Situation Room. Jack Mars

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СКАЧАТЬ time to time. The floodgates are almost never opened.

      “TVA was thinking they could aggregate ten or twenty dam control centers into one centrally located control center. So they retro-fitted several dams with computer software that can be operated remotely. Black Rock was one of them. We’re talking about very simple software – yes means open the gates, no means close them. For one reason or another, they never did create the central control center, but they did make the software internet-based, in case they ever decided to do so. The final nail, so to speak, is that the science of encryption barely existed at that time, and the software has never been updated since it was first installed.”

      Luke stared, stunned.

      “You’re kidding.”

      He shook his head.

      “It was easy to hijack this system. It’s just that no one ever thought to do it before. What terrorist would even know this dam exists? It’s in a remote corner of a rural state. You don’t get a lot of style points for attacking Sargent, North Carolina. But as we’ve discovered, the results are as devastating as if they had attacked Chicago.”

      Susan spoke for the first time during Kimball’s presentation. “And the worst thing about it is there are hundreds of dams like this across the United States. The truth is we don’t even know how many there are, and how many are vulnerable.”

      “And why do we think the Chinese did it?” Luke said.

      “Our own hackers at NSA traced the infiltration to a series of IP addresses in northern China. And we traced communication with those addresses to an internet account at a motel in Asheville, North Carolina, sixty miles east of the Black Rock Dam. The communications took place in the forty-eight hours before the attack. A SWAT team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms operates in that region, raiding unlicensed distilleries and breweries. That team was diverted to the motel, did a takedown of the room in question, and arrested a thirty-two-year-old Chinese national named Li Quiangguo.”

      An image of a Chinese man being led from a small nondescript motel by a group of tall and broad ATF officers appeared on the screen. Another image appeared of the same man standing on a narrow roadway across from a lake. He stood in front of a historic plaque that read Black Rock Dam – 1943, with a couple of paragraphs of description below.

      “Although he has travel documents including a passport under this name, we don’t believe this is the man’s real name. As you know, the sequence of names in China is reversed – the surname comes first, followed by the given name. Li is one of the most common surnames in China, practically a generic name, similar to Smith in the United States. And Quiangguo, in Mandarin Chinese, means Strong Nation. This was a name with militaristic connotations that was very common after the Chinese Revolution, but fell into disfavor probably forty years ago. Further, Li was found with a handgun in his possession, as well as a small vial of cyanide pills. We believe he is a Chinese government agent, operating under an alias, who was supposed to kill himself if he was about to get caught.”

      “So he got cold feet,” Luke said.

      “Either that, or he just didn’t get to the pills in time.”

      Luke shook his head. “After an operation like this one, an agent willing to kill himself would be holding the pill bottle in his hand, or have it in his pocket, twenty-four hours a day. What were the communications?”

      “They were a series of encrypted emails. We haven’t broken the encryption yet, and it may be weeks before we do. It’s one they haven’t seen at NSA. Very complex, very tough to take down. So at this moment, we have no idea what the content of the emails is.”

      “Is the man talking?” Luke said.

      Kimball shook his head. “He’s being held in a cabin at a FEMA detention center in northern Georgia, about ninety miles southeast of the attack site. He insists he’s simply a tourist who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

      “That’s why we called you,” Susan said. “We’d like you to go have a chat with him. We thought he might speak to you.”

      “Have a chat,” Luke said.

      Susan shrugged. “Yes.”

      “Get him to talk?”

      “Yes.”

      “For that, I’ll probably need my team with me,” Luke said.

      A look passed between Susan, Kurt Kimball, and Kat Lopez.

      “Perhaps we’d better discuss that in private,” Kimball said.

*

      “Okay, Susan, so this is the part where you tell me again that the Special Response Team has been disbanded, right?”

      “Luke…” she began.

      They were sitting upstairs in Susan’s study. The study was just as Luke remembered it. A large rectangular room with hardwood floors and a white carpet in the middle. The carpet served as the focal point for a sitting area with big comfortable upright chairs and a coffee table.

      One entire wall of the study was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. The bookcase reminded Luke of The Great Gatsby.

      And then there were the windows. Giant, gracious, floor to ceiling windows which gave expansive views of the Naval Observatory’s rolling grounds. The windows faced southwest and let in the afternoon light. The light was like something a master artist would try to capture.

      The days were clearly getting shorter. Although it wasn’t yet 7 p.m., early evening sunlight streamed through her windows. The day was already ending. Luke thought again briefly of his interaction with Becca when he dropped Gunner off. He shook the image away. It was too much to think about.

      He sat on the opposite side of the coffee table from the President. Kurt Kimball sat at an angle to both of them. Kat Lopez stood behind Susan and to her right.

      “Yes,” Susan said. “There is no more Special Response Team. Most of the former staff have been absorbed into other roles within the FBI. At this point, it would be rather difficult to rebuild what you think of as your team.”

      “Susan,” Luke said. “I’d like to remind you that you’re asking me to come out of retirement again. You know what I’ve been doing for the past two months? I’ll tell you. Camping, fishing, hiking, sailing. A little bit of hunting. A little bit of diving.” He rubbed his beard. “Sleeping late.”

      “So you’re fit for duty,” Kurt Kimball said.

      Luke shook his head. “I’m caked in rust. I need my team. I trust them. I can’t really function without them.”

      “Luke, if you’d stuck around instead of disappearing, we might have been able to carve out a little agency for you…”

      “I was trying to save my marriage,” he said.

      Susan stared right at him. “How did it go?”

      He gave her a tiny head shake. “Not too well, so far.”

      “I’m sorry to hear that.”

      “So am I.”

      Susan glanced behind her. “Kat, can we have the status on Luke’s former team members?”

      Kat СКАЧАТЬ