The Omega Covenant

by Richard Holcroft

  Tom asked, “Will it be secure here?”

  “It’ll be locked up tight, and I’m always the first person to arrive in the morning.”

  “That’ll be fine. Thanks,” Marchetti said.

  Ed nodded. “See you about nine.”

  After wolfing down an early-morning breakfast of bacon and eggs, Marchetti and Tom left the hotel coffee shop and made the drive back to the Toyota dealer.

  The receptionist smiled and showed them to Ed Kealoha’s office. Kealoha introduced them to a mid-forties gentleman standing nearby: Robert Kobayashi, tech representative from Toyota USA, who had responsibility for West Coast and Hawaiian Island dealers.

  “Many Kobayashis in Japan,” Tom said and smiled. “I spent time at Kadena while in the air force.”

  “Yes,” Robert said and returned the smile. “The name means ‘small forest,’ though I must confess, I’ve spent very little time in Japan. My father grew up in Osaka, my mother in San Diego, so I ended up living in California most of my life. Can barely order off a sushi menu to be honest.”

  Which explains no trace of an accent, Marchetti concluded.

  Ed said, “I told Robert you had a question about someone possibly hacking into the car. He can help you with that better than I can.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Robert said.

  Ed led the way to the maintenance bays. “Shit,” Kobayashi said when he saw the condition of the black Corolla.

  “That’s how a car looks when it hits a pole at eighty miles per,” Tom said.

  Kobayashi slowly made his way around the car’s exterior. He peered underneath at what he could see of the undercarriage, then stood back up, brushed off his slacks, and walked around the car to open the driver’s side door.

  He slid onto the faux-leather front seat and asked Ed for his flashlight. He studied the various dashboard switch positions, seat location, and general condition of the interior, then lay on his side and pointed the flashlight at the steering column and along the sidewall.

  After a few minutes, he pulled himself upright and flicked off the flashlight. “Can’t say for sure someone hacked into it, but I can’t say someone hadn’t either.”

  “Meaning?” Tom asked.

  “The control unit mounted under the steering column doesn’t appear to have been tampered with. If it had it’d have been obvious as soon as I removed the cover. But there are other ways to control the unit besides physically altering it. Auto manufacturers don’t want this to become public knowledge, but hacking into a car’s control systems is easy if you understand how modern automobiles work.”

  “In what way?” Marchetti asked.

  “Drivers have to stop thinking of a car as simple machinery of glass and steel. Today’s cars are more like a network of small computers controlling a whole range of functions. The downside, of course, is that a hacker with any degree of computer savvy can get into a car’s control module and remotely cause a multitude of nasty problems, with no one being the wiser.”

  “Which could have happened in this case?”

  “Absolutely. A simple way would be to use a twenty-dollar device the size of a cell phone called a CAN hacking tool, which would require physically getting into the control unit. Once they’d done that, they could fit the tool to the auto’s controller area network within minutes, and the driver would never know it was there.”

  “And do what, exactly?” Tom asked.

  “Run malicious code through the vehicle’s system to do whatever it was they’d programmed it to do: deploy airbags, control the steering, disable the brakes–you name it.”

  Marchetti shook his head. “I’ll bet ninety-nine percent of the population has no clue that’s possible.”

  “Me, too. In this case, there’s no CAN device in the control unit, but it’s not really necessary. Practically every new automobile has an integral Wi-Fi network already installed–OnStar, Bluetooth, mBrace, or something similar. The sophisticated hacker wouldn’t have to actually install anything. He’d be able to access the car’s control unit wirelessly, penetrate critical systems through that particular network, and sabotage most anything he wanted–from flooring the accelerator to controlling the steering and disabling the brakes.”

  Tom said, “So once you’ve remotely accessed the software, controlling the car’s individual systems would be easy.”

  “Piece of cake,” he said. “Automakers are doing their best to downplay these vulnerabilities, but it’s a serious problem getting worse by the year as cars get more automated.”

  “Hell,” Tom said, “we’ve got self-driving cars now.”

  Kobayashi nodded and continued, “Manufacturers are feverishly working on devices that’ll keep cars safe from cyber attacks. But we’re still at least a couple years away from that kind of protection.” He then walked around the Corolla one more time.

  “I’d say that if all the mechanical components in this car were working normally, and there were no drugs or alcohol in Mr. Vaughn’s system, I don’t know what else to conclude other than he lost control of this car through no fault or action of his own. It could easily have been remotely controlled by someone who overrode the driver’s inputs and caused the crash. Some call it a ‘Boston brakes’ assassination.”

  Marchetti thought Kobayashi had it nailed.

  Tom looked at Ed and asked, “Is there a way we can confirm that’s what actually happened by downloading contents from the black box?”

  “Possibly,” Kealoha said. “It’d show the last twenty seconds of data anyway.”

  They continued discussing Brad’s crash and any other possible causes until Kobayashi looked at his watch. He reminded Ed he had to leave for the airport in a few minutes to catch a flight back to Honolulu. Marchetti wanted to go by the hospital to see Vicki, so it was time for them to leave, too.

  Marchetti thanked him and asked Ed if he’d download the black box data and then bring the Corolla back to Princeville. Considering Brad’s death may have been murder, they thought it best to continue to keep the car locked up and out of sight at the St. Francis storage facility until they’d identified the precise cause. If there was a design flaw in the Toyota, Marchetti and Tom would just as soon keep the dealer at arm’s length from Janine’s investigation.

  As he and Marchetti walked back to the parking lot, Tom said, “In spite of what Kobayashi said, I’m afraid that if Brad was killed in a Boston brakes scenario, we’d have a hard time proving it.”

  Marchetti said, “I agree. Even if there’s data in the black box suggesting he’d been murdered, it wouldn’t tell us anything about the persons responsible, or their motive.” Deep in thought, he climbed into the driver’s seat of the Dodge Charger he’d gotten to replace the damaged Mustang and cranked the engine. “Find out what you can about the Hastings case you mentioned, too,” he told Tom. “Maybe we can make a connection to Brad’s death somehow.”

  “Right.”

  Marchetti tried to imagine any other possibilities they might have overlooked. He pulled away from the lot and joined traffic going north on Kuhio Highway. “I have just one problem with the remote control theory,” he said. “No doubt it could’ve been used in this case to cause Brad’s crash, but it isn’t foolproof. Not every victim is going to die. What if he hadn’t hit that pole, for example? He might not have been hurt at all and become an important witness at trial.”

  “True,” Tom said. “Though it sure as hell would convey to the driver he’s doing something they don’t like and needs to back off. In Brad’s case, he might be convinced to put his computer away for example, and go into hiding.”

  “But if Brad’s death was indeed a murder made to look like an accident,” Marchetti added, “we’ve got a whole new set of questions presented and very few answers.”

  “For sure it wasn’t a job for your average hit man,” Tom said. “Too complicated and sophisticated for that. If it was in fact a Boston brakes job, we’d be better off looking at one of the spook agencies for our ki
ller.”

  15

  Washington, DC, July 6th

  Senator Kraft emerged from the chauffeur-driven Town Car, buttoned his suit jacket, and passed through the E Street ground floor entrance to the West Wing of the White House. The snarled traffic on Massachusetts Avenue held them up long enough that he was concerned the emergency meeting might have started without him. But as he hurried down the corridor to the Situation Room, a vice-presidential aide standing nearby assured him they had been waiting until he arrived.

  Roger Kraft had been to the White House too many times in his fifteen-year career to count, but he still felt awe and pride when he walked its halls and entered the Oval Office. Likewise, with the Situation Room where, during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he’d participated in most of the president’s important security briefings, from Benghazi and negotiations with Iran, to recent security threats from China and North Korea.

  President Kennedy established the Situation Room on the basement floor of the West Wing when he’d become frustrated by his inability to receive real-time information about the Bay of Pigs debacle. Years later, the space was renovated and expanded to include up-to-date video rooms, a direct feed to Air Force One, two tiers of computer terminals capable of being fed classified data from around the world, and numerous curved-panel monitors for both visual enhancement and secure teleconferencing.

  The Situation Room staff’s purpose was to provide current intelligence and crisis support to National Security Council members, the national security advisor, and ultimately the president himself, including preparation of the morning briefing book. Handpicked from nominations submitted by military and civilian intelligence agencies, personnel who worked in the Situation Room were among the capital’s best and brightest, and no one appreciated that fact more than the president himself.

  Kenneth Wall, President McHugh’s national security advisor, would chair the meeting as usual, but the vice president would represent the White House that day. The president and his chief of staff were in Geneva meeting with European leaders regarding the most recent Israel-Palestinian conflict, but they’d stay in close contact with the vice president and other administration officials for the duration of his trip.

  McHugh and Vice President James Decker had been considered a political odd couple ever since they received the Democratic nomination four years earlier. Few people in Washington thought the relationship would work, but the two managed to get important legislation passed in the Republican-controlled House thanks to Decker’s persuasive personality and McHugh’s faithful allies in Congress.

  Prior to the Democratic convention in New Orleans that election year there was much discussion and rancor about potential running mates. McHugh was the affable, handsome Silicon Valley executive who had served two terms as US senator from California before seeking and winning the presidential nomination. To nearly everyone’s surprise, he proved to be a savvy and adept politician. Having served on the Senate Appropriations Committee, he helped steer billions of dollars to friendly drug and tech firms in Silicon Valley which had helped him in his campaign for the presidency.

  Conventional wisdom held that the vice presidential candidate’s best asset should be his ability to deliver a large number of electoral votes for the Democratic ticket. But elections over the last few decades defied that wisdom more often than not in favor of the vice presidential candidate bringing credibility and national political experience to the more inexperienced presidential nominee. Hence, eventual winning tickets became Carter-Mondale; Bush senior with Reagan; Gore with Clinton; Cheney and George W. Bush; Biden with Obama; and now Decker and McHugh.

  Months before the convention, McHugh was so confident he would get the nomination and go on to win the general election that more than having a running mate who could help him in the national election, he wanted someone who could deliver votes in Congress once he was sworn into office. He and his advisors considered former and current governors, congressmen and–women, long-time presidential advisors, chiefs of staff, and others. At one point they came close to selecting the attractive and popular governor of Pennsylvania until she stumbled in a fundraising scandal and quickly lost her appeal.

  Consequently, Decker was McHugh’s second choice, As senate majority leader from Arkansas, he was particularly suited for the VP role. It didn’t hurt either that McHugh and Decker were ideologically simpatico concerning domestic matters, such as tax and immigration reform. And after much backroom negotiation over what responsibilities a Vice President Decker would have in a McHugh administration, McHugh chose the blustery, powerful senate majority leader as his running mate and cruised to victory.

  Senator Kraft placed his cell phone in the wooden tray by the Situation Room door and entered the conference room. He nodded to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rusty Draper and shook hands with the other principals before they all took their seats at the polished mahogany table. Introductions weren’t necessary for some, as Kraft had met them many times before: Vice President Decker; National Security Advisor Kenneth Wall; Senator Trey Lofton, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee; Harriet Abbott, Deputy for Homeland Security; and Robert McGraw, FBI Assistant Director of Counterterrorism. Some of the others he knew strictly by reputation: Beverly Mason, Richard Walters, and Dr. Janet Silverthorn from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta; Michael Knapp, emergency preparedness chief at Health and Human Services; and New York City Chief of Police Anthony Corso.

  Kenneth Wall began, “I caution you at the outset to keep what we discuss here today absolutely confidential. The last thing we need in this crisis is mass panic.” He looked around the table, and they all nodded in agreement. “We were shocked to learn today that based on cases in New York, Boston, and other cities–mostly east of the Mississippi right now–we can confirm we have an outbreak of the smallpox virus in our country, medically termed variola major.

  Senator Lofton asked, “How big a crisis?”

  “CDC has classified the virus as a Biosafety Level 4 hot agent: lethal, airborne, highly contagious, and likely to cause social disruption.” He tried to remain composed but looked shaken and nervous. “A single appearance of smallpox anywhere in the world would be considered a global medical emergency. We have fifteen cases in the US alone, with more being reported every day. If contagion gets out of hand, it’ll be a calamity of unprecedented proportions.” He again looked around the table and saw twenty worried faces. “I’ll let Mr. Walters from CDC give us an update on the cases and their locations.”

  Walters checked his notes and began, “Of the fifteen confirmed cases so far, three are in Manhattan, two on Long Island, and two in Atlanta. Sadly, three Manhattan cases passed away yesterday, and one of the Atlanta cases, a thirty-two-year-old man, passed away early yesterday morning.” He leaned over and checked his figures with Dr. Silverthorn and continued. “We also have one each in Little Rock, Memphis and Baltimore, four in Boston, including a twenty-seven-year-old female now deceased, and one here in the District of Columbia. Victims and patients range in age from thirteen to sixty-two and come from all socio-economic backgrounds.”

  “Any connection between them?” Lofton asked.

  “There are some common factors,” Dr. Silverthorn said. “At least three patients had been to Hawaii in the past two weeks–Honolulu, specifically–but we don’t know where else in Hawaii they may have gone or exact days of travel. We’re still checking where they had been leading up to first appearance of symptoms but are having trouble locating relatives and friends, so our profile is not yet complete.”

  “What’s taking so long?” Decker asked. “With Ebola a couple of years back, we knew within days who the contacts were.”

  Mason answered, “Both diseases are among the world’s deadliest, but they’re spread in different ways. Ebola can be spread by animals but is usually transmitted through close physical contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. Contacts, therefore, are
more easily and quickly identified, since they’re usually family members and caretakers. Smallpox virus, on the other hand, can be transmitted through bodily fluids but also through the air, which makes identifying potential contacts considerably more difficult.”

  “Their time together in Honolulu does appear to fit our first exposure timeline, however,” Abbott said. “Police and FBI are presently interviewing friends, family, and acquaintances to confirm their itineraries. We expect to have more in the next few days.”

  “Were the three on Hawaii attending a particular convention or staying at the same hotel?” Draper asked.

  Walters shook his head. “Not a convention, but two of the three females from New York City knew each other well and were rooming together at the hotel in Honolulu. The third stayed at a different hotel in the same vicinity, near the Ala Moana Center.”

  “An area popular with tourists,” Dr. Silverthorn noted.

  “How can we be so sure this is smallpox?” Decker’s chief of staff asked. “We certainly don’t want to overreact and needlessly cause panic.”

  “Admittedly, it’s a difficult disease to diagnose,” Silverthorn said, “since it looks a lot like chicken pox or a bad reaction to penicillin. Most doctors haven’t been trained to look for it, either.”

  “Understandable, since we haven’t had a case of smallpox in the US in over sixty-five years,” Walters added. “But these have been confirmed by electron microscope, and there’s no question it’s smallpox.”

  “With all the elements of a biological catastrophe,” Silverthorn said. “Millions of particles are emitted in a single invisible drop of saliva spewed into the air when an infected person speaks or coughs, for example. Compound that with a fourteen-day incubation period, during which the infected person can infect ten to twenty others without knowing she’s got the disease. I promise you, overreacting is not what we need to worry about.”