by Mike Kraus
As one of many main ports set to receive enormous amounts of aid, the Los Angeles Port must be repaired and prepared for the arrival of dozens of cargo ships. A lack of manpower necessitates the opening of only a small section of the massive port and the selected location is one of the ones damaged by a bomb during the initial attacks. The cleanup process proceeds smoothly, though, with debris pushed out into the water or piled high in two designated spots by a pair of bulldozers.
Once the debris is cleared the holding areas are cleared of any cargo containers that were left over from during the attacks. These containers are moved out by truck to different sections of the port, their contents unknown and forgotten as they are doomed to sit for an indeterminate amount of time before someone is able to open and search through them.
Fresh concrete and rebar is used to rebuild and reinforce key high-traffic areas of the port that were damaged, while at the same time the electrical connections to the massive cranes and lights are repaired. The blast from the ship and the pair of trucks that were at the port severed lines both above and beneath the ground but it takes the crew of workers less than a day to find and replace the bad lines and restore power to all of the key systems.
In a matter of days the critically damaged port is transformed and turned from a darkened and damaged maze of metal and concrete into a small, functional and well-lit miniature city. A group of military personnel consisting of soldiers from the Army and National Guard as well as a handful of Marines stand guard over the port. Their presence is, initially, solely for security but they soon begin to perform other functions as it becomes clear there aren’t enough skilled civilians to handle the daunting task of offloading all of the ships. A few of the longtime workers at the port are located and brought to the port, exchanging their skills and labor for food, water and security that is so hard to come by.
Before any vessels are offloaded they are checked top to bottom by a group of soldiers outfitted with detection devices of every type. The delay in clearing each cargo ship is excruciating but the government refuses to budge on the issue. As the hours and days pass, the clearing team grows faster and more efficient with their work, leading to a glut of cleared ships waiting to dock so they can offload their supplies. The workers at the port, while initially left with little to do, must quickly spring into action.
Cargo containers are filled with nonperishable food, parts to repair key systems damaged during the attacks, medicine, portable shelters and more. Each container, once taken off the ship, is quickly unloaded into a warehouse where the contents are cataloged and marked with the location where they are to be delivered.
Convoys move between the port and the airfield multiple times per day, working based on the schedule of the aircraft that transport the goods to their ultimate destinations. Some goods are transported over land but the urgency involved in delivering food, water purifiers and medicine to key regions necessitates the use of air delivery.
The main transport aircraft consist of C-17 Globemasters due to their ability to take off from and land on runways that are short, damaged or otherwise inaccessible to large aircraft. C-5M Super Galaxies and C-130s form the bulk of the rest of the transport fleet. Civilian airliners are strictly prohibited from being used due to fears that they may have been compromised.
Despite the massive amount of transport vehicles in use there is still a clear shortage of men and machinery during the crisis. Dealing with the effects of the bombs and biological attacks leaves the military stretched thin. Tens of thousands of troops are brought home from overseas deployments and they are immediately reassigned to help deal with the situation on their home soil. Even with this influx of manpower there is still much to be done that goes unfinished.
Tens of thousands of civilian and military vehicles sit by the wayside, unable to be used in the rescue operation. The military struggles with checking and verifying the systems on their vehicles before allowing them to go out in the field. A few brave civilians take it upon themselves to use their vehicles to help transport emergency supplies and survivors but any vehicle that hasn’t been checked by the military isn’t allowed inside the survivor cities.
This situation leaves most cities with miles-long lines on the highways leading in as soldiers force survivors to abandon their vehicles. In the cases where vehicles may be useful inside the city they will check them from top to bottom to clear them for entry but the additional workload provided by these cases strains their resources even further.
At the end of the day the ongoing chaos caused by the attacks threatens to overwhelm the fragile response network set up by local, state and federal governments. Each new development pushes the response teams closer to their limit, stretches their resources even farther and destroys the lives of countless more souls. All it will take is one more large, coordinated attack and everything will collapse beyond hope of repair.
Chapter 4
“So he’s planning something bigger, huh?” Linda sighed. “I knew he would be. What is it, though?”
“I’m not certain.” Sarah tapped away at her computer on her lap. “I’ve spent every spare minute since the start of the attacks reviewing the data dump I was able to make from the annex.”
“You what? You dumped the data from the annex?” Linda’s eyes widened. “How did you manage that?”
“I was in the chain of command to purge the databases. I realized pretty quickly though that if I did that then we’d lose a lot of valuable data pertaining to the attacks. So I falsified a purge command and went back a day later and pulled the physical drives and brought them here.” Linda stared open-mouthed at Sarah for several seconds, not sure what to think or say. “You seem surprised.” Sarah smiled.
“I… how… why would you do something like that? You were the most straight-laced person I ever met!”
Sarah shrugged. “Am I? I did help you, after all.”
“Yeah, but you never betrayed classified information. You always just nudged me in the right direction.”
“I’m loyal to this country, Linda. Once I realized that we were going to lose information vital to protecting our country I did what I had to do. Just like with you. I knew you were onto something important so I helped you where I could without betraying my oath because, at that time, that was the right thing to do.”
Linda nodded slowly. “I suppose. What is it you’ve found in your database?”
“Like I was saying, I’m not certain. There are hints that someone has been trying to bring dangerous materials into the country.”
“What type?”
“Nuclear.”
“What?! Someone’s been bringing nukes in? And nobody found out? How is that possible?”
“Well,” Sarah said, brushing a loose strand of hair back over her ear, “there’s a lot to break down to tell you all of that.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Tell me everything.”
“All right.” Sarah resumed her typing and clicking. “So I’ve spent every spare minute possible looking for anomalies that could be related to the attacks. I’ve had some software assistance but I don’t have the computing power here to crunch the data like the agency does. A lot of it’s been guesswork, but…” Sarah spun her computer around to show Linda the screen. “A month before the attacks there was a strange little incident at the Los Angeles Port. Their radiation detectors went absolutely insane but it was filed as an equipment malfunction.”
“And you don’t think it was a malfunction?”
“If it was an equipment malfunction then it was the most specific equipment malfunction I think there’s ever been in the history of the world. The sensors don’t just detect radiation. They detect the type, the strength and the distribution throughout the container. If you ship a crate of bananas you’ll trip a sensor but it won’t sound an alarm because the distribution and type of radiation will match known readings. The sensor detected mass amounts of radioactive material in several crates that were shipped through. It was immediate
ly taken offline, ‘repaired,’ and then a new one was put back in.”
“That sounds suspicious.” Linda nodded. “What was it, though? Nukes? That seems like it would be hard to get anywhere even if you did have someone on the inside to make a sensor look like it was malfunctioning.”
“You’d think so. Unless the coverup came from higher up in the food chain.”
“What.” Linda’s response was a statement, not a question, delivered flatly with stunned surprise. “How far up the food chain are we talking here?”
“High enough to remove almost all references to this incident. Which, by the way, is the type that always gets logged to multiple government databases.” Sarah sighed. “Someone inside our government was helping Omar. And they probably still are.”
“That’s insane. How could they get away with it?”
“It wouldn’t take much. Falsify a few documents here, erase a few reports there, push his men into certain positions over here. If it was spread out over a wide enough period of time it wouldn’t show up as a pattern in the system, either.”
“So someone helped him bring nukes into the country. What’s he going to do with them?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure he did bring in nukes. Falsifying a sensor malfunction at a radiation portal monitor station is one thing. But there are mobile monitors driving all over the country—especially near borders and ports—and they would easily detect a nuclear bomb.”
“So a dirty bomb, then?”
Sarah nodded. “A less concentrated radiation signature disguised inside a heavily shielded vehicle would work. Especially if someone gave them the routes of the mobile detectors so they could stay as far away as possible.”
“Sorry, but this is the first I’m hearing about a ‘dirty bomb.’” Frank finally broke into the conversation. “You didn’t mention that before, Sarah.”
“I wasn’t sure about it, but I found some supporting clues last night. I’m still not convinced, though, but I think it’s our best assumption so far.”
“What’s a dirty bomb?”
Sarah was about to respond but Linda started talking first. “The official term is radiological dispersal device but everybody calls it a dirty bomb because it sounds better. Nuclear weapons are hard to get your hands on and even harder to build. Getting access to radioactive material isn’t hard, though, especially if you’re someone in Omar’s position. A dirty bomb is just a combination of radioactive material with ordinary explosives. It’s easy to make, extremely deadly and spreads radiation over a wide area if created properly.
“What I don’t get, though, is why he would be building a dirty bomb.” Linda looked at Sarah. “Didn’t some study show that the radiation levels from something like that wouldn’t be high enough to kill very many people?”
“Ordinarily, yes.” Sarah replied. “But this sensor data picked up a lot of material passing through before it was taken offline. If Omar packed enough material into the bomb then it could spread a lethal amount of radiation over a wide area. People would be dying in weeks and months instead of years and decades like they might if a more ‘conventional’ amount of material was used.”
“The mass hysteria caused by a dirty bomb would be bad enough. If the radiation started actually killing people in a short amount of time, though…” Linda sighed. “Damn. If that’s what he’s up to then it’s not good.”
“No. It’s not.” Sarah closed the lid on her computer. “Which is why you two are going to do something about it.”
Frank looked nearly as surprised as Linda when he heard what Sarah said. “You want us to do something about it? Why? Isn’t this a job for some government agency or something?”
Sarah laughed, stood up and walked to the boarded-up front window to peek through one of the cracks between the boards. “Do you really think the feds have the resources or the desire to chase after something that sounds like a late night conspiracy theory?”
“I hate to be a voice of doubt here but I’m kind of with Frank on this one. What is it he and I could possibly do to help?”
“Something this sensitive requires eyes on the ground. Linda, you’ve had enough experience in field ops to easily handle something like this. Frank’s more than capable of assisting you.”
Linda paused for half a second before bursting out laughing. She started to cough from laughing so hard before she finally calmed down enough to speak again. “You want… us to go do field work? Sarah, have you seen the condition I’m in? Come on. You have contacts all over the place. You know more people than I ever did. Surely someone who’s not crippled on the wrong side of the country can handle looking into it, can’t they?”
“Remember what I said about trusting people? I wouldn’t trust anyone but you with this. And getting across the country will be easier than you think.”
“What?” Frank looked at Sarah. “How?”
Sarah smiled. “I have my ways. In any case, you two are going and that’s that.” She looked at Linda. “You’ll be feeling better in another day or so once you start getting solids in you. Better enough to get on a plane, fly out and ask a few questions, at least. That’s what you’re going to do. Head to the port, ask some questions, get some information on these shipments and send that information back to me so that I can pass it on to the proper agencies.”
Frank frowned. “Didn’t you just say that the feds wouldn’t go after conspiracy theories?”
“It’s not a conspiracy if we have evidence. Also known as proof. Also known as the stuff you two are going to procure.”
“Sarah, look—” Linda started to talk but Sarah cut her off.
“I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer on this one, Linda. I know you’re still recovering and this is going to be rough, but after all these years of my helping you get bits and pieces of information so that you could pursue Omar, it’s time for you to get me some bits and pieces. If we don’t do this then a lot more people are going to die. A lot of them have already died. Let’s try to keep the count from going up, shall we?”
In any other circumstance, Linda’s first response would have been to jump at the opportunity to further pursue Omar. Feeling as ill as she did, though, all she wanted to do was continue lying on the couch while she waited for her body to heal. If what Sarah said was true, though—and she had no doubt it was—then Omar’s plans were far more serious than she had originally imagined.
“I can do it.” Frank spoke up, interrupting Linda’s thoughts. “Just send me out there. I’ll take care of getting the information back to you.” He looked at Linda. “I don’t want you risking your life when you’re just now starting to get better.”
In the back of Linda’s mind she wondered whether Frank was telling her that because he wanted to goad her into going with him. It didn’t matter if he was trying to bait her or if he was genuinely concerned, though, since his statement lit a surging fire inside of her. She pushed herself up against the pain and swung her legs around to sit properly on the couch. “Frank, you have zero experience in the field. If anyone should be staying it should be you. No, we’ll go together, though I sure as hell am not driving across the entire country.”
“You won’t need to.” Sarah smiled. “I’m glad to see you sitting up and looking better, by the way.”
“Same.” Linda glanced down under the blanket on her lap and sighed. “Where the hell are my pants?”
Chapter 5
After another night’s sleep and the consumption of several thousand calories worth of food, Linda was starting to feel better. After some stretches she found that her leg wasn’t hurting as much as she had originally thought. It still felt weak though, and as she tested putting her weight on it, she found that she was limping a lot more than she would have wanted.
In between eating, sleeping and getting her leg back into a semi-functioning state, Linda sat with Sarah and Frank to discuss the details of their trip to the west coast. Sarah gave each of them printouts of the vital information they would need
during the trip, along with the names of several contacts she knew of in the area in the military and local government.
“Remember, only talk to them if it’s an emergency or if you have hard evidence and can’t get in touch with me.”
“Yeah, about that.” Frank glanced up from his papers. “How is it we’re going to get in touch with you?”
Sarah retrieved a small black plastic case from a closet and opened it up. Inside, surrounded by a sea of foam, was a large phone that looked like something out of the 80’s. A short, thick antennae half the width of the phone itself was attached on its side. Linda pulled the phone out of the case and hefted it in her hand, turning it over as she examined it. “Sat phone?”
Sarah nodded. “Military grade. It runs on their network. Whatever you do, don’t lose it or break it. You won’t be able to transmit on their satellites without this.”
“You have one too?”
“Yep.” Sarah nodded and pointed upward. “There’s a small dish mounted on the roof and it’s integrated into the house’s line. One of the perks of having friends in high places. My number’s written on the inside back panel so you won’t be able to lose it.”
“How long does the battery last?” Frank took the phone from Linda and swiveled the antenna back and forth.
“Almost a month in standby. Probably three or four days of talk time. You won’t have a place to charge it so I put two extra batteries in there just in case you need them.”
“We’d better not need them.” Linda took back the phone and shook her head. “If we’re gone for that long then you’d better send the cavalry.”
