The Adversary (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 1)

by Reece Hirsch

  They found a couple of seats on the train, and the doors gasped shut. With a lurch, the train began moving. Everyone observed the etiquette of the subway, eyes fixed on the middle distance or closed in nodding half sleep, faces buried in laptops, smartphones, e-readers, and tablet computers, earbuds on. The train was silent, with no one talking and no sound but the rattling of the car over the tracks, which wavered in pitch from a low rumble to a high whine.

  Chris knew it was quite possible that the MTA would be one of the targets of the cyberattack if it was carried out. He reflected on how much of daily life was governed by the tiny programmable logic controllers that were Lurker’s target. The switches told the trains when to stop and go, which tracks to follow … and how to avoid collisions. PLCs also controlled New York City’s traffic lights, the flow of water through the sewer system, the operation of nuclear reactors, and the allocation of electricity throughout the grid to avoid blackouts. If the city were a human body, PLCs would be the nervous system, regulating a million tiny transactions and adjustments that allowed the organism to function.

  The train leaned to one side as it passed over a curved bit of track and everyone reflexively leaned in the opposite direction to compensate. Then the train pulled out of the York Street station and went under the East River. Chris frequently rode San Francisco’s BART trains, which traveled back and forth under the San Francisco Bay on the lines that linked the city with the East Bay. Chris understood Zoey’s phobia. He always tried to forget about the millions of gallons of water overhead as the BART train hurtled through the tunnels. The New York subway trains were narrower than BART’s, which only heightened his claustrophobia.

  Chris tried to push those thoughts out of his mind. They weren’t productive. They didn’t help solve the problem.

  After they had passed under the river and were several stops into the city, the lights in the subway car suddenly blinked off. Then the lights sputtered back on, only to …

  Blink off again in a way that somehow seemed final.

  As Chris and Zoey sat next to each other in the sudden darkness, Chris felt the car decelerating. The high-pitched whine of the subway car rocketing down the rails descended an octave or two as the train slowed and, finally, stopped.

  Power was out on the MTA and Chris knew that it wasn’t going to be coming back any time soon. What he didn’t know was how massive the attack was and what they would be faced with when they reached the surface.

  Zoey whispered to him in the dark, “It’s starting, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 43

  When the lights went out in the subway car, MTA etiquette went out the window. Suddenly, everyone was talking. At first, it sounded like the typically jaded gripes of New Yorkers.

  “Jesus, I’m already late for dinner.”

  “This city’s going to hell under this mayor.”

  “So this is what I pay taxes for?”

  Everyone stayed seated, assuming that the lights would come back up in a few minutes and the train would continue on its course. Every subway rider had experienced brief shutdowns like this at one time or another. But about five minutes in, an anxious tone crept into the voices in the darkness. Some passengers were starting to talk about getting out onto the tracks.

  Chris spoke up. “Why doesn’t everyone turn on their smartphones, laptops, whatever you’ve got. The screens will give us some light.”

  Devices clicked on around the car, together casting a faint glow like a night-light.

  “Is anyone getting Internet access?” Chris asked.

  A few voices chimed in from around the car. “Nah, I don’t see nothing.”

  “Listen, I have an emergency,” Chris said. “I need to open the doors of this car and walk out of here. Anybody want to help me with that?”

  There were some dissenting opinions voiced, but a couple of big guys were with him, and that was enough. His allies were a burly guy in his thirties who was dressed in jeans and work boots and a tall, wiry man in his forties wearing a dark pinstripe suit. Chris would guess that they were a construction worker and an investment banker, blue collar and white collar momentarily united by their shared impatience at being delayed on the way home to their families.

  “What’s your hurry? You know there’s a third rail out there,” the burly guy said.

  Chris groped for a story. “My wife just went into surgery. I have to get out of here.”

  The three men pried their fingers between the doors and pulled. As designed, the doors popped open with the application of a little force. Chris stepped down into the tunnel, followed by the two men.

  He looked up and down the tracks, but the darkness was impenetrable. There were no other cars visible, no safety lights on the walls. He looked for a ladder to the surface but didn’t see one. Chris stuck his head into the car and called out to Zoey, who climbed down onto the tracks.

  “Which way?” Zoey asked.

  “Well, Times Square is this way,” Chris said.

  Chris and Zoey set off down the tracks, barely able to see three feet in front of them. Once they realized that there wasn’t an easy exit to the surface, the two men who had helped open the doors decided to wait a while longer to see if the trains started.

  They stepped carefully to avoid tripping over the rails, steadying themselves by running their fingers along the mildewed brick wall. “Don’t hurry,” Chris said. “The third rail might still be electrified. If it is, you hit it and you’re toast.”

  They heard a skittering sound on the tracks ahead.

  “Those are rats, aren’t they?” Zoey asked.

  “It’s too dark to tell,” Chris said.

  “You’re a bad liar, but I appreciate the effort,” she said.

  The faint, cool breeze that blew through the tunnel seemed to be growing stronger as they advanced, along with the smell of urine, which might mean that they were approaching an exit.

  “Is there a square inch of New York City that hasn’t been pissed on?” Zoey asked.

  They approached the empty platform of the 42nd Street-Bryant Park station. The lights were out but, now that his eyes were adjusted to the darkness, Chris thought he could detect a faint brightening up ahead that might originate from the surface.

  Then they heard a faint rumbling ahead of them, growing steadily louder. It was a subway train barreling down the tracks. Apparently, some of the MTA lines still had power.

  “We need to get to the platform,” Chris said. “Run.”

  “What about the third rail?” Zoey asked.

  “Just run.”

  They loped awkwardly over the uneven tracks. Chris held Zoey up when she tripped and Zoey did the same for him. By the time they were fifty yards from the platform, the rumbling was much louder. The train was closing in, but the tunnel remained dark. The car was running with its lights out.

  Chris gave Zoey a boost onto the platform and she crawled up.

  “C’mon!” Zoey said, extending a hand. “Those trains are going to hit!”

  He glanced back and saw that it was true, the oncoming train was switching tracks with a high, grinding sound and heading straight for the car that they had just left behind. The virus must have disrupted the MTA’s routing system. Chris struggled to pull himself up, his elbows on the platform and his feet kicking beneath him in space. Zoey grasped his hand but he was too heavy and he fell back onto the tracks. He didn’t have to look. The noise told him how close the train was. Chris leaped upward at the platform and got his chest over the ledge. Zoey grabbed his arm and threw her full weight into it. With Zoey’s help, he wriggled up onto the subway platform.

  Chris made sure that his feet weren’t dangling over the edge of the platform, then they both scrambled away on their knees, trying to get as far away from the tracks as possible before the impact. With their backs against the wall of the station, they watched as the out-of-control train hurtled past. The lights were out inside the car, but Chris could still make out the panicked faces of passengers thr
ough the windows.

  A moment later, the subway cars collided with a horrendous dying-beast sound of rending metal. As soon as the noise stopped, Chris hurried back to the edge of the platform and jumped down onto the tracks, with Zoey right behind him. Chris and Zoey quickly retraced their steps to see if there was anything that they could do to help the passengers. They were confronted with a mass of metal that filled the tunnel from wall to wall, as if the cars had been paper bags squashed in a trash compactor. They could hear pneumatic hisses, the sizzle and pop of misfiring electrical connections—and screams. Chris tried the door on the rear of the car, but the metal was so twisted that it wouldn’t open. Through the window, he could see figures inside, some moving, some not. There was no other point of entry without heavy equipment.

  Chris stepped down off the back of the car. He didn’t want Zoey to see what he had just seen.

  “C’mon,” Chris said, turning her back, “there’s nothing we can do here but get help.”

  Stunned into silence, they returned to the platform, slid over the turnstiles, and climbed a frozen escalator. Although the subway station was entirely dark, Chris was relieved to see a lit streetlight on above them as they emerged at Bryant Park.

  “I’ve never been so glad to see a streetlamp,” Zoey said. “We need to find a cop or something.”

  Chris had spotted a policeman a half block away and was already running to him.

  “We just came out of the subway,” he gasped. “Two cars just collided down there. It’s bad. Just happened.”

  “We know,” the young cop said, eyes wide, looking like a soldier who was seeing his first combat. “Fire Department’s already on the way.”

  “They’re going to need equipment to get in there.”

  “Thanks. We got this.” The cop looked over Chris’s shoulder and saw Zoey watching them. “Go find someplace safe and get off the streets.”

  Chris went back to get Zoey. Behind her was Bryant Park, the empty ice-skating rink and the monumental white marble temple that is the New York Public Library.

  If they were going to catch Blanksy, they needed to move quickly. Without a word, they began walking.

  “Do you think …?” Zoey began, but she stopped in midsentence as she followed Chris’s gaze up Sixth Avenue, down a corridor of skyscrapers. Far down the avenue, it seemed as if someone was taking a giant eraser to the city. Before he even realized what he was seeing, Chris’s eye was drawn to the skyline by a surreal sense that things were vanishing.

  Upon closer inspection, it was clear what was happening. The city’s power was going out. Chris could see the darkness rolling across the city like a tidal wave. At the far end of the avenue, one massive building after another went black. The blackout moved quickly toward Chris and Zoey as they stood motionless on the sidewalk, just watching it come.

  Chris found himself bracing for the impact as if it were an actual wall of water racing at him.

  And then it was upon them. Chris gripped Zoey’s arm.

  “Times Square is this way, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Zoey said. “Should be about eight blocks.”

  “We’d better hurry,” Chris said. “It will probably take a while for the virus to fully install. Things are likely to get worse.”

  The city was lit only by the headlights of cars as Chris and Zoey walked along the Midtown sidewalk. New York was such a city of lights that it was unnerving to see it almost entirely dark.

  Zoey looked up at the strip of sky visible between the skyscrapers. “Look at that,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The stars.”

  “What about them?”

  “You can actually see them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen stars in New York City. It’s like we’re in a field in the middle of Nebraska or something.”

  Chris walked for a moment with his face to the sky like a marveling seven-year-old. “I think we’d better keep our eyes on what’s ahead.”

  CHAPTER 44

  As they hurried up Broadway toward Times Square, Chris knew that they were witnessing something new in the world—a city under full-on cyberattack. But, no matter what lay before them, he was not going to stop until they had found Blanksy, the architect of the destruction.

  When he glanced back at Zoey, she was still staring up at the night sky as she walked.

  “C’mon, Zoey. Focus.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “Look.”

  Chris saw that now there were more than stars filling the night sky. There were an unusual number of planes circling overhead—passenger planes. The flickering white and red navigation lights were clustered more tightly than he had ever seen before.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it does,” Zoey said.

  “Lurker must have knocked out the air traffic control systems at JFK and LaGuardia—just like Albuquerque.”

  “I hope they can divert them to another airport like Newark before there’s a collision.”

  “If Newark is operational,” Chris said. “Why don’t you get CNN up on your smartphone? Maybe we can get a sense of what’s happening.”

  They passed a bank ATM with a few people clustered in front of it. As they passed, Chris heard someone say, “It’s not working at all.”

  “The virus has probably taken down the banks and financial institutions,” Chris said to Zoey.

  Zoey was concentrating on her phone. “Here. I’ve got a story. It’s not just the banks. Wall Street has been hit, too. The New York Stock Exchange’s systems have failed and it looks like the market won’t open tomorrow.”

  “That could cause a crash in the global markets,” Chris said. “Do they understand what’s happening yet?”

  “There’s speculation that it’s a cyberattack, but no one has confirmed it.”

  “There’s more,” she said. “The city’s water filtration system is malfunctioning, so people are being advised to boil water until it comes back. Three train accidents—one in Grand Central Station. And there’s a chemical plant in Jersey that’s leaking toxic chlorine gas.”

  Chris picked up the pace. He and Zoey were nearly running now.

  Everyone they saw on the street was also rushing, looking for a safe place. They seemed dazed. They didn’t understand why the city had gone dark, but it wasn’t hard to guess what every New Yorker was thinking in that moment as the news reports of the damage spread—this was the next September 11. For most residents of the city, there was a dark compartment of their subconscious where they kept the knowledge that it would happen again, and that it would probably be worse—if that was possible.

  When they were still three blocks away from Times Square, they heard an explosion and saw a bright flash over lower Manhattan. There was no smoke or flames but a searing white light that faded and then erupted again, not to return.

  “That was a transformer blowing out,” Chris said.

  “All of Manhattan must be dark now.”

  “Things are going to be down for a while,” he said. “Transformers contain a lot of one-off equipment. It takes time to replace them.”

  Chris had read Department of Defense studies on the threat of cyberattacks and he knew that this was what their worst-case scenarios looked like. He also knew that each system failure would lead to a cascading chain of consequences. For example, a widespread and long-term power failure would disrupt the shipping and transportation systems that fueled New York. Modern inventory control systems were based on the ability to deliver goods just in time before they were needed. The gas and food shortages would begin very soon after the grid went down.

  Chris recognized that there was one element from the DOD worst-case playbook that wasn’t present yet, at least as far as he knew. He didn’t mention it to Zoey. In fact, he didn’t even want to allow himself to think about it.

  CHAPTER 45

  The Con Edison control room in Midtown Manhattan regulated the electrical power grid for nine million people over nearly seven hundred s
quare miles. The place looked a little like the NASA Space Center, with a room full of technicians at computer monitors, all facing a giant display that consumed an entire wall. Even to Michael Hazlitt’s untrained eye, it was apparent at a glance that Houston was having a problem. Every computer was manned, and supervisors were hovering over the shoulders of the technicians and moving from one station to the next. It was like the controlled agitation of a jostled beehive.

  Like everyone else in the room, Hazlitt and his partner kept glancing up at the “Big Board,” which displayed a floor-to-ceiling grid of all of the transmission lines currently in service on the island of Manhattan. If one were to fail, then a red light would flash. Thankfully, there was no red showing on the board so far.

  As soon as they received Bruen’s call, Hazlitt and Falacci had wanted to set out for the W Hotel in pursuit of Blanksy. They were the agents closest to Times Square, but their bosses at Quantico had instructed them to stay at Con Edison to see if they could do anything more to help avert the impending crisis. Hazlitt had already received considerable credit for unveiling the hackers’ fake help desk ploy, even though he had been clear that the idea had come from Bruen and Doucet.

  Con Edison’s data security team, working closely with the FBI’s techies, was finally catching up with what Ed de Lamadrid must have uncovered on his own days earlier—the vulnerability in the Aspira system that Lurker had exploited. Lurker targeted Port 583, a “listening” point in the Aspira system that performed a function called Remote Procedure Call (RPC), enabling file sharing with other computers. Lurker would make contact with a potential host system and deliver a series of instructions that would cause the system to place the additional requests in a temporary stack known as a buffer. When the buffer overflowed after being bombarded with requests, Lurker was able to redirect the functioning of Port 583, giving Lurker access to the heart of the operating system, the “kernel.” Once a hacker like Blanksy had remote control of a computer’s kernel, he owned it.