by C. A. James
“Wow,” said McCaig.
“And that’s the chink in his armor, too.”
A guardsman waved, and they both got out of the RV. Patterson walked up.
“Off the record, Ms. Garrett. I mean it.”
“Off the record, Patterson. I’ll give you one minute.”
“You have some camera equipment and Internet? Can you go live?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been invited here. You’re like an embedded war correspondent. Got that?”
“You’re asking me to lie?”
“I’m telling you. If you don’t, I’ll slam the jail door behind you so fast you’ll be lucky if your ass doesn’t get chopped off.”
“On what charge?”
“How else are you going to explain your presence here? Either I invited you, or you’re in cahoots with Zarrabian and his buddies. Which I know you are anyway. Treason, harboring a fugitive, aiding and abetting, you name it. I’ll nail you.”
“So why’d you let us in?”
“You two have been a pain in my ass. Now you get front row seats. I want the country to see this, and it amuses me that you’re the one who’s going to do it. Blowing up the dam, that would have been fun. It would have pissed this nation off.”
“And killed tens of thousands,” said McCaig.
Patterson ignored him. “But seeing terrorists try to attack the United States of America, and instead get turned into chopped liver? Now that’s patriotic shit.”
“But they’re not terrorists, are they?” said McCaig. “You tricked them.”
Patterson sneered at him. “You little pissant fucking G-man. Thought you were big stuff? You’re dog meat McCaig, you and your fuck buddy here. By the way, is she a good fuck? I’d bone her myself, but the crack whores in DC are better looking.”
McCaig started to react, but Christine cut him off. “Your minute is up. We’re on the record.”
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Garrett, Mr. McCaig. You may begin filming any time. For reasons of national security, we can’t allow outside communications until the terrorists are in custody in order to prevent them from getting information about our presence and position. Your cell phone and Internet signals will be jammed until then. Once the terrorists are in custody, you can transmit whatever you like. The guardsmen will show you where to set up.” He waved at a soldier and strode away.
She looked at McCaig. “No such thing as coincidences, right?”
“The lawman’s motto. Or mine at least,” he said. “Why?”
“They know the attack is today. That means they must have a man on the inside, right?” she asked.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“And we’re here. They now have press at the scene. Maximal publicity. Coincidence?”
“Huh,” said McCaig.
“Suppose their guy on the inside will survive the day?”
“Doubt it. The mole on Zarrabian’s team went down with the bridge. Patterson was probably glad. No loose ends.”
The guardsman walked up. “Ms. Garrett? This way, please.”
“Come on, let’s set up. You’re my cameraman,” she said.
“Me?”
“Bashir got a pretty decent video camera at some high-tech place in Salt Lake City, then with some fancy adapters and cables he routed it through my cell phone to the Internet.”
“And you can broadcast live from here to your TV show?”
“I can. But for now we just record, then we’ll blast it out to the station when Patterson turns off the jammers.”
“How is Bashir going to send his ‘hold’ text messages if we’re being jammed?”
“I don’t know. This could be a problem. If that interview goes live before the attack . . .”
“Yeah.”
Bashir used his sleeve to wipe a trickle of sweat from his eye. The RV was cooking in the hot sun and he couldn’t open the windows for fear of being spotted. He was beginning to worry that the heat would soon force him to open the windows, risk or not. He could endure discomfort, but he’d be useless if he passed out.
He looked at his cell phone—message after message, one every ten minutes, all the same: “HOLD,” and then the reply, “OK.” Two minutes until it was time to send the next message. He began to idly type the characters, H-O-L-D. But something was wrong—there was no signal.
What the hell? Even out here by the Fort Peck Dam, they weren’t far from a town. He’d had a solid signal. He stood up in the sweltering bedroom and held the phone in various positions. Nothing. And just one minute until the next scheduled text message! Was his phone malfunctioning?
He grabbed his computer-equipment bag, quickly extracted his Wi-Fi “hot spot,” and turned it on. Nothing.
He looked back and forth between the two devices, baffled. They couldn’t both be broken. Could the cell phone tower have gone dead? Then it hit him: they were being jammed.
And now he’d passed the ten-minute mark and missed the window for the next message. If he missed the next one too, Christine’s interview of Zarrabian would be broadcast to the world before the attack began. And if that happened, the terrorist team would be quietly captured or killed, and Christine’s interview of Zarrabian would make them both look like fools.
Everything hinged on the next few minutes. He had to get that message out!
Bashir burst out of the bedroom and stooped low. As quickly as he could, he shut all of the curtains, then drew the drapes across behind the driver and passenger seats. He held his breath for a moment, listening for someone outside to raise the alarm outside. Nothing. He’d made it. Nobody could see inside now.
He frantically began pulling open all of the drawers in the kitchen, looking for what he needed, then did the same in the bathroom.
Six minutes later, he glanced over his handiwork. He’d wallpapered the entire bathroom—floor, walls, and ceiling—using a roll of aluminum foil for wallpaper and a can of Christine’s hairspray for glue. The bathroom was now a perfect Faraday cage: completely shielded against all micro signals. No cell phone signal could get in or out. And no jamming signals, either.
Next he used the hairspray to glue a half-dozen layers of aluminum foil together into a somewhat rigid two-foot square. He cut it into a circle with scissors, then shaped it into a shallow bowl—a parabolic reflector that would focus and amplify microwaves.
Nine minutes gone.
He closed his eyes for a second and visualized the area around the RV. Which way was the town? Where was that cell phone tower? With that vision in his head, he opened his eyes, turned in toward the town and cut a circular hole in the foil wallpaper.
He picked up the phone in one hand, pointed the foil reflector at the circular hole, and held his phone where he thought the focal point of the reflector should be. His thumb was poised over the “Send” button. He moved the reflector slowly back and forth, searching for the signal.
There it was! A single bar popped up on the phone’s signal-strength icon. He hit the Send button and held the phone and reflector as steady as his shaking hands could manage.
A few seconds later, it came: “OK.”
Bashir closed his eyes and exhaled sharply.
McCaig panned the camera across the water. Here and there, a fishing skiff or houseboat dotted the lake. He spotted one and zoomed the camera in, magnifying the craft until he could see faces. The boat and its occupants were completely unremarkable. He zoomed out again, and continued scanning the lake: a water skier, another houseboat, some fishermen.
He spotted a half-dozen speedboats, all anchored together in a cove. College students were ashore drinking beer and tossing Frisbees. McCaig thought back to the “party cove” at the lake during his college days. It was a long time ago, before the unabashed craziness of today. Beer and sunshine, maybe a stroll into the woods with a bikini-clad coed—who usually kept her bikini on. At least the ones who strolled with him. It was very tame. Still, the hot sunshine and cold beer often enticed someone to go skinny
dipping, usually to the cheers and jeers from the other boats. There might be a few Polaroid photos here and there, maybe the couple would later regret their beer-fueled immodesty. But with no Internet, photos never went further than a few friends, and sooner or later were thrown out or lost. Youthful mistakes didn’t follow you for life.
He zoomed out and scanned up the lake. Two powerboats bobbed gently. Their occupants reclined in comfortable chairs with beers and pretzels at hand and fisherman’s hats pulled low to block the sun. Another memory . . . fishing with his dad. They hadn’t done it much, maybe a dozen times. But those memories were among his favorites—time alone together, talking about everything and nothing, his Dad praising the fish he brought in no matter how small.
He even loved the long drive home after dark, trailing the little aluminum skiff on a trailer behind the family sedan. It was TJ’s duty to keep Dad company on the long drive, and he tried valiantly. But as often as not, he’d wake up in his bed the next morning, still in his underwear and T-shirt from the fishing trip. Mom used to scold Dad over that, complaining that the bed smelled like a fish factory. She’d gather up the sheets and stuff them in the washer, then aim TJ for the shower, muttering and grumbling. But TJ knew she didn’t really mind.
He zoomed out. The image of the fishermen dwindled to distant dots in the camera’s viewfinder. He started to scan some more. A movement caught his eye. He swung the camera back. The fishing boats that had been there moments ago were gone. Only white, churned water and waves lapping the nearby shore remained. He scanned quickly, following the foamy wakes until the camera caught up with the two boats.
“What the hell?” he said.
Fishing poles and fishermen’s hats had disappeared. The boats were going fast—faster than should be possible. He zoomed the camera to the maximum. Something didn’t add up . . . it was the engines: twin Mercury engines, much too large for fishing boats.
“You see this?” he asked.
“Yeah,” replied Christine, watching the camera’s feed on her phone’s screen.
“This is it. I was hoping we were wrong.”
“Just point the damned camera!”
Bashir peeked through a small slit in the curtains. Through the windshield he could see McCaig and Christine in the distance, right where they’d been for the past hour. Something was up, he could tell. McCaig’s body was tense, and Christine was staring intently toward the lake. He watched.
Suddenly McCaig took off the baseball cap he’d been wearing to ward off the intense sun and dropped it at his feet. That was the signal. Bashir went into the RV’s bathroom and closed the foil-covered door to block the jamming signal. He pointed his aluminum-foil reflector at the hole that allowed its signal out, held the phone at the focal point, then waited for the phone to find the cell tower’s signal. He typed “GO!” with one thumb, then pressed “Send.”
He was done. The phone beeped a moment later. “OK. Good luck.”
Grant Petri stood behind director Alberto Espinosa and his staff in the control room. Banks of monitors filled walls and washed the room with the glow of incoming news feeds and on-stage cameras.
The past thirty minutes had been crazy. The text message, “GO!” preempting the network, frantic activity as calls came in from other TV, radio, web, and print news sources—he’d never seen anything like it.
And Christine’s interview with Zarrabian had been a bombshell. Zarrabian had predicted this attack in chilling detail.
This was it, the story of a lifetime. The administration was going to fall, heads would roll, and Grant Petri was the producer with the vision to turn Christine Garrett loose on the story.
And now this! Garrett had just transmitted the video of the attack itself, and it was exclusive. An incredible story, real videos of four terrorists attacking on American soil and being killed. It was going out in two minutes.
Dana Poindexter, sitting behind the anchor desk in the newsroom, filled one of the large monitors of the control room. Christine Garrett filled another. Several military trucks made Christine’s backdrop, and behind them the waters of Fort Peck Lake rippled in a light breeze. Christine was fiddling with her earpiece with one hand and brushing her hair with the other.
“OK, Christine, is that better?” asked the director.
Her image on the screen looked into the camera. “Yeah, I hear you now.”
“Sixty seconds, Christine. Can your cameraman hear me? Wiggle the camera if you can hear me.”
The picture waved up and down.
“OK, cameraman, got it. Christine, what’s his name?”
“It’s retired FBI Special Agent TJ McCaig. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
“Oh, for sure. It’s a pleasure, Mr. McCaig. My name’s Al.”
“Call him TJ,” said Christine.
“OK, TJ. Christine tells me you don’t do this for a living. No problem, I’m just going to be giving you instructions like zoom in, zoom out, pan left, pan right. Nothing tricky. Do it slowly, slower than you think you should. Don’t worry if you make a mistake, we’ll straighten it out. OK?”
The picture nodded again.
“Did Ben get all of our footage of the attack?” asked Christine.
“Scary shit, Garrett. Yeah, he got it and he’s already edited it. We’re ready. Stand by. Dana, twenty seconds.”
Petri saw Dana Poindexter nod.
“Dana’s going to do your intro. Camera two, standby. Flash, standby in fifteen.”
Poindexter adjusted the computer screen next to her and squared her shoulders. Petri could see her take a deep breath and close her eyes for a moment. A calm competence settled into her features as she looked into the camera.
“Flash in five, four, three, two, one, go.” The main monitor flashed with a big headline and the network’s animated logo. “Camera two ready, camera one stand by. In five, four, three, two, one.”
Dana Poindexter looked into the camera. “There is a major new development in the story of the terrorist attack on the Fort Peck Dam. We’ve just received word that a group of terrorists were intercepted by the FBI and National Guard. There was a short battle, and all of the terrorists are believed to be dead. We need to warn our viewers that the videos you are about to see contain very graphic violence that may not be appropriate for children. Christine Garrett is on the scene now. Christine, can you tell us where you are and what’s going on?”
Christine’s image filled the screen. “Dana, I’m at the Fort Peck Dam, about one hundred miles northeast of Billings, Montana. It’s the largest earth-fill dam in the United States, located on the upper stretches of the Missouri River. This might seem like an unlikely place for a terrorist attack, but moments ago, four terrorists driving two high-powered speedboats packed with explosives tried to destroy the Fort Peck Dam. As we reported earlier today, Colonel Ahmad Zarrabian, who was responsible for the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge, predicted this attack, and now his predictions are confirmed. It appears that the administration has known of the terrorists’ activities for months.
“FBI and National Guard were at the scene here and were ready for the terrorists. But rather than arrest them, they allowed the attack to proceed. The terrorists’ boats were destroyed before they reached the dam, and all of the terrorists were killed.”
Her image was replaced by a video of two powerboats racing across the lake. Christine’s voice continued, but Grant Petri was transfixed by the video. It was jumpy, probably taken with a handheld consumer-style video camera, but clear enough to show the unfolding drama. He stepped around the director’s console to get closer to the screen.
The two boats skimmed atop the water, pushed by high-powered twin Mercury engines that were far too large for such small boats. In each boat, a driver hunkered down behind a short windshield. A second man crouched, braced against a bench, holding an automatic weapon.
As the camera followed the two boats, the long, low line of the Fort Peck Dam came into view. The gunman in the leading boat grabb
ed his weapon in both hands and raised it into the air over his head, shaking it in a victory celebration. The gunman in the other boat did the same. Petri’s imagination filled in the men’s victory shouts as they sped to what they must have known would be certain death.
Suddenly dozens of Humvees, trucks, and hundreds of US National Guardsmen swarmed over dam’s top from the sloping backside. The two terrorists tried to shoulder their weapons and aim.
Before either could fire a shot, an immense volley of firepower erupted from the top of the dam. A hundred automatic rifles and a dozen .50 caliber machine guns fired simultaneously. The terrorists’ heads and upper bodies virtually disintegrated in a spray of blood and flesh. The boats’ hulls were peppered with dots that quickly turned to gaping holes. The massive twin engines’ shrouds were blown off, and moments later the engines exploded into small fireballs, sending bits of plastic and metal into the air.
The two speedboats drifted to a stop a hundred yards from the dam, and the guns fell silent. Suddenly, a massive explosion ripped the scene, obliterating the first boat in a huge fireball. A visible supersonic shock wave raced across the water. Moments later another blast ripped apart the second boat, sending another shock wave across the water. On the dam, guardsmen who’d been standing were knocked flat, and several trucks’ canvas canopies were torn away by the blasts.
Twin fireballs floated skyward, propelled by their own heat. Concentric circles of expanding waves marked the spot where the boats had been, but on the water there was nothing but waves to show that the two boats had ever existed. A rain of debris began to splash into the lake.
Christine Garrett’s image replaced the video and brought Petri’s mind back to the newsroom. He shook his head quickly to clear it. You could be in this business fifty years and never get used to seeing death.
The director barked some orders, and the screen was split, showing both Garrett and Poindexter.
“Christine, you commented earlier about what an unlikely place that is for a terrorist attack. Why did they pick this particular dam? Why not a large dam like Hetch Hetchy or the Hoover Dam?”