Blowback, page 5
Liam checks the time. Those materials were probably arriving this moment at Langley.
Yet two things are gnawing at him, like little rats coming out at night to chew at the base of his skull.
One was the woman soldier—probably attached to the GRU—whom he had shot back at the bot farm. A righteous kill, since she was armed, she was in a place that was designated as a target by President Barrett, and she was in uniform and about to shoot either him or Boyd.
Yet armed and in uniform, she was still a young woman, and the only woman in the GRU building.
Damn.
But he remembers the last time he saw his brother, Brian, when he was on leave before his final tour to Afghanistan. They had been drinking late into the evening in the basement of their parents’ home, and Brian suddenly said, “You know what you learn out there in the ’stan, Liam? I’ll tell you. Your job is to get home alive, you and your troops. Nothing else matters. And sometimes you gotta make a hard decision. Like that goat herder coming your way. Is he just a kid? Or is he carrying a grenade in that pouch? And what do you do if he doesn’t stop advancing? I’ll tell you. You remember job one.”
All right, he thinks. He’s done jobs in Syria and Iraq and Suriname, and has been up against bad guys and had done what had to be done …
This time, a young woman.
But a woman with a pistol.
If Liam had been a few seconds slower, a bullet could have drilled him, or could have killed Boyd Morris. And how to pass that news onto Boyd’s wife and kids? Sorry your husband and dad got killed, but I hesitated …
All right then.
The other concern is the president. He had given Liam and Noa Himel wide latitude and depth in choosing their teams, weapons, and getting the job done.
But Liam doesn’t like the eye-of-God oversight.
Was the president just being cautious?
Or paranoid about his orders being carried out?
Overall Liam is pleased with the mission outcome. Last year that bot farm had hijacked some social media platforms in Myanmar and had spread false stories and rumors about atrocities being conducted from a mountain tribe up north, leading to thousands of innocents being massacred. That led to a lockdown by the military government, which then led to international sanctions—except from Russia—which signed some lucrative development contracts for its Gazprom Neft oil corporation.
Now Russia paid a price for its killing of innocents. At the end of the day, Liam will put this op in the win column.
One of his team members sits down next to him on the sagging couch. The fire crackles and sparks.
“Ask you a question?” he says.
Liam says, “Ask away.”
“Back at the GRU bot farm, just as we were leaving, you dropped a pistol and a notebook. Looked like some of the pages were charred.”
“Good eye.”
“Thanks.”
“So what was that about?”
Liam says, “Just a bit of fun. That pistol has a serial number that will trace it back to the KDB, the intelligence agency for Belarus. The notebook has handwritten notes about the layout of the building, how to gain entry, how best to destroy the servers inside. Anybody reading it will think it came from a KDB operative, also from Belarus.”
“Damn,” the other man says. “Belarus and Russia …”
“They currently hate each other,” Liam says. “And it’s in our interest to make sure that non-lovefest continues.”
“Hell of an idea,” the operator says, who is Benjamin Lucas, another officer borrowed from the CIA’s Special Activities Division.
Liam nods. “Glad you approve.”
CHAPTER 18
IN LOS GATOS, California, Noa Himel is parked in a black Chevrolet Suburban on Kennedy Road, a neighborhood of this Silicon Valley city, with her fellow team member Wendy Liu behind the steering wheel.
The homes here are one-story ranch houses, most with very small yards, though the street is lined with lots of trees and shrubbery. There are even white picket fences along some of the yards. Noa has been on her own share of overseas missions, but she’s feeling a sense of pride and anticipation on this one, her first domestic op.
A domestic operation like this is usually illegal, but these aren’t the usual days.
Wendy Liu says, “Want to hear something interesting?”
“Always,” Noa says.
Wendy says, “My grandfather left China after Mao and his gangsters took over, back in 1949, and went to Taiwan, and then here, to California. Was a laborer, construction worker, and then started his own contracting firm. Built a lot of houses in this valley, and when he built those houses, you know what?”
“What,” Noa says, waiting for another vehicle to show up as planned in this pleasantly rich and tidy American neighborhood.
“He built these one-story ranch homes back when a regular family, you know, Dad, Mom, and two point four kids, could own a home like this. Now? You know what these homes cost?”
“Not sure, but I think you’re about to tell me.”
“Yeah, the initial cost of fifteen or twenty thousand dollars is now, a million, maybe two million, dollars.”
Noa spots a white van with red lettering coming down the street, bearing the logo of Comcast Xfinity, the cable company.
The driver of the van is not in fact an employee of Comcast Xfinity.
“God bless America,” Noa says.
“You’re damn right,” Wendy says. “Where else could a nearly illiterate peasant arrive and build homes that now sell for two million bucks?”
The van stops in front of a light-blue ranch house that looks nearly identical to its neighbors.
Noa says, “Well, the nearly illiterate peasants that didn’t join your grandfather sure have made something of themselves.”
Wendy laughs. “That’s the truth. Thirty or forty years ago, who the hell was worrying about Chinese espionage?”
The van opens and a male worker in a blue uniform and black baseball cap comes out of the front and goes up to the front door. He rings the doorbell and the door opens.
“That was then,” Noa says. “This is now.”
Two of her team carrying pistols and wearing ghillie suits—making them blend in with the home’s shrubbery and brush—get up from the small yard and storm the house through the open door.
Wendy starts up the Suburban’s engine.
“Preach it, sister,” she says, putting the vehicle in Drive.
CHAPTER 19
NOA AND WENDY put on blue windbreakers with ICE in yellow letters on the back to confuse any nosy neighbors, and go up the gravel walkway to the house, and then into the main living room.
It’s a crowded place.
There are six people sitting on the floor, four Chinese males and two Chinese females. All are dressed Silicon Valley casual, Hawaiian or polo shirts, khaki slacks, comfortable footwear, and all have their hands flex-cuffed behind them. There’s a single couch and that’s it for standard furniture. Four computer workstations, with monitors, keyboards, and stacks of system towers, gently humming, are clustered in a semicircle. Cables and other equipment hang from the plaster ceiling. No television or music system. The floor is bare hardwood.
Three of Noa’s crew—Phil Cannon, Aldo Sloan, and Juan Rodriguez—are working to pile up file folders, hard drives, and other materials in the middle of the floor. Phil still has his cable television repairman uniform on while Aldo and Juan, faces sweaty, are wearing their ghillie suits, looking like extras from some sort of shrubbery horror movie.
Noa looks at the house’s occupants and sees one male face that stands out. She grabs a folding chair and puts it in front of him, casually sits down, and nods.
“Zhou Lieu Wei, so nice to meet you.”
He’s the oldest in the group, with a fleshy face, thick black combed hair, and black-rimmed eyeglasses. He doesn’t reply. His polo shirt is black with a white IBM logo stitched in.
“Mr. Zhou, I hope you and your fellow agents are in good shape,” she says. “We don’t want to hurt you, but we also didn’t want you to destroy any computer files or hard drives as we came in to make your acquaintance.”
Noa leans over, grabs a thick black cable running in front of the workstations, gives it a tug. “Ingenious little setup you have here, Mr. Zhou. A power cable installed to send an electromagnetic pulse throughout this entire house, to instantly fry every computer in here, erase every file and system, and pretty much wipe clear the evidence of what you and your mates have been doing these past couple of years.”
Noa tugs it again.
“Didn’t work, right?” she asks. “Last week a Comcast technician came in to fix a modem problem and managed to fix this as well. When my team came rushing in a few minutes ago, one of your young ladies did her very best to set off the EMP pulse. Nothing happened.”
More and more gear is being piled up in the center of the room.
Noa says, “Nothing to say, Mr. Zhou?”
He stares at her with utter hatred and contempt, and says in good English, “I demand to call my attorney.”
Noa smiles. “Say again?”
“You heard me … woman. I demand to call my attorney. Now. Or after we’re taken to whatever location is prepared for us. Immediately.”
Noa says, “Why?”
For the first time since entering the house, the older male looks concerned. “Because … it’s the law, that’s why.”
Juan Rodriguez says, “Damn, Noa, you wouldn’t believe how much stuff is squirreled away in those back rooms. It’ll take us at least another half hour to get it all packed up. They didn’t even use the bedrooms … just slept side by side on futons in the hallways. Everything else is keyboards, servers, and filing cabinets.”
“Thanks, Juan,” she says. “Mr. Zhou, you and your comrades have been quite busy, haven’t you? Stealing various types of software programs and other systems, all for the greater good of the Middle Kingdom. And you folks delight in taking what’s been developed here for our uses—like facial recognition software to identify terrorism suspects—and use it for your own purposes, like inputting the faces of dissidents you wish to arrest and scanning for them on the streets of Hong Kong or Shanghai. Or stealing the software we developed for administering our Bureau of Prisons and using it to crush the Uighurs.”
He says, “I did not come here to be lectured by you, woman. Take us to where you plan, and I will make my phone call.”
Noa smiles once more. She shouldn’t be feeling this way, but she’s enjoying this. Unlike that spy ring in Cambridge last year that’s probably still hard at work conducting espionage thanks to the FBI, this one in Los Gatos is gone.
Their superiors in Beijing at the Ministry of State Security at 14 Dong Chang’an Jie Avenue will try for hours, days, and weeks to communicate with their spy cell here in Los Gatos and will get no answer at all.
Disappeared.
Noa likes the sound of that word.
“What phone call?” she asks.
“Do not joke with me, woman. I know the law.”
He lifts his head, spits at her, and a splatter of saliva strikes her face. Aldo Sloan and Juan Rodriguez stop in their tracks, and she holds up a hand to keep them from moving forward.
She quickly gets over the shock and says, “But there’s a new law, haven’t you heard? There’s a secret memorandum of understanding between Washington and Beijing. We’re going to treat you the same way your folks would if they arrested a group of American spies in China. Same kind of rights and legal representation that Beijing would provide if the roles were reversed.”
Now the Chinese leader seems to understand what’s going on.
“But …”
One of the cuffed women begins to weep.
Noa stands up. “You’re not a citizen, you’re here illegally, conducting attacks against the United States. Therefore, no phone call, no attorney, no one-way trip back to China. I hear Cuba might be nice this time of year, or maybe the Marshall Islands, or Guam.”
The captured Chinese agents stare on in silence.
Noa carefully wipes the spittle off her face, and then leans down and gently rubs her right hand on Zhou’s left cheek.
Noa says, “Get used to it. Papa’s got a brand-new bag, and his name is President Barrett Keegan.”
CHAPTER 20
THE APPLAUSE AND cheers coming from the attendees at the annual Humphrey-Mondale Dinner in Minnesota warms President Barrett Keegan and lifts his mood. The support and the love rolling up from the packed crowd inside the packed auditorium feels almost substantial, as he could lean into it, like one of those weathermen reporting on hurricane-force winds.
Accompanied by party officials, his own White House staff, and members of the Secret Service, Barrett is quickly escorted offstage, the applause and cheers still echoing in his ears and in the corridors of the building.
Briskly the Secret Service takes him outside, where the Beast—his armored limousine—is waiting, along with two other limousines, police cars, and Suburbans making up his motorcade, ready to take him back to Air Force One.
Standing next to him is Stephanie Martin, the head of the Minnesota state party. She says in an awed voice, “Mr. President, look at that!”
“That” happens to be what looks like thousands of residents, crowded behind hastily constructed rope lines set up in the large parking lot. Additional Secret Service personnel and Minnesota State Troops are valiantly working to keep the cheering crowd under control, as Barrett waves back at them, standing on his toes to get a greater view.
Look at that, he thinks, look at my people. The trust and love they have for him, Barrett Keegan.
He will never betray that trust and love, and that insistent voice inside of him says, You belong here, this is your time, your destiny.
Stephanie has to lean in closer to make herself heard over the cheering crowd. “This was unscheduled, sir,” she says. “It was just spontaneous. Sir, the people … they are behind you, one hundred percent.”
Barrett waves once more before ducking into the limousine. “I intend to keep that support, Stephanie, as I make them and their families safer than they can even imagine. Thanks for this incredible day.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. President,” she says as the heavy door is swung shut. “You’ve earned it.”
CHAPTER 21
LAS VEGAS
IN A PRIVATE dining room at the luxurious hotel Waldorf Astoria on Las Vegas Boulevard South, Secret Service Special Agent Marianne Harrison is feeling just a bit more comfortable at seeing her protectee, Alamo, settle down to a leisurely meal.
Alamo, also known as Laura Hernandez, former congresswoman, former governor of Texas, and now vice president of the United States, has spent a busy day with a variety of Nevada politicians, going out to the Hoover Dam for a speech on alternative energy sources, and then back to the famed annual Consumer Electronics Show. Alamo toured the various display booths at the CES, tried everything from a VR system that approximates the surface of Mars to a medical bracelet that could “read” vitals from heart rate to cholesterol level, and throughout the tour Special Agent Harrison—the detail leader—and about a dozen or so Secret Service agents kept close watch.
Even though the place was secured and there were undercover agents mingling in with the crowd, Marianne still wishes Alamo wouldn’t expose herself so much.
Which is hard to do, since as a former governor, Alamo loves to press the flesh and be out with the public.
But here, inside this closely guarded dining room, Special Agent Harrison is feeling more in control. This room is heavily secured, there’s a squad of agents in the kitchen area, and every chef, line cook, waiter, and waitress have been thoroughly vetted.
With Alamo are the governor of Nevada, the majority leaders of both the state senate and state house, and various business leaders and government officials. Alamo’s husband is back in Austin, where he’s a history professor at the University of Texas, and her two daughters are in schools in and around the Austin area.
The low-ceilinged, wood-paneled room is hung with burgundy draperies and decorated with antique paintings and sculpture. The piped-in jazz music is a soft backdrop for loud conversation and lots of laughs, and then someone starts having a coughing fit.
She looks to where the coughing is coming from.
Alamo’s table.
Harrison starts moving and there’s a crash of silverware being dropped and glass breaking, and she sees Alamo sliding to the floor, as her seatmates cry out and stand up.
She brings up her wrist microphone from her two-way Motorola radio that’s belted to her waist and says, “Alamo is down, Alamo is down, MERT, get in here now!”
Harrison gets to the fallen vice president, calls out, “People, give me room, please, step away!” Back to her wrist microphone she says, “All stations, Alamo is down. Shut down the perimeter. Nobody enters or leaves.”
Other members of the detail come through to her, pushing people and chairs and tables aside. The voices are louder now, with calls of “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” from the other diners.
Harrison’s training comes right to her as she instantly responds.
Alamo is on her back, eyes closed. She’s wearing a red linen skirt and jacket ensemble, black blouse. She checks her pulse at the side of her neck. Weak but regular. Harrison checks her mouth, makes sure her airway is clear. Alamo is fifty-four years of age, dark complexion and black hair, and is an avid jogger and tennis player.
