Over Norfolk, Virginia
USA
Jon Smith eased into the thick leather seat and looked out the window as Covert-One’s G5 climbed out of the Norfolk airport. He and Randi had rendezvoused there in order to pick up the jet Fred Klein had sent for them. It seemed that the fake IDs, baseball hats, new clothes, and sunglasses had thrown off whoever had been tracking them. Most likely, General Masao Takahashi.
Randi fell into the facing seat, sliding a bottle of Tylenol and a can of Budweiser across the narrow table between them. “No microbrews in the fridge, but I thought Bud would still be better than water.”
He used the beer to wash down a few pills before reclining and closing his eyes. The episode in the parking lot combined with hours of crisscrossing the country in the relative anonymity of economy class hadn’t done his back any good. At least he’d stopped coughing up blood.
“Get some sleep, Jon. It’s a long flight to Okinawa. Fred’s cleared us for a nice quiet landing at our Kadena Air Base there, and then we can make our way to mainland Japan. I need you firing on all cylinders. Right now you look about a hundred years old.”
“It’s not the years,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes. “It’s the mileage.”
She didn’t respond immediately, but when she did she sounded unusually contrite. “Thanks back there. If it weren’t for you, I’d have shot an innocent woman and gotten crushed by a jacked-up Nissan. Not the way I want to go out.”
He smiled thinly. “I remembered what Fujiyama said about cars. He insisted we drive an old one.”
“Sure, but I thought that was because modern ones can be tracked by satellite. I still don’t understand what happened back there, Jon. How were those cars being controlled? It seems—”
The sound of insane laughter cut her off and forced Smith to look down at his phone. The extremely appropriate ringtone belonged to Marty Zellerbach, a high school friend of his who’d grown up to be a technological wizard and one of the world’s top hackers. Occasionally very useful, he could also be incredibly exhausting. Zellerbach suffered from Asperger’s syndrome and had a love-hate relationship with his medications that created wild pendulums in his mood.
“Are you going to pick up?” Randi asked.
“No.”
“You know what he’s calling about, Jon. And you know we’re going to need to talk to him eventually.”
“Eventually sounds good.”
She flicked a hand out, putting his phone on speaker before he could intercept. “Marty. Sweetheart. How are you?”
“Randi? The question is, how are you?”
“I’m good, thank you.”
“I noticed you’re as gorgeous as ever. I’m glad to hear the arm wasn’t serious.”
Smith frowned. By the time he’d made it to Chicago, CNN was already running shaky cell phone footage of what had happened in Portland. He and Randi had both been vaguely recognizable, but in the chaos it was doubtful that anyone would come to the conclusion that they were the target of the attack. Or even that it was an attack at all.
“Jon? Are you there? Are you all right? You looked a little slow out there.”
“I’m fine, Marty.”
“Can I assume those cars were after the two of you and not the woman with the Baby Jogger?”
Randi looked down at the phone’s screen and confirmed that the call was encrypted. Not that Marty was in the habit of talking on open lines. He was extremely suspicious of the NSA and lately had become concerned about space aliens.
“I think that’s safe to say,” she responded. “What the hell happened out there, Marty? How were those cars being controlled?”
“It’s really not all that hard. Modern cars don’t have mechanical linkages anymore. They’re computer controlled. All you have to do is get into the onboard system. You know that asshole neighbor I have who keeps calling the cops on me? I got into his Lexus through the tire pressure sensor. Now his heat is on full blast all summer and his AC runs all winter. If I wanted to, I could take control and make him drive through his garage door. In fact, that’s not a bad idea…”
“Okay,” Smith said before Zellerbach could embark on one of his legendary tangents. “But you had physical access to the car. You plugged your laptop into it and if you wanted to drive it remotely you’d have to have either a cable connected or some kind of a radio controller, right?”
There was a long pause. “That’s true. Yes.”
“There’s no way someone could have gotten to all those cars to hack them, Marty. And I’d be willing to bet there was no one within radio controller distance either. Explain that.”
Silence. Clearly, this was a problem he couldn’t entirely figure out. And if there was one thing that Zellerbach couldn’t stand, it was a technological issue on which he couldn’t pontificate endlessly.
“Maybe someone got access during the manufacturing process. Radio control could be handled by hijacking cell towers or even satellites. The airport would be an ideal location—lots of security cameras to tie in to so you could see what you were doing.”
“They were different makes and models,” Randi said.
“Yeah, but parts for those cars are built all over the world. It doesn’t matter who upholstered the seats and made the shift knob. What you need to know is who made the engine control unit.”
“So how hard would this be, Marty?”
“That’s kind of a vague question. It would depend on—”
“Okay, let me rephrase. How much would it cost me to hire you to do it?”
“I’d probably ask for a fifty-million-dollar retainer and five years. No guarantees, though. I mean, I’d have to infiltrate the manufacturing and design companies that make the ECUs and figure out how to hide some very sophisticated software in their systems. Then I’d have to figure out a way to communicate with it…” His voice faded as he became lost in thought.
“You know all these guys,” Smith said. “Who do you think did it? Give me some names.”
“I doubt we’re talking about an individual hacker,” Zellerbach admitted. “Or even a group like Anonymous. I think we’re talking about a government.”
Smith and Randi looked at each other, clearly thinking the same thing: The Japanese did a lot of design and manufacture work for the auto industry. And they’d have the technological ability to hijack cell towers and satellite networks.
“Okay,” Smith said. “Thanks, Marty.”
“Do you want me to dig into this?”
“Absolutely not,” Randi said. “We don’t know what we’re into here, but whatever it is, it’s dangerous. We can’t scrape up enough of the last guy who helped us to fill a shoe box.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“We know,” Smith said. “But you’ve already given us what we were looking for. We’ll call you if we need more. Talk later…”
He reached over and cut off the phone, then closed his eyes again to the sound of Randi tapping on her laptop. He was just about to drift off when she spoke.
“Star got the names we asked for, Jon. Odd woman, but you have to respect the skills.”
“And?”
“We were close. The rocket fuel guy is Akito Maki with a t, not a d. The materials guy is Genjiro Ueda. Both are still alive and both work as private consultants. We’ve got life stories, tax returns, home addresses, phone numbers, you name it.”
Smith let out a long breath. “If they knew enough to blow the top off that mountain, we have to assume they’ve got Fujiyama’s files. They’ll circle their wagons around anyone who was mentioned in them.”
“I don’t see that we have much of a choice. We’re talking about Japan spending the last thirty years building a clandestine military and now purposely courting a war with China. The president can’t march into the UN with a bunch of conjecture. We need something concrete.”
Smith just couldn’t stay awake anymore. His body was draining his normally limitless reserves to heal itself and it wouldn’t be denied any longer. As he started to drift off, his mind began to project images of war. He’d been through too many. Seen too much. But what he’d experienced was nothing compared with the scale of a confrontation between the two Asian giants.
What would that look like?
Not anything anyone had seen before. Takahashi was too smart to let China overwhelm him with its superior numbers and the sheer weight of its hardware. No, much more likely the first shots fired in this conflict would be silent. Takahashi would simply have a handful of men fly to China and deploy his nanoscale weapon. The country would quietly rot from within. Eventually, the power grid would falter, machinery would crumble, buildings would collapse.
By the time the Chinese figured out what was happening, they’d be living in the Stone Age. No food, no transportation, no heat. Not even help from the outside because any relief effort would be attacked by the same nanotech that had destroyed China.
And in truth, that was a best-case scenario. Based on what he’d seen of Takahashi’s technology, Smith wasn’t confident that it could be controlled. A few minor mutations and it could run amok, spreading across the planet and destroying everything in its path.