burst into flames—literally.”

“I think this is on the verge of becoming one of the toughest

issues President Howe will face in his second term—What

should be done with all these enemy combatants that we’ve

rounded up and put into detention without formal charges?”

“From the looks of things, someone may have come up with

a solution.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that at all, but—”

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“Mr. Polk, thank you for joining us. CNN will return with

more live coverage of the fire at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after these commercial messages.”

Jack hit the mute button on the remote. “You still there?” he

asked over the phone.

“Yeah,” said Theo. “Can you believe he did it?”

“Did what?”

“They said it was a Cessna. Wake up, dude. It’s Operation

Northwoods.”

There was a pounding on the door. It had that certain thud of

authority—law enforcement. “Open up. FBI!”

Jack gripped the phone. “Theo, I think this lawyer may need

a lawyer.”

There was a crash at the front door, and it took Jack only a

moment to realize that a SWAT team had breached his house.

Jack could hear them coming down the hall, see them burst

through the bedroom door. “Down, down, on the floor!” someone shouted, and Jack instinctively obeyed. He had never

claimed to be the world’s smartest lawyer, but he was sharp

enough to realize that when six guys come running into your

bedroom in full SWAT regalia before dawn, generally they mean

business. He decided to save the soapbox speech on civil liberties for another day, perhaps when his face wasn’t buried in the

carpet and the automatic rifles weren’t aimed at the back of his

skull.

“Where’s Jack Swyteck?” one of the men barked at him.

“
I’m
Jack Swyteck.”

There was silence, and it appeared that the team leader was

checking a photograph to confirm Jack’s claim. The man said,

“Let him up, boys.”

Jack rose and sat on the edge of the bed. He was wearing gym

shorts and a Miami Dolphins jersey, his version of pajamas. The

SWAT team backed away. The team leader pointed his gun at the

floor and introduced himself as Agent Matta, FBI.

“Sorry about the entrance,” Matta said. “We got a tip that you

were in danger.”

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“A tip? From who?”

“Anonymous.”

Jack was somewhat skeptical. He was, after all, a criminal defense lawyer.

“We need to talk to you about your client, Jean Saint Preux.

Did he act alone?”

“I don’t even know if he’s done anything yet.”

“Save it for the courtroom,” Matta said. “I need to know if

there are more planes on the way.”

Jack suddenly understood the guns-drawn entrance. “What

are you talking about?”

“Your client has been flying in the Windward Passage for some

time now, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah. He’s Haitian. People are dying on the seas trying to flee