The Trigger (3 page)

Around nine, a courier arrived with her packet of new ID. Dallas set her alarm and took a sleeping pill. When she woke in the morning, Sonja Barnes would take a cab to the airport and start a new life.

Monday, May 6, 9:34 a.m.

Spencer Clayton called the hacker he’d hired over the weekend, but the young man didn’t answer. Greg Rafferty, who liked to be called Raff, had arrived late the night before, but Spencer didn’t care. He’d sent him a ten thousand dollar advance to get him here and would pay him an additional ten grand when he completed the job. Spencer had tried and failed to breach Morgan Bank’s security, so he’d gone into the IRCs—the 90s chat rooms where hackers still hung out—and asked around for the best gray-hat hacker he could recruit. Rafferty had been recommended by several people and had contacted him within six hours.

After a Google chat session, they’d finally spoken on the phone, with Raff calling him from a blocked number. With the promise of cash, Spencer had persuaded the hacker to come to Destiny and help “test the banking system.” Raff’s
gray-hat
status made Spencer a little nervous. White-hat hackers were the good guys, supposedly, who tried to keep the malicious attacks launched by the black hats from doing severe damage. Gray hats swung both ways, but they typically liked to test companies’ security by launching a benign assault, then telling the management how they’d taken advantage of their vulnerabilities. Raff was known for finding and testing security weaknesses and seemed perfect for the job. Spencer wouldn’t tell him what he really had in mind until the last moment, then Raff would have a choice to either stay in Destiny or take his chances out in the crashing world.

Feeling wound up, Spencer pulled on running shoes, checked the temperature, and changed into a tank top. On his way out, he stopped in Lisa’s room. His wife was sleeping, her breath labored. She’d become so gaunt he hardly recognized her, and the high doses of morphine would soon kill her if the cancer didn’t. He’d been watching her die for so long, he’d learned to be in the room and not cry. But knowing she was only days away now made his heart ache. Still, her passing would be a relief—for both of them.

Outside, the morning sun warmed the wet grass, and the smell of spring blossoms filled the air. Spencer jogged around the community, as he did every morning, just for the pleasure of seeing his creation. Seventeen homes, a new four-unit apartment complex, a community center that also served as a school and library, and a small medical clinic made up Destiny’s core at the end of Clayton Lane, a private drive off Bear Mountain Road. The residences were at the edge of the property and all that could be seen from the main road. Beyond the homes lay the fields and storage lockers that would sustain the members in the future.

A car started and he waved at Marissa, their nurse, as she headed into town for a part-time shift at a clinic. About half the members still had jobs in nearby Redding, about twenty-three miles away. Others made money online or had telecommuter jobs. He’d been lucky and had earned a small fortune as a software engineer, investing it wisely. In 2002, after the earlier attack on America, he and Randall had purchased the fifty acres together and built homes with help from local contractors. Over time, they’d invited others to join them, and the community had grown. They also owned a restaurant/bar in Redding—which would become worthless after the meltdown—and they earned a steady income from a website business that sold survival kits and prepper gear. He didn’t like the term
prepper
and thought of himself and his members as futurists. Everyone in Destiny accepted that current environmental and financial practices were not sustainable and would eventually crumble, but only he and Randall knew of their plan to trigger the reset.

After circling the housing area, Spencer jogged down a dirt road that cut through their property and led toward Honey Creek. The waterway curved around their acreage and had to be crossed a few miles outside of Destiny. That bridge provided the only public access to the community. The dirt road he jogged on had a well-hidden entry on the back side of the property. Spencer passed greenhouses, barns, giant gasoline tanks, and storage buildings. The previous owner had cleared the land long ago for farming, but the back half gave way to a gentle uphill slope dotted with oak, fir, and madrone trees. Beyond the acreage were miles and miles of forested land, and the dirt road he ran along eventually connected to Old Oregon Trail Road. Both routes to the property crossed waterways, and they had contingency plans to blow the bridges after the collapse—if they had to keep marauders from taking their supplies.

At the three-mile point, Spencer turned and headed home. His thoughts drifted toward Emma. Now that the FBI had questioned everyone about her disappearance—and hopefully moved on—he was acting quickly to implement their plans. He’d been a law-abiding software engineer for most of his life, and all of this was out of his comfort zone.

After his run, Spencer fed Lisa chocolate pudding and hung a fresh IV. She tried to tell him something, but he couldn’t understand. The morphine made her incoherent sometimes, but without it, her pain was excruciating. The cancer had started in her liver, but after a round of radiation it had metastasized to her spine and lungs. A doctor had encouraged Lisa to enter a clinical trial in San Diego, but his wife had decided to stay in Destiny and die in her own bed. They both regretted that they’d ignored the pain in her side for too long, but neither had ever considered cancer until the radiologist said the word
biopsy
.

Another regret overwhelmed him, and Spencer didn’t have the will to push it away. If only he’d gone to medical school like he’d wanted to. He should have borrowed the money and ignored his parents. He could have become a researcher and found a cure for cancer. Instead, he’d studied computer science and spent his career creating technology that would destroy the social fabric. He couldn’t go back and change that, so he was doing everything he could to correct it.

Lisa drifted off, so Spencer left the house and hurried down the long cul-de-sac to the apartment complex near the gate. He pounded on the door of unit one, knowing Raff was likely still asleep. “It’s Spencer. I want to get started.”

He could have called Raff —he had intermittent cell phone service—or sent an email through their satellite internet, but the only landline was in the community center and Spencer chose to live without electronic devices as much as possible. In the future they were preparing for, those luxuries might disappear, and in Destiny, they had little use for them.

After a long wait, Raff came to the door. Pudgy, with shoulder-length hair and an ugly black neck tattoo, the hacker looked older than his twenty-three years.

“What’s the deal? It’s not even ten yet.” Raff glanced off to the side, not making eye contact.

Spencer had to step back from his lethal morning breath. “I thought I explained that I wanted to get this project done in the next few days. I need you to work ’round the clock until we’ve breached Morgan Bank.”

“You never mentioned working 24/7.”

“I described it as an intensive short-term job. Get dressed and come over.” Spencer noticed the defiant look on his face. “Please.”

“I don’t want to work that hard. That’s why I’m a hacker.”

“I’ll give you a five-thousand-dollar bonus if you get everything done before Friday.” Money was always a great motivator. Spencer pointed back at his house. “The data center room is the green door on the side.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.” The hacker closed the door in his face.

Spencer resisted the urge to push it open and remind Raff who owned the apartment and paid his salary. For now, he needed the kid’s talent, but he hoped the hacker would leave after he’d accomplished his mission. Raff was the first person to stay in the community who had not come out of concern for the future, and Spencer hated the thought of him stuck there after the collapse.

He headed back to his own home, a ranch-style house bright with natural daylight, and entered the tech room. A few years ago, he’d built the addition, which could be accessed from the outside by others. The computers and hard drives didn’t take up much space, but this was where he, Randall, and their engineer brainstormed ideas, so the room also held a small fridge, a table and comfortable chairs. Spencer made a pot of coffee, opened the file list on his external hard drive, and savored his collection. Millions of email addresses, bank account numbers, and other personal data. He’d never used, let alone abused, any of it.

Yet.

He’d been collecting the data since his job at CyberSecure. The first batch had come from a security breach at an investment bank, and he’d accessed it inadvertently while trying to patch the flaw in their system. Once he’d realized he could download and keep the account information, the temptation had been overwhelming. It was never about money. He had plenty and wasn’t a thief. But the potential power of all that data had been intoxicating, and he’d downloaded it to a portable hard drive and taken it home. For years, Spencer hadn’t told anyone, but possessing the data had given him such pleasure—and peace of mind—that it had changed him. Everyday anxiety and job pressure had become inconsequential. He’d stopped working so hard and had started studying medicine on his own. He’d become a better husband and had finally agreed to have a child, but they hadn’t been blessed with one.

And he’d collected more data. The second batch came from a breach in one of the early social networking sites. A hacker had accessed the data and offered it for sale. In the tech world, everyone knew someone who knew the most active hackers, and word got around. Spencer had bought the list anonymously, for a cheap ten bucks a profile, knowing the hacker had probably sold the profiles many times over. After that, he began his own campaign of hacking into customer databases and downloading information. The financial account data was harder to break open, but worth the effort. Only in the last year had he decided what to do with the millions of files, and Randall was the only person he’d discussed it with. Still, Spencer hadn’t been able to penetrate any major banks, and without at least one, he worried his main plan wouldn’t work.

A few minutes later, Raff moseyed into the computer room. All he had done was change out of his pajama bottoms into a pair of jeans. “Where’s the coffee?” he grumbled.

Spencer suppressed his irritation with the man’s lack of social skills. “On the counter. Help yourself.”

“What’s the rush on this project?” Raff found an oversize mug and filled it.

“Congress’ failure to raise the debt limit puts the economy in jeopardy. We need to send out warning tests before things get ugly.”

Raff plopped down in front of a giant monitor. “Aren’t you worried we’ll trigger a run on the banks?”

That was, in fact, the plan. “It could be the jolt the banking world needs.”

After the financial meltdown started, Raff would fully understand what he’d participated in. But by then it would be too late to stop it, and Spencer suspected the hacker wouldn’t care. Not at first anyway. Once the financial institutions collapsed, taking everything down with them, Raff would no longer have anything interesting or challenging to hack into. They would all have to adjust to the new world, and in the long run, they’d be better off.

“Are you gonna tell me what you’re really doing?” The hacker looked alert for the first time.

“It’s simple. We’re sending a wakeup call to the banking institutions so they’ll tighten their security.” Spencer couldn’t help but add, “More important, world governments need to realize they can’t run on credit. We need to get back to the gold standard.”

For a long moment, Raff just stared. It was obvious he didn’t believe Spencer’s motives. Finally, the hacker said, “Tell me your plan again.”

Relieved, Spencer outlined the basics. “We use social engineering to access the log-in information and password for a key employee in each major bank. Then we find a fraud alert the bank has sent out, copy it, and embed our virus.” He took a sip of coffee, suddenly worried that his plan would sound amateurish to someone like Raff. “We send the warning email with the virus to millions of customers. When they access their bank accounts to check their balances, the virus uploads to their account and starts manipulating it. Millions of customers panic and withdraw their money.” Spencer also planned to scare millions of other recipients in his database with an email that looked like it came from the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And that was just phase one.

Raff nodded. “It’s simple and devious, and in theory, it could work. But the reason no one has done it yet is because banks have the best security in the world.”

“Have you tried hacking any?”

Raff shrugged. “I’ve taken a shot at it, but banks aren’t my main interest.”

“I want you to access Morgan Bank. If it works there, we’ll do the other main financial centers.” Morgan was international, the biggest bank in the world, and it had pissed him off one too many times.

“First we have to take control of zombie computers in another country and do everything from those desktops so nothing can be traced here.”

“Of course. How can I help?”

“You can write chunks of code for the account balance manipulation once I get the patterns worked out.”

“All right.” Spencer hated writing code, which was why he’d hired Raff, but he wanted to make this happen fast—before he got cold feet and changed his mind. “Thanks for getting on this.” Spencer finished his coffee and stood to leave. “I have to go see our engineer, but I’ll be back soon.”

“Bring me some pizza.” Raff winked and clicked on a monitor.

Spencer found Grace in the community center. He’d never seen her in anything but camouflage pants, but she seemed to have an endless collection of bright T-shirts. Today’s was hot pink. He stood near the door and watched her teach a small group of students about electricity. Only twelve kids lived in Destiny, but three were too young for school, and two others attended high school in Redding. Their mother worked in town and drove them in every day. The rest were all home-schooled by Tina Blackwell, a thirty-something certified teacher, but all the members did their part by instructing in specific subjects.