Church called before we even hit cruising altitude.
“Tell me something good,” I asked. Or, maybe, begged.
He told me about the release of the
seif-al-din
in a Best Buy in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Mother Night’s people had used big tractor trailers to block front and back doors, and then they released a couple of dozen infected into the store during a doorbuster sale of a new video game.
“Are there any survivors?” I asked.
“No,” Church said wearily. “But no infected have escaped. The trucks kept everything contained and local SWAT have the area locked down. However, the entire thing was broadcast live via cameras apparently placed inside the store.”
My stomach felt like it was filled with raw sewage. “The press is going to keep on this, you know. They’re going to want to show everything, maybe hoping for a response like to what we did in the subway.”
“No doubt.”
“If you wipe out the infected, they’ll see that, and if you don’t—and people get wind of what’s really going on in there … Christ, we’re screwed either way.”
“And all the confusion, public outrage, and panic serves Mother Night.”
I wanted to bang my head on a wall. Or maybe toss myself out of the damn jet. Would have simplified the day.
“You know,” I said, “thinking back on it, I can see how Bliss got here. Some of the things she asked. The kinds of trouble she got into with Auntie. The opportunities she had. It’s not unlike Hugo Vox.”
“Yes,” said Church, “power corrupts. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”
He disconnected.
But he was back in less than five minutes. It wasn’t about Bliss’s possible friends and it sure as hell wasn’t good news.
“Captain,” he said in a voice from which all emotion and inflection had been crushed, “at 10:01 this morning we lost all contact with the Locker.”
Chapter Eighty-one
Reconnaissance General Bureau
Special Office #103
Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Monday, September 1, 10:09 a.m. EST
Colonel Sim Sa-jeong mopped sweat from his face as he watched the numbers flow from the account he managed for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and into the numbered account of that witch, Mother Night.
He had won the auction, though barely.
Three-hundred and seventy-eight million euros. Nearly half a billion in U.S. dollars. Nearly one quarter of his yearly operating budget. And all for a weapon that the supreme leader might never have the courage to use. In his private mind, Sim knew that the young leader was more bluster than bite. Would he dare to use a bioweapon of such devastating power as the
seif-al-din
? Apart from the commonsense question as to whether such a weapon could ever be used with even a prayer of controlling it, the knowledge that North Korea had it could be disastrous. The entire world would fear the country, no doubt, and that was what Kim Jong-un truly wanted. But they would also become a unified force against Sim’s beloved country. North Korea would become an island in a sea of enemies. No one would dare invade them, but would anyone trade with them? Would fear of the prion-based pathogen force the world to defer to North Korea and treat it like a global supreme power?
Sim had his doubts.
But now the money was paid.
The only grace was that all of the bidders were blind as to the nationality and personal identity of the others. No one yet knew that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had bought the world’s most dangerous weapon. Only Sim, the supreme leader, and Mother Night knew.
For now.
His computer screen changed to indicate that the money transfer was complete.
Sweat ran in lines down Sim’s face as he waited for the last part. The coded message with instructions on where and how to take possession of the
seif-al-din.
An icon appeared. A symbol of the English letter A surrounded by a circle.
Below it were the words, in Korean,
CLICK HERE
.
Sim did as instructed.
Nothing happened for a few moments, but he waited with all of the patience he could muster.
Then the display changed again. The letter-A symbol expanded until it filled the entire screen. It paused for a moment, then dissolved into a cartoon version of the face of Mother Night. The cartoon image was laughing.
Laughing.
Then everything went crazy.
The computer system isolated and disabled its own keyboard and mouse. He tried pressing
CONTROL
,
ALT
, and
DELETE
simultaneously, but that did nothing.
Nothing that he was aware of at that moment.
In truth, those keys unlocked the Trojan horse that had been planted in his system by Mother Night during the auction. Once unlocked, hundreds of viruses and tapeworms invaded Sim’s computer and, via its wi-fi and landline connections, plunged into the intranet used by his department. From there it raced onward, infecting thousands of computers through the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Copying files, destroying security protocols, interpolating data, shutting down every system and program that could be used to defend against cyberattacks. And in flash-bursts it sent all of that data back out to the Net.
To Britain and Israel.
To Japan.
To South Korea.
To China and Russia.
To America.
To the major press agencies in more than one hundred nations.
And while that was happening, a secondary set of programs reinitiated the banking transfer order, using Sim’s passwords for authorization. Three separate sets of transfers began. Each one taking a remaining third of Sim’s annual budget. Two billion in American dollars.
It was all so fast.
By the time Sim realized that he could not stop the process and tore the battery out of his computer, the damage was done.
Everyone knew that North Korea had just paid two billion dollars for a doomsday plague.
Chapter Eighty-two
The Hangar
Floyd Bennett Field
Brooklyn, New York
Monday, September 1, 10:12 a.m.
“No, Mr. President,” said Mr. Church, “we can’t prove any of this yet. However, this is the most credible way for the pieces to fit.”
On the big screen the president of the United States looked like the victim of a violent mugging. He was gaunt, his eyes and cheeks were hollowed out by stress, the lines on his face seemed to have been carved there by a rough hand.
“I’ll be addressing the nation again in a few minutes,” he said. “My advisors are telling me not to, that right now the people don’t want to see my face anywhere except with a noose around my neck. In their shoes I couldn’t blame them. That video is damning.”
“Bug’s pulled it apart.”
“I know, he sent it to my people and they’re trying to decide how best to present that information to the public without it looking weak, phony, and desperate.”
“Good luck with that.”
The president bristled. “Is that sarcasm, Deacon?”
“No, Mr. President, it’s heartfelt. I believe you will need all the luck you can muster, and I sincerely wish you well.”
Some of the tension leaked from the president’s face, and he nodded. “Sorry. I’m a bit on edge.”
“We all are. Right now I have teams on their way to—” His cell buzzed and Church glanced at it. “One moment, Mr. President,” he said. “This may be news.”
He picked up the phone, listened for a moment.
“Send it to my screen. I’m on with the president.” He set his phone down. “Mr. President, I believe you need to see this.”
The big screen split and the other half was filled by Anderson Cooper. Two small pictures flanked the reporter. One was a screen capture of the Mother Night video from yesterday. The other was a picture of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. The text banner below the pictures read:
BIOTERRORISM
.
“… in a bizarre twist on the catastrophic events of the last twenty-four hours, sources now confirm that North Korean president Kim Jong-un has purchased a deadly weaponized pathogen—a so-called doomsday weapon—from the terrorist calling herself Mother Night…”
The president of the United States said, “Dear God…”
Chapter Eighty-three
The Locker
Sigler-Czajkowski Biological and Chemical Weapons Facility
Highland County, Virginia
Monday, September 1, 10:17 a.m.
He thought it was funny.
He thought everything was funny.
The looks on their faces.
The screams.
The bright blood, red as balloons.
The way they tried to run from him.
The way they tried to play hide-and-seek with him. Well, the way they tried to hide from him.
So funny.
All so fucking funny.
Like the two women who managed the data-processing office. One was as fat as the Goodyear blimp and the other looked like a pencil with boobs. Jack Sprat and his wife. An imperfect comparison, but he didn’t care. It was funny to think of them that way. The fat one trying to squeeze into a closet, screaming, crying, snot running down over her lips and chin. As if she could cram her fat ass into a closet that wasn’t even deep enough for the skinny one.
And the skinny one. Hiding under a desk. Silly bitch. How can you expect to hide under a desk if you give yourself away by screaming at the top of your lungs?
Silly, silly, silly.
And funny.
The way her hands just came off when he swung the axe. They leaped up and landed on the seat of the leather roller chair. One on top of the other, like pancakes. He couldn’t have managed that if he’d tried. He tried to get her head to land up there, too, but his aim was bad and her skull just fell apart.
But that was funny, too.
It was all funny.
The brains were delicious, too. So sweet. Filled with secrets. Better even than the flesh of their breasts, which he thought was the best thing he’d ever eaten. A naughty pleasure that made him chuckle guilty little chuckles with each bite.
Later, he stood in the doorway to the data office. Blood ran in twisty lines down his clothes, and it plop-plopped from the blade of the fire axe. It misted the air when he laughed because there was so much of it on his face.
He was sure some of it was his blood.
But that was okay.
That was funny.
It was all funny.
He turned away from the chunks and lumps, trying to remember their names. He should know their names, having eaten their brains. He was sure they
had
names. He’d known them for three years. But the names slipped away like greasy eels.
He thought about that image and laughed and laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
And …
Chapter Eighty-four
Pennsylvania Airspace
Sunday, September 1, 10:23 a.m.
I gathered my team and broke the news to them.
“Here’s what I know. We’ve lost all communication with the Locker. That includes landlines, cells, computers, the works. It happened in a way that somehow prevented the automatic systems from notifying anyone. In fact, from the outside during automatic checks by computers it appears as if things are normal. When MindReader pinged the system the automatic status sent back an all-clear message. It was only after Aunt Sallie tried to call them to have on-site security coordinate with us that she hit a dead line. All attempts to reestablish contact have been negative. Because the automatic replies were still functioning there’s no way to know exactly when the facility was actually compromised. Last verbal contact of record was nine thirty last night.”
“How the fuck are we just finding this out now?” asked Lydia. “I thought Auntie confirmed that the place was secure.”
I sighed. “It’s set up for computer confirmation rather than person-to-person. It was a design element that keyed a request from the Hangar directly to the Locker’s security systems. Ask for a status report and it runs an immediate diagnostic that excludes the possibility of human coercion.”
“Except when one of the world’s smartest computer experts rigs the system.”
“Yup. And I’m pretty sure Mr. Church is going to fry Aunt Sallie for not speaking directly to a human being,” I said. It’s possible my total lack of sympathy for Auntie was evident in my tone.
Top grunted. “Maybe that was built into the plan. Mother Night’s been jerking us in so many damn directions it’s likely she knew that this sort of slipup might happen.”
That thought had occurred to me, too, though I felt ungracious enough not to admit it. Aunt Sallie had threatened to neuter my dog. Ghost seemed to catch my train of thought and bared a fang.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” said Bunny. “I’m having a hard time buying that the Locker’s been taken. I thought that couldn’t happen.”
“
Titanic
couldn’t sink either, Farmboy,” muttered Top.
“No, I mean aren’t there like ten kinds of redundancies?”
“At least,” I said. “There are separate backup landlines for the computers and phones, ditto for wi-fi and cells. The redundancies are both passive and active. The passive ones go active when the primary signal is interrupted; the active ones randomly ping the system and go active when they don’t get a reply. And we have some phantom lines that even the people at the Locker don’t know about. These can be remotely activated on Mr. Church’s say-so.”
“Which he gave?” asked Top.
“Which he gave,” I agreed. “However, no one’s picking up the phone, and now even the computers have stopped responding.”
“Is the Locker the prize in this whole game?” asked Noah. “Or is this another way to thin us out to the point where we’re effectively useless?”
Of all the newbies he was the one whose personality I hadn’t quite grasped. Montana was a tough country woman with the professional skeptical cynicism of the FBI. Dunk was a solid team player with a sense of humor that was probably a façade over some kind of personal hurt. Maybe an idealist wearing the uniform because he actually thought it would make a difference. But Noah was a blank, a mask. In some ways he reminded me of a shooter who’d run with my pack a couple of years ago, a laconic man named John Smith. He’d been the best sniper in the U.S. military, the hammer of God in a firefight; but he kept everything in. He never shared his opinions or feelings, never let anything show. Was Noah cut from the same cloth, another internalizer and self-imposed loner? Or was his bland mask hiding complexities he didn’t want to share? Wish I had the time to find out.