Looking up at his right hand man, he
asked, “That coffee fresh?”
Daniel
Jones, DHS Deputy Undersecretary, tried to focus on the maps spread out on the
table in front of him. He had only gotten a few hours fitful, nightmare filled
sleep after the confusing events of the day before.
“I think…”
he muttered and took a tentative sip. “Ugh. Maybe not.” He rubbed the sleep
from his tired eyes and put down his third cup of stale coffee. "Who was
that?"
“Governor
of Georgia." The SecDHS picked up the pot and sniffed. "Never
mind. I’ll have water,” he said. Suthby got out of his thick executive chair
and bustled behind Daniel at the cabinet.
“You seem
full of piss and vinegar this morning, Hank,” commented Daniel over his
shoulder.
The
Secretary winced at the familiarity shown by subordinate. That was a
consequence of lack of sleep he supposed. Have to get that taken care of
before it goes too far, he thought. Satisfied with his glass of water,
Hank turned around and watched his lieutenant over the rim of the tumbler.
Daniel shrugged and took a swig from his coffee before turning back to the
maps.
Someone
opened the office door to deposit another report on the Secretary’s desk, then
stepped out. The noise from the outer office poured in like a rogue wave.
Hank could see staffers running all over the outer office, carrying papers or
coffee, talking with each other and shouting incident reports from the field.
“—going to
lose Atlanta!”
“That’s
what I said.”
“That’s
imposs—“
The office
door clicked shut and the sounds vanished. Suthby moved back to his desk and
marveled at the soundproofing the previous Secretary had installed. Bet the
carbon footprint is a doozy, though, he thought with a grin.
One of the
maps in front of him on the big oak desk displayed the estimated power outages,
each represented by a large X drawn at the location of the terrorist attacks.
“Damn…” he muttered to himself. “It only took a handful of attacks to shut
down the entire grid.”
“Those
bastards are quick learners, I'll give 'em that,” conceded Daniel absently as
he flipped a map and read some details on the back. They had been through all
this three times this morning, but Hank wanted to do it again in case they
missed something. A pattern, a clue. Something.
“Yeah, and
we’re not , Godammit,” Suthby said irritably.
He imagined
what it must have looked like to see the terrorists drive up in cars and trucks
and SUVs fully loaded with homemade explosives. There had been wave after wave
of them, blowing themselves up in explosions of hate. They had sacrificed
themselves in order to leave a bigger hole for the next car to burst through
deeper into the power plants.
He knew the
first responders had reported that it looked like something out of Hollywood.
Burned cars, wreckage, bodies everywhere, smoke and fire; Hell on earth. And
it happened at more than a dozen different locations across the country, all
within thirty minutes of each other. It took dozens of the terrorists to
breach each facility, but they had done it. Hundreds of men and a handful of
women. He shook his head at the very idea. Throwing an entire life away to
make a hole. It was madness.
“Okay, one
more time,” Suthby ordered.
Daniel
sighed and traced the events with his finger on the map. “When the power
stations were attacked, the damage sent out chain reactions that crippled power
stations further down the line, until the tidal wave of backed up energy grew
to the point that even the nuclear power plants had to shut down.”
“But,
they’re mostly undamaged. Just off-line.”
“Right,”
said Daniel. “But…with all the transformers blown across most of the country,
the transmission lines for the nuke plants are shot. They may work, but
they’re worthless to anyone until we get the transformers and relay
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