Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  In turn, the PI had told Walker that he’d followed his instructions to a T. He’d booked the motel room with cash, had not contacted anyone, and had sat and scoured the news and made notes about anything that seemed pertinent about the cyber attacks.

  He’d spent the past twenty minutes recounting those notes, which he summed up as: the President seemed unlikely to use the Internet kill switch legislation because it would be too big a blow to the economy, local and global; the General in charge of Cyber Command was now running quarterback—and she was a no-nonsense woman; and basically no one in law enforcement had any idea who had Jasper or where he was being held hostage or what might be coming in the next attack. Nothing had been reported of the ICANN members being abducted, and Walker made a mental note that he should ask McCorkell to look into that when he next rang and checked in. He’d have Granger do it.

  “Oh,” Granger said, “and you should hear the world bitching on about all their social-media accounts being hacked. I mean, you’d think they’d be smart enough, right, to figure out that anything written or spoken in the world is out there for all to see. I mean, really, has nobody heard of the Patriot Act? That thing’s been in place since 9/11, right? Idiots. Tell you what, though, this is going to mean big business for me. Since that Ashley Madison hack in 2015, my phone’s been running hot. Now, with all this out there? Damn. It’s Christmas in March and will be into April and May and beyond for the next five years for guys like me. I’m gonna need staff. I’m gonna need a bigger office . . .”

  Walker tuned out. Monica had already done so as soon as they’d sat in the car, cradling a bottle of water and leaning back in the seat. She’d closed her eyes and may have been sleeping. Walker checked over his shoulder and looked up into the air out the back window. Nothing showing. No Suburban, no helicopter.

  65

  “There’s a state-wide man-hunt in California for Walker and Monica and this guy.” Somerville brought an image up on the screen. “I’ve just run him through Homeland Security and he’s clean, but look what happened when I ran his image in the DHS database.”

  “Paul Conway,” McCorkell said.

  “School friend of Jasper’s,” Somerville said. “Went to college together, all the usual. Did five years for hacking and fraud. Created a new ID, now does a regular IT security job at a pharmaceutical company based in Palm Springs.”

  “Can you make some calls, get the heat off Walker?”

  “No. This is military now.”

  “General Christie.”

  “Yes. I’ve tried contacting her office all morning to liaise.”

  “But?”

  “I’ve not heard back.”

  “Where’s she located?”

  “Cyber Command. Fort Meade. But she could be set up in the Situation Room of the White House for all I know.”

  “I’ll find out,” McCorkell said, picking up a phone. “And when I find out, you and I are going to pay her a visit.”

  •

  Walker checked over his shoulder again. He was feeling a little better now that they had put nearly a hundred miles between them and the paramilitary team in the mountains. But he was unnerved that there was no police or military presence of any kind on the road—it was like any other Sunday, perhaps a little quieter than usual as people lived through the fallout of all their data being hacked, and sat glued to their television sets wondering what was next.

  “Relax, I’ve got eyes in the back of my head,” the PI said, seeing Walker’s actions in his rearview mirror. “Anything shows, I’ll let you know. And this old girl won’t let us down.”

  He patted his dash, as though knocking on wood in the hope that the Crown Vic would, indeed, not let them down. It was a good model of car, a reliable rear-wheel-drive sedan, big and roomy, used for years by police agencies country-wide until production had stopped around 2011. Walker knew that plenty of detective departments and federal agencies still hung onto them, preferring the steel frame and bodied sedans over the newer and more efficient vehicles in their fleets; the plastic jobs in the carpools were preferred only by the younger and newer members rolling through. It was more than nostalgia—it was clinging to a piece of technology that you knew worked, and that you continued to trust. Like Granger with his .38 revolver. He’d probably learned to shoot on the same model, and over the decades as all the other guys had moved to polymer-framed automatics with high-capacity magazines and better accuracy and ergonomics, he’d clung to the thing. A comfort blanket as much a talisman of protection and justice as a reminder of all that he’d done.

  Walker glanced again. Still no pursuit. No Suburbans. No helicopter. He looked forward. Monica was still asleep. Granger was quiet. The news was on the radio.

  So, Walker thought, Jasper has used a code that would only make sense to Paul. Did that mean he knew Paul would look into the hacks? There was no other reason. No other, unless there was another person to whom he had sent book ciphers after his friendship with Paul had petered out.

  So, what did that mean? If the message was aimed at Paul, perhaps they’d been in touch more than Monica was aware of, more than Paul had admitted. Considering Jasper’s personality, was it likely that he would share such a code with a new friend, rather than one he’d known since childhood?

  Maybe. Maybe, yes. Or no.

  Walker looked to Monica, and he realized he was looking at this the wrong way.

  Jasper knew that Paul would look at this, because he knew that his sister would get involved and force Paul to help.

  Which led to the real question: if Paul knew what those numbers meant, why hadn’t he said anything?

  Walker couldn’t help himself. He checked over his shoulder again, out the back window. Nothing back there but an eighteen-wheeler and a couple of soccer-mum SUVs, probably loaded with kids.

  “Walker . . .” Granger’s voice was accompanied by the car slowing.

  Walker looked forward. Traffic had banked up. And suddenly Walker knew why this section of the interstate was not rolling with blacked-out Suburbans and helicopters.

  The flashing lights of a police roadblock.

  66

  “Those federal guys have reached out to state police and are looking for us,” Walker said.

  “Then put these on,” Granger said. He reached across to the glove compartment, pulled out two sets of old-school metal handcuffs and passed them to Walker. In the next motion, he took the service lane, plugged in a magnetic blue flashing light and put it on the roof of the Crown Vic.

  Monica, suddenly awake, looked to Walker, uncertainty in her eyes.

  Walker put his cuffs on. He clicked in one wrist, and made the other sit on his lap, as if closed. He motioned to Monica to do the same, but she looked apprehensive.

  “Just do it,” Walker said.

  Monica put her cuffs on. CLICK CLICK.

  Just as Granger rolled up to the state police cars, an officer moved over from where he was inspecting a vehicle and held out a hand for them to stop. He was a motorbike cop: leather jacket, boots, sunglasses, his helmet on the handle of his bike parked by the emergency lane.

  “Tell them you’re taking us in,” Walker said into Granger’s ear. “Tell them to keep the roadblock set up, that there’s a third man they’re looking out for.”

  Granger was silent but he gave a tiny nod as he brought the car to a stop, and the cop moved around to his window as it wound down.

  “Officer,” Granger said. He flashed his wallet. Or a wallet. Walker couldn’t see it, but it must have been his old badge, for Granger said, “Burbank PD.”

  “Detective. We’re screening for three fugitives, sir.”

  “Listen to me, son,” Granger said in a low voice. “I’m taking these two in.”

  The cop looked into the back seat and went a little wide-eyed at the faces.

  “That’s right.”

  “Where’s the third person? Conway?”

  Walker was not surprised to learn that their names and images were ou
t there; the cop had recognized them and distinguished who was missing.

  “No idea,” Granger replied. “But it’s imperative that you keep this roadblock up and continue to look for him, and that you keep this under a tight lid.”

  “Sir?”

  “If Conway finds out his accomplices have been taken in, he’d go to ground. If he thinks he’s got a chance for escape, he’ll keep running.”

  “I’ll need to talk to my sergeant.”

  “Son, you’ve seen the news? The cyber attacks?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the captive’s sister.”

  “His . . .” the cop looked into the car. “For real?”

  “That’s right. This isn’t a man-hunt to apprehend them. It’s to locate and detain them until this ends—for their own safety.”

  “But . . .” The cop had his hand on his radio.

  “Chuck, right?” Granger said, looking at the name plate pinned to the cop’s jacket. “I’ll remember that. I’ll tell your sergeant and your captain how professional and thorough you’ve been. But I have to get these two back to LA. Just look out for the third guy. He’s out there, won’t be far off.”

  “I—”

  “Son, if you put this over the radio, then the people who have this lady’s brother might well just come for her. And they’re a hell of a lot scarier than you or me or all your buddies here. This has to be quiet. I have to get them into town.”

  “Sir, okay.” Chuck looked over at his colleagues and tapped his watch to signal he was off. “I’ll do as you say. But I’ll escort you.”

  “Chuck . . .”

  “That’s the best I can offer, sir. You follow me right on in, and I’ll drop you to where you need to get to, and I’ll make sure you’re all there safe.”

  Granger glanced ever so slightly at Walker in the rearview mirror.

  “Okay,” he said. “Lead the way.”

  67

  “We need to get off the road,” Walker said as soon as the window was up and the motorbike cop was on his machine and taking off, lights flashing. “We can’t go through to LA. We have to keep moving, to Palo Alto, but not like this. We haven’t the time.”

  “What do you propose?” Granger said.

  “We’re going to have to make a phone call,” Walker said. “At the next gas station. Pull in, pump gas, have the cop watch over us, and you go in and use a pay phone. And you’re gonna need to buy a road atlas.”

  “Road atlas?” Granger said.

  “They’ll track us,” Monica said to Walker. “The phone call, I mean.”

  Walker said, “It’s the best chance we have.”

  “But they’re watching your friends at the UN,” Monica said. “They’ll track that call.”

  “We won’t contact them,” Walker said.

  “Then, who? Who can help us?”

  “Your father.”

  •

  “Yes?” General Brokaw answered the phone.

  The man on the other end said, “You have a friend from Colorado Springs. He asked that you write this down and refer to that book on your desk, the one you’ve been meaning to use this year.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “Just write this down.”

  Then the voice delivered a sequence of numbers, with dashes between them, and that was that. The call ended.

  General Brokaw looked at the numbers he’d written down.

  He looked at the road atlas on his desk. Then back to the numbers. Then he remembered a game he’d taught Jasper as a child. Page, line, word . . .

  And he smiled.

  •

  Harrington and his crew landed at Los Alamitos Army Airfield in southern LA and immediately prepared to head out again.

  “Roadblocks?” Harrington asked his team member that he’d tasked with communicating with the Californian police departments.

  “Nothing yet, sir,” Kent said, “but I’ve got full details now on Paul Conway.”

  Harrington took the tablet to their kit tables and poured coffee from a big thermos. He sat and scrolled through the data, taking in everything he needed to know.

  “Get this back to General Christie’s office,” he said after ten minutes. “Make sure they’re aware.”

  “On it.”

  “So, where does he head? Where . . .”

  “Sir?”

  “Conway’s part of this,” Harrington said, draining his coffee and filling another. “Either from the start or because Walker and Monica Brokaw got to him. They’ve split up. Where does Conway head?”

  “I thought we only cared about finding Brokaw’s sister.”

  “And until we do that, we work all the angles. Conway’s part of this. We have to figure out what he’s doing.”

  “Sir, Cyber’s on the line.” Kent held out a satellite phone.

  “Harrington. Yep. Okay, good, send it through.” He hung up and looked at his tech guy. “They’re sending through all the traffic, all of what went from Conway’s computer that piggybacked a network at UC Berkeley and bounced it all off one of our communications satellites.”

  “Is that even legal?”

  “Them hacking or us getting their hack? You know what, it doesn’t matter. The General was very specific. Today, we’re the law. Whatever we need, they’ll get it done for us.”

  68

  The Air Force helicopter organized by General Brokaw was a UH-1Y, out of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

  It met Granger’s car at a country club north of LA, in a grassed area created especially for the purpose of providing helicopter transport for the exclusive membership. The motorcycle cop had been skeptical when given a new destination, but when he saw the light gray of the Air Force chopper and heard the unmistakable whoop-whoop-whoop of the Huey and saw the door gunners out each side, he knew that this operation, like he’d been hearing via snippets of news all day, was fast becoming a military one.

  “Thank you,” Walker said, shaking Granger’s hand. “You did a good thing.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied. “Anything else I can do, aside from the phone call?”

  “I’ve got your number,” Walker said, patting the guy’s card in his jacket pocket. “If I can think of anything in the future, I’ll let you know.”

  Monica climbed aboard the chopper. Walker was close behind.

  “Sir, I’m Master Chief Doolan.” He passed over two sets of earphones with mikes attached, and helped them into the bench seat against the rear wall, then plugged in their headsets, and said, “General Brokaw has put us at your disposal.”

  Walker nodded. He liked Airmen like Doolan. Good people. Family. Loyal.

  “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Walker, retired,” he said. “This is the General’s daughter, Monica Brokaw.”

  “Pleasure, ma’am,” the Master Chief said. “I’m sorry for your brother’s situation.”

  She nodded.

  Doolan said, “Where to?”

  “Palo Alto,” Walker replied. “As central as you can get. As fast as you like.”

  “We can do that,” Doolan replied, and he held the mouthpiece close to his mouth as he ordered the side doors closed and moved to a jump-seat behind the pilots and strapped in. The aircraft took off, nose dipped loose as the pilots belted northwest.

  “You understand this mission is completely dark?” Walker said into the mike, looking at Doolan as he spoke.

  “Yes, sir,” Doolan replied. “The way I see it, someone’s messed with Air Force, and we’re doing what we can to even things up a little.”

  Walker gave a thumbs-up.

  Monica looked out her window as the green grounds of the country club and golf courses made way for housing estates and strips of desert and highway and the hills and mountains that stretched all the way north. Her hands were clasped in her lap, and when Walker leaned over and put a hand on hers, he was surprised to see they were relaxed. But then, he figured she had been on plenty of flights, on all kind of aircraft, in a lifetime of follow
ing her high-ranking father around as a military brat. She let his hand remain there but she neither took it nor squeezed it.

  Walker looked dead ahead as the next question rolled around in his mind: why did Paul Conway remain silent about the code? Why . . .

  69

  “Touchdown in thirty seconds,” Doolan called.

  “Okay,” Walker said. He’d studied a map of the streets surrounding Jasper’s apartment building and memorized the route from where they would be landing, on a commercial helipad near Stanford Medical Center. Palo Alto stretched from San Francisquito Creek to the north to San Antonio Road to the south, from the San Francisco Bay to the Skyline Ridge, a mess of houses and buildings and monolithic homes that formed the bulk of the world’s tech companies.

  Monica had said nothing during the trip other than to recount Jasper’s address. Walker thought her reticence was caused by the drugs that still coursed through her. She’d finished a bottle of water but had not eaten. Her whole form seemed in a funk, as though the adrenaline had drained through her and she had no energy left. He knew what that felt like. He’d been there many times, after breaching doors and engaging an enemy and things going to shit—and afterward, a flat funk. A SEAL buddy had got him onto magnesium supplements, which seemed to help a little. Walker didn’t know the medical reasons behind it all. But it worked.

  The helicopter pivoted and hovered down to a light touchdown. The engine spooled down. Doolan unclipped Monica and helped her out. The two door gunners waved goodbye. Walker stood next to Doolan, far enough from the Huey to be clear of the wash of the still-turning rotors as the engines idled.

  Walker said, “Master Chief, I’m going to need one more thing from you and your two boys here.”

  “You name it.”

  •

  “Got him!” Kent passed the tablet to Harrington and pointed to the Trapwire screenshot of Paul Conway. “He used another ID to book a charter flight out of Palm Springs, light aircraft. This is from the reception’s camera, hundred percent facial recognition match.”

  Harrington said, “Destination?”