404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  “Oh, so now it’s Wikipedia? What’s the matter? Don’t you like your article? I think you look pretty good in that picture.”

  “I don’t like the whole setup. It’s like every wiki came fully formed right out of the head of Zeus. Like Athena.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The authors behind every entry—they’re nameless, faceless, just like the authors of holy books. Their very anonymity gives them power. That way the people in charge can contend they came directly from heaven. Muslims, for example—”

  “The Oracle Effect. You sound like Jaron Lanier.”

  “Who?”

  “The inventor of virtual reality. That’s what he calls it.”

  “Well, he’s right. Remember a few years ago when the chess master Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue computer? Everyone was so impressed that we’d finally developed a system that could vanquish the best human on earth. Or, when the Watson computer defeated those Jeopardy experts? What people seem to forget is that those machines were programmed by people. People programming—that’s what defeated Kasparov. It wasn’t just a machine on its own. But people like you don’t see it that way. You’re always imbuing computers with human characteristics, just like our cars. You make systems sound like an oppressed people.”

  “People like me?”

  “You know what I mean. Like the folks at Anonymous, like H2O2, or like Ibi Barzani. You’re always talking about data wanting to be free—”

  “Free as in unfettered, not free like free coffee.”

  “Whatever. Digital data doesn’t want to be free. It’s just data. Data doesn’t want anything. It isn’t alive.”

  “Not yet, you mean.”

  “I don’t subscribe to your noöspheric view of the world.”

  “Clearly.”

  “The Net isn’t a global brain. But over-using tech does mess with your head. Do you know Rex McCullough’s daughter, Lisa?”

  “I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

  “He does and she’s addicted to tech. Literally. Each time her phone pings, she reaches for it. It’s compulsive. Why? Because it sets off a chemical charge in her brain, releasing endorphins. Who’s calling or texting me? Is it my boyfriend, my BFF? Is it a new romantic opportunity? No wonder kids today are so fucked up. And the anonymity of it all just encourages bad behavior and bullying. If machines ever take over, like in Terminator, we won’t be skulls under their tracks. We’ll be drones lashed to some global Metropolis help desk.” Decker laughed grimly.

  “At your party the other day,” he continued, “one of your guests was talking about how more news is generated today by consumers blogging than by all the traditional news agencies combined. But I bet that with all of this mass linking and sharing, we’re not likely to see any more Bob Woodwards emerging and keeping us honest. Sure, we had lots of bloggers bitching at George W when he invaded Iraq, but did one of them uncover the fact that Sadam had no WMDs? Nope. That takes hard work, real investigative journalism. Just because you can reach millions of people—like Snooki or Honey Boo Boo—doesn’t automatically mean you have anything interesting to say.”

  “Hey, I like Honey Boo Boo. I’ve got a T-shirt with her face on it.” She put on a thick southern accent. ‘The menu says I get two sides. Why can’t my sides be meat?’ I think that’s rather profound.”

  Decker laughed. “If you say so. Personally, I think Reality TV is like watching a half-hour car wreck. People know it’s disgusting but they still turn their heads and keep looking.”

  There was a buzzing sound and Lulu lunged for her pocket. She plucked out her iPhone.

  Decker looked horrified. “I thought I told you to turn that thing off.”

  “I did. Honest.” She stared down at her mobile. “It’s a text message.”

  Decker plucked the iPhone from her hand. It was a simple, two-word transmission—The Wave. “There’s a cutoff just up ahead. I just saw a sign,” Decker said. “We must be three or four miles shy of Garner. Why don’t you take the wheel for a while?” With that, he swung the car off the road.

  A few minutes later, with Lulu once again in the driver’s seat, Decker accessed the Amazon page for the book he had written with Emily. Sure enough: There was a new review from some reader named “Scrapple220.” Decker read it three times before he realized it was a hybrid key-number/key-word code, using Scrapple and 220 as the base points. In less than two minutes, he’d decoded the message.

  “What’s it say?” Lulu asked.

  “It’s from our friend, Mr. X. It says we should go to something called the The Education Arcade, whatever that is.”

  “The Education Arcade? That’s the Virtual Reality center at the MIT Media Lab,” she told him. “Anything else?”

  Decker nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “What?”

  “It says, ‘The police are on to you. Hurry.’”

  “The police?”

  Just then, the text message on the smartphone was replaced by a video image. At first, Decker couldn’t discern what it was. It looked like some sort of game. A tiny spec moved along a thin line. He gasped.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s us,” he replied. The tiny spec was their car! He was watching a live ARGUS satellite feed. A moment later, the image was replaced with another scene of the Pontiac zooming right by a traffic cam. Decker could see it swivel and focus on them as they whipped past in a flash. That’s when he first heard the police siren wailing.

  “Shit!” Lulu cried.

  Decker glanced up at the rearview mirror. A state police cruiser was following them only two hundred yards back.

  Lulu’s phone started flashing. It too started wailing a high-pitched alarm.

  “Fuck!” Lulu cursed. “That’s my FoneHome alarm. It goes off if my phone’s lost or stolen.” The phone flashed again. “It’s taking our picture!”

  Decker fumbled about with the phone but the siren kept wailing.

  “You can’t turn it off,” Lulu said. “At least, not from here. You have to cut it remotely.”

  Decker rolled down his window and tossed the phone from the car.

  “Great,” Lulu said. “First my laptop. Now, my iPhone.”

  “Pull over,” said Decker.

  “What? Are you crazy? They’ll arrest us. And besides, this is a ’64 GTO, with a 389 cubic inch 6.4 liter V8.”

  Decker stared at Lulu in amazement. “What the hell kind of girl are you? And just because you know your engines doesn’t mean you can drive. Your grandmother probably drives faster. Pull over.”

  Lulu rolled her eyes but slowed the car down nonetheless. Moments later, they crawled to a stop, followed immediately by the patrol car behind them.

  CHAPTER 39

  Friday, December 13

  The blue and white cruiser with the flashing blue lights idled calmly behind them. Decker watched the state trooper as he looked down at something in his lap. He was taking his sweet fucking time.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Decker said for the umpteenth time. Finally, in what seemed like slow motion, the state trooper got out of the cruiser. He was wearing black pants with a blue stripe down the side, a blue-gray tunic, and a wide-brimmed gray hat like something Smokey the Bear might wear.

  Without warning, Lulu opened the driver-side door.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” asked Decker but she simply ignored him.

  Upon seeing her exit the Pontiac, the trooper stepped back behind his open car door and pulled out his gun. “Get back in the car,” he exclaimed. “Now!”

  Lulu ignored him. She stood by the driver-side door, her hands raised over her head. “Wuj hau sulima?” she began.

  “I said, get back in your car.”

  Lulu launched into a sudden tirade of Chinese that not even Decker could follow. With a sigh, he opened the door on the passenger side and got out.

  “You too. Get back in the car.”

  Decker lifted his hands in the air. “
She doesn’t speak English,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “Put your hands on the car,” said the trooper, increasingly frustrated.

  Decker did as he was told.

  The trooper scurried out from behind his car door. He still held the gun in his hand, aimed at Decker, and slowly but surely made his way toward the Pontiac. Lulu kept babbling away in Chinese. “Tell her to put her hands on the car,” he said earnestly.

  “I don’t speak Chinese,” Decker answered.

  “You. You,” he screamed, aiming his gun now at Lulu. He gestured wildly toward the car. “I said, put your hands on the car.” It was as if he thought that by shouting he would somehow bridge the language divide.

  “She doesn’t speak English,” Decker repeated.

  “Show me your license. Tell her to show me her license.”

  “I don’t speak Chinese.”

  The trooper came closer to Lulu. He was a young man, in his mid to late twenties, with a strong jaw and washed-out blue eyes. He looked more like the caricature of a policeman than a real trooper, thought Decker. And he was obviously unnerved by Lulu’s brazen refusal to follow any of his strident instructions.

  “On the ground,” he shouted at her. He gestured wildly at the road, trying to pantomime his directive. But Lulu simply ignored him. She kept screaming in Mandarin, growing more and more animated.

  Finally, in abject frustration, the trooper reached out for her arm.

  What happened next was difficult to follow, even for Decker’s trained eye.

  Lulu’s right foot flew up in the air with such speed and directness that the trooper had no time to react. The foot caught him on the side of the face with an audible thwack. He staggered backward, slipping on a patch of dirty snow, and before he could start to recover, Lulu landed a palm thrust to his solar plexus. The trooper buckled and groaned. In a flash, Lulu dropped to the ground, scissored her legs, catching him behind the right knee with the heel of her foot. Then she kicked him with her other foot right on the chin.

  The trooper flipped backward, striking his head on the tarmac. His Smokey the Bear hat went flying, his arms flopped, his hands slapped the wet pavement and the gun in his right hand skittered under the cruiser a good ten feet away. Without even hesitating, Lulu sprang to her feet, grabbed the unconscious state trooper by the ankles and began to drag him to the far side of the Pontiac, out of sight of the highway.

  Decker was speechless. He had never seen anyone move quite so fast. And he recalled how brazenly he had manhandled her in her apartment in Cambridge, how he had thrown her up against the wall and pressed his elbow to her throat. She could have done any number of things to resist him, he realized now. And yet she’d done nothing. She’d let him think she was helpless. Indeed, ironically, her diminutive size had proven to be an advantage to her, for it had served to conceal her real power.

  Decker pulled himself out of his stupor. He ran toward the cruiser, ducked down and fished for the state trooper’s gun. There it was, right beside the left tire, half-buried in a small pile of snow.

  He plucked it out and stuffed the M&P 45 in his belt. Then he reached into the cruiser through the open driver-side door and unclipped the shotgun mounted between the front seats.

  Lulu soon joined him. She began to examine a printout on the front seat of the cruiser.

  “Nice job,” Decker said with an air of false nonchalance. “I had no idea you knew martial arts. That was Góuquán, wasn’t it? Iron palm?”

  Lulu looked over at him through the cab of the car. “I’m Chinese, Agent Decker. We have a genetic advantage.” Then she laughed. “Yo, I’m kidding. You’re right, though. Góuquán. You know your Kung Fu.”

  “I’ve studied a little. But you...you’re a regular Si Yue!”

  One of the legends surrounding the origin of Góuquán, or Dog Boxing, was that it was developed by Buddhist nuns, some of whom—prior to joining their temples—were victims of the practice of foot binding and, therefore, found athletic disciplines that required a lot of standing quite onerous. The most famous of these nuns was Si Yue, who had developed her skills to protect herself from bandits and wild animals on the dangerous roads which she traveled.

  Lulu’s eyes widened at his comment but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached for the printout and scanned it.

  “...reportedly killed in Washington, DC, on December 11,” she began, “the suspect, John Decker, Jr., age 38, height 5’ 11”, approx. 185 pounds, black hair, medium build, was last seen in a black 1964 Pontiac GTO, VT license 40742, southbound on I-91 near Brattleboro, VT. He is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.” She looked up at Decker. “What am I, chopped liver? Oh, wait. Here it is: Decker may be accompanied by Xin Liu, age...never mind. That’s not my height or weight, either.”

  “This must be some kind of mistake. Wanted?” Decker stepped away from the cruiser as if he’d just been punched in the face. “On what charge? What law did I break? For taking out my would-be assassin?”

  Lulu glanced back at the printout. “According to this, the PATRIOT Act.” She looked back up with a shrug. “Congratulations, John. You’re a terrorist.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Friday, December 13

  The midnight black GTO tore up Route 2, heading eastbound toward Boston. Inside, Decker leaned forward to peer through the rain-spattered windshield. He kept an eye open for more cops as he swerved between cars.

  “We’ve got to get off the highway,” he said. “Where the hell is that exit? I can’t see a damned thing in this rain.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t—”

  “Don’t say it.” Decker glanced over at Lulu.

  “Okay, okay.” Then she added, “Why’s everyone slowing down?”

  He looked back at the road. It was true. All the cars before them were flashing their brakes.

  “Accident?” Lulu offered up without much conviction.

  “Or a road block,” said Decker. “Wait, there’s an exit sign, see? Exit 22. Route 68, Gardener.”

  They slid by another car, an Audi A6 in the fast lane, and Decker noticed the driver waving at him—a young man with a wide, toothy grin and a ponytail. He pointed at a radar detector mounted on his dashboard. Then, he waved his right hand up and down, motioning for them to slow down.

  “We’re in trouble,” said Decker. “Looks like more cops.”

  Lulu leaned forward, shielding her eyes. “Really? I don’t see any cops. Where?”

  “Must be off the road someplace. The guy in the Audi just told me.” Decker jammed on the breaks and the GTO dropped from seventy-five to just over sixty. The Pontiac slid in beside a Mayflower moving truck. “Where the hell is that exit?” he repeated, just as an explosion erupted behind them.

  Decker felt the car leave the ground, as if it had been literally picked up and thrown down the highway

  The windows shattered, sending pieces of window glass everywhere. There was a burst of white light. For a second, Decker was stunned. His ears simply stopped working. Then, they started to ring.

  He glanced at his side mirror. What was left of the Mayflower moving truck burst into flames, pitched into the air, and began to somersault end over end in their wake. Objects appear closer, was all Decker could think of as he braced for the truck to roll over and crush them.

  Decker stepped on the gas. The burning hulk of the moving truck kept somersaulting toward them. He held his breath as it flew directly over the Pontiac, flattening a half-dozen cars before plunging off the side of the road and down into the trees.

  “Holy shit,” Lulu said. “What the fuck?”

  Rain and wind swept into the cab through the shattered windows. Decker swerved to the right, almost hitting the rear of the car right in front of them. The GTO began vibrating violently as they ran over the rumble strips.

  “It’s a plane,” Lulu added. “I can see it behind us.”

  Decker glanced out his side window. “Where?”

  “There,” Lulu said, poi
nting.

  He glanced back again. “That’s no plane,” he replied. “It’s a drone.”

  “A drone? You’ve got to be kidding. We’re not in Afghanistan. What would a—”

  “It’s a drone,” he repeated. “Believe me. An Avenger, I think. Probably out of Hanscom Air Force Base. No, wait, that can’t be. More like an old MQ-1 Predator. An Avenger would be flying much higher. Plus, it’s setting off radar detectors. The new ones don’t use that old tech. Brace yourself. That was only the first.”

  “The first what?”

  “They usually come with two Hellfire missiles.”

  “Fabulous.”

  Decker laughed as he stepped on the gas. The GTO leapt up the highway, swerving now between cars.

  “There’s the exit,” said Lulu.

  “I see it. Keep an eye out for a white plume of smoke.”

  “Smoke? What smoke?”

  “That will mark the second missile. I have an idea.”

  “What? What idea?”

  “Just look for the smoke, Lulu. And tell me as soon as you see it. How high would you say that it’s flying?”

  “I don’t know—five thousand feet. Maybe more.”

  “Be precise, for crying out loud.”

  “Fine. Eight thousand feet.”

  “Okay. Figure she’s moving at seventy knots, and the missiles run maybe Mach 1.2, 1.3...something like that.”

  “You mean 950 MPH! How the hell—”

  “Just keep your eye on the bogie.” Decker pressed his foot to the floor.

  They swerved past a couple of cars and then charged off the main road toward the exit. The Pontiac skidded and squealed on a thin patch of snow as it banked down the ramp. When they reached the road below—ironically called Timpany Boulevard, Decker noticed—he swung around and pulled off to the side.

  “What the hell are you doing?” cried Lulu. “We’re sitting ducks here. Get under the overpass.”

  “Just look for the smoke.” Decker pulled up the parking break and put his foot on the gas. The rear tires squealed but the GTO stayed in place. His chest was completely soaked from the rain.