All Necessary Force (10 page)

“So all he wants us to do is go in there and confirm or deny his presence?”

“Yep. And I don’t want to do it, for the same reasons as Johnny. I could end up with this target two months from now.”

“I don’t want you to do it either. I want Jennifer to go.”

Jennifer jumped up. “
Me
? I’m not an… I’m not in the Taskforce.”

“You’re not what?” I said.

Knuckles said, “I think that’s a great idea. It’s a travel agency, so you can just do what we were already doing. Find some old shit here in Indo that we can go look at. That should make you happy.”

She looked from Knuckles to me, then at Bull, who nodded his head with a grin.

“Jesus Christ. What a bunch of babies. Let me see the instructions.”

13

C

ongressman Ellis looked at his watch. He had rushed over to the Cairo convention center to meet his contact while the rest of the delegation got over jet lag at the hotel, but he couldn’t spend a great deal of time here before the delegation began to wonder where he was. He expected a quick meeting, and now didn’t like the answers he was getting.

“What do you mean you can’t do anything?” he said. “This guy has a camera that might have my picture on it with Chinese officers. It could destroy our relationship.”

Han Wanchun gave a little shrug. “What on earth do you want me to do? I’m a simple businessman. I cannot help it if you get in trouble.”

“Don’t give me that shit. I have a copy of his passport and his last itinerary. He’s in Jakarta right now. That’s close enough for your people. We need to get that camera.”

Han was attending the international trade fair in Cairo as a representative of the Great Wall Industry Corporation, hiding his association with the People’s Liberation Army.

“You wish me to track someone down in Jakarta while I’m in Egypt? I think you’re growing a little paranoid. Is there something else I should be aware of? Something to do with our business?”

“I’m not paranoid. Just careful. The camera was in the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia. It should have stayed there until I could get to it, but somehow this man managed to get them to hand it over, against regulations. I did some digging on him, and he owns a company that has no history. No travel, credit purchases, or anything else. It stinks.”

Han smiled. “So you think this company is fake? A costume for something else?”

Exasperated at the dance, Ellis said, “Yes, just like your damn company. I’m not asking you to fly to Indonesia. Get some friends in the MSS to do it.”

Han looked at the booths to his left and right, making sure nobody next door had heard the outburst. Ellis realized he’d overstepped. While they both knew how ludicrous the pretending was, Ellis had never outright called any of his Chinese contacts liars or mentioned their association with the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the organ that conducted foreign espionage.

“Watch yourself, Mr. Ellis. You fear what’s on the camera when the real danger is in front of you. If I
had
contacts with State Security, I might be inclined to call them for other reasons.”

Ellis backpedaled. “I just meant you have a lot of pull with the Chinese government and could probably help. Nothing more. It would be conducive to our business.”

“Let’s discuss that first. When and where will we transfer the equipment?”

“Here in Cairo. I’ll give you specific instructions later. A plane will land at the airport in Alexandria, and I’ll transport the equipment here. From there, I’m out of it. It’s up to you to get it out of the country.”

“When? We are only here for one week.”

Ellis passed him a local cell phone he’d purchased. “I’ll call you twenty-four hours before the transfer. It’ll be within a week.”

He glanced at his watch. “Look, I have to get back to my delegation before they wonder what happened to me. I don’t want to meet again. Are we good?”

Han said, “Yes, up to a point. If I haven’t heard from you in five days, I’m going to find you. You won’t have to worry about the camera.”

Ellis felt sweat trickle down his sides. “Hey, no need for threats. I’ve always been good. Ask your other folks. We go back a long ways. The proof may be on that camera.”

“I’ll make some calls. Forget about the camera. Focus on the transfer. Give me the information on the man.”

Ellis gave him all he knew and left, winding his way back through the maze of booths. As he walked, he replayed the conversation in his mind. He realized the power scale had shifted. Somewhere along the line, he had fallen from a valued asset to a tool to be used. He had always called the shots, with the Chinese accepting whatever he offered. Now he was being outright threatened to produce. Even with the risk of the camera, an uncomfortable truth settled in: His greatest danger was no longer his own country discovering his activities. He’d never seen that coming.

14

K

eshawn walked through the woods around the substation, sketching what he could see of the interior. This one was a distribution point, one of the substations around the state that took the power from high-voltage lines coming from the generation plants and stepped down the voltage to something the residents and businesses could use. He was looking for the piece of equipment that made the step-down possible—an extremely high voltage transformer. He didn’t know why, but he’d been tasked to gather information on every substation that housed an EHVT. So, when his daily rounds took him by one, he stopped and sketched. Not many of them did, but enough to keep him busy.

He’d been specifically told to look at the line of sight, to find a vantage point where he could clearly see the transformer from outside the chain-link fence. A position where the view wasn’t blocked by the myriad of other components inside the substation. The contact had said, “See where you could attack it from the outside with a rifle.”

He knew that a rifle would do little damage to the transformer, since each one weighed over twenty tons and stood fifteen feet tall, but he liked the sound of the tasking.

Attack
.

15

A

fter pushing Jennifer to enter the travel agency, I had worried like a grandmother until she was out. Not about her safety, but about whether she’d get the information. It was a simple task, but the repercussions would ripple through the Taskforce grapevine if she failed. Precisely because it
was
a simple task. I should have known the worrying was a waste of time. After all, I’d trained her.

Jennifer had had no trouble inside the travel agency. She found out that the JI guy maintained an office there but was out of town for another week. Maybe more. She’d spent most of her time setting up a trip to Solo on the eastern part of the island, where archeologists had found one of the earliest known hominid skeletons. Whatever the hell a hominid is.

After passing the information, we spent a day and a half at a UNESCO world heritage site, Jennifer running around like a child while the rest of us wondered if the hotel had a bar. Fortunately, before Jennifer could find other sites to go explore, we got another message. Which meant another mission. Johnny was really wearing out his welcome, but it did get us out of the jungle and back to Jakarta.

Knuckles got the coffee this time. “He wants to meet to talk about it. I didn’t get any instructions.”

“Where?”

“A place called the Bar Fly Club. It’s on Jalan Jaksa. Apparently, it’s where all the expats hang out, so we’ll blend in fine.”

Contacting Johnny or his team face-to-face was a risk because it would tie our two covers together when they had no business meeting,
like a Wall Street banker having lunch with a pimp. It would have to be carefully managed.

“What’s the plan?”

“Pretty simple. He’ll be playing darts. We’ll get a beer, then go play darts with him. Introduce ourselves as fellow Americans, bullshit a little bit, then get down to business.”

It was plausible. Expatriates naturally congregated, so our actions wouldn’t draw too much attention. As long as neither of us was being targeted, it should work. Knuckles read my mind.

“He’s sure his guys are clean. They’ve done nothing to spike. He’ll have the team wash us. Once we get to the bar, we just get a table and wait. If we see another teammate join Johnny at darts, it means we’re clean and the meeting’s a go. If nobody shows by seven thirty, we walk out, meeting canceled.”

We spent the rest of the day scouting the area. At precisely seven, we entered the bar. It was a seedy little place, consisting of outdoor seating and a small inside area with a pool table and a dartboard. It was already crowded with backpackers staying in the hostels on Jalan Jaksa and expats from all over the world lined up at the bar. Johnny was at the dartboard, throwing with another man I didn’t recognize.

We got a few beers and took the only inside table that was open, trying to talk over the groan of the overworked and useless air conditioner.

Jennifer watched the dart game for a minute, then said, “Is Johnny religious?”

Knuckles laughed. “Hell, no. Why?”

“His baseball cap has a Bible verse on the back.”

Knuckles looked at me, passing the ball for the answer. I said, “Uhh… That’s just an inside joke. A Taskforce joke.”

Before I had to explain further, a man I did recognize joined Johnny’s group. I couldn’t recall his name, but he was Taskforce.

Knuckles said, “That’s our cue.”

We got up and sauntered over to the dartboard, spending twenty minutes introducing ourselves, throwing darts, and generally playing the “where you from” game like expats always did. Finally, Johnny said, “You’re clean. Let’s get a table outside.”

We were assaulted by the heat as soon as we exited. Even at night, the humidity caused my clothes to stick. Johnny found an isolated spot and didn’t waste any time. “I want you guys to do a B&E on the travel agency and get into Noordin’s computer.”

The task caught me by surprise. Breaking and entering wasn’t a risk-free proposition, and he already had the experts here for that. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to even enter in the first place.

I said, “We’ve got the best hackers in the world in D.C. Why take the risk of breaking in?”

“Yeah, I know, and we’ve already cracked the network, but there’s close to a hundred computers in that building, all on the same ISP. The guys have to go through each one, line by line, to see if it’s the right one. It’ll take a month.”

Knuckles chimed in. “So? That’s what we do. Slow and patient. You push the issue, and you’ll burn the Taskforce.”

“I know, but there’s a lot of chatter right now. Something big is going on, and the boss is willing to push it. Nobody has any leads, and this guy might be involved. CIA, FBI, and DOD are all pinging red, but with nothing concrete. It’s coming from all sorts of groups. JI, GSPC, AQ—everyone’s talking about a hit.”

“Why us?” I said. “You’ve got the Taskforce team. We’ve only got a couple of operators and a cover organization.”

“Because you’ve already seen the inside of the building. You know the layout.”

“Bullshit. Jennifer’s the only one that’s been inside.”

“Right.”

He didn’t say anything else, and it dawned on me that he wanted
Jennifer
to do the B&E.

“Whoa. Wait a minute. We’re just the cover organization. You guys do the operations. We just facilitate.”

“Pike, come on, don’t feed me that shit. You’re the only cover organization in the Taskforce that’s run by operators. What did you think was going to happen when you started traveling? You expect me to believe you wanted to sit on the sidelines?”

I looked at Jennifer and saw she had caught the reference. He had said operators. Plural.

He continued, “You know this makes sense. Why send in someone who doesn’t know the floor plan when you can send in someone who’s already been inside?”

He had a valid point. It’s exactly what I’d do—if I had my own team. But I didn’t, and Jennifer was brand spanking new. She’d never done anything like this outside of training, and it was my fault she was in this position. I’m the one who had forced her to go inside in the first place. This was a much bigger risk, and Knuckles saw it the same way.

He said, “Johnny, I agree with what you’re saying, but I don’t know. Jennifer’s not ready for this. She’s never done a live operation.”

“Jesus,” Johnny said. “She’s not going in alone. She’ll have my team there with her. I just want to use her knowledge of the floor plan. We’ll do the hard work.”

Jennifer spoke up. “I’ll do it.”

We all looked at her as if we’d forgotten she was there.

“I’ll do it on one condition. My guys go inside with me. No offense.”

I scowled and she mouthed
What?
I looked at Knuckles and Bull. “What do you think?”

Bull said, “If someone’s going in regardless, might as well be us getting the high adventure.”

Knuckles nodded, saying, “I’m game, but I think it’s a bad idea all the way around. Not Jennifer or us going in, but anyone going in. Too risky. Especially for a fishing trip.”

Johnny was smiling, knowing he’d won. “It’s not my call. Someone getting paid the big bucks wants it done, so don’t fret over it.”

I said, “Okay. What was your plan?”

“Well, we haven’t seen any security guards—even with the jewelry wholesaler on the third floor—so that’s not a threat. Basically, the place is wired with CCTV cameras and an alarm system, but they’re all linked into a central hub. Unfortunately, it’s a closed network. We can’t find an access point on the Web, and we’ve looked hard. We can still gain control
of the SCADA system if we can just get to a wire anywhere on the network.”

SCADA stood for supervisory control and data acquisition and was an egghead phrase for the computer system that controlled the security of the building. It came from industrial processes where a computer monitored all aspects of production to ensure efficiency. More and more commercial facilities were networked this way, with one overarching computer controlling everything from the air-conditioning to the lighting—sometimes in a location hundreds of miles away from the building.