Koontz leaned forward. “Why would Foobar want to risk that? Haven’t we been beating him up pretty badly lately?”
“Yes, but it’s not actually much of a risk. The coalition is already hitting him about as hard as it can from the air, and that hasn’t slowed him down, since his forces are widely dispersed and billeted in civilian villages as well. On our side, nobody’s been willing to commit troops to the ground, and that’s not likely to change. The U.S., Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are already in the coalition, and, leaving Turkey aside, the rest of the NATO nations put together wouldn’t be able to contribute a whole lot militarily. So he may be thinking he doesn’t have a lot to lose by taking the next step. And in the short term—by which I mean six months—he’d be right. Even if NATO decided to commit some ground troops, it can’t mobilize a force big enough to matter any faster than that.”
Koontz wasn’t satisfied. “Still, why try and take on Turkey at all? They’ve got a real army and air force and a hell of a lot more heavy and sophisticated weapons than Foobar has.”
“True, but Foobar’s recruiting efforts have been lagging lately. The West has clamped down hard on immigration, and we’ve been shutting down his social media sites a lot more quickly. Not as many young radicals are making it through now, and the Caliphate does continue to take casualties. So in a war of attrition, he has to lose eventually. But if all of NATO declares war against the Caliphate, Foobar would be sure to claim that the entire Crusader West is once again uniting to stamp out Islam. That would certainly bring in more recruits no matter how hard we try to stop them from getting through. Clearly, he thinks he’ll gain more than he loses. And he’s probably right.”
“That’s not really what we’re here to discuss,” Henderson interrupted. “Thank you, Stuart. We’ve got a tight schedule, so I’m going to ask Lieutenant Travers to give us the domestic and European threat overview.”
Travers took over the remote and clicked through to a map of America. It took a moment for Frank to notice there were four black dots widely scattered across the country.
“These are the only attacks Foobar has claimed credit for in the United States to date. So far as we can tell, they were all conducted by self-radicalized, solo Internet recruits. In other words, we don’t believe that any of these attacks was managed and directed, as compared to just inspired, by the Caliphate.” She clicked the remote, and a map of Europe appeared next to that of the U.S. This one was pockmarked with dozens of dots.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the case in Europe. The Caliphate has claimed credit for all the attacks you see here, and most of the perpetrators had traveled to Caliphate-controlled territory for training before Turkey tightened up its border. So as you can see, there have been a lot more attacks, and directed ones at that, in Europe than in the U.S. But it looks like that’s going to change.” She clicked the remote again, and now more than sixty dots of various colors were scattered across the map of the United States.
“Every dot you see here represents a break-in we believe was engineered by the Caliphate. Most, but not all, are explosives related. The red dots are all out west, and each one represents a mining operation. Most are copper mines in fairly isolated locations. The price of copper has been in the basement for a couple of years now, so each of these mines was mothballed. Since they aren’t closed for good, they still have lots of blasting caps and radio controls on-site but only skeleton maintenance staff. It didn’t take more than bolt cutters and a truck to empty out those storehouses.” She updated the map again, and only the orange dots remained.
“As you can see, these dots are spread out all over the country. They represent large farms and agricultural supply depots. The target in these locations was ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which can be weaponized into the kind of bomb Timothy McVeigh used on the Federal Courthouse in Oklahoma City.”
Frank shot Koontz a knowing look.
“Wait a minute,” Koontz interrupted. “If this is going on all over the country, how come it hasn’t been in the news?”
“It has but just in the local media, because the people behind the thefts were clever. At the mines, they only took equipment and not tons of explosives—although they could have. And at the farm depots, they took lots of unrelated goods as well as fertilizer and never more than fifty bags of that from any one location. So each of these break-ins looked like a small-time, local job. But that fertilizer comes in fifty-pound bags. If somebody steals fifty bags fifty times, you’re talking about a lot of boom. So far, the national media hasn’t connected the dots, so to speak, and the administration doesn’t want to shine a light on what’s going on until it’s figured out what it can do to protect the country against an attack.”
The chair followed up with a question of his own. “Exactly how much ‘boom’ are we talking about here?”
“A lot. Enough to make twenty bombs the size McVeigh used. And ten miles away from Oklahoma City, that blast registered over 3.0 on the Richter Scale.”
“So now let’s talk about the green dots,” Travers continued. “There are only two of those, and they’re biohazard labs. We’re not talking about illegal entries here, though, as it would be tough to break into a Biosafety Level IV lab without word leaking out to the media. What happened in each of these locations is that an audit discovered that some ‘weaponized’ samples, together with descriptions of how they were created, were never received at their intended destinations—someone was able to change the recipient addresses from legitimate labs to other locations before they were delivered. Unfortunately, there are two Level IV labs in the parts of Syria Foobar controls that we think are intact, so he’s got everything he needs to propagate those materials.
“The black dots mark the last type of incident I want to talk about. Each one indicates a power grid or telecom field maintenance office. If you look carefully, you can see that there are about a dozen of these. In each case, laptops and records were stolen. We can’t be sure that these incidents are related to the others, but it’s awfully unusual for so many of this type of facility to be targeted in a short time frame. Questions?”
Frank surprised himself by speaking up. “Has any evidence surfaced that anyone hacked any computers at any of the break-in locations, either before or after the thefts?”
“Not so far as we can tell.”
“Thanks.” Well. That was interesting. It was also interesting to learn the CIA believed the Caliphate was being financed from abroad, although it did not yet know by whom.
Frank considered what he’d heard as he drove home from Fort Meade. It seemed that the more he learned, the more Foobar’s capabilities and strategy seemed to focus on traditional rather than cyber weapons. But he’d learned his lesson about making up his mind too soon. If Foobar was in fact planning some sort of cyberattack, maybe one of America’s other enemies was helping him out?
But who? Despite the hostility North Korea and Iraq continued to vent against America and the more nuanced rumblings of Russia and China, the worst damage from a cyberattack that any enemy of the United States had succeeded in causing to date had not been serious. A government agency website had been taken down for a day or two and personnel records from poorly secured government servers had been stolen. That was pretty small potatoes compared to a real war.
No, he was still going to put his money on explosives. But if he was right, he still had to figure out how and where Foobar would strike.
* * *
That evening, Frank opened the door to his apartment and walked to the head of the stairs, but there was no Marla walking up to greet him. That was odd; she’d pressed the buzzer downstairs as usual to announce her arrival. Then he heard the elevator doors open behind him and turned to see her step into the hallway, struggling with an extremely large, gift-wrapped box.
“Happy Birthday!”
“Now what have yo
u done? Here, let me help you with that.”
“Bought you a birthday present, of course. Thanks!” She surrendered the box with relief.
“What in the world did you get me? I’m trying to get rid of things, not get more.”
“Oh, don’t be such an old poop. This is my greatest gift for you ever! I can’t wait to see your face when you open it.”
His door had closed and locked behind him, so he tried to balance the package precariously on one raised knee while he struggled to retrieve his keys from his pocket.
“Here. I’ve got my key. You just hang on tight to that package.”
She opened the door and he followed her into his living room, wondering what in heaven’s name could be inside the box; it was more unwieldy than heavy, but its center of gravity seemed to shift from one side to the other as he carried it.
“Okay. What do you think it is?”
“I have no idea. I really don’t. What is it?”
“You’ll have to open it to find out. Go ahead. No, wait a minute.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’ve got to get a picture of this.”
With more trepidation than curiosity, he tore away the paper and began pulling up the tape that held the box shut. When he opened it, he saw another large box, this one made out of semi-opaque plastic. “You … bought me a storage bin?”
She laughed. “Not just a storage bin. That just goes along with the real present. Take the top off.”
He did as instructed and found that the bin was filled with more boxes.
“So you bought me a bunch of packing materials for my move. That’s my big present?”
She laughed again. “Of course not. Open that one over there first. I want to see how long it takes you to figure this out.”
He opened the box as instructed and found a small heat lamp. He stared blankly at Marla.
“Okay, now open that one.”
This time he picked it up to examine it first. On the side, it read, “Pet bedding.”
“Oh no. Oh no, you didn’t—”
“Okay! Now open that big one!” She raised her phone up to her eye.
“Marla, you can’t really have done this.”
“Open it!”
He took the last box out of the bin. As feared, it had air holes in the top. And something inside was moving. “Marla, I can’t have a pet. They take too much time and trouble. I’d probably forget to feed it—”
“Will you PLEASE open that box?”
Now with unambiguously pure and unadulterated trepidation, he raised the lid and stared down into the eyes of an animal that was staring back up at him. He heard Marla’s camera make a sound like a prison cell door’s bolt sliding into place.
“You bought me a turtle?!?”
“No! A tortoise! Isn’t he great! I found him at a rescue shelter, and his name is Thor!”
“Thor?”
“Yes! I figured he’d be the perfect companion for you. You looked so sad the other day when we were talking about Simone.”
“I did not!”
“Yes, you did!”
“I did not, but anyway, are you suggesting a turtle—okay, a tortoise—would be an appropriate stand-in for a sophisticated French political scientist?”
“Well, no. But you won’t have to walk a tortoise or even talk to it. And don’t take this in a bad way, but he kind of reminds me of you.”
“I’m having a very hard time thinking what a good way to take that would be.”
If that was a question, she decided it was a good one to ignore. “Really, he should be perfect for you. You can feed him just about any kind of vegetables you happen to have in the refrig—okay, let me start that one over. You can buy whatever kind of vegetables you want to feed Thor. When you don’t want company, you can just forget about him and leave him in his bin in a closet with his light on and he’ll be perfectly fine. But if you want company, you can take him out and let him be in the room with you. Isn’t that just great?”
It was not just great. Or even a pale shadow of something way over to the wrong side of great and not even within sight of good, but Marla looked so pleased with her surprise gift he didn’t have the heart to point that out. So he summoned up a weak smile, said something about it being a very considerate gift, and gingerly picked Thor up to get a better look at him. The tortoise promptly urinated in his lap.
Marla put her hand up to her mouth. “Oh! I forgot to warn you about that! They said a tortoise might do that until he gets used to you. But after that, it will be just great!” She ran into the kitchen to get a roll of paper towels and then pretended to look at her phone. “Oh! I’ve got to get out of here! Sorry I can’t stay any longer, but now you and Thor can start getting acquainted.” She gave him a kiss on the top of his head and beat a hasty retreat.
Frank mopped his crotch with a handful of paper towels and looked down at Thor, now back in his bin and inside his shell as well. How did things like this happen to him?
He retreated to his bedroom to change, and on his return, he noticed one more item in the bottom of the big gift box. He was relieved to see it was a paperback book titled So Now You’ve Got a Tortoise! He opened it up and learned to his horror that Thor would likely outlive him. Why couldn’t Marla have given him something more short-lived, like a hamster or an octopus?
He dumped some of the bedding into the bin, clamped the heat lamp on the side, and then walked into the kitchen to find something to put water in. But he’d already thrown out or stored just about everything concave he’d ever owned. He finally settled on a peanut butter jar top, filled that, and set it down in the bin. The tortoise, now out of its shell, looked up at him with an accusatory stare.
“What?” Frank said.
But the tortoise just continued to stare.
With some effort, Frank came to the likely answer. “Are you hungry?”
The tortoise stared.
“Oh, all right!”
Grumbling uncharitable remarks, Frank donned his jacket and stomped down the stairs, returning ten minutes later with a tired-looking, overpriced head of lettuce from the convenience store on the corner. He peeled a few leaves off and dropped them in the bin. To his relief, the tortoise promptly began munching on them. He sat down to watch as the animal consumed one leaf after the other with slow gravity. When it was done, it looked up at him again. He peeled off another leaf and held it forward, wondering if it would eat out of his hand. It stared solemnly back at him instead.
“Now what?”
He was at a loss. What else could you do for a tortoise? For want of a better idea, he picked it up and set it on the floor. It immediately lumbered under the couch and didn’t reemerge. Well, if it was happy down there, so be it. He put all the boxes and wrapping paper back into the gift box, and he put that, along with the bin, in a closet. With a sigh of resignation, he picked up his laptop and returned to what he had been doing before Marla interrupted his solitary but settled life with her best gift ever. Within five minutes, he had forgotten all about his new roommate.
* * *
7
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
The day had arrived when Frank had promised to “meet” Marla’s new beau over dinner. It would have been awkward enough if he’d never met Tim before, but playing along with the current situation made him feel cheap and deceitful.
So there he stood, alone in front of a trendy restaurant in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, waiting for Marla and Tim. And now there they were, coming around the corner; Tim looked as uncomfortable as Frank felt.
“So! You’re already here! Dad, meet Tim.”
“Pleased to meet…” they both said, each starting and stopping at the same instant and then talking over each other again.
Marla laughed. “I said you
were both a lot alike. Let’s go inside.”
Tim hesitated and then walked into the restaurant next to Marla while Frank trailed behind.
When they reached their table, Marla took a seat next to Frank so he could get a better impression of Tim. He decided that Tim was neither particularly good nor bad looking, although he knew Marla’s opinion was more favorable. That was all to the good, Frank guessed, and anyway, he’d never understood how women looked at men, or anything else, for that matter. And Tim was very attentive to Marla; she led the conversation far more than he did, and Tim often nodded slightly in agreement when she spoke. Frank concluded that Slattery was a keeper from his perspective as well, and decided he should get to know him better.
“So what did you do your master’s thesis on?” he asked during a lull in the conversation.
“Transparency and director responsibility in corporate governance.”
“From what perspective?”
“I looked at instances where executives acted in socially undesirable ways and attempted to show that such activities were much less likely to occur in companies with boards that included outside directors who were actively engaged in board committees. I would have preferred to take a look at how politicians behave but couldn’t sell that to my thesis advisor.”
The Doodlebug War Page 7
