Buzzworm (A Technology Thriller): Computer virus or serial killer? (26 page)

Roger woke up on Sunday morning
feeling like his head was about to explode. In two days, he would be catching a flight back to an unknown future. Maybe another year locked up in Overton. Or worse. He was certain that the CIA would report he had failed miserably, which would end his career as a virus expert once word got around the industry.

He pulled a six-dollar bottle of spring water out of the mini bar and broke the seal thinking hydration might make his head feel better. Then he grabbed a granola bar worth roughly the same as a continental breakfast and ripped open the packaging.
The breakfast of champions,
he thought.

Xavier had promised them a lead on
Buzzworm
by noon, which was about two hours away. Hyde hadn’t disclosed his plans, but going and making an arrest seemed the most obvious tactic.
Buzzworm
, whoever he was, would finally be locked up. But would that change anything? Roger couldn’t help but think that whatever plans he had to disrupt Med’s launch on Monday could still go on without him. So an arrest wasn’t the solution.

Roger decided he needed to talk to Med right away. She had picked up a pay-as-you-go phone the day before to replace the one that
Buzzworm
had hacked, and he still had the number. She answered after a few rings, probably thinking about the wisdom of even talking to him again so soon after the Xavier incident.

“Are you OK?” was the first thing he said, pacing around the small hotel room.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding distant.

“You don’t sound like it.”

“Roger, Xavier has gone AWOL.”

Roger stopped walking, the pain around his temples making his vision blur. Having Xavier run had never occurred to them. Where could he hide?

“We need to talk. Where are you?” He could hear Med’s breath on the phone, not quite a sigh. She told him where she was staying and the room number at the Washington Plaza. He dressed and ran out the door within minutes, taking the stairs down to the lobby, too impatient to wait for the elevator.

After a short cab ride, he arrived at the Plaza, took the lift to the 22
nd
floor and knocked on her door. She let him in immediately, wearing a white hotel bathrobe over jeans and a tee. Her feet were bare and her hair was wet, as if she had just had a shower. She led him into a sitting area. You could fit four of his hotel rooms into her suite, which had a separate seating area and what looked like two bedrooms off the main area and a small kitchen. She was holding a small white cup in her hands. He could smell peppermint tea.

“How did you know about Xavier missing in action?” was the first thing Roger said.

Med took a sip of the tea. “Hyde was just here. He went looking for him.” She stared out the window, lost in thought for a few seconds. “
Buzzworm
has taken his daughter hostage.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Roger could only imagine what Hyde must be feeling right now, his only lead evaporating. “I wouldn’t want to be
Buzzworm
if Hyde gets his hands on him. But we still have no idea who he is. What’s he going to do?”

Med showed Roger the HUMMER and the graphical report she had run on web traffic. They stared at the cluster of dots crowded over a thinly populated area about two hours south of the city. She explained what the data meant.

“So you think that’s
Buzzworm
?” asked Roger.

“For Hyde’s sake, I hope so. Seems like an obvious place to keep a hostage.”

Roger pointed to the military laptop. “Can you take that thing on the road?” Med looked up, not sure what he was asking. “How long does the power last.”

“Six hours fully charged,” she answered. He could see it was plugged into the wall socket. So likely topped up.

“Access to satellite mapping?”

“That’s what it does best,” she said.

Roger looked at his watch. “Get dressed, Med. We’re going on a road trip.”

It amazed Roger
how you could drive fifty miles outside of the nation’s capital and find yourself suddenly in heavy forest, not a person in sight. Med had driven them in her aging Honda Civic; they had headed south out of Washington to Fredericksburg, in search of the location she had found and given to Hyde.

Med had the big
Hummer
balanced on her knee, the screen open against the steering wheel. They were parked on the east shoulder of Old Mill Road, a two lane gravel road that wound its way through pine and oak forest just west of the Mott’s Run reservoir. Roger had his eye out for traffic, worried that locals would be suspicious of a strange vehicle parked in their neighborhood. He looked over at Med who had access to satellite imagery on her computer that was clearer and more detailed than anything he had seen before. She could zoom into an object as small as a child’s bike and almost count the spokes.

“Here’s the private road that cuts through the forest. The road ends at the property identified by the web traffic scan. There’s a small clearing. Can’t see any borders or fences; it’s all forest with a few cleared areas here and there, except to the north where the forest ends at the reservoir.” On her map the reservoir stretched for miles from east to west, like a large man-made lake.

She drew her finger across the computer screen. “Whoever owns this has lots of wood for fire and cooking, fresh water from the reservoir and several garden plots for growing food. A survivalists dream. And the only entrance is this mile long winding cut road right through the Loblolly. Easy to guard and defend.”

“Lob what?” Roger asked.

“Loblolly pine. A local tree. Even as a kid I liked that word.”

“I didn’t know your skills included arborist.”

Med didn’t smile. “When you make a living reading satellite photos ten hours a day you learn a lot about local fauna. Besides, I grew up in this kind of back country. Corn fields. Pine forest. I’d love to have a home out here.”

Roger pointed to three light gray squares on her monitor. “What are those?”

“The biggest one, in the center of the clearing, is a house. I would call it a farmhouse because it has a porch on three sides. Like they used to build in the 1800’s. But it’s big. I would guess roughly four thousand square feet. Two chimneys. That way it could be heated in the winter with wood if the power goes out.”

“Then to the west, about a quarter of a mile away, just on the edge of the clearing is a steel building. Looks new. Could hold a tractor, implements. A machine shop.”

Roger was trying to understand how she could glean so much information from a small nondescript square on the screen. “How do you know this?”

“I can tell you’re a city boy. People in the country need a place to keep their tractors and a place to repair equipment. It doesn’t look like it, but there is about an acre of garden on this property. Enough to feed a large family year round. Plus, look at this.”

She zoomed in on the smaller of the two outbuildings. The corrugated steel roof filled the screen of her computer. “Look at that.” It was a black circle. “That’s a vent. Most out buildings don’t have vents like that.”

“What is it venting?”

“It’s too small for a chimney. I think it’s a gas engine. That means a generator. And if the generator is in a separate building like this, it’s probably big.”

“This guy is prepared.”

“More than you think. Look at this.” She pointed again to a blurry shape by the shed. “That’s a person. And it’s not our
Buzzworm
. This was taken on a Tuesday morning last week during working hours when our terrorist wannabe was most likely at work. It’s an adult in overalls.
Buzzworm
has hired hands.”

“Like farm workers?”

Med moved the screen around with her finger. She examined a few other details. “I see at least two people outside. There could be more in the house. They look like employees. Maybe guards.”

“Guards?”

“He’s probably super paranoid. I think we know that from his MO. He has a lot to protect and he has money. I don’t know why he doesn’t hire people to help out and keep an eye on things — while he goes to work to plot the overthrow of the government. Bastard.”

Roger looked out the window at the trees beside the road. “If there are guards, I guess the idea of just walking in to take a look is off the table.”

She jumped slightly when he said that. “Look there,” she said. She had zoomed in on the guard. Close to his body was an object, indistinct, but unmistakable. “He’s carrying a gun. Your average farm worker isn’t armed in the afternoon. These guys are on high alert.”

“So he’s going to run the show from the farm then?”

Med tapped her fingernails on the laptop. “He’s got everything he needs. Protection. Food. Fuel. And he has access to the Avion.”

Roger snapped his head around. “You said Avion. Is that why you asked me to search for that term in the lab that day? Why the interest?”

“GIPETTO runs on an Avion.”

Roger looked like someone had slapped his face. “You have an Avion at 213?”

Med looked puzzled. She pointed at the HUMMER’s screen. “This computing power you see — the satellite enhancement — that’s the Avion. There isn’t another computer on the planet, or a building full of servers, that could come close to that kind of raw power.”

The silence that followed in the small car allowed them both to hear the wind blowing through the trees around them. To Roger, the sound was vaguely ominous. He just shook his head. “He’s hacked the Avion, hasn’t he?”

Med held her palms up. “That’s impossible.”

“Sure it is. But he did it anyway. Probably was involved right from day one. From the installation. That would account for the videos anyway. He would need that kind of power to pull that off without a team of dozens of people. It would also explain that video of you that has you so freaked out — that ran on your secure system. He was playing with you. Son of a bitch.”

Med had turned pale, her mouth open slightly, staring into the dusty windshield. “He told Hyde that if he wanted to see his daughter again we needed to guarantee that the Avion would run uninterrupted for the next seven days.”

Roger sat forward in the seat, his hands on the dash. He was staring at Med now, doing calculations in his head. “That asshole has finally done it. He’s hijacked the world’s most powerful computer. Imagine a denial of service attack on the CIA, the FBI, the Military, NORAD, Homeland Security, Wall Street, international banking. By an Avion.”

Med was still staring off into the distance. “Is that even possible? It could last for days. For seven days, actually.”

Roger didn’t understand the reference to seven days, but he kept riffing. “The longest DoS attack in history was about an hour. On the FBI. That scared the shit out of the entire US military. So they’ve taken precautions. But that won’t help. Comparing a regular computer-based attack to an attack by the Avion is like comparing a rubber dinghy to a nuclear submarine.”

Med added. “And an attack from the inside. The loss of face for the United States will be impossible to calculate. Plus our national defenses could be useless for days.”

“Where is this Avion tucked away?”

“Roger, you don’t
tuck away
a fifty million dollar computer. A special floor was built for it on Sub 6.”

“So he kidnapped Hyde’s daughter for leverage to keep the Avion running. He knew somehow that you had a connection with Hyde. If you shut it down to stop the attack, she dies. If you leave it running, it rips the entire intelligence system to shreds and there is nothing anyone can do. Plus your big launch on Monday never happens.”

They both sat for a few moments, pondering the scale of the problem.

“I need to go in and take out his power,” was all Roger said.

“Are you crazy? You’re suddenly a SWAT agent? He has armed guards.”

“Hyde is heading into a trap. He doesn’t have a chance. If he could go in after dark tonight, no power, then he would have a fighting chance. Besides, without power,
Buzzworm
couldn’t run the Avion remotely. That’s why he has the generator. He knows his weakness.”

Med swallowed. Roger could see she was digesting his plan. It made sense. She rubbed her face with one hand. “OK. I have an uncle that lives about an hour from here in Mount Pleasant. Has acreage. He’s retired BATF. Maybe he can help us out. He used to specialize in these kinds of raids. Hopefully he will tell us were crazy or think of another saner solution.”

Roger hit the dash of her car with his right fist so hard Med jumped. She could see him changing in front of her eyes; for the first time since she met him he looked fierce, determined. Testosterone was in the air. “He’s not getting away with this, Med. Do you know what I mean? I hate these arrogant pickpockets. So let’s go see what your uncle has to say about it.” Med started the car, side checked her mirror and pulled out onto the road. When she turned to make a right onto River Road, the local feeder route to Route 95, she noticed Roger had his hand out.

“You took my cell phone away back at the hotel. Now I need yours.”

“Who are you calling?” she asked, handing over the neon pink pay-as-you-go bargain phone she had picked up at Wal-Mart.

“Hyde. I’m going to tell him to wait until the power goes out. And he needs to know about the guards.”

Med recalled the look on Hyde’s face back at the hotel room. “I don’t know, Roger. He doesn’t seem like the waiting type.”

Roger was dialing the number. “Yeah. That’s what worries me.”