The Anonymous Signal

MILLER Deposition 1

1

"Mr. Craig, sir."

A man in a chauffeur’s uniform held a door open patiently. The CEO of Goldman Sachs stalked toward the car. Silver-haired, dressed in a tailored business suit with a golden watch that glinted in the sunlight, his thin-framed glasses gave his harsh features a predatory intelligence. The black leather handle of his briefcase contrasted sharply with his golden wedding ring. Two bodyguards left his side and walked to a second car parked immediately behind.

Jack Craig nodded to the chauffeur and stepped into the limo. He dropped his briefcase onto the leather seat, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed as his driver shut the door. The interior was spartan compared to the cars kept by many of his equals at the top echelons of corporate power. But Craig had never taken to the ostentatious bravado that infected so many of his peers. To his mind, there was no surer sign of dominance than the refusal to flaunt it.

The driver entered and started the engine. “World Financial Center, Miles." The driver nodded and pulled the car out into midday Manhattan traffic. Craig engaged the auditory dampening system, sealing him off from the driver. "Yes, Heidi. I understand that there are midterms coming, but this bill cannot come up for a vote. It's got Warren's dirty paw prints all over it and it’s a step in the wrong direction." He paused, listening. "No, it doesn't matter. You won't lose your position on the committee. Hell, given how much you lot have gerrymandered things I doubt I'll be alive the next time you lose the House. We've got you more than covered with the advertising, believe me. Kill this vote. You’ve got nothing to fear." He pulled the phone away from his head to mitigate the shouting on the other end of the line. "For fuck's sake, Heidi! Least of all the press! Not even the Times has anyone off the payroll now."

Craig nodded several times, satisfied. He ended the call and sighed. No one in Congress has any balls except that damn bitch Warren! And they hadn't been able to find a price for her. He doubted there was one, but they still had many years to find out. Especially if they could couple it with some dirty laundry and rattle her cage a little. He swiped across the phone and hit an entry, placing a call.

"Hi, sweetheart!" For the first time that day, Jack Craig smiled. "No, I can't make your show today, I'm sorry. Daddy's got a very important meeting with the President. Tell that to your friends!" He frowned as a whining pitch escaped from the speaker. "I know, I know, honey. I'll bring you something special tonight, from that new toy store they opened, what's it called? The one with the giant bear?" There was a sound on the other end. "Right. That one. A surprise, okay?"

The vehicle pulled out onto FDR Drive and sped south beneath the Hospital for Special Surgery, the sun glinting off the East River on his left. Craig cracked the window open a wedge, gazing toward the looming mass of the Queensboro Bridge and the white sailboats bobbing along the currents.

"Now, Daddy’s got to go. You give him a kiss." A pop sounded on the speaker. "Thanks, honey. Talk to you later." He closed the connection.

Continuing to stare outside his window, Craig felt a weariness descend. Soon, he knew, they would reach their exit and the nasty courting ritual would begin at the hotel. A presidential speech on financial reform, dutiful agreements from the top managers, handshakes, TV moments, and reporters' questions. Too much money had changed hands for there to be any real concern. They owned the committees. The damn politicians had to trot them out every few years, give them a public tongue-lashing, and then it was back to business as usual.

A black spot in the sky in front of them caught his eye. What the hell? He disengaged the sound suppression.

"Miles, can you see that thing in front of us? I thought it was a plane, but it's something else."

While he was accustomed to the low flying aircraft along this route — helicopters heading to the Hamptons and tourist planes lumbering overhead — something was wrong. The craft, whatever it was, seemed way too low. Too small.

"Look at it — it's off the river and over the damned FDR.”

He could see his driver straining upward and nodding. "Some kid’s remote control helicopter or something, Mr. Craig."

Craig shook his head. "Maybe. Damn if it’s not going to hit us."

The object careened straight for them, slowing its approach until it paced the car. He could see it better now: four helicopter-like blades spun equidistant from each other separated like the points on a square. A mass of spidery arms underneath held what looked like a cylinder, the bottom shining like a large metallic disk. Craig felt a strange unease. It's like some giant insect from Mars.

"Miles, take the next exit. There. The sign that says 53rd. Take that exit.”

"But sir, we'll get snarled in the local traffic."

"Just do it!"

Craig wasn't sure what was happening, but his instincts were never wrong. He had lived too long as a predator and master of the games of power. When soldiers around him died in Vietnam, he made it out alive. It was a sixth sense, background processing, something that always alerted him to danger and opportunity. Right now, his alarms were ringing frantically.

The limo darted across lanes toward the exit to a chorus of horns. The small flying thing matched their motion, and continued to close the distance.

Miles grumbled as the wheels hit the exit ramp. "This some new paparazzi thing?"

Then, the impossible! The small craft accelerated and slammed directly onto the roof of the car.

Craig jumped. Shit! "Pull us over, Miles. Now!"

But there wasn't a place to stop the car. Still exiting the off-ramp, the driver accelerated and hurtled toward a curbside ahead.

"Goddamn thing is stuck to the rooftop," yelled Craig, grabbing the handle of his door. He prepared to leap out of the vehicle.

A large explosion rocked the corner of 53rd and Sutton Place. Windows of surrounding buildings shattered, facade stone fractured and fell, and debris from a black limo blasted outward with a fireball that set nearby trees and garbage on fire. Smoke surged upward from the demolished vehicle, only a chassis and partial skeleton remaining. Alarms sounded from cars parked near to the blast radius, and voices screamed over the din. Bodies were strewn motionless around the inferno. Wounded screamed for help.

Above the growing chaos, unseen by anyone below, a frenetic buzzing purred. An apple-sized object hovered hundreds of feet above the fire, a propeller whirling above an octagonal hardware collection ending with a downward-pointing lens. The mechanical insect watched over the scene with a cold stillness. As the first sounds of sirens began to spill toward the carnage, it climbed above the buildings and disappeared into the sky.

2

“So it is only fitting that today, five years after the events in New York and around the world that brought us to the brink of international conflict, we honor a man who was instrumental in bringing us back from that cliff.”

Special agent John Savas squirmed in his metal fold-out chair and prayed that this horrific political pageantry would reach its inevitable and dreaded climax. His salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed similarly to that time five years back, a time when the home-grown terrorists of Mjolnir had aimed a nuclear warhead at the Muslim holy city of Mecca during the great Hajj pilgrimage. But no amount of self-delusion could hide the fact that it was considerably more salty now than it had been. While he still worked to keep himself in shape, at fifty-five, age was beginning to finally have the upper hand, and his increased desk time as the director of Intel 1 hadn’t helped.

But it was more than simply age. As for the nightmares — Savas was too mired in a dying male culture to do much about them. PTSD was what psychologists talked about on cable news, not what men had or admitted to. Only his wife of three years, agent Rebecca Cohen, truly knew the extent of the damage. And that because she shared the trauma as well.

Savas watched the new Attorney General of the United States bring the speech to a point of tension and transition. The former prosecutor looked in his direction and nodded.

“And without further delay, here to receive the Award for Exceptional Heroism, please welcome a true American hero and pride of New York City, John Savas!”

Savas surged to his feet, flashbulbs exploding around him, applause drowning his thoughts like a churning waterfall. He moved as confidently as he could toward the stage, remembering to paste a reserved smile on his face for the evening news. A row of officers from the NYPD and local FBI branches greeted him with handshakes and pats on the back. Nearing the podium, reporters’ cameras pummeling him like strobe lights, and he shook hands with the Attorney General with one hand while grasping the medallion case and plaque in the other.

As they paused for the photographers, Savas instinctively searched among the front row of FBI agents for a diminutive brunette. Her long hair would be secured formally behind her. For events like this she usually wore her blue pantsuit. He would see her radiant smile beaming toward him, his desire to impress her flooding him with energy.

But she wasn’t there. He knew she wouldn’t be there, but looked anyway. She was hundreds of miles away in a secret location only a handful of people knew, checking up on two charges that Savas had personally assumed responsibility for. Deep in a forest, high in the mountains, Rebecca Cohen was at this very moment in the company of the nation’s most wanted fugitives.

Savas shifted his focus back to the Attorney General. He smiled for the cameras.

Exhausted, Savas dropped into his office chair and stared forward blankly. The medal and certificate stared back at him from his desk. He didn’t want them. He didn’t join the FBI after his son’s death on 9/11 for honors, and he hadn’t risked everything, even Rebecca, to stop Mjolnir to get a damned medal. He could think of thousands of victims of terrorism who deserved much more than he did. Who would repay them and their families? He could think of one man, Husaam Jordan, who had stopped a nuclear holocaust by sacrificing his own life. But what good were medals to the dead?

He grasped the award materials and unlocked a key-coded drawer in his desk. He yanked it open and pulled out a thick file folder, dropped the medal into it, and closed the drawer. It clicked loudly as it locked. The label on the file, bold black ink on white, left an afterimage in his mind: The Ragnarök Conspiracy.

Savas loosened his tie and sighed deeply. Now for just five minutes of peace.

“Captain Overlord, sir, transitional paperwork is now one hundred percent completed.”

He startled at a bald women framed by his office door, her arms grasping the metal frame above her head. Savas tried not to gawk at her toned body, hammered and stretched by several years of intense combat training. Gone were the waist-length orange hair and the Amish dresses. Piercings ran up her ears, in her lips and eyebrows. Today she wore fatigues and a green tank revealing rippling muscles on a thin frame — some punk version of Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3, but with orange eyebrows, green eyes, and a more spaced-out glare.

Another casualty. The meek girl he had known was gone, murdered just as surely as many in the ground. In her place stood something far more potent.

“Morning, Angel. Here to ruin my day?”

"It's part of my mission statement," she said.

"You know, agent Lightfoote, I’ve spent every favor I had left to let you parade around here like GI Jane. A little protocol every now and then would be nice."

"Stopping a madman and saving the world buys some unique capital, Fearless Leader." Her face darkened. "Steals other things though."

Savas absorbed her words silently. The losses could never be measured. Talented people, good people who could never be replaced.

"John, it's not your fault they died. Not your fault that you're the best to run Intel 1. Trial by fire," she said, nodding to herself. "They cut the fat. Axed all those 9/11 counter-terrorism toys or put them under you. Larry couldn't have done a better job."

Visions of a house bomb rushed through his mind.

"I don't know about that. He was a genius."

"And things are different now. Larry didn't know shit about cybercrimes. You set up the Operations Center under Manuel, not Larry. After what happened, you knew where crime and national security were headed: digital."

Savas shook his head. "Big picture only, Angel. I still can't figure out my email sometimes."

"Boss Man is supposed to be big picture."

"At least making you head of cybercrimes means someone can call you Captain Overlord or whatever for a change. How is your command and control center coming along?"

Lightfoote pouted. “John, there’s no budget! We cannibalized the Operations Center, but it’s not nearly enough. It’s outdated. We need server farms to handle the loads of searches and to fend off digital attacks. DNS floods are daily. Everyone wants to bring down FBI or get in our systems.”

Savas nodded. “I know, Angel. But times are tight. Budgets are bleeding. You’re going to have to be creative. If the criminals can do it, so can you.” He smiled.

“So Mr. Big Picture is telling me to emulate cybercriminals? You know blowing things up is a lot easier than building them.”

“Angel, don’t twist—” An alert tone rang on his phone. He scanned the message. “It’s Rebecca.”

“Yeah? How’s her special assignment?”

Savas frowned. “It’s very special. Now I need to take this.” Lightfoote beamed at him. “In private.” She grinned more broadly and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Savas sighed and opened the connection. A woman’s face appeared on his smartphone, brown hair and eyes, a smile on her lips. God, it’s good to see her.

“Agent Cohen, it’s been too long.”

“Yes, I’ve been stuck with babysitting duty. In the mountains. Now, who was it that stuck me here?”

“A heartless boss.”

“No doubt. If he hadn’t, Agent Savas, I could be there now. Next to you. Much closer.” Her eyes smoldered.

“Yeah, definitely way too long. I hope this call means you’ll be coming home tonight?”

Her smile was mischievous. “Booked my flight. In by ten.”

“Good. There’s a lot to catch up on.” His face darkened. “And how is Gabriel?”

Cohen looked to her side. “Gone now. Back to the cabin. They’re adapting, but getting restless. They’ve made it a home. But the world has made it a prison.”

There was a long pause as he considered her words. “No one said this would be easy for either of them. It’s wrong, but the setup was too good. A fight we couldn’t win.”

“I think they need to continue to fight, even a guerrilla war.”

“It’s on the agenda. We’ve finally put things back together over here and I’m coordinating with Fred Simon at CIA. We won’t leave them hanging. There’s a lot to be done.”

The landline on his desk buzzed. Now what?

“Hang on, Rebecca. This is from NYPD, on my red line.” He pressed the button to go to speaker. “Hi, Will. Don’t hear from you often.”

“John, we need you and a crime unit up to the East Side, Sutton Place. ASAP.”

“You sound rattled. Boys in blue don’t want this?”

“It’s a car bomb. A big one with some collateral damage.”

Car bomb? “Anyone killed?”

“Several bystanders and those in the car.”

Savas furrowed his brows. “Your crews are about as good as ours. Why me?”

“This one’s different.”

“Might be a challenge to ID those in the car if the fire was bad.”

“That’s just it, John. We know who was in that car. Phone GPS confirms it.”

Savas glanced to his smart phone. Cohen’s face looked tense. He turned back to the speaker on his landline. “Well, who was it?”

“Jack Craig, CEO of Goldman Sachs.”

“Ah, hell. Are you sure?”

“Unless someone else had his phone, it was him and the driver.”

“Dammit. A car bomb?”

“So it looks. That’s why we’re calling you in. It’s getting out already and it will stir all the hornets’ nests. And a car bomb, Goldman CEO? Whatever it is, it’s big. Mafia, some Unabomber type, or maybe one of these new terrorist groups. Too radioactive for us.”

“Understood. Moving on it now. Where are we headed?”

“Sutton Place south, fifty-three. Or just follow the GPS coordinates on all the photos flooding the internet. There’s no hiding this.”

MILLER Deposition 2

3

Savas and Cohen stepped out of the Crown Victoria in front of 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan. A towering glass skyscraper rose into the sky before them. Known as the Goldman Sachs Tower, the new forty-four story structure gleamed in the morning sun as it looked down from the northernmost end of Battery Park toward the World Financial Center. Savas could almost feel the power radiating from the monolith.

He closed the door and stared upward. "No logo. Not a letter or word on it. World's most influential financial institution, and it's basically anonymous."

Cohen stepped beside him. "It is kind of eerie, that's for sure. But I'll take it over yesterday's carnage, thank you. Forensics was picking things up with tweezers. I've had enough bombings for one lifetime."

"Hits too close to home." He turned to look behind them. "Look at those playing fields. Still brand new. This whole area was rubble and soot."

Cohen looped her hand under his arm. "It's hard to take, I know."

"Thanos died a few blocks from here. A lot of people did. Sometimes I think they should have left it like that. Broken. Raw." Kids squealed as they kicked a soccer ball across the field. "World moves on, and somehow we're all supposed to be okay with that."

"John, here they come."

Representatives from the bank rushed out to greet them. Two men and a woman, they wore appropriately moderate smiles for an occasion that consisted of their CEO having been blown up the day before, ushering them politely inside. Savas paused momentarily as they entered the lobby.

“That’s impressive.”

It was spectacularly cavernous, the ceiling higher than an opera house, works of modern art draped thirty feet in the air above them. It reminded him of standing in some of the newer airport terminals, only that everything was fashioned at several notches above the quality required for mass transportation hubs.

The woman nodded. “We’re very proud of our new building and contributions to the revitalized financial center,” she began, the delivery so perfect it seemed long rehearsed. “There are twenty-one million square feet and six trading floors, each larger than a football field. It’s a very environmentally friendly building with floor ventilation, cooled by a hundred storage tanks containing nearly two million pounds of ice. Views of the Hudson River and New York Harbor are available for our most senior members.”

“Like CEO Craig,” said Savas.

The woman’s faced paled. “Yes. Please, follow me.”

The building spanned two city blocks, and to Savas it felt like the walk to the elevator took them across the length of it. No one followed them inside, and the three Goldman employees were silent as the elevator sped upwards and stopped on the eleventh floor. Stepping out, they found themselves in a second, less gargantuan lobby, which required yet another trek to a second bank of elevators. Windows covered the walls and portions of the ceiling, bathing their path in light.

They passed the second bank of elevators and stopped in front of a doorway. The woman swiped a card over a reader and then keyed in a passcode. The door opened, revealing a short corridor to a smaller, lone elevator door.

“For our top executives,” she began as the elevator opened, “we have implemented enhanced privacy and security protocols. This elevator leads to the offices of the CEO and other top Goldman Sachs staff.” Her eyes darted away. “Unfortunately, we do not control the security outside of Goldman.”

Savas could see pain in the woman’s face. “You seem to have known Jack Craig well, Ms.?”

“Greenwald. Susan Greenwald. Yes, I was his personal administrator. His right-hand woman, you might say. Geoffrey and Kendall here are my assistants.” She nodded toward the two men. “As we discussed on the phone, you will be meeting with our interim CEO Donald Freiheit.”

The elevator doors opened. Before them an expansive conference room ran across the floor, centered on an enormous table of cherry wood. At the end of the table nearest them rose a man who ambled over in their direction.

Susan Greenwald reached over and tugged on Savas’ jacket, whispering to him. “I don’t care what you hear about us in the press, but Jack was a good man. He’s done more for this country, for this city than anyone I know. Find his killer.” With that she turned on her sharp heels and entered the elevator, the doors closing quickly as she vanished from view.

“Agents Savas and Cohen,” came the voice of Donald Freiheit. “Two names that need no introduction.”

Freiheit shook their hands, an expression of genuine interest on his face. He was a short man, bordering on stout, with thick glasses and a mass of gray and black curls that gave him more the look of an elder artist at a poetry slam than a new CEO. He led them to the table and poured water for each, sitting next to them like a professor before two students at office hours.

“We’ve had several rounds with the NYPD and FBI since yesterday. All of Jack's scheduling data, emails, phone logs — they're now in your hands one way or the other, either from us or your national databases. I’m not sure what else I can tell you, but I'm honored by the visit.”

Savas nodded to Cohen and she got immediately to the point, removing several photographs from her briefcase and placing them before Freiheit. “Surveillance footage from a handful of operating CCTV cameras identified some very unusual elements in the bombing.”

Freiheit glanced at the images. They were grainy, the black limo blurred in the still shot, even the street signs hard to read at the resolution afforded. However, his eyes immediately gravitated to the anomalies she referred to.

“What is this black thing on the top of the car?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Freiheit,” she said. “Look at this image, taken from another camera closer to the exit ramp from FDR Drive.”

“It looks like some giant bird or something. What’s it doing?”

Cohen shook her head. “We don’t know, and we were hoping that you might could shed some light on it.”

The CEO adjusted his glasses. “Me? How?”

Savas bent forward motioning between the images. “Between the time when the vehicle containing Mr. Craig took the exit ramp and the time the bomb exploded, something descended onto the roof of the car. Our analysts are still conferring with the military, but our best hypothesis is that we’re looking at some sort of remotely piloted aircraft, an unmanned aerial vehicle that was tracking the CEO’s position and then moved to intercept the car immediately before the explosion.”

“Unmanned aerial vehicle?” Freiheit seemed stunned. “You mean a drone?”

“Yes,” said Cohen, “a drone.”

“Doesn’t look like a drone.”

“Not like the military aircraft shown on TV,” said Cohen, “but there are hundreds of other military and civilian models of more designs than you could imagine out there. We can’t get enough information from these low quality images to positively ID the model, or even establish that it is a drone, but it’s our best working model right now.”

Savas focused intently on the new CEO. “Is there any way this could have been Goldman surveillance? Your Ms. Greenwald was extremely protective of Mr. Craig. Does your company use drones to monitor or keep tabs on Goldman execs?”

Freiheit shook his head vigorously. “Absolutely not. I’ve never even heard it floated as an idea. I’m not sure it would even be legal.”

“It wouldn’t,” said Savas. “Not yet anyway, but the laws on domestic drone use are in dramatic flux. Some honest mistakes could have been made.”

“Not by us, I can assure you. We’ve never had such a security effort and currently have no plans for one. I find these images very disturbing.”

“So do we, Mr. Freiheit. But before we went on any wild-drone chases, the obvious step would be to see if Goldman was in the business. The topic is sensitive, and, I hope I don’t need to emphasize, confidential. So we did need your time today.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

Cohen placed the images back in a folder. “A final item. FBI analysis of phone logs indicates that Mr. Craig made a series of calls to Washington the morning he died. The numbers were resolved to those used by Heidi Moss, the Utah Senator. Since these calls were only minutes before he died, they are of special interest to us. Do you know his relationship with the Senator?”

Freiheit licked his lips quickly and shook his head. “No. I mean, Goldman has many supporters, as well as enemies, on Capitol Hill. It’s not unusual for some of our most important lobbying efforts to come straight from the top, as it were. Business, you understand?” He smiled wanly. “Beyond that, I really have no idea what those conversations might be about.”

The interim CEO walked the agents to the elevator. “Susan will meet you on the Sky Lobby — eleventh floor lobby. You should take some time there if you can. It’s quite a view.” Freiheit smiled as the doors closed.

Cohen smirked as the elevator descended. “Bad actor.”

“Yeah, he’s lying,” said Savas. “Not about the drones — I think he was honest there. But there's something going on with the senator.”

She began typing into her phone. “Next shuttle to DC?”

“Think so. Have the team give Moss the heads up that we’ll need to speak with her today.”

“You going to run it through the Washington branch?”

Savas grimaced. “I should. But that will delay everything. I’m so used to the autonomy at Intel 1. I can’t stand the bureaucratic dances, anymore. It’s likely a dead end, so no harm, no foul. Right?”

“Okay,” said Cohen raising her eyebrows. “You know best.”

Savas frowned at her.

MILLER Deposition 3

4

Dusk had arrived in Washington. Street lamps engaged, drivers switched their headlights on, and the buildings took on a checkerboard pattern of light and dark. The large window before the FBI agents looked down to the busy streets, the view blocked by the form of an older woman before them.

“This is highly irregular and very short notice, but I understand the circumstances are unusual,” said Senator Moss.

Savas and Cohen had rushed to meet with the congresswoman as fast as possible, but extracting themselves from New York and navigating the D.C. rush-hour traffic had put them in much later than they would have preferred. They were lucky to catch Moss before she left for the day. High-level phone calls had helped constrain the situation — when the CEO of Goldman Sachs is blown up in Manhattan, normal etiquette is suspended.

“Indeed they are, Senator,” said Savas as they took seats around her desk. Moss was nearing sixty, yet still carried the grace and self-assured mannerisms of the opera singer she had been a lifetime ago. Cohen had quickly filled out her resume for them on the way over. A fourth term Republican from Utah, she had been a vocal critic of internet freedoms because of cyber-threats to national security, and had worked to enact laws to bring the wild online world under increasing surveillance and regulation. As chair of the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Innovation, she now exercised enormous influence on national telecommunications.

Cohen leaned forward toward the senator. “Only minutes before he was killed, Goldman Sachs CEO Jack Craig made several phone calls to your office number, Senator. Can you tell us what these calls were about?”

“Those are privileged communications. Unless we want to get very messy with the lawyers, I can’t divulge what was discussed. However, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Issues of business and telecom, with Mr. Craig arguing for certain approaches that he felt would be beneficial to the country and his business.”

She smiled. For far too long. Savas picked up the thread.

“Could it perhaps have something to do with the highly unusual series of votes that have come from you the last month, Senator?” Moss’ smiled faltered. “My colleague here has tallied not only a surprising reversal of several positions on the congressional floor, but also an increasing number of articles in the press trying to figure out just what exactly is going on.”

“I’m not sure what you are talking about. The press is always looking for a critical angle, you know that. My positions have always been clear. Certainly, different pieces of legislation can embody my positions to different degrees of satisfaction, and voting for or against a bill is often complicated by the sausage-like production methods of these laws, where the good and bad can be mixed together.”

Cohen didn’t mask her annoyance. “I’m sure that’s true. But there are bills that hardly changed where your votes have flipped. For example, Murdock-Holsen. A bill that would have denied the NSA certain access to internet communications. You initially opposed that bill, gave speeches against it, opposing the very nature of limited access by our surveillance branches.” Cohen read from her tablet. “To quote from your speech, you called it ‘A dangerous bill that would tie the hands of our law enforcement agencies and aid the work of criminals and terrorists.’ Yet three weeks ago you stopped speaking against it and have voted twice to move the bill through committee to a vote.”

“I believe that the concerns I had were adequately addressed in the revised version.”

Savas could see the woman’s lip trembling, the tightness in her hand grasping the side of her desk. Cohen seemed to notice as well. This topic had put Senator Moss under tremendous stress, and his instincts told him she was lying to them. What are you so afraid of, Senator Moss?

“Has the topic of domestic drones ever been part of your conversations with Goldman Sachs?” asked Cohen.

The terrified look intensified, and the senator glanced quickly toward photo frames on her desk. She seemed to half-whisper the next words. “No. Never. Why do you ask?” The false smile almost seemed macabre, now.

Cohen ignored her question. “You are on the record as supporting their use.”

“Yes,” she said distractedly, seeming not to see the FBI agents anymore and gazing behind them. “They are needed for homeland security. To make us safe. That’s what I thought.”

Savas furrowed his brows. “What you thought?”

She blinked quickly and regained focus. “What I think, yes, agent Savas. Law enforcement can make great use of drones to pursue criminals when vehicle chases would be impossible or dangerous, take surveillance without endangering officers, many things.”

“And what of arming them?”

She cocked her head to the side. “That has been discussed in closed-door sessions, but I don’t see that as necessary or likely in the near future.”

Savas sensed her resolve returning and saw that they were losing the advantage. He spoke on a hunch. “Are those your daughters?”

Instantly, an anxiety seemed to spread over her features. She smiled stiffly. “Why, yes, yes. Margaret and Sophia. Twins. They’re in college now, opposite sides of the country.” Her fingers curled inward toward her palm, the nails digging slightly into the wood. "Identical twins and so different. Isn't that strange?"

“How are they doing?” he continued.

“Well!” she nearly shouted. Cohen leaned backward, and the senator adjusted her tone instantly. “Sophia’s pre-med, 4.0. Margaret’s still finding her way but she’s doing great. Absolutely great.” That smile again.

“Well, try to appreciate every minute, senator,” said Savas earnestly. “I can tell you, you never know what you have until it’s gone.”

He faced blanched. “Yes. You know all too well, agent Savas. I will. I promise you.”

They stepped out of the Russell Senate Office Building into the brisk October evening, a black town car before them, waiting by the curb. Savas pulled his collar up and turned to Cohen.

“Well, what do you make of that?”

She shook her head, a cool breeze tossing brown hair about her face. “She’s been compromised, John. Did you see the terror in her eyes? You pushed a very bad button with her kids.”

“But who? And what? And why with fear? Don’t the players just buy their way to influence these days? Corporations are people, all that?”

She nodded. “This doesn’t make sense, and it feels very dark. Moss is a believer, John. You can see it all over her record. I’m not saying she’s above lobbying or influence, but nothing in her twenty years in the Senate compares with what’s happened the last few weeks. She’s either had a mental breakdown, a stroke or something, or what we saw means somebody has her in a very bad vice.”

“Her kids?”

“We should look into them. Check on their whereabouts, status. Start tonight with social media, get some shoes on the ground at their schools.”

“If they were snatched, we’d know.”

“True. But maybe something will come out of it if there has been some kind of threat.”

“Political? Dirty laundry?”

“Always in play with these folks.”

They arrived at the vehicle, and Savas opened the back door for Cohen. They got in and he slammed it shut distractedly.

“Reagan National,” he told the driver. He whispered to Cohen. “A CEO car bombed. A US senator looking blackmailed and changing her votes. What’s going on?”

She stared out the window. “Nothing good, that's for sure.”

5

Halfway around the world, off the tip of the Malay Peninsula, the city-state of Singapore was an engine churning into morning overdrive. Businesses hummed, planes were launched around the world, financial transactions from hundreds of nations sped through the computer systems of their exchanges.

In a gleaming new building of blue and gray, on a wide and open floor lit by a bank of windows facing toward the front of the structure, rows of digital detectives sat in front of their computers. Near the middle of the floor, a short, gray-haired man of European descent hunched arthritically beside the desk of a young Asian woman. He wore a stunned expression as he stared at her screen.

“Are you sure about this?”

Yi Ling nodded to her superior. The thin fingers of her right hand drummed nervously on her keyboard. She reflexively tugged at her chest-length hair with her left. She could not afford to be wrong about this.

It was only two months ago that she had landed this job at the newly opened INTERPOL Digital Crime Centre in Singapore. The DCC was a dream job, letting her use her computer skills in her home country under the auspices of one of the largest and most respected law enforcement agencies in the world. Her friends were all impressed. It paid very well. But now, everything was threatened by the discoveries she had made over the last two days. It had taken her all of yesterday to convince herself that should risk raising the issue with her superiors.

“Yes, Mr. Rosenfeld,” her perfect English hardly accented by her native Mandarin. “It’s always on the derivative bets. All off-market.”

The older man coughed and adjusted his glasses. “Nothing from the exchanges?”

“No,” she said, wetting her lips with her tongue. “See these modifications to the contracts? They occur after the parties have established the contract terms but before the instrument is finalized.”

Rosenfeld nodded. “That’s incredible. How are they not noticing the modifications?”

“I don’t know, sir, except that few check the source code anymore. Everything is automated these days, everything comes out of code. Maybe that’s why nothing was tried on the exchanges since there’d be too many eyes on the trades. There’s a code injection into the contract scripts here.” She indicated a row of text on one side of the display. “The siphoning is minimal and scaled to the return on the instrument. They’d have to dig through the layers of fees and clauses to root it out.”

“God damned penny shaving. But these are pretty big pennies. How on earth are these modifications getting in there?”

“I’m not sure, but look at this. The losses don’t show except for hundredths of a second because an equal amount of money comes into the account.”

“From where?”

“It’s random. Shell-accounts, investment banks, everywhere. And that’s what happens in every instance. There is a loss and nearly immediate plug of the deficit.” She didn’t want to say more and hoped Rosenfeld would reach the conclusion she had.

“I’ll be damned. It’s some sort of light-speed Ponzi-scheme.”

Yes. “I think so, sir. And I think it works because of the epic nature of the worm infection. There are so many compromised accounts, tens of thousands, that the code left on the systems can continuously shuffle money, even in these increased amounts, so that for no length of time does any one account report much of a loss. It’s fantastically complicated, but there is so much unregulated and unmonitored in these dark markets. I think that explains how it’s gotten away with this for so long and with so much money involved.”

“Just how bad is the spread?”

“I don’t know for sure, but unprecedented. I couldn’t believe how systematic it is. I’ve been using the NSA share-data on the known financial OTC trading, and I haven’t found any derivative contracts of significance in the last six months that haven’t been modified. It’s got to total in the trillions.”

“Incredible.”

“And as long as the contract is viable, it’s funneling the money. Untraceable. The money trail disappears in one offshore account after another.”

“Like some damn invisible parasite. Thank God we have access to the OTC bids. We’d never have known. Chalk up a success story to the NSA octopus.”

The woman swallowed. “Well, that may be part of the problem, sir.”

The old man looked at her face and pulled a chair over. He sighed, sitting down. “I’m not going to like this, am I? Go on.”

“I’m not sure yet, but there seems to be an association with the NSA data hacks and the timing of the code penetration.” God, she hoped she wasn’t making a fool of herself. She was prodding a dragon. She knew that.

Rosenfeld removed his glasses. “Wait. You mean that whoever is behind this might be piggy-backing on the NSA worms and backdoors?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Oy vey.” He put a hand to his head. “This is going to explode.”

Yi Ling felt her stomach churn.

After a silent moment, the old man replaced his glasses and patted her on the back. “This is incredible work. I’m going straight to Richards with this, getting this off my plate as fast as possible. We’ll see how the bigwigs are going to handle it. I need you to prepare a presentation. I’m going to put you as point. This is going to bring in all the agencies and spooks. Governments are going to freak out, especially the US. We’re looking at a game-changer here.”

The slight Asian woman trembled with excitement. “Yes, sir. Immediately.”

The old man stared grimly forward. “You might just have uncovered the biggest financial cybercrime in history.”

6

“Jen, what the hell is your son doing at my computer?”

The black hair of a young boy popped up from behind a monitor, his eyes wide behind oversized glasses. Several books were positioned around him on the desk, and his hand clutched a computer mouse in an iron grip.

A red faced man stood in the doorway to the home office, his teeth bared, high-end casual clothing draping an athletic form. A woman rushed past him into the room, placing herself between the boy and the man, hands up as if to ward off a blow.

“Now, Richard, he just wanted to try some programming. It’s for his class presentation.” She smiled wildly. “His will be so much better than all the other children’s! He’s a genius, you know!”

“A genius. Am I hearing this right?” He stepped into the room deliberately. The woman’s smile faded. “Your second grade brat is fucking up my workstation for a goddamned school project? I have trades on that machine, client information, our taxes! Important documents! Where do you think all this comes from, lady?” He gestured dramatically around the room. “Your nice clothes? Your car? That bitch therapist? Or those ritzy lunches you have with your girlfriends?”

Her shoulders slumped and she backed away from him. ‘Richard, it’s only—”

“How many times have we talked about this? I don’t know what his father let him get away with, but the little prince has got to learn the rules around here! My desk and my things are off limits! They're not toys! Do you understand that, kid?”

“He is doing serious work, Richard!” The wild smile returned. “See? He wants to be like you. He’s got your books out and he’s learning to write those programs like you do! I’m so proud of him!”

“So you’re defending him in spite of what I just said?”

“Yes?” she said, her face falling.

Richard lurched forward, left arm whipping across his body to backhand Jenny across the face. Her head snapped back with a crunch, and she dropped to the ground, catching herself on her palms.

“Mom!” The boy leapt up from the chair, then froze. Without turning his face away from his mother, his wide eyes darted toward the broad shape in the middle of the room. He began to shake.

Richard stared down at the crumpled form of the woman, drops of blood falling to the floor from the back of her hand, the overturned palm already filled like a bowl with a thick, crimson fluid. The anger drained from his face.

“Fuck!” he said, turning to the boy. “This is your fault, you know, you little brat. I don’t want to see you touching anything of mine again without my permission, or I’ll beat the shit out of you, too.” He spun and stormed out of the room. “I won’t be back till late. Try to clean that mess up.”

There was a jangle of keys and then a door slam. The house fell silent.

“Mom,” said the boy again, moving away from the desk. His hands reached out hesitantly toward her.

“No, no!” she said loudly, keeping her face angled away from him, her voice distorted, mouth full. “It’s okay, pooh-bear. Don’t come closer. Mommy’s okay.”

“Mom, your nose—”

The woman tried to stand, swayed and steadied herself on a chair nearby. Her face and shirt were stained red, her nose bent gruesomely.

“Can’t get blood on his chairs,” she mumbled, stumbling sideways with her hands cupped under her face. She reached the bathroom just off the office, and closed the door behind her. The boy heard her retching.

For several moments he didn’t move. Just faced the door of the bathroom, breathing labored, body shaking. He closed his eyes. Water ran behind the door and the sounds of muffled sobs leaked into the office space. His breathing slowed.

Exhaling, he opened his eyes. His upper lip twitched. He turned to the computer and sat down in the chair, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Richard was too big. He knew that. He couldn’t punch him the way Richard had hit his mother, not unless he wanted a worse beating. He couldn’t hurt him that way. But if he didn’t do something, he would hate himself forever. He knew that. He couldn't just let him get away with it. His mind raced.

His stepfather didn’t like anyone to use his things. His stepfather’s computer was important. The things on the computer were serious work. Maybe it was true, maybe he didn’t know how to code like a grown up yet. He wasn’t sure. No one would teach him at school and his programs didn’t always work like he wanted. He knew he needed to learn more.

But he could delete files. He knew how to do that.

He could delete ALL his stepfather’s files.

He opened a terminal window and began typing.

COHEN Deposition 1

7

Citigroup CEO Mitchell O'Kelly glared across his desk at his chief of security. He couldn’t believe they were wasting his time on this, but the directors had insisted and there was one thing even the CEO couldn’t ignore, and that was the Board.

He had known Jack Craig personally, of course. They’d been sparring frenemies for their entire careers across a slew of different corporate locations. O'Kelly had always found Craig an uptight puritan who couldn’t help but judge everyone else around him. But he had respected Jack. The man was a fucking genius with the nose of a shark, and you were a fool to bet against him unless you were holding one hell of a hand.

What had happened last week was indeed disturbing. Certainly O'Kelly was worried for his own safety, but the odds that this was something corporate CEOs in general were going to have to be concerned about were very low. He still didn’t have a working model for who could have committed such an act — nor had law enforcement as far as he could tell — but it was most likely related to specifics of Craig’s business dealings, his personal life, or a random nut job like John Hinckley or Mark Chapman. Sure, beef up the security, scramble the schedules, and then get on with business.

If only.

“Mr. O'Kelly, we have contacted a private security firm that was active in Iraq for VIPs.”

“Active in Iraq?” This was getting ridiculous!

“Yes, sir. They have a lot of experience dealing with threats of violence against vulnerable and important targets. They are mostly former military, highly trained, experienced with this sort of thing.”

“This is Manhattan, gentlemen, not Kabul or Baghdad. We’re not going to be driving around in bombproof Humvees. Let’s get a grip.”

“Sir, we’ve been personally contacted by the Chairman. He supports our recommendations. With threats of this nature — bombings, IEDs, whatever — we need people who have clocked hours with this sort of thing. The landscape changes.”

Holy shit. “What does this mean? Armored vehicles? SWAT escorts? Can I go to my son’s soccer games without a parent shakedown?”

The two security men glanced at each other anxiously. The older man spoke. “We don’t know yet what they will recommend, but we have scheduled a meeting with them tomorrow, first thing in the morning. They’re eager to find work in the States, sir.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“We’ll get recommendations and then brief you and schedule a second meeting all together to iron out a course of action.”

Ah, to hell with it. “Fine. Do what you need to do. Now, out. This nonsense has taken enough of my time today.”

The two men excused themselves with apologies and quickly exited the CEO’s office. O'Kelly swiveled his chair away from the closing door and glared up at the dim ceiling of the executive suite. The second floor design hadn’t been renovated for years and still possessed the wood and metal, mirrors and leather sensibility of a previous era of financial power. He found the stately atmosphere helped clear his mind, focus his thoughts on the tasks at hand.

His cell phone rang. He scanned the caller ID.

Franklin?

His son had grown up with a special rule in the house: Dad isn’t to be bothered during the work day unless it’s an emergency. In sixteen years he had never called. Not once. Not during his parents divorce. Not even when he had smashed his first BMW on the Long Island Expressway. Why was he calling now?

“Franklin, what’s going on?”

A harsh voice cut through the speaker. “We have your son, O'Kelly. Don’t do anything rash, anything stupid, or we will not hesitate to kill him.”

O'Kelly jerked upward and stood at attention, his gaze wild. “Who is this?”

“You know what we did to your partner in crime, Jack Craig. We blew him to bits. His bones litter the streets of this city, one of many he robbed for so many years. We will do much worse to your brat if you do not follow our instructions to the letter.”

His pulse racing, sweat building on his brow, O'Kelly paced the plush floors of the executive suite in panic. “How do I know—”

“Dad?”

It was Franklin. O'Kelly closed his eyes.

“Dad, God, please. They’re not kidding.” He seemed to be choking up. “They killed Coach Larsen. Shot him. Dead! It’s my fault, Dad! He was just trying to—”

Abruptly his son’s voice was cut off.

“Convincing enough for you?”

“Yes,” he whispered, his mind racing for solutions. He walked to his desk and the red panic button.

“You have two choices, O'Kelly. The first is that you kill you son by calling the cops, the Feds, your new military men,” said the harsh voice.

“How do you know—”

“Or, you act normally, alert no one, and do exactly what we say. You have no guarantees from us except that we will kill him. I think you know we are willing. But we don’t give a damn about your son. Only about you.”

A voice cried from the background.

“Dad! No, don’t—”

O'Kelly heard a slap, then silence.

“We are more than willing to let your spawn escape to gain increased cooperation from you. Because we have a special use for you. And you will be helpful to us because you know that your son will never be safe.”

“What do you want?”

“There will be no ransom. There will be no stalling. There is a black SUV waiting below on Park Avenue. If you are not in that vehicle in five minutes, your son dies. You are to come down from your second floor perch. Do not bring your armed muscle.”

“They will follow me once they see I’m leaving.”

“Make sure you get outside. Then whatever happens, do not pause, do not stop, do not seek to do anything except find your way to that vehicle. Do you understand?”

Thoughts and scenarios flew threw his mind, options and risks and assessments that could not be made with any confidence without data, without time.

“This is not something the both of you are going to get out of, O'Kelly. Make your choice: your life or your son’s. In four minutes, a decision will be made one way or the other.”

The connection was broken.

Mitchell O'Kelly did not hesitate. He had been presented with an impossible choice, and he didn’t need any more deliberation to make his decision.

Outwardly calm, he walked quickly out of his office and down the hall. Luckily the ground floor was only two flights down, otherwise there would be no chance to escape without being closely followed. Completely contrary to habit, he entered the stairway to the surprised expressions of the secretaries and leapt down the steps in painful bounds. His aging frame wasn’t up to this sort of shock, but it seemed likely he would soon have more serious concerns.

The CEO of Citigroup burst out from the lobby stairwell and walked like a man possessed toward the main entrance. He was not spotted until he had crossed nearly two-thirds of the distance. Shouts came from the voices of his security team, and his peripheral vision sensed several shapes converging from behind. They would reach him in seconds.

He was through the doorway, the sunlight of the clear October day blinding him momentarily, his eyes squinting desperately to find the black SUV.

There. Blackened windows hid the occupants. O'Kelly surrendered all pretense of casualness and sprinted toward the truck.

“Mr. O'Kelly!”

His bodyguards cried behind him. The men were under the strictest orders. They would have him in their arms within seconds for this dangerous breech of protocol, especially after recent events. The black vehicle was still fifty yards away. He’d never make it.

Hornets buzzed past his head. There were screams. He heard bodies fall heavily to the ground. He didn’t look back. He ran harder, the backdoor of the SUV opening, arms grabbing his, pulling him in violently. The vehicle lurched forward with screeching tires and he was thrown backward into a seat.

But he had seen. In a split second upon entering the truck and turning his head toward the plaza in front of the building, it was all too clear.

The fiends had shot and killed the men that had been charged to protect him. Their bodies were strewn across the cement and steps, people racing in panic away from the scene.

O'Kelly closed his eyes. God only knew what they were going to do to him.

8

Rebecca Cohen sat in the back of the FBI vehicle, nearly sick from the lurching dash through traffic. Staring at the choppy video feed on her phone was surely not helping the situation. They should have just called. But they needed to see each other.

“On the tarmac, Rebecca,” said a pixelated Savas, his phrases peppered with staccato pauses. “This is getting a bit insane.”

They had not been back a day before the next crisis had pulled them apart again. This time it was sudden disappearances of important people both in New York and in Washington. Congressman, aides, more CEOs, workers at the Federal Reserve Board. Whatever theories they had before were jettisoned. Whatever was going on, it was highly coordinated and professionally implemented.

“Feels like we’re back under siege from Mjolnir,” she said to the frozen face of Savas. “John?”

There was a pause, and then the connection reestablished. “Lost most of that except for Thor’s Hammer. But I think I know what you were saying.”

They had split their team at Intel 1. Savas had taken ex-Marine Frank Miller with him to DC. They would soon be on their way to the Capitol. Cohen had called another agent on their team, JP Rideout, and they were going to meet at the headquarters of Citigroup. The other cases were reported disappearances, no shows and quiet vanishings. But not at Citi. There were witnesses. There were bodies. There had been a failed pursuit by NYPD.

The sedan jerked to a stop and Cohen dropped the phone, the connection with Savas lost. She quickly texted him that she had arrived and would talk to him later. He would soon be busy as well.

The driver opened the door for her and she stepped out quickly, heading for the crowd of police and decorations of yellow tape in front of the building. The glass and steel structure towered above her. Horns blared like a strong wind from the snarled traffic of rubberneckers. Here to see the bloodbath. She counted four bodies. Two were near the exits, and two had moved toward Park Avenue before they were cut down. A black NYPD detective met her.

“Agent Cohen?” he asked. “I’m Tyrell Sacker. You’re it for the Feds?”

“No, we have a crime group en route and another special agent from my division.”

“Which is?”

“Intel 1.”

The cops eyes opened wider. “Well, we need the best. Reports are coming in from all over the city. The radio’s total chaos.”

“I know. Look, we’re going to go through this thoroughly, but can you tell me what you’ve put together? Is there enough for a summary?”

Sacker nodded. “A crowd of witnesses, and security cams to go back to and verify. But it still doesn’t make sense, even if the testimony agrees so far. Their CEO literally comes sprinting out of the building, ignoring the calls of his security team, running straight for a van or SUV. He was scheduled for meetings all day and was already late for one in the building. It’s like he went nuts. His team bolted after him, and, well, you can see what happened to them.”

“Shots came from the vehicle?”

“Doesn’t seem so. None of the witness reported seeing anything in the truck but some dark figures pulling O’Kelly inside. The shots were professional, agent Cohen,” Sacker said, looking back toward the bodies. “No evidence of misses. I mean, how often does that happen? I’d bet there were gunman positioned and waiting.”

“We’ll have our ballistics teams here soon, and we’ll need to get all the CCTV footage from all security cameras in the area.”

“On that. I’m point for this scene, so you’ll be talking to me.”

Cohen smiled. She liked Sacker immediately. He was gritty yet polite, sharp with an underlying empathic feel. She hoped that she could trust him.

“All right, we’ll work out the coordination of this investigation soon. For now, take me up to the crime scene. I want to get a look at the victims.”

The Capitol Police officers glared at the hulking form of Frank Miller with suspicion. Savas stood with him before the grand entrance of the Russell Senate Office Building. The stately marble, lofted steps, and the presence of twenty to thirty uniformed officers in combat gear sporting military-grade automatic weapons made an undeniable impression. He was as polite as possible.

“Yes, special agents Savas and Miller. These are our IDs. We’re en route from New York because of an apparent coordinated abduction connected to those here.”

A nervous officer stood several steps above them. “We have explicit instructions not to allow anyone except approved law enforcement officers into the building.”

“We are approved law enforcement officers!” growled Miller. “We’re here by request of the agency acting on orders from the fucking president! The little headsets you're wearing with mics — try them out and contact your damn superiors.”

Several weapons were pointed their way.

Miller was losing his temper, as he tended to do. A decorated former soldier, he had been shot twice saving Savas’ life in the line of duty as an FBI agent. He didn’t suffer fools well, and there wasn’t much that scared the man. Which is what frightened Savas.

“Okay, Frank, let’s just back off and wait for the red tape to unspool. There’s a lot of tension right now. We’re all on the same side.”

They returned to their car and waited out the next half hour. Evening began to fall, and the streets were a ghost town. The Capitol had been completely locked down.

The wall of police opened and a figure in a suit shuffled down the steps. Savas immediately recognized him — Tim Cox, Assistant Director in Charge, a lanky, bespectacled man and former Secret Service agent. The local branch had brought in the big guns on this scene. People were shook up.

“Agent Savas,” said Cox extending his hand with a surprisingly strong grip. “Your reputation precedes you of course, but you’re a long way from home.”

“Things are moving very fast, sir, and there hasn’t been time to coordinate investigations. But the murder of Goldman CEO Jack Craig may be tied in some fashion to Senator Heidi Moss.”

The Assistant Director squinted. “How so?”

“His last phone calls, minutes before his death, were to her. We paid her a visit and while nothing concrete came up, it was clear that she was under some sort of threat of some kind.”

“And you did not bring this to the attention of my office, because?”

Great. Miller glanced at him and Savas tried hard to ignore it. “It was a hunch, sir. And if not for the kidnappings of other CEOs and members of Congress today, it would have remained a completely unsubstantiated hunch. We can’t bother you with every possible idea.”

“Still, Savas, this is our turf. Let us decide what is worthy of our attention.”

“Point taken, Assistant Director.” Savas hoped they would be cooperative. “As you know, we have multiple events in New York, some still coming in as people are reported missing. I’m back here to begin coordinating with you on this seemingly related set of disappearances.”

Cox nodded. “It’s unprecedented. We have three missing Congressman, a high level official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and just as of ten minutes ago, it seems that the head of the Federal Reserve did not get off her plane at Reagan National.”

“Louise Lelann?”

Cox sighed. “So now you see the magnitude of this. Homeland Security is descending like a storm cloud, as if they didn’t eat up enough of our departments already. We’re on lockdown, the president’s day has been scrambled. I’m not sure who knows where he is. It feels like a terrorist attack.”

“I think it is,” said Miller.

“Well, then you folks are the right ones for the job.”

“There’s no one claiming responsibility? No ransom demands? Anything?”

Cox shook his head. “Nothing. But the game is still early. It’s certainly different than anything before. The murder of Craig — it could have been anything. But it was murder. A car bomb. A terrorist-y thing. Abductions of state officials? Corporate CEOs? What the hell is the play here?”

Savas looked at Miller and back to Cox, the cold night air bringing more of a chill than was warranted.

“I’m sorry to say, Assistant Director, I have no idea.”

9

“Senator, Mr. Avram’s yacht is probably the safest place you can be today,” said a gorgeous blonde hanging on the old man’s arm. She turned toward him conspiratorially, whispering in his ear. “They say it even has a radar system to detect missiles.” The senator reddened as her ruby lips brushed his ear lobe.

The boat carved its way through New York harbor like a titan. Nebula was the world’s most expensive privately owned yacht, three years in the making and boasting a pool studded with Havana bars, a helipad, five water jets, a cinema, and a four thousand square foot master suite. Nine decks, each with entry and exit points, rose from the waterline and gave the vessel more the appearance of an aerodynamic condo than a private cruise boat.

“Truly,” came the deep voice of Robert Avram, “she’s the safest boat in the waters today.”

They stood on the upper deck, lower Manhattan a frozen collection of ten thousand Will-o'-the-wisps of skyscrapers, apartments, and bridge lights. A full moon rose into the night sky and painted the gleaming surfaces on the yacht in luminescent hues. The blonde escort smiled broadly at the CEO, her sequined dress a light show reflecting the moonlight, the plunge of her neckline scandalous. Soft jazz floated on the crisp air from below.

“I hope so,” said the senator, vacillating between the seduction hanging on his arm and a set of internal worries that he could not completely dismiss. “I’m actually scared to go home tonight. People have disappeared from their own houses!”

The woman purred. “Maybe you don’t have to go home tonight.”

Avram smirked and left the pair to their courting dance. He had no doubts the woman would be in the old fool’s bed this evening. He had hired the cream of the crop. And he had made sure that useful photos would be taken discretely at opportune moments. Robert Avram ran his business like an old Mafia boss, and he was proud of that fact.

Stepping down the stairway toward the floor below, he felt a buzz in his shirt pocket. He removed his phone and answered. Almost immediately his face turned ashen.

“You can’t be serious?” He closed his mouth quickly, glancing around the harbor in panic. “Yes, I’m listening.” His eyes widened as a man’s voice spoke on the other end. “You want me to what? This is crazy! Why should I—”

At that moment, a light flashed above him. A second later the event repeated. “Yes, I see it. No, you’re right. Our radar can’t detect objects that small. Yes. I see. Yes, of course you are.” He looked down to the guests mingling below. “Can I at least warn the others?”

His face grimaced as he placed the phone in his shirt pocket again. His hands gripped the railing tightly, and he breathed in and out slowly several times. This is not happening.

But it was. And he had been told he had little time. He rushed down the stairway. Several people approached him, but he ignored them, darting into the heart of the vessel. Forgoing the crowded stairways, he would avoid being seen this way. No one would bother him, ask questions. He would not have to think about what was happening. He pressed his thumb to the scanner by the elevator.

The doors opened immediately. He entered and hit the button to the sea-level floor. The elevator descended, the doors opened, and he dashed toward the back of the vessel.

The area was empty, all the guests and staff concentrated on decks above with better views of the harbor. Avram removed his jacket and tie, kicking off his shoes and socks as well. He dropped his phone and Rolex on the deck beside a railing at the stern of the Nebula, the engines below softly churning the dark waters.

He gazed back at the boat. He had never been in love. He appreciated women, their beauty, enjoyed sex. But love? He hadn’t been raised on love. But the Nebula — that was a beauty to be loved. His design, his testament to everything he had accomplished and would do. He stared at it as a man would a lover on her death bed.

Then he climbed the railing, standing unbalanced at the corner of the stern, as far from the engines as possible. The lights of New Jersey and Manhattan formed a dizzying panorama of radiance around him. Placing his hands out to the sides, he leapt forcefully into the darkness.

The harbor was frigid, and he gasped for air as he struggled to tread water. Fortunately he had been a talented swimmer at Harvard, and despite the numbness creeping over his limbs, he was able to orient himself onto his back, his feet pointed back toward the Nebula, its music and soft lights fading as it sped away from him. A minute passed. Then two, and he worked to keep his arms and legs moving, the circulation flowing, retarding the hypothermia that had begun to freeze his muscles.

What sounded like a series of humming hornets’ nests streaked over his head and toward the boat. He spied small shadows cross over the lights of lower Manhattan, but he could not be sure it was anything more than his imagination.

But then the Nebula erupted in flame. A series of fireballs ignited around the boat, consuming his lady in a hideous light. The sound rushed over him, one-two-three punches of compressed air and ear-splitting detonations. Burning debris flew into the sky, then rained back down on the dimming skeleton of the boat.

Robert Avram wept. He knew in that explosion he had lost not only the symbol of his greatness, but everything. Confirmation arrived with little delay as he felt hands grasp his shoulders and lift him out of the water, dumping him harshly onto the deck of a small motorboat. Burly shadows manhandled him like livestock, binding his arms and legs, toting him to one end of the vessel, and casting him painfully into a corner. His captors revved the engine, and turned the boat southward toward Staten Island, racing into the darkness.

10

Savas watched the faint light of the morning grow over the East River. He sped down the FDR en route from La Guardia airport in an FBI vehicle, retracing part of the path Goldman CEO Craig had taken right before he died. The lights of the Queensboro Bridge were still bright enough to be easily seen in the creeping dawn, the tram lifting sleepy commuters into Manhattan from Roosevelt Island like a floating cabin in the sky. To his right, the concrete redwoods of the city flew by him with trails of light.

He was hardly awake himself. Last night an explosion had occurred in New York Harbor, before the eyes of Lady Liberty herself. Another CEO of a powerful multinational financial company was dead, his luxury liner blown to pieces where the fresh water of the Hudson mixed with the sea. The agency branches in Washington could work on their disappearing governmental employee problem themselves. New York, his city, was under siege again.

He had spent the better part of a night arranging his travel and for Frank Miller to stay in DC to coordinate between the coupled investigations. An early plane landed him in New York with the first businessmen. His driver flew down the East Side highway, traffic still minimal at this hour, their destination lower Manhattan. Cohen was waiting for him there.

The thin tower of the UN building darted past on the right, the reddening sky casting an infernal hue across its glass facade. For Savas, it seemed prescient, foreboding. His instincts told him that something subterranean and evil was brewing. He only hoped that they could find a break in their endless game of catchup with these dark forces and find a way to prevent further attacks.

The car passed NYU Medical Center, and soon entered lower Manhattan. Lost in his own ruminations, he failed to notice as they darted into the Battery Park Underpass and emerged on the western tip of the island. He was surprised to sense the car slowing as it pulled into North Cove Marina.

Cohen was immediately at his side as he stepped out of the vehicle.

“God, John, you look like crap.”

He laughed and fingered the lapel of her coat. “Always good to be home.” They walked toward the dock and the Coast Guard boat waiting there. “We’ve lost three CEOs in a week.”

“There’s still no claim for the attacks or abductions. The JP Morgan CEO, Robert Avram, is presumed dead, although his body hasn’t been found. Most of the bodies on the ship manifest haven’t been found.”

“But Senator McDougal?” He asked. “I heard that he was found.”

“Confirmed an hour ago at the morgue.”

“Jesus. I’ve heard talk of the National Guard, although I can’t imagine what good it would do outside of giving the public and news shows some sense that we aren’t sitting here helpless.”

“But we are, John.”

They neared the boat and several members of the Coast Guard approached them. He gritted his teeth. “Let’s see if we can change that. Gentlemen!” They walked forward and shook hands. “Agents Savas and Cohen.”

“You’re the man who took down Gunn,” said one of the sailors. “Honored to meet you, sir. I know about your son. I was here on 9/11, evacuating folks trapped on the south end after the towers fell.”

Savas swallowed. “Then I’m honored. You guys moved more than half a million, if I remember right.”

“Maybe more. Papers said it was bigger than Dunkirk in WWII. Somehow feels like we’re always at war.”

Savas understood completely. “Let’s get out there and see what we can see.”

They stepped onto the boat, the sailor gave instructions, and they pushed off from shore. “We towed it to Governors Island. Used to be a Coast Guard base. Boat was sinking, even with all the technology built into it to prevent that. I read up on it. The owner was a paranoid son-of-a-bitch.”

Within minutes they had arrived on the small island. The wreckage of what had once been a luxury yacht was awkwardly tethered to the dock, wisps of smoke still trailing upwards from her, the smell of melted plastic overpowering. It was obvious why no one had survived.

Police and fire crews worked with investigators combing the remainder of the vessel. A sharply dressed man, attired in a suit, with black hair and a French nose walked up to the FBI agents.

“JP,” said Savas. “What do we have?”

Rideout squinted in the light of the rising sun. “Well, this is big league forensics. Half the evidence is at the bottom of the harbor. But from what we’ve found and working with witnesses on shore and in other boats who saw the explosion, we’re talking about multiple detonations spaced a few seconds apart. Odd for a bomb planted on the boat, but there you go. The fireball was hot enough that we can assume synthetics, and a big payload. But it will take some time to analyze the residue and debris.” He indicated a small boat pulling out nearby. “We’re still relocating the bodies, the remains. It will take some time to identify them all. In some cases DNA matching might be the only way — there isn’t much left to go on. NYPD and several university labs with the required equipment are pitching in. Avram threw a big party.”

Savas shook his head. “Grim work.”

Cohen shuddered and rubbed her hands together in the morning chill. “You said multiple blasts. Could it have been explosives delivered externally?”

Rideout nodded. “Drone idea again? I think it’s likely. Missiles are out, as crazy as it is to even say something like that. Avram had a pretty sophisticated radar system that not only detected incoming birds, but automatically would send the data out encrypted on military and police frequencies. I guess he had some issues, but the fact is that the boat didn’t squeak last night. But I don’t think it could pick up fliers as small as many drones. They’d be invisible to the radar.”

“I guess he didn’t modernize his paranoia,” said Cohen. “Who would have thought to protect their assets from drone strikes?”

“Why aren’t there more agents here?” asked Savas, glancing around the dock.

“It’s a bit chaotic,” said Rideout, “and you’ve been in transit for the last two days. Commands from on high have all agencies scrambling to put bodies on people and places. The Bureau is like a ghost ship, if you’ll excuse the juxtaposition.”

Cohen turned to Savas. “It’s all been in the last twelve hours. The kidnappings and killings have a lot of powerful people very frightened. Pressure is being put on all governmental and state agencies to secure them. Favors are being called in. People are starting to panic.”

Savas nodded. “Should have seen it coming. You’ll have to excuse me — I’m running on about negative three hours of sleep. Hopefully I can get some shuteye soon, that is if nothing else goes FUBAR in the next few hours.”

His cell rang.

Rideout and Cohen stared at him. He just sighed. “Here we go.” He tapped the screen and placed the phone to his ear. “Hi, Angel. What blew up now?”

RIDEOUT Deposition 1

11

“Joe, Jesus, it’s the middle of the trading day. What the hell is this about?”

Two men huddled underneath a pedestrian walkway in a quiet London park. They had both approached the location independently, secretively, without informing anyone of their destination. Both had exercised extreme vigilance in their journey, checking for pursuit or other surveillance, doubling back and changing routes several times, increasing by three-fold the amount of time it would take to reach the rendezvous. One man was dressed in a suit and sported closely cropped gray hair. The other, a younger man by two decades, wore slacks and a button down shirt as well as sunglasses. Both appeared anxious, their British accents cutting like daggers through the conversation.

“I’m taking a huge risk even showing up here,” said the young man.

“And I’m not? Spit it out. Is it this virus you’ve been talking about?”

“Worm,” he corrected.

“Whatever.”

“The difference is important.”

“That’s because you’re a computer programmer.”

He shook his head. “It matters. Look, a virus is a file, you have to execute it, infect your computer with it. A worm digs in by itself, and can lay a lot of viral eggs and do other things. But it spreads itself. This worm is spreading everywhere.”

“What’s everywhere?”

The programmer’s arms danced through the air. “By now, half the machines on the London exchange are likely infected. By next week, nearly all of them will be.”

The older man straightened slightly. “What will it do?”

“We don’t know!” he shouted, quickly catching himself and lowering his voice. “Look, my division at Interpol got the first information from Singapore a few days ago. Since then, all hell’s broken loose. We’re finding it everywhere, chasing it everywhere. No one has a handle on it, not the Americans, the Chinese, or the Russians. Hell, if the Russians can’t take it down, we’re in a fucking boatload of trouble!”

“Brilliant. Let’s calm down. What do you know?”

The Interpol programmer swiped his brow, sweat glistening and beginning to pool in his eyebrows despite the cool autumn day. “It’s global. Initially we thought that it was only a finance worm, now we’re finding it other places. It actually seems to have used NSA backdoors and code as gateways to infiltrate the machines the damn Americans were already spying on. It hides well. We mainly find what it leaves behind.”

“Which is?”

“Lots of really nasty code. The thing is injecting subroutines and entire programs into existing software, or between two pieces of software and handshaking them. Gave itself away when large sums of money started to funnel through the infected systems into offshore accounts.”

“How much money?”

“I don’t know. Billions. Maybe more. But that’s one thing. Billions from the derivative market isn’t going to be missed, really. But recent findings are looking a lot more scary. Your machines, your trading algorithms that run the damn exchanges, they are all compromised.”

The older man narrowed his eyes harshly. “Compromised? How?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out! We’d need full access to your machines, today, to get to the meat of it quickly. We can’t lock this down with you running the programs. You’re going to have to halt trading.”

“Out of the question! We aren’t going to shut down the London Exchange so Interpol can go rummaging through our systems.”

“You don’t get it! This is preliminary, but if it’s verified, if what we’re seeing is real or even looks like it might harm the exchanges, Downing will pull the plug on the exchanges anyway! A stop in trading on purpose is better than a system meltdown.”

“There isn’t going to be a system meltdown!”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Every few years you fools cry wolf over some Millennium bug, Heartbleed this, or Shellshock that, and all manner of bloody apocalypse is about to descend on us. Every time the markets kept going just fine and the only thing hurt has been your reputations.”

“You know, most of the time the money you guys send my way is all I need for motivation to talk to you. And I’ve more than paid for myself in the information I’ve delivered. But this is different! I’m scared shitless right now by this thing, and so are half the people in my division. The Americans are scrambling and the Asian markets as well.”

“And I don’t see them shutting down in panic, do you?” The programmer said nothing, but stared toward the other end of the tunnel, exhaling a cloud of vapor. “Look, we’ll do a complete IT sweep, antivirus everything. We’ve handled these types of things before.”

“I’m telling you, this isn’t like—”

“Bring me back something concrete, with concrete effects and predictions, and then I can make a financial assessment of how much is to be lost from the thing as compared to the absolutely huge losses that we'll be sure to take for shutting down the exchange. Shut down is the panic button. The fail-safe. Bring me real data not doomsday maybes. Understand?” He fired a harsh gaze toward the programmer and stormed off into the park.

The man remaining in the tunnel shook his head and lit a cigarette. He smoked it under the walkway for several minutes before leaving, spacing his exit with that of his contact at the exchange. He also needed to clear his head and calm down. It was always like this, he told himself. Investors had profit on the brain and a foresight of a goldfish. All that mattered were next quarter’s returns.

I could be wrong. The truth was that they really didn’t know what this thing was yet or what it would do. He hoped they were all wrong about the dangers. He dropped the bud on the concrete and crushed it out with his shoe, turning up his lapels and entering the chaos of children’s shouts.

A boy stared toward the man as he exited, his gaze focused slightly above him and the bridge under which he had stood for the last half hour. He tugged on his mother’s arm and pointed into the sky. A small, blurred ball danced in the air above the park.

“Look, mummy. It’s a helicopter! It’s remote control!”

His mother nodded her head and tapped onto her smartphone. “Yes, dear, that’s nice.”

The boy continued tracking the object as it moved away from the bridge. “Herman has one. It’s wicked. It can do anything and…oh no!”

“What is it, dear?” his mother asked, her eyes never leaving the screen in her hand.

“It’s just going up and up. It’s too high!” He looked frantically around the park for the child who was trying to control it. His face dropped. “It’s going to be lost.”

And soon enough it was. The small object disappeared from view as it ascended into the sky. It did not return. The boy continued to look around the park, but there were no children in distress or racing after an out-of-control toy. His shoulders sank and he dug into the soil with his shoe.

The woman looked up from her phone. “What was that you said, dear?”

12

“So it seems the internet is going to blow up.”

Savas sat in front of a table in the computer science department at NYU. The academic setting was made all the more surreal by the presence of NSA staff, Interpol officers, and members of the Secret Service alongside several professors and students.

The NSA man tried again to assume command of the conversation. “That’s a rather dramatic way to put it, Agent Savas.” The representative of the agency was stiff in his gray suit, looking down his nose at the students and especially Lightfoote. However galling, Savas had to admit, she looked the part of a freedom fighter from some post-apocalyptic dystopian teen film. Eyes tended to wander toward her.

Savas was still trying to parse the odd collection of people around him. The NYU students had stumbled upon something. Fine. They had called, of all places, specific NSA branches. Why? Because along with Homeland Security, the NSA was funding their research. They were a “National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance and Cyber Defense.” Information Assurance. He liked that.

Then there was the presence of the Secret Service which had been explained by the financial end of this story. Yes, Agent Savas was aware that the Secret Service was responsible for investigations into financial fraud, in addition to its protective function for governmental VIPs. But still.

Finally, Interpol! But that is where things really got interesting and expanded from a local to a distinctly global problem. In fact, it was the Interpol officer who cut in on the NSA suit.

“Drama, Mr. Teller, may in fact be warranted here.” His thick Scottish brogue worked as an aural spotlight. “Our offices in Singapore have this worm penetrating systems all over the world, including major financial institutions and governmental entities. We believe upwards of ninety percent of machines exposed to it are vulnerable.”

The NSA man cut in quickly. “There hasn’t been time to ascertain how widespread it is.”

“With all due respect, I think the NSA has a lot of reason to minimize the threat of this code.” The Interpol and NSA representatives stared each other down.

Savas leaned forward toward the European. “Why is that?”

“Because the worm has gotten the most mileage out of piggy-backing on the NSA’s own spyware—their worms — used for hacking and stealing the secrets of everyone from the UN to foreign leaders. And don’t even try to deny your agency’s actions,” he said, cutting off an attempted protest by Teller. “Snowden let that cat out of the bag a while ago.”

The Secret Service agent spoke. “It’s a financial instrument,” she said. “Once into the system, there are a set of specific programs it looks for. When it finds them, it adds modules of code that relate to options trading on the derivative market.”

“What does this code do?” asked Savas.

The Interpol officer spoke. “From what we can tell, it’s funneling enormous sums of money from the off-market derivatives trading.”

“Off-market?”

“Yes,” he continued. “Contracts, bets if you will, that do not show up on any exchanges and are poorly regulated. In fact, we don’t even know how much money is tied up in those deals. But it dwarfs the imagination. Estimates are in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.”

Savas tried not to let his jaw drop. “I didn’t know that much money even existed in the world.”

“It’s all in bits and bytes, not in gold or cash,” said Lightfoote.

“Virtual money that isn’t so virtual.” Savas leaned back in his chair. “And how much money is being stolen?”

A white-haired professor from the computer science group flipped pages on a notepad. “We’ve been following the thing for three days now. There’s no way to know how much was syphoned before that, but our estimates are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“That’s a hell of a lot.”

“Per day.”

A silence filled the room. Savas looked at Lightfoote, who just laughed.

“Does you intern think something is funny, agent Savas?” asked Teller.

Lightfoote spoke for herself. “You idiots. Did you ever stop to think that if it was so easy for you to tear through the world’s firewalls that others couldn’t? Did you stop to think how fragile everything is now, everything online, everything in bytes — money, electricity, nuclear power systems? And now someone is using your own black hat code to leech from an underground financial market that should have been shut down after 2008? You’re like a bunch of fucking twelve year olds wandering around an arms factory and pushing buttons.”

“Your division has been included in this briefing because of your track record, Agent Savas,” said the NSA official, “but the disrespect and frankly treasonous attitude of your staff cannot be tolerated.”

“Are you insane?” asked the Interpol officer. “This is not a US governmental matter only. You aren’t in authority here, whatever God-complex your organization has developed. The lady is right. This is big. This is a disaster!”

“Look, people,” said Savas, standing up. “I’m inclined to agree with that assessment, and I thank you for including us in this briefing. Our team will get to it immediately. Anything we find with we’ll pass your way. But, you may have noticed that we have our plate full right now. Matters of life and death, not just money and taxes. Our resources are stretched to the breaking point.” He turned to the Scot. “This is a big threat. We’ll help, but we’re going put out the fire in our house, first.” He turned to leave.

“We need countermeasures,” said Lightfoote. Eyes turned toward her. “This is something new. Something truly dangerous. You can’t just rely on the software companies to develop and issue patches. There isn’t time.”

“What do you mean there isn’t time?” said Teller.

“I mean that whoever is behind this is not playing for a criminal unit or nation-state. Those groups have long-term ends in mind, stability of the system. You can’t make a living off the system as a criminal if you bring it down.”

“The system, whatever that might be, isn’t going down!” Teller looked incredulous.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Her green eyes burned. “This is major artery damage. You can’t wait to patch it. The patient will bleed to death. Organ systems will malfunction. You’ve got to go in aggressively and root the damn thing out. If you don’t, at the rates the professor mentions, come November you’re going to have an economic catastrophe on your hands.”

13

A four-by-five panel of giant flat-screen monitors covered a wall in a dark room. News stations spanning the content of the major networks to cable providers flashed a diversity of images. One by one, sound was associated with a given monitor and channel, large speakers on the sides of the array of screens projecting audio, the brightness on the other nineteen monitors dropping dramatically to emphasize the featured screen. Centered before the dizzying display was a lone chair containing a shadowed figure.

“This is Monica Grayford from CNN,” began the short-haired brunette standing before the Capitol building in Washington, DC. “Chaos has swept over the House of Representatives as a rebellion in the GOP threatens to bring the legislative branch to a standstill. Key members of House committees have suddenly switched their votes on multiple issues central to several pressing pieces of legislation. Among them are a host of financial reform bills including raising the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, legislation to remove corporate tax loop holes, and challenges to overturn the Supreme Court rulings on campaign finance reform and the personhood of corporations. In addition, numerous laws aiming to regulate the internet have found their support shifting dramatically, with numerous Democratic and Republican Congressman now supporting net neutrality and opposing governmental regulation and internet monitoring. For more on this developing story, we go to—”

The screen dimmed and the audio cutoff. A monitor on the upper right brightened, and a panel of men and women on Fox News were yelling at each other across a common table. A stout man in a suit centered in the middle screamed over the group.

“None of these theories makes sense! With elections nearly here, you aren’t going to see members of both parties suddenly reversing their long-held positions on important issues! I think that we need to step back and ask what is really going on here. What back room deals are being made and has the White House been involved to try and throw the results in November into chaos? We all know the polls show that the midterms are not going to go their way, so they have to be involved!”

A woman near the end of the table on the left cut in. “Based on what? Why do you always have to turn everything into a conspiracy of foul play by this administration?”

A black man near the center raised his hands in the air. “This is all speculation at this point. We don’t know what is going on. Neither do the leaders of either party. Until we can get explanations from the members of Congress themselves, all this is just hot air.”

The viewpoint shifted, jumping to a monitor on the lower level in the middle of the array. A heavyset man in a suit with gray hair paced about a television stage, waving his arms and gesticulating. Behind him was an enormous chalkboard, names of important political figures and organizations written and boxed in various locations, numerous arrows studded with short phrases and comments connecting the various names. The commentator was shouting.

“A Democratic Super PAC with ties to a billionaire is suddenly bankrupt? Why? Where did all that money go? A week later, we find one member of Congress after another switching their votes, always in the direction of the liberal agenda. Always decreasing our ability to monitor communications for terrorist activity and attacking the earnings of the job-creating class. Am I the only one seeing this? I mean, could it be more obvious? My fellow Americans, we are poised on the edge of a terrible cliff, where the terrorist sympathizing, Marxist left-wing agenda has put our very freedoms in the crosshairs.” His voice caught, and he wiped his eyes. “There might not be much more time. I don’t know how many times I’ll be allowed to address you when the new world order is imposed. I’ve never said this before, but I’m scared. Scared for America. Scared for the world. Because, in the end, it is we Americans that stand between order and chaos on this planet.”

The image and sound jumped to the upper left of the screens, a dour, bald man centered in the camera before a microphone. A woman’s voice spoke over the images.

“The Russian president has just begun a press conference. This is Russia Today with an exclusive video feed of the event called in response to reported violations of international treaties this week by the US Congress.”

The sound switched to the figure behind the podium. An angry voice speaking in Russian, dimmed beneath the words of a man translating the speech into English.

“…are extremely destabilizing and foolish. We urge party leaders in US House of Representatives to stop extremist wings and put stop to many bills now on floor. We call to United States President to veto laws passing. Russia will not tolerate more US imperialism over regions and resources international law has divided.”

The focus point shifted to a monitor in the middle of the array, a young woman of Middle Eastern appearance interviewing a cabbie on the streets of New York.

“Miss, what’s to say? It’s open season on the one percent. It’s bombs and guns in New York. All the VIPs are disappearing or going nuts in Congress. You know what I think? I think it’s the antichrist. I think it’s the goddamned end of the fucking world. First we’re gonna eat each other and everything’s gonna fall apart. Then all those angels with fire and lightning are gonna come down and fry us. You know what I’m gonna do tonight? I’m gonna go to church. I’m gonna light some goddamned candles and pray my ass off that God’s got a place for me in heaven.”

The man rolled up his window and the cab sped off. The reporter turned to the camera, her face troubled, her words stuttered.

“This is Maryam Tavazoie, Al Jazeera America, in New York.”

All the monitors went dark and the figure in the chair brooded in silence for several moments. From the faint afterglow of the screens, a weak line reflected off a hard surface.

A toothless smirk.

14

Angel Lightfoote poked her head around the doorframe. “John, the kids — they’re not all right.”

Savas sat behind his desk and held up his index finger with one hand and cradled the landline receiver in the other. The digits of his free hand also tapped onto a cell phone as he texted.

“Right. Ronald, look, I have to go. Thanks for the report and I’ll share it with the group.” He hung up the phone.

“Forensics?”

Savas nodded. “Yes. Residues found at the car and boat bombings match. Synthetics. Nothing special that we can trace.”

She nodded, the fluorescent lighting reflecting brightly off her scalp. “Come with me. We need to talk.”

Five minutes later they were exiting an elevator and stepping onto the basement floor. Savas smiled as he looked around the maze of monitors and racks of computers.

"Love what you're doing with the place, Angel. Looks more and more like the Bat Cave."

Lightfoote gestured toward several rows of servers. "That's the Hernandez pile, all Manuel's machines that can still keep up. Most of the connections to law enforcement and other agencies — not to mention the satellite uplinks — are now ported to the Great Wall." Her hand swept toward a much large bank of computers racked in metallic girders, floor to ceiling.

"Glad to see the money's well spent."

Lightfoote shook her head. "Everything's been augmented, enhanced. More aggressive than the old crises center. Militarized. It’s cyberwarfare out there now." Lightfoote sat at a long table with several monitors. “We’ve been stalking both of Senator Moss’ girls. One is at UCSF, the other Georgetown.”

He sat down next to her, watching windows displaying two young women’s faces. Video footage streamed and maps and other surveillance software recorded locations and other information. “So there’s a problem, or I wouldn’t be down here. Disappearance?”

“No, it’s a lot more subtle. The women are fine. So far. No sign of anything on their social media, personal emails, or phone conversations. We correlated their routines to video surveillance footage over the last few months. Nothing to indicate that they are functioning under duress.” She turned toward Savas and winked, the piercings running across her face inches from him. “But we’re playing with some inside information.”

She cleared the active windows and opened several CCTV montages displaying footage from numerous cameras. There seemed little relationship between the locations, angles, or time the video was captured. Lightfoote stared at one intensely and then hit a key, freezing the playback.

“There. See, that’s Anna Moss, right there, backpack, pony tail. She usually takes this route on Wednesdays. This is footage from two weeks ago. Look there,” she indicated on the screen.

Savas squinted. A dark blur was above and behind the student, but he could not make out what it was. “What is it?”

She stared at him with her eyes angled upward, nearly rolling them. “Watch.” Frame by frame, she advanced the footage. The Moss daughter moved jerkily as if caught by a strobe light, pedestrians and cars around her as well.

And so did the blur. Savas felt his pulse quicken. “It’s tracking her,” he whispered. “It’s a drone.”

Lightfoote smiled. “He can be taught! Watch closely. It shadows her up the street and then, there, lifts off into the air and is gone. We’ve got hundreds of hours of footage of the sisters. That let us catch the drones in ten or fifteen events. No doubts, John. We’ve tried to use image enhancement, but didn’t get much. We’re also taking known drone models and creating cross-sections at different angles and using image recognition software to score similarity. But whatever the models, these women are being stalked. By drones.”

“That’s it, then,” he said. “Imagine the kinds of photos you could get with these things. The kind of photos that when sent to a parent with the right note attached would petrify them.”

Lightfoote nodded. “And you don’t even have to put organic assets in play or touch the ground around the targets.”

“Wouldn’t someone notice these things?”

“Probably, but what would they think? There are kids’ toys as big as some of these, and in several states law enforcement groups are beginning to use drones. And whoever is behind this isn’t stupid. They don’t hang around long. So, somebody sees one? Then what? Before they can do much it’s gone. Not much to report without sounding like a UFO nut.”

“No wonder she jumped when I asked about drones. She’s a smart woman. She would have connected the bombing and these drones shadowing her daughters. And it’s almost a certainty that Craig from Goldman was calling her about her vote flip-flops. If it hadn’t been for the other CEO murders and kidnappings, I might have thought he was killed for that.”

He stood up and placed his hands on his hips. “That’s great work, Angel. You’ve linked the killing to the threats on Congress. With the meltdown there yesterday, it looks like she was the canary in the coal mine. We can use this to pressure the rest, make them open up about the blackmail.”

“You’d think that the victims would have noticed their peers’ behavior. Teamed up. Gotten some crowd bravery and brought the blackmail to the attention of someone by now.”

Savas nodded. “Maybe. But it just happened. They probably thought they were the only ones, working in a panic, tunnel visioned and focused on whatever personal nightmare was threatening to consume their life.”

Lightfoote stood up as well, continuing to stare at the blurry drone images on her monitors. “Drones of all sizes exist. Some able to handle large payloads. Some able to be mounted with weapons. And they’re invisible to radar. They could fly right up to the president with a bar of Semtex strapped to them. Or pop over to the Indian Point nuclear plant. They can go anywhere, John. They can photograph people’s bedroom windows, follow their kids, spy on the routes of world leaders. I’d be worried if I were you.”

A chill ran through him. “I am, Angel. I think we need to find out who is making drones in this country, what they’re making, and who the hell they are selling them to. Look for patterns in purchase and shipment. Anything.”

“Already beginning that search. What I’m worried about is that our drone-master is too smart for that. He wouldn’t have left such an easy trail, but would likely buy them in small amounts and change shipping locations, payment methods. Or under the table purchases from dealers who aren’t listed in the Better Business Bureau. That’s what I would do.”

“You know what Angel,” said Savas, eyeing her suspiciously. “You are frighteningly good at thinking like a psychopath.”

Her face darkened in a manner that unsettled Savas. She spoke hoarsely. “Thanks, John. It’s good to be noticed.”

“Well, I want you to keep doing that. In fact, you have my explicit permission to go full madwoman down here and follow any idea you think might be interesting. Don’t tell me when you fail. Don’t tell me missteps. Just do it. Find out what in the name of all that’s holy is happening.”

15

“No fucking way, man.”

Two young men sat in the middle of a nearly empty warehouse, a dense clustering of high-tech equipment forming an isolated island in the middle of the space. Three to four rows of nested black towers formed a maze around them, the cabinets housing shelf upon shelf of computer banks. A thick series of cables and power cords snaked across the dusty cement floor like an obscene vasculature bringing nutrients to a gestating embryo. In the center of the maze was a set of tables holding five or six large flat screen monitors.

“No way, Chen.”

The contrasting pair sat in front of the monitors, typing on keyboards, staring at a scrolling data stream. Chen was dressed in fatigues, close cropped hair topping off a thin and angular frame, a tight tank-top revealing tattoos painted across his arms and back. He sat upright, tense, tapping the screen in front of him.

“I’m not shitting you, Dave, these are his accounts! Offshore, unregulated. It took me this whole week to get to them.”

Dave swept his long, unruly hair out of his face, a tangled mass of brown and blond, greasy and unwashed. His general appearance was slovenly, and he slouched forward gazing at the screen. He shook his head in disbelief.

“Can’t believe Fawkes left a security hole.”

“Well, he’s not running the bank servers, now is he?” said Chen, his voice defiant.

“Five hundred million? I mean, what the fuck?”

Chen shook his head. “I dunno, man. Something’s up with this. Something really not cool.”

“Yeah, how does Fawkes get half a billion dollars? You think it’s related to all this shit going down?”

“Look at the withdrawals!” Chen scrolled through the banking records. “It’s like five million here, ten million here. Restore Our Future. American Crossroads. Strong America Now.”

“Sounds like student council assholes,” Dave said, upturning a bag of chips into his mouth, his words garbled.

“They’re conservative SuperPacs, you fuck.”

“SuperPacs?”

Chen rolled his eyes. “You’re such a fucking pot-head, Dave.”

“Amen and praise Jesus, you bet!” said Dave, smiling.

“Whatever. Look, there are transfers to Europe, China, India. It’s like he’s some multinational! These transfers are totally laundered. No transaction codes, no IDs, nothing!”

“Ain’t no money for nothing, dude.”

Chen nodded. “Something is really not cool here.”

A loud scraping noise startled the pair. They spun in their chairs and looked behind them, through an opening in the maze of the server farm. The large door of the warehouse had been yanked open, and three men walked into the cavernous space. In the middle was a young man, thin, nearly gaunt, dressed casually in a black T-shirt and jeans. His short-cropped black hair and pencil thin goatee was offset by a pair of shaded smart glasses. He constantly fiddled with a smartphone affixed to his belt. Flanking him on either side were two much larger, muscled men. They wore nondescript business attire, their eyes hidden behind black sunglasses. Their expressions were indecipherable.

“Shit,” said Chen under his breath, spinning slightly to position his hand over the keyboard and enter several strokes. The windows on the screen disappeared. He turned back quickly to the approaching men as they neared. The three stopped a few feet in front of the hacker pair, silence lingering for several moments.

“Yo, Fawkes!” said Dave awkwardly. “What’s this? Fucking Terminator Ten?” His smiled floundered against the stony gazes of the three men.

Hands continuously tapping the smartphone, Fawkes appeared to stare straight ahead at something outside the room. “You were always such a fucking waste, Dave. You could’ve been the best black hat to ever crawl out of 4chan. You know, when that shit-hole was actually worth something.”

Dave flipped him the bird. “Up yours. I still am.”

Fawkes ignored him. “Chen. It’s too bad you had to be so curious. Killed a lot of cats. I thought you’d be more grateful after I gifted you this little playground.”

Chen licked his lips, glancing between Fawkes and the two men on his sides. “What’s up, Fawkes? We’re just hanging.”

Fawkes finally took off his glasses, his gray eyes burning into Chen. “I’ve had a tick on you for weeks, Chen. I know you’ve been poking around the offshore accounts.”

Chen sat utterly still. The large room was silent except for the constant hum of the server farm around them. Dave broke the eerie stillness.

“So the fuck what, man? It’s not like you haven’t hacked your way through a hundred accounts.”

“But those are my accounts, Dave. Accounts that are too important to be messed with. Or for anyone to know about.”

“Fawkes, what’s going on?” asked Chen, his face grave. “Hundreds of millions? What are you up to? What’s with the bodyguards?”

Fawkes laughed. “You stupid fucks still don’t get it. You actually think a hundred million is a lot! Try seven-hundred trillion—that’s the size of the derivative market. Did you know that? And it’s all virtual money.” He gestured vaguely to the walls of computers around them. “It doesn’t exist except inside investment bank computers and people’s very active imaginations. When things are bytes in compiled data-structures, they are meant to be hacked. It’s fucking righteous deeds.” He laughed. “I’ve got trillions of dollars, you clueless ass. Those accounts you stumbled on were early, poorly secured penetration tests.”

Chen blinked. “Trillions? That’s not possible. What’s the game, Fawkes? This doesn’t make sense. We were against all this stuff!”

Fawkes fit his glasses back on, his voice growing slightly distanced. “I don’t have the time to explain to you losers. You never had the balls, Chen. None of you did. We hacked our way to the truth, but it didn’t set us free. We found out their dirty little secrets, and all of you panicked. Pissed your fucking pants! You wouldn’t dare do what had to be done. You hit MasterCard or outed bad cops.”

Dave and Chen looked at each other anxiously. Chen spoke again. “What has to be done?”

Fawkes began fiddling with his smartphone, staring off into space. With his other hand, he lifted a black and white object, a tight string hanging off the back. Placing it on his head, he pulled downward, the elastic string tightening around the back of his head, the object fitting tightly over his face: a mask of a smirking man stared back at them.

“What the fuck?” whispered Dave.

Fawkes motioned toward the two men beside him, who nodded. His voice was muffled. “Core dump, bros. The system software is too corrupted. Time for a reboot.” He turned his back on them and began to walk away.

Chen shifted nervously in his chair as the large forms of the bodyguards approached the two hackers. “My God, it is you! All of this!” His voice rose dramatically in pitch. “Are you insane? Do you understand what will happen?” Silence. “That’s not what we were about! No one reboots the fucking world!”

Fawkes stopped and sighed, his fiddling paused. The mask turned back toward them. “I do. And nothing is going to get in the way of that, not even Anonymous. I’m Anonymous now — what you all should have been.” He laughed. “You’d be amazed what you can do with a trillion dollars.”

Fawkes resumed his distracted gait, and headed for the exit. The bodyguards who had entered with him reached into their jackets and removed pistols. Bulging suppressors were attached to the ends.

“Ah, man, no way, no way, no way! This isn’t happening!” cried Dave, his eyes large. He stood up trembling in his chair, looking around the wall of computer cabinets hemming them in. Chen didn’t move, but simply closed his eyes.

A sudden scream ripped through the warehouse, punctuated by a series of sharp spits. The following silence was disrupted only by the echoing clap of shoes on hard concrete.

RIDEOUT Deposition 2

16

It was past midnight, and the basement at the FBI building was staffed only by three people. Two women and a man hunched over monitors as the steady buzz of computer servers churned around them. The bald woman stared across at the other two, her expression grave.

“Well, John, there was something about ‘explicit permission to go full madwoman.’”

“I didn’t know you were going to turn everything back on us!”

“It’s a logical byproduct of the search algorithms.”

Cohen placed her hand on Savas’ shoulder and yawned. “Can we just have one night without another crisis?”

Lightfoote stood up, a short tank exposing her midriff and rows of chiseled abdominal muscles. She walked over to the banks of servers and ran her hands over them like a nurse would a sick child.

“That meeting at the NYU computer science department spooked me. They weren’t coming clean with how bad things were, and what was said was bad enough. I knew then we couldn’t trust any of the other agencies to handle this. Worst of all was the NSA. They know the most and share the least.” She patted the metal shelving holding the individual units of the server farm. “So, assuming the worst, I let loose some worms of my own.”

“What?” said Savas, his eyes wide.

She turned her green eyes toward them. “Full madwoman, remember?”

“Yeah, breaking Federal law?”

“Well, that’s all not going to matter much longer anyway if we don’t get this under control soon.”

Savas swiveled in his chair to face Lightfoote. “Angel, what are you talking about?”

“My little wigglies reported back. It’s everywhere, John. Gone fucking viral is the phrase. All my babies,” she leaned her head against the machines, “they’re all infected. We’re infected — FBI is infected.”

“Damn.” Savas rubbed his temples. “Okay, so what—”

“The whole goddamned world is infected! This thing has simultaneously exploited every known security whole in the underlying operating systems. It’s like a MIRV missile for the internet with multiple warheads. Each one hits something, somewhere, in every system. And that’s all it needs. One weakness. Then the worm is in.”

Cohen whispered softly. “What is it doing?”

“Nothing yet. Nothing active. Or, whatever it’s done was done before we began monitoring it and it has covered its tracks. There’s a bunch of encrypted code that comes along with the thing in every infestation. That’s got to be the heart of it. Whatever it’s up to, I’d bet it’s contained there.”

“Can you get into it?” asked Cohen.

“Not yet. But I’m worried that when I do, it won’t be straightforward. Whoever did this has made an attack that is sophisticated beyond anything the internet has ever seen. The code isn’t complete or standardized.”

“I don’t understand,” said Savas.

“Those encrypted modules? They’re really diverse. Not one the same size on each system. I think it’s distributed. It’s like a P2P system where pieces of the file to be shared are stored all over the internet in different places. When you download your pirated film, the software at the end assembles a composite file from hundreds, sometimes thousands of independent file elements. That’s what’s going on here. The worm has spread to tens of thousands, probably millions of computers. Each infection is one of a large set of different worms — let's call them strains like for viruses. Each strain carries a different piece of the code.”

“Then if we can kill some of the strains, it can’t put the full program back together and we stop it?” asked Savas.

Cohen shook her head. “If I understand this, then each strain will have thousands of copies of itself all around the world. We’d have to hunt every one of them down.”

Lightfoote nodded. “Exactly. It’s too distributed. It’s like having a million backups on different servers where literally every computer is a potential backup system once infected. We’ll never stop it that way.”

“Then how?” asked Savas.

Lightfoote shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, then what does that code do when assembled?”

“I don’t know that either. I haven’t cracked any of the encryptions, and there are already hundreds of different packages I’ve found with the worms. We need the NSA computers to be working full time on this.”

“You think they know?”

“Yes. Definitely. They’re poking around infected systems, just like I did. So many computers are poorly secured, it’s easy to get into them and find things out. They have to know by now, or they shouldn’t have the keys to their computer arsenal.”

Savas stood up. “Then it’s about damn time they opened up and worked with us. Tomorrow morning we’ll get this moving.”

Cohen grabbed his arm. “Are you sure about that? I think you might be overestimating the influence the FBI has on the NSA. They’re so frighteningly close to Big Brother, we’re not going to have much pull.”

Lightfoote nodded. “And they aren’t going to look at my little enterprise as anything remotely useful compared to the fleet of processors they have. From a certain perspective, they’re right.”

“So, what then? We wait here helplessly for the NSA to formulate a cure and perhaps share it with us? If this thing shuts us down, we’re crippled to investigate the killings and abductions, anything at all really. We can’t remain that vulnerable!”

“Try the NSA, John,” said Cohen, walking up to Lightfoote. “Meanwhile, I suggest that you leave the leash off Angel. Don’t rescind your madwoman decree.” Cohen took Lightfoote’s shoulders in her hands, squaring up to face her. “Angel, why don’t you see what you can do about this thing. Assume we’re on our own. Assume it’s a matter of life and death.”

Savas nodded. Lightfoote stared between them and then back at her server.

“Okay. But be careful what you ask for.”

17

18

Evening had fallen on the crowds in Times Square, but the streets were bathed in electric hues from multiple monitors displaying ads and streaming video from numerous locations. Horns blared as cars piled along curbs waiting for an opportunity to turn into adjacent streets through the flood of pedestrians. Some walked in groups. Many seemed tuned out and into their digital devices. All were dressed in jackets to ward off the late October chill.

One by one, those walking the streets began to slow down, staring at their phones or tablets. Others began to crane their necks upward, interrupting their conversations, staring puzzled at the glowing behemoths of dancing images around them. Within a minute, nearly all the motion in the square had come to a halt, and the blaring of horns increased ten-fold as roadways were completely blocked.

Like dominoes, all the monitors in the square flipped jerkily to the same static image: a circle with a globe depicted in grid lines, leaves of a plant along the sides, the figure of a headless man in a black and white suit with a question mark over him.

Out of a window a taxi driver stuck his head and gazed up at the bizarre tiling of images across the buildings around him. He tugged on a baseball cap.

“What the hell?”

“John, you’d better come with me.”

Cohen stood in his doorway, a sharp glint in her eyes. Savas prepared for the worst. “Another attack?”

She shook her head. “Something different. But I think related. Media across the country, maybe world-wide, is being hijacked. It’s cable, network, online streaming sites like YouTube and Hulu. It’s systematic.”

“Systematic? The worm?”

“Don’t know. But this sure sounds like something it could be up to.”

Savas sprang from his chair and followed her into the floor’s common room. Normally a place for coffee and a break from work, the small space was packed as agents and staff stared up at a flat-panel screen. A strange black-and-white image of a headless man in a suit took the place of all programming on nearly all stations. Savas and Cohen stood outside the door looking in.

A man’s voice came up over the din of buzzing conversation. “That's Anonymous!”

Cohen turned to Savas. “He’s right! I knew I had seen it before.”

“Anonymous? Those kids who do social justice hacking?”

The voice of Lightfoote startled them from behind. “Kids, maybe. No one really knows who they are, how they organize, where they are. A few caught were high schoolers. Others older. Some established, even corporate. They’re everyone and no one. The name really does mean something. Unknown, distributed anarchy. Probably why they never achieved anything really big.”

“Until now, maybe,” said Savas as he started at the disconcerting image.

“Uh oh, there it goes,” said Lightfoote.

The screen pixelated horribly, and then locked onto another video feed. The crowds at FBI, in Times Square, and in millions of homes across the nation stared at two rows of chairs in a dark room. Harsh lighting fell directly on those seated in the chairs, the space behind them and to their sides too dark for any details to be made out. The men and women were tied to the seats, their arms and legs lashed with rope, gags in their mouths, and terrified expressions on their faces as their eyes darted.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Cohen. “The abductions.”

Savas felt his stomach drop as he began to recognize faces. The CEO of GE. Congressmen. The Chair of the Federal Reserve. Luminaries in business, finance, and politics. What the hell was happening?

Lightfoote spoke. “I’m going to the basement. They’ve compromised major digital distribution hubs. I bet it’s the worm. We might be able to catch it in action and see what it looks like!” She darted from the crowd and headed toward the stairway.

A mask appeared in front of the screen. Black-and-white, smirking, a thin goatee etched across the upper lip and chin. Savas had seen it before. It was a symbol of underground resistance to established powers — the mask of Guy Fawkes.

“Greetings sheeple of America, Europe, and beyond,” came a digitally distorted voice. “We are Anonymous and today is a day of judgment.”

The masked speaker stepped back from the camera. The figure was of indeterminate frame and size, dressed in a black suit and tie. It walked confidently toward the double row of hostages. Their eyes looked hopeless and panicked.

“Already we have targeted some of the worst criminals in our malignant society. Robber barons, plutocrats who pull the strings of the drugged masses. The architects of a feudal world increasingly of a few elements of royalty standing on the backs of millions of slaves.”

“Jesus,” said Savas. He picked up his mobile phone and dialed. “Yeah, Angel. You got anything on this? Location?” He grimaced. “I know there hasn’t been time! But what I’m seeing — it’s not good. I think these people are in danger.”

The masked man continued. “Today, as a taste of things to come, we again pass judgment on a group of criminals whose status in society is the only thing separating them from the mafia. Because in their greed they have killed like common thugs.”

He slapped the face of a man next to him. Savas recognized the captive as CEO O'Kelly.

The masked man continued. “They have poisoned our world, our rivers, our air, our very bodies as they profit. They have drilled and dug and burned and buried. They have denied health and home and peace to billions so they could luxuriate in ten thousand times more than they could ever require.”

Several shapes in dark clothing moved into the view frame of the camera. They wore Guy Fawkes masks. They carried automatic weapons.

“Oh, Christ,” whispered Savas. Murmurs ran through the crowd at FBI.

Several of the hostages in the chairs let loose gagged screams, twisting and wrenching their arms and legs in attempts to free themselves. Other seemed resigned, staring forward blankly.

“Today, we reject the weakness of fools. Of the failed Occupy Movement. Of the false Anonymous. Of corrupt nation-states who claim to serve the people but serve only their masters. Today we reject the foul words of the pundits, the professors, the activists, and the politicians who spout lies about change as they bathe in the status quo. Today, a real change comes. Today, we begin to put down a sick and broken system.”

There was a pause, and then he nodded toward the gunman. “Remember. Remember the fifth of November. This time there will be no providence of God.”

The men raised their weapons. Shouts came from some of the FBI onlookers.

Cohen turned to Savas. “John, Tell me he isn’t—”

Bursts of light erupted from the muzzles of the automatic weapons, blurs of static from the flatscreen. Puffs of fabric and blood exploded outward from the clothes of the hostages, their forms shaking from the projectile impacts and reflex action, muffled screams bursting from their gagged lips.

Then silence.

The murderers with guns were gone. Only the bodies of the dead stared back into the camera with vacant eyes or tortured final expressions. The grinning plastic of the man with the Guy Fawkes mask approached the camera, until the mocking face filled the entire screen.

“We are the real Anonymous. We are indeed Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

The video feed switched to a set of multiple views arranged in an array across the screen. In each case, the camera floated above the ground at what seemed to be disparate locations, darkness punctured by the lights of cars and buildings in the cities below.

The viewpoints descended. With increasing speed the ground dashed upward toward the viewer as the land sped by underneath, buildings whipping past. A disorienting collection of sub-screens careened wildly together.

But there was guided purpose to the movements. A zeroing in towards defined goals. Familiar and famous objects swam into view. The Capitol. The New York Stock Exchange. The Citibank building.

Savas gasped. “Oh, my God, Rebecca. They’re drones. They’re drones flying in for the kill.”

The screens went black. Outside the FBI windows, light pierced the darkness. The crowd turned toward the flash, an orange fireball climbing in the evening sky from Midtown. An explosion rattled the windows of their building.

SAVAS Deposition 1

19

Chaos stormed through New York and the world.

After the feed from Anonymous, network programming returned to something quite different than normal. Broadcasters replayed the carnage over and over, whipping themselves and the public into a frenzy.

At FBI, Savas had steered his people back to work. They would be slogging through the night. Schedules, family, health would suffer, but until the crisis could be controlled, he didn’t see any other choice. His phone rang constantly. From his superiors came a barrage of commands. Most of these came from above as the governmental apparatus went into war mode. Contacts and numerous agencies checked in with him, provided small pieces of useless information, and asked for favors of investigation and protection in return. He had nothing to give. His staff was already depleted even before the televised mass assassination.

In the middle of the chaos he received a message on his private cell. He stared at the number. It made sense. In all that was happening, now was one of the greater periods of danger from a government eating itself, going too far, forgetting its principles. Now would be a time for the Watchmen to call.

The group had formed during the Bush years when some in the FBI and CIA had grown concerned about the powers the executive branch and other governmental agencies had begun to assume under antiterrorism laws. Under the increasingly paranoid Obama administration, they had only redoubled their efforts to exert a more sane response to threats. Indefinite detention and torture were one thing, but secretive decisions for assassination of Americans without trial, endless spying on citizens by governmental organizations — for some of them, it had gone too far. With the national scandal of the Priest and Whore last year, they had finally pooled their meager resources and acted. And thus had Gabriel been created.

“Alice. To what do I owe the pleasure?” His smile faded. “What? Are you sure? When?” Savas looked around the floor. “Jesus. What will that mean? How far is the decree?” He nodded scribbling on a notepad. “Understood. Right. Thank you.”

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.

“Mmmmm, Francisco,” she said, downing a quarter of the two inches in the tumbler. “Cask strength?” He nodded. “Nice and warm. That shed is going to get further and further away as the winter comes.”

Lopez grunted. “I think we’ll spend a lot of time just clearing a path to it. I didn’t realize the snows came so early here. The mountains in Alabama weren’t all that high or cold.”

“How’s the buck?” she said, walking into the small kitchen. “Biggest one we’ve bagged. You’ve got your work cut out for you to top that one.”

“You’re one competitive girl, Sara,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “But he’s coming along well. Should be dinner for two weeks with the last veggie run.”

She nodded. “Runs are going to get harder with the weather. We need a strategy for supplies. I don’t think the Outback can handle what might be coming on these lousy roads. Next trip into town we need to make sure we have enough fuel for the generator.”

“By then we’ll have natural refrigeration and drain less power. We can fill the shelter with things. We’re remote, Sara, but not that remote.”

Houston placed her tumbler on the table and walked up to Lopez, draping her arms around his neck. “I’m getting used to a certain rustic luxury up here, Francisco. Nothing ruins rustic luxury like a few weeks of rationing.”

They kissed. Houston wasn’t sure what felt warmer, his lips or the whiskey. As his hands moved over her waist, she realized that both could spin her head around in the most delicious ways.

A device buzzed from a table beside the sofa.

Both Lopez and Houston turned quickly to the sound, the warmth draining from their faces, softer expressions replaced with intense eyes and set jaws.

Lopez rumbled deeply. “My guess is that it’s for you.”

Houston smirked and walked toward the landline. It looked like a receptionist’s business phone, rows of buttons and an LCD display glowing back at her. The phone cable ran through a black box with a pair of lights. The red light glowed. “They sure know how to ruin a girl’s evening.”

Lopez downed the rest of this whiskey and followed her to the phone, ignoring the device and staring out the window. He seemed to focus on objects thousands of miles away.

“Mary here,” said Houston, using the false identities they had been given. “Gabriel’s fine.” She pushed a button and the device went to speaker. A woman’s voice spoke from the other end.

“It is said: ‘Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.’”

Houston replied. “And it is also said, ‘Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.’” She watched a series of numbers changing across the LCD. They locked in a particular sequence, and she continued. “Handshake completed. Hi, Rebecca.”

“Hello, Sara,” said Cohen, her voice strained.

“This isn’t going to be a good call, is it? Are we blown?”

“No. Nothing like that. Something much worse.”

Lopez turned his head and met Houston’s eyes. His voice was curt. “What’s going on?”

There was a sigh and long pause on the line. “Be glad you’re in the mountains. Down here, it’s chaos. Short story is that there seems to be a hacker group called Anonymous that has suddenly mutated into a full-bore terrorist group. Attacks have ripped through the virtual world and bombings and assassinations in the real world.”

Houston crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s that got to do with us?”

“Sara, this is a national security threat. We’ve had major figures in business and finance and in the US Congress blown up or gunned down in the last week. At the same time, some kind of Armageddon worm has been secretly eating its way through world networks, syphoning off huge sums of money, controlling international media, and insinuating itself on every computer from academia to the Pentagon. It’s already caused havoc and we’re pretty sure it’s just getting warmed up.”

Lopez leaned over toward the phone. “That doesn’t answer the question. Why on earth are you calling us? What could we do? If we show our faces down there, we’ll just end up in a cell. More likely just dead.”

“The President has declared a state of martial law in New York and Washington.”

“What the fuck?” said Houston. “Are you kidding me? It’s that bad?”

Cohen sounded tense. “They’ve used drones to bomb the Pentagon, Wall Street. They took over the networks to televise the execution of business and political leaders. Military units are already moving into the city. Curfew is in place. So yeah, it’s pretty damn bad.”

Houston shook her head. “How does the world go to hell in a week’s time? You were just here!”

Lopez pressed her. “Look, if what you say is true, then what could we possibly do? Seems better that two hunted fugitives wait it out in hiding. Law enforcement will be looking suspiciously at everyone. That’s some attention we don’t need.”

“Most of our staff has been annexed by Homeland Security and put into bodyguard roles for the powerful. It’s the same all over NYPD and other FBI divisions. All kinds of 9/11 laws are getting dusted off and put into use. HS is calling all the shots. It’s ludicrous!” Cohen barked a laugh. “Right now, all we’ve got is the core of Intel 1: me, John, Angel, JP, and Frank. The other agencies seem paralyzed. We need you. The country needs you.”

“The country needs us,” said Lopez. “Would that be the same country that wants us dead? The same government that slandered our names and has us on your most wanted list?”

“Francisco, today’s not the day to seek justice for what happened to you. You know there are plenty of good people who deserve our best. Some of those risked their lives so that you and Sara could find a new life up there.”

“And now you want to take that away from us.”

Cohen sighed. “If we don’t stop Anonymous — I don’t know how far they’ll go. I’m afraid, Francisco. Soon, there might not even be a country to establish your innocence in!”

“This is crazy,” said Houston.

“I know it is, but aren’t most disasters as they unfold? 9/11? The attack on Mecca with one of our own nukes? Please. You two have unique skills. Highly valuable skills. And you’re ghosts. You have no obligation to the US government or anyone else. You can do what we can’t. Even Anonymous can’t find out who you are. Tools we can use to turn this around.”

“Tools,” said Lopez.

“Dammit, Francisco, you know what I’m saying! You’ve been screwed, yes. But don’t you feel the least bit of obligation to the people of this nation?”

Houston looked painfully toward Lopez, who turned his head away as he spoke. “You know I do. I was a priest once.”

“Then help us! We need everything we can get right now!”

Lopez looked at Houston. He nodded and closed his eyes.

“The activation protocol?” Houston asked.

They could almost hear the relief in Cohen’s voice. “Yes. I’ll rendezvous with you at the specified location. Thank you. Both of you.”

“You're welcome,” said Houston.

“And Sara, make sure you come prepared.”

The light on the phone switched to green and the LCD went blank.

Lopez silently grabbed his coat and walked to the door. Houston followed suit and took an LED lantern from the mantle. Together they walked outside and round to the back of the cabin. Lopez approached the cabin wall and knelt down. He brushed away several inches of snow, revealing a set of padlocked doors embedded in the ground. Houston removed the key from a chain around her neck and inserted it into the lock. They pulled together on the doors, the sound of them swinging on their hinges muffled by the deep snow around them.

A short flight of steps ended at the bottom of what appeared to be a surprisingly large wine cellar for a mountain getaway. Houston stepped from behind him and held up the lantern, pressing a button to intensify the light. Sharp shadows were cast across the room. The light spilled over crates and suitcases, canisters and body armor.

Lopez flipped open one case. Dark vestments, black gloves, and masks were folded neatly into sections. Houston ran her fingers over one of the masks and sighed.

“Never thought I’d be wearing these in the States. Never dreamed we’d be activated here.”

“Well, it’ll shoot facial recognition to all hell and back. We have to assume the targets will all be wired with a hundred cameras, and half of them might be governmental for all we know.”

“Blended in better in Islamic countries. That’s where all the action is these days. Or used to be.”

“From Rebecca’s tone, disguise will be the least of our issues. We’ll need something more serious than clothes.”

They both turned to an open wooden box, the top of the crate slightly off position. Houston tossed the lid to the ground and they stared inside. The light of the lantern glinted off black metal.

The interior was filled with guns.