Authors: J. M. Erickson
As both men walked out of the bank in silence, Helms was the first to speak. “He’s going to contact you, you know.”
“Yeah, it makes sense. Even though I am unlisted, I bet he will get through to me,” Andersen responded.
“Do you want a detail? It would be very easy for me to set that up,” Helms offered.
It only took Andersen a moment to assess the risk and dismiss it.
“No. Burns needs me. He won’t hurt me. He hasn’t hurt anyone really. The ballistics showed that your guys killed the guys from Boston, and those guys killed the other federal agent. And in light of the explosions, smoke, and fires, the only real damage has been property, egos, and national security. Burns has gone to great lengths to create havoc and chaos while limiting collateral damage. No … he won’t hurt me, not now anyway.” Andersen no longer felt anger about the deception. He was fascinated by everything this group had done. The level of detail and patience was staggering to imagine.
Helms nodded in agreement. Andersen had to get back to work. He knew that both of them would coordinate and proceed with their investigations and continue the search, but he was convinced that Burns and his team were long gone by now. They had had a two-hour head start and had been five steps ahead all along.
With the computers still down, they could be eighty miles away and dug in deep. The way this team operated, they might be watching me and Helms right now
, Andersen mused.
Probably not
, he had to admit, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before he heard from someone.
The Merrimack Valley Crisis,
as it was now called, lasted about four days before it stopped being the lead news. The bombs that were planted never blew up. It was later discovered that they were rigged not to. They just looked scary. Weapons of mass destruction were never found, let alone detonated. It had been Helms’s team that had found the computer and master server in a building that had compromised the operations center. The complex was very close to the North Reading Police Department. Janeson had discovered that critical detail. In one of his last communications with Davis, Andersen had found out that the operations center was now somewhere stateside but in one of ten states now, and they now had a plan to have two operational at all times. The auxiliary control room’s fail-safe method was discontinued. In light of the breach to classified information, the protocol for relocation and operations had been completely changed to work parallel of each other rather than sequentially.
On a national level, it took nearly fourteen hours to rectify the effects of the computer worm that had compromised thirty-two million American computers. Anyone with a computer demanded that the government find the domestic terrorists that had done all this damage. This kept the story alive on the front-page news for at least two additional days. It was apparent that antivirus companies had lost control of their product, lost the public’s confidence, and then lost a great deal of money. It was a massive public relations disaster. It was also clear that various private security agencies had been so ill-prepared that it had been the public and the consumer demanding justice. The irony of all this, Andersen suspected, was that while lives were not lost, the economic damage and the anxiety of having your computer turn against you had been very troubling to the public. Helms told Andersen in one of their weekly meeting that information had been omitted and kept from the public, namely the fact that all active security cameras and surveillance equipment at the time of the crisis had been also profoundly compromised. This fact was kept quiet to make sure that criminals and terrorists did not take advantage of the weak infrastructure. In fact, the missing classified data and who might be involved in the incident had also been omitted. By day six and seven, the conspiracy theories started emerging. Andersen thought the best theory he had heard was one that attributed the attacks to a joint Chinese, North Korean, and Middle East “trial attack” and that the “federal, state, and local governments effectively contained and preserved the nation’s infrastructure.” This was a good spin. It eventually became the common mantra following every news report. Andersen had a hard time adjusting to his knowledge that all the mayhem could have been profoundly worse, and yet all of it had been successfully committed by a group of average citizens motivated to survive at all costs.
After nearly a week, Andersen still contemplated all this from his leather chair while he drank a single-malt scotch. The television was now off, and the kids were settled into their evening routine. This was a quiet moment to maybe just read a magazine. Andersen was hoping for something light and nothing news-related. Maybe the whole Burns affair was over? No, Andersen knew he would never rest, even if Burns or David never contacted him. He was pissed that he fell neatly into a plan and was used as proficiently as a surgeon using a tool. Andersen was not a drinker by a long shot; however, he had started taking an interest in malt scotches a few years back, and now seemed like a good time to actually try some. The bottle had been a gift from Helms. Helms was still very determined to find Burns and his crew because, as he put it, they had “fucked up my region.” It was just as personal for Helms as it was for Andersen.
The magazine article Andersen settled on looked like it might be interesting, but his wife’s cell phone was going off, so he couldn’t concentrate. Pagers, cell phones, and any other communication devices were kept in one place. Because he knew that his wife could always be called into the hospital, Andersen picked up her cell phone, expecting it to be the charge nurse begging for his wife to fill in for her. Maybe it would be that new nurse that had filled in for his wife when she had gotten sick. She had dodged a bullet there. His wife had been home with the kids that day and not in the eye of the storm. However, the male voice on the phone threw Andersen off right from the start.
“This is Laura Andersen’s phone. How may I direct your call?” Andersen had always playfully wondered what a job in stand-up comedy would be like. Anderson wondered what else he would think of after more than two shots of whiskey.
“Lieutenant Andersen?” the voice asked.
Andersen’s levity immediately escaped, and if he was tipsy, the feeling was now gone.
“Yes,” Andersen responded.
“This is Alex Burns.” Unbelievable. Andersen’s home phone, cell phone, pager, and work phone had all been tapped for this very call, courtesy of nearly every federal and state law enforcement agency, and somehow, Burns was on his wife’s cell phone.
“How did you get this number?” Andersen responded, shocked by Burns’s ability to consistently do the unexpected.
They got Laura’s phone number,
he kept thinking.
“My colleague obtained the phone number at a party your wife was at.” Burns’s response was calm and level.
Not as soothing as David’s, but pretty calming, except for the fact he has Laura’s number,
Andersen thought. He was still stunned. Was no place safe from these people?
It’s one thing to terrorize a nation and point a gun at the head of the US government, but his wife?
Angry, Andersen could only muster a short response. “You got some pretty big balls doing that.”
Burns probably knew that Andersen’s wife’s cell phone would probably not be bugged or set up to trace, but he was going to keep it under three minutes anyway to be safe. “It’s funny. When it’s someone you love or care about that is threatened, an average man or woman is capable of doing anything.”
There was silence.
That statement had a great deal of meaning and hit the mark. Andersen immediately recalled David’s response to being called a terrorists and his comment that it was the government “that had killed my wife” and threatened his friends and taken his life away. At the time, Andersen had an intellectual understanding of what David was feeling. Now with his own wife in the mix and her having contact with someone in their group, Andersen felt vulnerable. It was like he was watching his wife innocently brushing up against the angel of death. Andersen was brought back by Burns’s voice.
“I am not interested in harming you, your wife, or your children.”
“You’d better stay away from—” Andersen started but was cut off.
“Shut up, Lieutenant. Here’s the deal. I have more classified intelligence and data to sell off to enemy countries and to the highest bidder, but I won’t. My team has pieces of the data and will be able to distribute this information in various forms and to various agencies ranging from newspapers to the Internet should we lose contact with one another. Other foreign governments, friendly and otherwise, will also be pulled in the mix if necessary. This plan has been carefully orchestrated to ensure that if anything bad happens to any one of us, it will be Department of Defense’s ass that will pay. All their secrets will be visible to the world. Because of the shit I have, the US will fall in the crosshairs of all enemy combatants as well as a few friendly governments. All this is arranged on a dead-man switch, and you’d all better hope for us to have long lives without complications. This crew is family to me. It’s personal. If I sense I am being followed or watched or if anything happens to them, I will rain hell down on everyone, and I won’t be satisfied until the whole world is burning. Am I clear?”
Andersen could hear the level of danger in Burns voice, especially when it came to the last part. He also knew that Burns’s question had been rhetorical. There was only one right answer.
“Yes.” What other response could he give?.
“And to prove that I am sincere, I sent you an interesting summary of the events that happened from May 1 to May 4, 2011.”
Before Burns could hang up and disappear, Andersen had to know one thing. “Burns, wait. Why did you leave Caulfield with me to be interrogated? You knew he would tell me everything.” That had been a burning question that had been keeping Andersen up at night.
Andersen was sure that Burns’s answer would make tactical and strategic sense.
“There were three unknown variables in the Merrimack Valley that needed to be either neutralized or contained. The FBI needed to be taken out of the mix and be first distracted and then disabled. You were one of the people who had the intelligence from Guantanamo, and you might have been able to make sense of all the pieces faster. And you might have been able to coordinate resistance to our plan and compromise the mission. Finally, there was Diane Welch, commandant of the state troopers who had tactical field experience and training in counterterrorism in Afghanistan. Sadly, she is on leave.”
Sadly
, Andersen thought. Diane was a colleague and a good friend. She was a childhood friend from South Boston. She and her husband had been friends of the family for years. Was Burns sorry because he had wanted more of a challenge? Andersen knew that she was on leave because her husband was dying of cancer.
“Sadly, Burns?”
“No one should watch a loved one die.”
Then there was a click, and Burns was gone. This was bad. Burns could feel others’ pain and his own. Leave him alone, and he would leave you alone. Mess with him and his loved ones, and he might just do what he had said. Burns might open the gates of hell. Andersen knew that Burns was capable of much worse than that.
By the grace of God, casualties were limited to two hit men and one of his old colleagues
, Andersen thought.
It could have been a lot worse.
Andersen turned over his wife’s smart phone, and there was an image of three documents. They looked like “after action” reports of the events leading up to the capture of Oman Sharif Sudani and the events following it as well. The events, however, were far from what the public knew.
The briefing prior the planned attack was set for May 1, but it was delayed as a result of the two leaders—the logistics field agent, Burns, and the team leader, Anthony Maxwell, had fundamentally different objectives. Burns’s plan was to land, strike, kill, and take the body for evidence to show the world that when you fucked with America, you would be hunted down, found, and killed. Burns wanted to demonstrate the American resolve, even if you were the “untouchable” Oman Sharif Sudani, “we would find you and kill you.”
Andersen viscerally agreed with the approach. He wasn’t a vengeful man; however, Sudani had killed a lot of people, and Andersen did believe in deterrence.
Andersen continued to read. On the other hand, Maxwell had another plan: he proposed that they kill all the witnesses, abduct Sharif Sudani, and use his knowledge to destroy the terrorists’ hierarchy as well as their command and control center. While Maxwell’s plan had the advantage of being a long-term solution to terrorism, it ran completely contrary to the policy of not cooperating with terrorists, especially one who was responsible for thousands of innocent deaths. The president of the United States had authorized the “kill order.” This ran contrary to Maxwell’s plan, which had been authorized by a man named Chairman Eric Daniels. The plan that was approved was Burns’s; however, his helicopter experienced “catastrophic mechanical failure,” and it was initially thought that Burns was killed. So was Burns’s plan. On May 2, Maxwell captured Oman Sharif Sudani, killed the witnesses, which included his wives and children, and was promoted for his efforts.
Andersen stopped reading to fully digest what was being said.
Wow … we let that bastard live,
he thought. Andersen found himself getting angry.
Let the killer go and kill the witnesses? Women and children? What the fuck?
Andersen forced himself to read on. He didn’t want to, but he had to.
The report went on to indicate that the American government could not be seen as an organization working with the “king of all terrorists” so they went public with the “kill plan.” Everything would have been all right if Burns had not survived the helicopter crash. But he had. The classified memorandum went on to confirm that Maxwell suspected that Burns had survived the crash because there was no body at the crash site. While there was not much time to do a thorough search, Maxwell was convinced Burns was alive and listed him as MIA. What happened after was only speculation. The memo is clear that Burns had escaped the helicopter wreckage. It is learned later via medical reports that Burns’s injuries to his head seemed consistent with an IED, while the injuries to his hands and arms were probably a result of the crash. The only substantive data that had been confirmed was when Burns arrived at a Red Cross site, transferred from a local hospital.