Enginewitch

By Stephen Elder

Enginewitch is a diatribe masked as a sci-fi novel. It is based on current events that add new fodder daily (and much faster than can be digested).
The Enginewitch is Shiloh Alderman, a young woman who can control electricity with her mind. The older brother of her best friend recruits her into the CIA where she is drawn into a daring plot. The president's total lack of government experience, clueless foreign policy, incessant lying, disregard for law, and delusional tweets have marked him as America's greatest security risk according to an analysis by the intelligence agencies. Their study concludes that America will soon be either at war with China, or embroiled in a civil war. An act without precedent is called for. Enter the Enginewitch, who faces a terrible conflict between patriotism and personal belief. Her decision can save or doom the country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359015658

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ENGINEWITCH

Copyright  © 2018 Stephen Elder

All rights reserved. This book is fiction. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means--whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic--without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this book is illegal and is punishable by law.

www.stephenelder.com

ISBN  978-0-359-01565-8

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. 

H.L. Mencken (July 26, 1920, column entitled Bayard vs. Lionheart)

Hundreds of wise men cannot make the world a heaven, but one idiot is enough to turn it into a hell.

Raheel Farooq, Pakistani poet and teacher

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Mark Twain

The Foremath

Chapter 1

Moscow, November 16-17, 2017

The sky was the color of an old lead pipe and felt just as heavy. It was cold. When is it ever warm in Moscow, Shiloh Alderman thought as she sat in a grey Lada watching the warehouse door in the rear view mirror. She had dressed warmly because she didn't want to run the car engine—the puffs of tailpipe condensation in the late November air would draw attention. Russian policemen were notoriously inquisitive, especially with foreigners, and more especially with Americans, and most especially if they knew the American was CIA. She was officially a trade rep tasked to the American embassy, but the current version of the KGB probably knew who she really was. They were thorough and ruthless.

The warehouse was a competently built structure, faced in attractive aluminum siding. It looked better than many Russian apartment houses, especially the concrete monstrosities built during the Soviet era. Whoever had designed it had some inkling of aesthetics. Also, the ubiquitous shabbiness that seemed to afflict Russian industrial complexes like a contagion was missing.

Shiloh waited for her team member to emerge. The op was behind schedule and it was time to start worrying. She'd had an uncomfortable feeling about this mission from the get-go, mainly because of her firm belief in Murphy's Law, the original phrasing of which was "Things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance." Shiloh Alderman personally gave things very little chance to go astray, but she was now old enough to realize that some things were actually beyond her considerable control.

There were several facets of the current op that qualified as beyond.

Like this one. Pyotr should have been here five minutes ago.

She pulled out her cell and texted a message in Russian. It read: Sweetie, you're five minutes late. I'm going to give you another five minutes and put your meal back in the oven. Okay? The translation was: This is Mechanic. Mission is five minutes behind schedule. I'm leaving in another five minutes unless otherwise advised.

An answer came back immediately: "I'll be there in two. Love you."

Pyotr had told her he'd be there in two minutes.

Five minutes was not a huge delay in their schedule, but their built-in safety margin was more than used up. As she waited, she thought back on the mission backstory and her misgivings began to metastasize. Control had confessed to her in the original mission briefing that they did not have the blessing of the Director. What he didn't say was that the Director did not even know about it. This op was blacker than black, which meant that if something went wrong and her team got into trouble, there was no backup or rescue. Control had said they would be on their own, but neglected to include the qualifier completely.

Why was this, she wondered? All intelligence services knew beyond any doubt that the Russians had interfered with the 2016 elections. They were not our friends. We were supposed to do unto them as they had done unto us. Why was this mission so black?

Control had also said that the mission had systemic problems. The mission concept had originated in the Technical Readiness Division after identifying a large and sophisticated techwar operation in a warehouse district on the Gorkovskoe highway about 16 miles east of Moscow's Ring Road. The complex was furnished with a 24-hour closed circuit TV monitoring system, and there was a separate system guarding the computer operation that was the mission's target.

Intelligence had indicated that the troll farm was gearing up to mess with the American midterm elections in a significant way, magnifying the incompetence of the US government and increasing support for the current president's policies.

President Ronald Drumpf was a famously easy target, not only for the Russians but also for his own countrymen. An anonymous researcher in the Tech Division had coined the name President Tang, a sarcastic in-house sobriquet for orangutan meant to reference the president's ridiculous orange hair and his ape-level intelligence. The nickname spread rapidly because most career-level CIA personnel resented POTUS incessantly bashing the intelligence services. They regarded him as unstable and unintelligent, hardly the self-proclaimed stable genius. Shiloh recalled her father's embarrassed confession that he had voted for him.

The President’s favoritism toward all things Russian was inexplicable to Shiloh. Her opinion was widely shared. The only feasible explanation for POTUS's behavior was that the Russians had something on the American president. The tech divisions in the intelligence agencies were hard at work trying to discover what it was so they could neutralize it if at all possible. Until that happened, there was every reason to keep the president and his allies as far out of the loop as possible while the alphabet agencies fought to keep the country safe. That was much harder to do when you couldn't trust your own leaders.

Shiloh was beginning to understand the paranoia exhibited by the average Russian.

She glanced at her watch. The two minutes were up. She was about to start the car when the warehouse door opened and Pyotr came out. He was a husky six-footer, good looking, with wide full lips and smiling blue eyes.

She jumped out of the car and waved to him, a girl come to pick up her boyfriend. Pyotr walked quickly to the car and kissed her hello. They got in and he began to tell her about what he'd accomplished when she shook her head very slightly and pointed up. The team had been warned about AI lip-reading technology and there were surveillance cameras over each warehouse door. There was only a slim chance that this particular tape would be looked at and an even slimmer chance that it would generate enough suspicion to be examined very closely. However, a training instructor had drilled into her that a spy's main asset was paranoia. He had hammered home the Sun Tzu maxim: Do not prepare for what you think the enemy will do to you; prepare for what you know he can do to you.

Pyotr had been undercover at the troll farm for the past two months. One of his reports had noted that the Russian techs were every bit as arrogant as American trolls and thought themselves just as invulnerable, and this particular outfit was surprisingly lax about their own security while they hacked away at the opposition's. It was easy for Pyotr to plant a new generation spy code coupled with a Chernobyl virus that would enable American intelligence services to know what the trolls were planning.

The second part of Pyotr’s task was to plant EMP devices with remote triggers throughout the troll farm. New equipment was constantly arriving at the warehouse, so the team had simply hidden the devices inside server cases for Pyotr to retrieve and place whenever he could. The plan was to glean as much information as possible about the troll farm's operation, monitor its progress, and then, if and when an intervention in the midterm elections was imminent, trigger the Chernobyl virus and then set off the EMP devices and fry the farm's electronics. So far, they were on schedule.

As Shiloh pulled out of the warehouse complex, a grey SUV pulled into traffic behind her. She smiled. She had been picking up Pyotr at the same time for the past two weeks, entering the warehouse complex at roughly the same time every afternoon and leaving fifteen minutes later. It was enough to establish a pattern. Because she worked out of the embassy, she merited her own personal surveillance car that tailed her everywhere she went. Apparently her route had become predictable enough to her watchers so that they did not bother following her into the complex, but instead waited for her at the exit point she always took. It was lax tradecraft, but then, she was just a low-level functionary in their estimation.

Ten minutes later she was on the M27 to Moscow, the grey SUV two cars behind her, making no particular effort to be covert. Pyotr glanced behind them. Shiloh said, I know. Don't worry about them.

It is long way to embassy. They are having many chances to stop us.

She shook her head. No, they won't.

Pyotr was still casting worried glances at their tail. The FBS was unkind toward moles. He absolutely did not want to experience their hospitality. Shiloh slowed just enough so that the car behind her began to creep up on her, and then pulled out to pass. She increased her speed slightly and then slowed again to make the last car between her and the grey SUV also pass. Now the Russian tail was directly behind her. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out what looked like a TV remote and aimed it over her shoulder at their followers. The SUV slowed and pulled off to the side of the road. Shiloh sped up. After she was out of sight of the stopped SUV, she took the next exit.

Pyotr looked back just to make sure the Russians had actually stopped. I'd really like to know how you do that, he said.

Shiloh just waved the remote.

Fine. I know. The remote. But it must control something. How to know which car to put thing in, whatever you put?

"Did you ever see the movie The Princess Bride?"

"Konyechno. Hasn't everyone?"

Remember the scene where Wesley poisons that nasty little Vizzini?

Da. So?

Wesley put the poison in both cups. The choosing part was a farce. It didn't make any difference which cup Vizzini chose. He was dead either way. I just stuck a device in all three cars they were using.

Pyotr had heard stories about Shiloh Alderman's strange prowess—her code name was Mechanic—but he was still unconvinced.

"Xorosho. So how you know which three cars?"

Pyotr's questions weren't new to her. She had developed several misleading answers to account for her talent at disabling enemy vehicles. When she was with another team member, she would occasionally stop by a vehicle to fake doing something to it. When asked what she did, need to know was always her answer.

Shiloh cut the interrogation short. C'mon, Pyotr. What do you think we're doing out there when you're inside playing with your computers? They follow us, we follow them. It wasn't really that hard. Now shut up and help me with the landmarks we're supposed to be looking for. I haven't used this route before.

Pyotr studied her for a moment, and then shrugged. Fine, Shiloh. There is first turn up ahead.

Eighteen hours later Shiloh and her four teammates were on a Lufthansa flight to Berlin, where they would catch a military flight home to Andrews AFB. The exfiltration had gone without a hitch, for a change. She and the three other Americans had had no problems—they were documented embassy workers going home for Thanksgiving. Pyotr Zhukov, a Russian citizen, was the potential problem. His outstanding computer skills and insider knowledge of Russian troll farms had earned him refuge in the Land of the Free.

As part of the current operation, Control had dispatched an agent to the embassy who roughly resembled Pyotr, and a make-up specialist had spent five hours making over the Russian tech to look just like the American ringer. Elevator shoes to add height, a styled haircut and dye, special facial padding and padded clothing to add weight, and an American suit had done the trick, plus the fact that the FSB didn't even know Pyotr was missing yet.

In addition to getting Pyotr out of Russia, the Agency had promised him plastic surgery and a new identity with a carefully constructed legend.

The team was scattered throughout Economy class. Shiloh had specified the seating arrangement so that casual surveillance would not associate them with each other, and also because she did not want to sit next to Pyotr for several reasons: he didn't look very attractive at the moment with his travelling makeover, but she found his natural appearance uncomfortably distracting. She wanted the time to herself to work on her action report. Pyotr was entirely too interested in her, more than what was warranted by mere intellectual curiosity about how she did what she did. That was also distracting.

She pulled out her smartphone and called the special number Control had given her for the op. Control answered on the second ring. She said brightly, Hi, sweetie. I'm on my way home.

Just then a cellphone sounded. A clarion tune issued forth from the purse of the woman sitting next to her, who answered and began a loud self-important conversation. She was garishly made up and pushing middle age, everyone's least favorite aunt. Her overpowering perfume served to repel rather than attract.

Shiloh glanced at the offending phone and it died. The woman glowered at it, turned to Shiloh, and asked, Is yours still working?

Shiloh just stared at her. Control, who had been listening to the exchange, smiled to himself. He said, See you when I see you...sweetie.

As Shiloh punched the off button, she smiled too. Her mind went back to that trip with her parents when she was five and had stopped a semi from hitting their car. A parental lecture had followed...

Chapter 2

The Witch's Family—1996

EJ! Shiloh Jane! Lunch!

Gwen Alderman congratulated herself for the nth time for choosing a child's name that screamed well. It had to be short enough to be shouted with one breath, long enough to convey gravitas and intent, and distinct enough to target one specific individual. Shiloh Jane seemed perfect. She waited expectantly for the bright shiny face of her five-year-old to pop around the corner of the garage, and pop it did, no longer bright and shiny.

Bright yes, but as the child ran up to the porch, Gwen could see that the shine was dimmed by several grease smears. Shiloh was helping her father tinker with a dirty engine again. The girl loved engines, and sought every opportunity to help her daddy with his restoration projects.

I swear, you're just a little grease magnet, Gwen said as she looked at the smudges on her daughter's cute little face.

That can't be, Mommy, Shiloh said solemnly. Grease isn't magnetic. Only iron is.

You're right, sweetie, but I love you anyway.

Gwen pulled her daughter into the kitchen. It was designed as a workplace, not a showpiece, but was nevertheless attractive with touches like wall tile, hanging plants, and cleanable stainless steel. She scrubbed Shiloh's hands and face and then planted a kiss on a sanitized area of her daughter's face. She told the child to fetch her father and not to touch anything.

EJ Alderman was a mechanic. His personal brand of community service was putting worn out vehicles back into good running order, and then selling them to local teens at cost as their first car. Parents were delighted to get an Alderman rehab because it was guaranteed to be reliable. It was infinitely preferable to buying a junker with unknown provenance from a used car shark. There was a waiting list for EJ’s products.

Almost as soon as she could walk, little Shiloh could be found out in the garage eagerly helping her father tinker with a dirty engine. She loved engines for no particular reason that her mother could discern (excepting, possibly, genetics), and sought every opportunity to assist her father.

Gwen watched Shiloh bounce happily out to the garage to do her mother's bidding. She didn't completely understand her daughter's intense fascination with engines, but on the other hand, neither did it alarm her. Shiloh was spending time with her father doing something she loved to do, plus it gave her mother a little more free time. Fortunately, there were no indications that Shiloh might become an out-and-out tomboy. On the contrary, she played happily with dolls (although Gwen noted that the Spiderman and Wonder Woman action figures had snuck in), plus her favorite outfit was a princess dress replete with fairy wings. Shiloh loved the dress so much that her mother had to be on constant alert to keep her from wearing it to the garage instead of the cute little coveralls designated as work clothes. It was an early indication that the little girl could become a clotheshorse. Shopping with her mother ran a close second to working on engines. Gwen smiled at the memory of their last shopping expedition to buy another princess outfit as Shiloh was outgrowing the present one. It was getting pretty threadbare anyway...

Just then the banging of the screen door interrupted her pleasant reverie. Shiloh burst into the kitchen dragging her six foot four father behind her like a puppy. Gwen approached her husband with a dampened cloth to wipe off his lips (greasy from holding various small tools and bolts). She stood on tiptoe and kissed them softly. As their lips touched, she still felt that electric charge she had experienced when they had first kissed at the age of thirteen. Although she didn't have her mother's gift of precognition, she knew right then what her future was and began counting down the days until her sixteenth birthday when she had some very specific plans for her boyfriend. EJ was already tall at the age of thirteen, and had now filled out to a robust 230 pounds. His jet black hair, arrayed in locks reminiscent of a Romantic poet, was an additional turn-on, and his pure green eyes sealed the deal.

Despite his formidable size, he was a gentle man, not only with his family but also with the world in general. She had seen him lose his temper just once in all the time she had known him, and it had been frightening. They'd been shopping for baby furniture when he saw a group of young toughs hassling a black kid who had dared to cross their path. EJ had walked over and waded in without hesitation. All five of the young men wound up in the hospital.

When their lips parted, Gwen gave him a look laden with promise.

EJ Alderman gazed just as adoring at his wife. He had known her since kindergarten, and had loved her for that long. Then, as he went to the sink to wash his hands, his gaze wandered over to his daughter and he was once more hit by the familiar feeling of unreality. Shiloh was the mirror image of her mother at the same age. Their pictures as five-year-olds were virtually indistinguishable, except for the hairdo. Gwen's own