Lethal Code

CHAPTER 4

Lana helped Emma through the crowded, noisy hospital lobby, eager to get her daughter home and safely settled so she could head out to Fort Meade as soon as possible.

The child was a little woozy from painkillers, and Lana had to hold her close as they started down a sidewalk that bordered a packed parking lot. She explained that their car was a few blocks away.

The high heat hadn’t hit yet, but the sun still felt uncomfortably warm until they found the shade of maples a few minutes later. With cool air on her damp skin, it seemed surreal to Lana that such horrors could have struck on a bright, beautiful, and seemingly normal summer day.

Emma, on the other hand, appeared only dimly aware of her surroundings.

Just as well, her mother thought, considering what they were about to drive past on the way home.

She helped Emma into the passenger seat and hurried around the car, eager for the A/C but annoyed by the initial blast of broiling air that had been heating up under the hood.

She had to remind Emma to put on her seat belt. The girl nodded but still looked a little out of it. When she fumbled with the device, Lana helped her. Typically, Emma would have minded anything she perceived as meddling, but she leaned back and closed her eyes.

“That’s a good idea. Take a nap.”

But as soon as Lana pulled away, Emma stirred.

Within minutes, smoke heralded the grisly train collision and raging fires. Then, to make matters worse, a troop transport truck turned onto the road right in front of them. Lana had a bad feeling about that, quickly confirmed when the vehicle braked, stopping all traffic behind it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Emma stiffen when a soldier lowered the tailgate, offering a view of body bags stacked several feet high. Men and women loaded nine more victims aboard.

“What happened here?” Emma asked, mostly mouthing the words.

Lana kept it brief and as appropriate as possible, a challenge with a massive train wreck and nationwide devastation. She reminded Emma of what Tanesa and her friends had done to save her mom’s life and the lives of so many others. The girl nodded solemnly as the soldier closed the gate of the troop transport truck and it pulled away.

But Lana quickly realized that it was like finding yourself stuck behind a school bus, because every block or so the truck stopped again. Instead of opening its door to boisterous children, though, the vehicle idled as the soldier lowered the tailgate so rescue workers could load more body bags. There was no way to get around them — and no mystery about the victims in the smaller bags or where they came from: Passenger train cars still burned in the distance.

As the troop transport pulled away again, Lana thought of Congress convening in the midst of this mayhem to consider a declaration of war. She wondered if the country was required by law to identify the enemy before such an act could be passed. It was such a basic question, yet in all of U.S. history, she doubted that it had ever come up. Why would it have? But that question, more than any other, had to be hanging over every discussion at the Capitol today. Congress would never declare war if it had to leave a big blank space where the name of the enemy should be. It would be hard to imagine a more blatant display of powerlessness.

A large part of her mandate at NSA would be trying to determine the aggressor. She’d handled cyberforensics on many other cases for the agency, including the North Korean breach in ’09 and the mostly hapless attempts by Iran to strike back at ongoing U.S. sabotage of its nuclear ambitions.

Much as she loved her daughter, Lana wanted to help her country respond to the crushing toll of the invisible invasion. She’d arranged for a friend to come over and take care of Emma.

The radio came alive with a man’s dulcet tones, not the monotonic computer voice that had delivered the heavy-handed propaganda she had heard earlier. It sounded like NPR had managed to get itself back into broadcast mode in remarkable fashion.

“I once lived in your country. It was in Detroit, not so long ago…”

A foreigner, she figured, though his accent was light. Probably commiserating with America in its time of greatest need. She remembered similar expressions of sympathy after 9/11, and made no effort to search for another station. She found his easy emphasis soothing, and thought he could be narrating a children’s book; but then she realized that he was telling the most terrifying tale she’d ever heard:

“… all your military power cannot protect you now. It will only leave you cold and dead. That is because our cyberwarriors have leveled the playing field of war, and they have done it for the cost of one of your attack helicopters.

“I am not exaggerating, America. Look at what we have done with so little. We have killed more than fifty thousand of you in twenty-four hours, almost as many as all the U.S. soldiers who died in the Vietnam War, and that lasted eleven years. It will be weeks before you can confirm that number, but we are confident of its accuracy because we calculated the impact of every action we took.”

Lana was torn between wanting—needing—to listen, and exposing Emma to such a horrific recounting of those murderous hours, most of which the girl had spent sedated in the hospital. With a quick shake of her head, she reached to turn off the radio, but Emma put out her hand to stop her. Lana relented.

“They were terrible deaths. You do not even know the many ways your fellow Americans died. But we do. Again, that was because we planned so carefully and for so long. Thousands are still dying. This morning and tomorrow morning and for many mornings to come, they will wake up to chemical contamination that will last years.

“We warned your leaders about our plans. They never told you. We announced to them that we would shut you down for a full day…”

“That’s a bald-faced lie!” Lana said to Emma.

The girl didn’t respond, even with a nod. She leaned closer to listen.

“They thought we were bluffing. We even told them exactly when it would happen. They still didn’t tell you. So from now on we will speak directly to you. We now have the means to do so, and if we are blocked, we have other ways to communicate to large numbers of you. We want to talk to you directly because we do not trust your leaders. You should not, either. They are deceitful, and their intransigence is killing you. Not us.

“We have made our requests clear. America must withdraw all its troops and military hardware to its borders and abandon all its foreign bases…”

More of that bullshit, Lana thought.

“… That is all we ask. That is a very simple way to have peace. But your leaders refuse to take even such a small step.

“So this is what we are going to do next. Without further announcement, we will shut you down for good. We won’t say when. It could be tomorrow or the next day, or next week, but it will happen soon. We promise.”

The troop transport truck stopped again. Lana braked. She glanced at Emma, whose eyes were pinned to the soldier lowering the tailgate again. Just as Lana was about to ask Emma if she was okay, her daughter glanced at her. Lana took her hand. Emma didn’t resist. It was the most intimate moment that they’d shared in months. Lana didn’t dare spoil it with words — but someone else did:

“Next time we will attack everything. We will include your banks and passenger jets, which we spared during the twenty-four-hour demonstration that we just completed. The three-plane collision on the runway in Chicago that cost the lives of more than six hundred passengers and crew was not planned by us. That was pilot panic. But next time your planes will drop from the skies. We promise.

“We also left your banks alone, even though we have easy access to your records. Only minutes ago, we drained all the assets from your president’s accounts. We did this to demonstrate how thoroughly we have taken over your country. His net worth is now nothing. That is how much his efforts to protect Americans are worth to you. Next time we will destroy all your banking records.

“Next time, millions of you will die…”

Incredibly, even vowing wholesale killing did not ruffle the man’s voice. But Lana did not want Emma to hear any more of this. She used the on/off switch on the steering wheel, knowing that she could catch the rest of the statement later.

“No!” Emma gasped. She grabbed the dial on the dash and turned the radio back on.

“At your weakest, when you are starving and desperately dependent on world aid organizations for the most basic foodstuffs, we will unleash a final surprise.

“Your leaders have left you entirely defenseless. They told you that you were strong. They told you that you were the most powerful nation on earth. They told you that you were safe. They told you lies.

“You are weak and defeated. For the price of one helicopter, we have brought you to your knees. We are like the Iraqis who used software that cost twenty-six dollars to spy on your Predator drones. Your big guns, nuclear bombs, and powerful armadas belong in museums. Your leaders, past and present, belong in prison for crimes against humanity.

“In purely functional terms, you are no longer a nation.

“Now we will slaughter you.”

The radio went silent, and the digital readout for the station disappeared.

When Lana lifted her eyes higher, she saw that the troop transport truck was fully loaded. The soldier closed the tailgate, and the vehicle pulled away. When it turned at the next corner to enter a broad boulevard, Lana drove straight ahead.

She looked at Emma. Her daughter’s jaw was set. The girl was crying. Lana took her hand once more.

“I’m a victim of terrorists,” Emma croaked. “I’m fourteen years old, and they did this to me.” She pointed to her throat.

Lana nodded. “And a lot worse to others.”

Emma returned her mother’s nod with one of her own, then glanced at the burning train cars. She gripped her mother’s hand hard. Lana felt the child’s fear and grief, and then her anger.

Emma was, after all, Lana Elkins’s daughter.