Gridlock

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “They’ll be fakes,” Thompson said.

  “Possibly,” Rogers said. “But we’re continuing with our search until we’re sure.”

  “SEBIN is behind this, just as it was behind the attacks on the Initiative,” Thompson said and he looked away for just a moment. “Who the hell in Christ does the bastard think he’s dealing with?”

  “We’re not entirely sure yet that it was Venezuela,” Young said. What none of them needed was a president so angry that he went off half-cocked.

  “Bullshit,” Thompson said. He turned to his CIA director. “Do we still have assets in Caracas?”

  “Yes, sir,” Walt Page said. “But since Balboa and since we recalled our ambassador and all but a skeleton crew from our embassy, the city has been sealed tight. We’ve been getting very little hard information, and what we do have is conflicting.”

  “How about electronically? We can listen to their phone conversations, monitor their Internet activity.”

  “Nothing conclusive, Mr. President,” Madeline Bible, the director of National Intelligence said. She was a short, somewhat rotund woman. With her hair done up in an old-fashioned bun, she could have been someone’s kindly grandmother, except hers was one of the sharpest minds in the intelligence gathering business. “Our best guess is that SEBIN knows our capabilities and is hand-delivering important memos. Several high-ranking intelligence officers, including a man we’ve identified as Colonel Luis Delgado have been seen entering the Miraflores Palace at all hours of the day and night. Delgado is most interesting because we think he heads SEBIN’s special operations department, which was almost certainly involved with the attacks on the Initiative.”

  “We have no one inside the palace who might have picked up something?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Bible said. “But although the information we do have is circumstantial, my analysts have a high confidence that President Chavez wants to strike back at us because of Balboa. And he wants it done sooner rather than later, before his cancer kills him.”

  “Walt?” The president turned back to his CIA director.

  “My analysts agree.”

  “Nick?” The president turned to his national security adviser.

  “The George H.W. Bush is currently finished with her ninety-day turnaround,” Fenniger said. “She should have her complete air complement aboard no later than noon today.” CVN77 was the latest Nimitz nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet, currently stationed at Norfolk.

  The room was suddenly cold.

  “Sending her south would be nothing short of provocative at this point,” Young said but he knew his would probably be the only voice of caution. Everyone in the room wanted this, no one more so than the president.

  “Chavez didn’t learn from Balboa, and if we can connect his intelligence apparatus with the Texas attack I won’t hesitate to order a strike on him and his government.”

  “But we haven’t established that connection without a doubt,” Young said.

  “No,” the president said. “Can anyone here suggest to me an alternative? Someone else who wants to attack us?”

  Young wanted to speak up, but despite his cautious nature he had no answer that made any sense.

  “The strikes on the Initiative were ordered by Chavez,” the president said. “The virus that the hacker in Amsterdam has used on us probably came from Russia via Iran’s intelligence service. Chavez and Ahmadinejad are practically in bed with each other. What better time for them to strike again—first with the blackouts, and now this attack in Texas?”

  “We should have something within the next ten or twelve hours,” Rogers said. “Be my guess that the three fishermen used fake IDs and are probably on their way to Mexico. They won’t get across the border. And once we have them in custody it won’t take long to identify them.”

  “Good,” the president said. “Whatever it takes, because I’m told that replacing those transformers could take as long as two years, crippling a lot of Texas industry. If this was a direct attack on us by a foreign government—Mr. Chavez’s or anyone else’s—we will strike back. Decisively. I won’t ask for sanctions from the U.N., nor will I order the freezing of bank accounts or any other soft moves. I’ll order our military to destroy hard assets on the ground. Perhaps the oil fields on and around Lake Maracaibo.”

  “There would be significant loss of lives,” Young said.

  The president looked at him. “Yes,” he said, and he turned to General Robert Blake who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I want the Bush to sail immediately and head south at her best possible speed. They can recover the last of their aircraft while en route.”

  “Her mission, Mr. President?” Blake asked.

  The Situation Room was deathly still. Thompson had not asked for a show of hands, he’d heard what he wanted to hear, and now the order was his.

  “Reach Venezuela, where she will stand off shore between Caracas and Maracaibo and make ready for my order.”

  “This would be a conventional strike, Mr. President?” the general asked. “Not a nuclear one?”

  The president hesitated for a couple of beats, which frightened Young more than anything else that had been said here this morning.

  “We will meet any threat with the appropriate response.”

  59

  ASHLEY LEFT THE rental car at the Sioux Falls airport and took the morning Delta flight to Washington National Airport via Baltimore. It was nearly noon by the time she arrived and phoned her father, the private number at his office ringing once and then flipping over to his cell phone.

  “It’s me, I tried to get you at your office. Something up?”

  “Where are you?” General Forester said. He sounded strained, as if he hadn’t been getting enough sleep.

  “I just landed at Reagan, and I have to talk to you.”

  “Not here, sweetheart. Go back to Bismarck and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “I need to talk to you about Nate, and it can’t wait.”

  “Washington may not be the safest place in the world right now.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ashley asked, even more alarmed than she’d been all night.

  “It’s the thing in Texas. Could be the next strike, we just don’t know for sure. But the president thinks he does.”

  “I haven’t seen a newspaper yet this morning. What’s happened in Texas, another blackout?”

  “No,” Forester said. “An electrical distribution yard that served a big nuclear plant a few miles from the Gulf was hit. Three of the big transformers were knocked out. It’s hell of a mess, because everybody believes that Chavez was behind it.”

  “Is all that in the news?”

  “Most of it,” Forester said.

  “Is there anything you’ve said to me that I can use?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Goddamnit, Dad, I think that Nate might be getting in over his head, and I’ve got to talk to you about it. I think that he’s on his way to Amsterdam to find the hacker. He has to be called back.”

  “Where did you hear about that?”

  Ashley told him. “Did you know about it?”

  Forester hesitated, and Ashley thought that she heard someone talking in the background. “Where are you right now?” she asked.

  “Just leaving the CIA. Do you know where Turkey Run Park is located?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s on the parkway, about a half mile west of the Agency’s driveway. I’m driving the gray Taurus. We’ll give you twenty minutes to get here.”

  “Who’s we?” Ashley demanded, but her father had rung off.

  She got a Washington Post from a bookstore in the terminal, but there was nothing about any incident on the front page, and it wasn’t until she was in a cab heading up the river on the George Washington Memorial Parkway that she found the story on the third page of the National section, under the brief headline: POWER TROUBLES IN TEXAS. The paper was treating it as an equipm
ent breakdown; three high-power transformers had evidently failed and somehow burned out. Could be a matter of days, perhaps longer, before the full two-point-five megawatts of power would resume energizing the Texas Interconnect.

  Nothing in the short article hinted at sabotage, nor was any federal official cited, which stank of a typical Washington coverup.

  Ashley looked out the window. The scenery here was hilly and heavily wooded. Somewhere she had read something about there being more species of trees here than anyplace else in the country. Under normal circumstances she would have found this place comforting. She’d always liked the country, and living in North Dakota she missed the forests, so this was pleasant except that her gut was tied in a thousand knots. He father wanted to meet at some ridiculous location—not his office, not even a restaurant, a McDonald’s or something. And talking to him on the phone she’d heard a voice in the background. And he and whoever was with him were coming from the CIA. And he was in his own car, not the limo.

  The traffic was moderate on the parkway, and within less than a half mile after they’d passed the Agency’s driveway the cabbie slowed for a road off to the right.

  “This the road, ma’am?” he asked.

  “So far as I know,” she said, but then she spotted a gray Ford Taurus just inside the park. “Yes, right here.”

  The cabby turned in and pulled up behind General Forester’s car. “Do you want me to wait for you?”

  “I’ll only be a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  “Meter’s running.”

  Ashley got out and walked up to the car at the same moment her dad and Nate got out. Neither of them looked happy to see her, but she felt an almost physical sense of relief. She wasn’t too late.

  “I’ll share the cab with you back to the airport,” she told Osborne. “We can go home.”

  “No, but you’re going to do a one-eighty,” Osborne said.

  She looked at her dad. “You can’t be serious. He’s not going to Amsterdam. You can’t allow this to happen.”

  “The CIA has a plane standing by for me at Andrews,” Osborne told her. He seemed grim.

  “For Christ’s sake, Nate. You’re a county sheriff, not a secret agent or spy or something. Going after some superhacker is a job for the CIA, or at least Interpol. Those guys are always busting groups like that.”

  “That’s the problem,” Forester said. “The Dutch government wants no part in it. They’ve refused to ask for Interpol’s help until we can give them some concrete proof, which we don’t have.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Yes, it is. But they’ve got their hands full with their Turkish immigrant problems, and from what we were told this morning, the Dutch police no longer try to hassle anyone who isn’t breaking a Dutch law. There’ve been serious repercussions in the past from the hackers over there.”

  “Send a CIA agent to take care of it.”

  “The Netherlands is a friendly country, and Walt Page doesn’t want to burn any assets if there’s another possible solution to the problem. The repercussions could be bad. Especially right now.”

  “So they’re sending you.” She turned on Osborne.

  “No one’s sending me, Ash. It was my idea, I just asked for the green light, which I was given because of the Texas thing, and what’s about to happen next.”

  “What?” she demanded.

  Osborne and Forester exchanged a look. “You might as well tell her,” Osborne said. “She won’t use it.”

  “She does and she’ll go to jail no matter whose daughter she is,” Forester said. “The president has sent an aircraft carrier to Venezuela.”

  Ashley stepped back. “That’s more than stupid, Dad. That’s nuts. Are we going to war?”

  “That’ll depend on Chavez, and the hacker. Because if our electrical grid—the entire grid—goes down, it’ll be as bad as a massive nuclear strike. Thompson, no president, could hold back from making a measured response.”

  “Nukes on Caracas, is that what you’re trying to tell me?” Ashley cried. She looked to Nate and then back at her father. “The Security Council went along with it?”

  “I wasn’t there. But according to Page the president promised an appropriate response.”

  “Whatever that means,” Ashley said. She was not just frightened now, she was angry. “We didn’t go to war over nine-eleven.”

  “No, but we finally caught up with bin Laden,” Osborne said.

  “And besides the fact that these attacks were directed by a sovereign nation, not some terrorist group, taking out our grid would be a thousand times worse than nine-eleven,” Forester said. “It’s the possibility that we’re facing.”

  “Send the CIA to Caracas, take the bastard out. Better yet, send a drone to hit him where he lives, or in his limo, or in his office.”

  “Might not be necessary if I can get to Dekker first,” Osborne said.

  Ashley could hear the traffic on the parkway, and off to the left somewhere some birdsong. She looked into Osborne’s eyes, but then she finally nodded. “Take care of yourself, Sheriff,” she said.

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and then her father, and without looking back returned to the cab.

  * * *

  “WHERE TO, ma’am?” the cabby asked.

  “Dulles,” Ashley told him. “I’ll tell you the airline before we get there.”

  Ever since she was a kid she’d gotten into the habit of always carrying her passport. She called the Capital City Travel agent she usually worked with in Bismarck, and within fifteen minutes had a confirmed business-class seat on KLM flight 652 leaving at 6:10, and arriving in Amsterdam tomorrow morning at 7:45.

  At nearly nine thousand dollars round-trip, her savings account was just about at zero, but besides being with Nate, she figured that she was going to get one hell of a story after all.

  The problem was exactly what she was going to do once she got there; she had no idea where Dekker actually lived and she knew that Nate would get there well before she did. It could be an expensive trip for nothing. Still, it would be worth every penny.

  60

  MAKAROV HAD TAKEN one pass on foot from the Noorderkerk to the edge of the old Soviet-era slum buildings that housed the Haven and the Roma camp, and seeing the problem he might face backed off immediately. The Gypsies were likely witnesses.

  That was earlier today. Now, a few minutes after seven in the evening, he waited in the Amstel Intercontinental Hotel’s Spiegelzaal, the grandly ornate Hall of Mirrors, sipping a sparkling mineral water with a twist as he waited for his Russian FSB friend Vasili Sumskoy to arrive from Moscow.

  Ilke had said she’d understood his delay when he phoned her at two, but he’d heard the disappointment in her voice. “How long then before your business is done and you get home?”

  “I should be finished here sometime this evening, and I’ll catch the first morning train.”

  “Call me if there is another delay.”

  “Of course,” Makarov had promised her.

  He wanted to extract himself from the relationship; it was a necessity for his safety—and hers as well—because at some point someone very good would be coming after him and anyone close to him. He knew too much that could potentially be harmful to too many people. But he could not do it. He loved her, and he was bound to do everything within his power to make sure that she stayed safe from harm even if it made him vulnerable.

  “When I get back we’ll go on a scouting trip for our new home,” he’d said. “I don’t think that I ever realized until just now how tired I am of the business world and the dreary people I have to deal with. After tonight, I’m officially retired.”

  “If I believed you, it would make me a very happy girl.”

  “Believe me,” he’d told her.

  The real problem, as Colonel Delgado had outlined it, was the timing. Dekker had to be taken out, but quickly and silently, before he knew what was about to happen to him.

  “If
he discovers that you’re coming, and if you give him enough time to react, he will unleash the virus against the U.S.”

  “So what?”

  “It would almost certainly mean war.”

  “You can’t believe that the Americans would be that stupid. Not after their string of debacles from Vietnam to Afghanistan.”

  “That’s exactly what we believe,” Delgado had said. “Don’t fail.”

  “I won’t,” Makarov had responded.

  The hall was half full with early diners, a low hum of conversation like white noise making the venue safe from eavesdropping. Makarov looked up as Sumskoy, wearing an old corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows and an outrageous bow tie, followed the maître d’ across the room.

  The Russian was not smiling, but he’d come at Makarov’s summons, which meant that he was probably broke again.

  Makarov stood up. “Thanks for responding on such short notice,” he said and they shook hands.

  The waiter came and Sumskoy ordered a double Stoli neat, but he said nothing else until his drink came and the waiter was gone again.

  “Here I am out of a warm bed, so it will cost you.”

  “Fifty thousand euros.”

  “One hundred,” Sumskoy said.

  “Done,” Makarov said. “Is she worth it, Vasili?”

  “You can’t imagine. Now, this concerns Mr. Dekker, I assume. Unless I miss my guess he’s done something to upset your employers—which I suspect is either the Venezuelans or the Iranians, or both—and you’ve been sent here to eliminate him and retrieve the thumb drive and the boy’s computer before he causes even more havoc in the U.S. For which you need my help.”

  “I need his exact location,” Makarov said, keeping the signs of any reaction off his face. Vasili knew entirely too much. By guessing that he knew about SEBIN’s and VEVAK’s connection he had signed his own death warrant.

  “I could have given that to you over the phone.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Of course. He and his girlfriend live in the tenth-floor apartment of a condemned building between the Jordaan and the Noorderkerk. There are actually three such buildings that were put up in the sixties, his is the one farthest west—on the other side from the Gypsy encampment.”