404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  “Until now.”

  “Yes, until now. Or, more accurately, until Matthew Zimmerman received this footage in his Dropbox. A day later, he too was dead. Not a suicide this time. An accident. Yet both of them murders.”

  “And Piratbyrån?”

  “Since Piratbyrån’s dissolution, much of the group’s philosophy has been inherited by the Pirate Party, which has made great political strides not only in Sweden but in Germany too. But, while many of the same people were involved in founding both groups, Piratbyrån was more of a loosely organized think tank, a philosophical greenhouse, not a political party.”

  “Is Piratbyrån affiliated with Anonymous?” Decker asked, remembering what Emily had told him in the bathroom the previous day. This is important, she’d said. H2OO2 was involved with Anonymous.

  “If Piratbyrån’s was the original brain trust, I guess you could say that the Pirate Party is the political wing and Anonymous the cyber-military wing of the movement.”

  “I wonder if H2O2 and Barzani knew each other.”

  “Probably. H2O2 was affiliated with Anonymous, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Wikileaks and, at least unofficially, Piratbyrån,” Lulu said. “He once hacked into Syrian President Bashar Assad’s office for emails about the Homs massacre on behalf of WikiLeaks. But you already knew that. It’s in his file. The one that you sent me.”

  “Right. I’d forgotten.”

  “Sure you did. What are you driving at, Decker? You didn’t forget.”

  “Our team didn’t find anything about H2O2’s affiliation with Anonymous in his loft.”

  “And?”

  “And yet,” Decker continued, “three of his friends later testified that he owned a Guy Fawkes mask, the symbol of Anonymous, and that he’d worn it on several occasions. But it wasn’t found in his loft when we searched it. Strange, don’t you think?”

  “It’s as if the assassin made a point of removing it,” Lulu said, “after taking him out. But why? Why try and cover up H2O2’s affiliation with Anonymous unless it signaled something that the assassin and his sponsors didn’t want you to know.”

  “Wait a minute. You said three things,” said Decker. He leaned back on his stool. “First, it was the fact that Zimmerman was murdered. Then, this stuff about Ibi Barzani. What’s the third thing. Maybe, I don’t want to know. Do I want to know?”

  Lulu pushed the keyboard away and stood up from the workbench. “In looking through Zimmerman’s correspondence, it’s clear that he had an assistant. A man named Rutger Braun. But Braun vanished soon after Zimmerman died in his car accident. Turns out Braun and Zimmerman were both working on some ultra-secret project code-named Riptide. Ever hear of it?”

  “Riptide? Sounds familiar,” said Decker. “Some sort of data warehouse project, right? Very hush-hush. Part of the NSA’s new complex in Utah. Someone at the office mentioned something about it. He thought I might be involved, said something obliquely, but when he realized I didn’t know what he was talking about, he shut up, got all nervous. What about it? What did you learn?”

  “Most of the data about this project is missing but here’s what I could piece together. Apparently, Zimmerman was recruited by his Harvard roommate, Rory Woodcock of Allied Data Systems, to work on this project for NSA called Kabbelung designed to integrate various data feeds—information re possible terrorist activities, from VISA applications, to car rental records, financial transactions, phone logs, et cetera. They were doing some predictive modeling leveraging user scenarios. Something like that. It isn’t specific. But it was clearly domestic spying. The stuff George W got into trouble for.”

  “And Kabbelung is German for Riptide.”

  “You speak German?”

  “A little.”

  “A little? And yet you know the German word for riptide! Exactly how many languages do you speak...fluently, I mean?”

  “I’m barely fluent in English,” said Decker with a laugh. “Look, are you suggesting that Zimmerman and this Ibi Barzani were terminated because they knew something about some Top Secret government program involved in domestic spying? That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? You don’t really know what Riptide is. You’re just guessing. And, besides, there...”

  Decker saw the object out of the corner of his eye. It was just outside the door. Right there—in the corridor. Then he heard it. Some sort of buzzing sound.

  “What the...” Decker was about to get up and take a look when he felt a flash of jolting pain in his wrist.

  He looked down. The robotic hand by the 3-D Printer had reached out and grabbed him.

  Decker tried pulling away but the grip was too strong. He was helpless. Then the mold over the 3-D tray began opening—opening and closing like the mouth of some mechanical Venus flytrap, the fleshy plastic covering shiny with green and gold chiplets.

  Decker wrenched at his wrist. He tried to pry it out of the bot’s steely embrace but it was useless. He could feel the bone of his wrist start to buckle. “Jesus Christ, help me,” he shouted.

  CHAPTER 34

  Friday, December 13

  As Decker struggled in the grip of the mechanical hand, Lulu rushed in beside him. She had picked up a piece of chemistry equipment—some beaker stand—and began using one of the metal legs to pry at the mechanical fingers. They loosened slightly. Decker managed to pull his wrist free just a little but not enough to release himself.

  “Take my gun out and shoot it,” he cried. “It’s breaking my fucking wrist. Shoot it, Lulu. Shoot it!”

  It was almost too late. The mechanical hand had pulled Decker’s own wrist and hand over to within inches of the mold on the tray. It continued to open and close like a predator’s mouth as his fingers inched closer and closer.

  Lulu pulled out the beaker stand and jammed it into the mold. The mold buckled down on it but it could no longer close, pinned open as it was by the legs of the beaker stand.

  Meanwhile, Decker continued to wrench at his own hand, trying to wrestle it free from the robot’s metallic embrace.

  Lulu reached over and ripped the Python out of Decker’s left shoulder holster. She aimed at the mechanical hand.

  “Be careful,” said Decker. “Open your eyes.”

  “They are open. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Then, do—”

  There was a terrific explosion. Lulu pitched backwards. The gun flew from her grasp as she somersaulted out of sight. Decker felt as if she had just shot off his hand. He was reluctant to even look down.

  Holding his breath, he finally glanced down at his wrist—one eye open, the other pressed shut. The shot had been perfect...or lucky. He flexed his fingers and wrist. Still in one piece.

  He was about to go over to Lulu to help her back on her feet when he noticed the object outside the door once again. It looked like a small rotating Frisbee, only three or four inches across, gun-metal gray, hovering six feet off the ground. Then, he remembered the NCTC cafeteria.

  A Samara! Like that surveillance drone driven remotely by Ivanov.

  Decker dashed toward the door and watched as the object spun away down the corridor. He followed. It vanished up a stairway and Decker gave chase, taking the steps two or three at a time. He found himself on another landing, running down a corridor that turned into a kind of glass tunnel, with a glass ceiling and walls, as he ran from one pod of the house to the next.

  It was as if he were flying along the top of the canopy, like a hawk skimming the face of the mountain, with the Samara always a few feet ahead.

  As the corridor came to an end, the Samara banked left and Decker lunged for the drone. He managed to catch the very tip of the wing and it chattered like a giant Palmetto bug struggling to right itself. It vanished around the corner. Decker gave chase...and stopped.

  The Samara hovered before him, with its one Cyclops video eye, flanked by another identical drone. They hummed, taking him in.

  Without hesitating, Decker snaked his belt off and swung it elliptically
with a broad sweep of the arm in one continuous movement, as if snapping a whip. The buckle caught the first drone dead center. It flew down the corridor, unbalanced, striking the other drone’s wing. They both crashed to the floor, clattering helplessly and cartwheeled away. Decker stomped on them furiously as if they were scorpions. One kept clicking as it tore at the carpet. He kicked it again toward the wall and it shattered on the surface, sending a shower of microchips everywhere.

  That’s when he heard the same tell-tale humming sound coming from a room at the end of the corridor. Decker dashed down the hall. It was some sort of guest room, with a sleigh bed and a Shaker credenza behind it. Beyond the bed was a bathroom, and beside that another doorway leading out to a balcony with an astonishing view of the valley below—a few swaths of green, cedar and spruce, vast tracts of bare deciduous trees intermingled with patches of dirty white snow.

  Decker entered the room cautiously, crouched low, ready to leap to the side. But it was empty. The Samara was gone. There was a fireplace built into the far wall, across from the bathroom, with a brass poker and tongs set beside it. He made his way over and picked up the poker. This would do, he thought, testing its balance and weight. Then, he heard the buzzing again.

  There it was. The Samara was floating just off the balcony, partially hidden by a large shade umbrella poking up from the center of a round metal table. Two chairs leaned up against the lip of the table.

  Decker wasted no time. He launched himself through the door, climbed up on a chair and the table without pausing, and lunged at the Samara. The tip of the poker just barely missed the edge of the drone as it dropped several feet and swept in from the side, raking his back.

  Decker felt his skin open up in one stinging hot line, now filling with blood.

  Without thinking or looking, just from the sound of its buzzing, he brought the poker around. But he missed once again and the Samara slashed at his chest. Blood burst from the opening. Decker uttered a cry, lashing out in response.

  The poker caught the edge of the drone just as it came in for the kill. It tumbled and crashed against the side of the building, bouncing and coming apart, sending shards of gray plastic and showers of brilliant white sparks through the air.

  Decker leapt to the side just in time to avoid it. He teetered on the edge of the balcony. It was a good fifty or sixty feet down to the tops of the trees. A dead drop.

  Why is it always someplace up high?

  He leapt to the floor of the balcony and made his way over to what was left of the Samara. It was still smoking and spitting. At the center of the mass was a glowing red LED. He lifted the poker high in the air, ready to strike it, when he felt a slashing pain in his arm.

  Decker cried out and the poker went flying, skittering over the tiles of the balcony. The buzz of another Samara receded somewhere to his left.

  Decker felt blood start to pour down his forearm. He had been cut on the back of the arm. It had only just missed the radial artery. The drones. Their wings had been sharpened like razors!

  Decker heard it swing in again. He ducked and somersaulted across the balcony, and the drone barely missed clipping his neck.

  Decker looked about for the poker. There it was—near the edge of the balcony. He reached out grabbed it, leapt to his feet, and swung about in one fluid movement. Then, he lanced at the Samara as it maneuvered away.

  The tip of the poker touched the wings of the drone. The frightful buzzing ceased and started to whistle as the Samara flew through the door back into the bedroom, spinning out of control. It wobbled, flipped over mid-flight, and finally crashed to the floor on the opposite side of the bed. A frightful crash was instantly followed by a puff of white smoke as it sputtered and flamed.

  Decker leapt through the door and up onto the bed. The Samara was still spinning about on the ground, the gun-metal gray wings of the seed pod revolving and wobbling, until the edge caught the floor. It pulled itself over and crashed against the wall, still smoking and flaming.

  Decker jumped to the floor right beside it, lunging the tip of the poker into the very heart of the spinning machine. The sharpened wings dug into the wall and stopped moving. For a moment, the drone seemed to try and pick itself up. For a moment only. Then, the red and green LEDs at the center of the smoldering circuitry began to flicker and blink. Decker stabbed it again. The blades stilled and the lights finally went out.

  Decker threw the poker to the floor. He looked down at the Samara once again, turned to leave, then stopped. With a sigh, he reached down, picked up the poker and—just for safe-keeping—continued to pummel what was left of the drone until all that remained were a few shards of shattered machinery. He was out of breath and panting when he realized it was...raining. Indoors!

  The fire from the burning drones must have set off the sprinkler system. Decker looked up at the ceiling. He let the water wash over his face, fill his mouth. He felt the grime of his struggle with the drones wash away, down the back of his neck, down his shirtfront and chest. He laughed and spat the water back up at the ceiling.

  That’s when the house moved under his feet.

  There was a great noise as if the very heart of the mountain were shaking. Decker ran from the room. He dashed down the glass-fronted corridor, watched as it cracked—first a little, just a line, then a tear and a rent—followed by an ear-splitting crash as it shattered about him. Glass pieces flew everywhere as he leapt through the door and slid toward the stairwell. He pulled himself down the first few steps in a shower of glass, the crystalline shards cutting the rear of his neck. He shook them off as he slid to his feet. Then he flew down the steps as the house continued to quiver and groan. He could feel the temperature getting warmer around him. The lights began flashing.

  He had seen this before...back at Lulu’s place. He knew what was about to begin. “Lulu,” he shouted as he raced down the stairs. “Lulu!”

  “I’m here,” she replied.

  Lulu suddenly appeared on the staircase below him, her “bag of tricks” in one hand and the Python in the other. There was a red welt on her cheek. “Where the fuck did you go?”

  “Drones,” he said simply.

  The house issued a groan that made them both stop in their tracks. It was like the bellow of some leviathan beast, as if the boiler itself had been wounded.

  They had made it to the main level and ran down the hall toward the front of the house. Each outlet they passed spat sparks at their feet. The lights in the ceiling popped like quarter-stick fireworks. Hand and hand they ran down the hallway. Frantic. Full tilt. The front door was just up ahead. They could see it. Right there. Right in front of them. They had practically made it when they were lifted up by a great wave of white light, carried upward and outward, blown clear of the house and down the side of the mountain.

  CHAPTER 35

  Friday, December 13

  Later that morning, Decker and Lulu headed north on Route 11, near the Hapgood State Forest, a few miles south of Peru. They had only just made it out of Matt Zimmerman’s house before it had gone up in flames. Now, bloody and exhausted, they were finally approaching their destination: the last known address of Rutger Braun, Matt Zimmerman’s assistant.

  Lulu had come across it by chance as she was scouring Zimmerman’s computer network. Apparently, the Net entrepreneur’s 3-D Printing system had been accessed one more time after Zimmerman’s death—by Braun. He had manufactured some sort of glasses or goggles using the device, and the order was linked to a record in a deleted database that also contained a street address deep in the Green Mountain National Forest.

  Lulu’s Ford Fusion puttered along the highway. Decker had bandaged the cuts on his back, chest and arm where the Samaras had sliced through the skin. Luckily, the wounds were not deep. But they stung and he found himself unable to get comfortable in his seat.

  Lulu had also been wounded. She had misjudged the kick of the Python and it had thrown her across the room to the floor where she had banged her right cheek.
It still looked puffy and red. “How’s the cheek?” Decker asked her.

  “I’m alright,” she replied, leaning over the steering wheel. Notwithstanding their recent excitement, she was still driving along at a snail’s pace. “As my grandmother always says, ‘As long as you’ve got today, you’ve got everything,’” she continued. “How much further?”

  Decker touched the GPS system on the console. “Only a few more miles. We take a left onto Pierce.”

  Lulu nodded. She stared up at the sky through the windshield. “It’s clouding up. Looks like snow.”

  Decker smiled. “Really? We almost get blown up in Zimmerman’s house and now you’re talking about the weather.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “What you’re thinking!” he answered. “We find out Zimmerman was murdered. We see a video of my assassin killing some hacker in Sweden. Why? What’s the connection?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “Other than sending the video, did this Barzani character leave any other message for Zimmerman.”

  “He only said that he’d been duped, that some code his group had secured to hack into systems in the creation of botnets had been compromised.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know. And Barzani didn’t know either. That’s why he sent it to Zimmerman, I assume. And I...” Lulu’s voice trailed off.

  “I what?”

  “Have you ever heard of Total Information Awareness?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” he replied. “Back in the ‘90s, right? That program set up by Admiral Poindexter, Reagan’s former national security advisor.”

  She nodded. “Poindexter fell from grace after being caught up in the Iran-Contra affair,” Lulu said. “But Bush made him head of DARPA despite that and, after 9/11, he came up with TIA. Put simply, it was a Manhattan-Project-style counterterrorism program. Poindexter wanted to bring together not only intelligence community data streams—the stuff you handle every day—but also private datamarts. You know: voice phone feeds and records; emails; credit card data; airline reservation systems. The works. To avoid privacy problems, Poindexter proposed encrypting personal identifiers on the data until a judge gave the green light. So, if the system were to find suspicious behaviors—let’s say a person on a terrorist watch list suddenly flies to America, takes flying lessons, rents cars, hotel rooms, buys a one-way ticket to NY for—”