"I'd have thought his computer security would have been better than normal, given what he had to hide and him being a PM and all."
"Yeah, you'da thought so. My guess is, next guy selling a pick-proof OS around here is gonna make a fortune."
"Here and everywhere else."
"I scan that. See you, Jay."
"Later, Chuanny."
After his cousin was gone, Jay considered the situation. So Thailand was going to get a new Prime Minister. That might or might not have much effect on the world, but he had to figure that whoever was doing this rascal had picked his targets carefully. To what end, Jay didn't know, but his gut feeling was that it was a real bad end.
He better get back himself. The boss would want to know about the newest developments.
On the way, however, something else caught his attention.
Holy shit!"
"Alex? I think you better see this."
Michaels looked up and saw Toni in his doorway.
"In the conference room," she added.
He followed her. The big-screen viewer was on, CNN.
A newscaster was doing a voice-over as images flashed across the large screen.
"Bombay, India — known by the locals as Mumbai — is the capital of Maharashtra and the major economic power of western India. Located on the shore of the Arabian Sea, it is a city steeped in culture. From the Victorian façades of the British Raj, to the tourist ghetto of Colaba, to the pulse-of-the-city Fort, eighteen million people call Mumbai home. Most of them are dirt-poor."
There was an aerial shot of the city. Stock footage.
Michaels glanced at Toni and raised an eyebrow. Why did she want him to see a documentary on India?
"This is the sidebar," she said. "Wait a second and they'll get back to the main story." She sounded grim.
"Modernization has brought at least some of Bombay into the twenty-first century," the newscast continued. "And modernization has reared its ugly head here today."
The image shifted. Two buses had crashed together in an intersection. One of the red double-deckers lay on its side; the other was tilted, resting against the back of a fruit truck. Some kind of yellow-orange melons were scattered and shattered all over the street. Bodies were laid out along the narrow street's narrower sidewalks. Rescuers ran to the buses, pulling more dead or injured from the wrecks. A man covered with blood wandered in front of the camera, yelling something over and over. A small boy sat on the curb, staring at a woman lying next to him who was obviously dead.
"All over the city, computer-controlled traffic signals apparently turned green at the same instant."
Another image. A major intersection with at least a dozen cars melded together by impacts. The cars were on fire, and an explosion rocked the scene, knocking the cameraman down. Somebody cursed in English: "Shit, shit, shit!"
Here was a high-angle helicopter shot — scores of cars, trucks, motor scooters and bicycles compacted into jagged masses. The voice describing the event was excited, but not overly so: "There are at least fifty known dead in a massive traffic pile-up on Marine Drive, with hundreds more injured, and estimates of other traffic fatalities in the city go as high as six hundred—"
Again the image shifted, showing a train station. A passenger train lay crumpled like a child's toy next to a stretch of track. Freight cars were scattered among the coaches, some of them turned onto their sides.
"At Churchgate Railway station, malfunctioning train signals apparently caused the collision of a Central Railways passenger train northbound from Goa, with a freight train heading south. At least sixty are known dead at this point, with more than three hundred injuries. We have unconfirmed reports of electric commuter trains colliding in suburban areas with fatalities, but travel in the city is impossible and we are unable to get to those locations except by air."
Another scene shift. A twin-engine airplane, engulfed in flames. Bodies — and parts of bodies lay scattered around it like broken dolls.
"Air traffic control malfunctions have reportedly caused at least four plane crashes. This one, a sightseeing flight filled with Japanese tourists, crashed into the yellow basalt monument known as the Gateway to India at the northeastern end of the Colaba tourist district, killing all twenty-four on the aircraft and at least fifteen on the ground, with dozens more injured. We have unconfirmed reports that an Air India jet with two hundred and sixty-eight passengers on board has crashed into Back Bay just south of Beach."
"My God," Michaels said. "What the hell happened?"
"The computer programmer." Toni's voice was grim.
"Somebody did this on purpose?"
"That's what it looks like. Jay is on it, but he's too busy to talk about it right now."
Michaels watched a rescue truck, lights flashing, frozen in gridlock. Jesus. They were dealing with a madman. A homicidal madman. Until he was caught, nobody was safe.
18
No real progress had been made on Steve Day's death.
Oh, the labs had cataloged all kinds of hair and fiber and bullet casings, but in the end, none of it meant anything without the people, clothes and guns the things belonged to — and they didn't have any of those.
Alex Michaels was more than a little bothered. He sat at his desk, staring into the wall. He knew there was nothing to be done about it; the best minds in the FBI were hard at work looking for the smallest clue, and standing there yelling "Hurry!" wouldn't help.
It wasn't as if he didn't have other things to worry about. As head of Net Force, he'd suddenly found out what it meant to have the buck stop on your desk. Aside from having to assign high-level cases to make sure they were handled right, there was all the political bullshit. He had to justify what his organization was doing, why they did it, and how much it cost, first to the Director, then, if they were feeling snoopy — and they always were — to Congress.
He had to appear in front of Senator Cobb's Security Committee on Thursday to answer questions about something Day had done a year ago that had mightily upset the Senator. Cobb, unaffectionately known as Tweety Bird in intelligence circles—"I taught I taw a puddy tat!" — was always imagining conspiracies, no matter where he happened to look. Cobb thought the military was scheming to violently take over the reins of government; that the Germans were secretly re-arming themselves to eat Eastern Europe; that the Girl Scouts were Commies. He had been the bane of Steve Day's life, and it looked as if he was going to be giving Michaels the same grief.
And if that wasn't enough, the political side of the job required a lot more of something else Michaels hated — socializing. Since he'd taken over, he'd gone to four black-tie political soirées, suffering through vulcanized chicken or salmon cooked to blackboard-eraser consistency. All of these events had featured after-dinner speakers who could put a room full of dexadrine addicts into a suspended animation that made Sleeping Beauty look like an insomniac.
No, this was definitely not a part of the job he enjoyed.
At least he didn't have to worry about building appropriations. That was the Director's job. And given all the new structures that Net Force had recently constructed, was in the process of constructing, or was planning on constructing, that would be a major chore in itself. J. Edgar Hoover would never recognize the FBI Compound, it had grown so large in just the last five or six years. It was a small town unto itself.