“Any updates on where they are?” I asked the senator. “Have you caught them yet?”
“Last status I received, we’re tracking a freighter that left from Pier Two at Norfolk International Terminal. We found that semitruck you saw being loaded at an abandoned house. It’s our guess they’re somewhere out in international waters by now.”
“No satellite imaging, I’m guessing?”
“Not much. We’ve got the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force fanning out over the eastern Atlantic looking for them. Should zero in any minute. The Russians are cooperating and providing their own overflight imaging from the area. We’ve got pictures of what we believe are the terrorists loading onto this freighter. The Russians hate these guys even more than we do.”
“You’re getting intel from the Russians?” Chuck said, raising his eyebrows. “Same Russians who just invaded the Baltic states and Ukraine last week? And Kyrgyzstan, too?”
“Same Russians that flattened most of Chechnya the last two weeks,” the senator replied. He waved a hand at the TV, where it had returned to a replay of the Moscow blackout. “The Red Army was as blinded as we were by this, and they preemptively rolled over borders as a defensive measure. That’s the line from their consulate, anyway.”
“You don’t believe them?”
“I’m not sure this is an appropriate response.”
“I notice we haven’t invaded anyone,” I said.
“The Russians are sharing some timing signals with our military,” the senator said. “They still have six operational GLONASS birds up, more than the two GPS we have left working so far. The European Galileo system is totally down.”
“Not the Chinese, though,” Chuck said.
I said, “Not the Chinese what?”
“They haven’t opened up that Great Firewall of China yet.”
The internet had become the splinternet in the past two weeks. Dozens of countries had literally disconnected themselves from the global network—sometimes even physically, by destroying optical ground cables.
Chuck continued, “And China just invaded Indian territory in the Himalayas and sent warships around Taiwan.”
The senator said, “We’re just lucky this has triggered no major conflicts—”
“Tell that to the Lithuanians.”
“Things are calming down,” the senator replied.
“And isn’t the NATO Cyber Defence headquarters in Tallinn? That’s in Estonia, right?”
The senator nodded. “Still operational, from what I’ve heard.”
“But under Russian control?”
“You need to stop watching TV, son. They’re cooperating. I’m staying on their ass, we’re passing a resolution through Congress to go up to the Security Council to censure them for the Red Army’s antics. They assure us they will roll the tanks back.”
“Sure, worked great the last time.”
“Last time?”
“Start of the Cold War.”
I said, “The Chinese Baidu geopositioning satellites are mostly intact, aren’t they? Are they sharing their signal?”
“Our Chinese friends are not sharing as much as a chopstick,” the senator replied.
“That’s exactly what Xenon is telling people on the networks.”
“‘Xenon’?” the senator asked.
“X-e-nonymous, Xenon for short,” Chuck said. “He or she says they are a high-ranking official in the Department of Defense. Social media’s been on fire the past two weeks, ever since this started. They’ve been bang-on with every detail so far.”
“Conspiracy theorists?”
“Seems like more than that.”
The senator sighed, “Can’t we get the goddamned social media shut down?”
“Now that sounds autocratic.”
“I’m just saying we don’t need any more problems.”
I said, “Most of it is being spread through Damon-net. Talk to him.” I motioned with my half-empty beer at Damon, who was still being grilled by the FBI.
The black image of the metropolis of Moscow loomed in the eighty-inch screen as the Fox anchor continued talking of power outages in India, and another talking head appeared on the screen saying that they were the ones responsible.
Chuck asked, “Any sign of Tyrell Jakob? If that guy’s not dead, he’s in on it, I guarantee it.”
“Where do you get that?”
“I’ve been reading.”
“This Xenon guy?”
“Could be a woman, don’t be a misogynist.”
The senator said, “We’ve found no trace of him, either at the Mississippi HQ or online or anywhere else, we don’t—”
Lamps beside the couches flickered.
The halogens in the ceiling blinked out just as all the other lights flashed off. The room was cast into a somber gray light. The humming sounds of the machines went silent. Someone shouted in the distance. The Secret Service men beyond the patio doors tensed, lowering their bodies while raising their submachine guns.
Chapter 2
A MOMENT LATER the generator kicked in. The lights came back on.
“Just a power outage,” an agent called from outside. “Other lights in the neighborhood have gone dark.” The man’s voice sounded like he was trying to be reassuring, but Secret Service agents were still scurrying past him across the grass embankment outside. “We’re calling Dominion Energy right now.”
I assumed that was the local power company.
Everyone was still on edge. Coming to this house was literally returning to the scene of the crime.
Bricklayers were already at work outside, repairing the entrance wall that I had nearly demolished when I thundered through it with the BullyBoy truck-tank two nights before. They must have cleaned off the driveway pavement by the entry, because the last time I’d seen it, it had been smeared with the blood of the Chechen terrorist I had landed the truck on top of.
It wasn’t just the bad guys that had suffered casualties here—one of the Secret Service had been killed, and Agent Coleman was still in the hospital recovering from multiple gunshot wounds.
I had only just gotten out of the hospital myself the night before.
After two nights in there, the thing I wanted the most was to get out. Admitted into the intensive care unit, I had recovered fast. My major injury was that my lungs had filled with water. I also sported an enormous bruise in the center of my chest, where the ballistic vest had stopped the bullet fired by Terek, one of the terrorists who had befriended us, or pretended to.
Or Pyotr, or whatever his name really was.
Chuck was worse off than me. His left arm was in a sling, as much as he said he didn’t need it. He took a round in the shoulder, which he said was mostly a flesh wound. At least it wasn’t his right. That one held a beer, which was already empty again.
He eyed the lights. Satisfied they wouldn’t go out, he said, “You want another?”
I shook my head and wrapped my arms tighter around Luke and my girls.
When the power had tripped off, the TV had shut down. The lights came up, but the TV remained dark. The room was silent. Luke was to my left and had his big-boy face on. I was half afraid he was going to ask for a beer to fit in with the guys.
“Should we turn it back on?” I asked Lauren.
She had Olivia in her arms, curled up like a little monkey. “She’s scared,” my wife whispered to me. “Why don’t we leave the TV off for now? Go get that beer with Chuck. Take Luke with you.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Everything on the cable news was disheartening, and they specifically designed their coverage to make it even more scary. Trust the TV news to turn an already frightening situation into something apocalyptic. Fires. Satellites falling from the sky. Entire cities and countries going dark. Images of warships and airplanes. We could all use a break from an already incessant news cycle whipping into a frenzy.
“Yeah, why don’t you get a beer with Chuck,” the senator said. “I’ll join
you in a second.”
I rose from the couch, leaned over to kiss Olivia and then my wife on the forehead, and strode through the dining area toward the kitchen, which was a short flight of three stairs up. Luke followed me.
In hushed tones, I heard my wife and the senator talking. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but it sounded as if the senator was asking her about legal opinions. I didn’t know they were working together, or that she had anything to do with his office. I let it go and decided to ask her about it later.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the side of the dining room, looking out over the Potomac River, I spotted gardeners raking up the first of the fall leaves. Two of them dragged huge clear plastic bags toward the garage at the rear of the house.
“How many times have you been to the GenCorp headquarters in the past year?” I heard one of the FBI agents asking Damon. “Would you say you are friends with Mr. Tyrell Jakob?”
Damon looked up at me as I passed him and rolled his eyes. This new team of agents had tried to take him into a private room, but this time he refused. He said he would cooperate, but he wanted to remain with everyone else. It was well past 2 p.m., and this was the third round of questioning today.
This time, though, they wired a lie detector machine to him.
One of the men who had questioned Damon that morning was still here in his suit, along with a new colleague, but a third man had joined them. This guy was much more casual, in jeans and a T-shirt, short-cropped hair, dark ochre-brown skin, his face weathered and creased. Two-day stubble on his chin. They were all seated at the round kitchen table in the nook at the end of the large kitchen, which occupied most of the split-level at this end of the mansion.
I patted Damon on the shoulder and walked over to join Chuck by the fridge. He handed me a beer. I popped the top off and it hissed. He handed Luke a bottle of fizzy water.
“Dad,” Luke said after taking a sip. “I’m kinda tired. Can I go take a nap?”
I ruffled his hair. “Yeah, but stay in your room, okay?”
He gave Chuck a high-five as he passed by and slid away around the corner.
“Leo,” Chuck said, “you want one?” My friend was now on a first-name basis with the senator.
Leo held out his hand and accepted the offered brew.
“Who’s that guy?” I indicated the man with the weathered face.
The senator said, “He’s not FBI. He’s more”—he searched for the right word—“off the books.”
“Do you know this man?” one of the FBI agents asked Damon as he held up a picture.
It wasn’t anyone I recognized.
“That’s Damon’s buddy.” Chuck whispered low enough that the men at the table couldn’t hear. “The one who worked at GenCorp. You remember, he was telling us he had a friend who worked there?”
Damon nodded that he knew the man. He explained exactly how they’d met when they had studied together at MIT, and said that he had communicated with him at GenCorp in the past two weeks. Or he thought he’d been communicating with him. He explained again how he had been duped, the same way they fooled the authorities into believing that his friend was still alive, when it was an artificial intelligence program that was responding to their emails.
“Don’t they already know all this?” I said to the senator. “It’s gotta be the tenth time I’ve heard them asking the same questions.”
“They’re doing their job,” the senator replied.
“Any more details on what they found at GenCorp?”
“A lot of dead bodies. Wrecked equipment. Forensics is working the scene right now.”
“I’m assuming they didn’t find Tyrell?”
“I assure you, son, you’ll be the first to hear.”
“Like I said, one way or the other, that guy was in on this.” Chuck raised his beer and took a sip. “Stubble-face over there is special ops or something? CIA? Why would somebody like that be questioning Damon?”
“Every three-letter agency is in on this,” the senator replied. “Active foreign shooters on our soil. Half of America somehow doesn’t believe it’s true, think this is some plot by our own government. We’re about to invoke the Stafford Act and bring active military onto the streets of America, but you can imagine how—”
I left the conversation and walked along the kitchen island with some intention of returning to the couch, but then stopped and made like I was playing with my phone.
“You destroyed twenty billion dollars’ worth of equipment,” I heard the second FBI guy say. “A lot of that was government-owned.”
“Leased,” Damon said. “Tyrell was renting some of those satellites to the government. And it was more like forty.”
“Satellites?”
“Billion. Dollars. What those ten thousand satellites in the GenCorp constellation cost. I had to destroy them. It was the only way I could figure out to stop Terek—”
“Terek?”
“Pyotr, whatever you guys are calling him.”
“This was your friend?”
“Is this a stupid game you need to keep playing?”
Both agents paused and looked at each other. Finally, one of them said, “We know he wasn’t your friend.”
I decided that had to be the one playing good cop.
“Thank you.”
“But you destroyed most of the evidence. Everything at GenCorp HQ is ruined.”
“I had nothing to do with the HQ in Mississippi, I told you that.”
“We mean, the satellites.”
Damon said, “I only did what I did because you guys were totally failing at doing anything.”
The agents looked down at their notes.
“Are you being serious?” Damon said. “I saved your ass on this.”
“You lied to federal officers,” the other FBI agent said.
That had to be the one doing the bad cop routine. I understood why Damon was getting frustrated.
The agent held up a tablet screen and played a video. A grainy image of Damon’s face appeared, in what had to be footage from a body camera on one of the police officers we’d encountered at a checkpoint a few days ago. The video revealed Damon, his voice scratchy, saying that he knew Terek, that they had gone to MIT at the same time, and that he had known him for years.
“They fooled all of us,” Damon said.
“You had been in contact with him for a year, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And you are the one that gave him access to your ‘Damon net’?”
“I didn’t give him free reign. He inserted an exploit. Created a back door.”
The two FBI officers leaned back in their chairs and looked at the guy in the T-shirt. He shrugged, got up from his chair, and walked away down the flight of stairs toward the main living area.
The FBI guy to Damon’s right held up the tablet screen again. “You know this man?”
They noticed me looking, so I turned away and went back to playing with my phone. I’d just seen a picture of a Chinese man on the FBI guy’s tablet. Nobody I recognized.
“I don’t know him,” I heard Damon say.
“What about these phone calls?” The FBI agent produced a sheaf of papers.
“No idea what you guys are talking about,” Damon said.
“Sir,” the closest FBI guy said, “you have to answer us in more detail. You have no idea who this man is?”
Damon muttered, “I should’ve seen it. I should be able to see all this. This is all my fault.”
“You said you’re on psychobiotics?” the other FBI guy asked. “Is that like psychedelics?”
“It’s like yogurt,” Damon said.
“You have the personal data of millions of Americans. We need access to that data.”
“I can’t just give you that. I’m doing my best to disable the network. I know it’s a compromise. I put in a patch to stop it.”
“You need to hand the whole thing over to the government.”
“Mr. Indigo, this is a national emergency.”
“I realize that, but I can’t just—”
I gave up eavesdropping and, beer in hand, realized I needed to hit the head. I went down the three steps from the kitchen to the main living area and crossed over to the hallway. I pushed open the door to the bathroom, but it was already occupied. The guy in the T-shirt and jeans, the special ops guy, was sitting on the edge of the bathtub with a black case open on his knees. I caught sight of steel syringes and a row of stoppered bottles.
He looked up at me and said, “Can you give me a minute, please?” He stood, leaned over, and swung the door closed.
I waited for a moment before deciding I did not need to go that bad. I returned to the couch to check on Lauren and Olivia. Chuck was back with his beer, sitting on the couch, staring at the blank TV screen.
“You guys want to talk to Susie again?” I asked.
There was a landline phone on one table beside the couch.
“Sure,” Lauren said. “Let’s ring them.”
A voice called out from the kitchen area, “We’re going live on the freighter in two minutes. Senator, you want to patch it through to the screen in the living room?”
“We’ll just keep it on the one in here,” I heard the senator say.
The guy in jeans and a T-shirt had come out of the bathroom, and he beckoned Senator Seymour to join him at the dining room table. I had just picked up the phone when the senator waved at me. I glanced at Lauren—she shrugged and indicated for me to give her the phone. I walked over to join the senator and the T-shirt guy.
“Name’s Archer,” the man said, extending his hand. “Walsh Archer.”
I shook his hand. He seemed to know who I was. He was built like a refrigerator, big and wide with square shoulders and gave off the impression of keeping things cool.
“Sorry for giving your friend a hard time there,” Archer said.
“Just doing your job,” I said without enthusiasm.
Walsh Archer sounded like about as fake a name as someone could come up with.
The senator opened the folder and spread the contents out on the table. “We are looking at the papers we retrieved from the truck when you smashed into that house in Virginia Beach.”
CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3 Page 2
