An instant later there was a deafening squeal of rubber on cement. The hum approached once again, this time in reverse. Seconds later the vehicle came to a stop beside her.
"Ms. Fletcher!" an astonished voice exclaimed.
Susan gazed at a vaguely familiar shape in the driver's seat of an electric golf cart.
"Jesus." The man gasped. "Are you okay? We thought you were dead!"
Susan stared blankly.
"Chad Brinkerhoff," he sputtered, studying the shell-shocked cryptographer. "Directorial PA."
Susan could only manage a dazed whimper. "TRANSLTR…"
Brinkerhoff nodded. "Forget it. Get on!"
The beam of the golf cart's headlights whipped across the cement walls.
"There's a virus in the main databank," Brinkerhoff blurted.
"I know," Susan heard herself whisper.
"We need you to help us."
Susan was fighting back the tears. "Strathmore… he…"
"We know," Brinkerhoff said. "He bypassed Gauntlet."
"Yes… and…" The words got stuck in her throat. He killed David!
Brinkerhoff put a hand on her shoulder. "Almost there, Ms. Fletcher. Just hold on."
The high-speed Kensington golf cart rounded a corner and skidded to a stop. Beside them, branching off perpendicular to the tunnel, was a hallway, dimly lit by red floor lighting.
"Come on," Brinkerhoff said, helping her out.
He guided her into the corridor. Susan drifted behind him in a fog. The tiled passageway sloped downward at a steep incline. Susan grabbed the handrail and followed Brinkerhoff down. The air began to grow cooler. They continued their descent.
As they dropped deeper into the earth, the tunnel narrowed. From somewhere behind them came the echo of footsteps-a strong, purposeful gait. The footsteps grew louder. Both Brinkerhoff and Susan stopped and turned.
Striding toward them was an enormous black man. Susan had never seen him before. As he approached, he fixed her with a penetrating stare.
"Who's this?" he demanded.
"Susan Fletcher," Brinkerhoff replied.
The enormous man arched his eyebrows. Even sooty and soaked, Susan Fletcher was more striking than he had imagined. "And the commander?" he demanded.
Brinkerhoff shook his head.
The man said nothing. He stared off a moment. Then he turned back to Susan. "Leland Fontaine," he said, offering her his hand. "Glad you're okay."
Susan stared. She'd always known she'd meet the director someday, but this was not the introduction she'd envisioned.
"Come along, Ms. Fletcher," Fontaine said, leading the way. "We'll need all the help we can get."
Looming in the reddish haze at the bottom of the tunnel, a steel wall blocked their way. Fontaine approached and typed an entry code into a recessed cipher box. He then placed his right hand against a small glass panel. A strobe flashed. A moment later the massive wall thundered left.
There was only one NSA chamber more sacred than Crypto, and Susan Fletcher sensed she was about to enter it.
Chapter 109
The command center for the NSA's main databank looked like a scaled-down NASA mission control. A dozen computer workstations faced the thirty-foot by forty-foot video wall at the far end of the room. On the screen, numbers and diagrams flashed in rapid succession, appearing and disappearing as if someone were channel surfing. A handful of technicians raced wildly from station to station trailing long sheets of printout paper and yelling commands. It was chaos.
Susan stared at the dazzling facility. She vaguely remembered that 250 metric tons of earth had been excavated to create it. The chamber was located 214 feet below ground, where it would be totally impervious to flux bombs and nuclear blasts.
On a raised workstation in the center of the room stood Jabba. He bellowed orders from his platform like a king to his subjects. Illuminated on the screen directly behind him was a message. The message was all too familiar to Susan. The billboard-size text hung ominously over Jabba's head:
As if trapped in some surreal nightmare, Susan followed Fontaine toward the podium. Her world was a slow-motion blur.
Jabba saw them coming and wheeled like an enraged bull. "I built Gauntlet for a reason!"
"Gauntlet's gone," Fontaine replied evenly.
"Old news, Director," Jabba spat. "The shock wave knocked me on my ass! Where's Strathmore?"
"Commander Strathmore is dead."
"Poetic fucking justice."
"Cool it, Jabba," the director ordered. "Bring us up to speed. How bad is this virus?"
Jabba stared at the director a long moment, and then without warning, he burst out laughing. "A virus?" His harsh guffaw resonated through the underground chamber. "Is that what you think this is?"
Fontaine kept his cool. Jabba's insolence was way out of line, but Fontaine knew this was not the time or place to handle it. Down here, Jabba outranked God himself. Computer problems had away of ignoring the normal chain of command.
"It's not a virus?" Brinkerhoff exclaimed hopefully.
Jabba snorted in disgust. "Viruses have replication strings, pretty boy! This doesn't!"
Susan hovered nearby, unable to focus.
"Then what's going on?" Fontaine demanded. "I thought we had a virus."
Jabba sucked in a long breath and lowered his voice. "Viruses…" he said, wiping sweat from his face. "Viruses reproduce. They create clones. They're vain and stupid-binary egomaniacs. They pump out babies faster than rabbits. That's their weakness-you can cross-breed them into oblivion if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, this program has no ego, no need to reproduce. It's clear-headed and focused. In fact, when it's accomplished its objective here, it will probably commit digital suicide. "Jabba held out his arms reverently to the projected havoc on the enormous screen. "Ladies and gentlemen." He sighed. "Meet the kamikaze of computer invaders… the worm."
"Worm?" Brinkerhoff groaned. It seemed like a mundane term to describe the insidious intruder.
"Worm." Jabba smoldered. "No complex structures, just instinct-eat, shit, crawl. That's it. Simplicity. Deadly simplicity. It does what it's programmed to do and then checks out."
Fontaine eyed Jabba sternly. "And what is this worm programmed to do?"
"No clue," Jabba replied. "Right now, it's spreading out and attaching itself to all our classified data. After that, it could do anything. It might decide to delete all the files, or it might just decide to print smiley faces on certain White House transcripts."
Fontaine's voice remained cool and collected. "Can you stop it?"
Jabba let out a long sigh and faced the screen. "I have no idea. It all depends on how pissed off the author is." He pointed to the message on the wall. "Anybody want to tell me what the hell that means?"
Jabba waited for a response and got none. "Looks like someone's messing with us, Director. Blackmail. This is a ransom note if I ever saw one."