Death Wave by Stephen Coonts Page A

bumped back onto the street, which, south of the roadblock, was nearly deserted.
He floored it as another burst of gunfire snapped after them. A white star appeared high on the rear windshield as a round struck the metal frame above it and ricocheted. Another round smashed Dean’s drivers-side mirror. On the right, he spotted the Dushanbe Fire Station, painted a startlingly bright shade of pink but with more traditionally red trucks parked inside the open bays.
“Passing the firehouse on my left!” Dean called. “Turning left!” He swerved the Hunter across oncoming traffic and ducked into a side street.
“That’s going to take you into a residential district, Charlie. A maze of narrow streets, lots of twists and turns. We’ll guide you …”
Dean decided that just maybe there actually were times when having your boss looking over your shoulder and micromanaging the situation was a good thing. With Rockman following his progress on the map back at the Art Room and guiding him through the warren of narrow streets and alleys, he could pay attention to the driving. The Art Room was also able to keep him up-to-date on police calls and radio reports, the signals picked up by one of the NSA’s SIGINT satellites and transmitted back to Fort Meade for translation and analysis.
They might , just possibly, get away with this …
    NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL BRIEFING ROOM
WHITE HOUSE BASEMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY, 1131 HOURS EDT
     
Rubens walked into a room dark with mahogany paneling and plush carpeting, dominated by a long, massive conference table, and found one of the last remaining openings. He noticed Debra Collins’ glance from across the table as he took his seat. He nodded at her, but she ignored him, turning instead to watch George Francis Wehrum taking the podium at the front.
Some of the people there were NSC staffers. The rest were a mixed lot of military officers from the Joint Chiefs and personnel from the NRO, the Department of Intelligence, the CIA’s Operations Directorate—that was Collins and the aide seated beside her—and the Department of Energy. The session this morning was a planned briefing by several U.S. government intelligence agencies for the NSC’s Presidential Advisory Staff.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming.” Wehrum was chief aide to ANSA, the advisor on national security affairs. His boss hadn’t arrived yet but was expected momentarily. “We have several important briefs on the agenda this morning. It’s going to be a long session. I will remind those present that information discussed in this room should be restricted to Top Secret and below.”
The National Security Council was comprised of about one hundred staff members working in one of the basement levels of the White House, a labyrinthine fortress with security almost as vigilant and as uncompromising as it was for the Puzzle Palace—with ID checks, a retinal scan, and a stroll through a brand-new backscatter X-ray scanner that could electronically peer through both clothing and hair.
Technically, the NSC was chaired by POTUS, the President of the United States, and its statutory attendees included the vice president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense. The senior military advisor was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the intelligence advisor was the director of national intelligence.
The meeting this morning, though, didn’t rate attendance by such high-ranking luminaries. Its purpose was strictly to serve as a session for presentations by various intelligence groups, briefing ANSA on several key situations or operational deployments.
Most of the people at the table were well known to Rubens, but at least there was now a new ANSA. The previous advisor on national security affairs had been Debra Bing, an unpleasant woman with political and personal power agendas that had often conflicted with a clear understanding of the information provided by the intelligence community.