Callsign: King - Blackout

22

Endgame HQ, Pinckney New Hampshire-2027 UTC/ 1527 Local

Lewis Aleman jiggled the empty can of Red Bull energy drink, shaking the last few drops of the beverage into his mouth, and tossed the aluminum container into a wastebasket where it rattled hollowly off several other discards.

“You should probably switch to water,” Deep Blue advised from his position at an adjoining workstation. “Any more of that stuff and you’ll give yourself an aneurism.”

“I’d rather switch to Sam Adams,” Aleman meant it only in jest. He wouldn’t dream of consuming alcohol in the middle of an operation, with an agent in the field. “Why hasn’t he checked in?”

“It could take a while for him to isolate Brown.” Deep Blue’s reply lacked confidence, and Aleman knew his superior wasn’t any more satisfied with the explanation than he was.

“He could be in trouble.”

“King’s a big boy.”

As if to punctuate the discussion, Aleman’s computer monitor blinked awake as did the large plasma screen on the wall. Aleman sat up straight. “His phone is active. He’s checking in.”

To his dismay however, the screen displayed the words:

Login failed. Please enter a valid access code (2 ^ attempts remaining).

“What the hell?” Something was wrong. He glanced at Deep Blue who looked equally concerned.

“King’s phone uses biometric security,” Deep Blue said, the question implicit.

Aleman nodded. The device, his own design, needed only a thumbprint scan-very useful for both preventing unauthorized use and rapid access in the field. There was no password or access code. Then, as lines of machine language began filling the screen, Aleman realized what he was seeing.

“That’s not King’s phone,” he gasped. “We’re being hacked.”

Override accepted.

Impossible. No one in the world could hack through the layers of firewall protection he had built to protect the Chess Team mainframe. Even with the power of a device like the supercomputer used by the NSA’s Echelon program, such an attack would have taken hours…days even.

Aleman was up and moving in a heartbeat, dashing across the room to a console that contained only a single, red button. Without even a moment’s hesitation, he slammed his palm down on the killswitch.

Lines of code continued to flash across the plasma screen. The hacker had anticipated this action and evidently disabled the killswitch remotely. That left only one option…if it wasn’t already too late. He pivoted and headed for the door.

“Aleman,” Deep Blue barked. “What in God’s name is happening?”

“Someone is in our system.”

“Shut it down!”

“I can’t. They’ve locked me out of the hardware.”

“Then pull the goddamn plug.”

“That’s what I’m going to do.” His profound respect for Chess Team’s leader compelled the tech expert to delay a moment longer. “But the only way to do that is to destroy the mainframe. A couple incendiary grenades should do the trick. But we’ll be completely cut off.”

Deep Blue’s eyes widened as the gravity of this revelation hit home. Chess Team’s effectiveness owed no small part to their access to information and instantaneous communication. The fire suppression system would probably prevent the destruction of the entire facility-probably-but immolating the computer mainframe would be a severe blow in the long term. In the short term, it would mean hanging King out to dry. But what choice was there?

“Do it.”