Frozen Fire (33 page)

“I gotta call you back, Marty,” Sam said abruptly.

“Something wrong?”

“Maybe,” he said distractedly, wanting only to hang up on his friend and get his God-damned girlfriend on the phone. “Last time I talked to her, Cyn was tryin’ to convince the captain to take them to the crash site.”

“She’ll never get there.”

“Well, I haven’t been able to get her on the phone since yesterday, and nobody’s called me or the station asking for bail money or where to ship her body,” he said with an attempt at humor that fell flat.

“Hey, she’s okay, Sam. Cyn is a nut, but she’s not stupid,” Marty said after a long pause.

“No, she’s not,” he agreed quietly. “I’ll get back to you, man. Thanks for callin’.”

10:15
A.M.
, Sunday, October 26, Embassy of Taino, Washington, D.C.

Victoria had known as she watched the sun rise that this day was never going to end. She’d barely slept last night, and her conversation with Charlie hadn’t done her any favors. She was exhausted beyond words and it wasn’t anywhere near noon. She would have to get a second wind soon or she wouldn’t make it through the afternoon.

Charlie had grudgingly allowed her back into the brain of the embassy, and she wasn’t about to mess it up. Given what his opinion of her had become, Victoria knew there wouldn’t be any more chances if something went wrong.

She rolled her shoulders and looked at Andy Trump, the embassy’s chief of information technology, hoping that her tiredness wasn’t apparent to him—or to Charlie, who had wandered in a few minutes ago and was leaning against the back wall of the office with his arms folded.

Such a comforting presence
. Victoria wanted to roll her eyes.

Andy was a good guy and a genius when it came to setting up and securing computer networks. She’d hired him herself four years ago, and they’d never encountered a situation that he couldn’t fix.

Right now, his business casual clothes were rumpled, stress was etched into his face, and she knew he was just as frazzled as she was. He’d been called in to the office as soon as the communications links with the island had gone down five hours ago, and had been working nonstop to reestablish them. Nothing had worked. Even the emergency links refused to come online.

“Andy, have your teams run the diagnostics again. Hardware and software,” she said, keeping a sigh out of her voice. “Networks, especially networks
you
design, don’t just stop working for no reason.”

“Victoria, we’ve run the diagnostics. The transponders are fine. The commands we’re transmitting to the island have all the proper codes within the agreed-upon parameters. We are infection free,” he said, as if he hadn’t already said the same thing several times this morning. “I am one hundred percent certain that the problem is on the ground down there. Either the ground stations have been damaged, or they’ve been shut down, or some codes have been changed.”

“There’s no reason for the ground stations to be taken offline, Andy. Micki would never order that, not without notifying us first and definitely not without a good reason,” Victoria replied, wishing she could believe her own words. “And she’d never take down the backups at the same time as the default systems. Especially not under these circumstances. She knows we need them.”

Without getting up from his chair, Andy leaned forward and gently shut his office door, then leaned back and met her eyes. “Vic, let me be blunt. Whatever’s going on down there is not happening by accident. Things have been powered down and turned off. The island has gone dark on purpose. We can’t even get through using cellular traffic, which, as you know, relies on a different transponder on a different bird and uses different receiving equipment on the ground.” Andrew folded his arms across his chest and let them rest on his not-inconsiderable paunch. “Orem’s checked the weather and there’s nothing going on. Barely even a breeze, no lightning strikes, no volcanic eruptions, no crazy geomagnetic, flux density, planetary-alignment, alien-entity, New Age psychobabble crap.
Nothing
is going on. And Tropical Storm Whoever is nowhere near Taino.”

Feeling what little energy she had left draining out of her, Victoria drew in a breath and kept her voice even. “Go on.”

“I think we have to start thinking about bad things,” he said simply.

“Like what?” Charlie asked from his place leaning against the wall.

Andy didn’t take his eyes off Victoria, and she could feel the intensity behind their deep, tired brownness. “That someone has changed the command codes or the security codes or both.”

“Who could do that?” Charlie asked, and Victoria knew he was deliberately not looking at her.

“Me, Victoria, Micki, in a heartbeat,” Andy said. “With more time, anyone with a lot of know-how. And lots of people down there have both the time and the talent.”

“Is that true?” Charlie demanded. “You both said it was secure. Now you’re both saying it isn’t.”

Meeting Charlie’s eyes, Victoria replied coolly. “Andy’s right, Charlie. It’s possible that someone down there could have hacked the system but the probability is extremely small.” She paused and Andy nodded, turning to look at Charlie.

“We wrote our own software, custom-built the network, and reinforced its perimeters with so many blind alleys and dead ends that you literally need a roadmap to find your way around to the important modules. The command codes—” Andy began.

“What are those?”

“Commands are the lines of code that identify tasks and define their execution,” Victoria replied. “With regard to the communication satellites, commands are what we send up to them and telemetry is the data that the satellites send back to our ground units to detail how the equipment has processed and responded to the commands. If everything is going smoothly, it’s described in full. If tasks fail or have to be aborted, the data tell us when, why, and how.”

“But commands can be overwritten?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. Anyone who knows the software and has a fairly high degree of coding skills could write new commands, but getting them into the system would be extremely difficult because of our security structures,” she continued. “The commands are not protected by run-of-the-mill passwords; these passwords are upward of twenty characters long and they change every thirty seconds. So to access the command encoder unit, you have to have the correct random password generator.” She slipped her hand into the pocket of the suit jacket she’d slung over the back of the chair in front of her and pulled out a small device that resembled a stick drive. “I have one, Dennis has one, and Micki has one. And there are two more, located in safe places
off-island. These are the only devices that can provide access to the system at such a high level.”

Charlie’s mouth flattened into a thin line and anger flared in his eyes as he realized it had been in her possession the entire time. He hadn’t known about it, so he hadn’t been able to seize it.

“So if someone has gotten their hands on this, they could get into the system,” she said, slipping the device back into her pocket. “But then they would have to get past the encryption. Without the proper encryption key, you’d need a supercomputer and a few weeks at least to crack the algorithm.
But
even if someone could get past all of those barriers, we still have someone pulling hammer duty twenty-four/seven,” she finished.

“What’s hammer duty?” Charlie asked warily.

Andy smothered a laugh.

“It’s our security method of last resort,” Victoria replied. “Someone sits in the secure area that houses the command encoder unit and the command decoder unit. Those are the black boxes that translate everything into and out of the encrypted code that passes through the satellite transponders and network routers. The person on duty is attached to the unit with a bracelet—more or less a handcuff with a long lead—and there’s a balpeen hammer nearby. If there’s a physical threat to either unit, he or she smashes the units, making the codes unrecoverable.”

Charlie’s eyes widened. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Vic. You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not.”

“That’s kind of primitive. Why not just eliminate the threat? Give the person a gun.”

Victoria looked at him, her eyebrows aloft. “The people who work near the units aren’t security personnel, Charlie. They’re computer geeks. They eat, breathe, and sleep computers, and the only guns they’re likely ever to have handled are virtual ones in Warcraft or something similar. Giving them a real gun and leaving them alone for four or five hours at a stretch is likely to make them attempt a game of quick-draw and they could end up shooting themselves, each other, or the units. We can make another unit if we have to, but getting a good programmer isn’t as easy as you might think. Besides, an attacker might have a weapon of his own, but no black box is going to survive an attack with a hammer.”

“That’s nuts.”

“Well, I’ll agree that it sounds nuts, but it’s more than just physical security, it’s computer security. Not all threats to the machines are physical. If something goes wrong with one of the units, a gunslinger couldn’t assess and fix it,” she finished pointedly. “Bottom line: Our communications system security is tight.”

“So what about Micki?” Andy asked.

Victoria turned to him. “What about Micki?”

“Tag, she’s it. Obviously.”

You don’t have to convince me of that
.

Victoria said nothing as she stood up and met Charlie’s eyes once more. “Unless you have other plans for me, I intend to fly back to Taino this afternoon. And then I’ll get everything back online.” She glanced to Andy. “Meanwhile, I’d like you to keep trying to make it work.”

As Andy shrugged and swiveled to face the array of monitors on his desk, Victoria and Charlie left the room.

“Bold plan of action for someone under house arrest,” Charlie said as they walked toward the staircase that would take them back to his second-floor office. “Give me that little thing you showed off in there.”

She slid it out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Be careful with it. If Micki and Dennis are—” She couldn’t bring herself to say “dead.” “If they’re not inclined to share theirs with me when I get back, I won’t be able to do much,” she said casually. “Are you going to try to stop me from going?”

“I’m not sure.”

Neither spoke again until they were in his office with the door closed.

“Going back is the only way to find out if Micki is behind any of this, Charlie. Depending on what’s going on down there, she and Dennis might be hostages, or they could be dead,” she said bluntly.

“Or Micki could be waiting for her accomplice to return.”

Stay cool
.

Victoria drew in a slow, deep breath. “The snide comments are getting old, Charlie. If I had anything to do with the plane crash or the landslide, do you think I’d be
here
?” She swept a hand to encompass the room, then sat in one of the wing chairs and looked straight at him. “I’d be in Northern Africa with Garner Blaylock. Why can’t you just accept the fact that you and Dennis are wrong, and that I’m your only hope to fix things? At least let me go back and try.”

“I am letting you try—from here.” Charlie moved away from the window and toward Victoria. “We need to be brought back online, Vic. The
media are going nuts because we can’t give them any new information. They’re calling this an ‘information blackout’ and implying that we’re doing it deliberately. They can’t hear about an equipment failure without creating fifteen different conspiracies. The fact that our personnel have started visiting the U.S. ships in the area so they can use the Americans’ equipment to contact us doesn’t seem to matter. And President Benson is enjoying every minute of it. He cut a trip short this morning and said it was because of a heightened terror risk. Ken Proust was on FOX a little while ago and I swear the guy was nearly having an orgasm. And his flunkies are swarming over this like rats on garbage day.”

“What’s life without a conspiracy?” Victoria replied wryly.

“I have to go back downstairs to the press room. I get to play sitting duck for a few more doorknobs who want to boost their ratings,” he muttered, buttoning the top button of his shirt and straightening his loosened tie.

“Who is it this time?”

“I’m not sure. Someone from our staff has been on nearly every news-related show there is this morning. Could be Martha Stewart at this point.”

“She tapes ahead of time. Besides, there’s no way to gift wrap this.” Victoria met Charlie’s eyes. “May I make a suggestion?”

He nodded.

“Shave,” she said lightly.

The shadow of a smile crossed his mouth. “I did already.”

“Do it again.”

“Doesn’t a five o’clock shadow make me look tireless?”

“Well, considering it’s nowhere near five o’clock yet, it just makes you look tired. Like you’ve been drinking too much coffee and would have preferred whiskey.”

“That’s pretty damned close to the truth.”

A sharp rap at the door was followed immediately by the entrance of Tim Cotton, Charlie’s senior advisor, who strode into the office and let the door slam behind him. Both Victoria and Charlie looked at him in surprise.

“Sorry for barging in, Vic. I know you’re due downstairs, Charlie, but you need to hear this,” Tim said without preamble as he walked straight to the large desk and reached for the phone.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“I’ll let her tell it.” Tim activated the speaker phone, then punched in a code to pick up a waiting call. “You know Captain Maggy Patterson. She commands the
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
, one of—”

“One of our research ships. Of course I know her,” Victoria interjected.

Tim nodded curtly. “She’s running the search-and-recovery operation at the crash site,” he said to Charlie. “Captain Patterson, are you there?”

“Yes, sir.”