25 Department of Homeland Security, Washington DC, November 10 1030 Hrs (1430Z)

Department of Homeland Security, Washington DC, November 10 1030 Hrs (1430Z)

"Rachel..." Joe Macintyre said, just bursting into her office. "We have a serious problem." Rachel was on the phone with her fiancée. "It's just chatter at this point, but it got picked up..." Aaron Young said. "Who's that?" "It's Joe Macintyre, I brought him up from the basement because he had started to piece this together." "Hey Joe, I'm Aaron Young. I'm Rachel's Fiancée and I work for the FBI" "Nice to meet you." Joe said. "Apparently the guys over in cyber found chatter and photos of various infrastructure together on a message board that is on a host in Mauritius of all places..." "Yeah, the folks over in Mauritius don't hand anything over. If it's being paid for by someone here, we may never figure out who is financing it." Aaron said. "Can we have the guys in Cyber sniff it and see if we can pinpoint who is accessing it?" Rachel asked. She could use a computer but some of the more advanced stuff that the teams in Cyber did were beyond her. "We can try," Joe nodded. "In the mean time I'm having Cyber scrape it so that we can get copies of everything and start plotting it out. Also they are going to keep watching and notify us if anything new appears." "Rach, Can you see if you can get me copies of that. I think we're working the same group." Arron asked. "Yeah, I'll talk to the head of the department." Rachel said. Her department was more focused on Mitigation, but the bust would happen with Aaron's people. They were Law Enforcement, after all. "Joe, go see if we can get into one of the large conference rooms down on the second floor. I think we're going to need the space." Rachel said turning to the computer. "And see if the IT department can get us a few large screen TV's in there. We need to be able to see what the hell we're doing." She turned to the phone. "I'll keep you in the loop, sweetie and I'll see if we can get you guys over here." "Sounds good. I'll keep you updated as well." Aaron said and then the phone went dead for a split second and then rang again. Rachel reached over and answered it on speaker. "Upton" She said. "Rachel, It's Director Watson," His gruff voice came through the phone. His voice might be gruff, but he was one of the nicest people she knew. "Can you come up to my office?" He would know what was going on by now, but she was still being summoned to the Office of the Director. "On my way," Rachel said. There was no point in taking her time. She grabbed the folder from her desk that had all of the bullet points of what they knew prior to Cyber making the discovery that they did. She hit the button on the phone, grabbed her phone and started upstairs. On the way to the directors office, she passed Mark Roach. "If you see Joe Macintyre. Let him know I'll be back. I'm going up to the director's office." "Will do. Are you working on something." "Maybe," She said as she started to walk away. It still didn't have a full agency go, but it might after this meeting. "I'll let you know." She said, as she got on the elevator. She pushed the button to go to the 5th floor of the building. That was where the Directors office was. A Few moments later she stepped off the elevator. The Directors office was on the south end of the building so she went that way, swiping her badge at the door that separated the common corridor from what could be best be described as the executive suite. She walked up to Director Watson's secretary. "Good morning, Cheryl..." Rachel said. Cheryl was like the gatekeeper for the Director. If you weren't expected or it wasn't an emergency, you didn't get past her. "Good Morning, Rachel." She like the Director had a gruff exterior, but were nice if you were on their good side. "He's expecting you. You can go in." "Thank you." Rachel said, walking over to the door and knocking. "Come in." She heard from the other side of the door in the directors gruff voice. She turned the knob and entered the Director's office. "Come and have a seat, Let's talk about what you've got." Rachel came over and sat down in one of the two plush leather seats that sat across from the desk. "Director, I can only tell you what we suspect so far. We, at this time, do not have firm data indicating a credible or imminent threat." Rachel started. "One of the low level analysts had noticed that several jurisdiction in Ohio had sightings of the same van near the nuclear power plants that are in the state." She opened the folder and pulled out the first pieces of data that she had received. "Now thoughts were that it could have been some transmission line maintainer the first time that It was seen. It had been reported as having a spot light that was pointed up at the transmission towers. At first it was a fluke because they normally do inspections during the day unless something is wrong, but it's been known to happen at night as well. It was when the same van was spotted on the east side of Ohio, that someone went 'wait a second' This was a different power company so a different company owned the transmission lines. The van has been seen in various places in Ohio. We've not heard anything else in terms of this van since the fourth." She took a breath and looked at the Director. He looked skeptical, but then again she had been skeptical when Joe had brought up the little bit of data that he had gathered at the end of October. "okay, I see nothing other than a suspicious vehicle and person or persons in that vehicle. You've got a lot of assets tied up in this right now." Director Watson said. "Yes sir," She said confidently. One thing that working in Homeland security had given her was a confidence that she didn't have when she worked in the private sector. She looked at the Director. "That was all we had until I got a call from the STACC Statewide Terrorism Analysis and Crime Center in Ohio about a memo that they had received from the Washington State Emergency Management. Turns out that someone there had written a memo on how to take down one of the must vulnerable pieces of infrastructure that we have." She pulled a copy of Michelle's memo out and sat it on the desk. Director Watson picked it up and looked at it. "Sir, I believe we may be looking at an imminent attack. Right before I came up here, I was informed that Cyber had found a site that was apparently being used for communication between parties involved in this operation." Director Watson looked up. "They are working to identify possible targets, but there could be a lot of them. No matter how well we do, we're going to be dealing with the effects of this for a little while." "Take OPS one and two, remove the divider and pull in any one you need to. I'll get you what ever you need." Director Watson said. "And get me in touch with this Michelle Oldham. I want to talk to her." "Will do, sir." Michelle stood. "I'm going to start getting inter agency stuff set up to help us on this. So far we just have this one van in Ohio, but depending on What cyber gets us..." "Keep me in the loop, Rachel," Director Watson said. "You're the National IC on this. You've got authority to bring in any one you need and deputize them into your team." Director Watson was scheduled to retire at the end of the year. He wasn't about to let something like failing to stop this be his legacy. "Yes, Sir." Rachel said, turning and leaving the room. She practically jogged down stairs to her office, taking the steps rather than the elevator. When she got back to her office, Joe was waiting on her with a grim look on his face. She looked at him. "Go get Ops one and two spun up, call facilities and have them open the wall, we're going to need the combined room. You're my assistant IC, you're making decisions if I'm not here for some reason." "Your..." Joe stammered. "Assistant Incident Commander?" "Yes, I just got promoted to IC on this, you're as in the know as I am." Rachel grabbed her laptop. "Also get cyber in there so we can review what they've got as well. Do you have a laptop?" "No, I have a desktop that's in my cube downstairs." Most of the lower level analysts were situated on the Second floor of the building. "Why?" "Because it will be easier than trying to haul a desktop around." She picked up the phone on her desk and dialed a number. "This is Rachel Upton, I was just promoted to IC for an incident that we are bringing OPS rooms one and two up for. My Assistant IC doesn't have a laptop and he needs one for this. Can you have someone bring one to the Ops desk in OPS one for him." She listened to the phone for a second. "Thank you." "Now you'll have one." She said. "Once we get down stairs, I want to call the STACC and WEMA and given them an update." Rachel paused for a second and looked at her laptop. She picked up the phone and called over to Cyber. "Hey it's Rachel Upton, get a few people down to OPS one so that I can have near instant access to the date that you guys have managed to get, please." She looked at Joe. "Let's go."