by D S Kane
McTavish placed a pile of fresh Arab clothing on the hood of the truck and the mercenaries donned the clothing over their uniforms. Cassie knew they would not want to attract attention as they passed through the airport. As they changed clothing, stripped to their waists, their bodies stank of death and cordite. The men donned white, loose, long-sleeved, ankle-length garments made of cotton, called thobes. On their heads they folded ghutras, square scarves made of cotton, over black tagiyah skullcaps. They wore agals, thick, doubled black cords, to hold the ghutras in place.
Cassie and the other women soldiers donned the same outfit she wore when she had escaped from Riyadh so long ago: black abaya cloaks and black boshiya veils over their faces.
The truck rolled away driven by one of the mercs, containing the wounded soldier on a stretcher, and the body bags containing her twelve dead. McTavish told the driver to meet them at the refueling station where the Lear awaited.
Seventeen of the eighteen survivors of the Riyadh operations walked down the dusty road to the airport, drawing little attention from anyone else.
All walked in groups so no woman was alone. They met up at the terminal for their chartered jet and began boarding the flight which might take them to their deaths.
Cassie sat near the back of the plane where LeFleur’s men—all of them except the wounded—had arrived and also elected to come as volunteers with her to Washington, DC. More lives to be responsible for. She stripped off her Muslim outfit and changed into casual Western civilian clothes along with everyone else.
She was so depressed she barely noticed the overpowering odor of so many naked unwashed bodies in such a confined space. No one even thought about privacy as they changed clothing.
Battle had made them family.
After she’d dressed, she belted herself into her seat and looked out the window as the aircraft lifted off the ground. No one could see her and the sound of the jet’s engines covered the sound of her sobbing.
She remembered something she’d placed in her pocket before she left for the Middle East. Cassie pulled out the wrinkled photo of Ann Silbee. She stopped crying.
Would the fallout cover Ann in Manhattan?
* * *
Cassie couldn’t sleep during the flight. The hushed talking among her mercs—and the stale sweat and body odors—kept her awake and nauseous. She stared out the window, wondering what she was capable of. She mourned all who had died helping her become something she hated.
Fifty-one hours until big bang time. She watched out the window as the sun rose and the plane descended onto the runway at Ronald Reagan Airport in DC.
Cassie was an atheist. There was no religion in her family or in her life. For the first time in her life she thought about praying for the lives of these people who accompanied her, trusted her, but she didn’t know how.
She sat silent, sad, in her seat.
As the plane’s wheels touched ground, she exerted command over her emotions. By the time the plane taxied to its hangar, there was no external indication of her turmoil, even though despair twisted in her gut and roiled her soul.
When the plane stopped rolling, she rose before any of the passengers had the opportunity to leave. Facing the others, she said, “I know you’re tired and stressed but we all have to keep ourselves focused until we hear what General Shimmel has to say. There should be a few buses ready to take us from the airport to the Israeli embassy. Everyone form up into the teams we used for your last assault and board the buses. Once we’re inside the embassy gates we can relax a bit.”
It was bedlam. The men and women leaving the aircraft tossed their Riyadh outfits into the container labeled “Arab clothing” at the front of the plane and then filed into the buses. Few of them talked to each other. Just being in the nation’s capital when a series of nuclear bombs was due to obliterate the city in just over two days would be enough to set anyone’s nerves on edge.
* * *
The mole had been away from the office for three days, visiting several military missile silos around the country where the United States removed the warheads from obsolete nuclear missiles, per the terms of its bilateral agreements with the Russians.
The van declared itself as “NDC, North American Division.” The designation represented the Nuclear Disarmament Commission, which wasn’t spelled out, the better to avoid drawing attention to the government vehicle. The mole had forged documents ordering the removal of the fissionable material and warheads from three obsolete missiles. The papers ordered the mole to collect these obsolete and now unstable and dangerous nuclear devices. These documents claimed the mole would deliver the material to the nuclear disarmament facility in Amarillo, Texas.
The mole completed a visit to a nuclear bunker in central Pennsylvania, and now all three lead-lined containers in the van contained missile warheads. The containers lay in specially designed cases in the back of the van, complete with connector wires used to fit into the missiles’ guidance-system electronics.
The mole glanced at the time while driving southwest on US 81 out of Harrisonburg toward Staunton, Virginia. 10:14 a.m. Behind schedule, feeling panic. The Houmaz family had threatened to kill the mole’s spouse and son by noon if the mole hadn’t arrived in Lewisburg, West Virginia.
Needing to make up at least fifteen minutes, the mole pushed the accelerator closer to the floorboard and moved into the left lane. Around fifty miles until the cutoff to US 64 West and then another seventy miles to the West Virginia border. From there, on US 64 the mole would still have another thirty miles going west into Lewisburg.
The mole passed every vehicle in the way and carefully avoided speed traps.
After a while the scenery looked like it might have been looped. I must have been through the area before. Sweat on the mole’s hands made the wheel slip when shifting lanes. The van’s speed exceeded ninety miles per hour. After ninety minutes, the mole turned onto Highway 219 and slowed the van to the speed limit entering the Lewisburg city limit.
CHAPTER 38
September 13, 8:46 a.m.
Israeli Embassy,
3514 International Drive NW,
Washington, DC
It had taken over an hour for the buses to reach the Israeli Embassy. Cassie scanned those seated at the third floor conference room table. General Avram Shimmel, Israeli Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Yigdal Ben-Levy, former Assistant Director of Information Security for the agency Lee Ainsley, and the US Ambassador to Israel, Benjamin Franklin Wagner—recalled from Israel overnight—all were seated.
Wagner bore an ugly smile. Neither Gilbert Greenfield, the agency’s director, nor Mark McDougal was present. There were three more seats at the table, reserved for Cassie and the two mercenary majors, LeFleur and McTavish.
The other mercenaries—all of them—stood at the back of the room. Since none of the mercenaries arriving from the Middle East had bathed in days, Shimmel asked one of the soldiers to open the windows as wide as possible. Still, the pungent odor of overripe flesh was apparent even to the mercs who were used to body odors in battle conditions.
Cassie sat, exhausted, her head sagging into her hands. She struggled to lift her head, faced Shimmel and asked, “Where’s McDougal? Where’s Greenfield?”
“Neither can be found. I’ve assembled everyone who can help us into this room. They have all seen the contents of the Houmaz brothers’ computer hard drive and the videocam recordings you made while you were interrogating Pesi Houmaz.”
“Don’t you mean ‘torturing’ him?” said B. F. Wagner, the sneer scathing his face. He looked in his early fifties, overweight. Rage made his face red.
Shimmel gazed with anger into Wagner’s eyes. “Had she not used the most severe tools available to discover and confirm what we now know, you would likely be burned to death in a radioactive explosion the day after tomorrow. You should be thankful for the opportunity to continue living.” He paused a moment to let the words sink in.
Wagner continued, thou
gh, as if nothing were at stake. “How do we know the intel here is the real thing? You told the Houmaz brothers they were going to die. Why not claim this plan, so we’d go scrambling off in a wild goose chase?”
Cassie lifted her head off her arms, straining at the effort. She could hear the desperation in her own voice as her words poured forth. “We chose to alert you. You don’t have to do anything about this warning. If that’s your choice, I’ll be gone from point zero to a safe distance minutes from now, and all these men with me.”
Shimmel’s eyes signaled a warning to her. Cassie backed off, but just a bit, continuing to stare at Wagner whom she’d never heard of before. “Mr. Wagner, if we leave and I find out anyone in the government at your level or higher left to avoid the explosions, and if we were correct and Washington DC is destroyed, I’ll make sure the world knows what you did here today. Quite frankly, I’m too tired to care right now. So, Mr. Wagner, what’s it to be?” She sneered and raised her voice just a bit in measured emphasis: “Just-don’t-waste-my-time.”
Wagner jolted in his seat. “Okay. But as far as I’m concerned, this intel has no credibility. Remember, the United States doesn’t condone torture. And we won’t tolerate mercenaries or foreign armies performing missions on our soil.”
“We’re here as advisors, not as a foreign army,” said Shimmel. “As Cassandra Sashakovich just said, when we leave this building, we’ll be leaving the country. But for now, you might want to commence an FBI operation in conjunction with Department of Homeland Security, using the information we so kindly provided you.”
Again, Wagner thought for a few seconds, then seemed to come to a decision and nodded. “All right. Yes, I’ve already done this. We’ve also got the NEST people—Nuclear Emergency Support Team—at work with us. About fifteen minutes ago, one of their units got a lead on one of the bombs in a van that came in through Seattle. Homeland Security stopped the van and recovered the bomb near the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues. However, there was no fissionable material in the bomb, though the bomb was wired and ready to receive it.”
He paused, letting them understand he wasn’t as dumb or as arrogant as he’d let them think. As Wagner scanned the faces of his audience, he appeared to be trying to guess how to harness control over them. He took a few seconds, coughing into a monogrammed handkerchief.
He continued, “The van contained instructions written in Arabic to drive to their command post at the General Lewis Inn, in Lewisburg, West Virginia. We have several helicopters with armed men now preparing to go there. It appears the device entered the country carried in pieces on our own military transports, just as Pesi Houmaz claimed. We assume the nuclear material would be inserted and the bombs armed in Lewisburg. The van contained a team of four Muslim extremists, and unfortunately, all died during our attempt to stop them, before we could question them. We don’t know where they assembled the pieces. Somewhere during their trip across country.”
Wagner frowned as barely controlled panic filled his face. “We haven’t yet found the other two devices. Our cryptology specialists believe the files you sent us contain a list of the parts of each bomb and their routes to Washington. But the files are heavily encrypted. Our cryptologists think it will take more time than we have remaining to crack the encryption. So I am ready to listen to your ideas and relay them to people who can help find and render the terrorists.” Now, his eyes reflected defeat at having to rely on people outside the US government for the intel needed to solve a peril threatening the capital.
At this point, Cassie struggled to restrain her emotions and remain placid amidst the room filled with near-panic. She spoke again, her voice quiet, confident, but cautious. “One of my specialties is cracking encryption. And since I left the agency, I have come to know people who create new encryption techniques, including the newest techniques used by terrorists. I had to learn these to survive. Please let me help you.”
Wagner snarled, “But I don’t trust you. There had to be a good reason why the agency fired you. If I let you do this and you fail, the whole thing will be on my head.”
She focused on his contorted expression. Wagner seemed to be filled with anger, and she couldn’t understand why. She wondered if he’d been told what to do by someone else? If so, it would take a counter threat at least as unreasonable to reset his balance.
So who’d set Wagner to act on their orders? Probably Greenfield. She took a deep breath to cool the rage she felt.
Staring directly into his eyes, she said to Wagner, “Sir, if your folks aren’t up to the task, you should have the entire city of Washington evacuated immediately and simply give up. Because if you don’t evacuate the city, there’ll be millions of deaths on your head. If you announce the danger, it’s likely the terrorists will immediately explode the weapons in an effort to gain maximum kill rates. You lose either way. If you don’t use my skills, you’re caught between two self-defeating alternatives.” She sighed. “You seem to be willing to fail by the book, sir. You have a choice. You can risk using me.”
Then Cassie smiled at Wagner. “Know this: as I said before, I have a computer program set to deliver evidence of involvement of the United States government in this, including the events that made it possible. If I die or if the President, the Vice President, the Cabinet, or anyone in the United States government here at this table leaves Washington DC and then a nuclear bomb goes off, the program will execute, telling the world what I know. I have to remain alive to keep the program from delivering all the evidence to the press.”
Wagner sat silent for a few seconds. “All right, you can try cracking the encryption. Have embassy staff find you a private office to use, and I’ll find you there.”
Cassie spoke softly to Ainsley. “Lee, come with me. I’ll need your help on the mainframe hookups.” She rose from her seat and strode to the door. Then she turned around to face those in the room. “Thank you, Assistant Minister Yigdal Ben-Levy, for the use of the embassy and the resources of Israeli Foreign Affairs. And thanks to each of you who fought with me as comrades by my side. Oh, I’ll need coffee. Do you know where I can find a machine or a coffee pot?”
Two hours later, Cassie and Lee sat staring at adjacent computer screens. She was so tired she had to stop every few minutes, vigorously shake her head and slap her own face. She had consumed two entire pots of coffee and rose often from her seat, stretching.
Twice she’d taken bathroom breaks, but once she’d fallen asleep on the toilet seat. Lee entered the women’s room to fetch her. It was the only sleep she’d had in over two days.
Lee acted as her assistant and helpmate. His computer connected to the agency’s mainframe. He searched the mainframe terminal for encryption methodologies known by the agency, hoping to match them to those found on the Houmaz brothers’ hard disk, now lodged within her computer. Cassie used a high-end computer to troll the Internet, trying to find a decryption methodology that could render the files.
Whenever Cassie drifted, Lee gently grabbed her hand and smiled at her, encouraging her not to fade. When she finally slipped into unconsciousness and slid from the chair, he caught her. “Come back, sweet. I know you need rest but not just yet. Please. We have to fix this before it ends us all,” he said, holding her. Lee’s nose sniffed her body. “Cassie, when’d you last see the inside of a shower? Yuck!” But he was still there, next to her.
The awful expression he bore on his face made her laugh. “About a week ago. I know. I smell like the back end of a camel. Sorry, Lee. Uh, please see if there’s anything on your mainframe matching this technique.”
Lee looked at his screen. “Nope. Move on to the next one.”
In their first hour of work they discovered the techniques Houmaz used were a hybrid of several of which the agency had no knowledge and no way to crack. But they found information about many of the techniques on hacker blogs and websites.
CHAPTER 39
September 13, 2:32 p.m.
Israeli Embassy,
3514 International Drive NW,
Washington, DC
Cassie began to realize she was outclassed. With her current knowledge she couldn’t decipher the files, and she had no way of learning enough to fill the gaps within the amount of time remaining. She accepted defeat and felt the weight of it, plus guilt at millions of additional deaths hanging in the balance. All that death heaped on her. Especially after bragging that she could break the encryption.
“Wait a second,” she muttered. “One of these techniques looks like something a hacker somewhere in Silicon Valley claimed in his résumé about three months ago, when we staffed Kahuna.” She thought for a few seconds more and then smiled as her memory scored a hit. “His name is W. Wing. He lives in Hong Kong and his call-sign is ‘CryptoMonger.’ I think he can be found at this email address…” She sent an email message from the well-tapped Israeli computer, not caring about the consequences. The message contained an attachment with one of the problem files:
CryptoMonger—Need help. I’m familiar with your skills from Project Kahuna. Attached is an encrypted file using an algorithm I am not familiar with. Could you tell me anything to help make this file decipherable? I hacked it off a computer 8,000 miles away, and that computer is no longer available.
—Swiftshadow.
While she waited for a reply, she continued working with Lee to see if they could determine the separations among the logical segments of the encryption algorithm. But, it was hopeless.
CHAPTER 40
September 14, 7:02 a.m.
Israeli Embassy,
3514 International Drive NW,
Washington, DC
Cassie and Lee kept trying to crack the encryption while they waited for William Wing’s reply. She knew he was their only hope.
A few minutes later, the computer bleeped with an incoming email.