The Enemy Within (42 page)

Military equipment and supplies of all kinds were pouring into Bushehr. Convoys of trucks piled high with tank, artillery, and small-arms ammunition had begun arriving from the north mostly at night and always under heavy guard. Other materiel arrived at the airfield, flown directly from overseas arms dealers.

Taleh had handpicked a trusted officer, one renowned as a master logistician, to manage the all-important buildup here. Now it was time to see if he was doing his job properly.

Surrounded by a small cluster of his own aides, General Shahrough Akhavi was waiting for Taleh in front of the headquarters building, an old commercial shipping office taken over by the Army. He was a short, solidly built man, but his wire-rimmed glasses and full beard gave him a bookish air, like a university professor or a bookstore proprietor. He wasn’t one of Taleh’s inner circle, but the general had marked him as a fine officer, another man with Western training who had suffered at the hands of the Revolutionary Guards.

Taleh emerged from the car, and the two generals greeted each other warmly. Kazemi ignored them and concentrated instead on rechecking his security arrangements. What he saw pleased him. The Special Forces detachments were in place, ubiquitous but unobtrusive. There were no signs of trouble in any of the surrounding buildings. Good.

The captain turned back to his superiors.

Akhavi was introducing his staff to Taleh. As each man stepped up and saluted, Kazemi studied them closely. He always found it interesting to watch the faces of junior officers when they first met the Chief of Staff of their nation’s armed forces. Fear was common, as was awe, and sometimes open admiration. He was possessive enough about his commander to take something of a proprietary interest in their reactions.

One man, a tall, scarred major, seemed to keep his emotions very carefully under control when he met Taleh. But as he turned away, a flash of some strong emotion rippled across his features. He looked as though he’d smelled something bad or seen something disgusting. The expression was gone as quickly as it had come, but seeing it raised the hairs on the back of Kazemi’s neck.

A bad attitude like that was not conducive to a smoothly running operation, and this was too important a post to let the matter pass. The captain resolved to discuss Akhavi’s staff with Taleh at the next available opportunity.

The group, led by the two generals, started up the steps into the headquarters building. Kazemi hung back as was his habit, to make sure the security people were keeping up.

There was the tall major again, he noticed, moving quickly, maneuvering through the crowd of officers to approach Taleh from behind. The man’s right hand was held tight and flat over his pistol holster, slowly lifting the flap.

For an instant, Kazemi froze. The major was not simply a disgruntled staff officer. He was an assassin.

The captain started moving, racing up the steps without calling out. The security detail was too far away and the would-be assassin too close for an outcry to do Taleh any good. He could see the man’s pistol slowly coming clear of the holster. No!

Desperate now, Kazemi shoved a fat colonel out of his way and lunged up the last few steps. Still moving full tilt, he crashed into the assassin from behind, knocking him to the ground in a tangle of flailing arms and kicking legs. The pistol skittered away, unfired.

Shouts of surprise echoed above him, and Kazemi caught fleeting glimpses of men running, some away from the struggle, others toward it. He felt the other man attempting to rise and slammed an elbow into the back of his neck hard enough to stun him. In seconds it was over.

A pair of hard-faced Special Forces troops arrived at a run and yanked the would-be murderer to his feet, pinioning him between them. Another retrieved the cocked automatic and held it out for all to see. That was all the indictment required. At Taleh’s curt nod, the guards hustled the dazed assassin away for interrogation.

Kazemi picked himself up, bruised and scraped but barely winded by the brief struggle. He looked around him. General Akhavi’s look of horror seemed genuine enough, and the staffs of both generals were confusion personified. There appeared to be no more immediate danger.

Flanked now by guards with their weapons drawn, Taleh walked over as the captain brushed himself off. Concern filled his voice. “You are all right, Farhad?”

“Yes, General.”

“Once again it appears that I owe you my life.”

“It is yours to take, General.” Kazemi smiled, half in pleasure at his own success, half in knowing Taleh was safe.

The general touched his arm. “Can you take charge of the investigation? I must still hear General Akhavi’s report.”

“Of course, sir.” Kazemi actually would have liked a quiet cup of coffee somewhere, but he knew the time to act was now, before any other conspirators escaped or fabricated convincing stories. He hurried off to find his opposite number on Akhavi’s staff.

Two hours later, General Amir Taleh emerged into the bright afternoon sunshine, blinking. He’d sat quietly through Akhavi’s prepared briefing, projecting an image of stability and confidence. He was fairly sure that the logistics expert had not been involved in the attempt on his life, and he wanted to show his trust in the man both for Akhavi’s sake and to reassure his staff. The Bushehr base was too important to the success of
SCIMITAR
to leave in unwarranted turmoil.

But while half his mind had listened to the reports, the other half had been busy running through the possible implications of this sudden, unexpected attack. His security arrangements were so tight and well managed that the possibility of a betrayal or a conspiracy within his own personal staff was very slight. Nonetheless, such a thing could not be completely discounted.

Taleh made another mental note to review their procedures with Kazemi if the young man’s investigation turned up nothing more here. The alternative was even more frightening than betrayal by one of his own men. It was the possibility that some of the officers in the Army were so disaffected by his reforms and by his apparent rapprochement with America and the West that they were willing to shoot him on sight even at the certain cost of their own lives.

He shook his head slowly. Perhaps his hold on power was even more tenuous than he had imagined. His shoulders stiffened. Well, then, all the more reason to press ahead with his plans.

His operations here and in the United States were nearing a critical stage.

It was time to use one of his most jealously guarded and sophisticated weapons the special weapon his agent had acquired in Bulgaria so many months ago.

NOVEMBER
26

(D
MINUS
19)

Special Operations Order
MAGI
Prime via
MAGI
Link to
WOLF
Prime:

1. Effective immediately, activate
OUROBOROS
.

2. When possible, transfer your base of operations outside the affected area and reestablish positive communications with this headquarters.

NOVEMBER
27 The Midwest.

(D
MINUS
18)

OUROBOROS
went active at noon, central standard time.

At 12:01 P.M. Bill Rush, a farmer outside Red Wing, Minnesota, picked up his phone and started punching in the number for his feed supplier. He stopped, three numbers in, when he realised he wasn’t getting a dial tone. He whopped the receiver against the heel of his hand, but it remained silent. Resolving to get a new phone tomorrow, he stomped off to do his chores.

At 12:02 P.M. Fred Wong, a commercial real estate broker near Chicago’s Loop, tried to dial one of his clients to let her know he’d be a little late for their meeting. Instead of a steady tone, the receiver was silent. He tried line two and, when that didn’t work, his cellular phone. Nothing.

“Wonderful,” he fumed, “an outage.” Grabbing his suit coat, the realtor sprinted for the elevator. His client was all the way across town, so he had no time to waste.

Three minutes after
OUROBOROS
activated, at 1:03 P.M., eastern standard time, Jeri Daniels, a salesclerk in Detroit’s trendy “The Cache,” ran a Visa card through the reader, her first sale since coming back from lunch. The small box didn’t seem to be working. The window displayed “dialing” as always, but then changed to “no connection.”

“Annette?” Jeri called to another salesclerk. “Have you had any problem with the card reader?”

Shaking her head, the other woman came over to help.

One minute later, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Mrs. Ruby Jeffers shuffled quickly over toward the telephone. That old electric space heater in the back room of her apartment was sparking and smoking, and she hadn’t made it to eighty-three by sitting around. She would call the fire department, if only to have them unplug the thing.

Arthritis forced her to move slowly, and the smoke was a little thicker by the time she made it to the kitchen. She picked up the receiver and frowned. Nothing. No dial tone at all. Not even static. Just silence. She dialed 911 anyway, but there was no response.

“Oh, my Lord,” she breathed.

Dropping the useless telephone, she left the kitchen almost running, ignoring the pain shrieking through her joints. The smoke was thicker, and the front door seemed a hundred miles away.

Precisely at 1:00 P.M., eastern standard time, all of the switching computers for the Midwest Telephone company had suddenly ceased to make connections. Occupied with some internal, mysterious task, they were no longer taking any calls.

Inside a service area that spilled across two time zones, Midwest Telephone was relied on by 40 million Americans living in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana for telecommunications service.

1:05 EM,
EST
Detroit Officer Bob Calvin tried to phone his girlfriend from the fast-food joint he’d stopped at for his lunch break.

Calvin was of medium height, with a very dark complexion, only one shade removed from jet black. He kept his hair cut high and flat on the sides, emphasising his lean, narrow face. He was in his late twenties, a seven-year veteran of Detroit’s police force. Although smaller than some, he kept a lot of energy in his frame, and he could move fast and hard when necessary.

He had the 0800-to-1600-hours shift, driving a police car through one of Detroit’s tougher neighborhoods. Come the afternoon and graveyard shifts, they’d have two men in the car, but in the daytime one cop per vehicle was all the force could spare. Usually, he didn’t mind riding alone in this neighborhood. He’d grown up here. He’d even volunteered for this beat. Now, though, he’d been around long enough to know just how close it was to the edge.

Hell, the whole city was… Calvin realized the phone he was holding wasn’t working and hung up.

He left the restaurant and climbed back into his patrol car. He reached under the seat and pulled out a small cellular phone. Although they were expensive to use, many cops bought them as backups for the car radio, or to make personal calls when phones weren’t available like now.

He pressed the dial and 1 buttons and heard the phone dialing. But the message window displayed “no connection.” He tried again, with the same results. What exactly was going on?

He put the portable away, a scowl on his face. The bum phone meant another long explanation to Linda, he thought irritably. He enjoyed her company and her conversation, but she was not a patient woman. The dangerous aspects of his job also worried her, and she often needed to hear that he was still okay.

“All units on this frequency, all units,” the radio crackled as he settled himself and started the engine. “Repeat, all units. Landline phone service is out. No incoming or outgoing calls from Dispatch can be made. The problem may be citywide.”

“Wonderful,” Calvin muttered sarcastically. The city was on the verge of blowing up, and now the utilities were on the blink. At least that explained his problem.

He often missed having a partner not for backup, but just someone to keep him company and bitch to at times like this. He could share his worries with another cop, but not with Linda.

The nationwide, tit-for-tat wave of white racist and black supremacist terrorism was threatening to tear Detroit apart. He’d seen some of the confidential memos circulating through the department. Many in high places were increasingly worried by the prospect of major trouble between the city’s poor, black inner-city neighborhoods and its affluent, white suburban neighborhoods. Far too many of Detroit’s people were already choosing up sides. Plenty of “black spokesmen,” radicalised by the violence or radical to begin with, spoke of “taking the war back to the whites.” And too many of their white counterparts were talking the same kind of garbage. The ugly reality of a race war seemed to lie just around the corner.

Calvin shook his head. He’d broken up a lot of interracial arguments lately. Vandalism and other low-level crimes were way up, and gang activity was at an all-time high. He saw the murderous punks all the time now, in packs on the streets, just hanging or cruising from somewhere to nowhere, just looking for trouble. All they needed was a spark to set them off.

Even as he worried, a small corner of his mind relaxed, imagining the tack he could take with Linda. “I tried to call you, honey, but the phones were out.” Best excuse in the world.

But he knew that the solution for his small problem with his girlfriend had created a much bigger problem for the city as a whole. Well, with luck, the phone company would uncross their wires in short order and bring everything back online.

Resolving to cover as much ground as possible, Officer Bob Calvin pulled out of the hamburger restaurant’s trashlittered parking lot and started his patrol. He still had half his shift to go.

1:10 P.M.,
EST
Midwest Telephone’s primary operations center, near Fort Wayne, Indiana

Maggie Kosinski pulled a printout out of the printer so that she could see the data for herself. The traffic counters all read fine. The links to the other Baby Bells throughout the rest of the country were busy too. It was just that no calls were getting through anywhere in the company’s service area.