Damage Control

by Gordon Kent

  Rao looked puzzled and glanced at Alan.

  “One of our people analyzed the video of the helicopter and found that it was on a heading of about one-ninety.” He didn’t say that the person had been Harry.

  Mary cut to the chase. “You’ve got us down to three facilities?”

  Bill spoke without turning his head from contemplation of a fox-hunt picture. “Only one of them’s important.” He moved to his laptop and typed and swung the screen so they could see it. “See? Yeah. Cool.” They found themselves looking at numbers. “It’s obviously a big factory doing contract work for the Indian Navy. And it gets the bandwidth of a TV station, so they must use it to watch the whole place on security cameras—what else? Now do you see it?” He sounded both patronizing and dismissive. “And anyway, it’s on the WMD Center’s possibles list.”

  Alan heard Mary’s quick intake of breath. He ignored her; if Bill had just blown a WMD Center secret to Rao, it was too late. “Who uses it? Uses what? And how do you know?”

  Bill groaned. “Servants of the Earth use the bandwidth to let big shots at this set of IPs watch the action on the factory production floor!” The word stupid, as in I just told you, stupid, was left unsaid.

  Ong was chewing her lower lip. She said, “He means that he thinks we’ve found an SOE site south of here that’s a big assembly facility where they might be able to do something with the nuclear devices. Something connected to the Navy.”

  Alan winked at her. “Now you’re talking.” He changed his tone to that of somebody speaking to a particularly spoiled child. “Bill, can you tell us where this facility is?”

  “From the website! Don’t you get it?” He was gesturing at his screen, which was still filled with numbers.

  Ong pushed a map at Alan, a finger tapping a location. “It’s about sixty miles southeast of here.”

  But Bill wasn’t done. He gestured at Ong and Benvenuto with a sneer. “Oh, they can tell you where it is, oh, sure!” His voice rose with excitement, so that the next sentence came out in a squeak. “In half an hour, I’ll show you what it is—on their own security cameras!”

  Ong turned on him. “We got the protocols for their security-camera feeds from Valdez, not from you! They were in the embedded code for the keys, which Valdez and Mave cracked without your help, Bill!”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “Yeah. Whatever.”

  Alan shut them both up. “Bill, are you telling us that you can show us what their security cameras at this SOE facility are seeing?”

  Bill made a Mad-mag Alfred Newman face. “Duh, I think he got it! Du-u-uh—”

  Mary hissed, “Bill—” and Alan waved her to silence. “How soon?” he said to Bill.

  “Half an hour. I’ve been saving the undecrypted data to disk. We’ll be able to watch the feed from an hour ago and then live, too, once I use Valdez’s software to decrypt, which we’re downloading as we speak.”

  “Get to it, then,” he said. “And I want to double-check your data on how you boiled all your choices down to this one. And Bill—” He smiled at Bill. “We’ll have politeness lessons when this is over.”

  He took Mary aside and asked her to get on to the WMD Center at once and get overhead imagery on the site that Ong had shown them on the map. Then he started out to go up to Harry’s room but thought better of it and went back to where Ong was leaning into her laptop. “Lieutenant,” he said softly. “One little task, and keep it to yourself. See what you can find out on the web about our friend the maharajah, will you? In particular, any military background?” He tapped the table once and left her.

  NCIS HQ, Bahrain

  Bahrain NCIS headquarters comprised two double-wide trailers connected by a plastic tunnel that looked as if it had been designed by Doctor Seuss. The door was reached over a sandpit that maybe somebody had once intended to fill with concrete and that some earlier occupant, tired of sand-filled shoes, had covered with rubber-mesh mats from the Manama souk. The step from the mats up to the office level required strong thighs and loose pants; beyond it, nonetheless, the air-conditioned offices seemed almost pleasant. Or could have, if they had had a little color; against the brightness of the Bahrain sand and sun, everything dwindled into colors so pale that they looked as if they had been bleached. Leslie, who kept bringing stuff like artificial flowers to brighten things up, thought the fading was some reverse effect of the Bahrain humidity.

  “Maybe curtains,” she said, standing in the middle and looking at the windows, which were covered on the inside with Venetian blinds.

  “Don’t you dare,” Dukas growled.

  “How about a coat of paint? Like, a nice blue, with maybe yellow—”

  “The NCIS budget doesn’t run to decorating, plus the new SAC Bahrain is a skinflint and won’t spend a penny on anything except the case load.” As himself the new Special-Agent-in-Charge, Bahrain, he spoke with authority.

  “Sometimes you’re a disappointment to me, Mike.”

  “Life is hard.” Dukas was looking over a new case that had come in overnight—two Marines were in the Manama police station in “protective custody after an offense to Islam.” He looked up at Leslie. “As long as you’re working for free, couldn’t you do some work?”

  “I work for free, you’re not grateful?”

  “I’m grateful, I’m grateful; I just like people to work if that’s what they show up to do.” His head was down over his papers. She tiptoed over and put her hands on his cheeks, lifted his head and planted a wet kiss on his mouth. “You’re so tough,” she said.

  “Jesus, Les, somebody might see!”

  “Nobody’s here; I checked.”

  With that, Rattner walked in. If he thought that that was lipstick that Dukas was wiping off with a used napkin, he didn’t comment. Instead, he shouted, “Hey, place looks great—looka those flowers over there!” He threw a stapled sheaf of papers down on Dukas’s desk. “Read ‘em and weep, kid—I got the goods.”

  “Should I leave?” Leslie said.

  “What, and take the life out of this place?” Rattner grinned. “Unless you’d like to file that crap on my desk—”

  She headed for his desk.

  Dukas was looking over Rattner’s pages—Xeroxes of a telephone log. “So?” he said.

  Rattner pointed at an entry highlighted in yellow. “We got him.”

  “Who?”

  “Cost me two hundred bucks. I’m gonna put it in as transportation expenses, and you’re gonna okay it.” Rattner pulled a chair over. “Cell-phone call, Manama to Washington, within the window your CIA lady gave us. Number in Washington is a high-powered law firm. Greenbaum got on the FBI overnight, they dicked around and I thought were maybe going to the UN for approval, but a half hour ago they up and deliver the goods: there was a call from same law firm to an office in an executive building I need not name, two minutes after the Manama–Washington call. Recipient is an assistant to the National Security Advisor.”

  “Who’s the leaker?”

  Rattner grinned. He looked as if he wanted to say, “Guess,” but he didn’t. “Pilchard’s flag lieutenant. His daddy’s a partner in the DC law firm.”

  “You sure?”

  Rattner pointed at the highlighted entry. “That’s his cell phone. Guy’s nuts, do a stunt like that with a cell phone.”

  Dukas was rubbing his hands slowly together, looking into the space beyond his desk and the waist-high partition that was supposed to define his office. “Okay.” He kept rubbing his hands. “We got him—once. You said you thought you had a leaker a couple other times. Did you check—?”

  “Near as I can tell, no; I already did the phone thing the other times, but we didn’t have this tight of a window. The other times, maybe he used e-mail.”

  “Which would be on his computer. Maybe.” Dukas frowned. “What’d you mean, Greenbaum got on the FBI?”

  “It was on his time—three a.m, he figured it was okay if he wasn’t learning to file. I had the night duty, I wanted help, I
called him. What you gonna do, take away my gold star?”

  “No wonder he didn’t show up this morning. Still—You guys did good. Both of you.” Dukas put one hand on a telephone and said, “When’s Greenbaum coming in?”

  “He’s out trying to find something about this guy.”

  Dukas sighed. “Okay, so the only work that gets down around here today is the leaker.” He fumbled through the papers on his desk and raised his voice. “Who the hell’s got my base phone book?”

  Rattner and Leslie moved at once, Rattner muttering, “Oh, jeez—” Both of them held out dog-eared Navy telephone books. “The office doesn’t have enough of them,” Leslie said.

  “You guys took my phone book last night? Why can’t you put stuff back?” Dukas tried to looked stern and jabbed his finger at the phone with what pretended to be anger. Rattner winked at Leslie, who raised her eyebrows at Dukas, who looked disgusted. He would have said something, but a voice was in his ear and he said, “Flag Security Officer, please. This is Special Agent-in-Charge Dukas, NCIS, Bahrain.” He put the phone against his ear, covering it with his hand, and said, “Anybody got anything to eat? It’s way past lunchtime.”

  “Michael, it’s barely eleven o’clock. If you’d eat a decent br—”

  He waved her quiet and swiveled away from her. “Yeah, Lieutenant, Special Agent Dukas. I’ve got something to discuss with you but it requires going secure. Okay? Right. Okay, going secure.”

  Dukas leaned back. When his screen told him that he was secure and was, indeed, speaking to the office of the Flag Security Officer, Fifth Fleet, Bahrain, he said, “We’ve got an issue here. It looks like a person on your staff has been passing information to a contact in Washington.” He didn’t give the suspected leaker’s name then but summarized what Rattner and Greenbaum had found. When he was done, the security officer said, “Can you tell me the person’s name, Mister Dukas?”

  Dukas looked at Rattner and actually winked. “The cell phone on which the call was made appears to belong to a Lieutenant-Commander Raymond Spinner.”

  A little silence followed. “I think that Admiral Pilchard had better hear this next.”

  “That’s good; the admiral and I had a little talk last night about the problem.”

  “Yeah, um—I was in a staff meeting where, um, the problem was discussed with some, mm, forcefulness by Admiral Pilchard. I think he’ll want to know about this at once.”

  “Should I hang by my phone?”

  “Yes, sir, if you would. Or keep me informed of how you can be reached quick.”

  Dukas hung up. Rattner and Leslie had been working at different desks, but both looked up. Not that they’d been listening, of course. “I think the shit’s about to hit the fan,” Dukas said. “Who’s going out for pizza?”

  The Serene Highness Hotel

  Harry had exiled himself to his bedroom so that he would at least appear to have no connection with the work. Alan found him there and told him what the computer people had done. “They’ve worked their asses off, and maybe they’ve hit paydirt. If Bill really gets into the security cameras, we’ll know a lot pretty quick.”

  Harry murmured that time was a-wasting and said something about not seeing the woods for the trees.

  “You want to stop talking in Zen and say what you mean?”

  “The nukes are gone, pal. Even if you locate them, you think you’re going to take them back somehow? Do you really think that the people who have India in chaos are going to fall on their backs and wave their legs in the air because you show up with five guys and a rubber-band gun?”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Yeah—go for the monster’s head.” Harry sat up. “I’ve been lying here thinking about the whole shmeer. We should have been going after the people who run SOE from the beginning, not the nukes. I know, I know, I’m the one who pointed us at the nukes in the first place, but that’s because I was being a good NOC. Well, now that I have time to think about it, I believe that was wrong.”

  “My orders are to find the nukes, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Harry grinned. “Don Winslow of the Navy, ta-ta!”

  Alan stared at him and then said, “You’re not helping,” and he called Fifth Fleet on Harry’s STU and got Lapierre again. “Dickie, find out if anybody can put a SEAL team in here in twenty-four hours.” He was thinking of how they would get the warheads back if Bill’s wizardry actually located them.

  Harry, who had closed his eyes, blinked open the good one at the sound of the word “SEAL.” “Ask for about ten thousand of them,” he murmured.

  Lapierre was telling him that the battle group’s SEAL team was ashore somewhere. Alan grunted. “Well, see what you can get me. Even fleet Marines. I may need them soonest.” And he gave Lapierre a barebones account of what was happening. Lapierre said that the admiral had better get that from the horse’s mouth, and in thirty seconds, Admiral Pilchard himself was on.

  “What’s going on, Alan?”

  “I don’t know yet, sir.”

  “You’re paid to speculate, Al. Now, speculate!”

  A violation of a basic tenet of Alan’s idea of intelligence—never speculate. Except when you’re ordered to. “If the nukes have been taken to a big factory or assembly facility, and if the place has the equipment and a clean room and the technical know-how—then I think they could be trying to put them into warheads. The Servants of the Earth have the money to afford all that—equipment, technical knowledge—plus, if they’d planned this way ahead, they’d have everything in place. But I don’t know.”

  “If they put one of those nukes on an aircraft and fly it into the Jefferson, we’ll lose at least six thousand men and a major part of the fleet.”

  “I was told the CAP is flying.”

  “Two aircraft. What if they send in a flight of twenty against us? Three nukes on three aircraft—that’s a pretty good chance of one getting through.”

  “I don’t think it’d be aircraft, sir. I think that the submarine—”

  Harry’s good eye was on the door; Alan looked and saw Benvenuto leaning in, one hand extended as if he’d just flung a pair of dice into the room, and his eyes wide as if he was looking for a seven.

  “One moment, Admiral—” Alan looked at Benvenuto with a This better be important scowl. “Make it quick!”

  “We’re in! You can see right into the—the—!” He waved the hand. “The factory!”

  Alan turned back to the STU. “Sir, may I call you back?”

  Pilchard was not happy. “You better have a reason.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Then he was running down the red-carpeted stairs.

  Bill was actually smiling. On his screen was a grainy, gray picture of a big space with pipes and conduits overhead and a vast floor crowded with machines. Even as Alan watched, the picture changed, and it took him several seconds to realize that he was looking at an entirely different space—smaller, uncluttered, brighter. A forklift drove across the line of vision. The pictures were eerily silent.

  The feed was running on Ong’s computer, too, so he leaned over and said, “Great job! You’ve all done a great job.” He realized that his heart was pounding, and not just from the run through the palace. They were looking into one of the Servants of the Earth’s own factories through their own security cameras.

  He watched the feed again—an external shot now of a metal-sided building with windows high up, nothing moving. Then a shot of a loading dock. A corridor. Another corridor. Exteriors again, weedy spaces next to buildings, hurricane fences with razor-wired tops.

  “Count the cameras,” he said.

  “We are.”

  “Any repeats yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  On another laptop, Mary was watching the footage whose digitals Bill had earlier put on disk and now decrypted—in effect, the history of the hour before they had got in. She was taking notes, jumping back and forth, manipulating the shots because they weren’t
live and going through them quickly because she was controlling the pace, not the live cameras’ program. “Forty stations,” she said. “About a minute a station, average, but it varies—forty minutes to go through the whole sequence live if somebody there doesn’t override the preprogram.”

  The picture quality was poor but clear enough to show a big facility with at least two big buildings and a scattering of offices and support structures—a power plant, a vehicle garage with heavy trucks, and an office complex that might have been a separate building or might have been a top storey above one of the big work floors. And the exterior cameras showed long lines of razor wire coiling away like spiral mirrors in the white of the sun, and an industrial wasteland beyond like the surface of Mars.

  And a gate with armed guards.

  And no sign of the three nuclear warheads.

  BBC World News

  “And now to Ben Mackinnon in Mumbai.”

  “Thanks, Erin. The situation here remains terribly confused, with rumors everywhere but not much in the way of facts. There were explosions overnight here in Mumbai; I could hear them from my hotel. The concierge told me with some excitement that one of the big film studios had been hit, but I can’t get confirmation of that. I talked last night to one old man who told me as absolute fact that the Americans have invaded along the southeast coast and that the Indian air force has sunk an American aircraft carrier. People on the streets seem to be thoroughly frightened still, and little wonder—the trains have stopped running, the telephone and electrical systems are down, the police can’t control looting, and the reports of widespread mutiny in the armed forces are simply too many to be laughed away. Under the general nervousness is the real fear of war with Pakistan. This is a modern city accustomed to instant communication and abundant information, and, suddenly lacking both, it’s a very sad, very nervous place. Ben Mackinnon, Mumbai.”

  The Serene Highness Hotel

  Everybody was watching the live feed from the SOE assembly plant. Alan was leaning over Ong’s table, whispering with her. “So what’d you find about our host?” he said.