She read through it again. The list was a who’s who of the power brokers in Congress and business.
“Oh, look — there’s the president herself!”
Of course. If you’re going to bring down the US in one blitzkrieg, you ought to have her on the list. That made sense.
But did any of it really make sense? Angel knew her brain was close to oatmeal at this point, but were these really hit lists? What madman would try to off that many high-profile people? What lunatic could ever think something like that was even possible? And to what end?
Chaos. She shook her head. It all seemed to point in that direction. The banking meltdown. The attacks. This list of powerful names. Fawkes had made no demands. He hadn’t tried to leverage the threats into anything. He seemed to be running by a playbook no one had ever seen before. No one could anticipate his moves.
Until now. Her virus was functioning, reporting on the worm’s activities. And her little digital operating room had revealed more and more of the inner workings of the worm. Like any code, it was a series of instructions, fragile logic and loops calling out to be hacked. All she needed was time. But there was precious little of that left.
Angel sat upright and gulped down a wash of cold coffee. She’d bring this directly to Savas in the morning. Those names had serious protection, especially after events of the last two weeks. But was it enough? Could the secret service, the military, private contractors, could any of them anticipate what attacks might come from a man that was as diabolical as he was creative? Could anyone?
Her screen went dark.
“What the hell?”
She clicked on keys and the mouse but there was no response. Wonderful. It was a very bad time for a device failure. She began to reach around for the power switch to forcibly reboot the machine when a line of green text ran across her screen.
“HELLO, ANGEL.”
It was like some old mainframe terminal, letters appearing left to right revealing words, then phrases. Carriage returns advancing text. A knot formed in the pit of her stomach. Someone else had hijacked her computer, and she had no doubts about who that was.
The GUI was gone, but she found that she could type.
“HI, FAWKES.”
She jumped up and disconnected the VMS machine from the internal network. She hoped to God he didn’t have any inkling of what she was doing with it.
More text appeared.
“LIKE THE MATRIX, RIGHT? IT’S BEEN INTERESTING WATCHING YOU WORK. BUT I’VE GOT THINGS TO DO AND YOU’RE CRAMPING MY STYLE.”
A green light appeared on the upper lip of the screen indicating that the camera was on. She ignored it and the video image that appeared on the screen. She raced toward the bank of computers along the wall.
A mocking voice came over the speakers.
“No use, Angel, baby. I’ve turned all the drives to goo already. You don’t think I’d give you the chance to shut them down first, do you?”
She reached the first machines and scanned for the main power connector.
“Thorough, aren’t you? Look at your pretty little ass wiggle! Here, I’ll just put a stop to all this unnecessary work so we can chat a little bit.”
The cluster of computers switched off. Machine-gun like clicks of the system shutting down, the lowering pitch of hundreds of disk drives spinning to a stop — it was like some sonic rush of wind through the room.
“There. That’s better.”
She turned to face the only active monitor left. A masked figure stared back at her, smile frozen in place. She walked up to the terminal and sat down.
“Practical. I like that,” came the distorted voice. “Butch, too. You swing both ways?”
“I’ll be swinging at you.”
He laughed, the sound crackling as the distorted audio maxed out the dynamic range of the electronics.
“Feisty! I should’a known that, though. I knew right off that those bugs crawling up my ass weren’t NSA. Not close to their style. Crude, self-taught. More clever. You weren’t raised in some dot gov hacking camp.”
Angel resisted the urge to look at the VMS machine. Everything might depend on whether he had discovered it. It loomed like a presence behind her, some spirit that waited for her attention that she had to ignore. Until this asshole had his gloat and finished the wipe.
“It’s not over, Fawkes.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Angel Lightfoote, special agent Intel 1. Angel Lightfoote of the scrubbed records.”
She bit her lip and tried to keep her composure.
“What? You thought I wouldn’t do my homework? You got history, girl! Most of it wiped. Somebody wanted you cleaned up and made presentable. Would that be this Savas guy? No? Probably the other one, Kanter, the one blown up a while back?”
“Fuck you,” she hissed.
“Oh, emotions, Angel. Not a girl’s best friend in this game. Don’t get attached. Don’t feel bad for Blown-Up Man. Slows you down. Blinds you.”
“Makes you human. He was a hundred times the man you are.”
“A man who was into other men, huh? Hundreds of times, I bet.”
She flipped him off.
“Well, good old Larry must have gone the extra mile. I was scraping the digital basements. Nothing. But then I found all that stuff on dear old dad.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she ground her teeth.
“That all had to suck, yeah? Tell me, were you really there, in that cage when he bit it? Yeah? I thought so. Fucked you up good, didn’t it? Did dear old dad have to watch what they did to you? Every little thing? I can imagine the next few years. No wonder they had to bleach your record! Is that what they did upstairs in that shiny little head of yours, too?”
The sly face on the mask, the smirk of Guy Fawkes, the tormenting knowledge this sociopath had about her life, it was too much. Angel reached down and picked up a metallic wastebasket from the ground.
“Angel, darling, let’s not fight.”
“It’s not over, you bastard. I promise you. Never make it personal? Well, you just sure as hell did! And I’m coming for you!”
She swung the basket at the monitor. Again and again she pummeled the screen, plastic cracking, pixels shattering. The monitor fell to the ground, a black circle from the impact in the middle of the masked face, blocking it out. Still she smashed it. Over and over on the ground, a fissure opening in the screen, the dark circle expanding like some black hole to swallow the entire image.
All the while, laughter.
Fawkes’ wild laughter spilled like acid from the speakers into her ears. Finally, she turned to the power cord and grabbed it with both hands, yanking it from the socket, releasing a tormented scream.
The sound ceased. What little was still glowing on the screen went black. The room was plunged into near darkness, the glow of the EXIT sign over the side door painting the room dimly in an infernal red.
She wiped sweat and tears from her face and stumbled over to the VMS machine. Her right hand was bloodied. She crouched and touched the surface of the old computer with her left, resting her head against cold metal.
Her head nodded rhythmically as she began to rock back and forth on the ground. She repeated words over and over, her voice much higher, nearly that of a child’s.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She wept.
43
The marine contingency posted around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had swelled beyond anything Elaine York had ever experienced. A former army field officer, one of the few women to be deployed into live hostilities in the first Iraq War, she didn’t shrink from conflict, armed or not. But to see the White House nearly obscured by flak jackets and fatigues was to enter into the kind of nightmare reserved for over-the-top Hollywood blockbusters. That it could become real had never truly entered into her imagination.