Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  As Jennifer set to work, Heather walked over to the window and peered out. Except for a few birds pecking at the grass near the driveway, nothing moved. Heather walked out of the office, unlocked the front door, and stepped outside. Moving into the trees, she paralleled the narrow lane that led from the driveway into the woods. Fifty feet later, the lane turned hard left and headed toward the road that linked lanes just like this one to the highway. The distant squeal of children at play in a backyard dominated all other sounds.

  Turning away from the lane, Heather made a 360-degree loop through the woods surrounding the house, her movements generating no more noise than a field mouse’s, despite the too-big Nikes that encased her feet. Finding nothing of concern, Heather reentered the house through the front door, locking it behind her. She turned to see Mark coming down the stairs, clad in better-fitting jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of gray New Balance running shoes. More importantly, for the first time in weeks, he’d shaved. The weight he’d lost had taken his already low body fat to near zero, making the muscles in his arms stand out like cables beneath his skin.

  “How’s your head?” Mark pointed to the Band-Aid at the edge of her hairline.

  Heather reached up to touch it. “I’ll live. You ready to eat?”

  “What’ve they got?”

  “Haven’t checked yet.”

  Mark turned toward the kitchen, with Heather in tow. “House like this, a couple of miles away from a store, they’re bound to have a full fridge.”

  It wasn’t full, but close enough to bring a smile to Mark’s face. The leftovers included chicken wings, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and half a pan of green bean casserole. Heather made plates for herself and Jennifer, leaving Mark to finish off the rest.

  When she set the plate, hot from the microwave, down beside the laptop, Jennifer didn’t even notice.

  “Brunch is served.”

  “Yeah, OK. Give me a sec.”

  Having watched Jen in some of her programming Zen states before, Heather left it and walked back to the kitchen. If it got cold, Jen could heat it back up if she wanted to.

  Retrieving her own plate from the microwave, Heather sat down beside Mark, who had amazingly almost finished clearing his first plateful. The smell of the food made her mouth water so she was afraid drool would leak over her lips as she took the first bite. It didn’t, and the meatloaf tasted as good as it smelled. But somehow, Heather couldn’t swallow.

  Standing up quickly, she strode to the sink, leaned over, and vomited into the garbage disposal. Immediately Mark was beside her, his arm around her waist.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Heather spit, tried to answer, and then succumbed to another retching bout. It was stupid. Jack and Janet had warned them about this, the aftereffects of killing a man. Somehow she’d thought, since she’d already seen Mark kill men, that she’d be immune to the reaction. But now that she’d dropped the mental guard she’d maintained throughout her captivity, the thought of the Navy SEALs she’d killed and the guards at the NSA facility flooded her mind. America’s finest. Heroes serving their country. They had families too. But she’d killed them all. And even though she thought she’d done what she’d had to, that didn’t make it better.

  Turning on the cold water, she rinsed out her mouth and washed her face, then flipped on the disposal. When she turned back to face Mark, he didn’t bother to say anything, just pulled her close and wrapped his strong arms around her body. As he held her, tears leaked from Heather’s eyes, gaining volume until they formed streams down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Mark. I’ve seen our futures. And most of them, the most probable ones, are so...so dark. And not just for us. For everyone.”

  “Look at me.” Mark leaned back until his gaze held her, pulling her out of her visions and into his eyes. “I don’t give a shit about those futures. None of them. I’m the now. And I’ve got a message for anyone trying to bring on that darkness. They try to take this away from me and they’ll be sorry.

  “I know this doesn’t make mathematical sense, but I want you to forget about any future that doesn’t go our way. Even if it’s 99 percent likely, throw it away. We can’t waste energy fighting to prevent bad outcomes. The only way we’re going to get through this is by focusing on what we want to happen. Visualize that. Find us a way through.”

  Heather steadied herself, wiped her eyes, and nodded. When he tried to pull her close again, she stopped him.

  “I’m OK now. I think I’ll try to eat again.”

  As she seated herself in front of her plate, Heather did what Mark had asked. As she began to chew, she pushed all the dark visions out of her mind. As her grandfather had always said, “If you’re going to bet the long shots, then let those ponies run.”

  Eileen Wu was frustrated. The four a.m. drive from her Annapolis apartment to Fort Meade hadn’t bothered her, at least not until she got to Meade. The post was still bottled up tight, and with all the NSA recalls plus the continued arrival of military and government investigation teams, she hadn’t actually made it through the gate until 6:35.

  The NSA parking lot was a nightmare. The parking garage that concealed the Ice House had been sealed off, forcing everyone out into the huge exterior lot, and, despite the early hour, Eileen had been forced to cruise the full rows until she found a slot to squeeze her car into a half mile from the facility.

  Her mood didn’t improve when she got to the building and discovered she would not be allowed down to her lab until after the forensics teams had finished the crime scene investigation. Worse, they hadn’t even started the actual investigation yet. The security folks had refused to allow the investigators and medical examiners access until their clearances could be confirmed. Even after their security credentials were verified through the Joint Personnel Adjudication System, JPAS, security again refused to grant access. Yes, they had top-secret clearances, but they weren’t cleared for SCI, sensitive compartmented information, and the Ice House was an SCI facility.

  As for Eileen, no amount of reasoning, arguing, or even ranting and raving made the slightest bit of difference. She wasn’t getting access until the forensics teams were finished. She’d even tried the old “I’m doing the electronic forensics investigation” ploy. Nope. The cone of silence had descended, and nobody was listening.

  Even a direct appeal to General Wilson hadn’t helped. He was already involved in forcing through security waivers to get the crime scene unit access to the Ice House, and she just wasn’t at the top of his priorities right now. She’d get her chance at figuring out how someone had penetrated the facility’s electronic control systems, but only after all the dead bodies were removed.

  By the time she was allowed into the building, it was already four thirty in the afternoon. She paused in the foyer to take in the scene. The building was a mess. The tile floor was littered with chunks of concrete, broken glass, and wood from walls and furnishings riddled by bullets and explosive ordnance.

  Eileen wound her way to the stairwell through a maze of yellow tape designed to keep people out of the areas where investigators were still working. The bodies had been removed, but the smell remained, the stench of death clogging her nostrils. Everywhere she looked the standing water was red.

  Looking away, Eileen shifted her focus to making it to the stairwell without throwing up. If anything, the stairwell was worse, indicative of the pitched battle that had raged inside as the Delta team fought its way down to the bottom.

  At the first sublevel, Eileen stepped through the open stairwell door and breathed a sigh of relief. The corridor between the labs was still wet, but the water wasn’t colored with blood. The doors to the labs had been propped open to let the halon gas dissipate, and although this had allowed some of the water from the hall to run down through the raised flooring, water damage to the electronics should be minimal.

  Turning into her lab, Eileen made her way directly to the workbench that held the dissected Gregory laptops. At first glance it a
ppeared undisturbed. Then she noticed it. One of the USB dongles was missing from where it had been connected to the electronic breadboard. Glancing to the other side of the table, Eileen muttered a curse through clenched teeth. Both dongles were gone.

  Without thinking, she lifted the phone from its cradle. Shit. No dial tone. And she’d had to leave her cell phone outside the secure area.

  She thought about walking back outside to call in a report, then discarded the idea. First she needed to do a thorough inspection to see if anything else was missing or had been tampered with. She had no intention of being unable to give complete answers to the questions that were going to be thrown at her. As busy as Balls was trying to figure out exactly what the hell had happened here, he wouldn’t be happy about getting a bunch of half-assed information.

  Sliding into her chair, Eileen began the methodical analytical work for which she was famous. And as she worked, the disturbing imagery and smells from the rest of the building finally slipped from her head.

  “Jack’s been busy,” Jennifer said as Mark and Heather stepped into the office.

  “Nothing surprising about that,” Mark replied, noting the clarity in his sister’s eyes, something that was very good to see.

  “Remember the Navajo cop who hid Jack and Janet on the Santa Clara Reservation?”

  “Tall Bear.”

  “Right. Apparently he’s become a real player in the Native People’s Alliance, a new federation fighting for tribal autonomy. With all the crap that’s going on out in the country, the NPA has declared independence. Tall Bear, as recently elected president of the Navajo Nation, pulls some serious clout. There’s talk of him becoming the first president of the NPA.”

  Heather shook her head. “What’s this got to do with Jack?”

  “He’s hooked us up with the American equivalent of the French Resistance. If we can make it to a reservation, the NPA has agreed to take us under its wing.”

  Mark moved over to the window, glancing down the empty driveway, his mind on Jennifer’s words. “Why hasn’t the US government already stepped down hard on the NPA?”

  “Things were getting out of hand even before we got ourselves captured. The government’s been able to establish good security in the Northeast corridor and in the major metropolitan areas, except for Detroit, which is pretty much a no-man’s-land. Most of the rest of the country is hit or miss. Some areas are well organized. Others not so much. It’s making it hard to get food and supplies around. The NPA’s a minor annoyance.”

  “The chaos should help us.”

  “Once we get out of the Northeast corridor,” said Heather.

  “Our best bet seems to be the Seneca Nation in western New York. They’re a large, well-funded tribe that generates over a billion dollars a year from their casinos and retail operations. Heavy NPA ties.”

  “We’re going to need some funds and IDs.”

  “Taken care of. I’ve arranged for delivery of three of the identities we prepared in Bolivia. Passports and driver’s licenses will be express-mailed tomorrow. We just have to get to the Mail Boxes Etc. in Harrisburg, where I’ve set up mailboxes in those names. We also have bank accounts at Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase. I’ve transferred sufficient funds for our near-term needs. Good news. Our new selves have excellent credit histories.”

  Jennifer reached over and grabbed a stack of pages from the printer, passing them to Mark and Heather.

  “Here’s your new backgrounds. Take a second to scan them. You two can pack up the laptop. By the way, I replaced our digital fingerprints and DNA records in the federal databases with those of known criminals.”

  Heather nodded. “We need this to look like a routine break-in. I’ll bag the jewelry on our way out. Then we’re going to need a car.”

  “They’ll wonder about the clothes.”

  “It won’t matter. By the time they figure it out we’ll be long gone.”

  Mark glanced at the clock, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Eleven twenty-four a.m. As good a time to start the rest of their lives as any. “OK. Let’s do it.”

  The US Food Service plant in Severn, Maryland, was a big operation, the main building really formed from two large buildings whose northwest corners connected. The plant had been built to facilitate big-rig loading and unloading, with employee parking on two sides, the northeastern lot surrounded by trees. It was exactly the kind of place Heather had been looking for. Early afternoon meant the parking lot was full of people back from lunch for the afternoon shift, too early for people to be thinking about leaving.

  Jennifer stepped from the northern tree line, seated herself on the curb, and popped open the stolen laptop, waiting fifteen seconds as it awoke from sleep mode. As Mark and Heather kept watch, she initiated the subspace receiver-transmitter SRT scan. With the SRT, she didn’t need any back doors or exploits such as her worm had exposed. Jennifer limited the search radius to one hundred meters, the grid filling with a list of programmable systems sorted by distance, the closest at the top.

  People thought of cars as mechanical devices, and in the old days they had been. Now they were mobile computing platforms, brimming with programmable electronics. And anything that was programmable was reprogrammable. Most of these systems could be hacked by amateurs with inexpensive wireless interfaces. All of them were vulnerable to Jennifer, Mark, or Heather, armed with an SRT and a computing device.

  The white Ford Fusion five parking spaces to Jennifer’s right gave a short squawk and blinked its lights.

  “Looks like our ride is ready,” Mark said, leading the way.

  “You drive,” said Heather. “Jen, you and the laptop get the backseat. I’ll take shotgun.”

  Mark opened the driver’s door, slid inside, and pressed the START button.

  “I-95 north?”

  “No,” said Heather. “I want to stay on surface streets, at least until we’re north of Baltimore. You ready, Jen?”

  Jennifer closed the door and leaned her back against it, positioning the laptop in her lap. “Give me a minute to bring up the traffic light grid and traffic cameras. Once I’ve completed the initial sort, it’ll be easy to re-sort as we move. This time of day I should be able to arrange for a delay-free trip.”

  As she began to type, Jennifer felt her hands start to shake, tremors that migrated up into her arms and shoulders.

  “Jen, you OK?” Heather reached into the back to place a hand on her leg.

  Focusing her will, Jennifer damped down the shakes. They were still there, just not so obvious.

  “Just coming off the drugs. Don’t worry. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  Mark swung the car out of the lot and north onto Telegraph Road.

  “If you need me to pull over or anything, let me know.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Heather shook her head. “Check the local police dispatcher logs.”

  “Working on it.” Jennifer opened another window on her display. “Shit! We’ve got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “Bad luck. Our car’s owner must have seen us leave the lot and called the police. We’ve got a cruiser a half mile north, coming south on Telegraph.”

  “Can you change the report?”

  “Give me a minute,” Jen said.

  Feeling Heather’s eyes on her, she scanned the police database for the record she wanted. Finding it, she typed in a few modifications, saved it, and fired off an update that would be picked up on every police-vehicle-mounted computer in the area.

  “OK. Stolen car is now a red Ford Fiesta heading east on Donaldson Avenue, Virginia license plate EAN-7301, occupants two Latino males.”

  “Our cop?”

  “Still heading south on Telegraph...wait. He’s making a U-turn.”

  “After he turns east on Donaldson, give him some engine trouble.”

  Jennifer smiled. “He’s not driving the newest model on the Glen Burnie police force, but it’s got an electronic ignition system. Won’t b
e a problem.”

  Heather settled back in the passenger seat, turning her attention to the road ahead. “Mark, once we pass Donaldson, take Aviation, then I-195 to the BWI parkway. I want to swap cars downtown. Then we’ll get up on I-83 to Harrisburg. What’s our hotel, Jen?”

  “Nothing but the best. Motel Six on Briarsdale Road. In the morning we can swing by the Mail Boxes Etc. and pick up our new IDs. Then we’re going to need some new clothes.”

  Mark nodded. “Sounds good.”

  Jennifer felt a new round of shivers crawl beneath her skin, and this time she didn’t even try to contain them. She could tell Heather noticed, but to her credit Heather offered no unwanted assistance.

  Jennifer knew she was in for a fight with her body’s need for heroin. For her, the NSA torture chamber was just getting warmed up.

  Eileen Wu’s eyes hurt, but she didn’t feel tired. She felt like a hunting dog on the scent of a big cat. A really big cat.

  She’d sensed something was wrong with the whole Al Qaeda escape scenario the moment she’d noticed that the two USB dongles had been taken from her lab. Those two missing USB devices screamed Jack Gregory’s name. But why take only the dongles? Nothing about them had stood out as special, so how special were they?

  Eileen looked forward to reviewing all the recorded data from when she’d first turned on the Gregory laptop, but right now she was hot on the trail of the person or persons who had taken down all the sophisticated security systems within the Ice House.

  In Eileen’s mind, it helped to put a face on her opponent. Maybe it was a bit of reverse sexism, but the face that came to her was a woman’s face, a face very much like her own. An avenging Valkyrie.

  Whoever the Valkyrie was, she’d done more than cause the Ice House systems to malfunction. She’d used them as weapons to blind, confuse, even kill her enemies. Eileen had never seen anything like the sophistication of this hack. Even the legendary Stuxnet worm paled in comparison. While that worm had been targeted at very specific systems, this one had compromised every electronic system in the building, from cell phones and tablets to high-end computing systems, exploiting security holes across a wide variety of operating systems. The most impressive thing about this new worm was its ability to genetically adapt and hide itself.