Gridlock

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “Done.”

  Still Sumskoy hesitated. He had a wife and a mistress, both of whom liked the good life, and he was hemorrhaging money. “Be very careful with what I’m about to tell you, my old friend. And understand something else, because beyond his identity and location, there is something else out of Iran that he’s become involved with that I cannot tell you about.”

  Makarov’s curiosity rose. “This something else, could it have an effect on what I’ve been hired to do?”

  “I can’t tell you that unless I know the nature of your assignment. Even in general terms.”

  “I can’t do it, Vasili. You must know how it is.”

  “Watch your back, I know that much. Just as I must watch mine.”

  Makarov had waited.

  “His name is Barend Dekker, and he’s not just another computer whiz kid—he’s only twenty-five, graduated with a Ph.D. from MIT when he was fourteen—he’s possibly the most important and therefore most dangerous hacker on the planet. I don’t know all of his background, but he only takes on two kinds of jobs. Those for very highly placed individuals—and governments—for obscenely huge amounts of money. And the others simply for his own amusement. But both have the same purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “To fuck the United States.”

  “So what?”

  “Listen to me, this kid is a genius, but he’s just as warped as he’s smart. He and his girlfriend live in some dump in some kind of a hacker’s commune somewhere down around Voorburg just outside of Amsterdam. And nobody bothers them, not the cops, not even the AIVD.” The latter was the Dutch intelligence service.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he could destroy their entire computer system with a few keystrokes. Infect them with a virus as bad or worse than the Stuxnet bug the Israelis put in Iran’s nuclear centrifuge system. As long as they don’t kill anyone on Dutch soil they’re left alone.”

  “What else?” Makarov asked.

  “There’s nothing much more that I can tell you.”

  “Is he working on something for you?”

  “No,” Sumskoy said a little too quickly.

  “For the FSB, or for someone inside the building?”

  “I’ve done all I can, my friend. Including warning you to take care. The rest is up to you.”

  Makarov paid the bar tab and got to his feet. “What I’m working on now has a good possibility of developing. If it does I’ll need more information about this kid.”

  “Nyet.”

  “Everything,” Makarov said, and he walked away.

  * * *

  “I’LL GIVE the word in about fifteen minutes,” he told the hacker.

  “Why did you call me now?”

  “So that you can be ready when it’s time.”

  “Believe me, I’m ready anytime.”

  10

  THE REPAIR WORK on the insulator went much faster than Bartlett figured it would; sometimes jobs went like that, but not often. And since he was working on the ground away from the downed line, he could work with only a pair of leather gloves and not the thick rubber ones.

  One pickup truck passed on the highway, but Bartlett only glanced up as it crossed the bridge over the Antelope.

  Six of the ten-inch in diameter ceramic disks had been almost completely shot away, but the central bolt that held them together had been pretty much undamaged, and in his estimation still serviceable. The most serious damage had been done to the connectors at the base of the insulator that held the thick aluminum power line in place. It looked to him like the shock from the bullet strike had been so great that they had been bent far enough for the line to drop.

  He replaced those, checked the integrity of his work, and then took up the slack on the block and tackle and pulled the insulator back to its attachment point on the cross arm.

  When it was fully raised he got back into the bucket and powered himself up, again humming a Randy Travis tune, “Forever and Ever, Amen,” half under his breath.

  Juliette, who never really liked country-and-western music, but who thought Travis was hot, had gone with her husband to an outdoor concert over in Fargo a couple of years ago. He’d never forgotten it, nor had his wife, who admitted that she sometimes listened to Travis’s music on their Bose CD player while she did her housework.

  At the top, Bartlett eased the insulator up a few inches, to where he could muscle it in position where the bolt holes lined up. Five minutes later, he had the bolts threaded and the double nuts on each tightened down.

  Unclipping the carabiner from the insulator’s lifting ring, he started to lower the bucket when a Stark County Sheriff’s radio unit topped the rise and came down. Wyman had probably called the sheriff’s office about this incident and they’d sent a deputy down to take a look. Though there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see now.

  By the time he reached the ground, the cruiser had pulled off to the side of the road, and the sheriff got out and walked the rest of the way down.

  “Morning, Sheriff,” Bartlett said. He’d recognized Kasmir from the re-election posters last year.

  “Heard you had a bit of trouble down here. Thought I’d come take a look.”

  “Nothing much to see. Just another pissed off rancher, or a bored hunter.”

  Kasmir glanced over at the power line nearly touching the ground. “Not kids?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “What they did was shoot out the insulator up there, and they did a damned good job of it.”

  “So?”

  “That’s a serious piece of construction, and it’d take more than a deer or elk rifle to do the damage I had to repair,” Bartlett said. “Those kinds of guns cost a whole hell of a lot more money than I make. Don’t think a kid would be running around shooting at power company equipment with a fancy piece of hardware like that.”

  “I get your point,” Kasmir said. He glanced up at the insulator hanging from the cross arm. “Have you already fixed it?”

  Bartlett nodded. “I’m going to raise the line now, so you might want to stand back a bit.”

  “Is it still carrying power?”

  “No. The relays at Donna Marie tripped, and they’ll stay that way till I’m finished.”

  Kasmir shook his head and coughed. “Do you ever get nervous up there?”

  “No need, if you’re careful.” Bartlett shrugged. “But if you do something stupid and your number comes up, it’ll happen so fast you won’t feel a thing.”

  Kasmir coughed again and took out a handkerchief to wipe his brow.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, Sheriff, you look like hell. Maybe you ought to go home.”

  “I’ll just have a look around first.”

  “For what?”

  “For a high-power rifle shell casing, and whatever else might be lying around.”

  Bartlett brought his grounding stick over to the downed line, but it drew no sparks, so he set it aside and tied a rolling half hitch around the cable. The hitch would stay in place and not ride up as the power line was raised.

  Kasmir had walked halfway back up to the highway where he’d parked his cruiser when he bent down to pick something up.

  “Cigarette butt’s mine,” Bartlett called. “Marlboro?”

  “Yeah,” Kasmir said.

  Bartlett took up the slack on the block and tackle and slowly raised the line up to the insulator. This part was tricky only if the wind got up to around twenty miles per hour or more, or if the rolling hitch slipped so that the peak of the line wouldn’t end up directly below the insulator.

  But not this time, and when it was in place, he tied off the line. He went back to the bucket and climbed in.

  Kasmir was up by his cruiser and was searching for something along the side of the road as he slowly headed toward the crest of the ridge.

  Bartlett powered the bucket up, slowing as he reached the vicinity of the power line and stopping a couple feet a
way. He used his grounding stick again, but as before drew no sparks. The line was definitely de-energized.

  Angling a little closer he eased the line up so that it was directly at the attachment hooks on the end of the insulator.

  At that moment something caught his eye to the north, and he watched as a dark blue pickup truck came over a rise about a mile away and then dipped down into the valley directly behind the nearest hill, slipping out of view. It looked like a Dodge to Bartlett, which in itself was nothing unusual, though most ranchers out here used Fords or Chevy trucks.

  But as he turned back to the power line he had the thought that it looked clean, the sun glinting off the polished chrome. Too clean.

  11

  FROM A DISTANCE Makarov had spotted the lineman at the cross arm in a bucket. Rather than park below the crest of the hill from where he’d shot out the insulator and walk the rest of the way, he kept driving.

  The sheriff would be parked somewhere near the power line. But it was essential that the officer was not sitting in his radio unit, because once Makarov called Dekker in Amsterdam and gave the signal, Kasmir would immediately call for an ambulance and backup power company crew.

  As he topped the rise, the sheriff was walking along the side of the highway up the hill about fifty yards from his cruiser. The lineman was manhandling the power line to attach it to the insulator, and no one was coming from the south, nor could he see anything in the distance in his rearview mirror.

  He keyed Dekker’s number into his iPad, and the hacker answered on the first ring.

  “Ja.”

  “Now,” Makarov said, and he broke the connection.

  For a second or two nothing happened.

  Makarov had nearly reached the sheriff, who had stepped off the pavement, and considered driving past if Dekker was unable to hack the power company’s computer system, when a tremendous flash lit up the bright morning sky.

  A dramatic arc of electricity seemed to envelop the lineman’s torso, sending his hard hat soaring into the sky as the top of the man’s head was engulfed in flames, his left arm instantly burning in two, and sparks flying out of his chest.

  The sheriff stopped in his tracks for just a moment, looking back at the lineman, but then he turned and sprinted for his cruiser at the same time Makarov pulled up at the side of the highway.

  Still no one was coming from the south.

  He grabbed his old but reliable 9mm Styer GB from where he’d laid it on the passenger seat and got out of the truck. “My God, did you see that?” he shouted.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Kasmir, still running, shouted over his shoulder. But then he turned, and spotting the pistol in Makarov’s hand, reached for his weapon.

  Makarov fired one shot, hitting the sheriff center mass and knocking the man off his feet and spinning him around, so he sat down hard on the blacktop, but still alive.

  “Goddamn, you shot me,” Kasmir cried weakly. He was still fumbling at the holster on his right hip.

  Makarov reached the sheriff, who looked up at him, and he shot the man in the side of the head at point-blank range.

  At that moment he looked up in time to see a mud-spattered yellow pickup truck cross the Antelope. It immediately began to brake hard when the driver spotted the sheriff lying on the side of the highway, a man standing over him.

  Makarov held the pistol behind his right leg and frantically waved at the driver to stop. He gestured toward the dead lineman up on the pylon. A relay or something had tripped, so electricity did not continue to cook the man’s body where it was hanging by a safety strap at the side of the bucket.

  The driver slowed practically to a crawl.

  Fifty yards out Makarov could see that the driver, a youngish-looking man, had a passenger. When they got closer he could see it was a young woman. Possibly the man’s wife. Her mouth was open and she was frantically gesturing at the lineman’s body.

  Makarov remained standing, the pistol concealed, until the couple got closer.

  “Have you folks got a cell phone?” he shouted.

  “Yes,” the man said, hanging out of the window.

  “Have you called for help?”

  “No,” the man said. He pulled up to a halt about twenty feet away and turned to say something to his wife.

  Makarov walked directly toward them as he raised his pistol and fired five times, the first three hitting the man in the upper chest and head, and one destroying the woman’s neck, snapping her head back, the last shot entering her head just beneath her chin.

  The pickup truck lurched to the left then bumped off the road and into a ditch where it stopped.

  It was sloppy, Makarov told himself as he went back to his truck. An incredibly stupid waste of his time and talent. So much could have gone wrong, and nearly had. His only real breaks had come by happenstance because the stupid rancher hadn’t the presence of mind to call 911, and that his image had not been picked up on the forward-looking dash-mounted camera in the sheriff’s cruiser, and that he’d not spotted a rear-facing camera.

  All luck, which he’d never allowed to a play role in his missions.

  And he was going to need even more if he was to get free without any further trouble. If his pickup truck was spotted before he reached the airport and was connected to the mess on the highway, he would have to radically alter his escape plans.

  He made a sharp Y-turn on the highway and headed back toward Dickinson, constantly checking his rearview mirror until he topped the crest of the hill and started down the other side. No one had been coming from the south. Another piece of luck in a shaky string.

  When he got out of this he would make it his top priority to find out exactly why Venezuelan intelligence had been willing to pay so much money for this assignment—the real motives. What was it they wanted next? Exactly what part did a Dutch computer hacker, who according to Sumskoy, was among the best in the world, play in something so minor as killing a North Dakota lineman? And why had Sumskoy been frightened enough about something or someone coming out of Iran to warn an old friend to take care?

  None of it made any sense, and in such situations Makarov had learned that invariably he was being told lies. And in each case he had covered his backtrack by eliminating the liars.

  * * *

  ONLY TWO cars passed him, but that was in town not out on the open highway. He turned off at the T-Rex Plaza, where he parked in the lot just opposite the main entrance. His flight to Denver left in about an hour, and to this point he was clean.

  He hid the pistol under the seat, then grabbed his small overnight bag from the backseat, and took it inside the nearly deserted mall and found the men’s room. In one of the stalls he changed into khaki slacks, a light turtleneck and dark blue blazer, and polished half boots.

  When he was finished he stuffed the old clothes into his bag and dumped the work boots into a trash receptacle and left the mall. The few people in the main corridor paid him no attention as he walked to his pickup truck. The discarded boots would be found, but probably not until later in the day when the restrooms were serviced, and it could very well take several hours before any connection to the murders was made—if ever. By then he would be long gone, well on his way home.

  Several other pickup trucks along with a scattering of cars were parked in the lot, and before Makarov got into his truck something struck him, and he looked around. His pickup was clean, but just about every other vehicle here was mud-splattered.

  It was spring, the muddy season in the farm and ranch countryside. Hardly anyone here drove trucks to make a statement, these were mostly used for work. And his stood out.

  One mistake after another, he thought as he got into his truck and headed over to the airport. The Russian Mafia people he’d hired to supply him with the weapons, the air reservations to Denver, and the pickup truck were based either in New York City or Minneapolis. Big cities. No farmers or ranchers.

  But it had been his error not to have thought the assignment t
hrough, and insist on checking these sorts of details. Even turning down the assignment when it was presented to him in Paris, because it hadn’t felt right.

  “Trust your training, gentlemen,” a Spetsnaz intelligence officer had drilled into their heads. “You’re being given the very best that the ruble can provide. No other army’s special force is better. Rely on that, and you just might survive to bounce your grandson on your knee.”

  Driving back to the airport just south of town, Makarov switched back to the Dickinson sheriff’s dispatcher frequency, still quiet. Almost too quiet.

  12

  THEY LEFT EARLY, Whitney in the backseat of Osborne’s Saturn SUV cruiser, Nate and Ashley in front, driving back to Medora and turning north on the National Park Road, the Little Missouri River that ran through the park to their left. The morning was crisp, not a cloud in the sky, only a very slight breeze; a perfect spring day, yet Osborne was having a serious case of the willies that he could not justify.

  “Do we want to stop at the visitor center?” Ashley asked Osborne. She turned back to Whitney. “You’ve never been to the park, have you?”

  “No. But I’ll leave it up to you guys.”

  “I’ll play tour guide,” Osborne said. “I grew up here, remember. Spent half my life as a kid hiking the Maah Daah Hey, canoeing down the Little Missouri, and couple of years ago some hunting to cull the elk herds.”

  “The river and elk I’ve heard about, but what’s the other thing?”

  “The Maah Daah Hey trail, Mandan Indian meaning an area that has been or will be around for a long time. Used for hiking. More than ninety miles of it.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Me, too,” Ashley said.

  They drove past the visitor center and over to the main entrance, the ranger on duty stepping out of the gatehouse as Osborne pulled up. His name tag said PARKS, for which he’d once told Nate that just about every federal park employee he’d ever met gave him a hard time.

  “Mornin’, Nate. Planning on arresting someone this morning?”

  “My day off,” Osborne said. “You know Ashley, but you probably haven’t met Dr. Lipton. She runs things down at the Initiative.”