Fifty Falling Stars Page 7

  “Officers at Lincoln Center are reporting that they engaged and killed a suspect. The man appears to have been carrying a small scuba tank disguised in a large backpack filled with an unknown gas. HAZMAT teams have been dispatched to the scene to take possession of the tank.

  “One of the FBI agents assigned to assess risk in the subway system was in an adjoining station from one of the attacks. He reported seeing a greenish cloud being pushed down the track by the airflow from a train. He reported people started coughing and gasping for air. He suspects a chemical attack.”

  “Jesus! Do we have any casualty reports yet?”

  “Nothing yet.” The man said. “Just a lot of reports of people rushing out of the stations in a panic.” He looked over to one of his colleagues who was still on the phone. The man on the phone gave him a thumbs up. The briefer turned back to Ned. “We have shut down all remaining subway lines to keep people from getting exposed and spreading the toxin.”

  “Good job.” Ned said. He pointed to a woman standing a few feet beside him. “Go get Sang in here right now!”

  Two minutes later, Ned’s deputy, Sang Ngo, entered the operation floor. Ned turned and spoke to the small, middle-aged Vietnamese man who walked up to him. “Sang, we’ve had another attack. I’ve got to head up and brief the secretary. Manage this situation as best we can right now.

  “Suz, get with the secretary’s office and set up a video teleconference in her office. Sang, I’ll tie you in as soon as we get the video up and running and you can give us an update in the meeting.” Ned headed off to gather his brief copies and go to the Secretary’s office.

  The briefing was an absolute mess. Sang briefed the senior leadership on the attacks in New York, and the meeting erupted in a shitstorm of questions. He didn’t have many answers. It took over twenty minutes for the discussion to die down enough for Ned to continue briefing. Ned finished briefing the Secretary of Homeland Security on the adjusted security manning on high value targets and began the next section of the brief. “Madam Secretary, we are looking at possibly reevaluating our list of potential targets into…..”

  “Excuse me, Ned, Madam Secretary.” Sang interjected over the video screen. “We are getting updates now that you really need to hear.”

  “Go ahead, Sang.” The Secretary said.

  “We have just gotten a report in from the NSA and confirmed by the Department of Energy. We are experiencing a massive cyber-attack right now. These hacking attempts are being targeted at the power grid, specifically power plants and smart grid enabled transformer stations.” Sang reported.

  “Have any of these attacks been successful?” Ned asked.

  “Yes.” Sang said. “We have lost several coal power plants and substations. We do not know if there have been any damages at the plants or if this is just a logical shutdown rather than physical destruction. We have our Energy Department counterparts doing inspections now. I will bring those reports as soon as we get them. As of right now we have major outages or rolling blackouts in eight northeastern states and three Midwestern states.”

  The Secretary grimaced. “Do we know where these attacks are coming from or who is doing the attacks?”

  The CIA senior liaison asked before Sang could reply. “What kind of attacks are these? Are they simple denial of service type attacks or something deeper?”

  Sang addressed the Secretary’s question first. “As of yet, we have not been able to identify the persons or organizations responsible for the attacks. We have managed to track the location of one of the attacks. NSA believes it was originated in a public library just outside of Los Angeles. We have not been able to locate the source of any other attacks.

  “As for the type of attack, the Department of Energy is telling us that these are system-level attacks. The malicious code is imbedding itself into the computer systems of the plants and changing variables, locking out controls, and redirecting power. The attacks are apparently quite sophisticated.” Sang finished.

  The Federal Emergency Management Agency Director looked to the CIA representative. “Mr. Ngo has stated about the sophistication of these attacks. Does that tell you anything about the possible origins of the attacks? Who could do something on that level?”

  The CIA representative cocked his head and thought for a couple of seconds. “First of all, I would like to point out that I am not making official accusations at this stage; but based on my knowledge of cyber warfare, I would say that this level of attack would only come from a handful of state actors. The US, China, Russia, and Israel would be the most likely suspects for developing something of this sophistication. I think we can rule out ourselves and Israel.”

  The FEMA Director turned to Ned, “I guess that rules out your theory that all of this may be connected to Iran.”

  “Not really.” The CIA representative said to the FEM Director. “Russian aid has been instrumental in the development of the Iranian nuclear program. Back in 2009 they helped the Iranians by providing fuel for their civilian reactor projects and a Russian organization even assisted Iran in getting a reactor working in 2012. With that level of support, it would not be that big of a stretch to think that they have provided expertise in other ways.”

  Ned turned to face the video teleconference camera. “Thank you, Sang.” Ned said turning back to the Secretary. “We will look into….”

  “I have more, Ned.” Sang said. “We have also had three physical attacks on nuclear power plants in Braidwood, Illinois; Shearon Harris, North Carolina; and Millstone, Connecticut. Given the success of the previous attacks, these are somewhat good news stories. All three attacks were thwarted.”

  “Do we have any specifics on these attacks?” The Secretary Asked.

  “Yes, Ma’am. The attempts in Illinois and Connecticut were car bombs. The attackers tried to drive through the barriers at the gates of the plants. In both cases, they made it through the initial barriers but were stopped when the security details at the facilities opened fire and killed the suspects. At the North Carolina facility, four men scaled the outer fences and were detected. Facility security tried to apprehend the subjects. The attackers fired on the security agents and were killed when they returned fire.”

  “Well, that’s some good news for once.” The Secretary agreed. “You look like you have more to say Mr. Ngo. Do you?”

  “I have received updated information on the attacks in New York.” Sang said.

  “By all means, go ahead Mr. Ngo.” The FEMA Director said.

  “Our HAZMAT teams collected the unspent canister at the Lincoln Center station and have completed their analysis. The toxin appears to be chlorine gas. The injuries sustained by passengers are consistent with exposure to chlorine gas. This is actually a bit of good news in that the gas is a respiratory irritant and is not extremely deadly like sarin or ricin. Casualty reports have over four hundred people killed and over two thousand people injured. Many of those injuries resulted from the people panicking and trying to escape the subway stations.” Sang said.

  “Do know where the attackers got this gas?” The Secretary asked.

  The FBI representative spoke up. “Chlorine, like most of the bomb materials we saw in DC, is easily made with common household chemicals. While it would have taken them a while to make that much to compress into pressurized containers, it is feasible. These guys could have been here for years making this stuff.”

  “Ma’am,” Sang cut in. “The worst news we have is the general public in New York City.” The room became quiet as Sang continued. “After the attacks and shutdown of the subway system, we have millions of people effectively trapped in Manhattan. The Occupy Wall Street protestors began to riot as the news about the attack spread. With the police and other law enforcement agencies all preoccupied with the attacks, the riots are going unchecked. We are also seeing looters and flash mobs taking advantage of the situation in some of the other areas of the city such as Queens and Brooklyn. The Governor of New York has called in the Nationa
l Guard to try and suppress the outbreaks.”

  The Secretary turned to her Department of Defense representative. “Colonel Pratt, I need you to get the specifics on how the National Guard is going to handle this and list of requirements that we can help with. Get with our FEMA guys and coordinate any relief needed for those trapped there. Until we clear the subways, we may have people trapped there for days. Don’t take any crap from the Governor or the Mayor. I don’t want this turning into another Katrina.” The Colonel left the room and the meeting broke up a few minutes later.

  Chapter 6

  William Meyers was a senior board member on the board of directors for Midwest Food and Freight, one of the largest food distributors in the Midwest. They specialized in refrigerated container shipping, moving fresh foods and frozen goods from farms to the wholesale distributors and out to the consumer; but they had a hand in the packaged items as well. Inflation had been a constant worry in the food market for the last two years. Keeping the company going on just a five percent profit margin had been tough. Several salmonella outbreaks and the rising price of fuel had taken its toll. Thankfully, the prices had risen slowly. Most consumers didn’t really pay attention or notice the smaller increases in food prices. They didn’t so much care that if, for instance, their peanut butter went up twenty percent as long as it happened slowly. It was only about sixty cents. The rumbling came when they got the final bill at the grocery store, if they even noticed then. If they did, they usually blamed the grocery store. Was it unfair to let the retailer be the scapegoat? Sure. Did the transportation companies really care? Not as long as the dollars kept rolling in and the margins fit. But all of this was about to change, in a big way.

  Meyers sat down behind the broad mahogany desk in his study and glanced at his computer screen. He was glad that they had invested in the IP based video-telecommunications equipment for the executive leadership. Otherwise, they would have all been driving in to the corporate office in downtown Chicago; and everyone knew that place was a tinderbox tonight. The program worked similar to the Skype application he had on his laptop except that it was secure. They couldn’t have someone listening in on their board meetings. To tell the truth, it had rarely been used. Tonight the investment paid off.

  Meyers checked to see who was online. All eight board members, the chief executive officer, the chief financial officer, and the chief operations officer had one of these secure sets. Almost everyone was online, waiting for the CEO to connect. The meeting was set for seven that Monday evening. The CEO’s executive assistant had emailed a set of the slides that they would go over. Meyers didn’t like what he saw. The slides painted an ugly picture with those numbers and charts.

  The only noise was the sound of Mr. Bartley. He was having some sort of dispute with his wife about the summer house down in Miami. At eighty-three, Bartley was the oldest board member and the least competent with technology. Meyers thought back with a small smile about the time when Bartley had ordered their tech support guy to change the channel on his computer. He later heard his secretary telling another worker that it had taken that same tech guy over two weeks to train Bartley to use the teleconference equipment. Finally the poor bastard had to put color coded stickers on the keys and write out step-by-step instructions. Meyers could kick that same tech guy for not putting the “mute” command in those instructions. But what could you do? Bartley’s father had been a founding member of the company back in the 1930’s.

  Meyers heard a ding from the machine that indicated someone had just joined the conversation. The familiar voice of the CEO came over the speakers. “All right, let’s get down to it. Shall we? Everyone is on I see. We’ve gotten read receipts from everyone that they received a copy of the brief. If anyone hasn’t got a copy, let us know now.” Everyone was silent, even Bartley. He must have realized the TV show was on and shooed his wife out of the room. “I’m going to start off by letting our chief operations officer give us a quick rundown of where we stand and then turn things over to our chief financial officer to give us the projections of what everything means. We’ll finish with a discussion about what to do and, hopefully, a decision. Garry.”

  The chief operations officer took over, his nasally voice filling the speakers and his face popping up to fill the screen. “As you have all heard, the protests in most major cities have caused quite a disruption. We have had trouble delivering to those stores closest to the affected areas. DC, New York, and Miami are effectively shut down until further notice because of the terrorist attacks. This is largely inconsequential since we have very few assets working out of these areas.

  “The two issues have joined to form somewhat of a problem with the Teamsters union. As you know, about seventy percent of our drivers are represented by this union. They issued a statement this weekend that they are going to stand in solidarity with the Occupy protestors to oppose the possibility of another financial bailout that might arise from the financial crisis we witnessed last week. Earlier today, they issued a safety statement in response to the terrorist attacks. They are urging all of their members to avoid driving in highly populated areas due to the possibility of the terrorist attacks. We are projecting that these two actions will reduce our workforce by approximately forty to sixty percent by tomorrow.

  “The second major complication we have is that approximately thirty percent of the cold storage warehouses that we are contracted to deliver to have been affected by the recent power outages. They are screaming that we have to get their supplies to market before it spoils. They have estimated that several products will begin spoiling within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They are demanding that we move those items yesterday. We have rearranged delivery schedules and tried to account for the reduction in drivers, but we will come up short. I mention this only because this may lead to lawsuits down the road.

  “The next issue we are having….” He paused as everyone watched Bartley talk on one of the minimized windows at the bottom of the screen that allowed everyone to see each other, not just the full screen of the current speaker. Apparently Bartley had found the mute button after all. “Mr. Bartley,” the chief operations officer said, “you seem to be on mute. Please use the mouse to unmute and continue.”

  The group watched Bartley fumble around with his computer, mumbling to himself for a few seconds. He finally found the unmute command just in time for the group to hear “…Goddamned piece of shit!” Meyers noticed all of the little faces at the bottom of the screen trying to conceal their laughter. “Don’t you have any good news for us, Garry? Things are tough and are going to get tougher. We can’t afford any lawsuits right now. Let’s get our legal guy to go over the contract again. This isn’t our fault.”

  The chief operations officer took back the conversation. “No, sir, it is not our fault and I defer to the legal department’s projection for us getting sued. I doubt we will. Even if we don’t, not meeting the expectations of these customers could cost us clients. And to answer your other question, I don’t have any good news, just more bad.”

  “As I was saying, we run both ends of the distribution chain. We get stuff from the manufactures or growers to the wholesalers and from them out to the stores. We are starting to see a breakdown in the seller/wholesalers relationship. Mr. Finch will explain in more detail about why that is happening. What I can tell you from an operational point of view, is that we have already had some orders cancelled. Some of these are short order contracts and others are long-term contracts. It would seem that there has been a run on food markets similar to what we’ve seen from the banking sector last Friday. Stores are requesting more and more goods but some of the suppliers can’t meet the demand or won’t from fear of the inflationary environment last week’s actions may have. We have already had several cancellations from our overseas suppliers. It seems they have the same fears. What this amounts to gentlemen, operationally speaking, is that we will only be able to fill about twenty percent of our orders for the next week. If all o
f this blows over, we may be able to pick back up once prices have stabilized and more certainty evolves from the situation.”

  “Can we afford to go that long without turning a profit? That’s an eighteen percent drop in this month’s revenue. We’d bleed cash. The way the markets are looking, we might not even be able to access emergency funds to cover this. Can we borrow the money?” the CEO asked.

  “I guess this as good of a lead in to my part of the presentation as any.” Mr. Finch, the chief financial officer said. “The short answer is, no. This is all stemming from the spontaneous dumping of American bonds last week. The dollar is only as good as the ‘full faith and credit of the United States.’ It would appear that the world has lost faith in us. What this means at a business level is that the credit market has ground to halt. There is a possibility that we could get a short-term loan to cover the projected losses for this month and keep our doors open, but the interest would be so high that it would still bankrupt us. If we can even get to our corporate investment accounts, which I doubt we will be able to, we would have to sell at a substantial loss. That might help cover the interest. What this really leaves us with is our cash accounts, which simply aren’t enough to cover this kind of slide; and that is just talking about this month.

  “Our suppliers and wholesalers are also concerned about the possibility of immediate inflation. They’re probably in the same boat we are as far as finances goes. If they meet their contracts and sell to the wholesalers too low, they will take a loss, not only from the high interest borrowing they may have to do, but from the gapping whole that inflation will gouge into their cash and operating budget. The wholesalers are in pretty much the same situation. One thing I don’t know if they have tried to figure is what we need to decide tonight. That is, how much are we going to charge for deliveries and are we going to honor the contracts that we have? We have some flexibility built into the contracts for fuel price fluctuations, but not to the magnitude we have seen since Iran tried to cut off the Persian Gulf.”