Damage Control

by Gordon Kent

  He turned then to see two armed guards and the maharajah, who was already standing, hands folded at his groin, a few feet in front of the others. “I think we should support our allies. Don’t you agree, sir?” Alan said.

  “I feared you would think we have not been behaving much like allies,” the maharajah answered.

  Alan walked toward him. “Your highness—General.” The maharajah’s right cheek gave a minuscule tic. “Whatever other agenda you have, we both want to neutralize those warheads.” The maharajah’s expression softened, an ironic smile just beginning to form. “I think we can help Major Rao, if you’ll let us have the internet connection back.” Alan pointed at the computers. “If we can take control of the cameras in the facility, we can let the major know what’s happening—give him an eye. Maybe we can even blind the enemy’s security by playing old pictures back to them—make them think nothing is happening.”

  “If you could do that, Commander—” The hands came up in a gesture of surrender. “However, I cannot have you communicating with your superiors.”

  “I’ll give you my word. And you can remain in the room. Or put people in here to observe.”

  The maharajah looked at him, looked around the room, noting with a curious smile the lighted billiard table and Mary’s cue, and then he turned back and called for Khan, and the two men talked in soft, low Hindi. Then he nodded at Alan. “I will take responsibility for the risk.” No attempt now to disguise his being in command.

  “Has Major Rao a map of the facility?”

  The maharajah hesitated. “He has notes that he made from your computers. This was done so quickly—”

  “But you can communicate with him?”

  The maharajah stirred as if he was uncomfortable. “A somewhat antiquated system—we are not so high-tech as we might like—”

  Alan was already with Ong and Benvenuto, explaining how they were going to make a map. “I want the whole layout—size of buildings, as near as you can figure; location of doors; layout of buildings with relation to the others; where the clean room and the garage are—everything. Think assault and defense—understand? As if you’re setting up the attack yourselves and were going to brief it.”

  “We’re helping them, sir?” Benvenuto looked as if he was going to break into tears.

  Alan put a hand on Benvenuto’s shoulder. “Pride goeth before a fall. Get to work.”

  They spent a half-hour comparing an overhead satellite photo with the calculations that Ong and Benvenuto made. From that, they put together a rough diagram of the facility.

  Before they were finished, Ong whispered, “Bill says he’s got it.”

  “You and Petty Officer Benvenuto zero in on the garage and the trucks. Go through the old data and the live feed and tell me anything that suggests change. Okay? Anything.”

  He crossed to Bill. “What’ve you got?”

  Bill waved at his screen. He hit a key and the shot changed; he hit another and it changed again: he had taken command of the security screens.

  “Can they tell you’re doing that?” Alan asked him.

  Bill pointed to a smaller laptop. The screen was split into twelve sections, the view of a different security camera on each. He touched a key, and a different twelve appeared. “They got all forty pictures up all the time, maybe on a split screen or something. The preprogram cycles through, like we been seeing, and maybe that’s on a big screen for them, but for sure it’s on the feed going out to the IPs for their bigwigs or whoever to look at. Plus the security guys can bring up any screen they want, which is what I just did here.”

  “Great. See if you can block the security screens at the site and play the old data on them. Understand? So that their security people will see the old stuff and think that everything’s fine. Okay?”

  Bill stirred. “SCADA,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “SCADA. I can do anything with SCADA.” Bill sat like an idol, staring at his screen. “I’m great.”

  “Right. You sure are. Get on it, Bill.”

  Over Bill’s head, he saw Ong looking at them. He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders a fraction. She smiled.

  NCIS HQ, Bahrain

  Dukas’s phone rang and a voice asked him to go secure and then stand by for Admiral Pilchard.

  Pilchard was on within a minute. “Dukas? Admiral Pilchard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My security officer tells me you’re on this goddam leaker. Run through it for me.”

  When he was done, Pilchard said, “Great to get a little good news for a change.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I didn’t need some back-door kibitzer at the White House.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I want you to nail him.”

  “The only quick and sure way is what we call a poison pill.”

  “You mean feed him some piece of bullshit that he’ll pass along. Great minds run in the same channels—I’m already on it.”

  “It would have to come from you and then be denied by you once he’s passed it on.”

  “Yeah, and it has to be believable and it has to be dis-provable after the fact. I’m in a meeting with my flag captain about it right now. I’m going to call you back in no more than ten minutes and tell you what story we’re going to pitch for him.”

  “Admiral, will you back me in going to JAG for a warrant to search LCDR Spinner’s quarters?”

  “Whatever. Call you back.”

  The Serene Highness Hotel

  “How long?”

  The maharajah checked his watch, a rather old Rolex, gold. “About half an hour more, I think.”

  Alan showed him the rough map they’d made of the facility. “I think it would help them to have this.”

  “We didn’t send a fax machine along, I’m afraid.”

  “I can talk it through, sir.”

  The maharajah looked at Khan and made a sign, index finger tapping his right ear, then a bob of the head toward Alan. Khan stepped out of the room and came back within seconds with a headset.

  “How are they doing?”

  The maharajah looked away. “They are very hopeful.”

  Hopeful. Jesus. Alan had done incursions and worked the intel on others, and he knew that hope was your last resort.

  “Hello, hello,” he said into the headset. “Commander Craik here. Hello?”

  “Hello, Commander. Rao here.” The voice sounded amused, slightly uneven because, Alan thought, of the bouncing of a truck. “I’m sorry, Commander. About what we had to do, I mean.”

  Alan knew Rao wasn’t sorry, would have done it again—so would Alan—and so he let the subject pass and said, “We’ve made a diagram of the facility, and I thought it would help you to have it. I can you talk you through it if you want it.”

  Silence, then a burst of chuckles, and then, “Yes, yes, of course—let me get a clean sheet on my clipboard—yes—?”

  Alan glanced at his watch and bit back the urge to feel outrage at what he was reduced to doing. “I’ll start at the northeast corner and move west and south. Got that? You’ll be at the upper right of the map—right? Okay—The perimeter fence appears to enclose an area of at least six acres. It’s metal mesh with razor wire on the top. There is at least fifty meters between the fence and the nearest building in the northeast quadrant of your map; that building is about eighty meters by—”

  It took more than twenty minutes to do it properly. When he was done, Rao went back over several points and was quiet and then said, “Thank you.” And, as if that was not enough—and it wasn’t—“Thank you very much.” He seemed to mean it.

  “How far are you from the gate?”

  “We think perhaps eight kilometers. Rather slow going here—people on the roads, much movement. Many of them have tried to stop us to ask for help. It is very difficult.”

  “Well—good luck.”

  “Yes. Quite.”

  Alan handed back the headset and avoided the maharajah’s ey
es, instead turning away to look at Ong. She beckoned him over.

  “The trucks are gone.”

  That took a second to sink in. “With the missiles?”

  “There isn’t a shot that actually shows, you know, some guys loading a truck with something with a sign on it that says ‘cruise missile,’ but, yeah. We believe they loaded up the missiles and took off.” She turned her head and shook her hair, and it brushed his face. “They’re gone,” she said.

  Alan knew that Rao would have to go in anyway to be sure.

  28

  Bahrain

  Greenbaum had come into the office while Dukas talked to Admiral Pilchard, and Dukas waved him and Rattner over. Leslie hung back and he made a motion at her, too. “We need your brains, Les. Come on.”

  “I don’t want to compromise your case.”

  Dukas laughed. “Lady, if this works, Monica Lewinski couldn’t compromise the case.” Dukas rolled his chair back, put his feet on the desk. “Okay. Pilchard’s going for a poison pill. What d’we need?”

  Rattner and Greenbaum looked at each other. Rattner apparently signaled Greenbaum to do the talking, because he said, “We gotta cover his telephones, his cell phone, and his computers. He lives off-base, but treaty with Bahrain says Navy has jurisdiction over Navy personnel, so we get a warrant from JAG and we’re good to go into his apartment and seize the computer there. Computer in his office is Navy property; we say grab it the moment he leaves.”

  “We think he’ll beat feet out of Fifth Fleet HQ absolutely as soon as he can, once he gets the dope he wants to pass to his old man,” Rattner said.

  Dukas nodded, signaled to Greenbaum to go on.

  “We think me and Rattner should be in the parking lot with a cell-phone scanner. If he comes out, we’ll catch the call. If he doesn’t, he’s gonna either use his laptop or his home computer, or he’s gonna use his home telephone.”

  “You hope.” Dukas was frowning. “He’s gotta plug the laptop in somewhere to send an e-mail, right?” Dukas was not strong on computers.

  “Yeah, modem.”

  “What if he goes to a cyber café?”

  Rattner shook his head. “Too risky. Anybody on staff knows FBI’s got the cafés covered like a blanket.”

  Greenbaum started nodding his head. “We can stop him at the gate. It’s established in law—Marines can stop anybody, search anything, at a military gate. Also seize any suspicious objects.”

  “Yeah, but we want him to send the message first. The message is going to be the proof—he’ll be the only one who has that information; if it gets sent, he’s the leaker. If it gets reported to NSC, his old man’s the contact, and we get double bang for our buck.” Dukas pulled his feet down and leaned forward, his hands folded on the edge of his desk. He jabbed the air with a finger. “Pilchard’s worried that when push comes to shove, he’s going to get dicked by the White House. He wants to show them that they’ve got the problem, not him.” He jabbed the air with a finger again. “Pilchard’s a good guy.” He looked around at them. “We’re going to nail this sonofabitch.” He looked at Greenbaum. “Good job. Now could you do some filing?”

  The Serene Highness Hotel

  After Alan told her that it looked as if the trucks—with the armed missiles—were gone, Mary Totten managed to hide from him the rage she felt. She thought he was an attractive, nice, stupid naval asshole who would be fine in the sack if you put a sock in his mouth but who was so focused on the Navy he couldn’t see that Rao and the nukes were history. But she could: if the nukes were gone, they were gone, and Craik was pissing down the wind by helping Rao and the maharajah.

  She crossed to Bill under the eyes of one of their Indian watchers and bent over him. “You okay?” she murmured.

  “Me? Sure. I guess.” He did look a little better. Using a computer made his blood flow.

  “Bill, you and I have to move on. No, don’t look at me. We’re talking, that’s all. Can you send an e-mail on the little computer in your lap? You can? Okay—send it to the office. Our office, Bill—the WMD office.”

  Bill looked scared. “The Navy guy promised the maha-who-ha guy we wouldn’t send any messages.”

  “Bill—!” Her fingernails dug into his shoulder. “Address the fucking message!” She turned to smile at the maharajah, then to glance around for Alan, who was across the room. Good. “Okay, Bill, this has to go in clear. Okay? So here’s the message. ‘Lost all three contracts today.’ Got that, Bill? Contracts with an r, not contacts—”

  “I can spell ‘contracts’!”

  “It’s better with the r, okay? All right, ‘Lost all three contracts today.’ Then, ‘Sailors all screwed up here. Sailors—all—’ Good! Then, ‘Going after new customer CEO.’ Great. Now hit send. Bill—hit send—No! don’t look at Craik! Hit send, Bill—!” She raised her eyebrows at the maharajah, as if dealing with subordinates was just such a bore. “Oka-a-a-a-y, Bill. Now—I want you to find the main server that the Servants of the Earth are using. Okay? The one where the most of their traffic is going? I mean, if we locate the server, we’re probably going to be close to their HQ, right?”

  Bill’s lips moved. Finally, after thus talking to himself for about ten seconds, he said, “Probably.”

  “Okay. Do a traffic-flow analysis. Can you do that?”

  “My laptop’s supporting SCADA seizure.”

  She looked down at the mini in his lap. “How about that one?”

  “Oh—Well.” He frowned. “I’d be doing two things at once.”

  “That’s why I brought you along, Bill—because you’re the kind of guy who can do two things at once.”

  Bill’s eyes flicked sideways at her hair, which was brushing his face, then down at her breasts.

  “Okay.” He gulped. “But the Navy guy won’t like it.”

  She showed her teeth. “The Navy guy won’t know about it.”

  Radio Beijing

  “The almost total collapse of the nation of India continues to be marked by armed clashes inside the country and by provocations along the border with China. As the military buildup on the border grows more intense, the People’s Army has rushed troops and heavy weapons to the area to defend Chinese sovereignty.

  “Nothing has been heard in thirty-six hours from the Indian Prime Minister. The state of emergency declared by chief of the armed forces Major-General Praba Ramasubu has not been confirmed by civilian authority. The strong possibility remains, therefore, that a military coup, coupled with a falsification of events to divert our eyes from the provocations along the border, is what has been engineered in India.

  “Forward elements of the People’s Army are prepared to resist to the death this outrage. Any movement across the border will be answered by massive force, up to and including what President Jong-Wu called last night ‘ultimate weaponry.’ Let renegade elements in India beware!

  “The suffering people of India continue to groan under this burden. Food is now scarce in many parts of the country. Water systems have failed in at least six states. No major city has reliable electrical power. The computer industry, long the jewel in modern India’s crown, has collapsed. Units of the army and navy continue to battle among themselves in a frenzy of self-destruction that may have been rigged by power-hungry nationalists at the top of the military order.”

  The Serene Highness Hotel

  “They can see the gate,” the maharajah said to the room. He held up a headset and Alan hurried over; the maharajah pressed it against his ear, and he heard Rao’s voice say, “Ten seconds.”

  On the computer screens, the gate was seen from inside, four armed men standing about. On the road outside, figures—workmen or idlers—straggled toward it. Something grabbed their attention; several pointed, and heads turned toward the approach road. It was like a silent film without the music and without titles, strangely unfinished-looking, as if reality would become real next week when the other elements were added. Then a Land Rover pulled up at the lowered barrier and ever
y door was flung wide. A dark stick figure came out of one of the gate buildings and was knocked flat by an invisible hand. The workers were already off the road, flat in the ditch or running across the fields of industrial rubble. One of Rao’s men jumped back into the lead vehicle and, as the gate rose, drove it forward, the passenger doors snapping shut with the suddenness of his acceleration.

  “They’re in,” Alan said to the maharajah, and he nodded as, on the screen, a heavy truck flew through the gate, accelerating all the way, the tires flinging gravel and dust. The maharajah, holding the headset to one ear, said, “They say an alarm has sounded.”

  Alan whirled toward Bill. “Are you feeding them that old footage?”

  “Yeah, yeah—yeah, I’m doing it, I’m doing it—!”

  Alan grabbed Mary. “You going to monitor the clean room?”

  “You bet your ass!”

  “Warn them of any resistance, any guards—anything!” He ran to Ong. “Can you pull up the outside of Building One while Mary’s—? You sure? Okay—I want you to stay on the outside, more than one view if you can—we’ve got to know if anybody is moving toward it. We’re the only early-warning system these guys have got!”

  He raced back to Bill. “Can you show me the live feed and still block their security? I need to—” Bill was waving at his larger laptop. Alan saw a loading dock, doors, metal surfaces catching the late-day light. The Land Rover appeared far away at the left of the screen and slammed to a stop and two men spilled out the back; then it was accelerating again toward the camera.

  The Land Rover accelerated around a short curve into a flat gravel apron between the back of the main factory building and the front of the garage, with a low shed making the parking apron a cul-de-sac. They knew of the shed only from the satellite photography because the security camera was actually sitting on it, unable to see itself. The Land Rover, however, was blocked by it; it spun in a controlled skid, stopped, and people jumped out. Far behind them, one of the trucks turned into the space between the buildings.