Walker was now alone in the back of the van as it drove over concrete. The hood was still over his head and his wrists were still tied behind his back with the plastic cable ties. The seams in the road where the concrete slabs met acted like a trundle wheel and told him that they were driving about twenty miles per hour, and he figured they were headed west, because of the compass in his head. They were almost at the NASA super-computing lab.
“Any chance I can get this hood off?” Walker asked.
Silence from the front.
“Is there anyone around?” Walker asked. “Employees?”
“It’s a Sunday. This is NASA,” the driver said.
“There’s no security?” Walker said. “There’s always security; there’s billions of dollars of tech sitting around here. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Silence.
“What did General Christie say to you before, Harrington?” Walker said. “Did she mention Jasper Brokaw being here? That Team Black had liberated him from his captors—or that they were waiting for your arrival to use Paul Conway to covertly hack the systems here and override Jasper’s commands, then you boys would have to deal with the terror group?”
No response.
“Do you know for certain that Brokaw’s here?” Walker said.
Harrington remained silent. Then, as the van started to slow, he said, “The drone’s just coming overhead now.”
“I’d use it,” Walker said. “The EMP.”
“You said before this place was EMP-proof,” the driver said.
“But Team Black’s communications systems aren’t,” Walker said. “What are there, six of them? They’re your enemy here, don’t you see? And they’re set up. Defensive. They’ve got a kill box all organized. It’s a trap. It won’t affect what Team Black are doing with Brokaw—”
“Would you shut up?” the driver said. He pulled to a stop. “This is it.”
“Can’t see them,” Harrington said.
“These guys have that reputation,” the driver replied. “Especially in the dark. You heard what they did in Syria, right? Shit. They hunted down half of IS’s hardest operators, and none of it was reported. I heard they even—”
“You need to use the EMP to shut down their comms, now,” Walker said. “It’s a—”
“You need to shut it,” the driver said.
“The EMP is a smart move,” Walker said. “Put them on the back foot for a spell. I’d leave two on Brokaw, send four out here to mop you guys up. Maybe just three, if they think they’re so good and there’s four of you.”
“Seriously,” the driver said. “I’m going to come back there and knock you right the fu—”
WHACK.
It was two sounds, a millisecond apart. First, the unmistakable sound of a high-velocity round as it punctured the windscreen, to the top left. The second sound came when the bullet hit the driver. It must have deflected on the laminated glass because while it was still a head shot, the driver was now gurgling. The sounds of death, before the silence. Walker imagined a .300 round, probably fired by an M2010 sniper rifle since these guys, Team Black, were US Army. The twelve-gram projectile, traveling at 3000 feet per second, deformed on the windscreen and hit the guy a little lower than aimed, then spun its way through the side of the driver’s skull and tunneled down and across through his face, tearing out the back of his neck. Air sucked and hissed as the guy’s final breaths expanded and deflated his lungs and escaped out of all kinds of new orifices. He slumped forward and came to rest on the van’s horn, which sounded long and loud and incessant in the still night air.
“Put your hands up!” Walker said to Harrington. “Show them you’re capitulating—and start bargaining!”
“Okay,” Harrington said. “Okay.”
Walker’s breath was fast inside the hood. He felt his heart topping out and immediately forced himself to relax.
“Make them take you inside,” Walker said, feeling his heart rate slowing a little. “Me too. Tell them the others are ten minutes out, that you had to separate in taking the three of us, and that you have to greet them when they roll in.”
“They won’t buy that,” Harrington said out the corner of his mouth, barely audible over the horn’s blare. “Okay, I can see them approaching—two of them. Team Black . . . Sons of bitches. Traitors.”
He rattled off a few more choice words.
Walker said, “Your comms still up?”
“Yes.”
“Your team heard all this.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good. Tell them to put the EMP overhead in five minutes. And have them tell Monica: Paul Revere, one for come, two for stay put.”
“What?”
“Just tell them that. She’ll know.”
Walker heard Harrington whisper into the microphone that was taped around his neck and picking up his vocal vibrations, and then he heard the front door of the van being opened, and then the rear doors.
•
“We can’t let the grid shut down,” the Vice President said. “How realistic is this?”
“Sir,” said the Secretary of Homeland Security. “The national electric grid is comprised of three smaller grids, called interconnections, that move electricity around the country. The Eastern Interconnection operates in states east of The Rockies, The Western Interconnection covers the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountain states, and the smallest is the Texas Interconnection system.”
“No BS now,” the Vice President said. “Can it be brought down by a hack?”
“It should be fine.”
The Vice President looked exasperated. He said, “Should be?”
“Since 2010,” the Secretary of Homeland Security said, “we’ve deployed a wide range of advanced devices, including more than thirty thousand automated capacitor feeder switches—”
“Damn it!” the Vice President banged his fist on the table.
Then, another voice came over the speaker on the table. The President of the United States. “We’ve spent hundreds of millions to make a resilient grid infrastructure that can survive a cyber incident while sustaining critical functions. Are you now saying that it’s all been for nothing?”
“Mr. President,” the Secretary of Homeland Security said. “Most Internet attacks just affect users of one particular site or service. This one, however, will be aimed at breaking the whole thing. The fact is this: Jasper Brokaw is an insider. If someone can wreak havoc, it’s him.”
The room fell silent.
McCorkell looked around. “If I may,” he said. “We’ve got an option here, in Jed Walker. Give him time.”