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The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

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“We’ve lost a great friend and co-worker in Michael James Trono,” he said, “but, more than that, we’ve lost a part of our family. Mike died the way he lived, putting his life on the line to ensure our success without ever thinking of himself. He was a man of action and honor, and he made the world a better place just by being in it.”

Juan cleared his throat and went on. “Mike wanted us to send him off with a celebration of his life. Sharing a drink. Sharing some laughs. Sharing war stories. And we’ll do all of that when we can. But he also would have wanted us to finish our mission first. There was no place Mike would rather be than on this ship and with this crew and he will be here as long as we remember him.”

Juan stepped aside for Julia Huxley, who worked hard to keep her voice steady as she read a prayer. Then Juan commanded, “Firing party, present arms!” Linc, Linda, and MacD stepped forward, weapons at the ready. The pallbearers tilted the platform holding the casket, sending it into the sea during a three-gun salute. There was no bugle on board, so Max started a playback of Taps over the Oregon’s external speakers. They stood rigid for the mournful dirge, while two of the pallbearers folded the flag and handed it to Juan. He would send it to Mike’s parents along with their son’s other effects.

Still in his

suit, he went down to the conference room, where his senior staff gathered along with Gretchen.

“I’m sorry we have to get right back into this,” he said, “but I don’t think we have much time to act. Gretchen, before the funeral you told me that you got a tip about Antonovich’s upcoming whereabouts.”

“Yes, Interpol has been in contact with the two sons of Lars and Oskar Dijkstra, the brothers killed in the Gibraltar plane crash. We’ve been investigating it as a possible act of terrorism, and their family has given their full cooperation. They told us that their fathers had been scheduled to attend a private opening of the new European Continental Control Hub outside of Maastricht, the Netherlands, in a few days.”

Juan sat forward. “Is that related to the electrical grid?”

“Yes. Bliksem Raster, the Dijkstra-Antonovich joint venture, was responsible for a good portion of the control architecture. It came online last week, and the CEOs are scheduled to get a private tour of the facility.”

“When?”

“It was supposed to be day after tomorrow at four p.m.”

“I’ll bet Antonovich asked to move it up, didn’t he?”

Gretchen nodded. “He asked to shift it to tomorrow at the same time.”

“They’re pushing their time line forward because they’re jumpy about what happened in Vilnius. The question is, what’s their endgame?”

“Eric and I have an idea about that,” Murph said.

“The Control Hub was designed to manage all of the European grid’s transformer stations from one central location,” Eric said. “It would be the perfect spot to attack the power system.”

“You think they’re trying to take down the continent’s whole electrical grid?” Juan asked.

“We’re already past the ten days that was warned about in the message ShadowFoe left at Credit Condamine for us,” Murph said, “and there hasn’t been a financial meltdown, so the banks have breathed a sigh of relief, right? Well, what if that threat was empty? Maybe they never planned to take down the banking system. We suspect that the bank security code was compromised as a result of the Credit Condamine heist, so what if their plan all along was to hack into the banks for money?”

Gretchen shook her head. “But we’ve been monitoring the banks very carefully since then. There have been no large discrepancies in trading or deposits.”

Eric raised a finger. “They’d know you’d be watching. But what would happen if the trades were transacted right before a major power outage?”

Her face clouded at the implications of the question. “The banks would be scrambling just to get the system back online. Any extended disruption would cause a financial meltdown. Tracking any bogus trades would be a low priority until we got everything up and running again. In fact, it might be impossible to trace them even after the system was functional again.”

“I think ShadowFoe knows that,” Murph said. “They could get away with billions.”

Juan asked, “What does the transformer station at Zingst have to do with this?”

Eric answered, “The destruction of the Frankfurt transformer station has minimized the ways power can be redistributed. Suddenly, losing the Zingst station would be catastrophic.”

“We’re talking a continent-wide blackout,” Murph said. “Transportation would grind to a halt. Gas pumps wouldn’t work. Airports would shut down. Computers and communication networks would be inoperable. No phones. No Internet. The economy would go into a free fall.”

“How long would it take to get the power back up if most of Europe’s transformers went off-line?” Juan asked.

“Three months, if we’re lucky.”

“Three months?”

“When we say the transformers would melt down,” Eric said, “we mean that literally. They would be totally destroyed. And industrial-sized transformers aren’t exactly available at the local hardware store. They’d have to be built from scratch, transported, and installed after the damaged ones were ripped out.”

Murph added, “Without power, how do factories in Europe make new ones? They’d have to come from overseas, which would take even longer.”



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