FENRIR: Chapter 36

[seawasp]

 
Given a few days for recovery...

 

Chapter 36: After-Action Reports

Days to Launch: 16

     Stephanie looked around the briefing room, wondering why something felt wrong. Then it clicked, and wry amusement dueled with pain. "I'm not used to seeing you at a briefing without Roger," she said, at Jeanne's questioning glance.

     "I'm not used to being at one without him. But it looks, thank God, that I won't have to for much longer." Jeanne Sacco looked around the table. "In other ways this is almost deja-vu."

     Looking a second time, Stephanie understood what she meant. The group sitting around the table was almost all of the same people she'd first briefed on Fenrir. Admiral Dickinson and Secretary of the Interior Truro were missing, but General Rainsford, Dr. Filipek, George Green, and Hailey Vanderman were all in their places.

     "Then we don't need introductions," Stephanie said. "I'm still pushing the schedule, so I don't have much time. Have we learned anything about our opposition?"

     "Quite a bit now, none of it good," Vanderman replied, in the precise tones she expected from the Director of the CIA. "They call themselves, very simply, The Group. Not much to wring out of that, but with the people we managed to catch after the attack, we finally got enough to amount to a crack in their armor."

     "Which was a stroke of luck," Green said. "These people had done a lot of their work right, compartmentalizing to the point that what little hints we got had each of the military intelligence branches thinking they'd found several different organizations."

     "But it's not? It's just one… Group?" The President lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

     Hailey Vanderman smiled faintly. "Took us a while to be sure, Madame President. About the only thing all of them had in common was that they wanted Carpathia to fail, but there wasn't a bit of commonality about why. They had religious nutcases who felt any aliens were basically soulless monsters by definition, people who just didn't want any complications of aliens in between us and the tech, anti-nuke types, all kinds of people.

     "But we finally got a couple of breaks and were able to make some guesses – the DOD, FBI, NSA, and Interpol helped a lot – and finally we managed to find the mastermind behind the assault."

     A picture blinked onto the screen, of a white-haired woman in what Stephanie thought of as a granny dress, smiling benignly at the camera. "You're serious? She was behind it all?"

     Green and Vanderman exchanged cynical smiles. "Yeah, that's everyone's reaction to the Duchess," Hailey said. "One of her biggest weapons; when she was younger, she was adorable and harmless looking, now she's everyone's favorite aunt. Except that Dana Malik, AKA the Duchess in the trade, inherited her father's arms-dealing business when he died, and expanded it. One of the hardest hardcases you'd ever not want to fu… er, mess with. She'll have tea with you, shoot you in the head, and ask someone to clean up the mess as she pours herself another cup."

     "Someone like that doesn't get involved in movements like this Group," Jeanne said flatly. "They might be hired for a job, but not dedicate themselves to some cause."

     "Generally, we'd agree," George said. "But the Duchess had a lot of contacts in the military tech world – as you'd expect – and from what we gathered she figured if Carpathia was delayed a few months past the rescue date, there would be basically no chance of live aliens, and much more alien technology would be recovered when Carpathia finally was launched to chase down the remains of Fenrir. With that much time she might be able to influence choices enough to get agents of her own on board."

     "We can't completely rule that out, either," Hailey said.

     "If anything justifies our using the extraordinary authority given us, I would think this is it. She needs to be apprehended." Jeanne glanced at Stephanie as she spoke; Stephanie gave an emphatic nod.

     Hailey grimaced. "We already set that in motion, Madam President. Joint assault team did a quick strike on her current headquarters – coordinated it with the UK and Chinese as Joint Operation Teatime. But…"

     "But," Green said heavily, "she didn't make it out alive. Still trying to figure out whether it was one of ours or theirs who shot her."

     "One of ours?" Stephanie asked, incredulous.

     "Could easily be," Vanderman said. "It's one of the oldest tricks in espionage, to have one of your agents in the assault force. They make sure that the target never gets a chance to talk. And of course if the Duchess was working with anyone else, they sure don't want her talking – and you can bet whatever you want that she damn well would've talked if we had caught her. She was a practical little monster."

     "She was that," Green agreed. "If it weren't that we needed to know so much, no one would be broken up about her being dead."

     "How sure are we she was at the top?"

     "Say ninety percent. We've got enough to pin the assault operation on her organization, and she wouldn't have let someone else tell her how to pull that off. My guess, she was at the top cell, which means we're looking for two more people."

     "Will we find them in time? Before launch? With her dead…?"

     Hailey Vanderman looked at the President, then paused a moment. "Director… yes, I think so. The Duchess may be dead, but we captured most of her command setup, and we've got top teams working on data recovery and forensic data analysis. If she was in that cell, there'll have to be connections to the other two somewhere, and I'm pretty confident we'll have them ID'd within a week now that we've got this much data."

     "Let's hope so, Because I've got to launch ASAP," Stephanie remembered York collapsing. We are not letting anything stop us. "Eva, I suppose we're ramping down the antimatter production now?"

     "In a few months," Eva said. "Given that we've devoted so much effort to the technology, even our impatient particle physicists agree that getting a few orders of magnitude more antimatter in storage than they ever had before is worth some delay. And the President recommended we keep that infrastructure operational until we learn whether Carpathia will ever voyage again after its main mission. If it will, it will need a source for antimatter."

     Stephanie nodded. "That does make sense. With this joint operation, I guess our big shaky alliance is still on?"

     "Even a bit less shaky than it was," General Rainsford replied. "China certainly isn't going to back away now, and neither will the UK. If they won't, few others would even think about it; too much face to be lost there. But you're right to push, Director; we're all strained to the breaking point. Once Carpathia launches we'll all be committed and the hard work is over. Except of course for you people on board. Then the hard work starts."

     "Don't we know it,"

     A few relatively minor other points were cleared up, and then the meeting was adjourned. Stephanie glanced mutely at the President, who stayed behind. "Director Bronson?"

     "Just Stephanie right now, please. I have to wonder – shouldn't we have had reps from the other countries here?"

     "It's a good thought," Jeanne Sacco said. "But this kind of thing… the raid on this 'Duchess' and her organization they'll be briefed on by their own people. We're not changing any of the goals of the project. All of them have enough to do right now. So I would say this time, it's not a problem."

     There was a rap on the door, and one of the Secret Servicemen looked in. "Excuse me, Madame President. Peter Flint would like to speak to you and the Director privately?"

     "Pete? All right, send him in," Stephanie said, then looked with a guilty start at the President. "If that's okay with you, Jeanne?"

     A gentle laugh. "Of course. Please, send Pete in."

     Pete waited until the door closed behind him to speak. "Thanks much for seeing me on such short notice, Madam President, Director."

     Stephanie settled back into the chair. Her body was reminding her she was not yet recovered, so putting off the walk to another meeting – even if it would now be later – was appealing. "No problem, Peter. We both know you wouldn't barge in like this if it wasn't important."

     "'Fraid it is," he agreed. One weathered hand ran through his short graying hair. "Thing is, that hack our friends pulled to hide their activities, it affected my Bells."

     Jeanne raised an eyebrow. "That's hardly a surprise. They did the same to our drones and UGV patrols, not to mention select parts of the security net overall."

     "Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, it kinda is a surprise. See, the Bells are custom through and through. Sure, we put together an interface package so we could exchange data and such, but that was just… well, like giving 'em a phone, I guess."

     Stephanie saw the implications. "You mean, they'd need an entirely separate set of information, detailed information, on the Bells before they could suborn them."

     "Bang on, Director. And there just ain't… aren't many people on Earth that could give 'em that kind of information. Probably, bein' honest, a lot fewer than could give the same information about your military security."

     The set, tight lips showed it was now President Sacco who was giving him full attention. "Mr. Flint, how many people, exactly, are we talking about?"

     "Been thinking on that, ma'am, and I don't figure it's more'n about eight, ten all told. Werner Keller, of course, and his head of security tech, whatsisname, the Brazilian whiz kid… Heitor, that's it, Heitor Almeida. Other than that, the MIROC team at IIS, six or seven people depending on if I count Ryan. Guess I should, he's no engineer but he knows more'n enough to dig out the info from the systems." He gave a faint grin. "Think I'll rule out myself, so many other ways I could've screwed things up here without getting that fancy."

     "Or getting shot at."

     "There is that. Which kinda threw my calculations right out the window, 'cause there was one other person who knew enough."

     Stephanie stared at him. "You mean… Angus? You thought ANGUS was the one who gave them the data?"

     "More like I'd have put him at the top of the list if it weren't for the fact he took a bullet for me," Pete said, nodding. "Any way you figure it, that was just plain stupid if he were in on the plan. I'm not pretending I'm indispensable, but no one would run the Bells as well, and what he did saved you two and at least a couple others. All he had to do was stand there and panic after the shots, like everyone else."

     "That… is a strong argument," agreed the President thoughtfully. "It doesn't remove him from the pool of candidates, though. I don't need Hailey Vanderman to tell me that it wouldn't be the first time an agent found his cover ID was becoming real."

     "Don't care for that idea much." Pete's jaw set. "But you're right, ma'am; we can't ignore it. Which is why I came here."

     "What are you thinking, Pete?"

     "Well, it was the way you pulled off the double shuffle with the antimatter tankers that got me thinking. I can trust the two of you, if I can trust anyone, and I need permission to set up my own insurance, if you get what I mean."

     Stephanie leaned forward, ignoring her aches. "Go on."

     "Well, first off, we don't ignore the others, even my people. Have your people dig their backgrounds hard. I hate to think anyone working for me would've been involved, but I hate the idea of pretending it couldn't be even more."

     "That you can count on," President Sacco said. "For that matter, I'll make sure they double-check Werner and Mr. Almeida as well as Angus."

     "No point taking chances, ma'am. But what I need your blessing on, it's a little sneaky…"

     Stephanie began to nod as Peter Flint laid out his plan. She hoped it would turn out to be wasted preparation… but if it wasn't, they just might be able to cut the head off the murderous serpent that had already struck them once.

     "Go to it, Pete," she said finally. "Nail it down tight."

     "Yes, Director," he said, and flashed her a harder, colder grin than she'd ever seen on the good-natured face. "Trust me," he went on. "I'll make sure of it."

 

Cover all your bases, Pete, because once you're out there, there's no backup.