What Ruhi drew from Lennon’s last remark was that they would not be traveling alone when they crossed the Yemeni border.
Ruhi was right.
Deputy Director Holmes was conferring with Teresa McGivern about Ruhi Mancur’s release when his executive assistant, Donna Warnes, entered his office and handed him a file. Warnes exited immediately, as if she knew both the urgency and secrecy of the information.
Holmes opened the large envelope and slipped out a document. Within moments, he shook his head and lifted his eyes to McGivern. “That chopper got close to the bus, but they couldn’t get any radiation readings. None of that stuff is working anymore. They thought they had it up and running, but when push came to shove, nothing registered.”
Military computers and those running the entire U.S. intelligence system had been disabled in the past few hours by viruses that had been “seeded” many months ago, even before the first cyberattack, according to an NSA forensics team feverishly trying to find the source of the shutdown.
“So we have no idea what’s in there?” McGivern asked.
“Just that there’s a man in the back of the bus with what appears to be a backpack bomb.”
Holmes reached into the envelope and pulled out several photos. “They had to use an old film camera to get these. It was just run over here, and I mean that literally — by a Marine marathoner. Can you believe that, Teresa?”
Even Holmes wasn’t sure what begged credulity more: photos that had to be developed in a mothballed darkroom, or their means of delivery. Fuel allotments were so small that any messages and parcels that could be carried by a runner were immediately dispatched in that manner, often with a phalanx of equally fleet-footed armed guards to ensure the safe delivery of top-secret documents.
As Holmes had waited to hear about the radiation readings, he felt like a magistrate in ancient Greece anxious for word of victory or defeat from the prototypical courier, Pheidippides. The renowned herald ran from the city of Marathon to Athens to announce a Greek victory over Persia. “Joy to you, we’ve won,” he supposedly said. But the absence of radiation readings was hardly good news in present-day Maryland, and the photos in Holmes’s hand were even worse. He passed the first one to McGivern, saying, “It shows the guy next to the backpack bomb.”
“That’s a hell of a surveillance shot,” she said. It showed a triggering device at the end of a tube that ran out of the pack. “What do we make of it?”
“Not much,” Holmes replied. “Could be a nuke, could be plastique, could be a red herring to keep us preoccupied while their real intentions are in play somewhere else. I don’t think we can underestimate their canniness.”
“That’s a nice way to put it.”
“I’m doing all I can to keep my profanities in check,” he replied, passing her two more photos of the presumed bomber.
“Can’t the techs tell anything by the trigger? Its width, length, that sort of thing?”
“They’re looking at these photos even as we speak, but I’m guessing not, based on my own experience.” He pulled out the last photograph. “Then there’s this.” He handed it to McGivern, adding, “That’s Lana Elkins’s girl.”
“Oh, shit,” McGivern said, looking at a black-and-white of Emma Elkins staring bug-eyed into a telephoto lens with a knife at her neck. There was an unmistakable line of blood on the blade.
“Where’s her mother?” Holmes asked Teresa.
“Somewhere in Saudi airspace. We don’t know where.” She shook her head. “We’re not in touch.”
“Is the king going to let her go?” Holmes asked.
“That’s what we hear via carrier pigeon.”
Holmes knew she was kidding. What McGivern didn’t know was that he’d already investigated the possibility of using homing pigeons. The military, not surprisingly, didn’t have them anymore. Rest assured, Holmes vowed, they would in the future. At least birds that could fly to and from the White House and all major intelligence centers.
“How bad is the Veepox outbreak?” he asked her.
“Minneapolis — St. Paul is totally closed down. No traffic is moving in or out. The only good news is the outbreak came after air travel ended, so that might slow it down.”
“How many cases?”
“More than a thousand, but that information is fourteen hours old.”
“So we have no trains, no planes, and—”
“They’ve knocked out all the computers at the CDC. That’s the latest.”
The cyberattackers had been as good as their word. Day by day they’d been taking the U.S. apart. In addition to knocking out all military and intelligence communications, they’d disabled GPS and other satellite-based directional capabilities. Holmes believed that the only reason the attackers allowed electric power for many civilian areas was to spread the panic even faster — and to make it clear to the American people that U.S. defense capabilities had been rendered almost useless. From a psychological warfare standpoint, it was a shrewd move.
Highway transportation was also a mess, but the agency’s analysts weren’t so sure those breakdowns would have made much difference, because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in salt-dome caverns in Louisiana and Texas was no longer functioning. It had been subject to a cyberblitzkrieg that made the Iranian attack on Aramco, which derailed thirty thousand computers at the world’s largest corporation, look like a stalled vehicle in rush hour traffic.
But worse than all the breakdowns in America, in Holmes’s view, was what was to come. He had no doubt that the cyberattackers’ coup de grâce would arrive when they targeted 350 million Americans with the country’s own nuclear missiles. Considering the growing misery of the American people, he suspected that a fair number of the nation’s terrorized population might welcome a quick deathblow.
“We’re not there yet,” Holmes said.
“What?” McGivern asked him.
Holmes hadn’t realized that he’d spoken aloud. “Nothing. Just weighing the worst outcomes, and we’re not there yet. That’s all.”
Teresa nodded, but probably didn’t believe him. They were old hands and had been through a lot of crises together, so she would know something deeply disturbing must be bothering him. She would also know better than to press him.
“What about the embassy?” Holmes asked her.
“They’ve got Ambassador Arpen and more than a hundred and ten embassy personnel. No one has been killed. Some beatings, we understand, but nothing life-threatening.”
“I just wish I knew what was on that bus, Teresa. We can’t let that thing go up into New York. Do we have anything that can get a reading?”
“Yes, we’re already looking into that. We’re resurrecting some old-school Geiger counters.”
“And they’re stopping for diesel, right?”
She nodded. “You want one of our guys pumping it.”
“I do, but make it a woman, someone rough around the edges. Believable. Play to their prejudices. They’re not going to think a woman’s going to be much of a threat.”
“And if the readings are high?”
“We have to find a way to keep them from moving. How many hours away from New York are they likely to be when they stop for fuel?”
“Three, at best. But no matter where it goes off, if they’ve got a nuke, we’re looking at a huge death toll. They’re in southern Jersey now. It’s not exactly the Bonneville Salt Flats.”
Holmes nodded, implicitly acknowledging the brute facts before him. “But the greater metro area has eighteen million people.” He almost said “souls.” It was like he could see them all rising, instantly incinerated. “What do our tactical folks say?”