by Dale Brown
A leg. Attached to a body. A body in a pool of half-dried blood on the porch.
“I’m guessing you’re Amin Greene,” he told it, taking out his cell phone.
96
Boston—later that day
“There’s no question now that Ghadab’s in the U.S. And we have to assume that he’s interested in you. You specifically, Chelsea.”
Johansen’s face filled the screen at the front of the Box. He was in D.C., or at Langley, or somewhere—he didn’t say.
Chelsea glanced at Massina, standing a few feet away, arms crossed in front of him. Johnny and Bozzone were behind him.
“Where is Ghadab now?” asked Massina.
“I don’t know,” said Johansen. “The data on the flash drive we found points to Boston. They have plans for Fenway Park, Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, and a few other places around town.”
A USB flash drive had been discovered on “Persia,” a CIA double agent discovered killed by knife wounds on a farm in Vermont. There was no question in anyone’s mind that the man had been killed by Ghadab; the wounds were very similar to those of others he’d killed. The drive contained a host of documents and backed-up web pages that, as Johansen said, seemed to indicate Boston was once again a target. So much so that a special task force with the CIA, FBI, and state authorities was going to set up shop in town.
Johansen had shared the entire contents of the drive, though not the drive itself, with Massina’s team at the beginning of his briefing. The Agency theorized that Persia was planning to give the drive to his contact when Ghadab discovered his treachery and killed him.
“The one thing that doesn’t make sense to me,” said Johnny, speaking for the first time since the meeting started, “is the drive. Why leave it in his pocket?”
“Everything was still in his pockets,” said Johansen. “His wallet, money—it looks like there was an argument, and he fled.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ghadab,” said Chelsea. “He’s very methodical.”
“Granted. We can’t rule out that this was a misdirection play. We’re looking into other possible targets. But we would be foolish not to put Boston on high alert. The FBI is trying to track him down.”
“Maybe he tied Chelsea to Palmyra,” said Johnny. “But what about the rest of us?”
“Everyone who was on the mission may be a target,” said Johansen. “But we found her personal information on the drive.”
“What do you think, Chelsea?” asked Massina.
“He’s definitely in the U.S.,” she said softly.
“We can have a dozen marshals from the U.S. Marshals Service watching you around the clock,” said Johansen.
“I don’t think I need that,” said Chelsea.
“You need some protection,” said Johnny.
“A whole army?”
“We can make it as unobtrusive as possible,” said Johansen.
“I agree, she has to be protected,” said Massina. “As does Johnny. We welcome the assistance—our head of security will work with your people.”
“The attack is going to be made against nuclear plants,” said Chelsea. “That’s what they were researching.”
“That may have been his original plan,” agreed Johansen. “But now—this data is different. And power plants, they are very hard to hit.”
“There’s always the fear factor, though,” said Massina. “Even an unsuccessful attack would panic a lot of people.”
“True.”
Chelsea’s attention drifted as Johansen outlined the precautions they would take. It seemed unreal. She doubted she was really the target.
He figured out that the dead man was a CIA agent somehow. He’d use that.
What’s the real target?
Boston again?
No terrorist had ever hit the same target again, at least not so quickly. But sometimes the most obvious solution was the right one.
Johansen signed off. Massina stood up.
“Everyone will be guarded,” Massina said. “We will provide a safe house—safe houses. Beef is in charge.”
Bozzone nodded.
“No unnecessary risks for our people,” Massina said. “For anyone.”
“So what are you going to do?” Johnny asked her as they left the Box.
“I’m going back to work,” she said. “What else can I do?”
97
Boston—three days later
In the days that followed, Boston became something of an armed camp. Homeland Security issued a blanket warning, saying an attack was imminent and that Boston appeared to be “high on the list” of potential targets.
A deluge of news reports—most wildly speculative—filled the web and airwaves. National Guard troops moved onto power installations in every state, not just Boston. Police forces suspended vacations. People suspected of terrorist leanings were brought in for questioning or put under surveillance. Police officers, many armed with AR-15s and shotguns, guarded every notable building in Boston, and much of the Northeast.
Boston’s mood was defiant. People went about their business with a definite edge. Even though the Red Sox were out of town, thousands of young fans showed up at Fenway every afternoon to keep vigil, staying well into the night. Other citizens gathered spontaneously at the city’s landmarks. The police didn’t like this—they argued, with some logic, that the presence of so many civilians increased the danger, presenting rich targets of opportunity.
But who could take issue with the attitude? Who would have expected less?
Massina understood: You don’t mess with Boston. You don’t mess with America.
But he was frustrated. He knew far more than the kids who slept on the grass at the Common, but he was just as impotent. Socrates churned through millions of leads, yet produced nothing tangible. The chat rooms Massina had lurked in buzzed, but the identities he had linked to terrorists had disappeared.
Johansen—who’d come up to Boston as part of the task force—claimed to be sharing everything he knew, but Massina still had doubts.
On the morning of the third day after the general alert had been sounded, the FBI staged a series of raids in the Burlington area, along with smaller actions in Minneapolis and Portland, Maine. Twenty-five would-be terrorists—several of whom had been first identified by Socrates—were arrested; two caches of weapons and material that could be used to make bombs were seized. A similar raid in the Montreal area by Canada’s Mounties yielded ten terrorists and a small armory’s worth of weapons.
The news media exhaled.
But Massina didn’t. Ghadab wasn’t among those arrested, and until he was found, the danger remained.
Six hours after the raids were completed, a liaison at the FBI forwarded the names of the suspects and what was known about them to Smart Metal. By that time, Chelsea and her team—augmented by a dozen other Smart Metal employees and two “loaners” from the NSA—had fed the names to Socrates.
The results were very disappointing. As Chelsea put it in her 6 p.m. briefing to Massina: “Aside from the geography, we’ve found no link between any of the people who have been arrested and Ghadab.”
“Does that mean there is no connection?” Massina asked. “Or we just haven’t found it?”
“Hard to know at this point.” Chelsea was talking to him via a secure link they had established between the Annex and the main building. “I have something else I thought we should try. The identities of the people in the bunker—Johansen never shared that with us.”
“Do they know who they are?”
“I’m sure they do.”
“I’ll ask. That may just send us on some wild-goose chases,” added Massina. “I’m sure the CIA has already checked into them.”
“We have to keep trying. And Socrates is better at teasing out connections than they are.”
“Or at least that they let on,” said Massina. “I’ll talk to them.”
Chelsea had the profiles within an hour. The AI program thrashed away, explor
ing their profiles and plotting possible links. Unlike the first few days where she’d constantly been tweaking the program, there was now little for her to do aside from occasionally looking at what Socrates was probing. The connections it found seemed fairly random, even to the computer: 50 percent probabilities and less. Nothing pointed back to the U.S., and even the connections to Ghadab and the rest of the Daesh hierarchy were tentative.
Hours passed. Chelsea felt her eyes closing; the next thing she knew someone had jerked her leg.
“What?!” she yelled, bolting upright.
“Hey, relax,” said Johnny, standing over her. “I was just checking to see if you were awake.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking after you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to be working the rest of the night.”
“Good,” said Johnny. “I rotated in to supervise the security team. You’re part of my mission.”
“Well, then, get me some coffee.”
She tried smiling. Johnny didn’t seem to think it was much of a joke.
“When was the last time you got some real sleep?” he asked.
“I’m all right.” She got up and walked over to the coffee machines. With the increase in staffing, they had added two microwaves and a pair of refrigerators, along with two more coffee makers.
“Seriously, you do need to get rest.”
“An espresso machine would be better,” she told him.
Johnny followed her over. “You mad at me?”
“No.” She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
Chelsea pulled over a cup and poured. “I gotta figure this out. We will,” she added.
Back at the console, Chelsea scrolled through the windows detailing what Socrates was up to. It had located what appeared to be a safe house in Chechnya; it highlighted the information, putting it in a special tab for further investigation.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” he told her. “Why do they have so many computers there?”
“Where?”
“In the bunker. Why? No guns, no explosives—”
“Everybody uses computers. They were planning.”
“If you’re talking to people, one or two will do it. Surfing the web—they don’t use it for porn.”
“Oh yeah they do. You should see what they look at. Violent stuff.” Chelsea shook her head. The Daesh people who worked with Ghadab were sick misogynists.
The ones that didn’t prefer little boys, that was.
“You’re thinking they’re primitive,” Chelsea told him. “Like because they’re from the Middle East, they don’t use computers. That’s not true. They’re crazy, but they’re not primitive.”
“What were they using the computers to do?”
“Map targets.”
“But you said they were looking at Chernobyl. There are no other plants like that, right?”
“It’s the idea that’s important. And we’re missing data,” said Chelsea. “If we had the original computers, if we had all the data, maybe we’d know.”
“Sometimes you can have too much information,” suggested Johnny.
“Not in my world,” she said, turning back to the screens.
Of the prisoners and the others who’d been in the bunker and identified already, one was a doctoral student in nuclear physics—which reinforced the nuclear-plant theory.
The others had all been software engineers or computer-science majors. Two, according to Socrates, had been active hackers, running scams on Facebook and harvesting credit-card numbers from European retailers.
Not one had anything in common with the people arrested earlier in the day. They did, however, have links to Ghadab.
Subtle links. They’d been in the same countries at times when he was there. They’d looked at the same websites, listened to podcasts from the same demented imams.
Maybe there were messages there. Socrates kept probing.
They were onto something, Chelsea thought, but they didn’t have it yet.
An hour later, even Chelsea had to admit she needed a break.
And food.
“I’m going to go get something to eat, take a shower,” she announced to the room. “I’ll be back.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Johnny.
Chelsea knew it made no sense to object, especially as he enlisted two other security people—John Bowles and Greta Torbin—to come along as well. Bowles was rather tall and sinewy; Greta was nearly a foot shorter but had fought mixed martial arts. Both were armed with AR-15s.
Johnny insisted that Chelsea put on a bulletproof vest before they went upstairs. Too tired to argue any more, she cinched it up, then fell in between Bowles and Torbin as they went up to one of the SUVs. Johnny got in the back with her; the others took the front, with Bowles at the wheel.
“They had hackers,” Chelsea told Johnny as they started for her home on the west side of the city. “Pretty good ones.”
“OK.”
“And a programmer who worked on environmental controls.”
“Like global warming?”
“No, environmental controls. Like cooling, that kind of stuff.”
“Maybe they want to attack our air-conditioning supplies.” Johnny laughed.
But Chelsea was serious.
“There must be a connection to what he’s doing now.”
“You’re looking for logic from a nutjob,” said Johnny.
They drove the rest of the way in silence. It was a little past six, but it seemed to Chelsea there was far less traffic than normal, as if the city was still not quite sure whether to go fully back to normal or not. A few blocks from her apartment, Chelsea realized she had left the air-conditioning off while she’d been gone; the rooms would be sweltering. She took out her phone, then keyed up the app that controlled her lights and appliances.
“Preset One, make it cold,” she told the app.
The screen blinked, then presented a quick environmental rundown—the apartment was eighty-six degrees.
“Good thing you don’t have a cat,” said Johnny, looking at the screen. “It’ll never cool off. We’re like two blocks away. Come over and rest at my house.”
“No, I want to go home.”
Bowles slowed as they turned onto the block, looking for a spot to park. Chelsea leaned forward to tell him to just let her off—he could park down the street—when she saw a flash from down the block.
Something exploded to her right—a missile had just struck her apartment.
98
Smart Metal Headquarters, Boston—a moment later
Massina had just turned from his desk to look out the window when he saw it flying in the distance: a Sikorsky S-92A, a huge beast coming in from the north, low, in the direction of the city center. The sun glinted off its nose; it looked like a muscular cat striding across the northern reaches of the city. The helicopter veered in his direction, banking and then leveling, heading directly toward his building.
Directly toward it.
Massina watched as it grew bigger. It was low, barely above him—descending, in fact, in his direction.
Get out!
He reached the outer office just as the helicopter smashed into the exterior windows.
99
Boston—that exact moment
“We’re under attack!” Johnny pushed forward against his seat belt, leaning toward the front seats. “Get us out of here!”
Bowles had already thrown the SUV into reverse. They spun into a U-turn. Johnny grabbed Chelsea, pushing her down in the seat.
“Hey!”
“Keep your head down until you’re out of here. Bowles, get us over to the office.”
Something exploded behind them. Another missile, Johnny thought, or maybe an IED.
He pulled out his radio, which was set for the common security channel. “Somebody just attacked Chelsea’s house,” he said. “C
all nine-one-one.”
“Johnny—the Smart Metal building’s just been struck,” said the desk man. “Something flew into the top floor.”
“No.”
“Outside—there are IEDs. We’re under attack here.”
Johnny heard an explosion over the radio.
“Bowles, we need to get to the Mountain.”
The Mountain was a safe house near Bald Hill well northwest of the city. Massina had purchased the property several years before, keeping the two buildings on it vacant. In the past few days he had clandestinely had work done to increase its security. Two Smart Metal security people were stationed there around the clock.
“I need to get back to work,” insisted Chelsea.
“We need to keep you safe,” said Johnny.
“If we’re under attack, I need to get to work. Get me to the Annex so I can help track him down.”
“Johnny, Bozzone’s been hit,” said Peter Mench, one of the shift supervisors. “A truck hit the front of the building and blew up at the barrier. We need you.”
“Secure it. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Johnny put his hand to his forehead, as if rubbing the outside of his brain might organize the cells and their thoughts inside. He’d expected something like this, trained for it, prepared, but going from the theoretical to the reality always involved friction—it never happened the way you thought it would.
“The building’s been hit,” he told the others. “Drop me on Cambridge and take Chelsea to the Mountain.”
“I need to be somewhere I can do some good,” protested Chelsea.
Johnny ignored her. “She’s your priority,” he told Bowles. “I can get to the office probably quicker on foot anyway.”
“I’m not running away,” insisted Chelsea.
“You’re not.”
Bowles slammed on the brakes. The traffic ahead had stopped dead.
“Throw it into reverse,” Johnny insisted. His brain hiccup was over—he could see what he had to do clearly and easily. “Go over to Longfellow, get away from the city. Go!”
