Washington, DC
6:16 PM Monday, January 19
“Ahem.”
Like a snowball had been shoved down his shirt, Jack jerked back to find Kekoa standing in the doorway, a sly smile on his tan face.
“Brother, you have impeccable timing.”
Brynn giggled and moved back to put some space between them, but she didn’t let go of Jack’s hand.
“Sorry, brah, but something kind of important is happening.” He raised his hands. “Not that what’s happening here isn’t important, but you know, maybe not as world-ending as what’s going on inside here.” He tossed a thumb over his shoulder at the inside of the SNAP office.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked as he followed Kekoa and Brynn inside and down the hall.
“You know how some of our clients have noticed attempts made against their security systems?” Kekoa led them into his office. “Well, the activity has picked up in the last forty-eight hours.”
“Right.” Jack moved a chair over for Brynn. “Did you figure out what it was?”
“A virus, I think. That’s the reason I called you back here.” Kekoa sat in his desk chair and rolled to his workstation. He began typing and talking. “I accessed Precision Technologies’ firewall and began source tracing the attacks—”
“Dozens of our clients from all over the world,” Jack answered Brynn, folding his arms over his chest. “Not only ours, but other security firms have noticed similar issues with their clients.”
Brynn’s forehead furrowed in concern. “You think it’s a virus that’s attacking their systems?”
Kekoa began typing again. “It is a virus, and it’s attacking the security mainframe.”
“Do you know where the attacks are coming from?”
“No,” Kekoa said. “Director Walsh has called in reinforcements to field calls from our clients while my friends are doing the hard work. Remotely, of course. Which is why you need to see this.”
Kekoa pointed at his screen, and all Jack could see was a skeleton of the earth with little lines pinging all over it. It reminded him of those airline commercials where the company shows all their destinations across the globe.
Brynn leaned in closer to the computer. “What is it?”
“Counterattacks.”
Jack continued to watch the globe get covered with lines, starting from one part of the world and landing in another part over and over. “You’re stopping them.”
“We’re slowing them down,” Kekoa said with a sigh. “It’s a good virus, if I can say that. Whoever created it knew how to defend against counterattacks. Once we go on the defensive, it ramps up the attack and actually . . . mutates.”
“Like a real virus.”
Kekoa nodded at Brynn. “Yep.”
“How do we stop them?” Jack asked, feeling his tension rise. SNAP’s clients, both in the government and in the private sector, were being attacked, and it was their job to stop it.
“We can’t. Not completely. But I have an idea.” Kekoa spun in his chair to face him. “My mom did a Bible study with her hula sistahs a while back, and she read something about the armor of Christ, particularly the shield of faith. Anyway, she said the kumu explained how the soldiers back in da day would use their shields to create a testudo.”
Jack rubbed his forehead. “English, please.”
Kekoa grinned. “Kumu is teacher and testudo is Latin for tortoise shell, or honu in Hawaiian.”
“Go on,” Jack said, catching Brynn covering her smile. “Do not encourage him.”
“Anyway, the soldiers would make this tortoise-shell formation by bringing up their shields overhead and overlapping them so no javelins or spears would hit them.”
“And how does this have anything to do with cyberattacks? We’re not facing the Romans here.”
“True, but I was thinking we could employ the same method. Go shields up.” Kekoa got up and walked to a whiteboard. He drew a box and labeled it computer. Above it he drew thin rectangles, overlapping so that the computer was protected from edge to edge. And above that he drew arrows pointing down at the thin rectangles. “This”—he tapped the box—“represents the computer systems currently being attacked. These,” he said, pointing to the rectangles, “represent a program we design to shield the systems from the attacks.” He tapped the arrows. “Individually, we’re not going to be able to install a program into every server, but if I work with the IT guys”—he looked at Brynn—“or wahines, we may be able to distract the enemy long enough to send in our own virus.”
“Go all penicillin on them,” Brynn said with a proud smile.
“Bahahahaha.” Kekoa’s laughter bellowed around them. “Good one.”
Jack shook his head, then his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw Lyla’s number. “Hello.”
“Hey, Jack.”
Hearing Garcia’s voice answer jarred Jack. “What’s wrong? Is Lyla okay?”
His words silenced the lingering laughter between Brynn and Kekoa.
“She’s fine. Trying to find us a flight out of here, but the snowstorm in DC is making it hard for us to get back.”
“And what about the fertilizer?”
“It’s gone. Someone broke into the dock warehouse late last night. Dock employees didn’t realize it was gone until this morning. Looks like someone came through an old access road, broke into the crates, and removed the fertilizer.”
“No alarm was triggered? No security footage?”
“No. Seems the system went down last night conveniently.”
Jack looked to Kekoa and then to his diagram, unease stretching through him. “Conveniently, huh?”
“Director Walsh put me in contact with some local security forces who are working the case now. We also spoke with the commander out at Andersen Air Force Base. We wanted to give him a heads-up, considering the base services the strategic bomber fleet.”
“Did he mention receiving any threats recently?”
“No, but he said a squadron of B-52s arrived this morning as part of a training exercise, and there’s some concern about the timing of all this.”
“Two hundred and twelve miles!” Jack heard Lyla yell in the background.
“Lyla’s miffed they can’t find that much fertilizer hiding on an island this small,” Garcia mumbled. “She wants permission to offer the local police force three brand-new squad cars if they work double time to find the fertilizer so she can fly home.”
Jack rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, right. I need you both there to locate the fertilizer and whoever stole it.” He looked through the office toward the window. Snow was falling again. “And unless Lyla can make the snow stop, she’d better grab some sunscreen and enjoy the warmth. Keep me posted.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Ending the call, Jack updated Brynn and Kekoa on Garcia’s news. He was about to suggest they order dinner when Brynn reached for a marker and went to the whiteboard. Drawing a line down the middle so as not to interrupt Kekoa’s sketch, she wrote down Texas, Guam, DC, and Egypt.
Next to Texas she wrote power grid. Next to Guam, fertilizer, and in parentheses wrote OKC. Next to DC, schematics and human trafficking/immigrants, and next to Egypt, illegal immigrants.
“When I analyze data, I look for a common thread. For the last week I couldn’t figure out what the connection was because I was looking at each event individually. But the missing fertilizer in Guam . . .” She looked at Jack and with a curl to her lip snapped her fingers. “It’s like the missing piece.”
Jack was never going to live the snap down, but watching Brynn in her element, seeing her work, it was alluring. “Go ahead.”
“Unexpected shipments of fertilizer arrive in Guam, unclaimed and now missing. Enough fertilizer to blow up a federal building like Oklahoma.” She pointed to the OKC on the board. “Tarek Gamal and Seif El-Deeb both arrive in DC undocumented and with fake passports. Before we can find out why, they’re kidnapped and then killed. Along with Joseph Ansari, who had reported members of his own mosque for extremist behavior. Today we discovered fake IDs, uniforms, and the diagrams for electrical and mechanical equipment but also one for the power grid in Texas.”
“Which reminded Agent Samson of the attack on the PG&E power grid in California.”
“Right.” Brynn nodded at Jack, but there was no delight in her eyes before she turned them on Kekoa. “Can you tell if the cyberattacks are coming from the same source? Same location?”
“No. A hacker this skilled would make sure to hide their trail.”
She faced Jack. “Your clients, the ones being hit, are they all defense contractors like Precision Technologies?”
“Not all of them. Finance, banking, a few government offices, technolo—” He stopped talking, his blood running cold.
Brynn’s gaze locked on his. “Jack, I think America is about to be attacked.”