Gridlock

by Byron L. Dorgan

  He got out of his car, stiff after the long nonstop drive, and trotted on an angle toward the ranch, keeping below the crest of the hill until the land began to flatten out. A shallow creek, not much wider than a drainage ditch, meandered from the northwest, clumps of tall grasses and a few willow trees along its banks.

  At the top he dropped to his hands and knees from where he had a good line of fire to the house about three hundred yards to the southeast and the barn, its hayloft door open. The deputy had parked his F150 out of sight, but Dr. Lipton’s car was in front alongside a Toyota pickup.

  No lights shone from any of the windows in the house. Presumably the scientist had taken Osborne’s advice and had gone to bed.

  Makarov had given himself forty-five minutes to take out the deputy, secure the woman, and bring his car to the ranch where he would wait for Osborne to show up. With any luck at all he would be back on the interstate and halfway to Minneapolis before anyone trying to reach the sheriff got suspicious.

  Even then nothing would connect Thomas van Houghton, driving an anonymous dark blue Camry, with the crime scene.

  Keeping low he crawled through the tall grasses along the creek bank until one of the outbuildings was between himself and the barn then he splashed across to the other side, and still keeping low, ran directly to the back of the house.

  The night remained silent, no noises and no lights from any direction.

  At the corner he could see the rear of the barn, its big service door open, the deputy’s pickup parked inside. Osborne was expecting him, and his deputy had laid the trap. The open hayloft door in front would give a good view of the house and out toward the dirt road, though not as far as the interstate. Anyone driving up to the ranch would be spotted once they topped the rise, the headlights even farther.

  Makarov pulled out his Glock, though he had no intention of actually firing it, unless he was cornered, and sprinted across the thirty yards of open space to the barn, where he held up at the open service door, for just a moment, before glancing back at the house, and then ducking inside.

  He stood stock-still in the deeper shadows listening, all of his senses alert for any sound, anything out of the ordinary, any movement, a cough, footsteps, anything.

  Almost immediately a dim light up in the hayloft switched on for just a couple of seconds then went out. A few moments later he smelled cigarette smoke. The idiot deputy had actually lit a cigarette.

  It was something a man of Osborne’s caliber and training would never have done, and Makarov was surprised and even a little disappointed that the sheriff hadn’t trained his deputy better than that.

  The hayloft covered the front half of the barn. Waiting another minute for his eyes to fully adjust to the deeper darkness, Makarov silently went to the ladder and slowly climbed up, rung by rung, until his head just cleared the floor.

  A few bales of hay were stacked up in the far corner, and couple of others just a few feet back from the open door where a man was seated, his back to the ladder, his figure silhouetted from the dim starlight. A Winchester .30-.30 was propped against one of the bales, a pistol in a holster at the man’s left hip.

  With great care Makarov climbed the rest of the way up, and moved a couple of feet to his left.

  Grafton, sensing something, suddenly looked over his shoulder, dropped his cigarette, and reached for the rifle.

  “I will shoot you,” Makarov warned.

  Grafton’s hand stopped inches from the gun.

  “If you think that Dr. Lipton will hear the shot and call for help, you’re wrong. She won’t.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  Makarov moved closer. “I won’t kill her, it’s not why I’m here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m here to assassinate your sheriff, of course,” Makarov said, taking another step.

  “Means you’ll have to kill me, too,” Grafton said, and he grabbed the rifle.

  Makarov moved in on the deputy’s left side and slammed the butt of his pistol into the man’s temple.

  Grafton was rocked back with a grunt, blood instantly filling his left eye socket, but he continued to try to bring the rifle to bear, the fingers of his left hand fumbling for the trigger. But like just about every law enforcement officer Makarov had ever come up against, this one did not have a round chambered. The philosophy was that the sound of a long gun being racked was intimidating enough to give the bad guy pause.

  Ignoring the Winchester, Makarov slammed the butt of his pistol into the side of the deputy’s head again with every ounce of his strength, knocking the man to his knees, where he lost his grip on the rifle.

  Makarov wiped the butt of his pistol on the back of the deputy’s jacket, then shoved it in his belt.

  Grafton grunted again and started to rise, but Makarov stepped around the hay bale, shoved a knee into the younger man’s spine, yanked his head sharply to the left breaking his neck, and let him slump to the floor.

  The deputy looked up, trying to bring air into his lungs, but it was impossible, and he knew that he was going to die.

  Indifferently Makarov dragged the still-convulsing deputy off to the side, then went back to the open loft door and looked out toward the driveway. The night remained dark.

  Grafton’s cigarette butt was smoldering on the floor and Makarov considered letting it lie. It was possible that the barn could catch fire, and with any luck spread to the house. Might leave an interesting message for whoever investigated the scene. But he ground out the butt under the sole of his shoe, and went back down to the rear service door where he held up again.

  Still no lights shone from the ranch house windows and he darted across to the rear door, which not surprisingly was locked.

  A sloping metal door was set against the foundation in the far corner of the house, and it was not locked. Inside, the only light came from the open door but it was enough for Makarov to make his way across what probably had once been used as a root cellar. A few jars of preserves with thick dust on them still sat on wooden shelves along the wall. A gas-fired furnace was tucked in one corner alongside of a water heater, also gas fired.

  Taking great care not to bump into anything, or make the slightest bit of noise, he reached the stairs and at the top the door into the kitchen had been left unlocked.

  He stood for a long time, listening for any sounds, but the only thing he could hear was the refrigerator motor. He walked out into the living room beyond which a short hallway led to the west wing of the low-slung house where he found a bathroom and the open door to a bedroom where a figure was bundled under a quilt in a twin bed.

  “Dr. Lipton,” he said softly.

  Whitney stirred.

  “Time to wake up,” he said a little louder.

  Whitney came awake with a start. She fumbled with her covers, but then sat up and reached for the bedside light.

  “No lights, please.”

  “Who are you?” Whitney demanded.

  “I think you know,” Makarov said. “Certainly Sheriff Osborne knew I was coming tonight. That’s why he posted a deputy in the barn.”

  “Are you here to kill me?”

  “Not unless I have to, which I won’t if you cooperate.”

  Whitney was fully awake now. “What do you want?”

  “I’ll be happy to discuss it with you, but first do you have any idea where the sheriff might keep his duct tape?”

  Whitney shook her head.

  “Well, then get out of bed and we’ll go looking.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “Then I’ll have to kill you after all.”

  “You don’t have a gun.”

  “I don’t need one, Doctor,” Makarov said.

  45

  IT WAS FOUR thirty in the morning, local, when the Bureau’s Gulfstream lined up for landing at the Dickinson Regional Airport, after the pilot first requested that the runway and taxi lights be switched on. Ashley had dozed in a seat near the rear of the main cabin fo
r the last couple of hours, since before they’d decided not to stop at Minneapolis, but Deb Rausch had been almost continuously on the phone for most of the flight, leaving Osborne with his own thoughts leading back to Afghanistan.

  He’d thought it more than odd at the time that a handful of Russian advisers had been sent supposedly to help the American forces to avoid some of the pitfalls that had kept them in country for ten years.

  “It was our Vietnam,” they kept saying.

  Though exactly what that meant from a Russian point of view was anyone’s guess, except that the brass in Kabul, presumably on orders from Washington, had permitted the Spetsnaz teams—one officer and one NCO—to be embedded with a few of the forward units around Kandahar in the south, Mazar-e Sharif in the north, and in the mountains outside Narang along the border with Pakistan.

  It had been a top-secret, highly sensitive operation that had lasted less than six months before the Russians had been ordered home. And no one that Osborne had ever spoken with had the slightest idea what had been accomplished, if anything.

  Deb Rausch was seated across from him, her eyes red. “Nettles is sending a helicopter for me. I’m going to hang out at the Initiative to see what happens if and when the attack on the grid actually develops. Do you want to come along?”

  “They’re not going to hit the project again,” Osborne said.

  “Probably not, but I’ve been asked to monitor the computer system at Donna Marie to see what effect shutting down parts of the grid is going to have on its output. Might give us a clue.”

  “From what Whitney told us, most of her scientists and technicians have already left or are in the process.”

  “We’re not interested in the research and development team this time, only the folks running the generating station, and the power connection with the grid.”

  “And who’s controlling it,” Osborne said.

  The hacker in Amsterdam, or wherever, had already shown them who was in charge. And if he pulled off the rolling blackouts, any last doubts would be completely erased. If it happened in just a few hours we would learn in no uncertain terms just how vulnerable the U.S. really was.

  Shortly after 9/11 Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld was telling people that we had entered a new age in which all the might of the United States, all of our nuclear weapons and submarines and aircraft carriers and missiles could not have protected us from the strikes on the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and what probably would have been a hit on the White House except for the heroes who had brought the fourth aircraft down in a Pennsylvania field.

  We were in the same situation now, only instead of hijacked airliners filled with passengers and fuel, this time we were faced with a cyber attack. It was something anyone who used a home computer understood very well; someone hacking into your system, into your bank accounts, identity theft, crashed hard drives, e-mails suddenly irretrievable—the feeling of total helplessness in the face of a technologically superior bad guy. An alien in many ways.

  “If we can pull up enough data from a sufficient number of locations we might be able to pinpoint his location,” Rausch said.

  “Your Cyber Crimes people come up with that idea?”

  “No. It was Lundgren’s suggestion.”

  They touched down with a bark of tires and a slight lurch, which woke Ashley, and she came forward. They taxied over to the terminal building and stopped about thirty yards from where an Air Force Blackhawk helicopter was parked.

  “Do you want to go back to Bismarck?” Osborne asked her.

  “I can file my stories from your place, if you don’t mind,” she said.

  Actually he did mind. In Bismarck she would be safe. But out here—no matter how unlikely that Makarov would have gotten this far so soon—she could be in some danger. “Do I have any choice?”

  She grinned. “Nope.”

  The door was opened and they headed forward. Dick Keating, the pilot, turned in his seat.

  “We’ve been ordered to head back to Andrews if we can get a fuel truck out here in time,” he said. “All air traffic across the country will be shut down in less than eight hours.”

  “I’m going to stick it out here,” Deb Rausch said.

  “Good luck,” Keating said.

  “To all of us,” Osborne said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  Captain Nettles had walked over from the helicopter. He was dressed in BDUs, his slacks bloused in his desert khaki boots. “Good morning, folks,” he said. “Are all of you coming back to the Initiative?”

  “Just me,” Deb Rausch said.

  “Mr. Kohl is expecting you, though it doesn’t look as if this thing is going to start till noon on the West Coast.”

  “Unless whoever is doing it was lying about the timing,” Osborne said.

  Nettles looked at him. “You know something I don’t?”

  “Nothing that would have any effect on your operations at the project. Have your people noticed anything out of the ordinary?”

  “We’re running regular air patrols out twenty klicks. Infrared at night. There’s been nothing but animals, and a little bit of traffic on the interstate and on eighty-five down around Amidon, but nothing heading our way.”

  “I don’t think they’re after the project this time.”

  “Neither do I, but I’ve been ordered to remain on scene until someone figures out what the hell is going on.”

  “You have my cell phone number,” Rausch told Osborne. “Anything comes up let me know.”

  “You, too,” Osborne said.

  Deb Rausch followed Nettles over to the helicopter, and Osborne and Ashley walked around to where he’d left his Saturn SUV radio unit. Only a few other cars and a pickup were parked in the lot, and just then Osborne had a strong feeling that he wanted all this business to be over with and to get back to the generally peaceful life of a small-county sheriff.

  He glanced at Ashley. A small-county married sheriff.

  She was looking at him, a little smile on her lips. “What’re you thinking, Nate?”

  “Later,” Osborne said, and as they headed out of the parking lot he phoned his deputy.

  46

  GRAFTON’S CELL PHONE rang softly. It was something Makarov had counted on. He moved to the edge of the hayloft door and looked out in the direction of the dirt road from the highway, but no lights were headed this way.

  The deputy had spoken with a flat Midwestern accent, and fast. Makarov answered on the third ring, but positioned a finger so that it was partially blocking the microphone. “Sheriff?”

  “David? I can barely hear you.”

  “How about—” Makarov turned his head away. “Now. Can—you—?”

  “We’re on our way from the airport. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” Makarov said, and he hit the end button.

  Almost immediately the cell phone rang again, and he answered it. “Here—” and he hit the end button again.

  Presumably Osborne was coming from the Dickinson airport. But he’d said we were on the way. Possibly another deputy, or possibly the FBI agent from Minneapolis Dr. Lipton had told him was involved in the Cyber Crimes investigation.

  It hadn’t been necessary to cause her much pain before she’d begun to cooperate. She’d been trussed head to toe on the bed, her ankles taped to her wrists. He’d found a long, slender fish-trimming knife in a kitchen drawer, and holding her mouth open with one hand had poked around several of her molars with the tip of the blade until he’d found a sensitive spot.

  After less than a minute she’d told him about Special Agent Deborah Rausch, and General Forester and the flight to Minneapolis and then Washington.

  “I was supposed to go, but Nate said I could stay here,” Whitney had sobbed.

  But there’d been no real tears.

  Makarov shoved her head into the pillow and brought the tip of the blade to within a half inch of her left eye. “Much of your work involves looking through a microscope,” he said.
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  She tried to struggle away, but he tightened his grip.

  “Quiet now, we don’t want me to make a mistake, because it would be a tragedy for a scientist such as you to be blind in one eye.”

  Whitney didn’t move a muscle, but this time real tears began welling up in her eyes.

  “More of a tragedy if you lost both of your eyes. Blind so young, at the height of your career.”

  “They think the blackouts will be caused by a computer hacker living in Amsterdam.”

  This was a surprise.

  “They know it was you who shot out the insulators and killed the sheriff and the couple in the pickup truck.”

  “How do they know?” Makarov asked gently.

  “Nate saw your image in the sheriff’s dash cam. It was a reflection inside the windshield. And he managed to get your photograph.”

  “Impossible.”

  “From Afghanistan,” Whitney said. “Nate was there. He knows you.”

  It had taken everything within Makarov’s power not to plunge the knife all the way through her eye, and into her brain. Instead he taped her mouth shut and made a quick survey of the house.

  He found her cell phone in her purse on the hall table and pocketed its battery. Next he cut the wires to the three landline phones he found—one in the master bedroom, one in the kitchen, and the other in the sheriff’s study. The laptop computer there was not plugged into an Ethernet connection, so he went looking for the Wi-Fi router which was in the hall closet. He cut all the wires including the AC and emergency battery leads.

  A gun cabinet was in the living room. He smashed the glass front and took out the three rifles and one 20-gauge over and under shotgun and field stripped them, taking the trigger mechanisms from all of them except for the Weatherby Mark V, which was an excellent long-range weapon. He found the scope and a box of .338 Lapua magnum rounds.

  Before he went out to retrieve his rental car and drive it back to the barn he checked on Whitney, who’d managed to wiggle herself off the bed.

  “If you prefer to lie on the floor that’s fine with me,” he’d told her. “But if I come back and find you anywhere except in this room, I will kill you. Do you understand me?”