Act of War aow-1 Read online

  “Flunky! Who’s she callin’ a flunky?”

  “Shh!”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “I’ll make sure I’m in charge. I just need you to help me get a secure server set up so I can get into my files, and back me up in case things start going south.”

  “No sweat, Kel. If the boss signed off on this, getting the server set up will be a piece of cake. You’ll be able to test it from home tonight. You going to use satellite DES?”

  “I’ll likely be moving quite a bit, so yes, I’ll access it via satellite.”

  “Got it. Everything will be optimized for secure satellite downlink. Won’t be as fast as what you normally get but it’ll be available anywhere except the Poles.”

  “I want to scan for that downlink setup routine,” Jason said.

  “No prob, J,” Ari said. “I’ll find out where she lives, set up the Cockroach to monitor, capture the authentication codes, and have it broken in a day or two. Maybe less, if it’s a standard satellite encryption routine.” Jason nodded.

  “Where they sending you?”

  “Clovis, New Mexico.”

  “Bring sunscreen.”

  “Anything else on GAMMA?”

  “From Brazil—no. But Kingman City, yes. TransGlobal headquarters in San Francisco received a tape, supposedly from GAMMA, warning them to evacuate Kingman City. The tape was never listened to—never even left the fucking mailroom.”

  “Oh, shit. Thousands of people might…might have died for nothing.”

  “The voice was in English but electronically altered—we might not be able to voiceprint, but we should be able to pick up speech patterns and nuances that can help us build a profile.”

  “Did GAMMA leave warnings in Brazil?”

  “Yep. Every time. Other places in South America too—other TransGlobal targets too. The latter messages were electronically altered too. We should be able to detect the frequency of the device that alters the voice and come up with a manufacturer.”

  “I tell you, Rudy, this task force shit better not be a waste of our time, because I think GAMMA is in Brazil plotting another attack, and we need to break them up and get them behind bars before they bring another nuke into the U.S.”

  “Amen.”

  “Hey, didn’t Chamberlain used to be an exec with TransGlobal Energy?”

  “I think so.”

  “That could explain why he wants this task force and robot thing chasing after these terrorists. Maybe he still has an interest in TransGlobal.”

  “Aren’t these guys supposed to divest themselves of any financial interest in public companies before they take public office?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get someone to check on that.”

  “Sure. Well, I better get busy. Talk at you later, Kel.”

  “Thanks, Rudy. Later.”

  Jason sat back in complete surprise. “Holy shit, the FBI might be on their trail already,” he said. “We have to find out where in Brazil they’re talking about, and we have to get down there as fast as we can.”

  “As soon as I break that encryption routine, J, I should be able to look in her files and find out what she has on this GAMMA,” Ari said. “Or maybe once she sets up in New Mexico, she’ll let you look at her goodies…and then maybe she lets you look at her files.”

  “Slim chance of either happening, Doc,” Jason said. “Have your guys break her satellite downlink as quickly as they can.”

  “You got it. Uh…dude, is there any chance we’ll get in deep shit by crashin’ into the FBI’s computer system?”

  “Maybe. But as far as I know, this is what I was told to do—by the fucking National Security Adviser himself.”

  “Sweet,” Ari said excitedly. “I’m in but I’m in, man.”

  Cascavel, Paraná State, Brazil

  A short time later

  Originating in the lushly forested highlands of western Paraná near the Paraguay border, the Piquir River was the last of the “living” rivers of Brazil, untouched and unspoiled, once nourishing millions of acres of rain forests and providing food, drinking water, transportation, and a livelihood for thousands who lived along its banks. Some of the towns and villages there had existed for centuries, and its people lived much as they had for the past four generations. As unbelievable as it sounded, it was said that some of the inhabitants who lived along the river had no implements or devices built before the turn of the twentieth century, and some had never before even seen a light-skinned man or woman.

  That changed with a single vote of the Third District Regional Federal Tribunal of the Brazilian Federal Court in São Paulo, when it overturned a protective order by a lower court and allowed the construction of the Cascavel Nuclear Power Project. Despite protests by a number of environmental and natives’ rights groups—and, it was said, bolstered by lavish gifts and bribes—the court gave the final go-ahead, and within minutes of the decision the first trees were being bulldozed.

  Cascavel was actually planned to include seven state-of-theart reactor facilities; each of the seven plants was larger than any nuclear power plant in the United States—1,500 megawatts each, for a total of 10,500 megawatts capacity. Designed to serve not just Brazil but many of Brazil’s neighboring countries—Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and even Chile—it was by far the largest nuclear power project in South America and one of the largest in the world. Once completed, each facility was to employ five hundred workers, although only a fraction would be from the state of Paraná—engineers, technicians, and security would mostly be from outside the country.

  In order to provide cooling water for the facility as well as power to serve the new towns begun during construction until the plants came online, a hydroelectric dam was built on the Piquir River, which took just over two years to complete. Six hundred meters wide and two hundred meters tall, the plant had four turbines and produced over four hundred megawatts of power. Thousands of natives were employed—some human rights groups charged they were “shanghaied”—to build the dam, and many perished under the difficult, “round-the-clock” working conditions. Then, to add insult to injury, when the dam was completed, the Piquir River ceased to exist…along with hundreds of villages within fifteen kilometers of its banks, some that had existed for centuries. Almost overnight, thousands of inhabitants lost their homes, and millions of acres of rain forests were destroyed.

  The newly formed lake was called Repressa Kingman, named for the president of the American company, TransGlobal Energy Corporation, which built the dam and was working on the nearby nuclear power plant as prime contractor for the Brazilian Ministry of Energy. At the dam’s activation, Harold Chester Kingman himself was on hand, and was hailed by energy and commerce ministers from four nations as the benefactor—no, as the savior—of the entire region.

  As they stood there atop the gleaming concrete and steel monstrosity, the corrupt politicians and indifferent, unfeeling, uncaring builder could—if they bothered to look—see where the villages, graveyards, churches, schools, and lands of the natives once were. They were covered by twenty meters of water now. In the winter, when the rains slowed and the river’s level went down, it was possible for some families to visit the graveyards of their ancestors and to actually search for their possessions.

  The next year the natives again made their way to the bare banks of Repressa Kingman to mourn their loss and try to recover anything of value they could find, but a riot broke out and several private security officers employed by TransGlobal Energy were killed, along with dozens of natives. Days later, the same district courts that opened the way for construction of this facility ordered a halt to the annual procession, and they authorized the state military police, the Polícia Militar do Estado, or PME, to enforce the ban.

  The atmosphere in the area surrounding the Cascavel nuclear power plant project today was just as tense as it was that first day. “It looks like they’ve deployed another two hundred PME troops around Unit One,” Jorge Ruiz, Ph.D., said, peering at th
e Cascavel construction site through a pair of brand-new high-tech binoculars. “And I see more armored cars too—perhaps another dozen surrounding unit one alone. There might be another hundred troops in them.”

  “Unit One is scheduled to be powered up soon,” Manuel Pereira, Ruiz’s student and friend, said as he looked through his own binoculars. “Second anniversary of the Repressa riot, Unit One’s activation—I would say that is reason enough for more jack-booted storm troopers, no?”

  “Maybe, Manuel,” Ruiz said, lowering the binoculars and slipping his rimless spectacles back on his nose. “It sure seems like an unusually large buildup of forces just for the anniversary of the Piquir massacre. But I’m definitely the wrong guy to ask.”

  In a million years he never would have thought he’d have found himself discussing military tactics, Ruiz mused for the umpteenth time that week. Tall, thin, with black curly hair and long, delicate fingers, Dr. Jorge Ruiz was anything but an outdoorsy, gung-ho military type—but circumstances had a way of changing everything and everyone, most times not for the better…

  Jorge Ruiz was born in Abaete, Brazil, one hundred and sixty kilometers northwest of Belo Horizonte, the capital city of the state of Minas Gerais. Raised in a Catholic orphanage, adopted by a rancher father and a teacher mother, Jorge and his two adoptive sisters and one brother grew up with the best of everything. In the summer they lived in a small home in Abaete proper, but for most of the rest of the year they lived in a ranch about twenty kilometers outside of town, where they raised Spanish Barb and Mangalarga Marchador horses, turkeys, large floppy-eared Indubrasil cattle, and large blue and white peacocks that were trained like watchdogs.

  As a high school student, Jorge received a foreign exchange student scholarship and was sent off to attend school in rural upstate New York. Although leaving his Brazilian family was hard, leaving his American family was even harder—he wept like a baby from the moment he was dropped off at the airport almost until landing in Rio de Janeiro. He vowed right then and there he’d return to the United States.

  After attending just two years of college in Belo Horizonte, studying agribusiness to follow in his father’s footsteps, he received a student visa, moved to the United States, and five years later received his bachelor’s degree in agricultural science, a master’s degree in agricultural and environmental education from the University of California at Davis, then a doctorate in global environmental and energy policy from Stanford University. He traveled throughout the United States for the next five years, accepting a number of fellowships and chairs to teach and publish his thoughts on the role of multinational corporations in the development of environmental laws and energy policy.

  As much as he loved the United States, his last position, chairing the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business’s Emerging Nations Fellowship, began to change his view of the multinational corporations’ role in the third world. Governments, he found, could be coerced or convinced by the people to better their economies and societies—but the large multinational corporations developing around the world were like stateless dictatorships, virtually unaffected by any codified laws or by the will or desires of their employees. They answered to only one code: greed. Their wealth was enormous and growing every year, and they remained almost completely above the law. If a nation changed its laws to make a situation unfavorable to a corporation, they simply moved to another country where laws were lax or more favorable. The Internet, satellite communications technology, overnight delivery, and high-speed international travel made such moves easy and rarely caused an interruption in business.

  Moreover, Ruiz began to be more and more disturbed by the noise, waste, pollution, chaos, and gross excesses of life in the United States—and how the American lifestyle was quickly spreading around the world, especially to his native Brazil. Bound and determined not to see his beloved native country turn in that direction, he decided to return home to see what good his first-class education, training, and experience could do. He immediately accepted a teaching position at the Universidade Federale de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, and was soon named dean of the College of Environmental Studies. Ruiz quickly became known as one of the world’s leading experts on environmental policy and reform.

  He was also known as something of a firebrand, a label he didn’t foster but didn’t reject, either. Almost forty years old, a husband and father of a ten-year-old daughter and six-year-old son, Ruiz still thought of himself as a young long-haired radical student and enjoyed nothing more than hanging out at the student union or in the hallways outside his office, sipping strong thick coffee—half espresso, half sugar, thank you very much—smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and arguing with his students and other faculty members on the issues of the day. In the summers he would return to his family ranch and there his students and the world press would find him, ankle-deep in cattle shit, having the time of his life working the ranch and arguing with his extended family around him.

  But the Brazilian government was not ready to hear his message. Investments in Brazil by multinational corporations like TransGlobal Energy meant much-needed revenues for the government and assured reelection of its political leaders. The more he fought to restrict or control the influence of the big stateless conglomerates, the more ostracized and isolated he became. He was eventually forced to leave his dean’s position, and he decided to go home to Abaete to his family’s ranch, a move that his detractors encouraged.

  But he wasn’t ready to be silent. He continued to publish his thoughts and research on the Internet and submitted op-ed pieces for newspapers and magazines around the world. Many others followed him to the farm. The ranch became a sort of campus-away-from-campus for students, intellectuals, analysts, and soon even economic ministers from governments all over the world.

  Jorge Ruiz’s message was simple: rein in the multinational corporations before they took over the world by eliminating the corporate entity and replacing it with individual ownership, responsibility, and accountability. If businesses lay in the hands of a single man or woman, and each and every action was the responsibility of that one person, those responsible would automatically reduce the size of their business to lessen their liability. Wealth would be shared by more and more citizens; laws could be simplified; and the abuses committed by nameless, faceless paper entities would theoretically lessen.

  He attracted many students and even some followers, drawn to Abaete by his simple message, simple lifestyle, and real passion for reform. Jorge would hire some of his students on at the ranch, exchanging work for lessons. The classes and lectures soon became an even bigger part of life on the ranch than cattle and horses, and some of the students were hired to be librarians, administrators, graduate assistants, and even security personnel. The ranch and its teaching, lecture, and publishing offices soon became known worldwide as the Grupo do Abaete de la Movimento Meio Ambiente, or GAMMA, the Environmental Movement Group of Abaete.

  But Ruiz was not destined for a quiet, peaceful life in rural Minas Gerais.

  A hydroelectric dam was under construction on the São Francisco River about forty kilometers north of the ranch. Once completed, the dam would supply electricity to a bauxite mine and aluminum processing plant outside Abaete—but it would also flood almost eight hundred square kilometers of the valley, force the relocation of thousands of citizens, and poison the river downstream with strip-mine and factory pollutants. Ruiz opposed the construction and filed numerous lawsuits to stop it.

  One night, masked men invaded his home, poured gasoline in the living room, and set it afire. While his wife collected the children from their rooms, Jorge tried to put out the flames. He was almost overcome with smoke and just managed to crawl outside before the house his family had lived in for five generations burned to the ground.

  He found out later that morning that his wife and children never made it out, but were overcome by the smoke and perished in the blaze.

  Several days later, the security of
fice of the dam’s construction company, a subcontractor of TransGlobal Energy Corporation, was dynamited, killing a dozen men inside. The letters “GAMMA” were written in blood-red paint six meters tall on the partially completed dam face itself. An announcement sent to media outlets all over the world via the Internet stated that the acronym stood for Guerra Alliance de la Movimento Meio Ambiente, or the Environmental Movement Combat Alliance, declaring war on multinational corporations that polluted the environment and exploited the working people of the world.

  Jorge Ruiz was of course the main suspect in the blast. Many saw him as a modern-day Zorro—one man battling the forces of evil around him, no matter how big or powerful. Even in an age of worldwide concern about terrorists claiming to be freedom fighters or patriots, many all over the world cheered him on, supporting him at least with their hearts and words if not their hands or wallets. But Ruiz was nowhere to be found; he was believed to be deep in hiding or perhaps executed by TransGlobal Energy’s rumored death squads.

  Instead, here he was, several months later, crawling on his belly in the mud about a kilometer from Repressa Kingman. He and Manuel had been out there for a week and a half, studying the security setup and inching their way—literally—toward various parts of the dam, then inching their way back out. They had been hounded almost every day by ground and air patrols, which got steadily heavier and more persistent every day. But their timing had been perfect, and they managed to avoid giving in to panic as they covertly made their way back to their observation post.

  Their mission was successful despite the dramatically added security because of two factors. First and foremost was Manuel Pereira’s skill in the field. He was a former Brazilian army infantryman—every able-bodied man in Brazil had to go through army basic training at age eighteen or after graduating from high school, then had to join a local state military police reserve unit until age forty; Pereira chose to spend three years in the regular army in an American-trained Special Forces infantry unit before joining the reserves. He knew how to move silently, knew how to search for sentries and signs of pursuit. Pereira showed the same joy of teaching Ruiz about moving, hiding, and reconnaissance as Jorge did of professing his love of the environment.