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Fox said. “This is actually the second time these guys have shown up.”
    Ozzi finally took his eyes from the TV screen. “I think I missed that,” he said.
    Fox got up, closed the door, then returned to his seat on the edge of the desk.
    â€œWhat’s your security clearance these days?” he asked Ozzi.
    â€œRed-Eight,” Ozzi replied. “Same as yours.”
    But Fox was shaking his head. “Sorry, I was bumped up to Red-Nine months ago,” he said.
    Ozzi was surprised and a little hurt. “And you didn’t tell me?” he asked Fox.
    The senior officer just shrugged. “I couldn’t,” he replied. “But it’s a moot point now.”
    He reached into his pocket and came out with a DSA security badge. It consisted only of a bar code.
    â€œCongrats,” Fox said. “You’re now a Nine, too.”
    Ozzi studied the ID card for a moment. “To what do I owe this honor?”
    â€œTo the fact that what I’m about to tell you is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the past one hundred years.”
    â€œThat these guys have shown up before?” Ozzi guessed.
    Fox just nodded.
    â€œRecently?” Ozzi asked.
    Fox nodded again.
    Ozzi sat straight up in his seat. “When?” he asked. “Where?”
    â€œThey were at Hormuz,” was all Fox had to say.
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    What happened in the Strait of Hormuz a little more than a month ago had been nothing less than Islamic terrorists trying to pull off an attack to rival the destruction of 9/11.
    Al Qaeda–funded terrorists had hijacked 10 airliners and two military planes and attempted to crash them into the Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln as the ship was making the narrow transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that led into the turbulent waters of the Persian Gulf. The attack, well planned and hyper-violent, ended in failure for the terrorists, though, dealing a major blow to Al Qaeda’s network. Every airliner was either forced to land before it reached the carrier or shot down by the Navy. A bloody day certainly, as the hijacked airliners were all local Arab carriers, carrying hundreds of local Muslims. But the carrier made it through virtually untouched—and the 5,500 U.S. sailors aboard were saved.
    The Navy had been heaped in glory with its valiant defense of one of its prized warships, but as was usually the case in great battles, there was more to the story.
    â€œThe reason the Navy was so successful in saving their precious carrier,” Fox told Ozzi, “was not entirely due to their defensive procedures or the skill of their pilots. They had some unexpected help. A last-minute piece of intelligence, delivered to them in a very unconventional way, allowed the Navy to know where and when the hijacked Arab airliners were coming, what their flight paths were, and their estimated time of arrival over the carrier. It was really just an aerial massacre after that.”
    Ozzi pointed to the screen. “You think these are the guys who tipped them off?” he asked.
    Fox nodded. “Not only that,” he said. “But two of them were flying around in Harrier jump jets that day— stealthy Harrier jump jets. Even after all the airliners were shot down, they knew two more planes were out there somewhere. Turned out that two of our own air refueling tankers were taken over by Bahrani fanatics posing as copilots. They came real close to banging both of those planes into the Lincoln . It was only because these two guys in the Harriers brought them down that the Lincoln isn’t sitting at the bottom of Hormuz right now, instead of floating off Iraq.”
    Ozzi was stunned. The public knew none of this. And judging by the security level attached to it, few people in the U.S. government or the military knew it, either.
    â€œWhat does all this mean for us?” he asked Fox.
    Fox lowered his voice even further. In this business,