Chapter 42
Harry was waiting in her office when she arrived. He was standing at the window holding a binder under his arm.
He dropped the binder on her desk. “Mark gave this to me after we talked to Caroline. Most of it is redacted. The people Wiley was involved with are audacious and insane. I don’t know if Wiley knew what he was getting himself into. Maybe he wanted to get caught in the end.”
“Before we do this, tell me what you know about dad and Mattie.”
Harry grimaced. “This may not be the best time for—”
“Please.”
He looked out the window. “No one could find any reason behind it. You know that part. But just before you left, I found something.” He wasn’t looking at anything but he wouldn’t look at her. “You remember his workshop in the basement?”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see her. “Yes.”
“After the funeral, I went back to the ruins to have another look. The fire had done a good job of obliterating everything except for your father’s workbench.”
“You’re talking about that metal section.”
“It was all twisted from the heat, but it was still intact. I found a metal panel underneath it that opened into a chamber below.” He wiped his brow. “We should do this some other time.”
“Tell me now.”
Harry was already pale. The light from the window threatened to wash out any remaining color left in him. “The chamber had been protected from the fire. It was about the size of a small bedroom. He had contraptions in there. You understand what I mean?”
“I understand.” Her dad had been another resident of Dominion with his own special secret.
“I found video tapes and pictures in a fireproof box. I couldn’t be sure who the girl was with him, she wore masks and wigs. You were about to leave for university and I couldn’t prove it had any connection to what happened. There was no point in hurting you any further.”
“How did you find out it was Mattie?”
“It was just a process of elimination. There were only two possibilities. It was clear the girl was a teenager. It wasn’t you, so the likely candidates were Stephanie or Mattie. I kept my eye on both of them. Over the years, Mattie’s behavior, while not conclusive, was the most indicative. She was travelling a lot. In a depressed real estate market in a city struggling economically, she was getting wealthier.”
She dropped into her chair and looked down at the binder. “What is this?”
“It’s terrifying if any of it is true.”
“Just give me the highlights.”
“There are no highlights, Joan.” He sat down across from her and tapped the binder. “This is essentially the apocalypse, revelations about the planned destruction of the United States of America from within.”
He shoved the binder over to her.
She flipped through the pages. Almost eighty percent of the entries were blacked out or missing. “How did you get the apocalypse out of this?”
“Smoke and mirrors, it’s all about distracting us, drawing our attention to something else and then wham.” He clapped his hands hard. “They even have a name for it: Operation Gangrene.”
“What were their objectives?”
Harry grimaced again. “I suppose Mark’s already become a victim. He’s read the whole report and no longer trusts anybody. You should have been brought into this as soon as you arrived.”
“Thanks for the compliment. I think.”
“The first phase is infiltration. They were going to slip people into both government agencies and private sector companies involved with national security.”
“They couldn’t possibly go that big. There are hundreds of them.”
“You know better than that. You warned about exactly this in your report on the risk of increasing domestic terrorist activities. It’s the fragmentation issue.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Joan, please, we need to stay on topic here. The high number of companies is actually what would make it easy not difficult. That’s what you concluded in your report, didn’t you: too many fragments to keep track of?”
She nodded.
“No one knows who all of them are or what they’re all doing. Wiley’s guys, though, they did their homework. They might just have a more comprehensive list than Washington does. They only need to pick the easy marks to get started.”
He got up and paced around the office. Even after moving some things when she took over, he easily navigated the new layout because he was so familiar with this room. He could probably tell the story behind every scratch and nick.
“Once inside,” he said, “they would get access to our intelligence gathering network, our monitoring and surveillance capabilities. That’s what your report concluded.”
“Only some of that is done by the private sector. DHS, CIA, FBI and the like tap into their feeds as needed, but it’s a cumbersome process that doesn’t provide that much useful intelligence. Besides, these companies would detect what was happening.”
“Not necessarily. You’re a new company with leading-edge surveillance technology. Maybe you’ve found a way to read minds or something else fantastic. Soon, DHS or FBI comes knocking on your door with a fistful of money asking if you can do some work for them. What do you do? You should know. Wasn’t this one of your scenarios?”
“You grab the loot and start hiring like mad. That’s where your vulnerability comes in. The word gets out. You’re looking to snag people with certain skills as quickly as you can.”
He looked around the room as if he expected to find hidden cameras. “You had an updated network installed, right?”
“You know we did. It started before you left.”
“Did any of those guys strike you as suspicious?”
“Occupational hazard. We’re trained to be suspicious of something new or anyone who shouldn’t be there.”
“That’s the thing. The people running this new company aren’t trained. They recruit people with exactly the right talents and they’re red-blooded, clean-as-a-whistle, true-blue American citizens. Some of them would be our brightest and best. That’s the horror of this report; they planned to use our own people against us. The company would think it was getting exactly what it needed and welcome them into the firm with open arms. Some of them would be agents. Most would be innocent new employees who could be co-opted into small, isolated fragments of the greater project. They would be unaware they were helping a seditious cause.”
He kept looking around the room and wiping his brow.
She said, “Assuming these true-blues got past screening, they would then move on to the second phase of their plan. They would identify and replace people in crucial positions within the company to get access to our security network. They would implement their spreading infection in small steps and gather all the data they could along the way.”
“Then they begin phase three: complete system shutdown. I think Mark gave me this report, as redacted as it is, because he read the whole thing and is scared shitless.” He came to the desk and tapped the binder again. “I would call this a leak. No one would authorize handing this over to me even with my special status. He’s worried someone in his office is already corrupted. Someone got to Wiley even in prison. It’s probably why he didn’t want to bring you in even after helping to get you here.”
Someone else had just been added to the list of those who had some input in hiring her. “No one could do all that. They would make mistakes, lose control. It’s just too massive.”
“You do realize how ridiculous you sound. Chinese and North Korean hackers have caused worldwide problems for banking, law enforcement and government operations. And what about all the time, energy and resources needed to deal with the Conficter worm? Our government was really up to speed on that, wasn’t it? Even if they only achieve ten percent of what they’re planning, we’d be weakened . . . maybe only one percent would do it. In most cases they really only n
eed the right person in the right place at the right time doing the wrong thing. The goal is to let it infect, spread and disable. Even as just an idea, it’s highly contagious and deadly.”
He opened the binder. “Look at Wiley’s list of international business partners.” He turned the binder around and showed it to her. “Some of them reside in the who’s who of nations with factions hostile to the US.”
She read the list aloud. “Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Colombia, China, Venezuela, Russia, North Korea. Could just be money laundering.”
“No doubt it started out as that, but, I’d say that list just might be big enough. He was dealing with North Korea, for Christ sake.” He turned to another page. “And then there are the ports. Remember what happened in Houston last Sunday? It was a suicide bomber.”
The page contained a list of the major port cities in the US: Boston, New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and more.
“They want to cripple as many ports as they can. One of their options is to dock ships loaded with explosives and then set them off.”
“Where did Wiley fit in all this?”
“Mark now has evidence that Wiley was behind the increase in drug trafficking through Dominion. He had ties to motorcycle gangs from California and Mexico. They were being played against each other to provide the cheapest service. Caroline told us he had been trying to obtain Plutonium, and that terrified him.”
“They’re trying to make a dirty bomb.”
“How long do you think that would prevent us from repairing and reopening our ports? What do you think that’s going to do to our economy? Who’s going to want to import or export anything through contaminated American ports?”
“The explosion is more dangerous than the radioactive material in it.”
“Yes, but they’re called weapons of mass disruption for a reason, like that anthrax scare. We’ve had the training for that, too, but the public hasn’t. Fear breeds panic. News reports would make a big story of the radioactivity detected. They’d have special features on the health risks from exposure to it. Chernobyl would be mentioned frequently. That’s what the public will latch on to. It won’t matter if NOVA has a show that provides the real facts. People will remember the sensational both in the US and with our trading partners.”
“Operation Gangrene is a good name for what they’re trying to do. The more people read this report, especially with the redacted parts still there, the more distrust is going to spread throughout both the government and the private sector.”
“Nothing in this report that we can see says so directly, but, to me, it’s implied our security people believe the infiltration process is already underway. Suspicious bureaucrats are going to start restricting the flow of information and terminating contracts at the slightest hint. They’ll say it’s just a matter of budget cuts and redundancies, but they’ll sever essential lines of communication. Vital sections of our security network are going to be cut off from each other. Holes are going to open up.”
“You’re implying we’ll go back to the same lack of cooperation and coordination that many believe left us vulnerable to the nine-eleven attacks.”
“And it will have all started right here in Dominion.”
“What do you know about Zemar and Saleha?”
“They are not terrorists.”
“Zemar has ties to the Taliban. Craig and Randal smuggled them into the US.”
“They smuggled Zemar out because he was trying to escape the Taliban. He saved their unit when it was targeted for a suicide bomber. The Taliban found out and were after him. Craig and Randal got them out to save their lives, Zemar because he was supposed to be the suicide bomber, Saleha because she is his sister and because of her orientation.”
“How long have you known all this?”
“For about a year. You see, I had little birdies fluttering about my ears, too, singing these very interesting songs. I checked it out for myself. They have been trying to find Zemar and Saleha homes with relatives in other countries.”
“And you believe Harding’s side of the story?”
“And so does Kate and Susan, who is just like Saleha, and Kelly. It’s the birds singing the songs that we should be looking at.”
Her private line rang. “Sheriff McGowan.”
“I can’t find Mattie anywhere, ma’am.”
She put the phone on speaker. “I left her handcuffed to her bed.”
“I went there first thing. She was gone and the bedpost was broken.”
“She couldn’t break a post that thick.”
“I don’t think she did, ma’am. I looked all through the house and then knocked on a few doors. Trudy Bellows told me she saw Mattie drive off in a Jeep with two men. From her description, I think they belong to Colter. She says they were dressed in camouflage gear and looked ready for war.”
“Can you go to the farm and check? Bring her back if she’s there.”
“Yes, ma’am. Should I take Rob and Jacob with me?”
“No, just get one of them into the office to cover for you. They’re not up for something like this.”
“Like what, ma’am?”
“On second thought, just keep out of sight and take a look around. If you see something you don’t like, don’t be heroic. Keep your distance and call it in.”
“Like what, Joan?”
“You’ll know it if you see it.” She hung up.
Her phone rang again. It was still on speaker.
“Sheriff McGowan.”
“Joan, Colin. I couldn’t find any more on Colter or his unit. The DOD has sealed their records. But we have the preliminary on those bodies from the fire.”
“And?”
“What’s going on in that little town of yours?”
“Why?”
“That guy who disappeared, he’s one of the bodies.”
Harry said, “Are you sure?”
“Albert Nguyen, yeah, dental confirms; all his fingers are missing, though. Four of the bodies we’ve tracked through the Los Angeles Gang Activities Task Force to the Los Demonios motorcycle gang. The sixth body is a DEA agent, Vince Deacon, who was undercover with the gang as John Hill. He was about to become the liaison between Los Demonios and someone in your area. He had just made that report when the Los Angeles office lost contact with him.”
Harry asked, “What did Nguyen have to do with any of them?”
“He was undercover with the DEA working on tracking Wiley’s drug dealing. Wiley had offered to bring him in on the operation as a transporter. Apparently, Nguyen was a stand-up guy and contacted the DEA. They persuaded him to work with Wiley for a bit longer. Nguyen was supposed to get in tight with him and then hand him off to another undercover agent who would coordinate efforts with Deacon.”
They were in danger of being swept away by the audacity and insanity of the operation.
“You know, Joan, we’re getting quite jealous back here in Portland. It’s been so damned quiet since you left. Why do you keep all the good stuff to yourself?”
“You’re welcome to join me on this one. Get everyone you can and get here as fast as possible.”
“I thought you might say that. We’ll be there in an hour.”
“Harry will coordinate with you. Be careful, Colin. This does have that Crowley feel all over again only much bigger.”
“Understood.” He hung up.
“Is that why you told Kelly what you did?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have that Crowley feeling all over again.”
“Operation Gangrene is based here. It started with Wiley here. He didn’t just call someone in Islamabad or Basra or Pyongyang and ask them if they had nothing better to do could they join him in this little plan of his to attack the US from within. He got help here first.”
“You’re on the right track, but I think it went in the other direction. They recruited him. It’s what they do.” He ran his hands through his hair
and exhaled hard. He still had little color on his face. “Mark and I got this completely ass-backwards. We thought Craig’s poachers might have been another cell hiding in the mountains. The one that you suspected escaped from the Crowley farm.”
“We thought there might have been two more cells there, six other terrorists who escaped. We found no evidence at the Crowley farm to support that, however.”
“Yeah, well, those six might not have fled into the mountains. They had a home base nearby they could return to.”
“We have no proof of that either.”
“Do you detect a certain military precision behind all this?”
“Someone who knows terrorist strategy and tactics and still has a lot of loyal men under his command; Craig told me yesterday he found something.”
“What are you going to do?”
“First, I’m going to talk to a radical veterinarian about what he has on his neighbor and about his illegal immigrants. Then I’m going to talk to his neighbor.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“When Colin gets here, take him to Colter’s farm, set up a command center and then notify me. You guys are going to be my big stick. Tell Huard to get all the legal stuff in order and to send everyone he can round up. National Guard would be good.”
“And if we’re wrong?”
“I’m more worried about being right.”