by Ben Coes
“You almost just got killed,” said Bond.
“Yeah, no shit,” said Dewey, touching his eye.
“You realize you just took down the top-ranked UFC prospect in the United States?” asked Bond.
“I wish someone had told me that before I got in the ring,” said Dewey, rubbing his eye. “How the hell’d you find me?”
“I broke into your town house.”
“That’s breaking and entering. You can get a ticket for that in D.C.”
“Sue me.”
“Hector send you?”
Bond nodded.
“I can’t imagine why he’d be worried about you,” said Bond, shaking his head. “Let’s go.”
12
ABOARD THE LONELY FISHERMAN
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
Faqir stood in the wheelhouse, chain-smoking cigarettes, his eyes flashing between the rudimentary navigation equipment and the four-foot waters of a wind-driven ocean, illuminated now by halogen lights at the trawler’s foredeck. It was almost midnight.
The wooden deck of the trawler was soaked in seawater. The steel along the balustrade was rusted. Near the bow of the ship, a watch tower stood thirty feet high, put there in order to spot schools of tuna. A cable was draped between the tower and the wheelhouse. Christmas lights were wrapped around the cable, though most of the bulbs were burned out. The few that remained created a dim, murky glow on the deck.
The wheelhouse had a strong stench of fish, body odor, oil, and cigarettes.
The boat was chugging along at twenty-four knots, thick smoke spewing from a pair of stacks behind the wheelhouse. The engine was loud and made an unhealthy grinding noise. It didn’t, however, concern Faqir. Not only had he crossed the Atlantic in far less seaworthy vessels, he also had the preternatural calm of a jihadist. He didn’t care if he died, believing in his heart that whatever was next was paradise.
It had been twelve hours since they’d refueled in Bizerte, on the coast of Tunisia. By Faqir’s estimates, the trip through the Strait of Gibraltar would take another day. Until then, Faqir did not intend to leave the wheelhouse.
He heard rapid footsteps on the deck and turned as the door to the wheelhouse burst open. One of the crew stood at the door, panting.
“Vrach dolzhen vam srazu.”
The doctor needs you immediately.
“Sledit’ za ognyami,” said Faqir. “Krichat’, yesli vy vidite kakoy-libo. Vy ponimayete?”
Watch for lights. Scream if you see any. Do you understand?
The young crew member nodded and walked to the wheel.
Belowdecks, Faqir passed the engine room, then came to a large cargo hold near the middle of the ship. Outside the room hung several pink hazmat suits, designed to protect against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear exposure. Each had a self-contained breathing apparatus. Faqir put one on, then opened the door.
The bomb lay on its side on a steel frame. A section had been removed, exposing a steel cylinder near the center of the device.
Dr. Poldark, also dressed in a hazmat suit, was standing over the bomb, looking at the cylinder.
“What is it, Doctor?”
“We have a problem,” said Poldark. “The explosives in the gun assembly are shot. They will not work.”
Faqir shook his head.
“I’m not a nuclear scientist, Dr. Poldark.”
Poldark took a deep breath, then smiled patiently. He pointed at the steel cylinder that stuck out from the bomb.
“This is a fission bomb,” he said. “That is the gun assembly. The way it works is simple. At the very end is a conventional high explosive. When that is detonated, it causes a bullet—made of highly enriched uranium—to fire down the barrel into a larger piece of highly enriched uranium at the other end. When it strikes the other piece of uranium, a chain reaction occurs. Critical mass. Boom.”
Poldark patted the steel cylinder.
“The problem is, this bomb is old. It was assembled in 1952 or ’53. I was a teenager then. Your parents, Faqir, were probably not even born yet. That’s how old it is. The uranium is, of course, pristine. It will last forever, or at least long enough for our purposes. But the conventional explosive that begins the chain reaction is, I’m afraid, useless.”
“I brought explosives, Doctor,” said Faqir.
He turned to one of the men standing against the wall.
“Guzny, gde zhe detonatorov?” he barked at the young Chechen.
Guzny, where are the blasting caps?
The Chechen’s eyes darted about nervously. Finally, he spoke, barely above a whisper.
“Ya iskal vezde. Ya, dolzhno byt’, zabyli ikh.”
I looked everywhere. I must have forgotten them.
Faqir’s face turned red as his expression flared in anger. He pulled a handgun from a holster at his waist, raised it, and fired. The slug struck the young Chechen in the center of his forehead, spattering blood across the wall of the hold. He fell to the floor.
Faqir looked at the two other men.
“Throw him in the ocean,” he ordered.
He looked at Poldark.
“I apologize for the incompetence of my man,” he said.
“Without some form of propellant, the bomb is useless,” said Poldark.
Faqir glared at the scientist.
“I will find you explosives, Dr. Poldark.”
“How?” asked Poldark, shaking his head in disgust and resignation. “We can’t go back. There is no way.”
Faqir ignored Poldark.
He turned to one of the Chechens and spoke to him in Akkhiy, an Arabic-influenced dialect of Chechen: “Get the weapons ready. Night optics too.”
13
PRIVATE RESIDENCE
THE WHITE HOUSE
Amy Dellenbaugh, along with the Dellenbaughs’ two daughters, Summer and Sally, were waiting in the living room of the White House private residence. The two sisters, ages nine and twelve, both had lacrosse sticks in their hands and were throwing a ball to one another. The president walked toward them, a big grin on his face. The Dellenbaughs were headed to Montana for their annual July Fourth vacation.
“Who’s psyched for Montana?” asked Dellenbaugh.
Sally tossed the hard rubber lacrosse ball to her sister. It went wide of Summer’s stick, then bounced on the marble floor, ricocheted up, and struck the wooden archway over the door. The ball shot left. It sailed toward a large oil painting of a man rowing a boat in an angry ocean by Winslow Homer. As it was about to hit the canvas, Dellenbaugh’s right arm shot out and caught the ball.
Sally stared at her father, whose smile had vanished.
“I’m psyched for Montana,” she said enthusiastically.
He shook his head, smiled, then underhanded the ball back to his daughter.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said, squinting her eyes.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” said Dellenbaugh, walking to her and putting his hand on her head. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re lucky you’re so cute.”
Dellenbaugh glanced at his wife, who was rolling her eyes and shaking her head.
“Honestly, J.P., you’re the biggest softie. That girl has you wrapped around her finger. How is she ever going to learn?”
“She’s supposed to have me wrapped around her little finger,” said Dellenbaugh, picking Sally up and walking toward the elevator.
The Dellenbaughs entered the elevator. Summer pressed a button for the first floor, and they descended. Outside the elevator, Calibrisi was standing, arms crossed, waiting. His face was ashen.
“Morning, Mr. President,” said Calibrisi. “Amy, Summer, Sally, how are you?”
“Hi, Mr. Calibrisi,” said Summer.
Calibrisi smiled, then shot Dellenbaugh a look.
“I’ll be right there,” Dellenbaugh said to his wife.
“No, I don’t think you will, sir,” said Calibrisi.
Amy saw the expression on Calibrisi’s face. She walked toward her husband
and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’s okay, honey. I’ll save a hot dog for you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re president of the United States. Montana will be there when you’re done.”
Dellenbaugh walked his family through the Map Room and outside to the South Lawn, where Marine One, the presidential helicopter, was already waiting to take the first family to Andrews Air Force Base. Behind Marine One were two more helicopters. One looked exactly like Marine One; this craft served as a combination decoy and attack chopper, lest anyone attempt an action against the president while on board Marine One. The other helicopter was the one used by the CIA director.
Dellenbaugh cut back through the Rose Garden, then through a terrace door that led into the Oval Office. Calibrisi was already seated on one of the tan Chesterfield sofas, along with Josh Brubaker, the president’s national security advisor. Dellenbaugh sat down on the other sofa, across from Calibrisi.
“How bad is it?”
“Bad.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“This is not going to be a straightforward deal, Mr. President,” said Calibrisi.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Hector.”
“What I mean is, this is developing into an attack pattern that falls squarely into the Vulnerability Matrix, sir.”
Prepared for the president’s eyes only, the Vulnerability Matrix was a top secret analysis coauthored by the CIA, the Pentagon, and the RAND Corporation. Every quarter, the brief, highly classified analysis laid out America’s critical security vulnerabilities for the president. It was a chilling document.
Calibrisi pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Dellenbaugh.
“I took the relevant page,” said Calibrisi as Dellenbaugh grabbed it from him and quickly scanned it.
POTUS EYES ONLY
VULNERABILITY MATRIX 997-A-554
* * *
KEY:
1 MANAGEABLE: THREAT IS ABLE TO BE EFFECTIVELY MANAGED BY U.S. GOVERNMENT/LAW ENFORCEMENT
2 CRITICAL: THREAT HAS VERIFIABLE ODDS OF SUCCESS AND WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO STOP
3 QUANTUM: RISK POSED BY THREAT HAS NO RELIABLE OR PREDICTIBLE WAY TO BE MANAGED AND MUST THEREFORE BE PREVENTED THROUGH FORWARD AND/OR PREEMPTIVE ACTIONS
* * *
SCENARIO A5-788
SHIPBORNE NUCLEAR DEVICE: EAST COAST
RISK FACTOR: 3
Commentary:
America’s single greatest security risk remains the same as in the last 74 consecutive months: terror attack involving an improvised or stolen nuclear device, delivered by boat to a city on the U.S. East Coast. The reason for this is simple: the volume of commercial fishing vessels (est. 6–7 million) × the length of U.S. East Coast shoreline = extreme improbability of discovery. This is referred to as “quantum vulnerability,” meaning that if such a plot were ever actualized, the odds of stopping it would be minimal.
President Dellenbaugh stared at the sheet of paper. He had a haunted look on his face.
“What do we know about the bomb?” he asked.
“It’s a thirty-kiloton 1950s era Soviet bomb.”
“Is it bigger than Hiroshima?”
“Much. There’s more highly enriched uranium, and the science behind it is better. Depending on the integrity of the trigger, the yield from this device could be ten times bigger.”
Dellenbaugh put the paper down. His hand was visibly shaking.
“How many people are we talking about?”
“Assuming the target’s a city, at least a million.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Dellenbaugh.
Calibrisi didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at Dellenbaugh’s cowboy hat, which was on the sofa next to the president. Dellenbaugh always wore it in Montana. He looked back at the president.
“July Fourth,” said Calibrisi.
“Independence Day. That’s four days, Chief. Let’s get to work.”
14
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA)
TAILORED ACCESS OPERATIONS (TAO)
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Serena Pacheco and Jesus June were seated next to each other inside a brightly lit office at NSA headquarters. It was three o’clock in the morning.
Pacheco and June were two of the NSA’s top electronic signals intelligence analysts. They employed a wide gamut of custom-built, extremely powerful software programs that pored through Internet, phone, and satellite traffic, most of which was obtained secretly.
They’d heard of Cloud, but only in the context of other well-known Russian hackers, a group considered criminal in nature but never before rising to the level of a national security threat. When they listened to the recording of Calibrisi’s conversation with Malnikov, it was the first time anyone had confirmed what had been considered an urban myth: that problems with air traffic control systems on 9/11 had been intentionally caused by computer hackers.
Now they were dividing duties. Pacheco was focused on Cloud’s likeness. After receiving a high-resolution sketch from the CIA based on Malnikov’s description of Cloud, Pacheco had quickly pushed the sketch out to Interpol and other intelligence agencies. That effort was intended to find Cloud by tapping into any personal or professional knowledge or experience with him. In addition, Pacheco had digitized the sketch and run it against a number of NSA surveillance programs. One such program, PRISM, was running the photo against visual media channels across the globe. This included security cameras at both public and private institutions, like airports and train stations, as well as license scanners, and, in cities where they existed, such as London, police cameras on street corners. PRISM could scan social media networks, like Facebook and Instagram. It also included certain Web-based photo storage repositories, such as iCloud, Dropbox, Flickr, Google Drive, and dozens of others, large and small.
If an image appeared that resembled Cloud, either in real time or at some point in the past, the software would trigger an alert. By 1 A.M., four separate alerts had popped. Three were errors, but one was Cloud, an Instagram photo taken by a girl at Alexei Malnikov’s nightclub. In the photo, Cloud is in the background, in a tank top, gaunt and pale. His hair is what stood out, an alarming Afro of blond curls.
In turn, PRISM shared the photo, its origin, and any other data tied to it with the other NSA surveillance platforms, expanding their arc of detection.
June was focused exclusively on the one concrete piece of data they had: digital records of the hacker’s phone calls with Malnikov. There had been three in all. Because Malnikov was already on an NSA watch list, those phone calls had all been recorded. June did not even bother listening to the conversations. He wanted the phone numbers, which he quickly found and then matched to the companies that had provided cellular coverage for the specific calls.
Two of the numbers were attached to a company called Beeline. The third number belonged to a company called MegaFon.
Legally, June wasn’t supposed to be looking into the proprietary data of phone companies without permission from those companies. Certain companies allowed it for national security reasons, but neither Beeline or MegaFon was on that list. June, however, didn’t give a damn. When a nuclear bomb is headed toward American shores, the legalities were irrelevant.
Beeline was owned by a company based in Amsterdam and incorporated in Bermuda. June was able to quickly penetrate the company’s Bermuda offices, hacking into a server from which all corporate documents, submitted to taxation authorities, had been sent. Inside this server, June focused on billing records. It was a voluminous cache of data showing minute-by-minute transactions of all 220 million customers worldwide, going back several years.
When June ran the two prepaid numbers against the database, each came back with only one record: Alexei Malnikov. Cloud had called him, then presumably thrown the cards away. Both cards had been shut off the day of the calls.
June waged a similar intrusion into MegaFon’s
records, this time going in through a “trapdoor” he’d built several years before. A hack that should’ve taken days, even weeks, now took less than an hour.
As with the prepaid phones, only one number had ever been dialed with the MegaFon Samsung cell: Alexei Malnikov. June expected as much. What he did not expect was for the Samsung phone to be live. He expected the phone to have been shut down. When he entered the number into MegaFon’s billing platform, he suddenly sat up and leaned in toward his computer screen.
“Call Jim,” said June, typing quickly.
“What is it?”
“His cell phone is still on,” said June.
When Bruckheimer entered the office, he moved behind June as, from beside him, Pacheco watched.
A map of Moscow appeared on the screen. A few keystrokes later, brightly lit gridlines appeared crisscrossed on top of the map. The feed sharpened and closed in, stopping on a street corner.
Bruckheimer leaned over next to June and hit the speakerphone.
“Get me Polk.”
15
NATIONAL CLANDESTINE SERVICE (NCS)
MISSION THEATER TARGA
LANGLEY
Two floors belowground, past multiple security checkpoints, in a dimly lit, windowless room walled in by high-def plasma screens, Calibrisi, Polk, and a half dozen others were gathered.
There were four mission theaters at CIA headquarters: Bravo, Echelon, Firehouse, and Targa. These were the epicenters of CIA covert operations around the world.
During a CIA operation, the mission theater served as tactical command control authority. Unless the senior case officer declared “in-theater command control,” someone at Langley was calling the shots. Using real-time visual and audio media, the theaters served to connect the many disparate, shifting elements of an operation in real time through the use of technology, data, and human intelligence. By managing an operation from a central hub, the Agency could direct the operators who were out there, at the front edge, risking their lives, with information such as the arrival of hostile forces or the detection of an operator’s movement.