Threat Level Black

Fisher took a long drag on the cigarette, working it down toward his fingertips. Something about the air in suburban Virginia made cigarettes burn quicker. Fisher had a theory that the burn rate increased in inverse proportion to the distance from Washington, D.C., with the Capitol building the epicenter of inflammability. Undoubtedly there was a flatulence factor involved.

“So is this something we worry about, or what?” asked Macklin.

“Oh, you can always worry,” said Fisher.

“Should we, though?”

Fisher took a last drag of his cigarette, then tossed it to the ground and took up another. Macklin had a kind of earnestness-grating, even under the best of circumstances, whatever those might be.

“Turning lights off in New York -not exactly the sort of thing that’s going to piss off Middle America,” said Fisher. “I know a bunch of ministers who might even get behind it.”

“The DIA thinks it’s a real threat,” Macklin said.

“Well, there you go, then,” said Fisher. “Obviously it’s nothing to worry about.”

“You’re joking, right?” Macklin eyed his cigarette, but Fisher wasn’t sharing, at least not with him: The head of Homeland Security had just suggested a five-cent tax on smokes to help pay for his department. “They say it’s good intelligence. There are intercepts between this Muslim cell in Syria talking about power going out. Problem is, they’re to a cell phone that no one’s been able to find. But the DIA thinks it’s good intelligence.”

“They ever tell you they had bad intelligence?” asked Fisher.

Macklin shifted around nervously. “Should we go to an orange alert?”

“What color are we at now?”

“Yellow.”

“You get a raise if the color changes?”

“No way.”

“Sucky job. You should never have left the FBI, Mack. You wouldn’t have had to worry about colors or the DIA. New York gets fried, it’s somebody else’s problem.”

“Hey, come on, Andy, give me a break here. I didn’t want to work for Homeland Security. Leah made me do it.”

Leah was Macklin’s wife. The pair had met while working together at the FBI several years before and, despite extensive counseling, had gotten married. From the moment he uttered the words “I do,” Macklin’s life had nose-dived: The poor slob had given up smoking, cut back on coffee, and according to the latest rumors even enlisted in a health club.

“I’m sorry for you, Mack. I really am,” said Fisher.

“So, can you help me out?” asked Macklin. “I need to make a recommendation to the big cheese in the morning.”

Fisher shook his head. It was pitiful, really. In the old days, Macklin never would have called the boss-anyone, really-the “big cheese.” Marriage really did screw people up.

“I asked Hunter to send you over because I figured you could help,” added Macklin. “Come on, Andy. Help us out here. Help me out. For old times’ sake.”

“I am helping you,” Fisher told Macklin.

“All you’re doing is busting my chops.”

“That’s not help?” asked the FBI agent. He looked at his cigarette thoughtfully. Jack Hunter was executive assistant director for National Security/Special Projects, a kingdom within a kingdom within a broom closet at the FBI. He was also allegedly Fisher’s boss. Hunter had in fact sent him over to talk to Macklin, but the executive assistant director-ex-ass-dic to people in the know-had specifically instructed Fisher to be not particularly useful.

Or, as Hunter put it, “If I wanted to help them, I’d send somebody else.”

“Turning off the lights seems too simple,” said Fisher. “All that’s going to do is make people mad at Con Ed, the power company. That’s not exactly a major accomplishment.”

“It’s not just turning off the lights,” said Macklin. “An E-bomb-whether they explode it over New York or Tokyo or Des Moines or wherever-every electrical device within twenty-something miles goes out. It takes months to get everything back online.”

“Yeah, I saw the show. Something else is up.”

“Mayhem’s not enough for you?”

“I like mayhem, personally. It’s just not enough as a motivating factor.”

“So, what’s going on, then?”

Fisher sighed. “Jeez, Mack, do your own detective work. You used to work for the FBI, right?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t like you,” said Macklin. “Come on, Andy. You’re the hot-shot hound-dog snooping machine. You look at an airplane crash and you can figure out what the pilot had for lunch.”

“Well, sure, if it’s splattered on the windshield,” said Fisher.

“I heard what you did with that Cyclops case.”

Fisher shrugged. He’d just about single-handedly broken one of the most far-reaching, diabolical conspiracies ever to rack the American military and political establishments. The President had personally thanked him. Even better, Hunter had avoided him for forty-eight hours after the busts were made public.

That and five bucks would get him a pack of cigarettes. Two packs if he got it through his Indian friends online.

“You got to help us,” said Macklin. “We could be facing a major terrorist operation here.”