Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  “Sir—the television,” Zoe Ledoyen said, entering the room and pointing to one of the three blank screens on McCorkell’s wall in the New York office. She had worked for fifteen-years for the French intelligence agency Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure, and via a past op that had impressed him, was now that country’s liaison with McCorkell’s UN outfit. She switched on the television, which immediately showed an image of a man wearing an orange jumpsuit.

  “What channel is this?” McCorkell asked, reaching for a remote to turn up the volume.

  Zoe said, “All of them.”

  •

  “Where am I?” Walker looked at his father, his gaze steady.

  David said, “Mexico.”

  “Where, specifically?”

  “A house. In Rosarito.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to talk.”

  Walker leaned forward, his elbows now on his knees, weight shifted. He could spring up, but even though he felt his mind running at close to a hundred percent his body was lagging, the drugs lingering. More than that, he’d been in a still, seated position for what must have been at least two hours. He moved his feet forward. They felt heavy. The sense of pins and needles ran up his calves and through his quads and hamstrings. Not good. They were seventy percent, maybe. Seventy percent reaction time for Walker would be about the same as a regular guy, but it wouldn’t be enough, not for here, not for now. He glanced behind at the two guys who had previously been in TSA uniforms and were now dressed in casual short-sleeved shorts and khaki pants. One still held a taser in his hand.

  Walker said, “So, talk.”

  “How are you feeling?” David asked.

  “Why are we here?” Walked looked to his father. “We’re close to the border, but not in the US.”

  David Walker replied, “You know that I have to be careful.”

  Walker stared at him. “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Because in America you’re a dead man.” Walker watched for a reaction. None come. Back home, his father was listed as deceased, two years back. He’d gone into the woodwork and Walker was still trying to figure out why. It had everything to do with an operation labeled Zodiac. But he could not be sure what function David Walker’s “death” was serving—to help him avoid US authorities, or whoever had instigated Zodiac? Was he part of the problem, or part of the solution? Was there a difference?

  “Why did you do it like this?” Walker said, motioning to the guys behind his father.

  “Because we had to talk.”

  “You said that.”

  “I needed to talk to you, face to face.”

  Silence hung in the air.

  “So,” Walker said, “There’s this thing called FaceTime. Or Skype. Why like this? Needles and hoods and weapons and all?”

  “One can’t be too wary with technology.”

  “A phone call wouldn’t have killed you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You could have met me in Alaska.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “That would be a waste of time.”

  “But you had time to drug me and fly me here—what time is it?”

  “Just after ten am. And you needed to hear this from me, and it had to be in person, and this was the nearest solution to meet both those needs.” David bent to his side, picked up a water bottle and gave it to his son. “And here, in Mexico, you’re closer to your objective.”

  “Closer?” Walker held the bottle, which was cool and wet to the touch, and thought of Alaska. “Why don’t you tell your guys here to relax?”

  “I can’t take chances.”

  “You think I’d kill you?”

  “You’ve had that look in your eye before.”

  “My point exactly. You’re still here.”

  “Jed, listen to me. I can’t ever go back to the US. Not with what I know. Not until all of this is over. And until you know what I know. I need to take every precaution.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know what’s coming next.”

  “And how exactly is that?”

  “Patterns.”

  “Ahh. And they pointed to Alaska, right? And yet here we are, detouring south of the border, in the completely wrong direction to where I need to be headed.”

  David Walker shook his head. “And how do you know that you needed to get to Alaska?”

  “You told us Alaska was next,” Walker said. “You told McCorkell that’s where the next Zodiac attack would occur.”

  David Walker nodded, said, “And I had to tell him that.”

  Walker paused, said, “A misdirection. Why?”

  “Inconsequential. After you hear what I have to say, you need to get back to southern California.”

  Walker watched his father for a moment, his anger building. “Your tip-off to head to Alaska was, what, a ruse?”

  “Ruse, misdirection, whatever you want to call it. We had to get your UN colleagues, and whoever is watching them, out of the picture—”

  “Why?”

  “Or they’d shut you out of this before you even began.”

  “We had to?”

  “Me, and you.”

  “You think we’re a team now?”

  “Aren’t we?” David leaned forward. No more than two feet between father and son. “Who got you into this?”

  Walker remained silent.

  “Look, Jed, to get near this next Zodiac terror cell? You have to go dark. I’m talking completely off the grid. That’s no comms—no emails, no calls—and don’t let them make you,” David Walker said. “You have to work alone and become a ghost, or you’ll never get close enough to stop it in time. And what’s happening? It’s already begun. We’re on the clock and there’s less than thirty-six hours until the main event. Drink your water.”

  Walker looked at the bottle a moment, as though taking it would be like sealing the alliance. But there was little option but to hear his father out and move in a new direction. He knew that David Walker was telling the truth, at least about being the one to filter information to Walker. But the trust and faith he’d had in his father his whole life had eroded over the past two years. The man he’d known growing up, a professor of international studies and senior policy adviser to every administration since Nixon, had become . . . What? A traitor? A liar? A manipulator—that was for certain. But why? That’s where he had to start. The why.

  Walker drank the water, then said, “So, what is it? What’s in southern California?”

  “What do you know about the Internet?”

  Walker looked at him briefly. “Something to do with computers, isn’t it? Like, FaceTime and Skype and a whole other bunch of stuff you seem to know nothing about.”

  David matched his son’s stare. “It makes the world go around. Without it there would be chaos.”

  “Without it?”

  David nodded.

  “Right,” Walker said. “And your point?”

  “It’s about to be switched off.”

  7

  McCorkell, Somerville and Ledoyen watched the news feed in silence. Listened to Jasper Brokaw’s speech. Stared at the screen as it cut back to the news anchors.

  “That’s our next Zodiac cell right there,” Ledoyen said.

  McCorkell looked from her to Somerville, who nodded that she concurred. He said, “What are the chances David Walker got a different tip-off to his son?”

  “You think he lied to us?” Somerville said.

  “It’s possible.”

  “But why?” Ledoyen said. “Just because he wants Walker working separately to our unit? Or because David himself is running Zodiac. A puppet master of chaos.”

  “Maybe,” McCorkell said.

  “Maybe to what?” Ledoyen asked.

  “All of the above.” McCorkell couldn’t yet see the trees for the forest. All the answers would be there. Could they figure it out within the thirty-six hours th
at this captive, Jasper Brokaw, just mentioned? Would they find Walker in time?

  “Why?” Somerville said, then looked to Ledoyen. “You’re right. We need to know the why.”

  “He lied to us, and he’s taken Walker,” McCorkell said, letting that possibility hang in the room.

  “I’m not so sure,” Somerville said. “I’ve seen Walker hesitate—in England, remember?”

  “A lot has happened since then,” McCorkell said. “And that’s not like Walker—he’d reach out and tell us, right?”

  Ledoyen said, “Maybe he didn’t have a choice.”

  “You really think his father picked him up and put him on this new threat?” Somerville said. “Told him to keep us in the dark?”

  McCorkell looked at the screen and shook his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  •

  Walker watched his father. As a kid he could remember thinking of him as a towering man. He recalled riding on his shoulders. Passing footballs and baseballs in the backyard in Houston. As a teen they’d moved to Philly so his mother could be around her extended family as her dementia worsened. Walker Snr had to travel a lot for work and had always kept an apartment in DC, to be near his government work and his Alma Mata, Georgetown, where he was an emeritus Professor, but he was home as much as he could be. That’s when, as a young man, Jed took the measure of his father as a man. He perceived his father to be an honest man. Someone who never skirted from a fight or argument to set things right. Hard working. Consistent. Appreciative.

  The man looking back at him now: Walker wasn’t sure what he saw. The man who’d left Walker’s mother in a nursing home to die, her mind long dead before; even he was gone. This guy before him was an enigma. A former professional academic specializing in global affairs, who had guided all kinds of administrations in the way they shaped their foreign policy and intelligence doctrines, had packed up and faked a death and disappeared and was now either the key to unlocking Zodiac, or the driving force behind it. Either way, he knew more than he let on. Either way, Walker couldn’t trust him, but he had little choice but to take the chance, because he was the only link he had to Zodiac . . .

  Zodiac. A program of terror cells that David Walker had developed in a DC think tank tasked to dream up worst-case scenarios that could damage, degrade and destroy the United States—a program that had in the past two years gathered a life of its own, perpetrators unknown, each terrorist attack initiating the next unlinked terror cell. So far Walker had succeeded in averting wide-scale damage during the first two attacks, but according to his father, ten more would follow.

  And David was the key. A key that would not be decoded. Not here, not like this.

  “That’s the next terror event?” Walker said. “Switching off the Internet?”

  “Yes,” David replied. “That’s the goal. But getting there is going to be the nightmare—the journey there are the attacks.”

  “Cyber attacks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Against critical infrastructure?” Walker said.

  “That’d be the best bet. The quickest way toward chaos. But we don’t know, and you have to work to find out.”

  “How?”

  “You look. Listen. Do what you do.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “Think of all the hacks we’ve seen lately,” David said. “A few years ago we were hearing about General Dynamics being breached, the Chinese gaining access to plans to our new fighter jet. Then the Home Depot hack that exposed more than fifty million credit-card accounts. Sony. The Pentagon. Remember when someone hacked the Twitter feed of AP and reported a bomb had gone off at the White House and Obama was wounded?”

  Walker nodded.

  “A hundred and fifty billion dollars wiped off the economy in the three minutes it took them to broadcast it as a hoax,” David said. “We’ve seen major cyber criminal intrusions as front-page news—and that’s just what makes the news. With the world as connected and reliant on the Internet as ours is, everything is vulnerable. Everything is porous. And you realize there’s very little that can’t be hacked. Someone’s going to try to work their way into our networks and wreak as much havoc as they can over the next thirty-six hours.”

  “Where do I start? I look at everybody on the planet who has a fast enough computer and the skills?” Walker said. “Hell—even kids are taught programming in elementary school.”

  “True. But your focus will be narrowed.”

  “Because of where the attacks are coming from? A nation state—Russia, China?”

  David shook his head, said, “Inside the US.”

  “By a US national?”

  “Yes, although he’s held by someone—a group, maybe a foreign party.”

  “They’re forcing him to hack us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s running the counter-attack, NSA?”

  “Homeland Security will be tasking elements of NS and FBI as first responders, but this will become military-led, fast. We’re in a different world now.”

  “What do we know?”

  “The first cyber attack is the data breach. The next is threatened to occur inside of six hours; more to follow over a thirty-six-hour period. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “It won’t get that far.”

  8

  General Christie’s phone rang. Her exec answered it, then passed it to her.

  “It’s the Director of NSA,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m watching it,” she said into the phone, turning down the volume of her television. “Is it legit, because he sure talks like it. Who is he?”

  “Checking specifics now,” the Director of NSA, an Admiral on the same campus at Fort Meade as Christie, his office half a mile down the military road, said. “But he’s NSA. Was Army. He’s worked on all our best stuff.”

  “That’s . . . unfortunate.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I’m headed to the White House to brief the President, then front the press room as the Homeland Sec doesn’t have the lingo to answer all the tech questions that will arise.”

  Christie paused, then said, “Want me to tag along?”

  “Not yet. Let me take the President’s temp on this. I’ve already been told I’m running in the background. This will be driven by Homeland Security all the way.”

  “You sure about that?”

  It was the Admiral’s turn to pause before speaking. “No,” he said after a moment. “Not really. Not if this starts playing out and the bills start piling up. I’m betting at the hundred billion in damages mark we’ll be called in.”

  “I’ll call it at fifty.”

  “You’re on. What are we betting?”

  “Street cred.”

  The Admiral laughed.

  “This is scary, isn’t it?” Christie said, looking at the television screen, watching a replay of Jasper. “That we’re so vulnerable. That it’s too easy to work a human angle like this and bring us to our knees.”

  “It’s terrifying.”

  “Get him,” Christie said, her voice detached as she watched the screen. “Bring him home.”

  “On it. FBI have already called me. They’re on it.”

  “Have his team brought in. His co-workers. That’d be my first move. See what they know, what they’re working on. Who they may have recently come into contact with.”

  “Yep.”

  “Double-check, then check again.”

  “Ah, I’m Navy, remember? Talk soon.”

  “Anything you need to get these SOB’s, reach out.”

  “Thanks, but I told you we’re off this. It’s become a federal law operation. I’m there to advise and pick up the pieces and give background.”

  “Give it time.” Christie ended the call, turned up the television.

  •

  Walker said, “Why won’t it get that far?”

  “Someone will stop it,” David replied. “
Someone has to.”

  “Who? Me? You?”

  “Someone. Maybe the President will give an order that can stop it.”

  “Then why doesn’t the President do that right now?”

  “That will be a last resort. It will have devastating consequences, but, perhaps, it will be the better of two terrible outcomes.”

  “Okay. So, you say there’s six hours to the next cyber attack,” Walker said. “That’s it? We don’t know the target?”

  “That’s it.” David stood and went to the boarded-up window. He peered through a slot between the rough-hewn planks, the sunshine making a line across his eyes. The eyes were still. Watchful. Regretful. “When I ran the Zodiac war-game in DC, we worked up a lot of worst-case scenarios about potential cyber attacks. The worst was an escalating series of events that got worse until demands were met. It spread resources for a response, created mass panic, and it was loud enough and big enough to force the President to make moves that would not normally be considered.”

  “Like?”

  “Martial law. National Guard on the streets. Turning off the Internet. Fun stuff like that.”

  “Has this group made demands?”

  “In a sense.” David turned and leaned his back against the window, his arms crossed over his chest. “When we gamed it, we mapped out a total field of targets, everything from personal-data breaches to total infrastructure compromise. Water, sanitation, power grids, cell towers, traffic signals, airports, the GPS system—anything and everything that makes the world go around can be attacked from a computer, anywhere, any time.”

  “That’s a huge list. You’re talking anything automated. Anything connected to the Net—which is most things nowadays, from a nuclear plant in New York to missile silos in the Dakotas.”

  “Yes. And it’s even worse now than when we theorized it. But the fact remains that the perpetrators can turn these targets off, they can reprogram them, they can destroy them—they can completely own them. They can use malware that overwrites and wipes out data so that it can’t ever be recovered after the event. Think back to Sony in 2015. They stole data and released it publicly—that’s embarrassing to some people, sure, but it was wiping all the data that was the kicker. Imagine that on a federal government level: wiping data from the IRS or the Fed Reserve.