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Only 1:00 p.m., and already her day was an exercise in futility. Two of her requested follow-ups on what she had thought had been promising leads had been denied due to “lack of feasibility.” This was primarily due to her boss, a politicking butt-kisser who squashed anything he didn’t regard as a “slam-dunk,” to parrot a certain high-level intelligence chief’s unfortunate choice of words a few years back regarding WMDs in Iraq. Since then, Tracy suspected that all of America’s intelligence agencies had become paralyzed by fear—the fear of not connecting all of the dots fast enough, or even worse, getting something wrong, and having the press lambaste them for not doing their job properly. That especially went for the one she worked for, the Department of Homeland Security.
When she had come to DHS two years ago, Tracy had been filled with the desire to join a department that would fight the real threats that America faced. She had hoped this new agency wouldn’t be hampered by the baggage of the Cold War and the continued focus on potential-threat nations and their standing armies. She wanted to tackle fourth-generation warfare and the emerging terrorist networks spreading from the hotbed Middle East to ensnare other countries in their multitentacled grasp of drugs, money and suicidal ideology.
Unfortunately, that had not proved to be the case. From its once-promising beginning, the DHS had rapidly become stuck in the same operational quagmire that hobbled most other government departments. Small-minded career bureaucrats wielded their power like tyrants, rewarding loyal followers and punishing anyone they didn’t agree with almost at whim.
In particular, there was a terrible lack of information flowing from the top officers down, which was, in Tracy’s and many other analysts’ opinions, crucial to effectively gathering intelligence to identify and stop threats to the nation. Personality clashes and conflicting interpretations of rules, regulations and even the DHS’s role in homeland security were everyday occurrences. It all served efforts to get vital programs off the ground.
The department’s creation by squashing together twenty-two separate agencies under one roof meant there was often confusion as to what section would handle a particular project, which led to even more delays. Certain departments, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, operated under severe budgetary limitations, to the point where the agents could not execute their duties effectively. The problem was later revealed to be infighting among various departments for budget allocation. Tracy had heard the horror stories, and had unfortunately been a part of some of them, as well, as she fought for information, access and resources, along with the other 180,000 people in the sprawling department.
When she got back to her desk, she found an e-mail from her supervisor, Brian Gilliam.
Tracy,
See me soonest regarding your sewage threat analysis.
Brian
“Fantastic, this is exactly what I need right now,” she muttered. Tracy had been analyzing unconventional attacks on metropolitan areas, and had come to the conclusion that there could be a risk—small, but definitely a possibility—that terrorists could attempt to contaminate water supplies of major cities using waste products. The companies that handled raw sewage were often even more poorly guarded than chemical plants, and the waste material could be released into aquifers with relative ease. She had worked up a solid list of facts to support her case, including three known plots that had been foiled in the past five years. She included lists of various treatment plants that were most vulnerable, and their proximity to major supplies of freshwater resources. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but that’s what she was paid to do, and Tracy thought she did it pretty damn well. At least, until her boss came in and crapped all over her carefully researched analysis.
She pulled the leather holder and hair stick from a tight bun, letting her glossy black hair cascade down to the middle of her back. She wasn’t a fool. She figured Gilliam let her do the reports primarily because she made him look good in his interdepartmental progress reports. And every so often he actually sent one up the chain, where it usually died a slow, painful death in one of the various committees that had to approve it. The fact that she was both a woman and part Mexican—her father was a blue-blooded Bostonian, hence her last name—didn’t hurt, either, given the DHS’s dismal record on both minority and gender-equitable hiring. Just what you wanted to be when you got into intelligence analysis—a good-looking figurehead.
She rose and stretched her back, feeling the kinks pop out, then smoothed her skirt. Across from her, Mark Whitney raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You just got back. Now where you off to?”
Tracy nodded at her supervisor’s office. “I’m about to go zero-for-three with Gilliam. Bet you a grande latte he’s going to flush my sewage-contamination report down the toilet.”
“What? I thought that was a great piece of work. You sure? He just sent one of mine on securing the Canadian border up the chain.”
“Yes, but you’re his fair-haired boy, remember?” Tracy said this without a trace of rancor. She knew Mark was a very good analyst. Tracy strongly suspected her boss was sexist, but he had never given any proof of it, other than the strange priority he gave some reports and not others—coincidentally the reports turned in by the men in the department, in particular. The fact that Mark was gay—and that Brian had never noticed—was a private joke shared between the two of them.
“Here goes. Wish me luck,” she said.
“Tracy, you work for the government—if they’d wanted you to have any luck, they’d have sent you a memo assigning you some,” Mark said with a grin.
“Ain’t that the truth?” Unable to delay any longer, she began the trek to Gilliam’s office at the end of the long, cubicle-filled room, each one manned by an analyst busily crunching the never-ending avalanche of data that poured into the DHS every day. She knocked on the door, and a terse voice called, “Come in.”
Tracy opened the door and slipped inside. Unlike the rest of the stark, gray-walled cubicles, which were only personalized with whatever an employee brought from home, Gilliam’s office was furnished well, if not plushly. Tracy always felt as if she were entering a bank officer’s workplace. The caramel-colored carpet was thick enough that she barely felt the concrete floor under her leather pumps, and the walls were actually paneled with a light-colored wood. His desk wasn’t a standard-issue metal-and-partical-board affair, either, but also made of wood—cherry, she thought. The surface was spotless, not even a piece of paper on it, only a flat-screen monitor attached by a sleek swivel arm so it could be pushed out of the way when necessary. Gilliam claimed that he had inherited the furnishings from his predecessor, but Tracy knew differently; she had seen the order invoices. Yet another efficient use of the company budget. Executives never learn that they can’t hide anything from a computer geek, she thought.
“Ah, Tracy, thanks for dropping by.”
When she had first met Gilliam, Tracy had searched for the one word that described him best, and had come up with unctuous, since it sounded slightly better than oily. Dressed in a pinstriped shirt with coordinated suspenders, and sporting gelled, dark brown hair that was never out of place, with gold, wire-rimmed glasses on his pale, round face, Gilliam was the epitome of middle-management bureaucracy.
“My pleasure, sir. You wanted to discuss my latest report?” Tracy knew from long experience that it was best to keep her boss focused on the task at hand, the better to get it over with as soon as possible. If she didn’t, he might make an attempt at small talk, which would be a punishment worse than receiving bad news in the first place.
“Yes, the waste-contamination analysis. First, I’m pleased to say that it was very good work—I really liked what I saw there.”
“Sir?” The curveball threw Tracy. Normally Gilliam was bluntly dismissive of anything that he didn’t automatically jump all over. The hair on the back of her neck rose; something was up, but she didn’t know what.
“Unfortunately, your threat-assessment estimate is too low at this time to forward this through the proper channels. However, I’d like to table it for a revisit in about three months. I’ll just hang on to this version, and we’ll see about further consideration when the proper time comes up,” he said.
Well, a partial victory was better than none at all, Tracy thought as she nodded. “Thank you, sir. I’m glad to hear that. Is there anything else?”
“No, you’re free to go.” Having summarily dismissed her, his attention had already returned to the computer monitor. Tracy knew that this was as good as it was going to get. She rose to leave, and was halfway to the door when he spoke again.
“Oh, there is one more thing.”
She turned and waited for him to speak.
“Your application for one of the next fusion centers that is about to open—I thought you’d like to know it’s coming up for review in the next few days.”
The fusion centers were a new program, the DHS’s version of boots on the ground. In effect, they were localized offices in each of seventeen sectors across the country, where staff would work local law enforcement and private-sector companies in a more closely coordinated joint effort. Tracy had been working toward a position in one of them from the moment she’d heard about the plan. The way Gilliam had brought it up was just like him—wait until she’d thought the meeting was over, and then spring this bit of news as a surprise.
“Yes, sir?” she said, waiting.
“I was wondering if you’d given any thought as to where you’d like to be posted. Although I’d hate to see you leave my team, I could put in a good word if you had a particular assignment venue in mind.”
Tracy’s instincts screamed at her to proceed with care. He’s never this nice. What’s going on? “Thank you, sir. I understand that an office will be opening in Virginia at some point, and I was hoping that could I transfer there.”
Gilliam removed his glasses and polished them, then did something Tracy couldn’t remember seeing since she had come to work for him—he smiled. Instead of reassuring her, the expression filled her with a vague sense of unease, especially since he looked like a cat that had just eaten a dozen canaries. She resisted looking down to see if there were any yellow feathers on her lapel.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do—pending HR’s approval, of course.”
“Of course, sir. Thanks again.” She walked to the door and let herself out, all the while wondering what trap she may have inadvertently stepped into.
6
Kate Cochran pushed up her viewscreen glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had just logged out of a quickly convened meeting with the members of the International Intelligence Agency, the governing body that had set up and now oversaw Room 59’s operations. The shadowy figures—literally faceless silhouettes in a virtual, heavily secured conference room, which was all Kate or anyone else who worked in Room 59 ever saw of them—met to deliver assignments, or, in this case, to discuss a potential mission that any sector director brought to the table.
Kate had conferenced in Pai Kun for support, and the diminutive Chinese head of Asian operations had performed with his usual spotless efficiency. Kate had also done well, opening a continuing surveillance file on Kryukov to find out what he knew about the suitcase nuke, and to try to track it down. The board, as concerned as the two directors were about missing nuclear weapons, voted both missions green with no opposition.
Kate had gotten what she wanted; now the only problem was trying to find a nuclear needle among the world’s haystacks. But that was why she had the world’s best analysts on her payroll. At least, I hope that’s the case, she told herself. She was about to slip the viewscreen glasses back on and dive back into the virtual world to see what her Web scourers had brought up when there was a knock at the door.
“Kate, you really need to take a break.” The slip of a girl who peeked into the room was Arminda Todd, Kate’s live-in housekeeper and, she often half joked, her link to both the outside world and sanity. Dressed in a red-and-black-plaid pleated skirt and a white boys’-cut button-down shirt, with her normally dark blond hair accented with streaks of black this month, she looked exactly like the moonlighting college student she was.
“Hi, Mindy. Come on in. I assume it’s lunchtime?” Kate asked.
“Do you ever look out those fabulous windows of yours? Try about three hours past dinnertime. I made you a plate.” She set a tray down with a heaped plate that gave off a spicy, heavenly aroma. “I was cooking with Grandmama, and of course, anything she makes will feed twenty, with leftovers.”
The main course, what looked like zucchini halves stuffed with ground lamb and baked in tomato sauce, didn’t look all that appetizing, but the smell was irresistible. It was accompanied by a small green salad and still-warm flatbread. Once Kate dug in, the first bite awakened a ravenous hunger. “Thanks,” she mumbled around a mouthful.
“Oh, I should warn you—” Mindy began just as Kate’s eyes widened, and she grabbed the glass of ice water, downing half of it in huge gulps “—Grandmama likes things spicy.”
“If that’s ‘spicy,’ I’d hate to see what she considers hot.” Kate paused, took another drink and eyed the plate dubiously. “It is good, once my tongue recovers from, what was that, a pound of paprika?”
Mindy shook her head, making her long pigtails swing back and forth. “Grandmama’s secret recipe. She says she will give it to me only on her deathbed, and that I can never write it down, but can pass it on to my own daughter when the time comes.”
“That sounds like her, all right.” Kate tried another bite, and was pleased to find that her mouth had grown accustomed to the pungent blend of spices. “Delicious.”
A soft chime from her computer brought Kate’s head up. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for. Give me a minute to see if I’m right, and I’ll quit for the night, I promise.”
Mindy scrunched up her face in what passed as a stern expression, but only made her young face and china-blue eyes look even more adorable. “All right, five minutes, but that’s all. Otherwise I’m coming in here to drag you out.”
“Deal, cross my heart.” Kate wolfed another bite while sliding the glasses down over her eyes. With precise movements, she navigated to the new message and opened it.
Hey K,
This slid into a DHS server twenty minutes ago. It isn’t much, but it’s the best lead so far. With the Rio Grande still leaking illegals like a sieve every day, maybe some homies from a bit farther east—like Mideast, if you know what I mean—are making a run for the border, too, before it really gets closed up?
Let me know if you need follow-up or anything else, okay?
B2S
Kate smiled. She’d figured that Born2Slyde, as the hacker called herself online, would come up with what looked like a solid lead first. The eighteen-year-old girl could whiz in and out of supposedly secure mainframes and security systems with unparalleled ease.
Room 59 had been organized as a decentralized operation, with no main ops center, like other agencies worked from, the better to not find it. Kate’s New York City town house, where she lived and worked, was the closest thing to one, and that was primarily because she hardly had time to leave the luxurious suite of rooms. Terror and threats to world security rarely took days off, so she didn’t, either.
She opened the triple-encrypted, compressed data file. That brought up two e-mail messages, along with an itemized list, including plutonium, that had been highlighted by the sender. B2S had also included current statistics for incidents of violence or large drug caches coming across the U.S.-Mexican border. The name of the sender caught her eye, and a quick check of a top secret deceased-terrorist list confirmed her first suspicion—that the man using the alias Arsalan Hejazi was supposed to be dead.
A deceased man placing an order from beyond the grave? Someone wanted to make a bomb, but what if they got the chance to pick one up that was assembled and ready to blow? All they’d need to do was get it across the border, which, while difficult, wasn’t impossible, according to the most recent border security review, Kate thought.
She used one of the installed back-door programs that enabled her to access any government network without being detected. Bringing up the network for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection department of the DHS, she entered the keywords Mexico, nuclear, border, kill and terrorist, and directed the system to scan all files accessed within the previous forty-eight hours.
Hundreds of messages back and forth between station offices and Washington filled her screen. Kate sat back and used a trick she had learned during grad school. She let her eyes wander over the long list, relying on her subconscious to home in on the message that would be most useful. Her gaze alighted on one subject line. Two Border Patrol Agents And Multiple Illegals Killed North Of Border Outside El Paso. Opening the message, Kate read a concise summary of an incident involving a pair of Border Patrol agents and twenty-three illegal immigrants, all shot at what should have been a routine stop. What was strange was that the coyotes had been killed, as well, and everyone had been shot multiple times, many in the back of the head at close range. The Border Patrol SUV had been found several miles away, a burned wreck, but the truck that had been carrying the human cargo had disappeared. It wasn’t just a random murder; it had been a massacre.
Who would go to such lengths to kill everyone at the scene? she wondered. The answer came to her immediately. Someone who had something to hide, and when their cover was compromised, they didn’t hesitate to kill everyone to insure that they wouldn’t be seen. What could be that important? A suitcase nuke?
Kate leaned forward again and brought up the e-mail from the Border Patrol agent, putting the two side by side. She felt a familiar strange fluttering in her stomach that heralded a leap in her intuitive logic. She knew the two incidents were connected, although she couldn’t explain why. It just felt right; that was all. But that was enough to start on, anyway. The proof would have to come later.
She looked at where the agent’s e-mail had ended up—the in-box of an analyst named Tracy Wentworth. My dear, I think you may be doing a lot more than you expected tomorrow, Kate thought, letting the rest of her dinner grow cold as she made preparations to travel to Washington the next day. Hope you’re up for the challenge.
7
The man known as Narid al-Gaffari had driven more than twenty-five hundred miles over the past three days, but instead of exhausted, he felt more and more invigorated as he neared his final destination.
Traveling down the highway at a steady seventy miles per hour in his nondescript Honda Accord, Narid took a moment to marvel at the diversity of the land he had spent every waking hour driving through so far. This was a far cry from his first visit to America, more than a decade earlier. Then he had been much more cautious, seeing enemies around every corner, the specter of police surveillance on every block. Now he looked back on those days as the easy times. After 9/11, there were still plenty of opportunities to sow the seeds of fear throughout the bloated American infrastructure—seeds that were still bearing fruit. But the paranoia, even if justified, had increased, and then the U.S. agencies had also started getting things right, so much so that al-Gaffari had resorted to what some might have considered desperate measures to rid himself of the surveillance. Desperate but effective—after all, few people spent time looking for a dead man.
This time, he had landed on the rugged coast of British Columbia in the dead of night, transferring from a freighter to a fishing boat that had dropped him off on shore. From there he had driven east, through the thick forests and the Cascade Mountain range and over the Rockies into the Great Plains, where the elevated beauty of the mountains that reminded him of home was replaced by the endless, flat grasslands that reminded him of the arid plains of Afghanistan that bloomed briefly in spring.
His map had been clearly marked, and when he’d reached the correct point, he turned south and followed a small maze of back roads to find what his contacts had said was an unwatched route into the United States of America. Although he had initially expressed doubt about this plan, he had been delighted to discover that it was exactly as promised—unrestricted access to the U.S. Although the passport and identification papers for his alias would stand up to determined scrutiny, he had decided to enter the country this way, not willing to risk being matched to a watch list and compromising the entire reason he had taken this trip in the first place.
As it turned out, he hadn’t had much reason to fear. After the crossing, his trip through the former breadbasket of America had been uneventful, even dull. The next few days had followed the same pattern—driving interspersed with sparse meals—halal food was hard to come by out here—brief breaks for his daily prayers until stopping at small, privately owned motels off the highway that were just glad enough to have a customer prepay in cash that they would overlook the securing of the room with a credit card. The fact that Narid spoke impeccable English, with a genteel British accent, did much to put the proprietors’ minds at ease.
For his part, he was a model tourist—quiet, neat, polite and minding his own business. Even when three drunken good ol’ boys had tried to play “rag the raghead,” as they had jeeringly called it before being stopped by a sheriff’s deputy—which gave Narid his only real fear of discovery during the entire trip—he had thanked the khaki-clad officer and declined to press charges. He had, however, gotten out of town immediately, and hadn’t stopped driving until he was three hundred miles away. Allah would certainly not have looked favorably upon him had he let the entire operation be jeopardized by a chance encounter with those uncultured thugs.
Winding his way through the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, Narid had passed plenty of empty land, and the peace and quiet he experienced while driving through those areas reaffirmed his determination to carry out the mission. He knew that the dividing line of the Mississippi River bisected this country to the east, and on the other side were tens of millions of people, crammed into their sprawling cities, half-clad in their revealing clothes, eating their artificial food, watching their mindless entertainment, listening to their banal music, smug in their complacency because they lived in what they thought was the most powerful nation on earth. It was a notion Narid would be only too happy to disabuse them of soon. But in a way, he was glad to see that this heartland wouldn’t be as affected by what he was about to set into motion. The people out here had been unassuming and friendly, men who worked the land and the women who stood by them. For the most part, they had let him go about his business with hardly a raised eyebrow, even given his obvious heritage.
Crossing the border into Texas had lifted his spirits immensely, and now, only a few dozen miles from his goal, Narid’s pulse quickened as the city of El Paso appeared in the distance. He resisted the urge to press the accelerator down, but left the highway and headed east instead, traveling on a series of progressively smaller roads until he turned down a narrow dirt road surrounded by featureless brown plains, broken only by an occasional small rise or hill. He followed it for another five miles, pulling up to a small complex of buildings on ten acres, ringed by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Large signs in English and Spanish warned that the fence was electrified. But what truly made the business unique was the white, three-story rocket that rose like a narrow finger on a launch pad in the middle of the buildings, pointing toward the heavens. A sign on the hill outside the perimeter proclaimed the company’s name—Spaceworks, Inc.