Act of War (35 page)

“But suppose we’re right. Suppose that’s where they’re hiding whatever it is they plan to use in the attack. What do we care at that point?”

“That’s a big supposition. Suppose it’s wrong. Suppose that’s only where one piece is. Suppose it’s a piece they can replace from somewhere else.”

Nicholas nodded. “Good point.”

“What about looping the footage?”

“You’d need clean footage for the interior cameras.”

“Meaning?” Harvath asked.

“Meaning they’d have to be looking at something static. There couldn’t be cars and things like that going past in the background. If they notice the same car or bicycle go by twice, that’s it.”

“But it
could
be done.”

“Anything’s possible,” said Nicholas, “but how do you transition from a live picture to a looped one without somebody noticing?”

“You interrupt the signal somehow. Turn it off and then turn it back on.”

“You want to hit their headquarters in Shanghai? That’d be one heck of an operation. It would take months to plan.”

“Who says we have to hit them there?” replied Harvath. “It’s like two cans and a string; we just clip it at our end. But I don’t think it could just be the CCTV feeds in question. It would have to be a whole bunch of stuff. So much stuff, in fact, that it dwarfs our stuff.”

“Are you talking about turning the Internet off?”

“We don’t have to turn it off. We just jiggle the switch. Can that be done?”

“Not with this,” Nicholas said, pointing at his laptop.

“But it
can
be done.”

“Not only can it, it has been done.”

Harvath looked at him. “It has?”

“Not too long ago, in fact. Back in January, almost all of China’s 500 million Internet users got bumped off the Web for eight hours. We’re talking half of the world’s Internet users. It’s been called the greatest failure in the history of the Net.”

“What happened?”

“China has this vast cyber snooping and censoring system nicknamed the Great Firewall of China. Its goal is to control all of the digital traffic coming in and going out of the country. They use it to squash dissent and root out any antigovernment sentiment. The Chinese have even employed it to jail journalists and dissidents.

“Sites like Facebook and Twitter have been blacklisted. Even Bloomberg.com and the
New York Times
have been blocked.”

“Why Bloomberg and the
NYT
?”

“Because,” said Nicholas, “despite some particularly procommunist people at the
New York Times
, the Gray Lady still publishes unflattering stories about China’s leaders. China doesn’t like that.”

“I’m sure they don’t,” Harvath replied. “But how did the Great Firewall cause the outage?”

“If you imagine it like an old-fashioned switchboard, all the cords got plugged into one hole. Somebody screwed up and sent three-quarters of China’s Internet traffic all to one location. Ironically enough, that one location was the servers of an Internet hosting company based in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was an epic failure.”

“And you think we could replicate that?”

“I think with the help of the computing power of one U.S. government agency in particular, I might be able to put together something similar. There’s just one problem,” said Nicholas.

“What’s that?”

“The NSA vowed a long time ago they would never let me inside any of their facilities.”

“You let me worry about the NSA,” said Harvath. “I want you to start figuring out exactly how you’re going to handle the Great Firewall.”

“You have a lot of faith in the FBI. We don’t even know if they’re going to be able to find any of the storage units, much less find them in time.”

“They’ll find them. Trust me. That’s what they do. In the meantime, start packing. I want to be wheels up within a half hour.”

The Logans had already been sent home, surveillance of the Cool Springs Marriott had been handed back over to the FBI, and Chase and Sloane were now sacked out on the couches in the hangar office. No one held out much hope that Deng was coming back to the hotel, not after everything that had happened. In fact, Harvath doubted that the man was even still in Tennessee.

They had turned over every imaginable stone. Even that gnawing discomfort Harvath had had about the photocopied driver’s license had finally clarified itself. He asked himself how, if he had been renting storage units under different aliases in different cities, he would have done it. The exercise had shaken an idea loose. It was a tiny needle in a big haystack, but it wasn’t impossible, so he had passed the idea on to the Old Man.

“Where are we going?” Nicholas asked.

“Back to D.C.”

M
C
L
EAN
, V
IRGINIA

T
he National Counter Terrorism Center was located in a stone and glass complex near Tysons Corner. It was part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and as such, fell under the responsibility of DNI General George Johnson.

The NCTC brought together experts from all of the alphabets in the soup, including the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, and DHS. Their goal was to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States as well as American interests abroad by making sure all available intelligence was being shared and no clues were being overlooked.

Entering the main building, Harvath saw Nicholas without both of his dogs for the first time. Reed Carlton had made an exception for the animals at the Carlton Group offices. It was a private business and he could make that call. He had explained to Nicholas, though, that federal buildings were a completely different story and that at some point, his job would require that he visit one of those buildings. When that happened, he wouldn’t be able to bring Argos or Draco.

Nicholas, being Nicholas, had, within twenty-four hours, both dogs officially recognized as certified service animals. Old habits died hard and Harvath could only wonder whom he had blackmailed, and with what, to secure the designation. Carlton, though, had had no idea.

The minute he saw the enormous dogs outside the NCTC with their bright red vests emblazoned with the words “Service Animal,” and
patches proclaiming
Working Dog
and
Don’t Pet Me Please, I’m Working
, he lost it.

Without missing a beat, Nicholas removed a card from a zippered pocket on Draco’s vest and handed it to him. On one side was written the corresponding portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act that applied to service animals and on the other was written, “If you have been handed this card, you have very likely already violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

“You’re not even American,” Carlton countered.

“I’m still protected,” said Nicholas, his hand on Draco’s shoulder.

No one was sure if he meant protected by the ADA or by the dog. Harvath figured it was probably both.

Carlton wasn’t in the mood. It was a con, and he didn’t like it. There were people with legitimate needs for service animals. Nicholas, in his opinion, wasn’t one of them. But with so many returning service members now using service animals, federal agencies were used to seeing dogs in their buildings. Granted, they were breeds like German shepherds or golden retrievers, not monsters the size of Nicholas’s Ovcharkas.

The Old Man caved and they came to an agreement. “You can bring
one
of your
service
animals,” he said, making air quotes around the word “service.”

With the issue settled, Argos returned to the Carlton Group offices with Sloane and Chase while the rest of the team walked past the flagpole and its puzzle-piece surround, and into the main building.

By the looks on many of the faces inside, one would have thought that the circus had come to town. The huge dog accompanied by a man less than three feet tall was certainly part of it, but the true draw for the employees of the NCTC was the two highly accomplished and highly respected warriors in their midst. There wasn’t a single analyst who didn’t harbor superspy fantasies of killing and capturing bad guys. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Carlton and Harvath were two of the best operatives the nation had ever fielded.

At the moment, though, that wasn’t how Harvath saw his skills. No matter how many pieces they had been able to uncover and put into place, none of them felt as if they were making a difference. They weren’t any
closer to stopping the attack. Part of him was glad to be at the NCTC trying to figure things out, rather than at the White House having to answer to the President.

After Harvath got Nicholas settled with the NSA people, he and Carlton headed for the NCTC’s Operations Center.

With its spiral staircases, sleek workstations, glass conference rooms, enormous flat-panel monitors, and loftlike vibe, the Ops Center was the nexus of America’s counterterrorism effort and looked like a Hollywood set designer had put it together.

General Johnson had been alerted that Harvath and Carlton were on their way in and had delayed his pre-presidential briefing. Waving the pair into the main conference room, he directed them to two chairs near the head of the table and then nodded for the FBI Director to begin.

His jacket was off and his sleeves were rolled up. Harvath had seen the man only at the White House, where he was always buttoned up. “First, let’s start with Nihad Hamid, the director of the Muslim internship program at NASA,” he said, referring to his notes and getting right into the briefing. “As most of you know, once the FISA court approved our warrant for surveillance on Mr. Hamid, we went after his phone, computers, banking records, all of it. We also brought him in for interrogation.

“Hamid claimed he had never heard of Khuram Hanjour, the recruiter out of Dubai. But when he was shown the files of the six engineering students from the UAE, he became very nervous.

“As soon as our interrogator saw that, he began to push him on it. As it turns out, many of those internship slots weren’t necessarily awarded on merit. Several of the board members at Hamid’s organization, the Foundation on American Islamic Relations—”

“Wait,” Harvath interrupted. “FAIR is involved in this?”

“Yes. You know them?”

“All too well. I thought that shill organization was disbanded after their offices got bombed a couple of years ago.”

“No such luck,” said the Director. “Three of their board members put the word out in the Arab world that for the right ‘contribution,’ they could guarantee acceptance into the NASA internship. Hamid went along
with it. As best we can tell, Khuram Hanjour used a cutout to pay FAIR fifty thousand per engineering student. The transaction went through a Hawala in Northern Virginia.”

“Where are the board members now?”

“We have them in custody and the Attorney General is drawing up the indictments.”

“Did they know they were abetting terrorists?” Harvath asked.

“I watched feeds of the interrogations,” the Director replied. “Are these men corrupt? Absolutely. They tried to get money out of everyone. But we don’t think this was designed to help get terrorists into the country. That won’t change the facts of the case, though, especially if an attack is successful.”

“Where’s the Bureau with pinpointing the locations of the engineering students?” General Johnson asked.

“We’ve got plainclothes agents staking out the different Wi-Fi locations they’ve used, and we’ve got additional agents covertly combing all the neighborhoods. Short of putting up flyers or going house-to-house, we’re at full capacity. At some point, the President is going to have to allow us to release the names and photos to local and state law enforcement.”

“Which, as we’ve already discussed, if it leaks to the press could trigger the attack.”

The FBI Director shook his head. “And if we don’t bring local and state LEOs in and an attack
does
happen? Who’s responsible for that?”

Johnson put up his hands. “I get it. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. The President, though, has made his position clear on this.”

“With all due respect, General—and you know I like the President—he’s wrong. Look at the 9/11 hijackers. They bumped up against the cops. These guys might, too. But it’ll only matter if the police know to be on the lookout for them.”

“The President says
no.
Not until we’ve exhausted every other available avenue.”

“You went statewide in Tennessee for Bao Deng,” the Director challenged.

“First of all,” Johnson replied, shifting his gaze to Harvath before returning his attention to the Director, “I didn’t make that call. Somebody
overstepped his bounds. Secondly, we had him as a legitimate murder suspect.”

“So let’s put the six engineering students on the radar for having overstayed their visas then.”

The DNI thought about that for a moment. “They should already be in the ICE database.”

“Which won’t mean a thing for the cells in Seattle, Dallas, or Baltimore.”

“Why not?” Carlton asked.

“They’re sanctuary cities,” the FBI Director explained. “They don’t take action against illegal immigrants. Oftentimes their police departments are told flat-out not to work with the Feds and not to cross with their databases. Just flagging these guys for having overstayed their visas wouldn’t have any impact at all. That’s why the Bureau wants them tagged as terrorists.”

The Old Man shook his head.

“How about Deng, at least?” Harvath asked. “Why don’t we go nationwide on him for the murder in Tennessee?”

“And if one of the national newscasts picks it up?” said Johnson.

“What if the White House reached out to the head of each network in advance?”

“To tell them what? That we have a suspected Chinese intelligence agent coordinating a massive terrorist attack, but don’t say anything?”

“No. It would have to be something that put them on a moral meathook so large that they couldn’t flop off it,” Harvath replied.

“Like what?”

“How about an assassination plot?”

The FBI Director shook his head. “You’re one administration too late. The mainstream media hate the current president.”