Thermals

by Evan Currie

  “I’ll authorize the use of our systems as well,” She said, making the decision on the fly. “You’re going to need every picosecond of computer time we can get you.”

  He nodded grimly, “I know.”

  “I’ll contact you soon,” She told him.

  “I’ll be here,” He replied tiredly, just before she closed the connection.

  She stared at the black screen for a long moment before moving, her mind racing as she thought about it. Eighty thousand potential terrorists, eighty thousand potential victims, eighty thousand potential hostages. It was turning into a tactical and public relations nightmare.

  Alright, She thought grimly, first thing is first. Identify the opposition.

  “Howard!”

  *****

  Anselm found himself staring at the black screen for a moment after the American Deputy Director of Intelligence signed off, lost in thought as he tried to get his head in gear. It took a moment, but he finally snapped out of it and keyed open his Portable and tapped in the direct contact address for the Director of Interpol.

  “I contacted the Captain,” Gwen started as she came in, falling silent in mid word as he held up his hand.

  “Madam Director?”

  “Agent Gunnar?” The Director shifted, wiping her hand across her face. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “A lot.” He told her grimly, “We’ve got a handle on what Abdallah is planning, and it’s worse than we feared. It’s not nuclear, it’s biological, and it has global implications.”

  There was a silence, then she spoke sharply. “Talk to me, Anselm.”

  “I’ll explain it in a moment, first I need some things.”

  “Name it, Agent.”

  “First, computer time. Lots of it. And blanket E-Warrants for electronic investigations on everyone in Tower City.”

  The Director managed to keep from screaming, he had to give her that, but her eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped. "Are you insane ? The International Digital Privacy Act specifically limits our powers in digital investigation, Agent…"

  “I’m aware of the implications, Madam Director,” He told her, “But we’re in deep here. The CIA is involved now, and they’re sharing Intel and are willing to give us computer time for this. It’s that big, Ma’am.”

  The Director of the International Police Organization let out a long, deep breath and slowly shook her head. “Do you have any idea how much computer time this will take, even if we can get the warrant?”

  “Director, I’m sending you the data on what Abdallah is doing now,” He told her, “Read it over and get back to me before you complain about computer time, Ma’am.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, eyes flicking to where her home system was announcing the receipt of his file. Finally she nodded, “I’ll contact you shortly.”

  When she signed off, Anselm turned back to Gwen.

  “Alright, we’re in deep and getting deeper,” He told her, “You call your Captain?”

  She nodded, “He’s calling in our people now.”

  Anselm nodded, sighing thoughtfully.

  “Were you serious? You’re going to investigate everyone in the city?”

  He nodded again, “That’s right. We’ll use ever CPU cycle from every computer we can link to if we have to, but we need to know how many terrorists we’re dealing with…or at least as close as we can come.”

  “But…everyone?” She looked stunned by the very concept. “That’s…”

  “Incredible? Insane? Huge?,” Anselm supplied.

  “Wrong.” She said, with finality. “It’s an invasion of privacy…it’s…”

  “It might just save the lives of the innocent,” He told her, “And with millions of lives on the line…They can charge me with Invasion of Digital Privacy if I live. I’m going to start with municipal government, emergency services, criminal records, and I should have thought of this before but also the PD.”

  Gwen’s eyes widened, “What!?”

  “You heard me,” He told her grimly, his hand dropping to his hip. “I’m sorry Gwen, but as of right now, I’m not taking anything for granted.”

  She glared at him, her eyes burning darkly. “You can be a real bastard, you know that?”

  He nodded in agreement, “Yeah. I know. So before we get to the intrusive part, you have anything you’d like to tell me, Gwen?”

  She said nothing, just thumped down into the guest chair of her own office, and glared at the man who had taken over her desk.

  *****

  “Amir, It’s Ryan Emmerson.”

  “Ah, Chief Emmerson. Do you have any news for me?”

  “The Interpol Agent has issued a request for local help. He has the names of thirty people he wants arrested, and he knows that you have a biological weapon, Amir.”

  “Unfortunate. This is what I need you to do, Chief Emmerson…Contact your people and have them prepare for tomorrow. I’ll handle the Interpol Agent, Ryan. Where is he?”

  “He and Gwen Dougal are at the station.”

  “Perfect.”

  *****

  “Satisfied?”

  Anselm ignored the acerbic tone coming from Gwendolen Dougal and merely nodded, “Yeah. I am.”

  She pursed her lips, uncertain whether to take that as any sort of concession, but knowing that his lack of challenging reply was even more frustrating. The background check had just come back on her, and as she’d fully known the facial topography scan of the Interpol and CIA databases had come back clean.

  Anselm didn’t apologize; however, he merely queued up the rest of the police department, along with the emergency services personnel, medical staff of the tower, and local government, and set them to searching.

  “You don’t have a warrant for that.” She hissed, eyes flashing again.

  “Given the situation, I don’t think it’s going to matter.” He replied.

  “It’s inadmissible in a court of law!”

  “You should read up on the Acts of Terror amendments to the British, Canadian, US, and yes even the Australian constitutions, charters, and whatever else. Terrorists don’t have the same rights under law as citizens.” Anselm replied grimly, “Hell, if we actually arrest anyone, they’ll probably be handed over to military tribunals anyway.”

  Gwen grimaced, looking away. She had actually forgotten about that, not having had to invoke those particular changes in Australian and international law at any point in her career. After the 9/11 incident in the United States, the various bombings in London, a release of Anthrax in downtown Ottawa, and the destruction of a three block radius from a small nuclear device in Kyoto Japan, new and extremely harsh international treaties had been written, or in some cases rewritten, to basically strip terrorists of practically all normal rights they may have enjoyed under law.

  Those laws had been, and still was in fact, under near constant attack by human rights organizations since 2008 when they had been signed. Only the rash of bombings in 2013 had prevented them from being revoked in Australia at that time, in fact, after a series of expose reports on the abuse of those laws had been aired.

  The abuses hadn’t stopped, and the laws were again coming under increasing attacks in the public eye.

  Gwen grimaced as she realized that those attacks were likely to again be derailed, Abdallah’s actions here at the tower would fuel the defenders of the new treaties for years to come.

  Anselm, reading her face, misunderstood the source of the grimace, though not by much.

  “I know,” He said, “those treaties haven’t always been used by the best people, or for the best reasons, but this situation is exactly why they were signed in the first place.”

  That point was the bare truth, she had to concede, though Gwen also had to wonder exactly how often did a group of terrorists actually get organized enough to pull something like this off. The proponents of the laws would say that once was too much, and to be honest even she couldn’t argue with that, but the entire situation
still left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “I don’t like it.” She said aloud, finally speaking.

  “If you did,” Anselm shrugged, “You’d be the wrong kind of person to carry that badge.”

  She snorted at the clichéd phrase, expressing her thoughts on his statement. “That’s the sort of bullshit people like us used to allow those damned treaties to be signed in the first place, Gunnar, and you know it. It’s nothing by self-comforting bullshit so we can sleep at night and not have nightmares about what we’re turning our world into.”

  “This isn’t the time or place for this argument.” He snapped back, “I don’t really approve of all the amendments to the laws myself, but they’re there right now and by god I’m going to use them.”

  “That’s the problem, right there.”

  Anselm grimaced, but finally ignored her, knowing that it wasn’t an argument that they were going to resolve any time soon. The hell of it was that he agreed with her, the laws were subject to abuse, and probably shouldn’t have been enacted. The fact that they were was out of his control, however, and he had to work with what he was given. Besides, if it would save the lives of eighty thousand people, let alone millions, he’d sign a deal with the devil himself.

  A voice, somewhere in the back of his mind, whispered nastily as that thought passed through his head.

  The road to hell…

  Anselm ignored it, turning his focus back to the task at hand, and went back to work.

  *****

  “I need a status report to brief the President, Natalie. What’s going on in Australia?”

  Natalie Cyr looked up as the DCI stepped into her office and she tilted her head ironically, “Why hello, Carl. Nice to see you, How’s the wife and kids?”

  He scowled humorously at her, but didn’t say anything.

  She sighed after a second, then nodded tiredly. “My team is airborne, they’ll rendezvous with the Reagan Carrier Group in eight hours.”

  “Alright, good. What about the situation on site?”

  “It’s not good,” She told him seriously. “We have over thirty confirmed terrorists at the Tower now, and the number is likely to rise. Interpol will have one of the START teams there tomorrow, but the locals are likely to be outnumbered even so.”

  The Director of Central Intelligence closed his eyes, tilting his head as he grimaced.

  “It’s not that bad, Carl,” She told him tightly, “But it’s bad. On the up side, they are working against time even as much as we are. They have to hold that tower for a week to achieve the worst case effect that they’re after, but even a few hours could result in a lot of fatalities.”

  “If they have to hold it for a week, they can’t win…” Carl Severson said, looking perplexed. “Even we could have a full Marine Expeditionary Force on their doorstep inside of five days. The Australians will roll right over them.”

  Natalie held up her hand, “For WORST effect, they need to hold it a week. Remember, a few hours will still sow a lot of panic across a great many countries, Carl. Plus, I’m not so confident that anyone will roll right over them.”

  “Please, Natalie…” The DCI scoffed, “The Australian armed forces aren’t amateurs, and no terrorist force can stand up to a straight out fight with regular forces.”

  “No, but this is a potential hostage situation with almost a hundred thousand hostages.” She reminded him, “Unless you think that the President, or the Australian government will authorize an air strike?”

  Severson winced, holding up his hand. “Point. Alright…peace. You have a plan?”

  “Right now it depends on Raymond Gorra, I’m afraid.” She told him grimly, “The ball is in his court. If he holds off on his plans, then we can cut him off and do this relatively cleanly. If he moves before we’re in place…It’s going to get ugly, Carl. And you can tell the President I said so.”

  Carl Severson raised his eyebrows, then smiled without humor at her. “I’ll do that.”

  He turned to leave, then stopped and looked back. “SecNav has been informed of your operation, and he’ll have the Reagan complement of Masters at Arms standing by to assist.”

  “Thank you,” She told him, honestly grateful. “We’re already running the files of the people around the Tower…so hopefully we’ll know how large the opposition is by the time we’re ready to launch the operation.”

  “Keep me posted.” He told her, heading out the door. “And for God sake’s Natalie, get some sleep. There’s nothing you can do dead tired.”

  *****

  Waiting is the worst part of any high stress job.

  Police work always came down to the drudgery, like most any other job. In the past it was often called ‘pounding the pavement’, the basic component of police work being getting out and simply talking to everyone possible. In the post Digital age it was more often than not a matter of waiting for computer searches to come through.

  Normally those were fast, coming back in fractions of a second, but when they were long, they took forever.

  Tonight was going to be one of those nights, Anselm knew, and the army of faces marching past the screen at electronic speeds certainly held up his thoughts on the matter. Gwen had dozed off in her chair some time ago, and he had found himself doing the same from time to time.

  In fact, the only thing that was keeping him awake was the occasional ping from the computer that announced one more potential gunman to the army he was beginning to imagine around him.

  Fifty three and counting.

  Anselm closed his eyes, his head nodding down into his chest before snapping back up.

  Abdallah must have been planning this for years, over a decade perhaps.

  And that being the case, Anselm was really starting to wonder what his contingency plans were in case of official involvement.

  He had to have them, the Interpol agent realized, his mind working tiredly. The involvement of Law Enforcement Agencies was inevitable, so he had to have plans to deal with them.

  What kind of plans though?

  Hostages seemed to be a given, but that alone wouldn’t work unless he’d managed to maintain operational security on the biological factor. Security on something like that wasn’t easy either, and with it known, Abdallah had to know that the government would likely be forced to assault the tower, hostages or no.

  The terrorist had certainly had the time to make those preparations, additionally it was obvious he had the money and backing, and now Anselm was watching the number of men Abdallah had increase by the minute.

  So what had he worked out to ensure that his plan went through?

  What was Abdallah’s ace in the hole?

  *****

  “Begin distributing the weapons to the men, Coreem.”

  “Yes, Amir.” The small man nodded his head, looking toward a series of pallets of munitions marked with the Chinese Star. “Shall we roll out the heavy pieces as well?”

  Amir glanced away from the pallets of QW-9 shoulder fired Anti-Aircraft missiles toward the vehicle towed Type 105 35mm cannons. Based on the updated Swiss Orlikon Skyguard system, the Chinese weapons were an improvement over the Type 90’s that preceded them. Capable of computer assisted targeting, the heavy weapons were more than capable of creating a zone of low altitude interdiction against anything they were likely to face in the short term.

  “Not yet,” he told the small man, “but have them moved to the garage in preparation for deployment. We don’t want to alarm anyone unduly, not yet anyway.”

  Coreem laughed, nodding. “Yes, Amir. I’ll have everything prepared as you order.”

  “Good man.”

  The small man nodded again, grateful for the compliment, then ran over to a waiting forklift and turned its engine over. Amir watched for a while as he began to move pallets of anti-aircraft missiles out of their storage locations to where they could be broken up and delivered to the men.

  The interference in his lab had forced him to move his plan up much faster
than he’d hoped, and it was becoming obvious that even under the best possible outcome he wasn’t going to hit his optimal time frame. There was no way he could hold the tower for a week, not even if the Americans weren’t the ones who had broken into his lab.

  However, a week wasn’t necessary.

  A few days, a single day even, if he could get the concentrations up to a critical level, would serve. The panic and despair would still reach truly awesome levels, and that was all that he really asked.

  Abdallah just wished that it had been the Chinese or the Indians who had chosen to build the tower. Using it to strike directly at the American mainland, at the ‘good old US of A’, would have made the entire plan…sheer perfection.

  *****

  The light was pouring in on his face when the insistent ring tone brought Anselm out of a restless sleep and the Interpol Agent grimaced as he felt the knotted muscles in his neck and back. He reached out, his hand flopping against the desk until he found the portable and tiredly flicked it open.

  “Gunnar here,” He groaned quietly, rubbing his neck with his free hand.

  “Agent Gunnar,” The Director said, bringing him more awake.

  “Ma’am,” He said, straightening in the chair and wiping his face and eyes, pushing his mussed hair back.

  “It wasn’t easy, Agent, but I got you your warrants.” The Director scowled, “The Australians are not amused, so you’d better not be wrong about this.”

  “I’m not,” Anselm replied, not mentioning that he’d already started the background checks. He knew that the Director had to realize what he’d done, and if she chose to ignore it, he wasn’t going to argue. The Computer geeks at headquarters would be screaming about the CPU cycles he was using, so she could hardly have missed it.

  “If you are, Agent,” The Director’s face was tight, and her voice cold, “it’s your ass.”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “The STARTer unit I dispatched will be there today, but I’m already leaning on the Australian government to allow the dispatch of our full response unit to your location within forty eight hours.”