_EPILOGUE

EVERYONE WAS THERE, FROM the secretary of state to all of the Joint Chiefs, even though no one was ever going to be allowed to admit to attending.

“How many killed?” said the representative from the Senate Armed Services Committee.

They looked at the Coast Guard captain, a nondescript man of middle age with a carefully cultivated air of dullness. “Seven killed. Thirteen wounded. Those are just our own casualties, you understand. There are ninety-seven crew members on the Agafia and eighteen on the Star of Bali yet to be accounted for.”

“Who is handling the interrogation of the surviving terrorists?”

The FBI agent said, “That’s us, sir. It’s slow going but we’re getting some good stuff from the hired hands. I think we’ll have a pretty solid report for you soon.”

“What about the missile?”

“The wreckage has been recovered.”

“And the payload?”

“The payload was dispersed upon impact and detonation.”

“Dispersed where?” This question came a little more sharply.

The FBI agent looked at the Coast Guard captain, who looked at the mad scientist on his right. His hair looked more Donald Trump than Albert Einstein and he wasn’t really mad, but when your job was primarily providing worst-case scenarios it helped if the people to whom you were delivering them thought so. “Impact was about twelve miles south of Seward, in Spoon Glacier, at an elevation of about twelve hundred feet. There was a steady onshore wind of fifteen to twenty knots. The cesium-137 was dispersed across the northern half of Resurrection Bay. We estimate that the fallout would disperse most heavily on the maximum security prison on the east side of the bay, but that the wind was blowing strongly enough that some of it would have reached the town. However, not in such quantities as to prove an immediate hazard to the health of anyone living there.”

For those who were listening for it, the stress on the word “immediate” was readily apparent. No one commented on it, though.

“So that’s good news, then,” the president’s man said. “Nothing that can’t be explained as a conventional missile. No reason to tell anyone otherwise.” He looked around the table for opposition to this eminently sensible viewpoint and of course found none.

The mad scientist made a noncommital noise. His report had gone in days before, and the president’s man knew full well that it would be years before the effects of the fallout would be known. The cesium had dispersed over a wide area covered with snow and ice that would melt into streams and rivers and flow eventually to the bay and the sound. In the meantime, the Centers for Disease Control would maintain a quiet watch through local clinics to monitor the health of the community, in particular the incidence of cancer.

“Very well,” the president’s man said with satisfaction, “our line will be that a terrorist attempt to attack the homeland was unsuccessful due to the diligence of our own counterterrorism forces, who had the operation under continuous surveillance from the moment of its inception. When the terrorists were discovered, they fired off the missile prematurely in the hope of doing random damage. Due to the vigilance and skill of the United States Coast Guard”-he inclined his head toward the Coast Guard captain-“no such damage was suffered.” He shrugged. “There was no serious threat to the public at any time.” He cocked an eyebrow. No one contradicted him, but the air force general was displaying less enthusiasm than he liked to see. “General? Something you wanted to share with the rest of the group?”

The air force general raised his head. “Why Anchorage? There are half a dozen ports on the West Coast with military bases to target and far more people to kill, and therefore that much bigger a message to send. Why Anchorage?”

“We weren’t looking for them to attack Anchorage for precisely those reasons,” the man from the CIA said. “I think it’s fair to say they took that into account in their planning of the attack.” He shrugged. “And besides. It’s Anchorage. What’s more, it’s Alaska. Most Americans think Alaska floats off the southwest coast of California, right next to Hawaii, with occasional appearances on the Discovery Channel.”

There was a rich chuckle all around at this witticism. When it died down, the man from the White House looked at the man from the CIA. “And the motivation behind this attack?”

The agent shook his head. “Not what you would have expected, sir, not at all. For one thing, the Ja brothers seem to have acted independently.”

There was instant and vocal skepticism, and the CIA agent had to raise his voice to be heard. “That’s what la Bae-ho is claiming, sir, and so far his story hangs together.”

“They were al-Qaida trained,” said the army general. “Bin Laden’s got his own fleet of ships. Didn’t you say you couldn’t trace the owner of this freighter?”

The CIA man met the general’s contemptuous look with a bland expression. “Ja Bae-ho makes a very convincing case that this was a personal mission, General.”

“Then where did they get the money to finance this operation?”

“We don’t know yet, sir. We have some leads, which we are tracing now, and-”

The general glared. “Yeah, well, I know, and I don’t need to trace any so-called leads and neither does anyone else in this room with half a brain.” His tone made it clear that he was excluding the CIA’s man from that number.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” the representative from the White House said, and everyone shut up. “This was too close. We must take steps to see that it never happens again.”

“Sir-” the Coast Guard representative said.

“Stir up your service, Captain. Come up with some recommendations for the defense of the coastline and our ports that we can put into effect immediately. What almost happened here is deeply disturbing to every thinking member of this committee. Thank you all for coming.”

The audience was at an end. The crowd dispersed. The representative from the White House lingered to talk to the Coast Guard captain who had given the briefing. The captain concentrated on gathering up the handouts, perhaps two of which had been looked at by the attendees.

“Imagine,” the man from the White House said, chewing reflectively on the earpiece of his reading glasses, “they almost pulled it off, they almost sailed that puppy right into an American port and set off a dirty bomb that if detonated would have taken out nearly three hundred thousand people and rendered a strategic air force base and an entire city uninhabitable for years to come.”

The captain closed his briefcase.

“This is going to happen again, isn’t it, Captain.”

It wasn’t really a question, but the Coast Guard captain answered it anyway. “Yes, sir, it is.”

CAPTAIN LOWE WAS BURIED with full military honors in his hometown of Valentine, Nebraska, his wife, son, and two daughters present. His wife was presented with the flag that had draped his coffin and she accepted it, dry-eyed, as her daughters wept quietly and her son stared straight ahead with a stony face.

HELMSMAN EUGENE RAZO WAS buried with much more fanfare and ten times the family members present in his hometown of Kodiak. His fiancee’s family hosted a memorial potlatch that is still remembered for its cornucopia of food and the amount and quality of the gifts given those who attended. His parents started a scholarship fund in his name at the held indefinitely without bail or representation. His uncle died later that year, but he never knew it.

THE BODIES OF TERRORISTS, mercenaries, and ship’s crew floated ashore in Resurrection Bay for months following the incident. Ja Yong-Bae’s body was not among them.