by Ed Kovacs
“Detective Chan, it would behoove you to—”
“Behoove your sorry asses out of my crime scene! Franklin! Escort these two no-neck imbeciles out of here and pass the word that nobody is to give them so much as directions to a slit trench.”
Franklin stepped forward. Flood and Bates hesitated, then walked to their vehicle. Bobby Chan watched them go, then looked again at the photo of Kit Bennings that he held in his hand.
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
CHAPTER 21
Dennis Kedrov’s laptop alarm beeped. He’d been dozing in the backseat of the black Yukon parked under camo netting about one hundred yards from the bomb site. His laptop screen provided the only light in the vehicle, and the USGS, United States Geological Survey live earthquake Web site showed a readout of a real-time earthquake in the vicinity measuring 1.5. Not much of a quake, but big enough, so Dennis flicked on a flashlight and spotted the detonator. The unit was connected to an ultrathin wire that ran out the window and off into the darkness. He carefully picked up the detonator and pressed the button.
The earth rumbled and shook. It was too dark for him to see it, but dust shot several feet into the air all around the blast site. A depression in the soil of about six inches suddenly formed in a jagged, seventy-five-foot-diameter circle, with the bomb’s location as the epicenter.
Under a partly cloudy sky with starlight filtering through in soft dollops of illumination, Dennis smiled as he retrieved as much of the detonation wire as he could. He quickly collapsed, folded, and stored the camouflage netting into the back of the Yukon, then drove away into the darkness.
* * *
The AT&T Global Network Operations Center in Bedminster, New Jersey, does exactly what its name suggests: it manages all aspects of the communications giant’s global network. Over 140 large video screens comprise a massive, curved wall giving network managers 24/7 monitoring of all networks, including broadband, Internet, data, and telephony.
One of those wall-mounted screens suddenly depicted a flashing red light on a network route. The location was southwestern Wyoming.
A chiming alarm sounded at Georgia Anderson’s workstation, snapping her out of a daydream that had something to do with a tall red-haired man she’d seen working out at her gym.
“Damn!” she said out loud, sitting up straighter in her chair and brushing hair away from her eyes.
Anderson quickly brought up multiple screens on the large flat-panel monitor at her sleek oak computer console. Her slim fingers flew over the keyboard, pausing only to place a headset boom mike on her head. She brought up pages showing color-coded graphed readouts of data traffic flow.
“What?” Georgia said aloud, to herself. She couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. She keyed in GPS coordinates and brought up the latest satellite imagery of the problem area. She saw nothing out of the ordinary but quickly checked a few other Web sites.
Georgia nervously pushed a telephone button to call an immediate supervisor, a man who had less time on the job than she did and who knew less than she did. “Ben, it’s Georgia. I know you’re seeing what I’m seeing, but I can confirm it’s a complete break.”
Georgia tried to rein in the anxiety in her voice but couldn’t. This was big. No, huge. The biggest problem she’d ever handled and maybe the biggest she had heard of since she’d been working for AT&T. “The entire cable bundle must be severed.…” She paused to listen to a question she couldn’t answer. “I don’t know how, but there was a small earthquake in the vicinity just before we lost all signal. I suggest you run this up the chain, quick, and contact Langley, the White House, Fort Meade, DHS, and any other three-letter agency on your emergency-call-sheet list. Any affected agencies will probably want to divert their traffic onto our southern cable.”
Almost breathless, Georgia nodded and pushed a button ending the call. She then went to work sending “STATUS RED” e-mail alerts out to supervisors of emergency repair crews and other technicians, with the exact GPS coordinates of the break. They would bust their butts to get on scene, ASAP. As she sent the e-mails, Georgia doubted that she’d have time to hit the gym and look for the red-haired guy anytime soon.
CHAPTER 22
Yulana Petkova slept soundly on a cot that had been placed in Interrogation Room #1 along with a few other items to make her “quarters” more comfortable. The lone surviving Russian thug pulled from the wrecked sedan by Buzz and Angel also slept soundly—on the floor of Interrogation Room #2.
At three-forty-five in the morning, Kit, Buzz, Angel, and Jen were all tired, but no one mentioned that as they fortified themselves with snacks in the conference room.
“The bad news is that our Russian friend in the other room has no idea where Staci is being held,” said Angel.
“But he admitted he was part of the raid on your mom’s house. He claims he’s never met Popov but that he met Popov’s nephew, Mikhail Travkin,” said Buzz.
“I’ve already hacked into law enforcement databases. Travkin is clean. I’ll have to dig deeper to see if there’s something on the guy,” said Jen, eating a chocolate donut with one hand as she swabbed down her keyboards with a cleaning wipe in her other hand. “But we already know his address, so that’s good.”
“How’d you get that?” asked Kit, perking up.
“The Russian we grabbed in the parking lot,” said Angel, “has a hooker girlfriend who used to service Travkin at his condo on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood while the wife and kids were out shopping.”
“Good work,” said Kit, rubbing his eyes from exhaustion. If only he could have slept on the flight in from Moscow. “We move on Travkin tomorrow to get to Popov.”
“We’ve already sketched out a plan,” said Buzz, opening a folder.
“Before we get to that, I need to fill you in about Yulana.” Kit recounted to them events at the coffeehouse and some of the other discussions he had with her, emphasizing that she was being blackmailed due to a kidnapped family member, the same as him.
“She’s a black-projects scientist? She looks more like a fashion model,” said Jen. “She’s so pretty, I hate her.”
“She could be lying about all of this,” said Angel.
“You’re right. She could be the best actress in the world and be selling me a bill of goods. But I don’t think so. I asked her some very specific technical questions about EMP weapons as we drove back here a little while ago, and she answered them all accurately. In fact, she corrected me a few times.”
“If what she says is true, then…?” Buzz looked concerned as he chewed on the stem of his pipe.
“Then I’m thinking it’s about an EMP bomb, Buzz. You guys remember hearing about those Red Team security exercises against supersensitive facilities that I ran a few years back?”
“I heard your team gained access to a navy facility that stored nukes,” said Jen, smiling.
“We got into the facility, but not into the bunker where the nukes were. And we got into plenty of other places too. But we did it in a way that didn’t embarrass the local security pukes or the generals or admirals in charge. I always made sure that most members of my team got captured, looking foolish. And we focused on follow-up training. We didn’t want to tell them they were doing things wrong, but we tried to make them see what they were doing wrong.”
“So what does that have to do with Popov?”
“Not many people know this, but my Red Team gained access to a storage building at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque. That building was full of nonnuclear EMP and directed energy weapons.”
Angel whistled a “holy cow” kind of whistle. “You actually got inside?”
Kit nodded. “We could have cleaned the place out, Angel. Taken whatever we wanted.”
“EMPs—Yulana’s specialty,” said Jen.
The group shared serious looks all around.
“So your mission will be to steal an e-bomb from Sandia,” said Buzz.
“That’s the best guess I have right
now. Otherwise, why does Popov need me?” asked Kit.
“Why would he need an e-bomb?” asked Jen.
“Maybe he wants to sell it,” said Angel, twirling his green-handled screwdriver out of nervous habit. “Or he’s doing this for the SVR or GRU because they want our technology.”
“Popov has no loyalty to the Russian intelligence agencies. His biggest complaint in life is that he’s a millionaire, not a billionaire. He’s bitter that he didn’t become one of the new oligarchs of Russia. He wants money and lots of it.”
“But he won’t become filthy rich selling one or two American EMP bombs,” said Buzz.
“So how do you get rich using an e-bomb?” asked Angel, pointing the tip of his screwdriver at Kit.
“That, Angel, is the billion-dollar question.”
* * *
Kit ordered everyone to sack out for a couple of hours in the bunk room. He then set up his laptop in the common room. Using Darknet software, he attached a digital photo of Yulana to an urgent encrypted message and sent it to a friend in D.C. still assigned to the Activity; he asked the friend to fly to Albuquerque today with certain sensitive equipment and other items and to personally bring it to a private mailbox address. Since the man was like a brother to Bennings, Kit knew the delivery would be made.
He reclined on a sofa in the common room, but sleep eluded him. He spent a couple of minutes pressing the migraine pressure point on his hand; all of the recent stress and lack of sleep was like an invitation for a migraine to show up. Since meds didn’t work for him, all he had was the acupressure to try and keep a migraine from kicking in. He got up and crossed over to the acoustic guitar he’d spotted earlier in a corner of the room. He quietly tuned it and then played a muted rendition of Sleepy John Estes’s “Worried Life Blues.”
As he plucked the strings, he thought of his mom, of Staci, of Rick and Maria Carrillo. For Staci’s sake and in honor of the dead, he had to win, had to be the best he’d ever been, had to cover every base, every angle, had to become bigger and stronger and smarter than he’d ever been.
But something was bothering him, something lapping at his memory. What was it, what had he missed? A vague thought or notion, a suspicion about these recent events nagged at him like a pain that came and went, that the doctors couldn’t identify. What were the questions that he should be asking that he wasn’t? What was the obvious connection to Popov he hadn’t yet made?
Bennings mentally hit rewind. As he relaxed and free-associated, a question popped to the forefront: How had Popov learned of his successful Red Team penetration of Sandia? Only about a dozen people in the world could link him to that.
* * *
Many of the pricey high-rise condo buildings on an exclusive stretch of Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, California, have a helipad on the roof. But in one particular building, access to the two massive penthouses was gained only via a private elevator. Visitors first had to get past the discreetly armed guards—former LAPD officers—in the lobby. After being buzzed through a heavy security door, a private elevator awaited. The elevator was controlled by an operator in the penthouse security station.
Mikhail Travkin’s condo took up one-half of the top floor, Viktor Popov’s the other half.
The evening had been mostly social until a few hours earlier, when Popov and Travkin sat down to business, accompanied by plenty of food and drink.
Now, in the wee hours of the morning, with the penetrating scent of eucalyptus from the branches sitting in a plastic bucket full of water, Popov and Travkin lightly dozed as buxom young masseuses rubbed down both men in Popov’s nearly authentic banya. Travkin called it a sauna, because he grew up in the United States, and a sauna was a sauna.
The soft chime from his small tablet phone awoke Mikhail. His thin lips curled into a snarl and he shook his head, squinting as he read a text message.
“Viktor, we must speak.” Mikhail turned to the masseuses and gestured for them to leave.
“What now, Misha? I was just dreaming something lovely.”
“Two of our men are dead, one is missing. At the morgue where Bennings’s mother is.”
“That’s not good news,” said Viktor sitting up.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Their orders were not to initiate contact with Bennings, not even to follow him. We don’t need to follow him, just make their presence known. Did they disobey orders?”
“Unlikely. I made it very clear they were to take no action.”
“So Bennings murdered them?”
“I believe so. Uncle, I have always taken your counsel, but this time, I ask that you take mine. We cannot afford this unwanted attention. Dead Russians point to us. Eventually, connections will be made by the authorities.”
“It’s not good, I’ll go that far.”
“That’s not far enough to go. The FBI, the police, the army investigators are closing in on Bennings. What happens when they catch him? Do you really think he won’t mention your name and that you kidnapped his sister?”
“Allegations are cheap, Mikhail. They can prove nothing.”
“Correct, you and I personally have nothing to worry about. Our deceptions, however, are something else. I’m ordering a team to take them all out—Bennings, his friends, the Petkova woman. It would have been nice to use the major, but the risks have grown too high.”
“We can still—”
“Uncle. The men are already in place. We can’t risk the whole operation based on the belief that Bennings will deliver. We thought he would stay docile because we held his sister. I can only deduce he is more callous than his evaluation indicated. We must do this, Viktor, to secure what has long eluded you, what has been denied you. Forget Bennings, we have Doctor Rodchenko. The end result for us will be the same.”
Mikhail had never stood up to Popov before, and Travkin could almost read his uncle’s mind. This was a shift in their relationship. He watched closely, reading the irritation on Popov’s face as the older man appeared to consider what this meant for their relationship.
“I have grown attached to the Bennings outcome, mainly because of its allure and because so much has gone into engineering events. But great generals must be flexible and be ready to pivot and change strategies as events dictate,” said Viktor. After another moment of seeming reflection, he nodded his acquiescence. “I won’t oppose your decision, Mikhail. Perhaps we have reached the end of the line with Major Bennings. But tell your men not to kill Petkova. She may still be useful.”
“Thank you, Uncle,” said Travkin, although he had no intention of telling his men to spare Yulana Petkova. Better they all died now.
CHAPTER 23
Bennings had been dozing on the sofa in the common room for less than ten minutes, with the guitar still in his lap, when a soft but shrill beeping from the alarm control panel in the communications room woke him. The alert was a proximity alarm. Maybe a dog or a cat sniffing at the door? But since you don’t install expensive alarm systems to ignore them, he got up and crossed to the bank of CCTV security monitors in the small adjoining room.
In a flash he snapped alert, not quite believing what he saw. Men dressed in black and wearing balaclava masks stood at both the front and back doors. SWAT? An FBI Special Response Team? CID? The men quietly examined the door and doorframe, as if checking for alarms or the construction of the door itself.
Kit quickly checked monitors showing views of the front and rear parking lots. At least a dozen vehicles surrounded the shopping-center safe house. He estimated thirty or more men stood holding weapons in the predawn dimness. He zoomed in a camera and saw men in front of a dump truck, attaching something to the bumper. Check that; there were two dump trucks, front and back, and the items being attached to the bumpers were battering rams.
He zoomed in on a group of men, looked at their faces, jackets, and shirts. They were thugs. Russian mobster soldiers. And they were about to attack.
Bennings bolted into the bunk room, flipping on the l
ights. “Thirty Russians outside, ready to break down the doors! Grab only what you can carry including guns and ammo! We go up to the roof in half a minute. Move!”
Buzz, Angel, and Jen scrambled off their cots, instantly alert.
Kit still wore his holstered Kel-Tec Sub-2000, and he grabbed his day pack and bolted into the room where Yulana slept. He rousted her and stuck the barrel of a SIG SAUER .45 pistol against her forehead. She stared at him incomprehensibly, blinking aqua eyes as wide as saucers. “We’re about to get hit by Popov’s army. If you tipped them off, I promise I will slit your throat.”
He pulled the Russian beauty to her feet, grabbed her purse, and dragged her out.
Buzz and Angel hustled into the hallway wearing packs and carrying HK MP7A1s. Kit joined them holding on to Yulana.
“Where’s Jen?”
“Getting her laptops!”
The building shuddered as the loud crashing sounds of the two steel doors getting knocked from their hinges rang out a warning that the fight was on.
Kit thrust Yulana at Buzz. “Take her and get to the roof!” Kit spun and bolted back toward the common room.
Buzz and Angel both gave Yulana hard looks.
“I didn’t tell anyone! How could I? I don’t know where we are!” protested Yulana.
“You have come and gone a couple of times, and we haven’t had you blindfolded. You could have seen street signs, the name of this shopping center,” said Angel, grasping his green-handled screwdriver like an ice pick.
“You slipped away from Kit earlier tonight, didn’t you? And called Popov,” said Buzz.
“I didn’t!”
