The Curse of Medusa

CHAPTER THREE

Alan Pauling pushed his hand into the Cheetos and pulled out half a dozen of the neon-orange snacks. He stuffed them into his mouth before wiping the salty cheese on the side of his Hawaiian shirt. It was hot and humid in New Orleans — just his kind of weather — and he settled back in his seat and stretched his arms in the comforting warmth. It reminded him of home in Queensland, not that he’d ever be going back there. When all this was over, and his special skills were no longer needed, he was going to buy himself a large house on a small island somewhere very isolated.

Watching the crowds forming below in the street, Pauling hoped not for the first time that Novak had done his part of the job properly and got inside the Beast. They had all known that was the hardest part of the entire operation, and any screw ups wouldn’t be known until the big moment itself. He shrugged his shoulders and ate more Cheetos. They would know soon enough.

How many of these people would survive the next few hours? Pauling had no idea. He didn’t particularly care about any of them. The tiny handful of people he cared about were thousands of miles away in Australia. The Boss had told him that particular country wasn’t a target, at least not yet. The Boss had his reasons for striking America, but the Boss never talked about them to anyone and Pauling knew better than to ask.

Another mouthful of Cheetos and he cracked open a Pepsi Max. Alan Pauling had a technical mind, but was not a complicated man. As far as he was concerned, all he cared about was the Golden Rule, and that was whoever has the gold, makes the rules. After this job for the Boss, he would be wealthy enough to fly away and build himself his own personal fiefdom, somewhere tropical if he could help it.

And nowhere immediately downwind of the Eastern Seaboard. After today, that would be a big mistake.

He fired up his laptop and swigged from the can of warm Pepsi. Waiting for the software to load, he peered once again through the window at the hubbub seven storeys beneath him. Enjoy it while you can, folks, he thought. Pretty soon nothing but mayhem down there.

The principle was simple enough — exploiting a simple zero-day vulnerability to change the course of history. Pauling enjoyed his work, and his study of the target vehicle’s network architecture was especially interesting to him. The more sophisticated the system, the more vulnerabilities there were to attack and exploit, and that was what made this job so exciting. It didn't get much more sophisticated than this.

If the vehicle was connected to the internet, which it was, it was simply a case of acquiring the car’s IP address. That was where Novak came in. With that information, Pauling was able to rewrite firmware in a chip inside the vehicle’s navigation system and import his own code. With that done he would be able to control the vehicle through the exploited CAN bus. A simple hack of the night-vision camera on the front of the car would allow for a visual as he controlled the car, and after that, as far as the passengers in the target vehicle were concerned, Alan Pauling was God.

He crumpled the empty bag of Cheetos and tossed it over his shoulder before peering outside the window. He glanced at his watch. The crowd was gathering nicely, and pretty soon the car would be here.

Then it was Showtime in the Big Easy.

Speaker Todd Tobin loved supporting his team more than just about anything else in this world, and today was no exception. The Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio was humming with excitement as his team, the Cincinnati Bengals, were preparing to kick the pants off the Seattle Seahawks. Days like this were a rare treat for Speaker Tobin, who spent most of his time in Washington glad-handing and smooth-talking people he barely knew and cared for even less.

Today was a break — hotdogs, fried onions, French’s mustard, sunshine and last but not least, a great game ahead of him. He could barely contain his excitement.

Laura looked at him and rolled her eyes.

He smiled. “What?”

His wife said nothing and passed him a paper towel.

“Mustard?”

She nodded.

He knew what she was thinking — why can’t he eat something less messy, at least in public? He knew she loved him all the same, and he loved her too — not least because she always seemed to have a paper towel handy when he needed one.

He leaned forward, close to her, and whispered so the security detail in the seats directly behind them couldn’t hear what he was going to say. Five short words later he saw the smile spread on his wife’s face. It worked every time…

“Woah!” he said, pointing at the field. “He’s going to make him pay for that — they’re down 24 — 7!”

Laura rolled her eyes again and smiled. Looking like she cared about football was part of the job. For her husband it was easy because he loved it, but on her part it was all fake, and that made it hard work. Sometimes she felt like her smile was about to fall off.

Tobin moaned as the Seahawks moved deep into Bengals territory thanks to a classic piece of misdirection play. “That is not a fair catch… come on!”

“That’s what I was going to say,” his wife said with a smirk.

He ignored her, watching with interest as the scrimmage played out and the quarterback spiked the ball after the snap.

“What does that mean?” Laura almost sounded interested.

Tobin turned to his wife and smiled at her lack of knowledge. “Technically it’s an incomplete pass, so it means the clock is stopped and the down is exhausted.” He turned back to the game so fast he missed the second eye-roll.

“Gee, thanks for that, honey,” she said. “It’s so much clearer now. It all makes sense.”

Then she stopped talking and stared at her husband, her brow furrowed in bewilderment.

A small red light was meandering its way from her husband’s sleeve to his chest. It continued on its path up his neck and over his face where it stopped on his forehead, just beneath the peak of his trusty old Bengals baseball cap.

“Honey, what the hell is…”

She never finished her sentence. Half a second later her husband was propelled violently backwards over the back of his seat and into the lap of the Secret Service agent behind, a bullet hole drilled into the center of his head.

Only then did she hear the familiar sound of the rifle shot, a second behind the bullet.

Laura Tobin screamed as a Secret Service agent pushed her hard to the ground, covering her with his body and calling in the attack over his earpiece. The other agents responded in seconds, drawing their weapons and scanning the stadium. Whoever it was, the delay between hitting Speaker Tobin and the sound of the shot meant they were a good distance away.

The crowd roared with approval, mistaking the terror attack for some kind of publicity stunt, but seconds later total anarchy came to the stadium as reality dawned on thousands of football fans and a rush for the exits ensued.

America really was under attack.