Drone Threat

36

Every eye around the table in the Situation Room was fixed on the video monitor. Eaton held the remote control. Video footage from the TXDOT cameras inside the Woodall Rodgers tunnel played a brief clip of the Kan-Tex tanker truck rocketing through the light traffic. The image froze.

“There. It looks like the left front brake engaged. See the smoke from the burning rubber?” Eaton said. She hit the Play button again. The image advanced in slow motion. “As you can see, physics took over from there. The tanker swerves, hits the wall, and—”

A fiery explosion engulfed the last camera, killing the image in a haze of digital snow.

“How many dead?” Lane asked.

“Including the driver, seven, possibly more. Hard to tell. Not much left, forensically. Dallas PD is still running down VIN and plate numbers from the wreckage. They’ll reach out to the addresses of record and try to piece together a more definitive list of victims.”

“Thank God it didn’t happen at rush hour. Would’ve been a holocaust,” Grafton said.

“Where else?” Pearce asked.

“The 405 in Los Angeles, not far from LAX, along with Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver. No other fatalities. Mostly lane closures, traffic rerouting. Two of those were fuel spills, so HAZMAT teams had to be called in.” Eaton noted the time on the wall. “Some of them won’t be cleaned up by evening rush hour, so there are still plenty of headaches on the way.”

“Do we have any Gorgon Sky on these attacks?” Lane asked.

Pearce shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. The attacks all happened exactly where we didn’t have them in place.”

“Of course not,” Chandler said, unable to hide his disdain.

“How soon until all of the major metro areas are covered?” Lane asked.

“I’ve got commitments from Boeing, General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, and three other majors. We’re getting camera pods and software packages out to each of them so they can link their systems into our network. We should have seventy percent of the country covered within the next seven days.”

“No faster?” Lane asked.

“They’re balls to the wall now, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ve got a question. Weren’t all of the tankers from the same company?” Chandler asked.

“Yes. Kan-Tex, out of Texarkana, Texas.”

“Is Kan-Tex on any of our watch lists? Or any of its employees?”

“Not on mine,” Eaton said.

“Nor mine.” Mike Pia, the director of national intelligence, had arrived just minutes earlier. In his wire-rimmed glasses and tailored pinstripe, he looked like a well-heeled college professor or a Wall Street executive. He’d been both at one time or another in his storied career.

“Shouldn’t you guys have the same list?” Chandler asked.

“There are a lot of damn lists these days,” Pia said. “Too many.”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Peguero said. “The last thing we need is one single list of enemies of the state. That’s begging for abuse.”

Pearce bit his tongue. He personally knew of a case where a man was on one terror suspect watch list and yet passed his FBI background check when he applied for — and received — a concealed carry permit. No wonder most Americans felt that the federal government was too big and too inefficient to be of any use other than sucking away billions of tax dollars to accomplish nothing but employ an army of worthless bureaucrats.

“Can we please stay on topic?” Lane asked. A vein throbbed on his temple.

Chandler waived a hand. “Sorry. Just frustrated.”

“Join the club.”

“The fact that all of these tankers were from the same company is good news. It probably means it was just that one company that was hacked,” Pearce said. He turned to Eaton. “And from the description you gave of their automated dispatch system, it sounds like all they needed was access into one terminal, probably the administrator’s. From there they took complete control.”

“I’m starting to miss the horse and buggy,” Chandler said. “Analogue had its advantages.”

“I had a call in from the Washington Post ten minutes ago, sir. I told them to sit tight but that will only buy us an hour. Maybe two.” At twenty-eight, Alyssa Abbott was not only the youngest White House press secretary in history but also Lane’s youngest senior advisor. She was another busty blonde who seemed destined for cable sportscasting or anchoring Fox News. But she was whip smart and rough as a cob, growing up with four older brothers who were all active-duty U.S. Marines. Abbott was an award-winning war correspondent and frequent on-air personality before signing on with Lane’s presidential campaign.

“What do they know?” Eaton asked.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the tanker crashes all happened within thirty minutes of each other. The wire services want to call this a terrorist incident — a case of ‘suicide truckers.’”

“Holy Moses,” Chandler said. “Just what we need.”

“We’ve got to give them something or they’ll go out with it,” Abbott said.

“What do you suggest?” Lane asked.

“Environment and Public Works has been pushing for a new highway bill. Money for more roads and bridges. We can spin it that way.”

“You want to blame all of this on potholes?” Pearce asked.

“Of course not. But I can feed them some inside dope about new funding legislation we’re proposing—”

“But we’re not,” Lane said.

Abbott smiled. “That’s where the spinning part comes in. Let me promise them something exclusive on the highway bill we may or may not be working on, and promise to backfill this other story when we’ve got more facts to give them. If I toss in the national security angle, that should buy us another day.”

“That supposes we actually learn anything by tomorrow. What exactly do we have right now? Let’s go around the room, starting with you, Julissa.”

The attorney general shook her head, frustrated. “The Dallas FBI field office is flying up to Texarkana right now with a computer forensics team. They’re already remotely accessing the site to monitor it and shutting it down to keep anything else from happening. The San Diego computer services firm Kan-Tex contracts with is cooperating as well. It will be at least a day and probably more before we can identify the hackers.”

“Or maybe never, if they’re good enough,” Garza added.

“Maybe not,” Eaton said, shrugging. “Good news is that we managed to piece together enough security camera footage to trace the flag drone’s flight path backward from the White House lawn to its point of origin. We discovered it took off from the back of a boat moored at the Capital Yacht Club.”

“Please God, tell me the boat belonged to a registered Republican,” Chandler said, grinning.

“A Green Party lawyer, actually. A lobbyist for one of the environmental organizations. She was and still is out of the country. We’re still digging around but my team is confident she’s not the one behind this.”

Lane turned to the DNI seated next to him. “Mike?”

“Melinda indicated yesterday that chatter is up. Same on our end. The jihadi sites are all abuzz that something’s going on, but nothing specific. If ISIS is behind this, they’re keeping quiet about it.”

“Any reason to think they’re not behind it?” Lane asked.

“Nobody’s claiming anything at the moment. Doesn’t mean they won’t later. And this kind of attack — public, disruptive, newsworthy — is right up their alley. The only thing missing is a high body count.”

“They gave it one helluva college try today,” Chandler said. “We’re just damn lucky they couldn’t pull it off.”

“Seems to me they could’ve killed dozens, maybe hundreds more. Those tanker trailers are practically rolling ordnance, and they had complete control of the tractors pulling them,” Pearce said. “All they had to do was wait for worse traffic or run those tankers into more vulnerable targets.”

“Are you suggesting restraint again?” Pia asked. He’d read yesterday’s briefing minutes. Thought Pearce’s point was interesting.

“Seems like it.”

“Restraint for what purpose?”

“Clearly not terror, at least in the classic sense. I think these attacks are pointed at the president. First it was the airports, now it’s the highways. These both have profound economic implications.”

“We’ve already established that ISIS is trying to pull down our economy,” Chandler said. “What’s your point?”

“The attacks are escalating. That means the consequences for not acceding to their demand to fly the flag only get worse. The goal is to get you to fly that flag, Mr. President, not kill Americans.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Garza said.

“Why is flying the flag so important?” Lane asked. “Wouldn’t a terror strike on our soil be victory enough?”

“This is about humiliation, not just publicity,” Pearce said. “ISIS pledged to fly the black flag over the White House back in 2014, the same year they declared the Caliphate. If they fail to keep that promise, they’re the ones who are humiliated.”

“Believe me, I have no intention of ever flying that black diaper over my own home,” Lane said. “Alyssa, spin the story any way you need to to keep the newspapers away from this as long as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Chairman Onstot will be here in an hour to talk about our military options. Let’s break for lunch and reconvene when he arrives. If we can’t find the bastards here, we’ll have to take the war to them over there.”

Chandler and Grafton exchanged a glance. Music to their ears.