by Larry Bond
The senator did not disappoint him.
“A knockout blow. Something that would stop these terrorists in their tracks. I think the President should get up off his duff and declare a nationwide state of emergency. We should slap every known member of these extremist groups into preventive detention until we can sort out the guilty from the innocent. And if the police and FBI are too damned shorthanded, I think we should deploy the Army and Marines to do the job!”
“Wouldn’t the ACLU and other civil rights organizations object to—” the interviewer began.
“The hell with the ACLU!” Reiser interrupted sharply. “We’re at war, whether those idiots know it or not.”
South-Central Los Angeles, California
Officer Carlos Esparo swore softly as the scene in his binoculars swam into sharper focus. He and his partner were stationed seven blocks from the improvised roadblock thrown up across a major street leading into one of L.A.’s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods. The roadblock wasn’t much—not yet. Just a few old clunkers parked sideways across the street. But it was manned by punks. By gang members wearing their colors. By armed gang members. Most wore pistols tucked into their pants, and he could see at least one shotgun. The LAPD officer was willing to bet they had automatic weapons too. He’d had too many run-ins with the local street gangs not to respect their firepower.
They were stopping every car and truck headed into South Central. Only those driven by blacks were allowed through the roadblock. The others, those driven by whites, Hispanics, or Asians, were waved back with menacing gestures and shouted insults.
Esparo clicked the button on his radio mike. “No, sir. There’s been no violence. Not yet anyway. But I still think—”
The voice of his watch commander cut him off. “Don’t think, Carlos. The orders come right from the top. You just stay put and observe the situation. Got it? Don’t intervene unless they start getting out of hand. And even then, you check with me first. Is that clear?”
Esparo gritted his teeth. “Clear, sir.” He understood the reasoning behind his orders even if he didn’t like them very much. With racial tensions climbing every day, the LAPD could not risk sparking another disastrous riot. Even his request for a SWAT sniper team on standby had been refused. They were too busy guarding vulnerable installations and city officials.
NOVEMBER 23
Oak Brook, Illinois
The coils of razor wire strung across the quiet, suburban street west of Chicago seemed utterly out of place. So did the hunting rifles slung over the shoulders of the well-dressed, mostly middle-aged men clustered around a tiny portable heater. Their breath steamed in the freezing late autumn air and they seemed acutely uncomfortable. But they also looked angry and utterly fixed in purpose.
Against police advice, Oak Brook’s various Neighborhood Watch groups had decided to arm themselves against what they saw as a rising tide of terrorism and civil strife. Their members, mostly wealthy lawyers, doctors, and stockbrokers, were taking turns away from work to patrol the streets and to man checkpoints at key locations. All of them were determined to make sure that no “undesirables” bent on murder, rape, or pillage menaced their homes or families.
America’s social fabric was starting to come apart at the seams.
CHAPTER 17
BLACKOUT
NOVEMBER 24
On the Potomac River, near Leesburg, Virginia
(D MINUS 21)
A severe autumn storm—the howling, roaring creation of high winds and driving sheets of ice-cold rain—tore across Maryland and Virginia just after dark. The long, black wall of clouds came pouring down out of the Blue Ridge Mountains, scudding eastward across rolling hills, woods, and open farmland toward the Chesapeake Bay. Thirty miles northwest of Washington, D.C., the storm swept over the tall steel towers of the PennMarVa Electrical Intertie.
The intertie’s transmission lines linked Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia electric utilities together in a common power pool. Under normal conditions, the network enhanced each company’s market and power supply position. Lines running north gave them access to cheaper hydroelectric power routed from Canada. The intertie also made it possible for member utilities to swap electricity back and forth to meet unexpected demand or to make up for out-of-commission generating plants.
Now, though, the power transmission network was a liability—a weak point open to attack. Its long high-voltage lines were especially vulnerable where they crossed the Potomac.
Sefer Halovic turned his face to the bitter, cleansing wind with something very like exultation in his soul. For him the storm was a manifestation of God’s power—a vast and elemental force lashing out at America’s sophisticated technology and its material works. It was surely a sign of divine favor for his own secret war.
Strengthened by this revelation, he swung back to the task at hand.
A massive electrical transmission tower loomed out of the darkness above him like some primeval monster. As warning to low-flying aircraft, a ruby-red light blinked at its peak, one hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The fierce wind keening through the tower’s steel girders rose and fell in eerie counterpoint to the low, crackling hum of raw electricity coursing through the 500-kilovolt lines it supported.
Halovic peered through a blinding torrent of rain, following the swaying power lines northward across the Potomac until they disappeared in the swirling darkness well short of the Maryland shore. Another tower soared there, visible only as a hazy, pulsing glow in the distance. Truly, this was the place to strike, he thought. Once again, General Taleh’s planners had done their work well.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
Khalil Yassine had to yell to be heard over the wind and rain. “The charges are in place!”
“Good!” Halovic patted the backpack slung from his left shoulder. “I will place the detonators myself. Use the radio. Find out how Nizrahim and his men are coming along.”
The young Palestinian nodded sharply and slithered down the rain-soaked slope toward where they’d parked the vehicle they were using tonight—a dark-colored Jeep Wrangler. It held the automatic weapons they would need later, spare explosives, and communications gear.
Halovic moved in the opposite direction, toward the nearest leg of the giant transmission tower. He knelt beside the white blocks of plastic explosive Yassine had molded to the steel, and reached inside the backpack for a reel of detonator cord. More blocks of C4 were visible on another of the tower’s four supports. Ignoring the freezing rain soaking through his jacket, the Bosnian began his delicate work. First, he stuck sections of the detcord into all of the charges the younger man had placed. Then he spliced the separate lengths together. He did not hurry. Men who took foolish chances when rigging demolitions rarely lived to regret their haste.
Satisfied that his splices would hold, Halovic started back toward the Wrangler, carefully trailing the detonator cord behind him. Again, he took his time, making sure of his footing before taking any step. Slipping in the mud now could undo all his hard work.
The Bosnian would have preferred using a surer, easier means to set off his explosives, but that was impossible. This close to a high-voltage source, timed or electrical detonators were too likely to malfunction or go off prematurely.
Yassine rejoined him halfway down the slope. “Nizrahim says they are almost ready. He is standing by.”
Halovic nodded without looking up.
Five minutes later, he knelt again, this time on the muddy access road next to their stolen Jeep. This far away, the transmission tower was only a half-seen blur through the pouring rain. A dirt embankment offered rudimentary cover. He pulled more equipment out of his backpack. In quick succession he taped the end of the detcord around a nonelectric blasting cap and then attached a time fuse and fuse lighter. Ready.
Halovic climbed up the embankment and gently placed the detonator assembly on the ground within easy reach. Then he slid back down the embankment. Set.<
br />
Yassine crouched beside him holding the walkie-talkie to his face as though it were a sacred talisman.
The Bosnian reached up and gripped the pull ring on the fuse lighter. He glanced at his companion and nodded sharply. “Go!”
The younger man clicked the transmit button on the walkie-talkie. “Fire!”
In that same instant Halovic yanked the pull ring out of the lighter and flattened himself against the embankment. The blasting cap exploded, sending fire racing through the detonator cord at 21,000 feet per second.
THUMMP. THUMMP. Harsh white light flared against the dark, rain-drenched sky as their plastic explosives went off, shearing through hardened steel supports as though they were butter.
Two more explosions echoed across the river as the charges Nizrahim’s team had set on the Maryland tower detonated.
Halovic cautiously raised his head over the embankment to check his handiwork.
With two of its four steel supports shattered, the Virginia-side transmission tower shuddered, whipping back and forth through the rain. Then gravity and its own enormous weight took hold. Girders and bolts buckled under stresses they were never designed to withstand. Slowly first and then faster, amid the wrenching scream of tearing metal, the tower swayed sideways and toppled.
The long, twin 500-kv lines fell with it, whirring downward through the air, smashing through trees, and splashing into the white-capped Potomac. On the way down, they made contact and shorted out. Streamers of hellish blue light arced back and forth between the swishing wires like bolts of lightning trapped in a narrow space. Abruptly, everything went black.
Halovic blinked away the dazzling afterimages and turned toward his staring, openmouthed companion. “Come, Yassine. We have much more to do before we are done.”
The Palestinian nodded and followed him down the embankment to their waiting vehicle.
PennMarVa Intertie Emergency Control Centers
As planned, the terrorist attack came at the worst possible time—the hour just after sunset when the demand for electricity peaked. Streets were now brightly lit against the gathering darkness. Office lights, computers, and copiers were still on. And millions of people coming home from work or school were flipping on lamps, televisions, ovens, and microwaves.
So when the PennMarVa Intertie’s 500-kv line went down, it created havoc in seconds. Current was still flowing south with nowhere to go. Emergency circuit breakers tripped automatically, desperately shunting the electrical load to secondary 230-kv lines. But the cascading load was too much for them to handle. Line temperatures rose rapidly, climbing toward the danger zone. More circuit breakers blew out across the entire system.
As alarms blared through several utility control centers, their computers swung into action, fighting for precedence among themselves as they tried to bring transmission lines back up. Power outages hopscotched across a vast area—south from Gettysburg all the way to Williamsburg, Virginia. More and more substations and secondary lines went black as they were knocked off-line. The edge of each outage was easy to see. On one side of a street the houses and streetlights were bright and warm. On the other side there was nothing but cold darkness.
By the time the situation stabilized, more than 300,000 homes and businesses were left without power.
VEPCO trouble crew, off Route 7,
near the Potomac
Rain pounded the red and gray VEPCO truck lumbering up the rutted access road. Water crashed down across the windshield in waves that drowned vision for seconds at a time. Branches scraped across metal as the fierce winds whipped the trees on either side of the narrow road into frenzied motion. For an instant, the truck skidded sideways as its tires lost traction in the mud.
Almost anybody with any choice was either at home or heading there as fast as the weather allowed.
Ray Atwater and his partner, Dennis Greenwood, didn’t have a choice. Both men had seen the weather coming and had said good-bye to their wives, not expecting to see them again until the storm stopped, whenever that was. While everyone else hunkered down, Virginia Electric Power crews worked to keep the lines up and everyone warm.
Right now Greenwood drove while Atwater pored over maps and diagrams of the power grid. Raised in Michigan’s stormy winters, Greenwood fought the rain-slick roads like a pro. Atwater was a rarity, a native of the area, and he was more than willing to let the other man have the wheel.
Their first job was to find the line break and see how bad things really were. In a sense, they were scouts for the construction crews assembling at utility yards throughout northern Virginia.
Atwater shook his head as he used a penlight to scan the intertie map. The first sensor reports showed that they’d lost the 500-kv line at one or both of the river transmission towers. He hoped the sensors were wrong. Even in good weather, trying to string new line across the Potomac would be a delicate, ticklish job. Under the current conditions, it would be all but impossible.
The troubleshooter put his charts away as the truck nosed out of the woods onto the long, mostly open slope leading to the intertie Potomac crossing point. He stared through the streaked windshield, straight into the center of total darkness. It was no good. He couldn’t see anything up ahead—no steel latticework and no red warning light. Nothing but rain-flecked blackness in the headlights.
Atwater glanced at his partner in surprise. “Where the hell’s the tower?”
He rolled down the window on his side, letting in the cold and wet, but also improving his view. Still nothing. “Shit.”
He thumbed the transmit switch on his radio mike. “Dispatch, this is One-Five—”
Rippling flashes lit up a small grove of trees only yards away. The windshield blew inward.
Both Atwater and Greenwood were killed instantly by a stuttering fusillade of automatic-weapons fire that ripped them apart. The utility trouble truck rolled on for a short distance and finally came to rest against the access road embankment. One lone headlight still gleamed, shining across the twisted wreckage of the 500-kv transmission tower.
HRT ready-response section
A sudden gust bounced the UH-60 Blackhawk up and down through the choppy air. The clattering rotor noise rose to a new pitch as the helicopter’s pilot fought to maintain his control over the machine. They were only five hundred feet above the wind-whipped surface of the Potomac. Between the wind, the rain, and the bitter cold, flying conditions were right on the margin between dangerous and suicidal.
Seated right behind the cockpit, Helen Gray gripped her MP5 submachine gun tighter, trusting that her safety harness would hold. As the Blackhawk nosed down into forward flight again, she leaned closer to the copilot’s helmeted head. “How much further?”
“Not far.” He turned his head toward her, eyes invisible behind a set of night vision goggles, and gestured through the windscreen. “Maybe another half mile or so.”
Helen slipped her own goggles down and stared hard at the wooded slopes ahead. It was difficult to make out any details through the downpour.
“There. About five hundred yards ahead. Just out of the tree line.” The pilot’s voice crackled through her earphones. “Looks like a vehicle. It’s not moving.”
Helen saw the VEPCO trouble truck at almost the same moment. It was slewed across an access road just below a pile of debris that must be the transmission tower they’d briefed her on. The driver’s-side door hung open. “Take us in.”
“Roger.”
The Blackhawk swooped closer to the hillside, shuddering again as it flew through more turbulence. HRT troopers in full assault gear slid the helo’s side doors open, bracing themselves against the sudden onslaught of rain and wind.
Helen leaned out through the opening, focusing on the ground rushing upward toward them. They were at one hundred feet. Fifty. Twenty-five. Her fingers unsnapped the safety harness holding her inside. “Here we go, people! Get set!”
The Blackhawk flared out just above the ground and hovered there, rot
or pounding.
“Move! Move!” Helen threw herself through the side door and dropped prone with her MP5 out and ready. The rest of her section spilled out after her and took up firing positions, forming a defensive ring on both sides of the helicopter. The instant they were all out, the Blackhawk transitioned to forward flight and climbed away into the darkness.
She waited for the sound of its engines to fade, scanning the ground in front of her for signs of movement. Tree limbs swayed in the wind, but she saw no evidence of anyone still lurking in ambush. “Anyone see anything?”
No one did.
Helen nodded, unsurprised. As she had feared, they were undoubtedly too late. Unsure of what had happened to its men and suspecting only a simple communications failure in the bad weather, VEPCO had delayed reporting any problem for nearly an hour. When the call came in, Flynn had immediately dispatched her HRT section to the scene. He had also asked both the Virginia and Maryland state police agencies to set up roadblocks in a wide perimeter around the power line crossing. She frowned. By now the terrorists were snugly and securely hidden among the D.C. area’s several million inhabitants.
Helen’s lips pursed as she sighted through her goggles at the bullet-riddled VEPCO truck. Why should they linger on at risk, when they had so easily and swiftly accomplished their mission?
Knocking down the two intertie transmission towers merely created a onetime inconvenience for several hundred thousand people. By killing the men sent out to cope with the problem, though, the terrorists had multiplied the effectiveness of their attack a hundredfold. How many utility crews anywhere in the United States would venture out to repair a line break or downed power pole until they were sure that SWAT teams or military units had secured the area? So power outages and other problems that once would have lasted only minutes or a couple of hours were bound to drag on for several hours or days.