“Did you say thorium?” Charlie looked at her for a moment, letting that sink in.
“Charlie!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it!”
“I’ll help him get access,” said President Caldwell, her image coming up on one of the control center’s big screens.
“I’ll assist,” said Briggs, rushing into the room and dropping into a computer station.
In the meantime, Grim stared determinedly at the SMI’s screen. She brought up a 378-page Oak Ridge National Lab report on the thorium stockpile in Nevada, and Fisher scanned a bar graph over her shoulder.
There were 3,500 tons of thorium stored in 21,585 metal drums. Each drum weighed an average of 330 pounds. The United States owned 18,924 drums of monolithic material, India had 760 of granulated pebbles, and France had 1,901 of dry powder all stored at the same site, buried in the side of a mountain.
Not a second after reading that, Grim typed in a request, and a wireframe representation of a tractor trailer began rotating on the screen, with data scrolling beside it:
A twenty-foot-long truck could hold approximately 120 drums. This was assuming no pallets, the drums packed into shipping containers. A tri-axel slider chassis could carry up to 44,000 pounds on U.S. roads. The 120 drums would have a total weight of approximately 40,000 pounds.
Over 800,000 hazmat shipments hit the roads every day, and all were highly regulated by the government. There were even classified routes across the United States for the transfer of such materials, with attempts made to keep them away from large population centers, but that was often impossible. The most recent map glowed beside Grim’s truck; however, when the government wanted to ship something highly classified such as nuclear materials, weapons, or other such top secret military technology, there was no map to be found, no record of the shipment. They’d call upon a “black” or “ghost fleet” of trucks whose drivers would not answer to their civilian employers but be directed by the government operators themselves. No other entities save for the government could track them or communicate with them. The dispatchers at their respective companies would be aware that drivers were on the road and transporting “something,” but no other information would be available.
Ghost fleet cabs were fitted with custom composite armor and lightweight armored glass, as well as redundant communications systems with dashboard panic buttons. The comms were part of a Qualcomm-like fleet management computer wired directly into the truck’s data bus. The command centers could monitor and track a vehicle’s GPS coordinates, get readings from the dashboard instrumentation, and engage in encrypted communications directly with the driver via an in-cab keyboard. Drivers or command center managers had the ability to disable the truck via traditional means such as shutting off the fuel supply and by the recent adoption of flux compression generators so the vehicle could not be moved or opened, its electronics permanently disabled by a localized electromagnetic pulse wave. Drivers had nicknamed that switch the “PON-R,” pronounced “pone-ar” and meaning “point of no return,” a familiar term also used by aviators to reference a point where their fuel level would no longer allow them to return to the airfield.
In addition to the sophisticated kill switches, the trucks were designed to defend themselves with concealable Metal Storm robotic 40mm guns that could quickly deliver massive barrages of suppressing fire over a large area.
From the outside, though, you’d never know they were anything but your run-of-the-mill haulers, with standard diamond-shaped warning placards and labels, and painted with their company logos. Even the small comm domes atop their cabs were a common sight on such tractors.
And as expected, sensitive materials were not left in the hands of apprentices. Ghost fleet drivers comprised some of the most experienced haulers on the road, many with over two million miles of hazmat transports under their belts.
The data Fisher continued scanning was merely a refresher course. It was his business to know about the ghost fleet and their operations since hazmat materials were likely targets for terrorist attacks.
“Okay, got it,” said Charlie. “TSMT’s in charge of the shipment. President Caldwell just got me access to the ghost fleet’s network.”
Tri-State Motor Transit was one of a handful of companies that specialized in moving hazardous materials for both civilian clients and government contractors. They had a reputation for having some of the most adept and skillful drivers in the industry — but if their shipments had been compromised, then all the safety training and experience in the world could still fail them.
“Okay, patching through,” Charlie said.
The SMI flashed as a map of the United States blossomed to life, outlines of states glowing in brilliant green with an overlay of cargo routes shimmering in red.
Grim began pointing to the flashing blue dots on the major highways. “Here they are. I count eight, Charlie.”
“Confirm. Eight trucks. They’ve left Nevada and are en route to the Port of Jacksonville, Florida. They’ve scattered the loads, though. Each truck is about eight hours behind the one in front of it, with a few of them taking a more northern route you can see there.”
“Do these trucks have escorts?” Kasperov asked from behind them. “Department of Homeland Security teams or something?”
“No, they don’t travel with escorts,” said Fisher. “Draws too much attention.”
“Mr. Kasperov, you said the oligarchs might attack these shipments,” Grim began. “Do you have anything more specific?”
Kasperov flinched and could not meet Grim’s gaze.
“If they want to take out the entire shipment, they’ll wait until all the trucks reach the port,” said Charlie. “They could blow the cargo ship or even launch an air attack from the shipping yard. Hell, they could already have the shipping yard rigged to blow.”
Grim raised her voice, her tone twice as emphatic. “Mr. Kasperov? Do you know something? If you do, you have to tell us. You realize what’s at stake here, don’t you?”
Fisher stepped over to the man. “We rescued your daughter. You do this for her. You talk.”
Kasperov nodded. “As I said, their plan has three stages. I was to be first. They never told me about other stages. One of my best employees spied on one of them, hacked his computers, and told me about it.”
“Are you talking about Kannonball?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, Patrik Ruggov, Kannonball. He learned about shadow war oligarchs have against your nation. The president was trying to put an end, but they kept on. He learned about teams of Iranians they hired who were smuggled into United States across Mexican border and purchases of large quantities of C-4 explosives from cartels. He told me about many trips to Nevada. He learned that stage two of attack was to be terror and contamination. But again, I never thought they would go through with it. Always a deterrent, a way to threaten Treskayev, manipulate him.”
“Where’s the lead truck now?” asked Fisher.
Grim pointed to the map. “Topeka, Kansas. Looks like it’s nearing exit 361B just south of the North Kansas Avenue Bridge, rolling at sixty-eight miles per hour.”
“So we’ve got some time before all the trucks reach Jacksonville,” said Fisher.
“Maybe not,” said Grim. “I’ll have the SMI generate a blast scenario — because if you think about it, multiple hits on multiple trucks would spread the most terror and contamination. That’s what they’re after.”
“So you think the C-4’s already on board the trucks?” asked Fisher. “They won’t blow them all in Jacksonville?”