02 Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

changed every day for security reasons. Patch wouldn’t have gawked at the scenery anyway. Most days, like today, he was absorbed in the contents of the leather-bound folder on his lap. It contained the latest national-security data that he was to present in his briefing to President Virgil Corland, scheduled for 6:30 a.m. There were the standard State Department memos, diplomatic cables, a Homeland Security report … the usual.
    Recently the Department of Agriculture had begun filing its own reports. They wrote about the growing dust bowl in the Midwest; and their concern was that the unending drought, coupled with the bizarre pest infestations, had decimated American agriculture, putting a lot of farmers and food industry workers out of work. The DOA’s latest speculation was that those conditions might create “increased domestic unrest and possibly create homegrown, right-wing terrorists.” Patch thought it was bunk, that it would take the national-security focus off the real threat. And he said so. The intelligence guys, the Defense Intelligence Agency — the DIA — and the CIA had agreed with his assessment. But the mood in the situation room had been different lately. Politics was trumping everything — not that political realities weren’tfactored into every decision made in Washington when it came to war and peace: Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Kosovo, Persian Gulf 1 and 2.
    But now there had been a seismic sea change. It wasn’t just about politics either. Geopolitics was running everything. Now there was talk from the president, and even more from Vice President Jessica Tulrude, about a “global security coalition” and less talk about American interests.
    Patch’s file also contained a short summary of his briefing from the CIA. As usual, when it came to the agency’s written outline for Patch — and for everyone else, for that matter — the CIA kept it concise and cryptic. The spy guys wanted to keep things up their sleeve until the last minute, until it was their turn to brief President Corland.
    This morning Patch’s file had memos from the FAA and the NTSB concerning the Chicago air catastrophe of the day before as well as the near misses at JFK and LAX.
    He looked over the photos of the crash scene and spat out several of his favorite sailor’s cuss words as he looked at the carnage. He came to a one-page statement from the office of Vice President Tulrude. He read it carefully. Then a second time.
    He swore again, this time even louder, trying to vent all of the steam out of his system before the meeting.
    On the other hand, he thought, maybe I should just tell the vice president where to go and be done with it.
    In Patch’s mind, there was a cancer in the White House, and it wasn’t coming from the Oval Office. It was coming from a little farther down, from the VP’s office in the West Wing.
    Forty-five minutes later, in the situation room in the basement of the White House, the president’s national-security advisors were seated in the black-leather executive chairs around the long walnut conference table. On the walls, digital screens flickered with intelligence data, charts of international hot spots, and, today, a cascade of images from the crash of Chicago Flight 199.
    President Corland was flipping through a report. His face was pale and haggard; his skin, an unhealthy pallor. In the harsh glare of the ceiling lights, he looked even worse. The president brushed his handover his partially balding head as he read. He looked up and started the meeting.
    “Let’s begin with you, Admiral. This air crash and the other two flights … no question about who was behind this?”
    “No question.
Al Aqsa Jihad,
a splinter group of Al-Qaeda.”
    “What’s their beef with the United States? … as if I have to ask.”
    “Our support of Israel.”
    “Right. Okay. What are we doing to round up these murderers?”
    The deputy director of the FBI chimed in, “We have a dragnet around the greater