While they walked, Dräger rattled off statistics about the building and its role in controlling the flow of electricity for over three hundred million people. Ivana dutifully interpreted the information while observing the security measures. The grounds were surrounded by a ten-foot-high wrought-iron fence topped with spikes. A ditch inside the fence line was meant to stop trucks carrying explosives, as were the thick metal columns at the front gate that had to be lowered below grade by the armed guards to allow cars to enter.
They went through metal detectors at the entrance, and their bags and equipment were searched, but there was no X-ray machine, just as they expected.
They walked down the sleek tiled halls to the rear of the building, where the command center was located. As they went, Sirkal backpedaled while he focused the camera on Antonovich, who didn’t crack a smile or speak. Dräger’s patter continued nonstop.
When they reached the door to the command center, Dräger asked Sirkal to turn the camera off and he complied. At the same time, he subtly opened the camera’s body, while the two other men removed stilettos from the audio equipment they were carrying.
After Dräger scanned her palm on the reader and typed in a passcode, the door buzzed open.
There was a marked contrast between the silence outside the door and the bustling noise and activity inside the command center as they stepped in. Over thirty analysts and technicians were stationed at three tiers of computer desks facing a giant wall of screens with all sorts of maps and status displays showing the current state of the continent’s electricity grid. A row of glass-enclosed offices lined one side of the room. The only other door was the emergency exit at the far side of the room.
Sirkal nodded at his companions and they plunged their stilettos into the necks of the two security men, who collapsed in a gush of blood. Beatrix Dräger shrank back against the nearest console, dumbstruck with horror.
Before anyone else had a chance to react, Sirkal handed out pistol magazines he had hidden within the camera body to Ivana and the two mercenaries. They all loaded them into small semiautomatics they had tucked into the back of their belts.
Steel pistols would have set off the metal detectors, which they had known would be in place. Instead, they’d fashioned non-metallic pistols based on firearm designs found on the Internet that were meant to be used with 3-D printers. The black bodies of the guns were constructed out of polymer, the springs plastic, and the barrels a high-strength ceramic. They looked just like ordinary pistols.
The downside of the homemade pistols was that their life span was very short. They could fire the entire ten-round magazine of .22 caliber ammunition, but the barrels would crack and become useless after that.
Ivana racked the slide and fired a single bullet into the ceiling. The crack of the gunshot made everyone inside the command center turn in unison.
Shouts and screams erupted from the workers when they saw the men bleeding out on the carpet.
Ivana leveled the pistol at the workers while keeping one hand on Antonovich. If he made any move to escape or resist, she would have no problem killing him, although that would ruin the illusion that he was behind the whole attack.
“Everyone put your hands up now or die,” she demanded.
Half the room’s occupants raised their arms in the air, but the other half were either confused or hesitant. Ivana picked the nearest non-compliant person and put a bullet through his head.
“Now!”
All of the other hands shot up.
“Now, stand up. My friends here will come around and empty your pockets of phones. If I see anyone make an attempt to call or text someone, that person will be the next to die.”
Phones were quickly collected without incident.
“What we do now,” she said in as pompous a voice as she could muster, “we do for our Mother Russia. No longer will our country be subjugated to the whims of Europe’s illegal and immoral sanctions. It’s your turn to suffer.”
After the offices’ landline phones, computers, and panic buttons were disabled, all of the workers, including Dräger, were herded into them and locked inside.
Ivana attached her laptop to an Ethernet cable connected to the command center’s network. In a few minutes, the entire network was infected and she could now control all of the remote circuit breakers from the application on her laptop.
She instructed all of the breakers to lock in the closed position. One by one, the lights on the big board turned red to indicate the dangerous condition each location had been put in.
When the whole continent was a beautiful scarlet, Ivana checked the sum of the accounts where the money had been transferred. The number of zeroes blew her away. The total read just over thirty billion euros. She grinned and texted her father.
Money is transferred and Dynamo is active. You are a go.
Golov replied seconds later.
Understood. Commencing attack once we have Oregon under control. Get out of there. Good work, my girl.
Ivana smiled at that. Soon, whole nations would go dark, and she’d get to see it happen from the air. She detached her laptop and put it back in the briefcase.
“Time to get back to the Achilles and pop some bubbly,” she said to Sirkal.