Breakpoint (24 page)

Then he thought about calling Jimmy and remembered the urgency of the task Foley had given him. He carefully stepped back out of the Dugout into the corridor and hit the speed dial for Jimmy Foley. “The Russians, the Chinese, whoever, they've been here. Trashed everything, ripped off the hard drives. What do I do?”

The Foleys had just arrived back at their little Battery Park City apartment overlooking the Hudson. “Okay. Don't panic.” Jimmy could hear the tension in Soxster's voice. “Clear the zone, but with your eyes open. Be careful of places somebody could be hiding. Then get in the car and drive over toward Boston University, 1010 Comm. Ave. It's Tommy McDonough's office. Don't take your weapon in with you. Stay there. Maybe he'll let you use his computer, but at any rate you'll be safe there. Tommy will send a forensics team over to the Dugout.” Jimmy paused a moment and added, “There's nothing in there that shouldn't be in there, right, like—”

“Drugs? Hell no,” Soxster said into his earpiece. “Shit! I bet those bastards took my Kistler chard.” Soxster took the fire escape out of the building, hopped a fence, and hailed a cab to near BU. McDonough arrived while Soxster was still trying to explain things to the uniformed trooper in the State Police lobby.

“Jimmy said this was damn important,” Tommy McDonough explained. “Better be, cuz I was comped Celtics tickets. Had ta give 'em to the neighbor kid.” He showed Soxster into a room filled with computers.

“Wow, antediluvian,” Soxster let slip.

“This is just stuff we've seized. Keep it for parts. Good stuff 's back there. You set up in there, while I get the forensics boys in from their Saturday-night beans and franks with the family.” On his way out of the door, McDonough turned back to Soxster, “They ain't gonna find no drugs in there, right?”

Soxster felt a little odd using one government agency's computer crime lab to hack another government agency's network, but moving fast was important and it would be late Monday by the time TSA agreed to give them what they needed. He was glad that he kept some key tools on his 100-gigabyte PDA. He was quickly on to an anonymity-providing server in Canada, then out to a university system in Texas, then the public library in New York City, on to a system located somewhere at an internet exchange point. He began capturing all of the digital conversations to find any traffic having an IP address that fell within the network ranges assigned to TSA. There were plenty to choose from.

The communication stream he chose was a file sharing app that tunneled over port 80, designed to let users access the internet with a web browser and not be blocked by the firewall. It was running as a TSA employee downloaded a pirated copy of a movie still playing in theaters. Taking that path in, Soxster scanned the network. There were no internal firewalls or file-encryption system. They also had not instituted identity-based access-control lists. He looked for big network storage devices where video logs would reside. Bingo!

It was huge, terabytes of files. He searched on “Teterboro” and “03.10.12.” There were four cameras. He began with the file “Internal/terminal/magnetometer” and sent it sailing to the music file-sharing application on his new State Police desktop. As he started to load “flight line—north,” the connection was broken and an image of a red stop sign popped up with the words. “You are engaged in an unauthorized transmission of government files out of the TSA network. This may be a criminal act punishable by a million-dollar fine or twenty years in jail, or both. TSA/CISO.”

“Shit!” Soxster said in the empty room, and broke the connection. They must have had some egress-control system looking for large file transfers. Well, at least he got one big file out. Jimmy had said to begin looking at people arriving about three in the afternoon and freeze-frame the faces of all the adults. That would take a while, even using the intelligent video and facial recognition software he had acquired. And then there was the little problem that they had no database of faces with which to compare the images, no facial-recognition equivalent of mug sheets. Or at least, not yet. But he was inside a State Police computer room.

While the first desktop machine sorted through the file from Teterboro, Soxster moved to another workstation and logged in as “McDonough, T.” He hit the “forgot password” link and the system was soon asking him to supply “favorite sports team.” McDonough had said he had Celtics tickets, but his favorite team could have been the Patriots, Sox, or Bruins. Then Soxster thought: I bet McDonough went to Boston College. The Eagles. Soxster went with it and was quickly inside the State Police network. Not only did they have mug shots, they had access to FBI mug shots. Soxster got to work.

A few hours later, as the clogged local area network that he had strung together was churning away comparing faces at Teterboro Airport with known criminals, he checked in with Jimmy Foley in New York. “You know, James, already I can tell you an awful lot of these guys at the Executive Jet terminal have had serious trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

“Not surprising. But no one who was mobbed up, no Russkies?” Jimmy asked.

“Nope, not using this database.”

“Any Asians, Chinese-looking?” Jimmy asked.

“Sure, but I don't know who they are,” Soxster said, starring at the faces zooming by on the screen.

“Can you believe there were one hundred and eight takeoffs out of that airport after three o'clock that afternoon? I got the printout from the FAA. That place makes LaGuardia look sleepy,” Jimmy mused while poring through a spreadsheet. “No one went anywhere suspicious, unless you count West Palm, and they were all aircraft owned by big corporations or chartered by them: Mousenet, Google, Nanotech, Pharmagen.” He scrolled down the list. “Then alphabet soup. GE, GD, SAIC, BAH, DCS, EMC, CNN…”

“We need Susan,” Soxter admitted. “How's she doing down in the Bahamas by herself? Kind of scary, her soloing. I don't trust Gaudium, and I think she's fallen for his whole line of crap about how we shouldn't ‘change what it means to be human.'”

“I talked to her this afternoon,” Jimmy replied while cross-referencing company names. “I think she's getting suspicious of Gaudium, too. She wanted you to check out the private security firm he owns, Dominion Commonwealth Services—sounds pretty vague.”

“That would be DCS? Didn't you just—” Soxster hoped he had heard correctly.

“Shit, yeah,” Jimmy said, pulling up the flight list. “Gulfstream VII registered to DCS, Dover, Delware. Took off at 1705 headed for Santa Rosa. Where's that?”

“California. It's about twenty minutes south of Napa, and, guess what, it's even closer to Russian River,” Soxster said, snapping his fingers.

“Could still be innocent. Gaudium owns a security firm, which undoubtedly does some business in Manhattan. Execs from the firm fly out to see the owner. Nonetheless…,” Jimmy said as he was hunting for the Dominion Commonwealth Services website. There wasn't one.

“Who doesn't have a website?” Soxster asked.

“It's incorporated in Delaware,” Jimmy noted.

“They all are. I think Delaware gives out coupons for free upgrades at Marriott when you register three or more companies,” Soxster joked as he surfed to the Delaware Secretary of Corporations site. “Okay, here it is. Their offices is a P.O. box in Sperryville, Virginia. Gaudium is not listed as an officer. There is an Elizabeth Eloh, who is the CEO, and an R. Nayk is the secretary and treasurer of the corporation. They are not publicly traded.”

“Let's Google them,” Jimmy said, looking for any reference to the company, anywhere in cyberspace. “Oh, here's something. They must be pretty legitimate. They ran a recruiting ad in
Army Times
and in
Christian Soldiers.
And here's a story about the guy who used to run SOCOM, Special Forces Command—General Bowdin, retiring to go be the COO at Dominion Commonwealth.”

“Bowdin? Francis X. Bowdin?” Soxster asked. “Isn't he the guy that got forced out for giving fundamentalist evangelical speeches to the troops? Yeah, and he was mentioned in Professor Myers's article. He was a leading crusader against Transhumanism. Saw it leading to the ‘End of Days.'”

“What the fuck is Transhumanism?” Jimmy asked.

“It's a movement that supports improving humanity through genetic engineering, enhancements of all kinds, including human-machine interface, brain downloads, nano implacements, things like your eye…,” Soxster sputtered.

“How do you know about my eye? Never mind, keep that fact to yourself,” Jimmy muttered as he pulled up a Google image of Francis X. Bowdin in his Special Forces green beret. “Try an image of Bowdin on the facial-recognition software.”

“Already did.” Soxster sat looking at an image of Bowdin in civilian clothes, walking through the Teterboro security check at 1621 on March 10. “It still may not prove anything.”

“Wait a minute. Jesus Christ!” Jimmy screamed into his headset. “It does prove something. The guy who hired the Russians who blew up the beachheads, the guy who probably them killed them. Dimitri Yellin called him Mr. Spetsnaz because he reminded him of a Russian soldier. Spetsnaz…”

“…means Special Forces!” Soxster finished the sentence. “Once you look like an SF general, you always look like an SF general. It's been him that China has been using to fuck us over, bomb shit.”

“I'll bet my wife's paycheck that it's been him.” There was elation in Jimmy's voice. “But probably not working for China, but for Gaudium. Look at it. Bowdin's a religious fanatic all worked up about this Transhumanism, just like Senator Bloviator. He teams up with a rich, mad scientist who shares the same fears. Motive, means, opportunity.”

“Wait, Jimmy. Susan is down on some atoll alone with Bowdin's guys, who are probably about to blow up some baby clinic.”

“And she's probably about to be blown up in some baby clinic. I got to get a message to her without letting them know that we're onto them.” Jimmy zoomed his right eye in on Ellis Island as his mind raced. “And I have to prove all of this to Rusty before the Pentagon bops China. It's been us, Americans, all along. Shit!”

0755 Local Time
Hong Kong

“I didn't think you would come,” Wu Zhan said, walking across the room to greet Sol Rubenstein.

“It's been a while,” Sol offered, shaking hands.

“Since you rounded up my network and ran me out of Washington, you mean?”

“You left of your own volition, as I recall, before we declared you
persona non grata,”
Sol recalled.

“Yes, after the FBI accidentally ran my car off the road into Rock Creek.”

“Was it the FBI that did that?” Sol asked. “No hard feelings?”

“The best thing you could have done for me. As you know, I now run the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry, but I report directly to the President on certain matters. Come, let us have breakfast—your flight is in a few hours and we have much to talk about.”

As they sat by the window in the private dining room, Sol gazed again at the skyline, the busy traffic in the harbor. “Beautiful city, but why here? Why not in Beijing?”

“Too many people to see us in Beijing, including your embassy. Hong Kong is neutral ground,” Wu explained.

“It's part of the PRC,” Sol asserted.

“Yes, but it is a Special Autonomous Region. It has its own elected government, own charter of rights, own flag, own police. Beijing exercises little control.” The waiter wheeled in a table with plates of scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, pastries, and fruit. “I developed many bad habits living in the States. High-cholesterol breakfasts were one of them.” After piling his plate, Wu Zhan got down to business. “President Huang asked me to run operations to determine who was behind the attacks in the U.S., the internet bombings, the hackings. He did not know if it was the PLA or some arm of the Ministry. He asked me to spy on his government, my government.”

“And, let me guess, it wasn't the PLA or the Ministry,” Sol said flatly.

“You won't believe me, but I will offer you proofs. No, it was neither the Ministry of State Security, nor the military. But that is not to say that we do not monitor your cyberspace. As you yourself uncovered, we are well placed to see what is going on.

“The only connections to China were some hacks that were routed through Dilan University. They originated in California. Is there a Bagdad in California? Also, the hacks into the commercial satellites came from near there, within fifty kilometers. I have had all the files translated into English and placed on this thumb drive,” Wu said, placing a jump drive on Sol's side of the table.

“I am afraid that isn't proof enough. Somebody hired people in the U.S. to do these attacks. Who else would? You are threatening the new Taiwan government, placing your military on alert, running exercises along the coast and in the straits. You want us to back off, not to help Taiwan. So you send us a message. You're also worried about the technological gap we have blown open again and you had a plan on the shelf to redress it. You implement that plan as the way of sending us a message. In New York, we call it a two-fer.” Sol spoke forcefully, staring at Wu.

“Sol, why would we do that? Our economy is tied to yours. We have lost billions already because of the attacks on the cyber connections and satellites. There are some who think a temporary economic dislocation is acceptable to get Taiwan back, but who is to say it would be temporary? And how do we control the provinces during an economic downturn? We are already having unrest in the villages.” Wu paused to see if he was persuading his old foe.

“We're about to leave you in the dust technologically again,” Sol countered. “To borrow from the late, lamented Chairman Mao, there will be a Great Leap Forward, but this time it will be ours. Of course, you want to slow us down.”

“Yes, we have noticed the tech gap opening up again. We aren't as good at genomics, nanotech. Living Software will set us back, at least until you let us be part of Globegrid. But we have plans to catch up. We are spending billions of yuan on research and training.” Wu reached into his idiomatic English: “Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg?”

“Wu Zhan, you know as well as I do that there are those in the PLA who think you have become too economically tied to the U.S., who would gladly sacrifice for a while to disentangled our two economies. We have our sources, too,” Sol asserted.

“The PLA is a problem. They took the election of the Independence Party in Taiwan very badly. And to rub salt in the wounds, the idiots on the island then shoot down PLA fighter planes. Their apology and offer of money was offensive. They shoot us down using a new laser gun, no less. Something we don't have. That's the tech gap they worry about. PLA studies say that if they don't retake Taiwan soon, the defensive technology on the island may get to the point where it cannot be invaded successfully,” Wu explained.

“So they want to invade it now?” Sol asked.

“Yes. And some of them even believe that the Pentagon has staged these attacks in America to blame them on China, so that the President and Congress will want to fight us. They think the Pentagon is planning something for later this year, for your election. That's why they want to go first and take Taiwan.”

Sol looked out the window and shook his head. Then, looking back at Wu, he asked, “How can they possibly believe that the Pentagon would kill Americans?”

“They mirror-image, Sol. The PLA would murder Chinese; they have. The PLA also knows there is a big U.S. exercise coming, strategic bombers in Guam and Australia. Atlantic Ocean–based aircraft carriers coming into the Pacific. What other conclusion could they come to?”

Sol pushed away his plate and stretched his long frame out, with his legs extending away from the table. He briefly closed his eyes. The jet lag was hitting him. He sighed. “How do you suggest we back our two sides down?”

“Give us something on Taiwan, have them say they will accept a Special Autonomous Region status, like Hong Kong,” Wu pressed.

“That's what this is all about, isn't it? You'd love that, have us abandon the Taiwan Relations Act?” Sol asked sarcastically. “Ain't going to happen.”

“Without that, President Huang may not be able to control events.”

Sol stood up. “Thank you for breakfast. I have a flight to catch.”

0715 EST
Hopetown, Elbow Cay
The Bahamas

Susan had risen early and run three miles of the six-mile-long island, on the hard-packed sand below the high-tide line. She had run in college, but now her sport was tennis and she was getting pretty good at it. She had beaten Sam during their end-of-year getaway in Boca Raton. As she stood at the top of the stairs at the lodge, high above the quaint harbor with its 1863 candy-cane lighthouse, she spotted Arnold Scott at the helm of the whaler, just entering the harbor. Then she felt her BlackBerry vibrate, finally getting a signal now that she was higher up and facing Marsh Harbor. She checked her messages. There was an encrypted signal marked urgent from JXF3, Jimmy.

Scott waved up to her and began to maneuver the whaler into the lodge's dock at the bottom of the stairs. “Be right down,” she yelled. She stepped back into the lodge and read the message. “DSC is run by are tired general named Bowdin. We think he recruited and ran the hackers, killed the Russian mobsters. We think he and Gaudium are in league. You may be right about them planning to kill the children, but we haven't figured out how. The kids are probably all over the U.S. You may just want to pull out now and we will send people in to find out. We can get the Bahamas police to sail over and get you.”

She thought for a moment and then sent a message back. “May not be time to organize others to go in. I have to save the children, no matter how many chromosomes they have.” She waved good-bye to the lodge owner as he sat down to an old PBX call router. All the phone lines in the little hotel were routed through the ancient switch to the one outgoing line.

“I see you're wearing your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. Very nice,” Scott said as Susan stepped down in to the whaler in a pink pantsuit.

“There weren't very many choices. I've been on the road for almost a week.” Susan realized how big it had been as she said it. “But I wore sneaks for the boat.”

“Well, it's very appropriate for an expectant mother, or one who hopes to be one,” he replied. Scott expertly handled the boat through the crowded little cove, into the channel, and then almost stood the boat up in the water as he sped toward the next cay, Man-O-War. “No buoys around here. You really have to know where you're going, because it's so shallow and there are lots of sandbars,” he yelled over the gas-driven outboards. The boat bounced across the clear water.

“If it's not too personal, have you thought about actually having kids?” Scott asked. “I don't mean these freak kids, but your own, natural ones?”

“You sound like my mother.” Susan spoke over the engine noise. “Here's what I tell her: If my husband and I decide to, we'll let you know.”

“It's fun playing your husband, but what does the real guy do?” Scott asked.

“Boyfriend. He's a doctor.”

“I'll bet he's a white guy,” Scott replied.

Susan gave him a look. “Well, as it turns out, this one happens to be. Why?”

“Tough for the brothers to succeed in America. Schools, drugs, gangs. A bright woman like you wants to be with successful men, and unless you go in the Army or are a super athlete…,” he explained.

“I know lots of successful black men, most of whom were never in the Army or the NBA,” Susan countered. “You got to get out more, Arnie.”

He cut the engine as the whaler moved into the harbor channel at Man-O-War. Susan could see a cute village of cottages and a few larger buildings. “Where's the clinic?”

“Isolated, all by itself on the northern edge of the island, about a mile and a half,” he said, pointing. He brought the whaler into the large, wooden public dock and tied up. At the edge of the dock, Susan looked up and down the path at the few stores. They were closed for Sunday. “Before I walk you up there, we should go back to our safe house first,” Scott declared.

“Why? I'm supposed to be at the gate by half past.” Susan checked her watch. It was 7:20
A.M
.

“Well, there are some guys there from DCS, came in last night, who you should meet first,” he said, hesitating.

“No,” Susan said, beginning to walk down the path, “No, Arnie, I think I'd better get moving.”

“It's not a request,” Scott barked. He reached out a long arm to grab her. She saw his hand move toward her in slow motion. Her synapses fired. They know. They know we're onto their plot to kill the children. The damn hotel phone. She bolted and sprinted up the path between two cottages. She saw his face, charging behind her, mean and focused. She ran hard, putting distance between them. There were clothes out on a line drying, and she dodged quickly behind them. No one was out on the pathways; they were in church. She saw a wooden stairway that led back to the water and she leaped down the steps. A dog went wild inside a cottage on her left. A rooster was crowing. She turned at the bottom of the stairs to look back, just as he arrived at the top. He was closing the distance between them.

She heard laughing from nearby and saw a large shop on a pier, opening up. A large white woman was putting a stick under a shutter window to prop it open and let in the air. Susan ran for her, down the pier toward the store. A sign said “Sail and canvas makers since 1793.” She burst inside the store. It was filled with brightly colored canvas bags. “Susan! Stop!” she heard from too close behind her. She turned and pushed over a table piled high with red, orange, and yellow canvas tote bags, then ran into the interior of the factory and outlet. “What's going on out there?” someone yelled from inside. Susan turned a corner and saw three big women sitting at some sort of large cutting and sewing machines. Bolts of the bright canvas hung overhead.

“He's after me. He's trying to rape me,” Susan heard herself scream as she ran toward the women.

She heard the nearest woman say, “Ain't none a our affair what you black people do.” The white woman had arms bigger than Susan's legs and a look on her face like she had just seen an ugly bug. Arnold Scott exploded into the room, panting, “You can't escape us.”

Susan saw an open doorway that led out onto the pier in the back. There was a small motorboat tied up. She ran between the machines toward the door and tripped over a pile of bags on the floor. She turned to get up, and Scott was over her. She kicked away, but he grabbed her ankle with a hand that felt like hot steel.

“I won't let you kill the children!” she screamed.

He reached down and put a hand under her, raising her whole body in the air, as she tried to kick his face with her one free leg. He was yelling, “You have to come with…ARRR, oh, oh.” He dropped her hard on the wooden floor. She opened her eyes, but saw only lights and whirls, flashing. Arnold Scott was stretched out on top of one of the machines, with three large women standing around him holding blood-covered knives and giant scissors. One of them came over and stood above Susan. Susan watched blood drip onto her suit and saw that there was already a spray of fresh red blood on her side.