Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (14 page)

Tedious, too. Because of the FBI’s high standard for safety, before the drill even started, Frank and the rest of the team had to spend hours checking every round to be sure no live ammo inadvertently slipped into the mix.

These days it was laser tag. Light-sensitive vests worn by all participants, weapons that projected red laser dots. Easier to track and quantify after the drill was done: plug everyone’s equipment into the computer, get a printout of exactly who shot whom and where and when. But to Frank it still felt like capture the flag, the video version. A fucking joke.

The NRC ran computer simulations of various aircraft crashing into the containment structures, and they developed strategies to combat overwhelming force—sheer numbers of attackers coming from multiple directions. According to the computer models, the steel-reinforced concrete structures could withstand the crash of a passenger jet without catastrophic damage to the reactor, and there were workable ways to call in reinforcements from local law enforcement agencies in time to counter a large-scale assault. But Frank had serious doubts about those working in the real world.

Somehow, after all these years, force-on-force continued to be the gold standard for judging the security of nuke plants. To make matters even more Mickey Mouse, the NRC limited the drill to six on six. Six on the assault team going up against six plant-security guys. The drill happening in a previously agreed-upon window of three days.

Not once had Sheffield seen them game out the use of insiders. All it took was one guy behind the scenes toggling the right switch, or sabotaging a circuit board, and the best security plan was worthless.

That first time, when he’d seen how shabby the force-on-force drill was, Frank protested. Wrote memos, even took a meeting in DC, flying up on his own dime. All the congressional aides were respectful, scribbling notes, listening, asking a few questions, but nothing came of it.

And why not? Because the system was fucked. Same revolving door that operated throughout Washington. People like Emily Sheen put in a few years with the NRC, then left for cushy lobbying jobs with the power companies they used to regulate. And guys from power companies in a fit of public-spiritedness filled Emily’s position for a while, policing their old pals. An endless daisy chain of collusion and back-scratching. Everybody giving everybody else a big benefit of the doubt.

Catch-22 times three. The economy was totally dependent on critical infrastructure systems. But those systems were owned and operated by private corporations. The owners of those critical systems wanted minimal government oversight, but the same owners believed it was the duty of the government to protect them against all manner of disasters and attacks.

Finally Claude and an Asian guy came back into the room carrying a plywood sheet they positioned on the conference table—a scale model of the plant, every building and tower, along with detailed renderings of the landscape, complete with the miles of straight cooling canals, the surrounding waters of Biscayne Bay, and the neighboring parks and open spaces. All of it with the molded contours of the terrain, complete with trees and boulders painted in realistic colors. Like a goddamn Lionel train set.

Claude unzipped a plastic baggie and dumped out a mix of miniature trucks, cars, and rubber soldiers. The Asian guy hung around grinning at Frank and his flowered shirt, then he shot Claude a smart-ass look and left.

“You guys don’t use computers, Smart Boards, any of that?”

“I’m old-school,” Claude said. “Can’t hold it in my hand, it isn’t real.”

Claude set up six rubber soldiers inside the front gate, and six on the outside of the power plant’s property.

“We’re gaming it today?” Nicole said. “No prep?”

“Frank here, he’s done this three times already, right, Frank? Pro like you, you don’t need any prep, do you, Frank?”

“We can start,” Sheffield said. “But we may need a second round.”

“Suit yourself. You’re the G-man.”

Nicole produced a yellow legal pad from her briefcase. Fired up and eager, she clicked her ballpoint pen three or four times as if gunning a big V-8.

Then they began.

SIXTEEN

TWO HOURS LATER THEY WERE
wrapping up.

Sheffield had stayed quiet, letting Nicole sketch out the scenarios. With only a half dozen players on each side, the options were limited. After she realized Frank wasn’t going to contribute, she tried gamely to probe the plant’s defenses. Claude shooting down each of her setups.

She tried spreading out her six attackers along two flanks. Some coming overland from the south, the others through public land from the north.

There’s fences, razor wire on top, Claude told her.

Bolt cutters, Nicole said.

So you make it through the outside fence, there are security cameras every ten feet. A second fence twenty feet inside the outer perimeter. Motion sensors with alarms in the security office. Tamper with the fences, game over.

Okay, so they’d do a frontal assault with two waves. A group of four overpower the two guards at the front gate.

Do that and three more guys would be out there in half a minute. Your attackers are exposed. Security are riding around in steel-reinforced Jeeps.

Then what if two guys dressed as civilians present fake IDs. Press credentials or law enforcement. They get the green light, and once inside, the other four exit the vehicle and fan out.

Fake IDs won’t cut it. All visitors have to be cleared beforehand. If he’s not on the clipboard, the freaking president of the USA isn’t coming in.

Went like that for two deadly hours. Given that she was winging this, Nicole was fairly inventive. Claude started out smug and got smugger by the minute. Shooting triumphant looks at the NRC lady and Frank.

“Try this,” Nicole said. “Our guys are on four-wheelers, six separate all-terrain vehicles. They come in waves, take different paths toward the plant. Guys riding the perimeter would draw a crowd, right? Soon as a few of your defenders commit to chasing, the main assault breaches the front gate.”

“Not a problem,” Claude said.

“Sounds like a problem to me,” Sheffield said.

“You’re wrong. Anyone enters the front gate on an ATV or whatever the hell they’re driving, they’re going to be zapped.”

“How’s that happen?” Sheffield leaned back in his chair.

Claude glanced around the room like a kid cornered with a stolen cookie. “It’ll happen.”

“You need to be specific, old buddy.”

“Zapped,” Claude said, staring at Frank. “That isn’t specific enough?”

“That’s horseshit, Sellers. How do you repel multiple attackers each on their own ATV or dirt bike, or whatever?”

“My people are elite. They’ve seen it all.”

“Nobody’s seen it all.”

“Every one of them is certified in police counterambush tactics, stealth-movement techniques, tactical covert-entry skills, forced cell extraction, countersurveillance detection, tactical roadblocks, and vehicle extractions.”

“Certified by who?”

“They’ve had training from the best. Constantly upgrading their skills.”

“That’s good, that’s good. Certified by who, Claude?”

“Private-sector professionals. We don’t need Big Brother looking over our shoulder all the time.”

“Let me guess. You took them to Peak Performance Tech, up in Aventura? Or somebody like that.”

Claude was silent, glaring at Frank.

“Peak Performance,” Frank said, remembering their slogan. “‘When the best isn’t good enough.’”

“Damn right,” Claude said. “They’re top-notch.”

Frank looked at Nicole, then at Sheen. Keeping his voice businesslike. No snark, no pettiness. “What Mr. Sellers is referring to is a weekend seminar. Eight hundred bucks a head gets you three days of lectures, some fieldwork playing soldier out in the Glades. They throw in a little Xbox video gaming, let you shoot at cartoon bad guys, then award spiffy diplomas at the end. The folks that teach the courses for Peak Performance, every one of them washed out of Quantico or got tossed from Miami SWAT. I know them. They’re losers, all of them.”

“Fuck you, Sheffield.”

“As tempting as it sounds, I’ll have to decline.”

“There’s no need for this,” Emily Sheen said. “We’re on the same side.”

“Are we?” Frank said. “Which side is that? Team Incompetent?”

“Fuck you twice,” Claude said, “coming and going.”

“Mr. Sellers, please. We’re all professionals here.”

A professional doofus, Frank was about to say when Claude straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat.

“Okay,” he said, “just so you don’t go home mad, let’s pretend your guys penetrate the fences. What then? Where do you go, what do you do?”

Nicole looked to Frank for help but he gestured for her to take it.

“All right,” she said. “Shut down the plant’s internal power source. Take the reactors off-line. Isn’t that the point? ELF’s dream would be to get into the control room, press the red button. Cause a few hours of panic on the streets of South Florida.”

Emily Sheen was quiet, blank-faced, nodding her encouragement.

“Can’t be done. There’s a flicker in the plant’s internal power grid, a dozen diesel backup generators kick in,” Claude said. “Shut down the main electric terminal, the diesels keep the reactors glowing. The control rods are magnetically linked to the lifters, so the power goes off, the rods release, drop into the tank, automatically cool the whole reaction down. On top of the Westinghouse AP1000 there’s a tank that holds around eight hundred thousand gallons of water. Enough to control reactor heat for three days. Cut the power, that tank releases its water, gravity fixes the problem. Simple as that.”

“Okay, then one member of the four-man assault team peels off and incapacitates the generators, takes out the water tank.”

“Soon as there’s an intrusion alert, a defense team is dispatched to guard the diesels and tanks,” Claude said. “You got to do better than that.”

“That leaves you thin. You’ve got two guys occupied at the main gate. Two more at the containment-building entrances. One guy roaming, now some unspecified number at the generators.”

“We’ll manage.”

“And you’re okay with this, Ms. Sheen? No specific countermeasure offered by the plant’s head of security?” Frank smiled at Sheen.

“I’m here as a neutral observer.”

“Lame,” Sheffield said. “Jesus Christ, I could pick up a carload of day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot and knock this place over.”

Claude’s cheeks were flushed, but Sheffield was relaxed now. With all the dog sniffing out of the way, his blood pressure was easing. He’d spent the last thirty years dealing with the likes of Sellers, guys with advanced degrees in assholery. Sometimes they were on the wrong side of the law, but just as often they were his own damn colleagues. Assholery was an equal-opportunity affliction.

Sheffield was focused on the cooling canals on the tabletop mock-up. Thirty canals running perfectly parallel for five miles south of the reactors; the one farthest east was only a few hundred yards off Biscayne Bay. Prince Key wasn’t shown on the tabletop replica, but if the plywood were a few inches wider, it would have been sitting right there, due east of the plant.

If this truly was Cameron Prince’s play, that’s how his people would come. By water from Prince Key. Across that four- or five-mile stretch of shallows, then portage the kayaks to the first cooling canal and paddle straight up to the backside of the plant. Come at night when the video cameras were minimally effective.

“I have a question, Ms. Sheen.”

“You’re dealing with me, Sheffield, not her.”

Frank kept his eyes on the woman from the NRC. “I assume when Homeland Security’s whiz kids removed the ELF image from the servers, they also did a thorough housecleaning of the closed loop. Scrubbed any malware, infections, repaired any changes to the server root directory. If they didn’t do that, or didn’t do it thoroughly, the whole system is vulnerable to stack overflows, denial of service.”

There was silence. Claude glared across the table at Sheffield, and he could feel Nicole’s eyes on him, too.

Sheffield said, “Who’s your head computer guy? The one that sets the Group Policies? Rules for the level of encryption and security protocols.”

“We bring people in,” Claude said.

“You got temps running your system monitoring?”

“Computer experts, local geeks. They do excellent work.”

“That’s nuts,” Frank said to Sheen. “Hiring outside techies, who knows what they know or don’t know? The problem is, the closed loop is your buffer, it’s the one thing that keeps some teenager in his bedroom from taking over your reactor and blowing it sky-high. As it stands, the closed loop could be compromised and you wouldn’t know it.

“All it would take, somebody installs a network interface card in a single computer on the loop, then that machine communicates with a wireless access point, which could be something as simple as somebody’s smartphone. Bingo, the closed loop isn’t closed anymore. It’s wide open to the Internet.”

“I’m sure Homeland Security did everything possible,” Sheen said. “I have no doubt they combed the entire system. I’ll be happy to pass on the Post Attack Vector Analysis. All their findings.”

“Do that,” Sheffield said. “I want it tomorrow first thing. And I’m sending one of our cyberjocks out here to double-check.”

“Of course,” Sheen said. “I’m sure Mr. Sellers and his staff will have no objection.”

Claude rolled his eyes. “So we’re done here?”

Ignoring him, Frank went on, “What we’ve not considered is the fact that someone apparently spent a good deal of time probing the network. It appears that person had access to a power-plant computer for several hours, and that person is still unknown.”

“Whoever it was, we got it covered,” Claude said. “New protocols. You can’t throw a goddamn light switch in the plant without me knowing about it.”

Frank stood, stepped around Nicole, and reached a hand out to the reactor building. Twenty-five stories tall, it was about four inches high in the scale model. He touched a fingertip to the containment building. “Boiling water to keep the lights on.”