Second Strike

CHAPTER 83

^{WASHINGTON, D.C.,}

^{AUGUST 18, 5:12 P.M. EDT}

All it took to fool the United States of America were glasses and a ball cap.

Vasiliev had alerted Bor to be prepared to deploy the volunteers. While it was still possible, even likely, that the event would proceed, he needed to leave the consulate and travel through the District to the house where the volunteers were waiting. Since they believed Bor was a jihadist, and to make sure the volunteers could never be connected to Russia, they were kept some distance away.

The Americans were credulous, but they weren’t stupid. After the suicide bombings they would be on highest alert, and Garin was certain to have insisted to the powers that be that Bor was at the center of everything. Even if they weren’t wholly convinced of his involvement, they would act out of an abundance of caution and check all surveillance videos for his image—presuming they knew what his image looked like.

Bor, always a step ahead of his adversaries, left nothing to chance. Both machines and man had biases. Those biases permitted Bor to evade detection by donning nothing more than heavy-framed glasses with one frame slightly smaller than the other and an Orioles cap pulled low over his brow. It was a matter of symmetry. Both human brains and facial-recognition algorithms were thrown off by subtle alterations. For humans, the alterations were magnified by stress. Chaos and pressure caused the closest of associates to misidentify one another. Even the most highly trained associates.

Even Garin.

He was somewhere nearby. Bor hadn’t seen him. The consulate’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras hadn’t picked him up. But Garin was out there, waiting. Bor was sure of it. In the two years they’d been Omega teammates, Bor had watched Garin closely—observed his techniques, habits, and preferences. The man was relentless. Bor had never seen him fail. He made mistakes, as anyone would, but they were inconsequential and immediately rectified.

Bor slung a large black Adidas bag filled with handguns, ammunition, and an MP7 over his left shoulder and proceeded out of the door of the consulate surrounded by several visiting diplomats. He scanned the surroundings as he walked to Wisconsin Avenue and immediately hailed a cab. He saw no sign of Garin, nor did he expect to. If Garin identified Bor, he wouldn’t intercept him here. Rather, Garin would lie back and observe Bor’s movements, waiting for him to rendezvous with others. Then the fireworks would begin.

Garin anticipated that Bor wouldn’t emerge alone from the consulate.

As clever and experienced as Bor was, when it came to evading detection, he had a significant handicap: his physique. Unless he was walking with a group of NFL running backs, his body would betray him.

And it did so only moments later when he left the consulate with several midlevel functionaries from the European Union. In contrast to their deskbound softness, his musculature had a rough, almost cartoonish quality. The minor alteration to his facial appearance would have been enough to throw off most people, but Garin spotted him just as he was entering the Red Top cab. Garin determined not to lose the cab in the traffic as he jogged to the black Explorer. He got in and followed several cars behind.

The traffic was sufficiently heavy that even if Bor looked back through the rear window it would be difficult for him to locate Garin. Given the events of the last couple of hours, Garin thought it likely Bor was now in play and would link up with whatever team might be supporting him.

They proceeded at a moderate speed down Memorial Parkway past Arlington. Garin’s phone vibrated and he answered, putting it on speaker. It was Olivia. Though she sounded weak, Garin was relieved. He demanded that she put Congo on.

“Listen to me, Michael. This can’t wait. Hammacher was engaged by DARPA to design systems to prevent the hacking of aircraft—military, commercial, drones, anything.”

Olivia paused to catch her breath. “There are vulnerabilities in the air traffic control system. The FAA and others are patching them, but as soon as they do, it seems new ones appear. There are up to three thousand commercial flights being monitored at any given time, so to some extent, it’s like playing whack-a-mole.”

“Olivia, I’m following Bor as we speak. Give me the CliffsNotes version.”

“Before his death, Hammacher designed patches for vulnerabilities in GPS satellites, surveillance and broadband systems, and air traffic control centers, which the Department of Transportation implemented, in the main.”

“In the main. You mean, not completely.”

“Right. Congress had a battle over funding. I know, big surprise.”

Garin shook his head. “Is Bor somehow going to exploit these remaining vulnerabilities?”

“Based on all of the evidence, I think he intends to hijack commercial airliners.”

“By hacking air traffic control?”

“Yes and no. One attack could be directed at the air traffic control systems. Disrupting the routing of aircraft, creating havoc, possible crashes and midair collisions. Aircraft and air traffic controllers could be rendered blind. False images or locations of aircraft could appear or disappear on radar screens.”

“You mean like that hack in Sweden last year?”

“Precisely. We believe Mikhailov used that as a test run. Swedish air traffic control systems went completely off-line. Thankfully, nothing serious happened, just some flight cancellations until the system came back online.” Olivia was speaking rapidly.

“Why do you think Mikhailov, the Russians, were behind it? What evidence is there?”

“The lack of evidence is evidence. The Chinese, Iranians, usually leave some trace of their presence. The Russians, however, rarely, if ever, do. They’re that good.”

“So what’s Bor’s role in all of this? He’s not a cyberwarrior.”

“I think Bor is going to somehow attack aircraft directly.”

Garin, absorbed in what Olivia was telling him, noticed that he was now only two cars behind the Red Top cab. If Bor looked back, he’d easily recognize Garin. He slowed into the right lane and let other cars overtake him, placing more distance between himself and the cab.

“What does that mean?”

“I think Bor’s going to access the flight controls for individual aircraft.”

“He can’t, Olivia. No way. Cockpits are completely inaccessible these days. And protocols established since 9/11 prohibit pilots from opening the door in case, say, a terrorist threatens to kill a hostage.”

“He doesn’t have to get into the cockpit. He may be able to control the plane from the passenger compartment. That’s what DARPA engaged Hammacher to prevent.”

Garin slowed a bit and drifted farther behind Bor’s cab. “You’ve got my attention.”

“There’s controversy as to whether a passenger can take over flight controls with a laptop, but apparently DARPA was sufficiently concerned that they were paying Hammacher a huge sum to make sure it could never happen.”

“And you think Bor is capable of hacking flight controls? How would he do it?”

“From what I can gather it’s done by scanning and accessing the plane’s networks through the in-flight entertainment system. A passenger uses an Ethernet cable with a connection to a laptop or tablet computer. He removes the plastic cover to the seat electronic box that’s located under some of the seats—usually the one located under the seat directly in front of him. It’s easy to do—removing the cover, that is.”

“Slow down.”

She did, but barely. “Say he overwrites codes on the plane’s thrust management computer. He can give it a command to descend or climb. Or maybe he issues a command to descend or climb to just one engine. The plane would pitch or roll. Theoretically, then, he could hijack or crash the plane.”

The cab turned right. Garin sped up slightly to beat the changing traffic light and make the same turn. “It can’t be that easy,” he said. “Major airplane manufacturers leaving their systems so vulnerable some gamer could take over and fly the plane into Mount Whitney? They must have redundancies, interlocks, whatever you call it, to prevent someone from messing with a plane’s software while it is in the sky.”

“They do. But Hammacher says—said—they can be overridden.”

Ahead, the cab slowed to a stop at a traffic light. Garin tensed momentarily in anticipation of the possibility of Bor getting out, but he remained in the vehicle. Garin stayed several vehicles to the rear, his attention split between the cab and Olivia.

“Even so,” Garin argued, “wouldn’t instruments in the cockpit signal that someone was attempting to tamper with the plane’s network? I mean, wouldn’t the plane’s computer identify an attempted hack and counter it somehow?”

“Normally, yes. But if someone was sophisticated enough, he could create a virtual environment to evade the EICAS—to fool it. And this possibility had DARPA… I think the technical term is ‘freaked.’”

Garin nodded to himself. “If it was possible, it should have them freaked. But that’s just it. If someone could take over a plane by hacking its in-flight entertainment, DOT, FAA, and the airlines would also be freaked. But they’re not…”

Garin stopped, realizing his error and anticipating Olivia’s counter.

“And if they freaked it would be a disaster. Merely acknowledging the possibility would cause air travel to grind to a halt. No one would set foot on commercial aircraft. The Dow would crater. Commerce would be devastated.”

Ahead, Bor turned to look back. Garin ducked his head toward the dash, not completely, but enough to obscure his face without appearing conspicuously evasive. He hesitated a few moments before straightening.

“Michael, can you still hear me?”

“I can. Okay, even if I’m not completely persuaded by the Hammacher file, we now know with certainty that Bor is involved in something, as if we needed two suicide bombers to prove it. And the guy who made my ear ring said Bor would discharge a backup operation.” Garin followed the cab through a left turn. “I suppose you think he’s going to hijack a plane?”

“Yes.”

“Admittedly, that’s bad.”

“It gets worse.”

“Figures. Go ahead.”

“Commandeering a plane is bad enough, but that’s just the means to an end,” Olivia said, her cadence slowing. “Remember the sheet with the flight numbers?”

“He’s hijacking all ten?”

“Even worse. I checked the flight paths of all ten. Bor does only big things, right?”

“How bad is it?”

“This is a leap on my part, but I think Bor’s confederates are going to crash the airliners into critical infrastructure.”

“Like another 9/11?”

“No. He’s not just going to fly into buildings, as bad as that was and is. He’s going to fly them into nuclear power plants, oil refineries, and hydroelectric dams. Just a dip of the wings, a slight detour, and they’re there before fighters can be scrambled to intercept. Tens of thousands will be killed immediately. Ten times more eventually.”

Garin’s jaw clenched. His grip on the steering wheel tightened.

“And that’s just a distraction to keep us preoccupied,” Olivia continued. “The Russians have been engaged in movement of troops and a buildup of matériel throughout their western front—Baltics, Ukraine, even Poland. They’re also moving south in a pincer movement along the Caspian.”

“Toward Iran?”

“Toward Iran,” Olivia confirmed.

“But they were just helping Iran’s nuclear program,” Garin said, thinking out loud. “But really, unbeknownst to Iran, the Russians were using them to hit us with an EMP. The mother of all false-flag operations.”

“And now they’re about to invade their ostensible ally,” Olivia continued. “An ally whose military defenses have been utterly devastated by weeks of massive bombing.”

“So we’ve essentially prepared the ground for Mikhailov.” Garin whistled slowly. “He causes us to bomb Iran into oblivion and then he waltzes in and controls their oil reserves.”

“Not to mention the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” Olivia added, speaking rapidly again. “Fifteen million barrels of oil pass through the strait every day. Combined with their own reserves, the Russians would control more than a third of all the oil on the planet.”

“Holy—”

“Nothing holy about it, Michael. He’s gambling that this doesn’t result in a world war. This is sheer insanity—”

“Maybe not,” Garin interrupted. “If Bor hits the sites, the probability of war is certain, but war with jihadists and their state sponsors. It will look like they’re the ones who hit us, not Russia. On top of everything, it will look like Russia’s doing our dirty work for us by invading Iran—the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism.”

Garin tapped the brakes. He’d gradually sped up during the exchange with Olivia. He drifted back another fifty or so yards.

“Still a big risk,” Olivia insisted.

“We can debate that all day, but it’s happening. The suicide bombers are proof.”

“What do you need from me, Michael?”

“Tell Congo to stand down and allow the medical personnel to treat you,” Garin said. “And call Brandt. Give him the flight numbers. The president will order them grounded.”

“What about Bor?”

A dull wave of pain pulsed from his right ear to the other side of his head, clouding his vision. The sharp, piercing sensations, though less frequent than immediately after his encounter with the Butcher, remained just as intense. He focused on Bor’s cab.

“I’ll take care of him. Go.” Garin disconnected. Several cars ahead of him he caught a glimpse of Bor riding in the back of the Red Top cab. Garin knew that the threat wouldn’t be eliminated with a simple order from the president grounding flights identified on the list he’d taken from the man in the safe house. For all he knew, the list itself was a fraud, a decoy. If there was anything Garin had learned from Bor’s operations, it was that even his backup plans had backups. And nothing was ever as it seemed.

Bor caught another fleeting glimpse of the black Explorer in the rearview mirror of his cab. It appeared Garin had just terminated a call.

Bor had been aware of Garin’s presence mere seconds after leaving the consulate. Despite Garin having thwarted the EMP operation, Mikhailov, Stetchkin, and the rest still didn’t fully comprehend the nature of the man they were dealing with.

Bor placed a call on his cell. When it was answered he spoke briefly in Russian before disconnecting. Seconds after that, two gray Jeep Grand Cherokees trailing Garin’s SUV by several car lengths peeled off onto a side street to the right.

Bor leaned forward. “How much longer until we get there?”

“In this traffic, not long. Ten minutes. Fifteen tops.”

Bor leaned back and counted the seconds subconsciously. They were approaching another intersection approximately a quarter mile ahead. If his timing was correct, it should happen there.

Thirty seconds later Bor’s cab cleared the intersection. He saw Garin’s Explorer in the right side-view mirror as it entered the same intersection.

Garin caught a flash of gray out of the corner of his eye less than a second before one of the Grand Cherokees slammed into the right side of his Explorer, driving it across the street and into a car parked against the opposite curb.

Garin’s head ricocheted off the driver’s-side window, rendering him momentarily dazed. Garin instinctively reached for his SIG. The doors of his car were sandwiched between the car on the curb to his left and the Grand Cherokee to his right, trapping him in the vehicle.

Garin shook his head to regain his senses, swiftly raised his pistol toward the front of the Grand Cherokee, and squeezed off six shots—left to right—across the SUV’s windshield. Four of the rounds—two apiece—struck the two Zaslon operators in the front seats, killing both. Almost simultaneously, the third Zaslon operator sprang from the right rear door of the SUV, an MP5 submachine gun trained at the Explorer. Garin dove to the floor as a three-round burst ripped across the rear of the Explorer. Garin popped back up and returned fire with two rounds to the Zaslon operator’s face, dropping him in the street.

Garin’s eyes searched the interior of the Grand Cherokee for any additional targets. Seeing none, he swiveled to the rear, emptied his magazine into the back window of his SUV, and dove through the shattered remains, rolling onto the hatch before falling to the street.

A cacophony of screaming, sobbing, and whimpering pedestrians and squealing car tires swirled about him as he scrambled to his feet and the second Grand Cherokee screeched to a halt thirty feet behind the first. In one fluid motion Garin ejected the spent magazine, seated a fresh one, and fired seven rounds into the darkened windshield of the second SUV.

Garin swung behind the Explorer, using it as a shield, and paused for a moment, the only sounds the tinkling of broken glass and approaching sirens. He discerned no movement in the passenger compartment of the second Grand Cherokee. He saw no bodies, dead or alive.

Two Arlington patrol cars approaching from Garin’s right skidded to an abrupt halt twenty feet from the second SUV. Two officers leapt from each of the vehicles with weapons drawn, shouting unintelligible commands in the directions of both the second SUV and Garin. A single Zaslon operator materialized from the rear door of the vehicle and with astonishing speed and precision shot each of the four officers with an MP5 before any of them was able to squeeze off even a single shot. Almost simultaneously, Garin fired five times at the Zaslon operator, hitting him three times in the torso and once in the throat.

The Russian was dead before he fell to the ground. When he did so, Garin saw a pedestrian lying on the ground on the opposite side of the street, Garin’s fifth round having struck his upper left thigh.

Garin cursed, rose from his crouch behind the cab, and cautiously approached the second Grand Cherokee. The bodies of two Zaslon operators lay slumped in the front, dead. No one else was in the vehicle.

Garin sprinted across the street, and the wounded civilian’s expression morphed from one of pain to one of terror as Garin neared. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Garin shouted. “I’m a good guy. Good guy.”

Garin knelt to examine the man’s wound. Although his left pant leg was bloodstained, the wound, though painful, was relatively minor. The bullet had merely grazed the man’s thigh.

“You’re going to be all right,” Garin assured him. “More cops will be here any second. They’ll get you to a hospital.” Garin seized the frightened man’s arm, tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, and wrapped it around the wound. “You’ll be fine. Hang tough.”

Garin rose and sprinted toward the closer of the idling police cruisers, the wail of approaching sirens in the distance. He climbed in, shifted into drive, and sped in the direction Bor’s cab had gone.

Garin’s intention was not to overtake Bor, presuming that was even possible at this point. It was to evade arrest and detention by the police, something that would take him out of play and thereby virtually ensure the success of Bor’s mission.

Garin raced down Clarendon, light bar flashing, until he was confident he’d put sufficient distance between himself and the scene of the shootout. He needed to abandon the stolen cruiser before he was intercepted. A quarter mile in front of him was another intersection, three cars stopped at the red light. He swerved around and in front of them, blocking their path. Then he got out of the car with his SIG leveled menacingly at the driver of the lead vehicle and motioned for him to get out. The panicked-looking middle-aged man complied instantly, his hands raised over his head. Garin slid into the driver’s seat of the maroon Ford Fusion and proceeded in the direction of Reagan National. A simple calculation to increase the odds. He had no hope of reacquiring Bor, but he knew the assassin was eventually headed toward Reagan National or Dulles. The odds of intercepting him there were better.

Garin picked up his cell and called Dwyer.

“Dan, Bor is likely going to Reagan or Dulles.”

“How soon?”

“Assume immediately. He and whoever is with him cannot be allowed on any—” Garin stopped speaking abruptly, interrupted by an agonizing bolt of pain that shot from his outer ear through his skull.

“Mike?”

The intensity of the pain blurred his vision. Garin clenched his jaw and composed himself. “Call Olivia on Congo’s cell. Tell her to tell the president he needs to order FBI SWAT teams ASAP to Reagan and Dulles, and to alert security at both airports.”

“What for? Won’t that tip off the mole? Tip off Bor?”

“Yes. No. No other options. We lost Bor. We’re out of time. I’ve lost Bor. There, the attack is imminent…”

Dwyer’s brow furrowed. Garin was babbling, incoherent. “Mike, what’s going on?”

The garbled response from Garin was interrupted by the noise of violent impact and the sickening sound of twisting metal.