style="font-size:15px;"> The chief said, “I may look like an old geezer, but I know a thing or two about fires. A little private plane crashing into a building doesn’t carry near enough fuel to start a fire like this. These bodies we’re pulling out of here, we’re not talking third-degree burns. Upward of eighty-five, ninety percent of them, it’s fourth- and even fifth-degree, some of them cooked right down to the bone. And that smell in the air, benzene all the way.”
“What is it you’re trying to tell me?”
“I know napalm when I see it.”
The major turned his gaze back toward the fire, then pulled his encrypted cellular phone from his pocket and dialed the naval station command suite.
7:02 a.m., Miami, Florida
Jack increased the volume to hear the rapid-fire cadence of an anchorwoman struggling to make sense of the image on the TV screen.
“You are looking at a live scene at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay,” said the newswoman. “We have no official confirmation, but CNN has obtained unofficial reports that, just after sunrise, there was an explosion on the base. A large and intense fire is still burning, but because both the United States and the Cuban military enforce a buffer zone around the base, we cannot send in our own camera crew for a closer look.
“Joining me now live by telephone is CNN military analyst David Polk, a retired naval officer who once served as base commander at Guantanamo. Mr. Polk, as you watch the television screen along with us, can you tell us anything that might help us better understand what we’re viewing?”
“As you can see, Deborah, the base is quite large, covering about forty-five square miles on the far southeastern tip of Cuba, about four hundred air miles from Miami. To give you a little history, the U.S. has controlled this territory since the Spanish American War, and the very existence of a military base there has been a source of friction in U.S./Cuba relations since Fidel Castro took power. There is no denying that this is Cuban soil. However, for strategic reasons, the U.S. has clung to this very valuable turf, relying on a seventy-year-old treaty that essentially allows the United States to stay as long as it wishes.”
“We’ve heard reports of an explosion. Has anything of this nature ever happened before at Guantanamo?”
“No. Tensions have certainly run high over the years, spiking in the early sixties with the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, and spiking again in 1994 when sixty-thousand Cuban and Haitian refugees were detained at Guantanamo. But never anything like this.”
“What might cause an explosion and fire like this at the base?”
“That would be pure speculation at this juncture. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Can you pinpoint the location of the fire for me? What part of the base appears to be affected?”
“It’s the main base. What I mean by that is that Guantanamo is a bifurcated base. The airstrip is on the western or leeward side. The main base is to the east, across the two-and-a-half-mile stretch of water that is Guantanamo Bay. You can see part of the bay in the upper left-hand corner of your television screen.”
“What part of the main base is burning?”
“It’s the southern tip, which is known as Radio Range because of the towering radio antennae that you can see in your picture. Interestingly enough, the fire is concentrated in what appears to be Camp Delta, which is the new high-security detention facility.”
“Camp Delta was built to house suspected terrorists, am I right?”
“The official terminology is ‘enemy combatant.’ Originally, the only detainees there were the alleged members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In recent months, however, the United States has broadened the definition of ‘enemy combatant.’ As a result, Camp Delta now houses drug lords and rebels from South America, suspected war criminals from Chechnya, kidnappers and thugs from Cambodia and a host of others who meet the Defense Department’s definition of ‘enemy combatant’ in the ever-widening war on terrorism.”
“This whole issue of detainees—this has become quite an international sore spot for President Howe, has it not?”
“That’s an understatement. You have to remember that none of the detainees at this facility has ever been charged with a crime. This all goes back to what I said earlier—the base is on Cuban soil. The Department of Defense has successfully argued in the U.S. federal courts that the base is not ‘sovereign’ territory and that inmates therefore have no due-process rights under the U.S. Constitution. The White House has taken the position that the military can hold the prisoners indefinitely. But pressure has steadily risen in the international community to force the U.S. either to charge the detainees with specific crimes or release them.”
“Some of these detainees are quite dangerous, I’m sure.”
“Even the president’s toughest antiterrorism experts are beginning to worry about the growing clamor over holding prisoners indefinitely without formal charges. On the other hand, you could probably make a pretty strong case that some of these guys are among the most dangerous men in the world. So Camp Delta is a bit of a steaming political hot potato.”
“Which has just burst into flames—literally.”
“I think this is on the verge of becoming one of the toughest issues President Howe will face in his second term—What should be done with all these enemy combatants that we’ve rounded up and put into detention without formal charges?”
“From the looks of things, someone may have come up with a solution.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that at all, but—”
“Mr. Polk, thank you for joining us. CNN will return with more live coverage of the fire at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after these commercial messages.”
Jack hit the mute button on the remote. “You still there?” he asked over the phone.
“Yeah,” said Theo. “Can you believe he did it?”
“Did what?”
“They said it was a Cessna. Wake up, dude. It’s Operation Northwoods.”
There was a pounding on the door. It had that certain thud of authority—law enforcement. “Open up. FBI!”
Jack gripped the phone. “Theo, I think this lawyer may need a lawyer.”
There was a crash at the front door, and it took Jack only a moment to realize that a SWAT team had breached his house. Jack could hear them coming down the hall, see them burst through the bedroom door. “Down, down, on the floor!” someone shouted, and Jack instinctively obeyed. He had never claimed to be the world’s smartest lawyer, but he was sharp enough to realize that when six guys come running into your bedroom in full SWAT regalia before dawn, generally they mean business. He decided to save the soapbox speech on civil liberties for another day, perhaps when his face wasn’t buried in the carpet and the automatic rifles weren’t aimed at the back of his skull.
“Where’s Jack Swyteck?” one of the men barked at him.
“I’m Jack Swyteck.”
There
