The Island--A Thriller

by Ben Coes

  That’s what one of his screens was now doing, trying to find correlations.

  But as Igor waited for the results of his analysis as to the origination of the call, a different part of the wide computer screen abruptly froze. This was a screen he hadn’t even really been using, other than as a catalog of sorts for the various programs he had running on other screens.

  The screen flashed a neon red icon in the upper right corner. Across the frozen section of screen, the word NOCOS appeared in white caps.

  “Enter on four one,” said Igor with his thick Russian accent, speaking to the computer as he watched the icon—after recognizing his voice—burst into a live video feed.

  He was looking straight ahead, through a camera on an individual, a chest-mounted wireless camera. It was body camera footage from someone in law enforcement. It was a recording only hours old. The officer was lifting the limp head of a dead man, a body slumped over in a car, a riot of blood, a hole in the neck, and, on his face, a missing eyeball, a horrible-looking empty hole, surrounded by blood and recently mauled tissue.

  Igor spoke:

  “Program.”

  “Everest,” came a robotic, synthetic female voice.

  Everest was a facial recognition platform.

  From the dead man’s right eye—the remaining eye still in the socket—a digital balloon interrupted the screen.

  A bright white digital box. The file photo of a man.

  TOP SECRET

  -NOSEC—NOSEC—NOSEC—NOSEC—NOSEC—NOSEC—NOSEC-

  ALPINA 42.6

  IDENTITY:

  LAWRENCE, PHILLIP

  GOVERNOR adjutant 14

  U.S FEDERAL RESERVE

  Igor spoke:

  “Why am I looking at this?”

  The computer:

  “Einstein 3, high-value incident,” said the voice.

  Einstein 3 was an NSA algorithm that filtered secure government gateways for metadata, including the most mundane internet traffic, always focused in on government officials, even at a local level. Igor had customized it so that it was always on but only made its presence known when it found something.

  The screen showed the dead man, Lawrence, in a photo from a few years before. He was one of four individuals: three men and one woman.

  The screen popped up a document.

  ________THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL RESERVE

  CHARTER AMENDMENT TO UNITED STATES TREASURY c.67T

  ACTION 290-B

  FEDWIRE

  TC CODE: 1000000000–1

  DECEMBER 5, 1998

  _____4

  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

  -Action 290-B establishes a central and secure digital framework for the management of all transactions by and between the U.S. Federal Reserve and any governmental or non-governmental entities.

  -Action 290-B establishes a U.S. Treasury enterprise composed of four (4) individuals whose responsibility—as a necessarily combined redundant entity—is to effectively manage all debits and credits of the Federal Reserve whose transactional value are more than one billion dollars.

  -THE FEDERAL RESERVE WILL CHARGE SUCH INDIVIDUALS, HEREINAFTER REFERRED TO AS GOVERNORS, TO MANAGE ALL MOVEMENT OF FEDERAL RESERVE ASSETS AND SHALL BE INDEMNIFIED HEREBY FROM SUCH ACTIONS, PER ACTION 290-B

  Igor realized that the man who’d been murdered was one of the individuals who managed the Federal Reserve.

  As Igor read on, his mouth went agape, and he felt his heart palpitating. The dead man, Lawrence, had been flagged on a remote NSA algorithm. Lawrence and three other individuals were in charge of something even he barely understood, Fedwire. They controlled, day in and day out, approximately $5 trillion of sovereign American wealth—the entire liquidity of the United States Federal Reserve and thus the United States of America.

  The ebb and flow of money.

  Igor believed he knew everything, and yet, in a fraction of a moment, he realized he didn’t know anything.

  He typed furiously, attacking levels of information deep inside government servers, using the NSA root to find another level of information. It was a Level 3 file, so secret that it was locked inside a cryptographic fortress, layered with various encryption keys, but Igor quickly bored into the kernel of highly secure data in which the identities of the four governors was displayed with photos and links to their backgrounds:

  FENNER, DAVID [670–3 T.9]

  JAKLITSCH, ADAM [411–1 Q.4]

  LAWRENCE, PHILLIP [700–3 V.0]

  WINIKOFF, KARA [329–0 Z.1]

  When the screen froze again, a cold chill washed over him. Another algorithm appeared on the screen. A small red circle started flashing.

  The algorithm was cued off the profile Igor was now pushing against every available database he could find. It was metadata, a cell call to 911, only just live. In this case a woman, her eyeball missing. She was already known to Igor, for she was on the LCD next to Lawrence.

  Kara Winikoff.

  He ran all four names against the data cipher that had flagged Winikoff. The results came back almost immediately. All four were dead.

  ____________FENNER, DAVID [670–3 T.9]

  —deceased—

  Per NYPD Brooklyn 17 06:15 AM EST

  ____________JAKLITSCH, ADAM [411–1 Q.4]

  —deceased—

  Per NYPD Manhattan 71 06:45 AM EST

  ____________LAWRENCE, PHILLIP [700–3 V.0]

  —deceased—

  Per PD Mt Kisco NY 06:57 AM EST

  ____________WINIKOFF, KARA [329–0 Z.1]

  —deceased—

  Per NYPD Manhattan 44 07:20 AM EST

  Igor scanned the reports. Three of them were shot in the chest, Lawrence got it in the neck, all at close range, all inside vehicles.

  Each of them had had one of their eyeballs cut out. Each of them was missing a thumb, freshly hacked off. It was a tightly choreographed operation.

  Igor cut out of the live feed as Everest scrolled.

  ___________ All four governors will work at the same time and will coordinate schedules accordingly without exception.

  ___________ All four must be present for any movement of liquidity.

  ___________ Place of work should be secure and anonymous.

  ___________ Latest technology should always be employed to not only move assets but to gain entrance.

  ___________ Governors shall be selected on the basis of intellectual capability.

  ___________ A council will be formed of private sector leaders whose role will be the selection of said governors.

  ___________ The council and governors will remain anonymous and their activities secret under threat of sedition.

  Igor picked up his cell and dialed.

  “I’m busy,” said Polk.

  “It’s important.”

  “New York is under siege,” said Polk. “The president is trapped. Unless it’s more important than that, I don’t have the time.”

  “It’s more important,” said Igor.

  “I’m listening,” said Polk.

  “Everything is a distraction,” said Igor. “It is far more serious and complicated, Bill.”

  “How?”

  Igor spoke Russian:

  “Delo v den’gakh. Eto vsegda o den’gakh.”

  It’s about the money. It’s always about the money.

  “Skazhi chto ty imeyesh’ v vidu,” said Polk.

  Say what you mean.

  “They’re hacking into the Federal Reserve,” said Igor. “The president is a subterfuge. The room where it’s all managed must be in Manhattan.”

  “There’s no way,” said Polk.

  “What do you know about the governors of the Fed?” said Igor in a sharp voice, communicating the urgency of the question. “Fedwire?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m not allowed to discuss that,” said Polk.

  “All four were killed this morning,” said Igor, interrupting. “Four governors, four different locations. They each got shot a
nd each one of them is missing a thumb and an eyeball.”

  Polk was silent for several seconds.

  “This is turning into a really shitty day,” said Polk.

  “The eyes and prints allow them into the room,” Igor said. “It’s an iris-based provisioning structure backed up by prints. All four individuals need to be there simultaneously in order to enter. Or at least their thumbs and eyes.”

  “Entry protocols,” said Polk. “I’m hooking us into someone who knows about the Fed, especially the systems you’re talking about. In the meantime, try and get a handle on the entry architecture. CENCOM, establish Igor, Singerman, and me over JWICS.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  73

  9:24 A.M.

  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

  116TH STREET AND BROADWAY

  NEW YORK CITY

  Singerman left his town house and cut down to Riverside Drive. Cars, SUVs, minivans, delivery trucks, motorcycles, and throngs of people just walking or running, were moving north toward Harlem and, presumably, out of Manhattan—or at least away from the chaos that enveloped Midtown and below. Traffic was at a standstill. Singerman approached a black Suburban, stuck in the line of traffic. He approached a male driver and got his attention.

  “I need to borrow your vehicle,” said Singerman, weapon at his side, though clutched in his hand. “It’ll be replaced.”

  The man waved him away, yelling at him from behind the glass.

  Singerman raised a submachine gun and aimed it at the driver.

  “Get out,” said Singerman.

  The driver flipped the middle finger. Singerman fired. The bullet shattered the driver’s side window as it cut in front of the driver then exited through the passenger window, shattering it also.

  The driver raised his hands and opened the door.

  Singerman carjacked the Suburban and slammed the gas, maneuvering over a low concrete divider and roughing it over thick shrubbery in the middle of Riverside between south and north. Singerman executed a U-turn on Riverside Drive. He swerved into the southbound lanes and gunned it.

  Above Riverside Drive, and indeed the upper part of the island of Manhattan, the sky was blue. But clouds of smoke pirouetted into the sky in the distance.

  He was at 115th Street and he hit the gas hard. The southbound lanes were mostly clear. Some people, not content to wait in the northbound lanes of Riverside, were driving north in the southbound lanes, and Singerman had to dodge and weave to avoid the oncoming vehicles, though he pounded the gas pedal hard and was accelerating. By the time he reached Ninety-sixth Street, it was barely possible to get by. The road was a logjam as people abandoned their vehicles, or else remained in them trying to push around the vehicles that had already been abandoned. He started using the sidewalks and was not afraid to push aside vehicles by ramming them at the front or back bumper. By Eightieth Street, he was feathering the pedal, moving through whatever small chutes existed in the roadway, sometimes playing chicken with a northbound vehicle. At some point, he started bouncing against oncoming vehicles on the sidewalk, trying to get out of the city. It was chaos, and when he saw a wall of stopped cars above Seventy-second Street, Singerman pounded the gas and cut right, plowing the Suburban to a pedestrian running path that led down into Riverside Park.

  Singerman banked right off a brick column with a brass plaque at the top of the stairs and accelerated down a flight of concrete steps, slamming hard at the base of the stairs into tar as sparks shot out and metal scraped. When he grounded out, he slammed the gas and was soon moving fast through the pedestrian park. He kept his foot on the pedal, hard to the floor, honking when necessary to scare people away before he ran them over.

  He heard a beep in his ear and reached up.

  “CENCOM, identify.”

  “NOC 3390 AB2,” said Singerman.

  After a few low beeps:

  “Aaron, you have Bill and one more person.”

  “Aaron, it’s Bill,” said Polk. “You also have Igor, who is a DCIA NO/SEC. Where are you?”

  “Riverside Park,” said Singerman as he cut back and forth between pedestrians.

  “Hi, Aaron, my name is Igor,” came a deep, crisp voice with a sharp Russian accent. “Bill said you have some knowledge of the United States Federal Reserve?”

  74

  9:25 A.M.

  EAST RIVER

  NEW YORK CITY

  Dewey saw where the missiles had come from. He drifted down the river, pulled along by the current, at times violent enough to heave him down beneath the surface. He kicked his way so that he was in a direct path toward the dock. At the bank of the river he reached up and felt a wall of granite blocks. He continued to be swept by the current but let his hand feel along the wall of granite. It was slippery, covered in years of algae, oily spillage, and other sorts of dirt and grime. He found a small divot—a missing corner of a rock above his head—and he held on and kicked off his fins. He pulled up on the small, slippery inch of rock and hoisted himself up, above water, then let the water pour off him and his weapons. Dewey’s foot found an edge and he started scrambling, grasping for pieces of granite, his feet reaching desperately for small edges, and he slinked up the wall of stone and came to the esplanade. Then a surge of river hit him and he was back in the furious current, tossed into the river which swirled him a sudden five feet away from the bank.

  He caught his breath and resurfaced. The river appeared to be calm, yet beneath it was constantly churning and hauling Dewey down.

  He let himself drift—he didn’t feel like fighting the river anymore—and the current carried him closer and closer to the tower of smoke still pouring from the end of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel where the explosion had occurred. He saw the dock. It was a maintenance dock. It was stacked with machinery, a crane, and piles of cement bags. A temporary dock, clinging by a chain to the shore.

  As Dewey drifted closer, he registered movement. Halfway down the dock. It was a man looking up the river in his direction. Dewey watched as he abruptly placed the rifle down and picked up a shoulder-fired missile. Dewey realized he was the one who had shot down the American helicopters on the way in to save the president.

  Dewey took a deep breath and went below the water, submerging a few feet and swimming hard. He let the river take his body in a drift, then swam up when he saw the dark outline of the dock above. Quietly, he grabbed the underside of it with one hand. He moved carefully to the back of the dock, until he was at a thin gap between the dock and the bank.

  He surfaced and took a noiseless breath as he glanced down the length of the dock. It was crowded with pallets of stone, bags of cement, stacks of buckets, tools covered by tarps, and a mobile crane. His clothing blended into the background, and he wasn’t moving, like a rattlesnake hidden in tall grass. The terrorist, now clutching an AR-15, was approximately three-quarters of the way down the dock.

  In the distance, on the streets just above the river, gunfire was rampant. Sharp staccato fusillades of submachine guns interwoven with pounding single blasts from automatic rifles. There were screams, sirens, and the air, even down on the water, smelled like gunpowder.

  Dewey went back underwater. He moved along the back of the dock, holding himself below the water. He looked up through the water and tracked the dark edge of the pier against the sky. Holding his breath, Dewey reached to his ankle and removed a knife from a sheath strapped to his leg. It was a steel combat blade: SOG SEAL Pup. It was nine inches long. The blade was black and double serrated. He put the hilt of the knife in his mouth and bit down, clutching it between his teeth, as the fast-moving water coursed against him, and his lungs started to burn. He paused below the water until he felt he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, then emerged and climbed silently onto the dock, behind the Iranian, lifting himself up with his hands then stepping onto the wooden platform, blade between his teeth just as the Iranian sensed or heard him. The Iranian pivoted—AR-15 in his clutch—and swept the muzzle toward Dewey. As a drumming of b
ullets cracked the air, Dewey lurched and slashed the blade down at the killer, slamming the knife into his chest. He ripped it beneath the terrorist’s armpit in a violent hacking cut, gashing through clothing, skin, muscle, and bone. His cries of agony were muted by the surrounding din. Dewey buried the knife deep inside the terrorist’s chest, from the side, then, just as quickly, wrenched it back out, yanking up and letting the upper serrated teeth of the SEAL Pup gore through yet more of the man’s insides. Without taking his eyes off him, Dewey dunked the bloody blade in the river to wash it off, then resheathed it.

  He stared down at the young Iranian who was bleeding out. Dewey took the AR-15 from the terrorist’s hands. He inspected it as the man made a few last flails, hitting at Dewey’s legs. Dewey ignored the dying man and reached down, removing two mags from his vest. He aimed the rifle at the Iranian’s skull, but then put it slightly to the side and fired, testing the firearm. The Iranian jerked to the side, even though Dewey hadn’t shot him. A dime-sized hole tore into the wood of the dock. Dewey ran his hands over the weapon and then clutched it in his right hand.

  Dewey finally focused in on the bleeding-out Hezbollah on the dock. Dewey looked down into his eyes. The man fought to keep his eyes open, looking up at Dewey as dark, almost black maroon blood chugged from his nostrils, mouth, and ears, like a faucet.

  “I’m sorry this didn’t work out,” said Dewey to the terrorist. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Dewey put his foot beneath his torso and kicked forward, tossing the bleeding terrorist into the river. He watched as he drifted away in the fierce current, at first trying to swim, then rolling and sinking beneath the black water.

  “Don’t forget to write!” Dewey yelled.

  75

  9:25 A.M.

  TRUMP WORLD TOWER

  FIRST AVENUE

  NEW YORK CITY

  The man leaned over the edge of the building. He was across First Avenue from the UN building. He trained the optical on the American gunman down below.

  The building he was on had ninety floors. Firing a missile down at the sniper who was targeting Mansour would not be easy. He knew the missiles were not designed for the type of firing sequence he would be putting it through. He saw the sniper on the third floor of the UN building. He focused in. The gunman was scanning the area between the tower and First Avenue with his eyes but had the rifle aimed at the guardhouse, where Mansour was hidden.