“Better question,” Nicholas said, “who is Damari here to assassinate?” He trailed a hand over the top edge of his laptop, glanced at the screen. All was running as planned, his patch was holding. But who knew for how long? He was thankful the IT team was keeping a sharp eye on the situation.
“He’s here to murder the vice president of the United States,” Savich said.
Stunned silence, then: “But that’s crazy,” Mike said. “I mean, she’s covered from here to Sunday and sideways with security; he’d never succeed. How do we know this?” Mike was sitting forward as if she wanted to pull the information out of Savich’s mouth.
“The Israelis had been closing in on him, watching some bank accounts he supposedly has,” Savich said. “They say he flew from Jordan to London to Mexico City three months ago, then probably went north and over the border into the U.S.”
Sherlock went on, “Callan Sloane has friends in Mossad. They alerted her immediately that Damari was hired to kill her, and others as well, as yet unidentified.
“No matter how well she’s covered, guys, you all know Damari’s rep. He never fails, so this is a very serious threat indeed.”
Savich said, “When we meet with Carl Grace, we’ll soon see if the CIA truly intend to be up front with everything they know not only about COE, but also about Damari.”
“Well,” Nicholas said, sitting back, “that certainly tops what we have to tell you and Sherlock, but”—he nodded to Mike—“tell them, Mike.”
She gave them a fat grin. “I went to school with Vanessa Grace. Carl Grace is her uncle, evidently her handler. She was shot in Brooklyn, picked up by the CIA, stabilized, and medevaced down here. I hope Uncle Carl will tell us if she’s alive or dead.”
52
ROOK TAKES A2
Nicholas’s laptop beeped.
Mike leaned in to look. “Is it the breach? You didn’t get it contained?”
Nicholas said, “It’s being difficult.”
“Is that a Brit understatement?” Mike asked.
Savich came around his desk, looked over Nicholas’s shoulder. “No, I don’t think so, Mike. It looks like the threat assessment from Dominion’s security servers ran us through multiple failure scenarios—are you going to be able to contain this breach, or do I call in the IT cavalry?”
Nicholas was watching his worm chew through Gunther’s code. “So far, so good, and I know your IT guys are looking at the same thing, and they haven’t yelled out. But you know, I don’t like the feel of this. What do you think, Savich?”
Savich called his IT department. “Martin, I’m putting you on speaker. What are you guys seeing?”
A man’s very calm, very soothing voice said in a dead monotone, “People, this is an incredible DDoS attack and it’s managed to access the DERMS—the Distributed Energy Resource Management System—which controls the grid itself.” They heard him draw a deep breath. “Sorry, the power is now shutting off, quadrant by quadrant.”
“A moment, Martin. Nicholas do you see it?”
“Oh, yes, I see it. He’s right, we’re going down.”
There was a beep from Nicholas’s laptop, then a series of three in a row, fast and steady, an alarm going off. “Oh, no. Oh, bugger me!” He started typing frantically. “The bloody worm isn’t working now, Gunther’s code kicked it out and accelerated the grid collapse. The DDoS attack is spreading instead of halting. Exactly what I was afraid of.”
“I copy that, Drummond,” Martin said.
Sherlock asked, “How many homes are without power? How far has it spread?”
“It’s happening really fast. Right now, millions are without power, all over Virginia. Even more widespread power and voltage fluctuations, too. If we can’t get it back online, we may start seeing larger failures across the board. Once one system is overloaded and goes offline, it’s a domino effect. If we’re not careful, the whole eastern seaboard could go down. You did a good patching job, Drummond, but COE’s hackers did a superb number on us. There’s no stopping this now. You with me?”
Sherlock’s cell rang, and she listened, punched off. “Can you hear me, Martin?”
“Yo, what now?”
“That was the head of security at Dominion. They’ve put a call in to their contacts at Juno to see if they can step in and help shut this down. He said this attack is so specialized, so perfectly timed, it makes him very suspicious of the assessment Juno did on their systems.”
“Bloody well right they should be suspicious. Someone in their operation screwed up big-time. It’s spreading too fast for us to contain it.”
And the lights went out.
Dead silence, then shouts from the outer office, chairs squeaking on the floor as agents pushed back from their desks. Then a deep grinding noise filled the office, as the Hoover Building’s many generators kicked on and the emergency lighting came on.
Martin’s calm voice came out loud and clear, “Nicholas, look at the grid of lines crisscrossing the eastern seaboard—like arteries into a heart.”
They all stared down at Nicholas’s laptop. One by one, the lines disappeared.
“It’s the worst-case scenario,” Nicholas said. “The grids have gotten out of balance, the peak load is too much, so they’re systematically shutting down. The bastards have managed it. They’ve overloaded the grids.”
Sherlock asked, “Can we get them back up and online, Nicholas? Martin?”
Nicholas said, “I can’t, not alone, anyway. Martin, we need to get together and reverse-engineer the code. They have remote control of the grids, and they’ve managed to use it.” He stared at the screen. “Outages are being reported from North Carolina to New York.” He looked up at Savich. “If the vice president is a potential target, this could signal the beginning of an attack.”
Sherlock was already punching in numbers on her cell. “I’ll alert the Secret Service.”
Mike was scrolling down her cell phone. “The media is already having a field day. Twitter has exploded with speculation.”
Nicholas said, “Martin, I’m on my way; get your team ready to reverse-engineer. Mike, can you get a SitRep on the outage for me?”
“On it.”
Savich said, “Nicholas, let’s get down to IT and stop this thing. Martin, get ahold of Juno, we need to work with their protocols.”
Nicholas said, “I want to bring in Adam Pearce, too. We have to move fast.” Savich nodded and Nicholas dialed as they walked.
Adam sounded exhausted and harried. “I know, I know, Nicholas, COE pulled a doomsday on you. I’m working on it.”
“Work faster. I’m in D.C. and I’m about to work with the IT team here at the Hoover. Can you trace where the signal is coming from?”
“I’m looking. It’s south of you. They’re popping online then getting off as quickly as the IP addresses register. The last signal came from near Richmond. I’ll call you back.”
Savich and Nicholas broke into a run, down the long hallway and into the mainframe server room. There were a dozen men and women scrambling around, making sure the backups were safe. A man with short black hair, aviator glasses, and a small mustache walked up to them. He said in a voice so calm, so soothing, Nicholas felt his heart rate slow, fought the urge to yawn: “You Drummond?”
At Nicholas’s nod, Martin said, “Come this way.”
Savich knew he wasn’t needed. He stood there and watched the room of people shift into a complex ballet, people switching stations, screens glowing, keyboards clattering, all under the oddly green-tinged lights of the emergency backup generators.
Mike came up, tugged on his sleeve. “Air traffic control is rerouting all planes in the area. The Capitol power plant is offline, so the Capitol police are enacting emergency measures as if there’s an imminent attack coming on their locale. Sherlock spoke to the Secret Service, and Vice President Sloane is being moved to a secure location. All the nuclear plants up and down the eastern seaboard are executing emergency measures. The Metro and the trains into and out of D.C. are all offline. We’re going to have massive gridlock, and fast. We need to control this, make sure we don’t have a panic on our hands. What else can we do?”