ProxyWar

by D S Kane

  He glared back. “Okay!” He stared out the side window at the heavy snow covering the road.

  He thought, treacherous driving. But no plan occurred to him, no matter how hard he tried to conjure one.

  * * *

  Jon looked in a store window as he passed Third Avenue and 52nd Street. He felt shabby due to the grease stains on the Burberry from dragging it behind him as he crawled into the garage from the elevator. It would cost a fortune to clean the expensive trench coat. But at least he didn’t look out of his altered inadvertent role—a down-on-his-luck former business executive, now jobless, like most of those who used the services of Rent-a-Wreck.

  He forced a smile and walked into the tiny vestibule that served as their office. An overpowering odor of greasy food wafted into his nostrils.

  He stifled his urge to vomit. “I need a car for the night. Maybe for two nights.” He shrugged.

  The night clerk looked up from the tablet he was reading. He punched buttons on his desktop. “We have three cars available. A recent model Chevy, a slightly damaged Ford, and a Toyota Corolla with a nearly totaled dashboard. They all cost $80 a night.”

  “They all work? None of them will just stop after a few miles?”

  The clerk smiled. “Take the Ford. I parked it. It works fine but shimmies if you exceed fifty miles per hour.”

  Jon nodded and passed the man his driver’s license. The face on the license resembled his own, but it was German in origin and the name printed on it was “Friedrich Stamphil.” And I thought I’d never get to use that old cover again. “Where did you drive in Manhattan to get the car up to 50?”

  “First Avenue under the 59th Street Bridge. You can get up to sixty this late at night.” The clerk accepted the license. “Uh, this is German. Are you a tourist?”

  Jon nodded. It seemed to satisfy the clerk, who printed a stack of forms for Jon to sign.

  “You want insurance?”

  Jon shook his head. This, after all, was Rent-a-Wreck. It was likely the car was already a piece of trash and besides, this cover was untraceable. He pulled a pen from his pocket. In ten minutes I’ll be out of Manhattan and on my way to MacArthur Airport.

  Without any hesitation, he smiled as the clerk handed him the keys.

  * * *

  The second bus pulled off the parkway near the entrance to the private air field at Dulles. The mercs all had their weapon loaded and ready.

  Major Halid Sambol drove the bus. He turned into the approach street. Sambol’s head swiveled as he scanned the area. “Sir, what are your orders?”

  Seated directly behind Sambol, General Alister McTavish kept his voice low. “Expect a hostile force. But do not fire first. Return fire only.”

  McTavish studied the exterior of the private air terminal. There were two Cessnas parked within, their wheels blocked and passenger ladders waiting. He couldn’t see anyone with a weapon but there were many places to hide. “Approach, but be prepared to leave in a hurry.”

  The bus crept forward over crunching snow. From the corner of his eye, McTavish noticed a taxi speeding toward the terminal. Before he could react, several men emerged from the airplane hangar, holding automatic weapons. “Leave now, full speed.”

  The taxi trailed but slowly caught up to them. McTavish could see William Wing waving at them from the back seat, his face full of fear. “Keep going. The cab isn’t a threat. Let it follow until it’s safe to stop.”

  After several minutes, Sambol stopped the bus and William and Betsy boarded. McTavish tapped Avram Shimmel’s number into his cell. “We have two additional passengers, Wing and his female friend. Hostiles still hold the airport. It’s a no go. What are your orders?”

  Avram’s voice left no doubt. “Get onto Interstate 95 and go as fast as possible toward New York. When you catch up to my bus, call me again.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Interstate 95,

  south of Baltimore

  February 24, 1:06 a.m.

  William Wing and Betsy Brown sat in the last row of seats as their bus rolled north through the outskirts of Baltimore. He heard General McTavish ask how long until they caught up with bus number one, containing Avram.

  Betsy touched her notebook’s screen. “Translation widget just stopped functioning. What’s that?” She pointed to Cyrillic script on the screen.

  William had taken Russian in high school. He read the entry. “Rats. Seems like the top of the food chain in Russia wants Cassie dead.” He scanned the second section of the document, written in Mandarin. “Israelis rendered Tobelov. For that they’ve given her a death sentence. The Chinese take exception, stating they have a more important and more global mission.” His lips moved as he read. “But the Russians have convinced the Chinese that they need to let them have their way. Betsy, I have to call Cassie and tell her.”

  He handed the notebook back to her and left his seat. At the very back of the bus, he found it relatively quiet, and punched in Avram’s number. “Avram, it’s Wing. I’ve found some intel you need to know. About the Russian SVR and the Chinese CSIS. Yeah. The Chinese have a hit on me, but the Russians are targeting both Cassie and your Mother person, too. And I now have a few details on the communications tech they’re using. We’re almost done hacking into their servers. Betsy is working on the Russian side but she hasn’t finished yet. It looks like the actual invasion will be preceded by China dropping the electric grid in the United States. Tell Cassie about the Russian hit contract. Anything more you want from me?”

  He listened to Avram take a deep breath before speaking. “Where is your bus?”

  “We’re just reaching Baltimore now.”

  “Tell Betsy to finish her analysis of the Russian servers in a hurry. We’re flying blind.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth Rochelle “Butterfly” Brown found that her tongue had squeezed through one of the corners of her mouth. “Damn.” It happened on the rare occurrences when she concentrated on a single task to the point of fixation. The SVR server was a surprise to her in too many ways. Its encryption was ever so much more gonzo than the flimsy piece of shit the CIA used. It had taken her autotroll twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds to get through the last firewall and solve their file encryption. But even the messages were written in code. And this one was a new crypto, one she’d never seen before. Fukaduck!

  She pulled her fingers off the notebook’s keyboard and reread the message. She’d taken Russian in high school at the insistence of her mother, Elena Brunischevskia,who’d been born in a suburb of Saint Petersburg and sneaked out as the Soviet Union crumbled.

  The message, translated into English, said something akin to:

  Borscht 2 Palestine 79 foolish picture 896

  nyet pachtu 416.

  Whazzafuk? Either the words were all references to something else or they were in some other code. She scratched the bridge of her large nose and thought of asking William to help her but he was busy speaking with Avram, and besides, she felt if she couldn’t do it, how could he? Wasn’t she the better hacker?

  She tapped her fingers on the screen as she took another look. Nope. Nothing she could do here. She scanned down the screen to the next message. Maybe she’d have better luck with that one.

  * * *

  The large room on the fifth floor of the NSA’s headquarters complex was dark except for the glow of the terminals. Seated at one in an area where no one else could see him, agent Andrew Cardiff watched as his Wingnut screen flashed a warning message. The Wingnut system was a new NSA monitoring system, and he’d been assigned to test the beta version.

  He opened the window the message referred to: a phone call from one cellphone to another, both located in vehicles traveling north on Interstate 95—one sixteen miles north and the other twenty-eight miles south of Baltimore—both moving toward the Pennsylvania border.

  He smirked. This would be a big payday for him. He’d been at the agency for almost a decade, a deep plant mole.

  He took
the stairs to the basement servers of the agency and sat at one of the secure terminals in the empty room. It only took a minute to bypass the outgoing security firewall, key and send the message to his handler in the SVR. He was done in less than ninety seconds, well short of the two minutes which would trigger a firewall fail alarm.

  CHAPTER 24

  Room 23107, Mandarin Oriental Hotel,

  Singapore

  February 24, 1:24 p.m.

  Premier Lin Chow Chang of the People’s Republic of China touched his earbud when he heard the buzz notification of his guest’s party’s arrival. He rose from the ornamented red brocade couch he’d been sitting on and stared at the camera’s monitor screen by the door, while he waited for the knock.

  Out in the hallway of the twenty-third floor, he could see the elevator doors open and three Russians in trench coats exit into the hallway. Trench coats in eighty-degree heat. He shook his head. Underneath those coats, they must be armed. Armed for a meeting where they’d be signing a peace treaty. Russian idiots!

  He took a deep breath. It would all begin in seconds.

  The expected knock came. “Enter.” Since he understood Russian and that was the language of his guests, he spoke it.

  One of his security men opened the door. The guests entered and the smallest of them stepped forward and extended his hand. “This is indeed a monumental occasion.”

  Lin Chow Chang had never met Vladimir Pushkin face-to-face before, but he’d studied the file they’d assembled on him. Both Pushkin and Lin had started their careers in their countries’ security services. Each had been mentored by his country’s leaders in politics for many decades. Now, each ruled his own country.

  He studied the face of the man who had once been his enemy. “It is good to finally meet you.” He shook the Russian president’s hand. “Please, have a seat. Our business will take but a few minutes. Before we begin, why not take time for a cup of tea?”

  The Russian sat and nodded to one of his taller bodyguards, who pulled a bottle from under his coat. Pushkin took it and offered it to the Chinese premier. “Our finest vodka. If you wish, we can toast to our success at the end of the treaty signing.”

  The difference in cultures was something Lin had been coached to expect. He found it offensive nonetheless. When discussing treaty terms, one must remain sober. He handed the bottle to one of his own security men.

  Premier Lin sat back, relaxed to all appearances while his mind worked furiously, selecting his words with care. “Our futures will be inexorably tied together, our borders a bigger concern than ever, when we are finished.” He watched while the tea was poured.

  Pushkin nodded. The president ignored the teacup in his hand. “Yes. But this treaty should keep us in a marriage bed, not in marriage counseling.” He chuckled, and Lin nodded although he didn’t share the man’s sense of humor.

  Pushkin seemed surprised at finding the teacup in his hand. He smiled and sipped, then put it down and drew a pen from his overcoat pocket. “The treaty is fair. China gets all lands east of the Mississippi. Russia gets everything west of the Mississippi. We agree to Saint Louis as the port where all fair trade shipments between our collected colonies will take place.”

  Nothing new here, thought Lin. He scanned the document, absurdly short for such an important treaty. The words were written first in Mandarin, then in Russian, and finally in English. They called for fair trade agreements between the two districts, East America and West America.

  He wondered how long it would be before a war started between Russia and China over some arcane part of the document neither country’s advisors and rulers had understood well enough to negotiate in advance.

  He signed the last page of both copies of the document and passed them to Pushkin, who signed them both and returned one copy to Lin. Officials from both countries countersigned as witnesses. The Russian countersignatory was the one of the security men who had accompanied Pushkin.

  One of Lin’s security men returned the vodka bottle. The bodyguard nodded to indicate it had been tested and wasn’t deadly. The bodyguard poured two single-jigger glasses and both Lin and Pushkin held their glasses aloft.

  Pushkin smiled. “To the end of the United States of America.”

  Lin nodded, wondering if it could ever be that simple. Both men drank, ending their one and only meeting.

  * * *

  Ann Silbey Sashakovich sat at the desk in her room at the family compound in suburbs of Washington, DC. Her wrist was under her chin, the pose she adopted whenever she was deeply focused on something. Her other hand was wrapped around strands of her blond hair. The notebook computer in front of her face showed an Internet screen from a site of the US government. She leaned closer and read it, then copied a paragraph from the website into a report she was writing on computer security for school.

  Her cell buzzed. “Mom? Where are you and what the bleep are you doing?”

  She heard Cassie take a deep breath. “Something big is going down. I’m with Avram and his mercs on a bus. We’re traveling toward New York.”

  The very name of the city where she’d been born, where her birth mother had overdosed on drugs and her brother had been murdered after they had become homeless, left her speechless. She remembered how Cassie had found her and stopped the rapist who’d been just about to… She was sure Cassie’s statement meant something very bad was happening.

  When she realized that Cassie was in danger, her mind went blank.

  “Ann?”

  She popped back. “Sorry. It sounds like you’re way past busy.”

  “Yeah. But I need a favor. We have William and his Butterfly hacking the Russian and Chinese security service servers so they’re overloaded. I need you for a special project. It looks like I’m one of the targets being hunted by a nasty group of Russians. Can you find out just who they are, what they know, and where their hitters are?”

  Ann remembered how a team of Russians had tried to kill her adopted mother several times before. Or specifically, a man named Ivan Tobelov, one of the Russian mafiya’s bosses. Her fists clenched as her mind dropped into a hole. This time she recovered faster. “Okay, Mom. I’ll call you back just as soon as I find out.” She terminated the call and refocused on her new task.

  * * *

  “We have an update on the location of one of the callers. Just north of Baltimore headed onto the bridge.” Andrew Cardiff terminated the secured call to his benefactor. He opened a webpage that was similar to Google Maps and watched the tracker satellite’s screen as its camera moved north to focus along Interstate 95. It was over three hundred miles away, and unable to get good focus on the target vehicle, which was moving at the speed limit.

  He couldn’t task the satellite to move closer and see what make and model it was and take a photo of its license plate without drawing attention to his off-the-books task. From its size, he guessed it was a large SUV or a bus, with a Washington DC plate.

  * * *

  Ann found the Russian FSB servers hard to crack. The only useful link she found sent her to the Chinese CSIS servers. The CSIS servers were straightforward but even more nuanced and therefore more difficult to hack. The CSIS firewall took her over a half hour to bypass. But once she was past the firewall, she hadn’t a clue where to begin her search. Her online translation program often failed with Russian. With Mandarin, it hardly functioned at all. Slowly, she penetrated one directory after another, examining files almost at random.

  One file was marked with a priority flag. She opened it. It was several pages of graphic images. She scanned them and then printed them for further study. The first was Chinese, and she skipped it because the translation program once again failed to decipher the language. The second was Russian, and the program coughed up tiny bits of what was there.

  But the third file was written in English. She read it and her jaw fell. Ohmigod. This must be what all the fuss is about!

  She sent copies of the graphic pages to Cassie’s cell. Then she
called her. “Mom, did you get the three short pages I sent?”

  There was substantial noise wherever Cassie was located. Voices, vehicles, and other sounds.

  “Yeah. Thanks. Lemme take a look.” There was a slight pause. “Ann, is this for real?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d you find this?”

  “Parts in the Chinese CSIS security server. A page with a title in Chinese that I couldn’t understand. More in the Russian FSB server. I’m sending you the links now.”

  This time Cassie responded almost instantly after Ann sent the link. “Got it. You may have solved one of our safety problems. I gotta go. Love you, Ann.”

  Now Ann had time to study the document in its entirety. She reread it several times and decided there was more trouble coming than her adopted mother could handle with just a few mercenary soldiers.

  She called Lee Ainsley, her adopted father. Maybe the NSA could help them. But there was no answer on his cell or his desk’s landline. He didn’t think it safe to leave voicemail.

  * * *

  Susan Rubin had spent most of the morning in the foreign exchange trading pit at one of the trading desks. She’d been tracking trades made by the Russian and Chinese governments.

  Two trades had caught her attention, and she spent an hour backtracing their origins and then following each trade’s destination.

  Both trades funded accounts in the United States, and both were sourced in DC. Not unusual. But both trades occurred within seconds of each other, and both were for huge amounts of money. And in the case of each trade, a substantial portion of its cash was then forwarded on to accounts in Manhattan.

  She scratched her head. Usually, the proceeds of trades such as these would be sent first to accounts in money center banks in Manhattan, and then forwarded on to Washington. So why were these trades—coordinated trades in typically uncooperative countries—sent this way? Why was such a large amount of cash urgently needed in Washington?

  She was sure she knew the answer. Rubin punched in Avram’s number. She now had circumstantial proof of a conspiracy. It was an explanation of all the events so far: the attack on the Israeli embassy, the attempted murder of Cassandra Sashakovich, and the mass of Russian and Chinese who hunted Avram and his mercenaries.