Off the Grid (18 page)

He didn’t like it.

•   •   •

F
OR ONCE
, Joe was glad not to be in direct contact with Marybeth, because she’d be both horrified and worried sick about what he’d
learned. At the same time, though, he could use her counsel because she usually had a clearer head than he did. And he could
certainly
use her sense of urgency and the network of law enforcement and government contacts she had at her fingertips in order to send in the cavalry.

Jan cringed when she saw the bear carcass up close and she quickly turned away. The flies had found it and they kept up a steady hum.

“It was them,” she said to Joe. “That’s what they did to Cooter.”

“They cut off his head?”

She nodded. “I would have been next if I hadn’t run out the back door. And that would have been
after
they humiliated me. I could see it in their eyes. I’ve never been looked at like that before.”

Joe pondered that. He thought of the last time he’d seen Sheridan, a month before, on her weekend visit home. She was fresh-faced, intelligent, attractive, and independent, just like her mother.

He said, “Let’s get going,
then.”

THE NEW MONKEY WRENCH GANG

Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

—E
DWARD
A
BBEY
,
The Monkey Wrench
Gang

As Ibby got up from his chair he asked Nate, “Do you know what an EMP—an electromagnetic pulse—can do?”

“Vaguely.”

“An EMP can literally kill every electronic device in the vicinity of the pulse itself. We’re talking phones, computers, cars—anything running on an electric current, which is just about everything there is. A powerful EMP could take down the electrical grid in this country. And it doesn’t just shut things down. An EMP corrupts all the processors and circuitry so they can’t be used again. It can fuse the insides of a power plant together so it wouldn’t work again.”

Nate sat back. “You’re making a bomb here to do that?”

“No, no, not a bomb,” Ibby said, insulted that Nate would even use the word. “Sure, that’s one way a massive EMP could be delivered, by a nuclear device on the tip of a missile. A device like that could take out the electrical grid and shut the country down, except for a few isolated pockets and the facilities that had backup
power supplies and generators. It would cause massive destruction and death. I can’t even imagine how many people would die if the grid went out for a long time. But I said that no one will get hurt here.”

“So if not a bomb . . .”

“Not a bomb.”

Nate was skeptical.

“Look,” Ibby said, “all you need in order to build a small EMP device, say small enough to kill a smartphone forever from two feet away, is a simple circuit board, a nine-volt battery, a high-voltage capacitor, a voltmeter, a switch, and copper wire to coil around a post. These are all things you can buy at any hardware or electronics store; they’re not state secrets. When it’s completed, it’s about the size of a paperback novel. I’m no engineer, but even I can put a small one together now. It’s not brain surgery or nuclear science.”

“So who is building this thing?”

“Some of our team members who
are
engineers. They’re as upset at the government as you and I are for what it’s doing. I gave them the task of building a larger version of the EMP device I just described. A
much
larger one.”

Nate said, “I saw the eighteen-wheeler in the first shed.”

“There’s two of them in there, side by side, actually,” Ibby said. “We’re putting the giant EMP devices into the trailers of both trucks so they can fire a highly concentrated pulse out the back. We’re just days away from deploying them.”

Ibby opened the shed door to the outside and gestured to Nate to follow him. He said, “By this time next week, there will be no more illegal surveillance of Americans. The government won’t know what hit them.”

•   •   •

N
ATE TRAILED
I
BBY
to the second shed. As he did, he glanced over his shoulder. The “volunteers”—including Sheridan—had apparently gone around the third shed and entered a makeshift dining area. He caught snatches of distant conversation in the still morning.

“I need my weapons back,” Nate said.

“Sorry, but we’ve got a strict ‘no firearms’ policy here. When you leave the premises, you’ll get your guns back.”

“I’ve had bad experiences without my guns.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“The policy doesn’t seem to be in effect for Saeed and his goons, I noticed.”

“They’re
security
, Nate. Of course they’re armed.”

Nate shook his head. Ibby ignored him.

“When I found this ranch, I was amazed to discover that the former owner had apparently prepared for the coming nuclear war by building one hell of an underground bomb shelter,” Ibby said. “Keep in mind that this place was built in the early 1960s. I wasn’t around then, but I’ve read all about the paranoia. Apparently, the owner thought the Russians might drop one on him way out here in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t make sense to me, but the fact that he built it sure has been useful. If the team and the volunteers operate out of sight at all times, there’s no way the spy satellites can figure out what we’re up to.”

Ibby stopped and looked up. He said, “This is my dream, that someday soon I’ll be able to stand here and look up and see the sky, the clouds, and maybe my falcons without someone up there looking back at me, wondering what I’m doing and making an electronic
record of it. Or me calling my family without knowing some spook is listening in. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?”

Ibby looked down, but not before Nate caught a wink of moisture in his eyes.

“Not that my family has any idea where I am or what I’m doing,” he said. “If my father knew . . . God help me.”

•   •   •

T
HEY ENTERED
THE SECOND SHED
, the one filled with parked vehicles and equipment. It smelled of decades-old sheep manure, dust, and spilled fuel. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and since there were no rooms partitioned inside like the third shed, it was cavernous. Swallows had built hundreds of bulbous nests in the rafters, and the small birds swirled high above their heads.

“There are still some pigeons I haven’t yet trapped to feed my falcons,” Ibby pointed out. “You’re welcome to them if you need them.”

“Thanks.”

Nate could feel a slight thrumming vibration through his boot soles as he stood on the floor of the shed.

“Generators,” Ibby said in explanation. “As you might imagine, we’re entirely self-contained. We get our electricity from our own source and water from a well. It gets pretty lonely at times for everybody, so I allow weekend breaks, but only at night.”

He smiled and said, “Not that there are many places to go from here. Wamsutter or Rawlins . . . well, you get my drift. There’s a little café on the interstate I have an interest in. It’s not much, but most of us go there when we need a break.”

Nate knew the place. It used to be a strip club.

Ibby approached what looked like the entrance to a storm cellar in
the corner of the shed. The cinder-block base had slanted horizontal double doors on it. Before grasping the door handles, Ibby spoke into a rusty Schlitz beer can sitting on a windowsill over the entrance.

“It’s me.”

Nate heard a dull click from the other side of the double doors. Apparently, the beer can hid a microphone.

Ibby grinned at Nate. He was obviously very proud of this place, Nate thought.

“Watch your step,” Ibby said.

•   •   •

T
HE BOMB SHELTER
was constructed of thick concrete and it ran nearly the entire length of the shed. Bare bulbs were strung along electrical wires attached to the ceiling, bathing the space in harsh white light and creating deep shadows in the corners. As they descended from the entrance on a stout ladder, Nate looked over his shoulder to see four or five curious faces looking up from crude desks and workstations.

Ibby waited for Nate to climb down and join him, then said to the others, “This is Nate Romanowski, folks. He’s a brother of mine from the world of falconry. More important, he’s a brother to all of us when it comes to our mission here.”

A fiftyish man wearing a dark jumpsuit said, “Welcome to our world.”

Nate nodded to him. The man
looked
like an engineer; half-glasses, disheveled hair, bulbous nose, rough hands, grease-smeared tool handles sticking out from every pocket of his overalls.

“This is Bill Henn,” Ibby said. “He’s our chief designer. Bill helped build the Utah Data Center and he was there when it
opened. But Bill was under the impression the facility would be used only to find and target terrorists. When he objected to its actual use, Bill found himself suddenly unemployed.”

“I’d rather be doing the Lord’s work,” Henn said. “Which is what I’m doing now. My wife, Donna, came with me and she does most of the cooking.”

“Bill can answer any technical questions,” Ibby said. “This is his baby from start to finish.”

Henn nodded quickly, then went back to soldering on a circuit board of some kind on his desk.

A young, hard-looking woman with frizzed black hair and a feline cast to her eyes approached them. She was tall, slim, and fit. She wore a suede vest over a long-sleeved T-shirt and tight gray slacks.

“Suzy Gudenkauf,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Nate shook her hand.

“Suzy’s our outreach director,” Ibby said. “She’s been with us as long as Bill.”

“Outreach?” Nate asked. “I thought you used couriers?”

“We do,” Gudenkauf said. “But that’s just part of what I do. Maybe the smallest part.”

Nate found himself mesmerized by her deep brown eyes, and she didn’t look away.

Ibby said, “Suzy’s talent is in networking. She’s incredibly well connected with people who share our outlook. She identified funding sources and distribution paths that keep us in business. As you can imagine, it’s really super-expensive to buy all the parts and equipment we need and to do it all under the radar so it isn’t tracked. Suzy has people on both coasts who trust her and our mission to the point that they’ll send hard, untraceable cash through the couriers.”

Gudenkauf said, “If Bill over there needs a half ton of copper wire to get delivered to a pickup point along I-80, I make sure it gets handled. If he needs industrial batteries or two big-ass Caterpillar generators, I find sources who can deliver them. If Ibby here just has to have his chai tea latte in the afternoon, I make sure he gets it.”

Ibby nodded at that.

“So if there’s anything at all you need . . .” She let the sentence end in a slight smile.

Nate ignored the implication.

•   •   •

“W
ANT A TOUR
?” Ibby asked Nate.

“Sure, but first I have a question.”

“Is it technical?”

“Sort of.”

“Then ask Bill.”

Henn looked up expectantly.

Nate said, “I’ve been at facilities overseas that were prepped to withstand an EMP attack. I saw copper-mesh cages over the top of the electronics that could absorb a pulse and divert it into the ground. I can’t imagine the NSA hasn’t built screens around the hardware at the data center. Or is your device so powerful it can cut through the shield somehow?”

Henn nodded. “They’ve got a shield around the supercomputer that my EMP device probably can’t penetrate. The pulse
may
be powerful enough to leak inside and screw up a few things, but there’s no way it would create the massive failure we hope for.”

Nate looked over to Ibby.

Ibby said, “We’ve thought of that. Actually, Bill thought of it early on. So we’ve got a work-around.”

“I know you said no one will get hurt,” Nate said. “But having done special operations, I know that something unexpected always happens. What if there’s someone walking around in there with a pacemaker in his chest? Wouldn’t an EMP kill him?”

“It’s possible,” Ibby said. “We pray that won’t happen, or anything like it. Believe me, that kind of thing has kept me up at night. But in the end I have to accept the possibility of unintentional collateral damage. It sounds harsh, but it’s true.”

“Kind of like disabling the vehicle of that spy you told me about?” Nate said. “You hope he can walk to the highway without dying of exposure.”

Nate and Ibby stared at each other for a moment before Ibby looked away. Ibby said, “It would be unfortunate. We’re doing everything we can to minimize casualties. You’ve got to believe me on that. There are so many other ways we could’ve taken out the data center—bombs, a frontal assault—and we think we’ve chosen the one that will do the least human damage. I hope at least you’ll give us credit for that.”

Nate grunted. Neither a yes nor a no.

To Henn, Ibby said, “Let’s walk him through.”

“Mind if I tag along?” Suzy Gudenkauf asked while linking her arm through Nate’s.

•   •   •

“I
COU
LD BORE YOU
with the jargon associated with supercomputers,” Bill Henn said as he slowly led Nate and Ibby through a
concrete hallway that connected the workroom to another space directly beneath the first shed.

“Petaflops, nodes, processors, how many quadrillion floating points per second, chiller plants—all that—but it’s simpler for a non-engineer to simply understand if you think of a supercomputer as a giant brain and everything built around it as organs that exist to keep the brain healthy and functioning. If the organs fail completely or blood stops circulating, the brain will die rather quickly.”

Henn stopped and turned around so he could use his hands to gesture while he talked.

“A supercomputer is millions of dollars’ worth of interconnected hardware and software running at maximum capacity doing billions of calculations of ones and zeros every second. For every watt of electricity used, a watt of heat is generated by the machine. There’s no way around it. Those computers get hot fast, and in order to function they must be kept cool. Think of the fans they used to have in old desktop computers. Those fans were there for a reason.

“So the supercomputer must be kept cool at all times—sixty-five degrees, to be exact—or the nodes inside will delaminate, meaning they’ll fall apart and fail. What you need to keep in mind about a supercomputer facility is that for every foot of space occupied by the brain there needs to be an additional four feet of space devoted to keeping the brain cool. It’s all about keeping the brain cool at all times. There can be no fluctuation at all. If the temperature fluctuates, the nodes delaminate and the data goes kablooey.

“That’s why there are so many cloud server centers out here in the West,” Henn said. “High elevations, dry air, and long winters
mean cooler temperatures. That’s why they built the Utah Data Center where they did.

“So, how do you keep the brain cool? Water and air, but mostly water. You circulate cool water over, under, and through the supercomputer itself. They haven’t come up with anything more efficient than just plain cool water, and believe me, they’ve tried. That’s why every supercomputer facility has water storage, chiller plants so water heated by the machines can be cooled down again, and a shitload of cooling towers outside. Think of water as blood to the brain.

“In order to keep that water flowing at all times, there’s a power substation plugged into the electrical grid. But of course they have backups to their backups. Remember: it’s
all
about cooling. If the power goes out for some reason, there is massive battery backup in one of the buildings that keeps the power going so the water can continue to circulate. But batteries don’t last forever, either, and if the power is out for hours there are sophisticated backup generators on site that fire up. They’ll power the electricity and water supply as long as fuel can be delivered to them.”