by D S Kane
April said, “I’m not so sure. So, Cantor ended herself. But what if there is a nastier story underneath what we just saw on television? I fear that there is another story, a much uglier story below this one. Much more dangerous. My gut tells me you all face unintended consequences from Cantor’s suicide.”
* * *
Lee Ainsley handed a printed copy of his “Security Audit Report” to the NSA’s director of Computer Security and nodded. “Here’s my report. You won’t like it. I’m tired.” The director nodded back, then dropped the report on his desk.
Lee was done with this assignment. From what he’d heard while he traveled, Cassie and Ann had met with a spot of trouble while he was gone. He was happy to finally be going home.
He took a taxi to McCarran Airport and boarded his plane back to Reagan. When he took his seat, he pulled his cell from his pocket. There was just enough time for him to catch up with Cassie and alert her that he’d be home tonight. He punched in her number and was dropped into voicemail. “Cassie, it’s Lee. God, how I’ve missed you. During the test phase of the project, we had to surrender our cells, so I have no idea what you’ve been up to. I saw a report in the newspapers saying that some hackers were arrested by mistake. Were you involved in that? Was Ann? Okay, well, when you get this message, know that my flight home will arrive at Reagan tonight at 11:32. I should be at the compound by a bit after midnight. I can’t wait to see you and Ann.”
He terminated his message and replaced the cell in his pocket. Lee wondered what Cassie had been up to while he traveled.
By the time he landed, the small-screen television in front of his seat had given him more than enough of the news. Cassie’s face was on several channels, with several television interviews about how she was arrested, head bagged, transported to a concentration camp, and how she had escaped. What disturbed him even more, was that his business trip for the NSA was to inspect the data-storage facilities for what he hadn’t before realized were those exact concentration camps! His boss had told him the facilities were soldier training fields and barracks. Son of a bitch!
He now expected she wouldn’t be at the compound. She would be in a safe house somewhere. He called Avram, sure the tall guy would know where she was.
* * *
The small group of fugitives were seated around the dining-room table of the safe house. Cassie and April were talking about what topics they should cover in the next interview segment. Ann and Charlette were planning to hack into the US Senate’s computer system to retrieve copies of Ruth Cantor’s emails. Jon and Avram were discussing what the first phase of a kinetic operation might look like, and they still had major disagreements about whether any kinetic segment would be necessary, or even possible.
The doorbell chimed. Cassie walked to the CCTV and smiled. She opened the door. “Welcome back, honey.”
Lee stared at the group and noticed two people he didn’t know. Cassie and Lee hugged. Then Lee said, “Who are you?” He stared at April.
April said, “April O’Toole. I’m an investigative journalist.”
Lee pointed to the CypherGhost. “And you?”
“I’m Charlette Keegan-Ashbury and I started the hacker problem when I tried to bring down the aircraft Ann was riding in.”
Lee’s mouth opened slightly. Then he sighed. “Okay, then. I have some information you guys need to know. No one told me this is classified, so here goes. My trip was to inspect the data-center security for several government-related sites, the first one in Provo, Utah. I never got on campus for what I was told was a military training and barracks, but they were owned by the FBI. My work was outside a very high fence that surrounded the entire facility, and the outbuilding I was in had very light physical security at the entry point. No fence, no military guard. At the entry gate for the compound of buildings inside the fence, they used retina scans and thumbprint scanners, and they had armed guards at the security entrance. I told them it would be enough. Their data security was typical for a government installation. Old firewall standards, not nearly enough to withstand a hacker barrage. Almost nonexistent, and absolutely ineffective. I told them so in my report.”
Ann and Charlette high-fived. Ann said, “Another easy target for us.”
Lee stared at Charlette. “Why did you start all of this?”
Charlette shrugged. “Please, sit down for a few minutes and I’ll tell you how it all happened.”
Lee took a chair. “I’m tired, so please make it fast.”
Charlette repeated what the rest of them already knew.
CHAPTER 30
December 6, 11:48 p.m.
Swiftshadow safe house, Washington DC
Cassie folded into Lee’s arms in the smallest of the safe house’s four bedrooms. “Missed you, sweetie.” She kicked the door closed and kissed him fully.
Lee held her tight. He pulled his head from hers.“I saw Ann and Charlette enter the same bedroom. They are lying in the same bed. What gives?”
Cassie took a deep breath. “They’re lovers.”
Lee pulled away from her and stood straight. He stared into Cassie’s eyes. “Really.”
“Uh-huh. She told me. She’s experimenting.”
“You sure that’s all it is?”
“Not your business. Not my business. Let them be.”
Lee shook his head. “As usual, I’m the last to know.” He snuggled close again. “Dunno why, but now I’m suddenly horny. Let’s do each other.” He kissed her neck.
She nodded, then pulled her nightgown off. “I’ve missed you. I was waiting for this.” She tugged his shorts off and pushed him onto the bed. Then she mounted him slowly, while he moaned low.
He tugged at her nipples and she gasped. “More,” she begged.
Lee placed his mouth where his fingers had been.
She rode him hard for as long as it took.
* * *
Ann and Charlette emerged from their bedroom in the safe house as the sun rose, pink and purple. Ann rubbed her eyes, yawned, pulled coffee cups from the cupboard and a tin of coffee from the pantry. “I guess we should change Mom’s call sign to Big Noisy.”
Charlette nodded. “Yeah, but lots of that was your daddy. No wonder we got so little sleep. Are they this loud in your house?”
“Dunno. My bedroom is on the other side of the house from theirs.” Ann placed several spoonfuls of coffee into the top partition of the coffee pot and poured boiling water into the chamber above the pot. “Need lots of this today.”
Charlette waited for the coffee to drip. “About the Senate’s email server. Got lucky late last night. Plucked several passwords with my first hack. I think we can polish this off today if we have just a bit of luck.”
Ann sneered. “Luck? Since when do we need luck?”
* * *
But, by three in the afternoon, Ann wished she hadn’t shown such confidence. She was stuck with a cypher she couldn’t crack, and was too proud to ask for help. She tried again and again, until her fingers flew off the keyboard and slammed the kitchen table.
Charlette, seated across from her, looked up. “What?”
Ann hissed, “Can’t crack this one.” Ann pushed the notebook across the table.
Charlette scanned the screen. “Huh. Looks like you’ve been at this for…wow, over six hours. Lemme see.” Her fingers moved tentatively, pressing keys a few at a time. “Shit. It’s a lot harder than it should be. Tell you what, let’s move on to the next message. We can come back to this one later.”
* * *
The gruff voice on the other side of the phone line made the Irwin Sadowski’s ears twitch. He listened to the caller’s almost hypnotic drone, then rose from his desk and turned to look away from the row of cubicles outside his glass office. “Yes. We can see over ninety percent of them on the map. The other ten percent is just over two hundred thousand hackers. They must have either failed to swallow the Bug-Lok, or the nanobug failed to lodge in their brainstems properly. Three of the nanodevices
gave us lots of static. We don’t know the reason why.”
More questions from the person who was his handler for this piece of the operation. Sadowski thought before replying. “Yes, I see what you mean. But understand this. We’re almost there. The outliers won’t matter in the long run. Almost anyone who might tumble to your overall plan has been located, and if any of them try to stop the next phase, all we need to do is send an armed team to their location.”
His handler mumbled something more, then terminated the conversation.
Sadowski shivered from his caller’s closing threat. So much now depended on being able to control or neutralize the recently-freed two million technonerds.
* * *
Ann stared at the message. She had finally disabled its encryption. This was something she’d have to tell Charlette, Cassie, Avram, and Jon, as soon as possible. Too bad William and Betsy had removed themselves from the action. They’d find this interesting:
Mr. Edgenest,
Note that the Bug-Loks were administered to every prisoner, and almost all appear to work. Over 99% of the incarcerated hackers echo the words they’ve said over the Bug-Loks, along with what they see and their location, per the settings of their embedded nanodevices.
Irwin Sadowski
Now, to find out who these people were and why they had administered nanobugs to her mom and her friends. Ann found her hand under her chin, scratching it, a sure sign that she’d think of nothing else until she completed her task.
She found nothing at all on anyone named “Edgenest.” Not on Google, not in any of the government’s records, nowhere. So, “Mr. Edgenest” was either a call sign or someone’s cover name. But Irwin Sadowski’s name is out there, big time. He was the late Senator Ruth Cantor’s legislative assistant and a frequent attendee at Security Council meetings.
Ann knocked on the door of the bedroom where Lee and Cassie were asleep. She heard Cassie ask what the matter was. “Mom, I want to tell you what I just found. It’s important, I think.”
Cassie opened the door partway. Ann guessed her mom was naked. “What?”
Ann read the email aloud.
Cassie uttered the words, “Oh, my god. This means there might be two of these things inside me. I’ll need to get the second one out of my head.”
Ann nodded. “Call Dr. Sheldorf?”
CHAPTER 31
December 7, 6:52 a.m.
NSA Concentration Camp Number 33,
Provo, UT
At the security gate outside the fifteen-foot-tall barbed-wire fence, the soldier stood at attention. “Yes sir. I failed to see the problem until it was too late.”
The suited visitor shook his head. “Too late now. And now that the President knows about this, it’s too late to to hide the camps.” He walked twenty feet away, where the soldier wouldn’t hear him.
Sadowski pulled his cellphone from his suit jacket pocket. “It’s Sadowski. I’ve debriefed each of the soldiers responsible for the escape. It appears that two things happened around the same point in time. Some hackers we failed to find used the internet to bust through the firewall and opened every cell door in all thirty-seven camp buildings. That’s how most of the prisoners escaped. It was far too much for law enforcement to handle. The hackers reached town centers and commandeered cellphones and library computers before we could mount a counter-response. They posted what we’d done on every social media network that exists, long before we even knew it. Television news reporters picked up the story and it’s all very public now. The other thing that happened was that three prisoners were exfiltrated though underground tunnels. I have the names of those hackers. They may be more dangerous than any of the others. I’m sending you the names and their last known addresses. I think they’ll be trouble. It might be a good idea to terminate them as soon as possible.”
A few seconds passed while Sadowski listened. “Well, if you think we shouldn’t do that, I understand. One of them is now featured in the news, so terminating her after all the news fuss would indeed look suspicious. Yessir, I’m on my way back to Washington. We need to determine how to make the next step in the plan work, now that we no longer control the hacker population.”
* * *
Dr. Henry Sheldorf had become the chief battle surgeon of the Swiftshadow Group after his predecessor had died in combat the previous year. Cassie had pressed Sheldorf into accepting the post because she knew he’d now be a target of those who held grudges against both her and the Swiftshadow Group over the years. Might as well be what your enemies think you are, if that makes you safer, she thought.
Cassandra sat on a stool. The back of her head and her neck were shaved. Sheldorf ran the jammer-scanner over her neck. “Yes. Ms. Sashakovich, I can see two of them, both lodged inside your medulla oblongata within a few neural clusters of each other. I can destroy them where they sit or remove them. Easier to destroy them, but it’s your choice.”
Cassie looked up at Sheldorf. “Remove both, and try to keep them intact so we can determine the manufacturer, features, and functions of the rogue. Okay?”
He nodded. “Right then. We’ll begin immediately. You’ll be out for about an hour. Please lie down on the surgical table, your face down into the mattress slot.”
She nodded and repositioned herself. She felt a pinch into her arm and her world melted away.
* * *
“Sir, it’s Irwin Sadowski. A bit of news. We’ve lost communication with one of the three hackers I told you about. A woman named Cassandra Sashakovich. As I told you before, there have been interviews with her during the last few days. The reporter’s name? April O’Toole. Washington based. Newspapers and television. Award-winning. So, we can find Sashakovich using O’Toole as a choke point. What do you want me to do?”
The gruff voice on the other side of the line was more urgent now, and spoke for longer than Sadowski could remember.
“Yes, it might just be a defective Bug-Lok unit. Okay then, we’ll leave her alone right now. But without the Bug-Lok signal, we’ll no longer be able to easily find her.”
This time the other man was brief.
“Yessir. I’ll call when phase three is ready.”
* * *
Cassie remained in bed for most of the day following her surgery. Every time she tried to get up, she felt dizzy. But, late in the afternoon, she felt well enough to leave the quiet bedroom in the safe house.
Ann and Charlette were still where she’d last seen them, sitting at the kitchen table.
“Hi, Mom. You feeling up to a sitrep?”
Cassie blinked. “What time is it?”
“Nearly noon. So here’s the latest. We know now there is a phased project plan, which Senator Cantor screwed up by having the hackers rounded up before the House of Representatives could pass their version of the anti-hacker bill. When the bill was defeated, well, it might have been the reason why she committed suicide. Or, might be the reason why she was offed and it was made to look like she offed herself. The first phase was to rid America of all the hackers, probably because only hackers could find out if some secret project was using any form of encrypted communication. So, we still don’t know the intention of the project. Apparently, phase two was to wreak some sort of havoc on the military to keep them preoccupied while the third phase was initiated. No specifics on phase two. Phase three is totally unknown right now, but my own guess it, it’s a coup d’état.”
Cassie’s jaw dropped. She turned away from the two young women. I wonder if this is a reaction to the government’s inability to foresee the attempted invasion of Russia and China, last year. Did some group see weakness and decide to push their advantage while it still exists?
Cassie steadied herself. “Thanks. Let me know if you discover any other interesting tidbits.”
Cassie pulled her cell from her pocket and called Dr. Sheldorf. “Doctor, it’s Cassandra Sashakovich. As soon as you determine the results of the Bug-Lok analysis, please call me. Many lives may be at stake.”
CHAPTER 32
December 8, 9:41 a.m.
Capitol Building offices, Washington DC
The steady rain and occasional thunder punctuated Irwin Sadowski’s final visit to Senator Ruth Cantor’s office in the Capitol Building. In between thunderclaps, he dropped souvenirs from his desk into moving boxes. He carefully selected what to take, ignoring what was classified, and focusing on items he might use to create an impressive-looking office when he finally found another job. Of course, he thought, having worked for a suicidal senator isn’t a very good recommendation.
When the final box was taped shut, he recruited another of the late senator’s ex-staff to help him carry the boxes to his double-parked mid-sized rental car in the underground lot.
He filled the car’s trunk and back seats with boxes of unclassified documents, and dumped the personal keepsakes into the trunk. All the while, he thought about his future in a new nation’s government not yet formed. My only chance for employment will come after the coup.
He closed the car’s trunk, thanked the former staff member, said goodbye, and started the engine. He sat and waited for the car and the defroster to warm so he’d have a clear view of the road before he drove off, down Michigan Avenue toward the freeway. The downpour followed him.
His cell buzzed and he answered it through his car’s Bluetooth.
The gruff voice hissed. “Is it done yet?”
Sadowski gulped. “No. I’ve just left the senator’s office. I’m on my way home. Listen, you promised me money and staff so I can complete my assignments. People to help. I’m still working solo.”
The voice on the other side sounded like it was smothering a laugh. “I can replace you in a heartbeat. Now that you’ve lost your senator, you are of limited use. Think about that before you complain again.” The phone call suddenly ended.
* * *
Cassie paced around the bedroom she and Lee shared at the Swiftshadow safe house as she listened to Dr. Sheldorf speaking on her cellphone, with an urgent tone that seemed almost overwrought.
