Andrew Britton - The Operative

Within this system was another series of protections designed to circumvent industrial espionage. Every vial of nitroglycerin, every packet of gunpowder, every bar of steel or silver used by the molding shops, every tin filled with. 3mm screws had to be logged out from the OCQ-the Office of the Central Quartermaster. When he had established his company, Trask had realized that to sell to the military, he had to appeal to the military mentality. Using an army term to describe what was simply a disbursement center gave him an advantage over a rival with a purely functional “stockpile” or “repository” or “distribution center,” which made them sound like Wal-Mart or Best Buy, and not an arms developer.

Within the OCQ were the MCs-the munitions caches. These small, guarded warehouses were located side by side on sublevel four and were numbered from one to eleven, from small-caliber armaments to long-range missiles. There were also two lettered divisions: A and Z, as they were unofficially known. These were in a separate, isolated section of the basement. Officially, they were Division Alpha and Division Omega. Division Alpha experimented with high-yield bunker-busting devices, like the air-to-ground, laser-guided Enhanced Paveway III bombs, which were used by NATO to pummel Gadhafi in the Libyan uprising.

Division Omega was different. It created weapons that had never been used in combat. To date, only a handful had even been tested at the military’s White Sands range in south-central New Mexico. Division Omega designed EPWs-earth-penetrating weapons. These were all nuclear in nature. Unlike atom or hydrogen bombs, which had to be dropped from airplanes, or the much-feared but unwieldy and impractical “suitcase nukes,” these weapons were designed to be portable and precise.

And two of them were missing.

They had been checked out legitimately two days before. Tom Brehm remembered that clearly. Trask Earth Penetrator 1 and 2 were the only crates that had left the room in nearly a month. According to the manifest, they were bound to Site Green at White Sands via road, Absalom Bell, driver. They were due to arrive today. Except there was a problem-an alert Brehm had received that morning from the Department of Defense. It was directed to everyone involved with weapons testing:

EYES ONLY

DoD Command Center Dispatch A894D

SENT: 5:20:13-8:22 a.m.

RECIPIENTS: SECURITY LEVEL 4, W-PROJECTS

STATUS: URGENT

NOTIFICATION: UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE ALL NUCLEAR

AND EPW WEAPONS TESTS ARE ON HOLD. RDUs ON

HIGH ALERT FOR POTENTIAL MOVEMENT OF ENEMY ORDNANCE.

RDUs were radiological detection units. In test runs using low-level contraband, these radiation sensors, hidden throughout the nation in likely targets-ports, airports, financial and transportation centers, sports arenas-had been successful in identifying low-level radiation, as low as one hundred counts per minute. That technology assumed that in getting such material into the United States on board a boat or plane, the containers had taken a jostling and were leaking, even slightly. But no one in the DoD or at Homeland Security was willing to bet a city on that good fortune.

Thus, a secondary technology, the CIP-the Containment Identification Profile-was secretly deployed in 2009 on highways, on major bridges, at tunnel entrances, and elsewhere. It used fluoroscopic technology to search for lead containers: anything the beams could not penetrate was labeled suspect. Homeland Security had opted to keep the CIP program secret not just to prevent a general alarm-though people were constantly moving through the crosshairs, they received exposure on par with a dental X-ray-but also so potential terrorists would move slowly and confidently to and through cities until they could be quietly apprehended. These early warning systems allowed for a measured police response to prevent terrorists from panicking and triggering their devices prematurely.

The reason the DoD had instituted the A894D alert was to freeze lawful radioactive ordnance so that law enforcement could stay focused on radiation and radiation containers that might actually represent a threat.

The problem, Brehm noted, was that Absalom Bell was just entering Texas and was still on the move. His dispatcher, who would also have received this alert, should have notified him instantly to pull over and stay pulled over.

Protocol required that any anomaly in the system be reported not only to appropriate officials in the local system-Trask executives-but also to Homeland Security. Tom Brehm did so at once.

Brehm did not contact Bell directly. He was not authorized to do so, and a quick check of the system indicated that the problem was on the driver’s end: the stop order had been dispatched and ignored.

Most likely the entire thing was a careless oversight. Inexcusable, but not immediately dangerous.

In the event that that wasn’t the case, however, Brehm notified the Texas State Police. He did not provide them with any information about the contents of the vehicle; he gave them only the GPS data and alerted them that a Trask Industries van should be eyeballed with possible prejudice. That would put the NMSP in a position to act in the event, however unlikely, that at some point in its cross-country passage a van armed with a pair of tactical nuclear weapons had been hijacked.

Brehm kept an eye on the computer, watching for updates, as he went about the day’s business. But it was difficult to stay focused. Perhaps it was a reaction to what had happened in Baltimore and New York, perhaps it was his own bent toward devil’s advocacy and Murphy’s Law- What can possibly go wrong, and did it? — or perhaps it was a combination of those. But he couldn’t shake a nagging sense that something had gone bad here.

Bad with the potential to be very bad.

Jacob Trask was at his desk in his study, reading CNN online and having a breakfast of homegrown fruit and coffee. He had had an uncharacteristically restless night, not only because the goal was finally in sight but also because he feared possible blowback from Hunt’s actions in New York and the discovery-now being reported as breaking news-that the FBI might have been infiltrated prior to the attack. They didn’t need a lot of time to finish what they had started, but they did need today. They needed to distract an entire city, keep the eyes in the sky away from the target and on likely targets. When Yasmin Rassin was ID’d, she must be dead, not poised to perform her final act of marksmanship.

That was when he saw the high-priority alert come in from Division Z. He read it, then read the original DoD dispatch, then stared at the monitor while he felt his heart begin to race. He didn’t realize he was squeezing the handle of his ceramic mug until he heard it snap at the bottom. He pushed the coffee aside, pushed the bowl of fruit away, looked at the computer clock, and did a quick mental calculation.

Time, as always, was the adversary. Time and speed. He had been forced to move slowly. It had been necessary to test the Gillani Technique in the lab, test it in the field with random acts of violence, test it in Baltimore with a coordinated act, and now maneuver crowds of people out of position while he prepared for the final act. He had to keep law enforcement moving in an amoebic mass all around New York, like a herd of elephants dancing around a mouse that had already gone to ground in the high grasses…

“The driver,” Trask said through his teeth. The goddamned driver. It was not the driver’s fault he had ignored the alert; he did not know he had ever been carrying nuclear materials. Dispatch knew he had been carrying them. White Sands thought he had been carrying them, but he was always going to take the fall before he got there…

It will have to happen sooner rather than later, Trask thought. Before he can reveal where he brought the crates.