ProxyWar

by D S Kane

  * * *

  Dmitri Sokol watched as the attendants removed the last refueling nozzle and hose from his small fleet of helicopters. He nodded at his own helicopter’s pilot and the chopper lifted from its landing pod. The other two followed into the snowy swirl, a safe distance behind.

  The three unmarked choppers were each big enough for twelve men, and also carried enough firepower to destroy the targets he’d been alerted to by Andrew Cardiff. The NSA mole had earned his payday. Too bad the plan called for his termination.

  But first, he had to end Cassandra Sashakovich.

  * * *

  Lee Ainsley watched the choppers lift off. How’d the Russians get this many of their soldiers into this country? From his days in the army, he knew the choppers were the equivalent of Blackhawks but they bore no markings at all, even on their fuselage near the tail rotors. He’d removed the battery from his cellphone to keep the NSA from tracing his location. While he’d no reason to believe there might be a mole in his home agency, right now he trusted no one. Better to go dark until he had enough intel to make it worth the risk of calling Cassie.

  CHAPTER 25

  Cassandra Sashakovich’s home,

  1805 Wilson Lane, McLean, Virginia

  February 24, 2:18 a.m.

  Now that Ann understood the nature of the danger, she knew she had to do more to help her mom. But what? She wracked her mind trying to see how the events fit together. In the end, she just knew too little and was afraid to make assumptions.

  There were two people who could help her help Cassie. Her adopted dad, Lee Ainsley. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering his cell? The other potential helpmate was her adopted uncle, Misha Kovich. Misha had told her many stories about his years with the KGB before the Soviet Union fell. He knew more about how the Russians planned and executed covert missions than anyone else she knew.

  She decided to try her dad again first. Her fourth try. “Lee?”

  “You have reached the voicemail of Lee Ainsley—” She left yet another brief message. By now, Cassie must have called him and told him what was happening.

  She frowned and called Misha. “Uncle, it’s Ann.”

  “Schto? What?”

  “Mom’s in trouble and Dad isn’t answering his phone. I need help.”

  “Da. Ya nie ponimayu. I don’t understand. What you want I can do for you, little one?”

  She told him everything she knew.

  He was silent for a few seconds. “Find this link.” He rattled off a string of numbers separated by decimal points, and she keyed them as fast as he stated them. “Brings you to secret Russian state security servers.” He slowly said the letters which she keyed in English, and they showed on her screen in Cyrillic lettering. “I know these servers well. Much has changed, but not Russian thinking.”

  She penetrated the FSB firewall. It took less time than the others she done recently.

  He guided her through the labyrinthine pathways of the server’s file system. “What you now see?”

  “Uncle, you’ve been here recently, haven’t you?”

  “Is like second home for me. I visit all the time. My user info is still valid. They never know. Maybe they never care.”

  “Okay. I see messages, probably between the Chinese CSIS and the FSB. Not sure what they are.” She read the Russian as best she could. “They aren’t encrypted, but whatever program they use for translation isn’t very good. Grammar and typos.”

  “Yes, I tell them about it several decades ago. Fools. But what are they saying?”

  “One looks interesting. There is a set of English words. A name, embedded within the Cyrillic. Maybe the Chinese have a mole in the NSA. The name is Andrew Cardiff.”

  “Search for his name.”

  She did. The link led to Wingnut and she spent several minutes hacking into its firewall. Ohmigod! “Cardiff is tracking Willy and the Butterfly using Wingnut.”

  “Call your mother now and tell her. Use landline phone only. No email unless secure on both endpoints. Ponimayu? Then call the Wing and the Butterfly. When you have done that, call me back. I will task you further.”

  She felt her heart thump. She terminated the call and did what he’d asked.

  * * *

  Jon sat in his rental car in the lot at MacArthur Airport, near Islip. He scanned his wristwatch as he shivered in the cold. Where are they now? He figured it would be several more hours. He turned on the engine so he could use the car’s heater.

  His cell buzzed. “Avram?”

  “Sorry, Jon, we’ve been busy. Look, a change in plans. We took three buses from Washington and will approach the city from New Jersey. Meet us at United Nations Plaza.”

  Jon thought for a while. “It’s a nasty plan. You’ll be exposed from the moment you reach the Lincoln Tunnel. I know, it was my original plan, but it was the best I could think of at the time. I suggest you all leave the buses in northern New Jersey and steal cars. Do it before you enter the tunnel. Fifteen stolen cars have a better chance of escaping notice than three stolen buses. And if you are tracked, some of your autos stand a chance of getting through that tunnel.”

  He heard nothing for almost a minute. “We’ll think about it. Meanwhile, get back to Manhattan.”

  Jon half-closed his eyes. “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  Avram heard his cell buzz in his pocket. “Lee? Where are you?”

  Ainsley replied. “There are several helicopters heading your way. Blackhawk equivalents, with no rotor markings. Three, I think.”

  Avram cursed in Hebrew. “Okay. Thanks.” He terminated the call and sat focused, his ears tuned for the sounds around him. He’d need the cover of an overpass when the choppers attacked. He tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Go faster!”

  It was over ten minutes later when he heard the familiar noise of chopper rotors. He stuck his head out the window of the bus and scanned the sky using binoculars with night vision infrared.

  Then he looked forward. No overpasses were in sight.

  The one helicopter emerging into view angled toward the Interstate, moving at full speed. Avram could see twelve Russian Spetsnaz special forces officers, their AK-74s pointed out the gapway toward his bus. They fired rounds continuously, stopping only to reload.

  With the first bullet to hit the bus, Avram shouted, “Evasive plan number four. Mercs return fire. Ready the first Stinger.”

  Several mercs opened windows and fired back using automatic rifles.

  Other mercs gathered around a large metal box. One pulled the lid open and three more assembled the weapon. It took only a few seconds before one of the mercenaries held their defensive missile launcher ready on his shoulder. Another stood alongside him and read the screen on the missile launcher. “Ready now.”

  Those nearby scrambled away from behind the weapon and the merc viewing the screen pressed the launch button. The missile blew away from the bus and climbed, then straightened its direction and headed straight for the chopper. The sky turned red for a second as the chopper blew apart in a fireball.

  Where were the other choppers?

  * * *

  Dmitri Sokol watched the fireball from the lead chopper. His Blackhawk was about a mile behind the charred remains now burning on the Interstate. He cursed in Russian and told his pilot to fall back. Then he radioed the other surviving chopper to ensure they were warned about the Stingers.

  He’d need to arrange a better plan to end the buses. How many Stingers did they have?

  * * *

  “Toss the phones!” Several miles behind Avram’s bus, everyone on Cassie’s bus looked at her. “They’re tracking us through our phones. Toss the secure phones as well. They may have penetrated our security using Wingnut.”

  Within seconds, only Cassie’s burners remained in the bus. None of the burners had its battery inserted yet. She assembled the battery for one and punched in Avram’s cell number. “Toss all your phones. That’s how they’re tracking us. Use secure email
only, and leave drafts at the Swiftshadow Consulting Group website.” Then she called the number for McTavish and told him as well.

  Using the folder for email drafts rather than sending them was an old espionage trick. They would log into a website and read the unsent draft email, then delete it and leave a draft reply. What was never sent could never be intercepted by Wingnut.

  * * *

  Ann tapped in the number for her uncle Misha.

  “Da?”

  “It’s Ann. What now?”

  “After you made phone call to your mother, you are no longer safe in your house. Even armed guards at compound are not enough. Now you pack small suitcase or ‘go bag’ and meet me at my apartment.”

  “Uncle, I can’t drive. I just have a student’s license.”

  “I give you permission. This one time only. Da?”

  She took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll be there soon.” She wondered what a go bag was. She ran to her bedroom and threw enough clothing to last three days into a backpack, added her notebook computer and other things she might need, drew on her winter parka, and headed through the garage door. Only one of their cars was there, a hunter green 1952 MGTD antique that was Lee’s pride and joy. There was no key anywhere in the car.

  She called Misha.

  “Da?”

  She explained the situation.

  “Take pliers, cut red and black wires under where key is inserted. Open garage door, touch cut wires together briefly and car will start. Tell no one where you are going. Not even your mother’s bodyguards. Ponimayu? Understand? See you soon.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Interstate 95,

  north of Baltimore

  February 24, 2:37 a.m.

  The second bus rumbled along, its engines rumbling a muffled song of sadness.

  Cassie sat stock still. She thought through all she knew about their situation. Why invade the United States right now? Why not either before now or later? What had triggered the Russians and the Chinese to act?

  Another question pushed into her consciousness: How long did they have until it was too late for any countermove to be effective? Was Ben-Levy correct about his assumption that the United Nations could doom the invasion? Did they really have any power? Surely making the invasion plans public might have some effect.

  Then it dawned on her. Both of the invading countries were also besieged by unhappy people who hated their own governments. Ben-Levy was counting on the dissidents to start their own revolutions within Russia and China.

  And that just might work.

  It didn’t take her long to suspect that Yigdal Ben-Levy was at the center of the “why” of the invasion. She knew Avram himself had closely followed Ben-Levy’s movements for years. Something Ben-Levy had done must lie at the trigger point.

  She opened a secure link from the Swiftshadow Consulting Group’s website on her notebook and went to the folder with Avram’s notes. She had long ago cracked his password. She found that he’d researched the old spymaster’s activities going back the last seven years. The links all led to the Mossad’s servers, and she backtraced the links. The Mossad was the hardest target to hack she had ever come across. It took her almost twenty minutes to penetrate their firewall.

  Once she had entry, it only took a few more minutes to find the smoking gun. Six years ago, Yigdal Ben-Levy had initiated a black operation called Bloodridge. The op was off the books, a false-flag operation designed to look like a border war between the Chinese and Russians, its goal to keep Russia from selling its Soviet-era weapons to Third World countries, including terrorist groups.

  For Bloodridge, Ben-Levy had several operatives roam the Chinese-Russian border, initiating a small, unreported war between the two countries, hoping that would motivate the Russian mafiya to stop their weapons sales. It worked. But the Bloodridge op caused the Chinese to seek a better way to discern the plans of their enemies. They researched nano-technology and developed their own version of the bio-hack called Bug-Lok that Israel’s Ness Ziona weapons research organization had developed for one of the unnamed intelligence services in the United States. Ohmigod! It was Gilbert Greenfield’s agency! Cassie’s former employer. She was shocked that she’d been so close to the center of what had happened to trigger the shit storm that was now hitting them all. She needed to know more, and read on.

  The Mossad’s server had an extensive folder of notes on the Chinese version of the nanodevice, called the DeathByte. It seemed Avram, Jon Sommers, and William Wing had been involved in that one, up to their hip boots. But there was more.

  The Bloodridge op also caused Islamic fundamentalists who no longer had access to Russian Cold War surplus weapons to try a different approach to destroying the United States, and that led the Houmaz branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to transport nuclear bombs into the United States in pieces. Cassie herself had stopped that op and crucified the Houmaz brothers in Saudi Arabia. Which in turn led to the mess her life had become following the Houmaz brothers’ deaths.

  The Bloodridge op was the gift that kept on giving. It must have left telltales, and although it took a few years for the Russians or the Chinese to figure it all out, eventually they did. Which led to their alliance in the pending invasion. When both countries knew what the Israelis had done, they decided to eliminate all possible causes of the problems between them. Meaning they would destroy both the United States and Israel.

  She took a deep breath. Knowing why was the first step in designing an effective plan to stop the war. But what could she and one hundred mercs do?

  She left a draft message in the website’s folder, stating what she now suspected was the root cause of the problem.

  * * *

  In the third bus, about twenty miles north of Baltimore, Michael Drapoff sat with Cassie’s other bodyguards and Yigdal Ben-Levy, all staring at the screen on his notebook. “Bloodridge? I remember that op. Crap! I knew this would rise up and bite us in the ass.”

  Lester Dushov shook his head. “Yigdal, I warned you that Bloodridge was dynamite.”

  Ben-Levy shook his head. “We had no choice. If Russia was left to sell its older nuclear submarines to terrorists, they’d have used their missiles to incinerate Israel.”

  Lester shrugged. “Michael, Ari, JD, and I were the team that did this. It’s our responsibility now to finish it.”

  Michael nodded. “What can we do?”

  Ben-Levy touched Michael’s sleeve. “Nothing we can do will correct the errors I made in the past. We must act to stop the war. Since the Chinese and the Russians need logic bombs to kill the electric grid in the United States, stopping these logic bombs from activating is the key.”

  Drapoff shook his head. “We can’t stop those logic bombs. As long as the Russians and the Chinese have functioning electric grids, either one of them can launch an attack.”

  Ben-Levy nodded. His lips moved without words forming. “Yes, of course. I should have thought of this before. So, we have no way to stop the Chinese and Russians from killing the electric grid in the United States?”

  Michael shook his head. “No. We don’t have enough knowledge about their logic bombs to be able to even find them, let alone disable them. We’re stuck with your idea of telling the world as the only way I can think of.”

  Ben-Levy nodded. “I may have an alternative to stop the war. We’ll still need the United Nations as a publicity trigger, but my plan has a chance to end the invasion. How much time do you think we have before they drop the grid?”

  Lester shook his head. “They aren’t ready yet or they’d have already dropped the grid. We have some small amount of time still to do something.”

  Michael shrugged. “Do what? We’re fucked. Totally fucked.”

  Ben-Levy nodded. “Yes, of course. We must reach the United Nations. We must alert the world. Only the combined might of every other country in the world can stop this war. But what if we could drop the grids in both Russia and China? We already have a map of China’s grid.”
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  PART III

  CHAPTER 27

  Interstate 95,

  Elizabeth, New Jersey

  February 24, 4:52 a.m.

  In the smog-shrouded darkness, Cassandra Sashakovich couldn’t see the chemical refineries of Elizabeth, New Jersey, that marked the landscape just south of the Lincoln Tunnel, but she could smell them. The foul, oily stench told her they were closing in on Manhattan.

  By now, Cassie was sure each of the bus commanders had read her earlier draft entry about the helicopters. She knew it was but a matter of time before they all were found. With the tunnel less than twenty-five miles away, it would be a race to see if they could get into Manhattan before more choppers arrived on their tails. Even before dawn, the pre-rush-hour traffic was building. She wondered if the hostiles would open fire in traffic and kill civilians. She sighed. Of course they will.

  Her notebook computer remained open to the drafts page of the Swiftshadow.com website. She heard it chime and watched as a new draft message appeared, addressed to her. It had been sent by Ann:

  Mom—

  Uncle Misha helped me with the work I did for you, but then he told me that I was no longer safe in our house. He had me travel to his place and then he packed me up and is taking me out of the country. Moscow. Says “we have a mission to save America.” Right now we’re on a private aircraft on the way to Moscow. He asked me to tell you we need a Stuxnet derivative to kill the Russian electric grid. He said you have to send someone to China to kill their grid. He said Michael Drapoff would know what to do.

  —Ann

  Cassie’s jaw fell.

  Misha had always been trouble, but this was trouble squared or cubed. She wasn’t sure which. Ann was sure to become entangled in something bigger than what she and Misha could control. How could he involve her teenage daughter in this dangerous situation?