“Okay, well—surely there are other plants.”
“Yes, sir, most certainly, but there is no practical way to compensate for the loss for very long. And sir, I’m concerned that the hacking isn’t over yet. What if they hit another plant around LA, too? We’re watching closely now, of course. We’ll shut down any affected system and prevent untreated water from reaching the water mains.”
“But you’d have to shut the plant down, too,” I say.
“Yes, sir. We could have multiple water treatment plants shut down at once.”
“What are you telling me, Sam? We could have a massive water shortage in Los Angeles?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, sir.”
“How many people are we talking about? Los Angeles and Orange Counties?”
“Fourteen million, sir.”
“Oh, Jesus.” I put my hand over my mouth.
“We’re not just talking about hot showers and lawn sprinklers,” he says. “We’re talking about potable water. We’re talking about hospitals and surgery wards and first responders.”
“So, what—this will be Flint, Michigan, all over again?”
“It will be Flint, Michigan,” says Sam, “multiplied by a factor of one hundred forty.”
Chapter
53
But not immediately,” says Carolyn. “Not today.”
“Not today, but soon. LA County alone is bigger than many states in population, and this is its biggest supplier of clean water. We’ll have a crisis starting today. Not Flint, Michigan, not yet—but a real true-blue crisis.”
“Mobilize FEMA,” I say.
“Already done, sir.”
“We can have a federal disaster declaration.”
“Already have it written for you, sir.”
“But you have something else in mind.”
“Yes, sir. Fixing the problem, sir.”
That’s what I thought he was going to say.
“Sir, you know as well as I do that there are many very good, highly competent individuals under our umbrella when it comes to cyberdefense. But it looks like very good and highly competent isn’t going to cut it today in Los Angeles. Our people there are telling us they’ve never seen a virus like this. They don’t know what to do.”
“You need the best.”
“Yes, sir. We need the threat-response team you assembled.”
“Devin Wittmer and Casey Alvarez are with me, Sam.”
Sam doesn’t immediately reply. I’m keeping him in the dark. We both know that. I have a source telling me today is the day for the attack, but I haven’t identified the source to him. That’s unusual. And on top of that, now I’m telling him what he probably already figured out for himself—that our country’s two most elite cybersecurity experts are with me in an undisclosed location. None of this makes any sense to him. He’s the secretary of homeland security—of all people in the world, why wouldn’t I tell him?
“Sir, if we can’t have Wittmer and Alvarez, at least send part of the team.”
I rub my face, think it over.
“This is Dark Ages, sir. There’s no chance this is a coincidence. This is the beginning. Where it ends, I don’t know. The rest of the water plants? The electrical grid? Are they going to open the dams? We need them in Los Angeles. We got lucky once today. I don’t want to count on luck again.”
I get out of my chair, feeling claustrophobic down here. Pacing helps me. Gets the juices flowing. I need them all flowing in the direction of the best possible decision.
The gas explosion…the decimated biological lab…the tampering at the water lab.
Wait a minute. Wait just a—
“Was it luck?” I ask.
“Finding the malfunction in the water purification plant? I don’t know what else I’d call it. It could have been days before they caught this. This was a highly sophisticated hacking.”
“And it’s only because of the destruction of the bioterrorism-response laboratory that we thought to manually check the control functions at that water plant.”
“Correct, sir. It was an obvious first-step precaution to take.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s my point.”
“I’m not following, sir.”
“Sam, if you were the terrorists, what order would you do things in? Would you contaminate the water supply first or blow up the lab first?”
“I…well, if I—”
“I’ll tell you what I’d do if I were the terrorists,” I go on. “I’d contaminate the water supply first. It wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. Maybe within hours, maybe within days. And then I’d blow up the lab. Because if you blow up the lab first…if you blow up a lab dedicated to emergency biological-terror response first…”
“You show your hand,” says Carolyn. “You know the first thing the federal government will do is check things like the water supply.”
“Which is exactly what we did,” I say.
“They showed their hand,” Sam mumbles, as much to himself as to us, thinking it over.
“They deliberately showed their hand,” I say. “They tipped us off. They wanted us to go inspect all the water plants. They wanted us to find the cyberintrusion.”
Sam says, “I don’t see how that helps—”
“Maybe they don’t want to poison the water in Los Angeles. Maybe they just want us to think they do. They want us to send the best, the most elite cybersecurity experts in the nation to LA, to the other side of the country, so that our pants are at our ankles when the virus strikes.”
I put my hands on top of my head, work it over again.
“We’re taking an awfully big risk in making that assumption, sir.”
I start pacing again. “Liz, you have any thoughts here?”
She looks surprised that I’m asking. “You want to know what I’d do?”
“Yes, Liz. You went to one of those Ivy League schools, didn’t you? What would you do?”
“I—Los Angeles is a major metropolitan area. I wouldn’t risk it. I’d send the team to LA to fix that system.”
I nod. “Carolyn?”
“Sir, I understand your logic, but I have to agree with Sam and Liz. Imagine if it ever came out that you decided not to send—”
“No!” I shout, pointing at the computer screen. “No politics today. No worrying about what might come out later. This is the whole freakin’ show, people. Every decision I make today is a risk. We are on the high wire without a net. I make the wrong decision, either way, and we’re screwed. There’s no safe play here. There’s only a right play and a wrong play.”
“Send some of the team, then,” Carolyn says. “Not Devin and Casey, but some of the threat-response team at the Pentagon.”
“That team was put together as a cohesive unit,” I say. “You can’t cut a bicycle in half and still expect it to work. No—it’s all or nothing. Do we send them to LA or don’t we?”
The room is silent.
Sam says, “Send them to LA.”
“Send them,” says Carolyn.
“I agree,” Liz chimes in.
Three highly intelligent people, all voting the same way. How much of their decision is based on reason and how much on fear?
They’re right. The smart money says send ’em.
My gut says otherwise.
So what’s it going to be, Mr. President?
“The team stays put for now,” I say. “Los Angeles is a decoy.”
Chapter
54
Saturday morning, 6:52 a.m. The limousine is parked on 13th Street Northwest by the curb.
Vice President Katherine Brandt sits in the back of the limo, her stomach churning, but not from hunger.
Her cover is airtight: every Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., she and her husband have a standing reservation for omelets just around the corner on G Street Northwest at Blake’s Café. They have a table ready for her, and by now her order is assumed—egg whites with feta cheese and tomatoes, extra-crispy hash browns.