Vincent couldn’t get the thought of Sean and his imminent incarceration out of his mind. He had called just about every Senator and Congressman that had owed him a favor, which was not an insignificant number, but the message was the same every time. There was nothing they could do. The US Attorney was on the warpath and Sean was in his sights; all had been warned to stay well clear.
Vincent buried his head in his hands. He had reached the end of his call list. Sean, it seemed, was destined for prison and certain death. The $30 million bounty offered by the Los Zetas was going to ensure Sean did not last long, wherever he was incarcerated. That concern had also fallen on deaf ears. The government, once it got its guilty verdict, would not afford Sean any special dispensation.
“The Director’s secretary just called, they’re waiting for you,” buzzed Jane, interrupting Vincent’s thoughts.
Vincent stood up and despondently grabbed his jacket and headed to the daily briefing and no doubt another jibe at his being late from Charles, his boss, the Director of the CIA.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the case. Vincent joined another heated discussion, which appeared to be a continuation from the previous day’s disaster. All hell had broken out with each agency blaming the other for the mess. From what Vincent could work out, it seemed that a terrorist cell had been identified by the CIA. The CIA had asked the NSA to track all calls and they had then passed back information, which ultimately led the CIA to uncovering a domestic terrorist base in Chicago. The CIA has passed the information to Homeland who had liaised with the FBI and local agencies. From there, everything had fallen apart with various agencies fighting for ownership and initiating surveillance, which ultimately spooked the terrorists and none had been seen for days. They had literally disappeared into the wind.
As the meeting was drawing to a close, a phone call was put through. An extremely pissed off President was put on speakerphone.
“Mr President, you are on speaker with my team,” offered Charles, alerting the President to the other attendees.
“Team of what?” asked the President sarcastically. He was not a happy man.
“Sorry, Sir?” asked Charles surprised.
“I’ve just had Homeland and the FBI in here telling me about the screw up in Chicago, six fucking terrorists escaped under our noses!”
Charles shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He didn’t expect his counterparts to sink so low as to try and blame him for their screw up.
“Mr President, we did everything we could, Sir. We passed on the intelligence as soon as it fell outside of our jurisdiction!”
“I don’t fucking care whose fault it was, Charles,” shouted the President. “You guys cost me billions, fucking countless billions and you can’t catch the guys with their fucking home addresses! We can catch Bin Laden in fucking darkest Pakistan but we can’t catch six guys in fucking Chicago??!!!”
“But we can’t operate on US soil!” argued Vincent, he was fed up with the injustice.
“That’s all I get! We can’t do this, we can’t do that! I’m fed up with it! FBI and Homeland will be contacting you. And don’t worry, I tore them new assholes as well. I want to start hearing what we can do, not what we fucking can’t do! This shit stops now!”
“Of course, Mr President!” replied Charles to a dead line. Charles turned to his team for ideas.
“He’ll be gone in 6 months!” offered the Head of the Intelligence Division. Everybody knew the President had no hope against Governor Brown at the upcoming election
“And so will all of us. He’s ruthless. When he tells you to figure it out, you figure it out or you’re gone!” replied Charles sternly.
“But we can’t operate on US soil, even if we wanted to!” said Vincent. “I’ve got the best operatives in the world, they piss all over what we have domestically but we’re restricted by statute!” argued Vincent, defending his team.
“I know, I know,” replied Charles. He knew there was nothing they had done wrong but unfortunately Homeland and the FBI would be finding anything they could to redirect the blame. “Anyway, to find a solution, we need to look at the process as a whole, so let’s go through exactly what happened,” suggested Charles, handing over to his Head of Intelligence Division
Vincent sat back and listened as the Head of the Intelligence Division detailed the process and paperwork involved in passing information across to other agencies on an ongoing investigation. The list of procedures and checklists was endless. He actually wondered how they ever managed to achieve anything with such a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy and red tape.
After over two hours of discussion and analysis, they came to the conclusion that there was little they could have done differently. The problem wasn’t at their end. The FBI and Homeland had dropped the ball; it was their asses on the line and not the CIA’s. It was their procedure and their ass covering that had alerted the terrorists. Problem solved. At least for everyone at the CIA perhaps but Vincent was thinking of someone outside of the CIA. A thought that might just make save a number of people’s jobs.
As the group stood up to leave, Vincent stayed seated. “Charles, would you mind if I just run something past you?”
“Of course,” replied Charles, herding the others out the room.
Vincent waited until the door closed behind his colleagues and he and Charles were alone.
“What if we had an operative planted so deep domestically that he didn’t even know he was there himself?” he began.