DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (33 page)

This same counter-attack, however, also caused strains of the attacking payload to morph and replicate back through financial market networks, infecting all major and minor brokerage houses before moving on to do the same through inter-connected banking institutions. Businesses tied to these banks for networked transactions succumbed next. The effect of these infections did not immediately manifest itself.

A few minutes after their initial attack, two young men holding laptops in one hand while raising the other hand in a fist as they shouted Jihadist slogans in Arabic were arrested and swiftly turned over to the FBI. By the time the opening bell rang in the New York Stock Exchange, the two young men were being interrogated as enemy combatants. An hour later, after a bout of defiant resistance, they would crack and confess they had received their laptops and software from Brother Martin Spencer whom they claimed was now an avowed Muslim and brother in Jihad.

In another two hours, while the New York Stock Exchange remained fully operational, all trading came to a stop. Brokerage houses and banking institutions ceased to send buy or sell orders. It seemed as if the whole world had lost all interest in stock trading.

An unexpected attack on the New York and Eastern Seaboard power grid followed. This attack, quite different from the Los Angeles switch-out of power grid controllers and monitors came through a surge in energy consumption, first from infected financial institutions, then from businesses they served, until eventually every business on the Eastern Seaboard was operating at peak power consumption.

The surge caused the power grid to crash. In spite of the best efforts of those managing the crisis, major cities and surrounding areas prepared for a black night. Talking heads at major news outlets would have gone on air to say as much, but all TV and radio stations went off the air. All news websites displayed a black screen with the same hacked message: “Allah is great. Judgment has come.” Other than pencil and paper and a pigeon or two, no news would go out.

Chapter 43

Though Cynthia tried her best to be gentle, Martin Spencer woke up with a start. “We’re in Salt Lake,” she said.

Martin rubbed his eyes and smelled the gasoline.

“Almost done gassing up,” Ochoa was saying to his right, just inches from his face. “Made good time. 7:50 AM Pacific, 8:50 AM here.”

“Good,” Martin managed to say. “Any news?”

“Sasha says there’s been some action in New York City,” Ochoa said. “Failed attack on the stock exchange, your latest held it back and then some, but trading stopped for what reason, we can’t tell. Then the power grid crashed. The entire East Coast is blacked out, from Maine, down to Florida. They arrested the perpetrators. News on the wire says you helped them, that you’re a Jihadist.”

“What?” Martin said.

“I know,” Ochoa said. “Let’s move you to the Land Rover so you and Sasha can talk some more. Cynthia, Beloski will relieve you now, you get some sleep.”

“And you?” Cynthia asked Ochoa.

“I push. Same with Ortiz. It’s just another six hours.”

Martin shook his head. “Longer if we go on Highway 40. Around two more hours.”

Ochoa nodded. “You want us to get off the main road.”

“Yeah, especially if I’m a Jihadist. So change of plans: we’ll come from the south, stop at Fort Collins, Colorado. Might also avoid our new friend ambushing us on the way in.”

“Chana?” Ochoa asked. “Yeah, Sasha said something along those lines. Any thoughts of splitting up to be less conspicuous?”

“Thoughts, yes. Convinced? Not so much,” Martin said. “We hang together. I don’t want any more repeats of last night. We’ll just separate a bit, maybe a mile apart, keep in contact via radio.”

Martin went to the Land Rover, and through the rear window, Cynthia saw him give Sasha a quick kiss. Then they started talking a mile a minute. Beloski came over, and Cynthia moved over to the passenger seat. Leti came around passing out goodies from a box of doughnuts and a tray holding six cups of bitterly thin coffee. They finished gassing up, and pushed out.

Stan and Cynthia exchanged some idle chat. As soon as they exited I-80 to turn onto US-40 a few minutes later, Cynthia leaned back the seat and told Stan to wake her up in two hours. As she drifted off to sleep, she was thinking to herself that this really wasn’t so bad, that she and Martin should have gone on his dream months-long cross-country driving vacation a long time ago.

Regrets, she thought. So many regrets. They were hard to shake. Maybe somehow she and Martin could manage a way to undo them.

The president’s intel briefing started with a bang. Last night, the beacons ops teams had placed on Spencer’s team’s vehicles had all gone dead. They’d been located, crushed into the ground at their last known location. Oh, and this morning, in NYC, the stock exchange had undergone an attack, and the apprehended malefactors, two college kids with laptops, after intensive interrogation — which only lasted two hours, by the way — confessed how their brother in Jihad, Martin Spencer, had given them their laptops and software with instructions on how to perform the attack, which though initially repelled, had “back-washed” first through the New York financial networks and eventually caused the Eastern Seaboard power grid to crash. No news from Spencer and it was all quiet on the WNC front. The team in California was still working to identify the twelve dead bodies and trace the unmarked black ops helicopters belonging to the team that had attacked Spencer and his team the night before.

After hearing his team swirl a bit on whether Spencer had been playing them and was in fact a Jihadist, the president knocked on the table, and the room grew quiet.

“OK,” the president said. “So they killed the beacons. Did we ever tell them those were our beacons? Did we ask them if it would be OK to track them?”

“No, Mr. President,” Thompson, representative from the Collections team said on the phone.

“Well, if I were Spencer, I was just attacked by twelve masked gunmen, and I didn’t know who put these beacons on my cars, yeah, I’d toss’em, too.”

The president stood up. “As for this Brother Spencer crap, it sounds like you and I are the only ones in the room that agree on this, Robert,” he added looking at Odehl. “It’s a decoy, people. They want us to think that the real attack is in New York and the East Coast. As a bonus, they throw in this bit about Brother Spencer personally one-on-one training them and giving them laptops and software. Now, how exactly did Spencer do that while cooped up in the Sierras, getting shot at and hanging for dear life on rock walls and rappelling ropes?”

No one spoke but the CIA deputy director. “Sir, I think there’s a lot of good logic in what you’re saying, but we need to play it safe. We really need to retrieve Spencer, for his own protection, at least, and—.”

“How many teams are in place in the WNC? One? In Wyoming, maybe? In Colorado? Nebraska?”

“We need resources on the East Coast to address the crisis there,” the secretary of Homeland Security said. “I know you think it’s a decoy, but it’s a catastrophic one. We can’t ignore it.”

The CIA deputy directory added, “We can’t put all teams in the WNC, but we’re almost there, Mr. President.”

“And so is Spencer, and I’m sure not going to stop him now.” He pointed at the FBI and CIA deputy directors and said, “Get your teams in place now. Work on that instead of chasing every wild hare conjecture about Spencer. And stop wasting time on identifying that pile of dead bodies. That can wait. Put them on ice, store the helicopters in a safe warehouse somewhere, and bring your resources to bear on this situation.”

“Mr. President,” the secretary of Homeland Security said. “What if the WNC is the decoy? What if Spencer wants us to believe that is where we should focus our attention, or alternatively, what if he’s been deceived by the attackers to believe that? We really cannot ignore the East Coast. The entire East Coast, Mr. President. History will just not look kindly on us if we get caught looking the wrong way.”

The president gritted his teeth. Implied in the secretary’s appeal was also the threat that he wouldn’t get a second term if he made the wrong call.

“I concur with the secretary,” the secretary of Defense said. “There’s really no vulnerability in the WNC area, not of the sort being exploited in the East Coast, Mr. President.”

The president weighed his options and said, “How many teams can you spare for the WNC?”

“I recommend two, Mr. President,” the FBI deputy director said.

“Very well,” the president said with a sigh.

“Mr. President,” a voice on the phone said. “We just got an incoming message from Spencer. New intel and status. On your screen in 10 seconds.”

Everyone turned to face the screen in unison. The screen flashed, and a yellow message window appeared. “Text sent via secured field phone, sir.”

The screen read: “On way, undisclosed route, with re-vector; NYC attack=chaff; New target intel follows. FWD: [Squadron exercise on target; up in air tomorrow; Allah’s wind sweeps from the south, his angels rise to his throne] REF: Koran 30:48,50-51; 69:15-17 — posbl interp: aerial assault from south (Colorado); 8 angels = 8 atkrs (on judmt day); 2^8=256 UAV nodes?”

“Ideas about that last part?” the president asked.

A lot of heads shook around the room. Not a clue.

“Sir, we ought to look up those Koran references,” Odehl said. “Martin is not a Jihadist, but he read the Koran before deploying for the Iran operation. He studied it, even. It sounds like he’s offering some references to back up his proposed interpretation of the message intercept.”

“Let’s pull up those references, now,” the president said.

It took way too long, but the person running the computer finally managed to bring up the references from a website and displayed them on-screen. As everyone read, the person running the computer underlined what he thought were key relevant phrases.

[30.48]
Allah is He Who sendeth the winds
so that they raise clouds, and
spreadeth them along the sky
as pleaseth Him, and causeth them to break and thou seest the rain down pouring from within them. And when He maketh it to fall on whom He will of His bondmen, lo! they rejoice;

...

[30.50] Look, therefore, at the prints of Allah's mercy: how
He quickeneth the earth after her death
. Lo! He verily is the Quickener of the Dead, and He is Able to do all things.

[30.51] And if
We sent a wind
and they beheld it yellow, they verily would still continue in their disbelief.

...

[69.15] Then, on that day will the Event befall
[69.16] And
the heaven will split asunder
, for that day it will be frail.
[69.17] And
the angels
will be on the sides thereof, and
eight will uphold the Throne of thy Lord that day
, above them.

Another swirl of discussion ensued. Spencer’s knowledge of the Koran caused some to revisit whether he was a Jihadist. Some squinted at the passages and said they were vague and impossible to use for any solid conclusions. Others said that more time was needed to analyze not necessarily what the referenced text said, but how Jihadists interpreted them.

The president excused himself and stepped into the quiet room. When one of the cabinet members offered to go with him, he raised his hand and went in alone.

Chana’s phone rang, and she saw a secure call request coming in. She keyed in a 14 digit code and waited, listening to a stream clicks and beeps.