Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  “And if we can’t break out?”

  “Like I said. Our chance is coming.”

  For two and a half hours, Heather laid out the details of what she had in mind, refining the plan with Mark’s feedback, playing through the scenarios in such vivid detail that they both experienced the same dreamworld rehearsals. But to make the scenarios complete, she was going to need a completely accurate layout. And she wasn’t likely to get that until their break was already under way.

  Mentally exhausted, Heather terminated the last vision. As she felt her hold on their link fade away, Mark’s final thoughts brought a tired smile to her lips.

  “So we’re just going to wing it. Sounds like my kind of plan.”

  “You with me, Jen?” Heather’s mind reached out for her friend.

  “Better than most days. Worse than some.”

  Indeed, Heather felt far less haze in Jen’s mind than she’d felt in several days.

  “Jen, I need you to get as much clarity as you can for the next few minutes, even if it costs you later.”

  Heather knew that the effort of shunting the heroin effects away for a while would inflict a heavy penalty on Jennifer once she relaxed from the effort, as if she had endured a sudden overdose. Heather knew it, hated it, but asked her to do it anyway.

  She didn’t need to ask twice. All at once, Heather felt Jen’s mind reacquire its normal cutting edge. That was good. The opportunity stood in front of her right now, but in five minutes it would be gone.

  “OK, Jen. In a few seconds I’m going to want you to do your thing, but you’ll need to follow my thoughts and do it through me.”

  “Sounds like fun. Let’s go for it.”

  Heather relaxed back into the real world, feeling Jen like a hitchhiker in her mind. Dr. Jacobs detached the last of the sticky electrodes from her temples, wound up the cords, and returned them to their case.

  As he turned to place the items back on his cart, Heather focused on what she needed, felt Jen pick up the thoughts, and then almost lost consciousness as a wave of vertigo carried her into Dr. Jacobs’s head.

  It wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced. Although she’d touched Jennifer’s memories, she hadn’t wanted to pry into that part of her mind. Certainly this was nothing like the psychic link she shared with Jen and Mark. This was an empathic bond that gave access to the target’s innermost feelings.

  On the surface, Dr. Jacobs seemed very happy with his perceived progress, but beneath that lay a raging sexual urge to do things to his patient that would never be sanctioned by his bosses. If only he could be alone with her for an hour without that damned camera.

  Like a tick, Jennifer burrowed into that feeling, amplifying the sick urge and feeding it back into Jacobs’s mind. The doctor turned toward Heather, stepping close to where she lay so that his body blocked the camera’s view. Sliding his stethoscope over his ears, he leaned down.

  “Take a deep breath and hold it,” he said, sliding the cold end of the device beneath her gown, his hands gently resting against the curve of her breast.

  Once again Jennifer amped up the man’s hidden desire.

  “Now, let it out slowly.”

  Heather complied, feeling his hand move a little farther up the curve of her left breast, a tremor passing through it as he paused.

  “Now, once more.”

  Again his hand shifted and again Jennifer ratcheted up his excitement. Suddenly, his eyes closed as a shudder passed through his body. When they reopened, he frowned, withdrew the stethoscope, turned, and hurriedly pushed the cart to the door. When he pressed his hand to the biometric reader, the electronic lock opened, then locked behind him again as he backed the cart into the corridor. Then, with the squeak of rubber wheels on concrete, he was gone.

  Heather glanced up, then rolled onto her side, away from the camera. As she felt Jennifer slip back into her drug-induced haze, Heather’s fingers stroked the touchpad of Dr. Jacobs’s Android cell phone.

  The worm was designed to penetrate security holes in Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Mac OS, OS/2, Android, Palm, and IOS. It mutated using an evolving genetic algorithm, opened multiple root-level back doors, mapped the host system’s routing tables, services, and attached devices, then hid itself to await external commands. It didn’t do much, but what it did, it did well.

  It provided one additional service that Heather immediately brought into play: it opened a telnet port that provided remote shell access to every network-accessible infected system. While she lay curled into a fetal position beneath the sheet, Heather’s fingers flew across the tiny cell phone keyboard, scrolling through a list of nearby hosts and routers. One by one she accessed the systems, made a quick check of attached or networked devices, then moved on.

  She calculated the odds that Dr. Jacobs would discover his missing cell phone within an extended time window. Jennifer’s subtle manipulation of the man’s suppressed urges had left him with sticky underwear, shocked and embarrassed, so mentally flustered he just wanted to get someplace he could shower himself clean. If he used an on-site shower facility, a 98 percent probability, she might have as little as thirty minutes before he discovered the missing phone. Heather had set her mental clock on a thirty-minute countdown. It now stood at twenty-four minutes, eleven seconds and counting.

  Heather knew the facility had been designed with multiple layers of TEMPEST cages, but she knew something else too. Dr. Jacobs collected data from his cell wirelessly. He also used Wi-Fi from his cell phone to network to his office. That meant the TEMPEST integrity of the lower levels was floor by floor, connected with other floors via secure fiber. And she didn’t need to wirelessly connect to the primary control center. She just had to be able to wirelessly access a computer that was linked to that local area network.

  Heather stared at the small screen, feeling a sudden burst of exhilaration. She’d found it, a route to the security system that controlled the door locks. As happy as that made her, she had to find one more node before she could override that system. It would do little good to take control of the locks if they could watch her every move through the network of cameras.

  The camera in her cell had a coax cable connection. That meant the other security cameras were probably hooked into the monitoring system the same way. You could bet the same contractor installed the whole shooting match. If that were true, they would show up as directly controlled devices on some system. But even if some of the cameras were smarter, network-enabled devices, she could still take control of them. There would still be a central computer that sent out the IP commands that told them what to do and that routed the video streams to the appropriate clients.

  Twenty minutes, thirty-four seconds.

  An adrenaline surge almost caused her to roll to a sitting position. Heather funneled the feeling into a big smile.

  “Gotcha!”

  She didn’t need long. Five minutes. Maybe less, just enough time to get from her cell to the nearest room with some more capable networked computer systems, time enough to take out any resistance and get up on the local area network.

  Heather entered the commands to force an immediate shutdown of the camera control system, switched telnet targets, and unlocked all electronically locked doors throughout the facility, forcing a reboot of the security control system. Then, to add just a bit more confusion to the coming mayhem, she killed the facility lights—not the power, just the lights.

  As the lights went out, Heather leaped from her bed, pulled the heavy cell door open, and hit the corridor at a dead run. Although the sound wasn’t loud enough to provide a bright image, the echoes from her running footfalls provided enough detail for her to clearly see her surroundings. She didn’t need louder sounds. She wanted to see the sounds made by others.

  Taking a right into the first hallway, Heather saw a flashlight beam stab from the opening door on her left. The look of pain and surprise on the guard’s face barely registered as Heather’s spinning side kick broke his a
rm at the elbow, sending the flashlight flying, the beam whirling through the dark corridor like a Jedi light saber, before smashing out on the concrete floor.

  Then, like a lioness, she was on him.

  Bud Gendall stared at the bank of security monitors that all displayed the same message: “VIDEO SOURCE DISCONNECTED.”

  “What the hell just happened to our feed?”

  John McCall, his night shift partner, looked at him and shrugged. “Looks like the system just rebooted. Gotta love Microsoft.”

  Then the lights went out.

  “Shit! Power’s down too?”

  “Can’t be. The computer’s coming back up now.”

  Sure enough, the security and computer monitors still wept their pale light into the encroaching darkness. Weird. Bud didn’t like weirdness. Not in the NSA’s most secret supermax facility. Not on his shift.

  Grabbing the heavy black flashlight from its wall mount, John switched it on and headed toward the door. “I’ll check it out.”

  As John stepped into the corridor, a loud crack accompanied his scream. A rush of adrenaline coursed through Bud’s body like an electric shock, throwing the unfolding scene into slow motion. The flashlight spinning out of John’s hand. The whirling flashlight strobing the action into a sequence of freeze-frame images. The McFarland girl’s cold, hard face, eyes gone white. John’s right arm flopping like a rag doll’s. McFarland catapulting John’s 240 pounds of muscle toward him like a human cannonball.

  Bud was halfway to his feet, hand tugging the Beretta from his service holster, when John hit him. Rolling with the blow, Bud came back to his feet with a grace that spoke to his years of training. Even as he sought to level the gun, the girl’s axe kick knocked it from his hand, the force of the blow numbing his arm from the shoulder down.

  Bud responded with a leg sweep that should have landed her flat on her back, but she countered, using his own momentum against him, her elbow smashing his left orbital socket, wiping his vision with a red haze of blood and pain. As the floor rose up to meet him, her knee interrupted his downward progress, the impact crushing his trachea and rupturing several branches of his inferior thyroid artery.

  As Bud felt blackness enfold him, he realized the unthinkable. This slender young woman in her blue hospital gown had just taken him and John out. As easy as putting out the trash.

  A quick pulse check confirmed what Heather’s visions had already told her. She was this room’s sole survivor. Shunting aside a wave of revulsion, Heather let her training propel her forward.

  Moving quickly, Heather retrieved both guards’ duty belts, holsters, and pistols, closed the door, and slid into the chair recently occupied by the second guard. As she used the back door to bypass the log-in screen, Heather heard the wail of an alarm, accompanied by distant shouts and the muffled thumps of gunfire.

  It took her twenty seconds to bring the camera controller back online and another eighteen to take root control of that system. Overriding the default settings, Heather rerouted all camera output to her station, displaying the live video in a grid of small windows spread across the security monitors. A quick glance told her what she needed to know.

  Heather pulled up a three-dimensional facility diagram, then three additional windows on the primary computer display, rerouting all facility controls to her terminal. Noting Mark’s and Jennifer’s locations, she engaged every other lock in the building, restored the lights, and initiated the central control center’s fire suppression system, flooding the locked room with halon 1301. Apparently the NSA was exempt from the EPA global warming ban on halon fire suppression systems. Not that it mattered to Heather which fire suppression gas they used. Fire wasn’t the only thing it would suffocate. She couldn’t have someone trying to restore central system control while she had work to do.

  On a different sublevel, two dozen Arabic prisoners had stormed from their cells, killing three guards, but losing five of their own in the process. Now armed with pistols, nightsticks, and flashlights, the survivors were systematically working their way down the corridor.

  Ground-floor cameras showed that the facility rapid response force, deprived of video intelligence, had broken up into three teams of five that moved to secure the elevator shaft and stairwells.

  With a deep breath, Heather shifted her attention to Mark and Jennifer. They were being held on the third sublevel, just like Heather, but in separate wings. As they’d planned, both twins had remained in their cells, awaiting Heather’s contact. Now that she had a chance to devote the required level of concentration, Heather opened her mind to Mark and Jen.

  “Ahh. There you are.” She felt Mark’s relief wash through her.

  “You ready to move?”

  “Just been waiting on you.”

  “Jen?”

  “She’s out of it again. I’m gonna have to go get her. You got a layout for me?”

  Heather pulled forth the memory of the 3-D facility diagram.

  “That’ll work.”

  “I’ll unlock the doors along your route as you get to them, then lock them again behind you. Get moving.”

  Heather dropped the link, refocusing her attention on the monitor showing Mark leaving his cell, then entering another camera’s field of view as he raced down the corridor.

  Movement on the first monitor attracted her attention. One security squad had entered the elevator, headed down to her level. She stopped it between the first and second sublevels, killing all power to the elevator shaft, simultaneously sealing all doors shut. It wouldn’t keep a determined team from climbing down and forcing the doors open, but it would slow them down. Reconsidering her action, Heather restored power and the elevator’s downward motion, injecting a slight error into the elevator controls. Instead of stopping on sublevel three, it continued its descent to sublevel four.

  As the doors opened, the security team suddenly found itself engaged in an all-out Al Qaeda firefight.

  Jack listened to the military police alert go out, paused just a moment to confirm the location, and then reached for the remote device controller. Something big was going down at the top-secret NSA detention facility code-named the Ice House. Initial reports indicated a group of high-level Al Qaeda detainees had initiated an escape attempt, resulting in a call for all units to converge on the facility.

  Well, if they thought this was Al Qaeda–initiated, Jack was happy to help support that theory. Checking the radio signal strength to each of the five remote devices, Jack flicked the first switch to the ARM position, waited for the green light, pressed the DETONATE button, and waited. The blast wave arrived seventeen seconds later, strong enough to rattle the windows. Now the MPs were going to have to get organized without any radio communications.

  Flipping the second switch to ARM, Jack repeated the procedure and was once again rewarded with the delayed blast wave. So much for the main telephone trunk lines off base too.

  The image of Janet slipped, unbidden, through his mind, little Robby perched on one hip as she stood beneath the jungle hut’s thatched overhanging roof, waving at him as he’d turned for one last long look at her. He missed his lover. He missed his partner.

  Getting up from his chair, Jack walked to the sink and started a fresh pot of coffee brewing. The next three blasts needed a delay for maximum effect. One cup of java ought to just about do it.

  The shock wave shattered the window, showering the bedroom with shards of glass. General Balls Wilson rolled out of bed, cutting his bare feet as he stood up.

  “Was that a bomb?” His wife’s frightened voice helped clear the last of the sleep from his head.

  “It’s OK, Maggie. It wasn’t that close.”

  His hand reached for the light, then paused as he thought better of it. “Just stay in bed. I’ll get your slippers. Then I want you to walk down to the basement and stay there until I say different. Understand?”

  “I understand.” This time her voice was steady. She hadn’t spent all those years as an air force offi
cer’s wife without learning how to stay calm in tough situations.

  He took a step and cut his foot again, cursing himself for leaving his own slippers in the closet. As he reached the closet door, a second blast shook the room, this one more distant and from a different direction from the first. Jesus H. Christ. The goddamned base was under attack.

  The realization lent speed to his actions as he tossed his wife’s slippers onto the bed, picked out the embedded glass slivers, and slid his bleeding bare feet into his class-A dress shoes.

  “Get on down to the basement.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He felt her arms encircle his neck as her lips brushed his left ear. “Stay safe. I love you.”

  “I’ll be fine. I love you too. Now go.”

  General Wilson walked over to the phone and lifted it to the ear on which Maggie’s kiss still lingered. No dial tone. Picking up the mobile satcom phone, Balls pressed the first number on the speed dial list, listening to the hiss and warble as it established the secure connection.

  “This is General Wilson. What the hell’s going on?”

  “Sir, this is John Briggs. We don’t know the extent of the problem yet, but we got a report of an attempted prison break underway in the Ice House, followed by two explosions. We don’t know exactly where they came from, but someone’s taken out military police communications and the main phone lines. For some reason they haven’t gone after the power yet.”

  “Any comms intercepts?”

  “We’ve got no chatter. Nothing.”

  Balls didn’t like that answer. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “No sir. This kind of Al Qaeda attack would need some kind of advanced coordination.”

  “If it’s Al Qaeda.”

  “Pretty much has to be. At least that’s the view here in the SCIF.”

  “Who do you have on shift tonight?”