He put the phone away and stared forward, seeing nothing except images of the city in his mind. A New York surrounded by military vehicles.
Savas jumped from his chair and exited his office, finding Cohen on the floor. She was coordinating with several agents on the requests — or rather demands—for even more of his staff to be reassigned to protective functions for VIPs. Very soon, they would be running Intel 1 on pure air.
“Everybody listen up,” he said, cutting into the middle of their conversation. “Very serious newsflash. I just got a call in from some sources, reliable ones. The president is going to declare martial law.”
Cohen blinked. “Martial law?”
Savas nodded. “Within the hour. In the city for sure, maybe the whole tri-state area. They’re panicking. I guess I understand that, although I don’t know how locking down the city is going to help much. They must know about the worm, and now with additional threats of terrorist bombings and killings, they needed to act. They decided to lock everything down.”
“Anonymous isn’t stuck walking the streets of New York, John!” shouted Cohen. “This won’t achieve anything except to cause a real panic. People are going to start bolting from the city.”
“They won’t be able to.”
“And you know how that’s going to turn out, right?”
“God, I hope not. We can’t let this panic us, too, okay? At the root of this is a core organization, people orchestrating everything. If we can find that core, flush out or corner those people, we can put a stop to this. And for that we need—”
“Here, Commander,” said Lightfoote, panting from a run.
“We need Angel.”
“It’s probably going to be both New York and DC,” said Lightfoote, catching her breath. “I’m intercepting a lot of chatter. People aren’t using secure lines. They’re freaking. They’ve also got a lot of the Cabinet and Congress going underground, presuming continual threats.”
“Word on the Capitol?”
Lightfoote nodded. “You’ve seen the footage on the news. Main entrance and steps are blown to hell and back. Few were hurt at this time of night, but the point sure was made. The building is structurally sound, however. It would take a lot more firepower than these little drones can carry to seriously damage it.”
“And what if they have bigger drones?” asked Cohen.
Angel bit her lip. “Then it could be a lot worse. But the scurrying of governmental staff is creating power vacuums. Basically, we’re moving to a crisis mode unlike anything except during the Cold War. Not even 9/11 approached this. The apparatus is gearing up for siege.”
“This is not going to end well,” muttered Savas. “Update me on the worm.”
“It had to get visible, and wow, what a beauty.” Cohen arched her eyebrow. “Seriously, Rebecca, this is the Michelangelo of hackers. The damn thing self-assembled from thousands of computers around the world on some mysterious signal.”
“Self-assembled?” asked Savas.
“Yes! We thought that it was hiding on various computers. Only parts of it were. Like the distributed code I mentioned? I didn’t realize that the entire worm was networked. In other words, it doesn’t exist as a single piece of code on any computer, but like a neural network that’s the sum of a bunch of minor worms on millions of computers. It’s incredible. Powerful. Unstoppable.”
“Unstoppable?” said Cohen.
“Well, I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t think anybody would. It’s unprecedented. It’s a distributed AI that’s taking over the distributed brain we call the internet.”
“But it was activated with the Anonymous broadcast?” asked Savas.
“It ran the damn broadcast, John! I tried to get inside the code that activated, but it quickly detected my efforts and erased itself from my computer and shut down the computer’s internet access. Wiped the hard-drive. I'm reinstalling from backups.”
“Wouldn’t that cut off part of itself, if it’s some distributed thing over computers?” asked Cohen.
“Yes, but it’s like killing some of your brain cells by a night of heavy drinking. The brain overall isn’t hurt much by that afterward. And the thing is everywhere from finance to military computers. We can thank God that the nuclear arsenal is still mainly run off five-and-a-quarter inch floppies and machines from the 1970’s. But every other damn thing is infested. We don’t control the digital world, anymore. The worm does.”
Savas felt his head pounding. He needed something concrete, something practical. “Tell me what the threat is.”
Lightfoote looked at him in shock. “John, it can do anything. Write any code, erase data, create data, shut systems down, modulate system function. Turn off the water and lights. Open the Hoover Dam. Drop half the airplanes from the sky. Delete the world’s money supply. Anything. What’s the threat? It’s fucking digital Armageddon.”
Cohen turned to Savas. “John, this is too big for us.”
He nodded. “I’ll call in every contact I have at the CIA and NSA with what we have. We’ll run a shadow agency. Meanwhile, let’s see what’s left here.”
“We’re down to the core group and a few extra hands,” said Cohen. “They’ve pulled all the assistant agents and trainees. It’s mostly us. We’re the boutique group. Expendable in this crisis.”
His mind raced. “Let’s break this down into tasks. Overall, we need to provide some kind of quick break into the worm and who is behind it. We’re a small team, a talented team. We can move quickly whereas other agencies will just be reactive. We need to go after the worm first.” He nodded to Lightfoote. “We’ll get JP down with Angel in the basement, and they’ll try to trace the origins of this thing, find out its weaknesses. Rebecca, you, me, and Frank will find everything we can on this Anonymous group. But Intel 1 doesn’t have much firepower right now.”
“We do have an ace-in-the-hole,” said Cohen.
“Yes,” said Savas wearily. He rubbed his hand across his brow. “I’m not sure they’re ready to wade back into things — they’re still radioactive. But we don’t have a choice. Once they defied an entire nation. Maybe now they can help us save it.”
20
Sara Houston, wrapped in a dark coat, trudged across a white field carrying a pile of firewood. The pines behind her circled a small cabin, smoke rising from its chimney, a warm yellow glow spilling through the windows, reflected on the snow crunching under her boots. Clouds of vapor escaped her lips as she marched forward, a serene expression on her face, crisp blue eyes peering outward from a face framed in brown hair.
She climbed onto the porch and dropped the wood into a bin. She ran a gloved finger across the door, tracing the vines that trailed up the wood. The leaves had fallen, and only cordons and trunk remained, hardly more than thin stems. But Houston had planted them only a year ago, and was satisfied with the progress.
Dusting off her boots and coat, she opened the door and stepped into the warmth of the small cabin — a single room with bed, table, and miniature kitchen. A sofa beside the window overlooked the porch, and the fireplace crackled loudly on her right, casting red and orange light across her chiseled features. She lowered her hood, chin-length brown hair dancing in a disheveled mess about her face. She smiled at Francisco Lopez walking toward her with a pair of tumblers holding caramel liquid.
The light showed the breadth of him, muscles filling out a black sweater, short and curled black hair and a dark beard masking much of his face. His features were a sharp contrast to hers, his skin a rich copper, features Aztec. He held a glass toward Houston and smiled back at her. She brought the drink to her lips.