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Nora was right about the coffee and croissants. They gave Randall a renewed burst of energy. By the time they’d walked back to the building that housed their makeshift headquarters, an unmarked car was waiting for them.
Fortunately, a local police officer was driving.
Everyone introduced themselves, and then Officer Fleming accelerated away from the curb. “Your address is less than ten miles. Even with the traffic lights out, I can have you there in fifteen minutes.”
The fact that very few cars were out helped as well. They passed a Dallas Area Rapid Transit depot with DART buses lined up at the curb. With no traffic signals and no way to call 9-1-1 in the case of accidents, the transit authority had bowed to Abbott’s call to cease all non-essential transportation. It wasn’t worth the liability to put their drivers on the road.
They travelled north toward Highland Park, then turned east to Lower Greenville.
Fleming shifted in her seat. She was black, probably forty years old, and by the looks of it, a seasoned officer. “This area is in a real state of transition. You have half a million dollar condos across the street from public housing.”
“How does that work?” Randall was riding in the back seat. He tapped his window, which looked out over a row of two-story brick apartments that had been built at least fifty years ago. Trash littered yards and not a single blade of grass or shrub threatened the place. People sat out on their stoop, smoking cigarettes or holding babies. Children from toddlers to teens gathered between the buildings playing ball or hopscotch or whatever kids played when their cell phones weren’t working.
“Not very well, to tell you the truth. The lower class is getting pushed out due to urban revitalization.” Her voice put quotation marks around the last two words. “While it’s a boon for the real estate market, the people at the bottom have fewer and fewer places to go.”
She made three more turns and arrived in front of a house that looked no better than the apartments they’d passed. “This area sits right in the middle of the turn war.”
“War is a rather harsh term.” Nora’s hand was on the door handle, but she waited for the officer’s reply.
“To you, it might. To the people living in these houses? They’ll get bought out at bottom dollar, and then they’ll have a tough time finding someplace else to live.” Fleming nodded toward the house. “Want me to go in with you?”
“That won’t be necessary. What we find will determine how long we’ll be. I’ll let you know.”
Randall jogged to catch up with Nora. Apparently the caffeine had energized Nora as well. Had she had a double shot of espresso or a triple?
They did a perimeter sweep and met back at the front door. Randall checked the door frame for any signs of an explosive device, then nodded at Nora, who knocked loudly.
No answer.
Of course there wasn’t. It couldn’t be that easy.
“Want me to jimmy the lock?”
“Not necessary.” She’d put her hand down into the bottom of the old mailbox attached next to the front door and pulled out a key.
“I didn’t realize postal workers actually came to the door anymore.”
“Only in old neighborhoods like this—another reason the city would like to see them bulldozed.”
“No mail.”
“There’s a post office box associated with the address. Cash was able to get that far into the postal computers before the system crashed.”
Randall pulled in a deep breath as Nora unlocked the door and they stepped into the place. He liked being out from behind a desk, but times like this—times there could be a bomb attached to the door or a guy with a gun sitting inside—he wondered if he was crazy for choosing field work.
Then they stepped into the room, and any thoughts of desk work evaporated like raindrops in the sun.
He let out a long, low whistle as they walked around the room, then into the kitchen and the single bedroom. Every room was the same, packed from floor to ceiling with boxes of what looked like unopened merchandise.
Only that wasn’t quite right. He picked up a box holding a first generation iPad and studied it. Definitely it had been opened, then placed back inside exactly as it had been packaged.
Nora stopped in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips. “A hoarder? Our hacker is a hoarder? How does that make sense?”
“It kind of does.” Randall squatted down in front of a tower of cellular phone boxes. “Though collector might be a better word than hoarder.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Hoarders often can’t articulate why they keep something. They have an obsessive compulsive disorder to prepare for the future—any future. I knew a woman once who kept toothbrushes, printer paper, and green beans.” He glanced up at Nora, a smile playing on his lips. “You couldn’t walk through her house, and she couldn’t explain to you why she had to buy yet another toothbrush when she saw one.”
“Huh.”
“This is different. This is...more like a very well-thought-out plan.”
“For what? This stuff is all...old.”
“That’s exactly it.” Randall hurried from the room, checking to see if what he thought was happening here, was in fact happening. When he returned to the living room, Nora was coming in from outside.
“I told Fleming we should be ready to go in a few minutes. This looks like a dead end.”
“But it’s not. Call Quinn and have him send a team over.”
“A team?”
“They need to check for fingerprints, though I suspect our guy—or gal—wore gloves.”
“You think this is legit? That our cyberbug lives here?”
“I wouldn’t say he or she lives here, but whoever it is definitely uses this place as a staging area.” He tapped a tower of smart speakers. “These are all Gen 2 devices—not Gen 1.”
“You lost me.”
“Gen 1 was analog. Gen 2 was digital.”
Nora walked over to him, put her hands on his shoulders and attempted to shake him.
He couldn’t help laughing.
“Explain it in English.”
“Okay. Look. Gen 1 was the first wireless technology, but it required a modem. Gen 2 was truly wireless. These devices stacked throughout this house...all of them...are Gen 2. They’re not older and they’re not newer.”
“Why is that significant?”
“Because there are no security patches for Gen 2. Whoever is in charge of our cyberattack is using this house to send signals through.”
“Someone could do that?”
“Sure. It’s like this place is a giant amplifier to a part of the web that everyone thinks has been shut down.”
“But it hasn’t been.”
“Not yet. They’re working on it, to make room for 5G.”
“You’re making my head hurt.”
“My point is that he’s patching his code through these devices.” He picked up a box that claimed to hold a baby cam set inside a wooly lamb. “He’s hacking these machines, because they have no security patch. That’s how he gets in...from there, the IoT can take care of the rest.”
“The machines talk to each other.”
“Exactly. It would be like getting a call on your cell phone from your great grandparent talking on a wall phone that has a long curly cord. You’d still be able to hear and understand grandpa.”
“So if we turned off all these...devices, would that shut our perp down?”
“No. He—or she—is already in.”
“So what do we do?”
“What we always do. We follow the trail.” He had that fluttery feeling that he got when he was close. He could almost see how this had come together, but there were a few pieces missing.
“Back to headquarters?”
“Yeah, and I think we better hurry.”
🙛
Nora didn’t spend too long trying to understand what Randall had described. She had a basic understanding of the web—certainly more than most people—but less than an average computer geek. She didn’t need to understand the intricacies of cyberbugs any more than she needed to understand the details of bomb makers. Her job was to catch the perp before he caused massive damage to people or systems.
He or she...
Nora glanced over at Randall and bit back a smile. He was learning to think outside the box, to put his preconceived notions aside and analyze what was in front of him. If she could teach him that, they’d make a great team. Randall understood aspects of the web and coding that sounded like foreign language to her. All that talk about Gen 1 and Gen 2 made her antsy. Generation X she could understand—baby boomer, millennial, even Gen Z. She understood people, especially the ones she was pursuing.
She’d been with the agency for ten years now. She could count on one hand the motives for cyber terrorism—greed, revenge, insanity, and warnings about the dangers of technology. She didn’t even need her entire hand to count motives. No one planted a virus into a system because of unrequited love. She’d encountered only those four motives, and she didn’t think for a moment that a new motive had sprouted out of the Texas dirt.
Sometimes if she could tag the motive, she could more easily find the perp. This was big. Whoever was doing this probably wasn’t insane. It felt too well planned for that. Which left greed, revenge or warnings.
The last one bothered her the most. Those people couldn’t be reasoned with. They were certain of their superiority—they were the only ones who truly understood the dangers facing not just America but civilization. They were convinced that the only way to avoid the collapse they so clearly foresaw was to bring the system—the entire system—down immediately.
Was that what they were dealing with now?
She wasn’t sure.
Fleming took a different route back to their headquarters—over to I-75, then south to the Woodall Rogers Freeway, which gave them an excellent view of downtown Dallas. The place was eerily vacant, as were the roads. Whoever was behind this cyberattack had managed to bring the 9th most populous city in the United States to its knees.
To what end?
What were they hoping to achieve?
Fleming was exiting toward downtown when Nora’s satellite phone rang. Randall glanced up from the tablet he’d been staring at. They rarely gave out the number to their SAT phones. Only the director, Governor Abbott, and Quinn had Nora’s number—and of course Randall.
“Brooks.”
“He wants to meet you.” There was something in Quinn’s voice she couldn’t identify—a warning, or something he wasn’t saying.
“Who?”
“Our perp. He hired a courier—some kid we’re holding. The message says to meet him at two p.m. at the Fountain Place.”
“Hold.” Nora covered the mouth piece, pulled the phone away from her ear and addressed Fleming. “Change of plans. Can you take us to Fountain Place?”
“Sure thing.”
She put the phone back to her ear. “We’re on our way.”
“I have the Chief of Police on hold, waiting your instructions.”
Nora glanced at Randall.
Should they go in alone? Or would they need the back-up?
As if reading her mind, Randall shrugged.
She spoke back into the phone. “Three men, plain clothes, tell them to meet us...”
Randall had pulled up a map of downtown Dallas on his tablet. “Meet us at the corner of Ross and Freeman.”
“Anything else?”
Nora couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or truly wanted to help. She’d have to hope for the latter.
“Send a photo of the message to my phone.”
She clicked off and turned to her partner.
“Think it’s real?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Feels too early for a show-down.”
“It does.”
“But it’s something.”
“Could be a decoy. Could be a trap.”
“Cheer up, Nora. Maybe it’s just another clue.” Randall tapped his fingers against the edge of the tablet. “Maybe he’s messing with us to see if we’re as smart as we think we are.”
“Are we?”
“Time will tell.”
Fleming met their gaze in the rearview mirror. “You two sure take this stuff in stride.”
Now it was Nora’s turn to shrug. She turned her gaze out the window. “It’s not the end of the world, Officer Fleming.”
“Feels like it when everything stops working.”
“And that is their goal. If you feel trapped, you’ll bend.”
Fleming pulled to a stop at the corner of Ross and Freeman. “Should I wait?”
“No. We’ll catch a ride back with the police chief. Be safe.” Nora slammed the door without waiting for an answer.
As the officer’s car pulled away, Randall stood beside her, reading from his tablet as she gazed up at the glass tower. “Forty-two floors, design is a multi-faceted prism, completed in 1986, and named after 172 fountains.”
“Great. Mirrors, angles, and water.”
“Our perp is definitely playing with us.”
“It would seem.” Her phone binged, and she opened the attachment from Quinn.
You have one chance to end this.
Fountain Place. Mezzanine level.
Brooks and Goodwin only.
2:00.
Nora frowned at the screen. “Why the mezzanine level?”
“Why here?”
“How did they know our names?”
“And why do they want to negotiate with us?”
Nora crammed the phone back into her jacket pocket. “I’m pretty sure this is not a negotiation.”
They hurried over to the two men and a woman who stood twenty yards back from the intersection. Each person stepped forward, shook hands, and introduced their self.
“Police Chief, Keith Sowars.”
“Assistant Chief, Mitzi Nguyen.”
“Captain, James Wright.”
Nora and Randall introduced themselves, then quickly briefed the Dallas group on what they thought was happening.
“I might know a good place to survey the situation.” Wright glanced at his bosses, who both nodded for him to continue. “The front of the building, in the middle the fountain area. Lots of trees—and they’re live oaks so they’ll still have their leaves. Should provide plenty of cover.”
“Let’s do it.”
As they jogged toward the front of the building, Nora glanced at her watch. They had fourteen minutes to decide how they were going to handle this.
No water came out of the fountains. The pumps had stopped when the electricity cut out. The place wasn’t completely deserted, though. There were at least a dozen teenagers on skateboards enjoying their day off.
“I’ll clear the area.” Nguyen turned toward the teens, but Nora stopped the woman with a hand on her arm. “Wait. We might need them.”
Nguyen cocked her head to the side, waiting to hear what reason Nora would have for endangering the lives of civilians—and not just civilians, but under-aged civilians.
Instead of explaining herself, Nora turned to Randall. “What do you think?”
He crossed his arms and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t like it. Something isn’t...we’re not seeing the full picture here.”
“Agreed.”
Nora turned to Sowars and Wright. “CCTV?”
Wright shook his head. “All the closed circuit televisions are currently disabled—per the governor’s orders.”
“So our perp isn’t watching us right now.”
“Unless he’s inside,” Sowars pointed out. “Not that he could see us from here, but he’ll see you approach and enter the building.”
“He’s not here. I can guarantee you he’s not in that building, so why does he want us in there on the mezzanine level?” Nora turned back to Randall, but he was already ahead of her. She didn’t even have to ask the question.
“Even if he has hacked into one of the federal satellites, he can’t track us via the car we were in or our civilian phones. They’re both routed through commercial providers who are currently down. All the GPS feeds are down, but the satellite phones are a different matter.”
Which again pointed to someone on the inside.
She’d figure that out later.
Instead of calling Quinn, she punched in the number for Abbott’s millennial group.
Brynlee answered.
“Are the brown-outs still cycling?”
“Yup.”
“I’m at 1445 Ross Ave. Tell me when it’s scheduled to come back on here.”
“If the pattern stays the same, it’ll cycle back on at 1:57 and stay on for four minutes.”
“Thanks.”
Nora disconnected the call and strode toward the closest teenager, who performed a complicated skateboard maneuver that shot him up three steps then spun him in a half circle. Once he was facing her, he popped the board up and caught the end of it.
“Let me guess. We have to leave.”
“Not exactly. I want to borrow your board.”
“This board?” The kid looked fifteen, had the requisite long hair that had been carefully styled to look as if he hadn’t combed it in a week, and was sporting a good case of acne.
Nora didn’t miss being a teen.
But she remembered what it was like to be that age. You wanted to be the one making the decision, and you could usually use extra money.
“How much?” Nora reached for her wallet and pulled out five twenties.
“I paid double that.”
Nora doubted it, but she didn’t have time to haggle. She pulled a hundred more, made the exchange, and smiled when the kid said, “I should have asked for three.”
“Tell your friends we need them off this block—now.”
By the time she’d walked back to Randall, he’d already procured a roll of duct tape. Where had he found that? She didn’t take the time to ask. Instead, they secured both of their SAT phones to the board.
“Four minutes.” Randall nodded toward the building. “Want me to take it in?”
“Nope. This is why I get paid the big bucks. You’re going to want to stand back from these fountains.”
Nora took off at a jog, while Randall explained to the others what she was doing.
No one was visible in the building—no guards, no business people. She reached the door at exactly 1:57 as the electricity powered back on. Water surged through the fountains behind her, and the front door opened easily. Whoever was orchestrating this wanted her inside.
Ambient light had come on around the main lobby, and more importantly, the escalator she’d seen from outside had started operating, stretching from the lobby up to the mezzanine level. She popped the skateboard on the bottom step, made sure it was moving up, then took off at a jog.
She’d reached the edge of the fountain area when an explosion shook the building behind her. Glass rained down around her and sirens pierced the afternoon.
At least she knew why their perp wanted her and Randall on the mezzanine level. That was where he’d planted the bomb.
He wanted to kill them.
🙛