“I think your schedule may have to be revised, Marek,” he said grimly. “Unless this is only a very local problem.”
In less than a minute, emergency generators in the basement kicked in, restoring power to the headquarters building.
Wilk glanced down at his phone. Dozens of texts were already flooding in, from every ministry in his government. “Shit,” he muttered. He turned toward the somber-faced man in charge of his security detail. “We’re heading for the roof, Major,” he said, rising to his feet.
Major Dariusz Stepniak frowned. “I think that would be most unwise, sir.” He glanced up at the lights. “It’s possible this power outage is intended to lure you out into the open. If so, there could be a sniper targeting the roof, hoping you’ll make an appearance there. It would be safer to return to the Belweder Palace immediately.”
With an effort, Wilk fought down the temptation to tell the other man he was being a paranoid idiot. Like all agents in Poland’s BOR, the Bureau of Government Protection, its version of the U.S. Secret Service, paranoia was practically part of Stepniak’s job description. It was his job to imagine the sniper on every rooftop, the pistol-wielding assassin in every crowd, the suicide bomber at every public gathering.
But that didn’t mean it was necessary for Wilk to indulge every one of the major’s fears.
He rose and jerked his head toward the door. “I’ll just have to take that chance, Dariusz. If you’re right and someone shoots me, you can tell me how fucking stupid I was. But in meantime, I need to see what the hell is going on outside for myself.” He held up his smartphone, showing the sea of urgent messages, all highlighted in red, flicking onto its small screen. “Because whatever it is, I can assure you that it’s really bad.”
Minutes later, Wilk, Stepniak, Brzeziński, and a number of aides were on the roof of the five-story headquarters building, staring out across Warsaw’s skyscraper-studded skyline. It was utterly dark, marked only by a few tiny points of light that showed other buildings with working emergency generators.
His phone buzzed sharply, signaling a Priority One call. “Wilk, here.”
Prime Minister Klaudia Rybak was on the other end. Ordinarily perfectly cool and collected, she now sounded flustered and out of breath. “I’ve been in touch with the top people at Polski Siece Elektroenergetyczne,” she said.
Wilk nodded to himself. PSE was the state-owned company in charge of Poland’s national power grid. “And?”
“They say their voltage-control software is malfunctioning,” the prime minister said quickly. “They don’t yet know how or why, but their computer programs are apparently misallocating power — shunting power to portions of the grid that are already at maximum capacity and siphoning electricity away from areas that need it. Voltage surges all over the country are knocking out transmission lines and generators.”
“How bad is it?”
She gulped. “Their best guess is that more than fifty percent of the country is already completely blacked out.”
Wilk closed his eyes. He and the rest of his inner circle had all been on edge wondering where Russia’s hackers would strike next. Well, now they knew. Not that it was any comfort, he thought bleakly.
“I’m afraid there’s more, Piotr,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Andrzej says he’s getting frantic calls from his opposite numbers all across the Alliance.”
Wilk felt himself tensing up. Andrzej Waniek was his foreign minister.
“They’ve been hit by the same kinds of transmission outages,” she told him. “The Baltic states, Hungary, Romania, and the rest are all going dark.”
A slowly rising moon turned the woods around the Polish air base into a dreamlike world where pitch-black shadows mingled with splotches of pale gray light. Tree branches rustled, swayed by gusts of cold wind from the east.
Captain Ian Schofield, his senior NCO, Sergeant Andrew Davis, and Whack Macomber lay prone in a clump of brush growing over and around the charred trunk of a tree felled by lightning. They were on a shallow rise overlooking the perimeter fence. All three wore ghillie suits that included the most efficient antithermal linings available. While motionless, they were effectively undetectable by the human eye or most IR sensors. Despite that, none of them was under any illusion he could hide for long from the lithe gray-and-black shape prowling slowly along the fence several hundred meters away — not if it decided to come looking for them, anyway.
“Tell me again why we’re out here, Major?” Schofield murmured into Macomber’s ear. With luck, even the CID’s razor-sharp audio pickups would have trouble picking out his whisper at this distance amid the noise of the wind whistling through the woods.
“We need you and your guys to keep an eye on CID One out there,” Macomber said softly. “We’re… well, let’s say we’re a little worried about the pilot.”
“Worried as in you think maybe the guy’s catching cold? Or worried as in he might go loco?” Davis growled.
Macomber shot him a sour grin. “The latter, Sergeant. As I suspect you’d already guessed.”
“Maybe so,” the noncom said with a glint in his eye. “But since you’re asking us to keep tabs on a potentially homicidal maniac who just happens to be riding around in a practically invincible combat machine, I kinda figured it made sense to hear the bad news straight up. Without any of the usual HQ happy talk.”
“Fair enough,” Macomber agreed. He understood Davis. Like him, the sergeant was a seasoned veteran with multiple covert operations under his belt, first with the U.S. Special Forces and then with Scion and the Iron Wolf Squadron. And one of the first things anyone learned in Special Ops was to figure that whatever the rear-echelon guys told you was about 70 percent sugarcoating, 25 percent pure BS, and maybe, on a good day, about 5 percent fact.
Schofield frowned. “If this man could be a threat, why not simply wait until he climbs out of the CID and then send him in for a psych evaluation?”
“Because, in this particular case, that’s not an acceptable option, Captain,” Macomber said flatly, making it very clear to both men that he’d gone as far as he was going to go down that road. The fact that Patrick McLanahan was still alive, never mind that he could not survive for very long outside a CID, was a tightly held secret, even within Scion and Iron Wolf.
“Swell,” Davis muttered. “Ain’t nothing so joyful as being voluntold to babysit a killing machine.”
This time it was Schofield who shot him a warning glance before turning back to Macomber. “Very well, Major,” the Canadian said. “What are your orders if we do see this pilot going off the reservation? Do you want us to engage him?”
“Hell, no,” Macomber answered. “I try not to send guys out on suicide missions.” He shook his head. “No, if you spot trouble, you call it in to me or Charlie Turlock and then vamoose as fast as you can.”
“And then what happens?” Davis wanted to know.
Macomber was silent for a moment. At last, he sighed. “Then Charlie and I gear up in other robots and do our best to put him down, without getting ourselves or anyone else killed.”
When he’d crawled far enough back down the rise to be safely out of sight, Whack Macomber slowly climbed back to his feet. He winced as his knees popped. “Man, I may be getting too old for this snake-eating commando shit.”
Charlie Turlock jumped up from the tree stump she’d been sitting on while waiting for him. She grinned. “Maybe so, Whack. That’s why CIDs are so cool. You get a nice cushy ride and you let the robot do all the work.”