Situation Room. Jack Mars

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ like to speak to her directly, if you don’t mind.”

      “Luke, I’m her chief-of-staff. I’m empowered to listen for her. You can trust me to take the message correctly and get it to her.”

      “Time is of the essence here, Kat.”

      Kat’s voice was firm. “So if we stop jousting over whether you’d like to leave a message with me or not, I think we’ll make better use of everyone’s time.”

      Luke sighed. This was how it went. They brought you in, they sent you on a mission, and everything had to be done as soon as possible. Then, when you came to them with the intel, they were in meeting. Leave a message and we’ll call you back.

      “Okay, Kat, you got a pen?”

      “Very funny,” she said. Of course she was a tablet person. Luke had never quite adapted himself to the latest and greatest technology. He still had a tendency to scribble notes down on scraps of paper.

      “We interrogated Li Quiangguo this morning. Based on a lead he gave us, we have uncovered a list, and possibly more than one list, of dozens of facilities that are likely targets of terrorist attacks. Our tech guy believes these are probably cyber attacks, like the one that opened the floodgates on the Black Rock Dam. Each target facility has its own document. The documents describe technology in use, network technology specs including data limits, size of backbone, processing speed, also age of the tech they’re using, and its known vulnerabilities.”

      “What kind of facilities are these?” she said.

      “Airports. Power stations. Entire electricity grids. Oil rigs. Oil refineries. Dams. Bridges. Subway and train systems. You name it, it’s on there.”

      “Any timeframe indicated?”

      “Yes. The last document in the list was called Zero Hour. We opened it. The date was August eighteenth, two days from now.”

      There was silence over the line.

      Luke went on. “We are heading back to question Li again. It’ll take us about ninety minutes to get up there. The target lists are on CD. My tech guy, Swann, is going to stay here in Atlanta and oversee uploading of the data so we can get it to analysts at FBI, NSA, and CIA as soon as possible. You might want to consider pulling your National Security people in now, so they’re ready as soon as analysis starts to become available. And if you don’t mind, pull us some strings so that we have the analysts we need. We’re probably going to need a hundred people, today, this afternoon, which means we’ll need cross-agency cooperation.”

      “You’d better talk to Susan directly,” Kat said.

      “Yes. I’ll remind you that I asked to do that at the beginning. So that we didn’t waste time.”

      “I understand.”

      The line went dead again.

      Ed was staring at Luke. Ed’s eyes were large, but not in his typically frightening way. His face was pained. He looked like a man who had just been given an unpleasant surprise, or a child who had been told there were no more cookies.

      Behind Ed’s head, buildings and billboard zoomed by. They were on a highway overpass now.

      “I’ve got the chopper pilot on the phone. That’s the best I could do.”

      “Okay, what does he say?”

      “He’s on the chopper pad here in Atlanta. And he’s in touch with the FEMA facility.”

      “Okay, Ed, let’s not play twenty questions. Give it to me.”

      Ed shrugged. His eyes narrowed.

      “Li Quiangguo is dead.”

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      12:30 p.m.

      The Situation Room, United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC

      “Should I be in on this?” Michael Parowski said.

      Susan nodded. “I want you there.”

      They were on the ground floor of the New White House, walking briskly toward the Situation Room. Kat Lopez trailed two steps behind them. Two Secret Service men trailed two steps behind Kat.

      “What do you want to tell people?”

      Susan shrugged. “There’s no need to tell anyone anything, or even announce your presence. Kurt Kimball often kicks some people out if things go to a high level, but otherwise, no one would be shocked to see a sitting Congressman in there.”

      “When will we tell people?”

      Susan glanced back. “Kat?”

      “We’ve got a tentative date of Wednesday, nine a.m. We’re putting together a press conference. If the weather looks good, we’ll do it on the back lawn. If not, we’ll do it in the communications room. Does that give you enough time, Congressman?”

      “Two days? You’d be surprised at the amount of stuff I get done in two days.”

      They passed through the open double doors of the Situation Room. Two more Secret Service men flanked the entryway. Big, bald Kurt Kimball, Susan’s National Security Advisor, was already inside, standing in front of a large flat-panel screen mounted on the wall. He was talking to a young tech guy and holding a remote control in his hand.

      The place was filling up. Kurt had several staff members in the room, and his two top intelligence analysts, both of whom he’d brought over from the RAND Corporation as soon as he arrived.

      Trish Markle, the new Secretary of State, was in a seat facing Kurt, and talking to two of her young staff members. Trish had been in her job six weeks already. She had been an Under Secretary at the State Department when Mount Weather happened, and Susan had simply promoted her to the top slot. Trish was forty-seven years old. She had spent long years as a government bureaucrat – maybe too many. So far, she was doing an unremarkable job as Secretary.

      “Kurt,” Susan said, cutting through the background chatter.

      He looked Susan’s way, then came over. He shook hands with Congressman Parowski. “Mike, good to see you. I hear there’s a big announcement coming.”

      Parowski glanced at Susan. “Interesting. I just heard about it myself.”

      Kimball smiled. “Word travels fast down these hallways.”

      “Kurt,” Susan said, “if you’re ready, I want to get started. I feel like we’re already behind the eight ball on this. There are huge gaps in my knowledge.”

      “I’m ready. But people are going to continue to straggle in while we’re talking. And the analysis we have is very, very preliminary. Mark Swann just finished uploading the last of the files to secure servers maybe twenty minutes ago.”

      “That’s okay. I don’t need all the details. Just get me, and everyone else in this room, up to speed about the overall threat.”

      Susan sat down at the head of the long conference table. Kat Lopez stood behind her and Mike Parowski sat to her left. For a second, Susan remembered how she used СКАЧАТЬ