It’s a good thing I love being a cop, He thought as he helped the next group into the car, Cause otherwise this traffic control shit would really get a mate down.
“The police inspector has begun accessing the net protocols from the station,” Director Jacob said, approaching from behind Abdallah as the terrorist entered a security code into a wall lock.
“Oh” Amir smiled, looking over his shoulder. “Took her longer than I expected. Very well, I suppose that we’ve taken all the time we are likely to get. Follow through with the first stage of the plan.”
Jacob nodded, “Very well, Amir. Shall I send a team to the Station”
Abdallah paused for a moment, considering. On the one hand, he didn’t generally approve of random killings while in the process of achieving a mission, they generally attracted the wrong kind of attention to the random killings he was hoping to achieve at the fulmination of his plans. Long term deaths were more important, after all.
However this Inspector and the Interpol agent she was associating with were a long cry from `random’ targets. They were, perhaps, directly to blame for the increased time schedule he was now operating under, and the directly proportional loss in expected casualties of his plan. If anyone deserved to die, it would be them.
More to the point, they were going to be a pain in the ass if left alone. He could just feel it.
“Very well,” He said finally, tapping in the final code to open the large metal door before them. “I suppose that it’s time to end the charade. Proceed to phase two as well, and eliminate the police that aren’t under our control.”
“All of them” Jacob asked, his voice uncertain.
“Well, wait until the crowds have died down, but yes. All of them. No point in having people who actually aspire to heroics kicking around alive, Jacob. They’ll just get themselves killed in the long run anyway,” He said, pulling open the huge counter weighted door. “Give them what they want.”
Jacob nodded, a hint of a smile on his face. “We have a few people who are looking forward to that.”
“That’s why we keep them around,” Amir said, stepping into the secured room.
Jacob nodded, stepping back and vanishing, as Amir looked at the rows of stainless steel canisters that lined the wall of the small room. The terrorist smiled privately, taking satisfaction in the stark, clinical image of over a decade of research and preparations.
Chapter 8
Anselm slid into the chair, pulling the keyboard out from the desk as his eyes roved over the screen briefly. The numbers were still, predictably, being crunched, but enough of them were in to give him a bleak image of the situation he and the innocent civilians of Tower City were facing.
So far there were almost sixty known or suspected terrorists in the city, and it was absolutely mind boggling to Anselm that none of them had tripped security alarms before Adrienne Somer had recognized a familiar face in a honeymoon photograph.
The fact that Director Jacob was on the list, of course, made it somewhat easier to believe, but that was hardly enough. Some of these people were in the criminal population, such as it was, and while it wasn’t standard protocol to run miscreants through international terrorist databases, neither was it entirely credible that all of them could simply slip through.
That meant someone was running interference through the computer systems.
Unfortunately, that didn’t narrow matters much. Hacking computer systems was a time honored tradition in the post digital age, and even the most secured of systems were known to be breached from time to time. Given the fact that Abdallah had obviously had his claws into the Tower Project from early on in its inception, it was literally child’s play to hook intercepts into the infrastructure of the local web access nodes.
After all, how often does one really get a chance to be on in something literally from the ground up
Anselm shook his head, tapping in another command, only to be met with an alarming whistle from the computer, followed by a loss of connection with the CIA and Interpol computing clusters.
“Ah hell,” He muttered, tapping in more commands, “Now what!”
He tried to restart the connection several times, but got nowhere, and instead gave up and pushed back from the desk. He got up and headed for the outer offices, “Gwen!”
“What!” She snapped back, eyes flaring, and he guessed that she had no more luck than he’d just experienced.
“We’ve lost net access.” He told her.
“What” Now she just sounded perplexed, which Anselm well understood.
The network link for a police organization was a dual line fiberoptic bundle, either of which fully capable of taking up the full slack for any conceivable use they’d have for it. Both lines were linked, by preference, through separate feed stations though in cities such as Tower City that wasn’t always possible.
In effect, a police station was never supposed to fall off the international police network.
Gwen started tapping at the configurable keyboard in front of her, ordering a connection reset, only to receive the same error as Anselm had seen a moment earlier.
“This isn’t right.”
“I figured that,” He said dryly, drawing his portable from his pocket. “I’m calling the Director.”
She ignored him, continuing to work on the computers while he tapped in the directors name on his buddy list.
A moment later he looked up, “I can’t get a signal.”
Gwen’s head snapped up, eyes widening, “That’s impossible.”
It should be, that was certain, Anselm conceded. A portable didn’t operate on any single connection scheme, and should have been able to establish a link over any open internet connection within the entire city. Failing that, its secondary protocol was the cellular links that still crossed the planet in almost every nation, and certainly here in Australia.
There was no single place where a break would disrupt the use of a portable computer, which meant that short of a nuclear attack or asteroid strike, which Anselm was relatively confident hadn’t happened, no accidental event could possibly cut off a portable.
“They’re getting started,” He said grimly, shaking his head. “We’re too late.”
Gwen fell back in her chair, paling as she pushed her red hair out of her eyes and whispered, “Oh no.”
“The last numbers that came through put the opposition at almost sixty men,” Anselm said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know how many people they could have convinced to join them in the tower, but I doubt it’s anywhere near Abdallah’s optimal number.”
“What are they going to do next”
“I don’t know,” He shook his head, “They’ll have to hold the greenhouse.secure it before they can start.”
“That’s a big facility, Anselm,” She said, shaking her head. “Twenty five thousand acres of parks, crop lands, thermal tanks.it’s a lot of place to secure.”
“Maybe.maybe not,” Anselm shook his head, “They don’t care what people do once their inside, right They just don’t want them leaving.”
“That would make it easier,” She nodded, shrugging. “I don’t know.Still a lot of emergency exists around the outer ring.”
“What if they keep everyone to the inner rings”
She shook her head, “Mostly empty sections there, thermal capacitance tanks, dehumidification.it’s industrial.at least as much as we get around here.”
Anselm sighed shaking his head, “Jesus.Twenty five thousand acres to spread themselves out.if they have the men to do it.How many people could they possibly have in there”
“Thousands,” Gwen told him grimly. “Maybe tens of thousands.”
Anselm considered the numbers for a moment, then shook his head, “I don’t care how many people he has, there is no way Abdallah can control that many people. He just can’t possibly have the numbers.”