J.D. BLUNT NEARLY spit out his cigar when his assistant rushed into the conference room and told him who was at the door. Blunt froze for a moment, wondering if his assistant was the victim of a prank. With the rest of the team still gathered around the table, Black nodded toward the door.
“I don’t think the Gipper likes to be kept waiting,” Black said.
Blunt scrambled to his feet and lumbered out of the room and down the hallway. Outside the doors, he noticed a pair of Secret Service agents standing around President Young. Blunt activated the door by depressing his thumb to the keypad.
As the doors slid open, Young pushed his way past his security detail. One of the men grabbed Young’s arm.
“Sir, please, we need to secure the building,” the agent said.
“Like hell you do,” Young snarled as he ripped his arm away. “This place is safer than the White House—and I trust more people here, too.”
The agent relented but remained just a step behind President Young.
“This is quite a surprise,” Blunt said, offering his hand.
Young shook it but kept walking. “This isn’t a social call, J.D. We’ve got a serious problem brewing all over the country.”
“So, what are you doing here then? Shouldn’t you be in the situation room?”
“All those people in there are worried about me losing power,” Young said. “To hell with them. I need some people who can take action and get stuff done.”
“In that case, you’ve come to the right place.”
Blunt directed the president up a flight of stairs to the second floor and into the conference room where the Firestorm team sat awaiting their director’s return. When Blunt entered with Young right on his heels, there was a collective jaw drop from everyone sitting at the table. They quickly stood up, paying their respects to the president.
“Sit down, sit down,” Young said. “We don’t have time for all this. America is deteriorating in real time, and I need some answers along with a team of people who can take immediate action.”
As the team sat back down, Black nodded. “What do you need, Mr. President?”
“I need a time machine to go back and not sign that stupid Defense Oversight Bill that Woods convinced me I needed to sign,” Young quipped. “I didn’t realize it reduced my power in the Emergency Powers Act as well.”
“Unfortunately, our technical expert here, Jana Shadid, hasn’t invented one of those yet,” Shields said “But I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“In the meantime, I’ll settle for knowing who’s behind this and why,” Young said.
As they were talking, the lights flickered and the power went off again. Within a couple of seconds, the Firestorm generator kicked on again.”
Young let out a string of expletives before slumping into a chair. “What is the meaning of this?”
“We’re just as confused as you are, Mr. President,” Blunt said. “These power outages are rolling across the country, knocking out vital services. We’ve managed to keep our power on for the most part due to our backup system, but we’re having trouble being able to do the research that we need because other databases and servers are out, slowing the Internet to a crawl.”
“Have you learned anything so far?” Young asked.
Shields nodded. “I was able to get a live report on the country’s power grid, detailing which portions were out and which ones weren’t.”
“And?”
“These are rolling blackouts, sir, which is making it difficult to pinpoint the source,” Shields said. “This seems like a virus to me, but a planned one.”
“How could this even happen? Who’s capable of doing something like this?”
“There are plenty of candidates, but the biggest problem with all of this is that you’d have to have access to all three of our major power grids in the lower forty-eight,” Shields explained. “There’s the Eastern grid, Western grid, and the Texas grid.”
“Texas has their own grid?” Young asked.
Shields nodded. “It’s Texas, sir, those people seem to do whatever they want, though that is one gigantic swath of land.”
“So, can we shut down the grid ourselves to possibly reset the system?” Young asked.
“That’s a possibility, sir. But that might make things worse.”
Young furrowed his brow. “How so? If we cut the power, it’s just going to be for a longer period of time.”
“It’s possible that if this is virus related, trying to restart the system might create more of an issue,” Shields said. “If the virus reproduces, things could get much worse and eventually collapse the whole system.”
Young eyed her closely. “It sounds like you’ve seen something like this before.”
Blunt nodded. “We were part of a mission last week that eliminated one of the world’s most dangerous hackers, DarkNite. We were able to gain access to his computer and downloaded a large cache of files. Shields identified a string of code that was viral in nature and would behave like this one.”
“Then let’s extract that code,” Young said. “Wouldn’t that solve it?”
“Not as quickly as you might think,” Shields said. “If DarkNite was the one who did this, he’d have the code hidden in multiple places. Finding it would take weeks of intense searching.”
“Is there any quick fix?” Young asked.
“Not that we’ve been able to determine, unless we could identify the actual servers the virus was inserted on. That’d make the job of removing much quicker.”
“Like days instead of months?”
“More like hours instead of days,” she corrected. “But that’s contingent upon that information. We’re not likely to get that any time soon.”
Young’s eyes widened. “But if we can?”
“If you can get that for us, we’ll get it fixed for you.”
A faint smile spread across Young’s face. “That’s what I like to hear.”
Young’s phone rang. He answered it, and the smile on his face transformed into a frown.
“Well, tell him to fix it himself,” Young said. “I saw him cheering me signing the Defense Oversight Bill last week on his social media account. And he knew exactly what it meant.” A short pause. “I don’t care if L.A. burns to the ground. I don’t have any power now, thanks to the monsters who crafted that piece of legislation.”
After another short pause, Young resumed talking.
“Who? Martin Kellerman? … He’s in Washington right now? … Get him to the situation room immediately. I want to talk to him.”
Young hung up. “I need to get going, but keep me updated on what’s happening. If I don’t present a calm face to the American people with some hopeful news, this country might tear itself apart based on what I’m hearing. It’s a madhouse out there right now.”
Blunt nodded and stood. The rest of the Firestorm team followed suit.
“Let me walk you out, Mr. President,” Blunt said.
Young waved him off. “You have work to do, so get busy. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
“Of course,” Blunt said with a nod. He didn’t say anything for about thirty seconds after Young exited the room.
“Are you all right, sir?” Jana asked.
“I will be once we figure out how to restore normalcy to the nation,” Blunt said.
Shields nodded. “We won’t let you down, sir.”
* * *
WITH YOUNG GONE, the Firestorm team parceled out the work and began researching everything they could about how a virus could infect three different grids at once. Shields brought her desktop into the conference room and encouraged everyone else to get their laptops. In a matter of minutes, they had assembled their own situation room.
Blunt paced while chewing on a cigar. His head hurt from all the data being tossed around by the team members, but he needed to hear what they were saying. As they shared new information, Blunt hoped it would trigger something in his mind and he’d be able to put the pieces toget
her on how this virus had infected the entire grid and brought the U.S. to its knees.
After a half-hour, a humming noise started up and about five seconds later, power was restored. Blunt shut off the generators again and continued to mull over the problem.
When Blunt returned to the conference room, everyone was abuzz over something Shields had just said.
“What did I miss?” he asked as he shuffled back into the room.
“I found some phone records of DarkNite’s buried in all those files I harvested off his computer,” Shields said.
“And?”
“He’d been communicating with someone in the U.S. for the past few weeks,” she said.
Blunt nodded. “Sounds suspicious given the circumstances, but I’m not sure that fingers him as the mastermind behind all of this.”
“No, not yet,” Shields said. “But I also found this note buried in the system. It was titled: ‘Virus 0202’. That’s today’s date—February second. And guess what time the power went out in the East grid? 2:02 P.M. And the Texas Grid, which runs on Central time? 2:02 P.M. And the West grid? 2:02 P.M. in Phoenix.”
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Blunt said. “Something like that takes precision and planning.”
“Exactly,” Shields said. “And based on what we know at this point, I think it’d be crazy to think that DarkNite wasn’t involved with this operation on some level, if not the mastermind himself.”
“He had to have help,” Black said. “He was on every terrorist watch list we had. It seems inconceivable that he snuck into the country and embedded his virus on three different power grids with a code so strong that it disabled all the fail-safes and crippled the entire system.”
“So, who helped him?” Blunt asked. “From all our intel on the guy, he was a loner.”
“And he looked the part,” Black said. “He was holed up in a house overlooking a lake in Turkey on the outskirts of a small village. There’s nothing about him that even hinted at his ability to pull off a sophisticated operation like this.”
“Then it was an inside job, right?” Blunt asked.
“That’s what I’m leaning toward,” Shields said. “He had to send this virus to all the different grids and have someone at each site break protocol to upload the code. I’m not saying that can’t be done, but that’d take a lot of coordination.”
“Maybe he had help for that, too,” Black said. “Look, I just can’t imagine this guy having the personality to pull this off. Someone here had to help him.”
Blunt snapped his fingers and pointed at Jana. “Take that number from Shields and see if you can find out who DarkNite called. … And do we have a real name for DarkNite? I’m tired of calling him by his stupid online handle?”
“It’s Oliver White, sir,” Shields said.
Blunt furrowed his brow. “Oliver White? I thought DarkNite was Russian.”
“We all did, sir,” she said. “But we got a report from Interpol after his dental records were matched up. Oliver White was originally from South Africa and emigrated to Turkey three years ago. Where he came from directly is unknown.”
“Maybe he had more charisma than we gave him credit for,” Blunt said.
“No,” Black said as he shook his head. “Absolutely not. That guy I saw in Turkey couldn’t sell an ice cube to a man dying of thirst in the desert. He was way beyond awkward, at least the minute or so I saw him alive.”
Blunt grunted. “Just find out who Oliver White called and why. I want to give the president something as soon as possible.”
Everyone dove back into their work while Blunt lumbered down the hallway. He needed to think. He was missing a few pieces of the puzzle but needed to clear his mind to figure them out and put everything together.
CHAPTER 32
Washington, D.C.
AT THE WHITE HOUSE situation room, President Young’s anger intensified with each passing second. With the power back on, television stations flooded the airwaves with images from all over the country. Traffic gridlocked, cities set ablaze, hospitals overwhelmed. The scenes appeared more suited for an apocalyptic movie as opposed to real life. And Young knew exactly where the finger of blame would be pointed.
Young put his hands on his hips and sighed. He locked eyes with Jackson. “There has to be some action I can take now, right? This appears to be a national emergency and to keep my hands tied like this is insanity.”
“There’s not much you can do at the moment,” Jackson said. “What can you do that would help right now? Open up the federal purse strings because there’s been an outage? People aren’t starving. People have essential resources.”
Woods put his hand on Young’s back. “I understand your desire to help, but consider what you can actually do versus what people need. We simply need the power to return to a stable and dependable utility. This will be forgotten in a week or two.”
Young didn’t agree with any of his advisors’ assessment of the situation, which made him wonder if either he was crazy or he had surrounded himself with an incompetent staff. Neither conclusion was a good one.
One of his aides tapped him on the arm, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Sir, Mr. Kellerman is here to see you.”
Young turned around and saw Martin Kellerman, who was offering his hand with a worried look on his face. The tech mogul thanked Young for inviting him to consult for a few minutes.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Young said. “What can we do about this situation? Is there anything you’d recommend?”
“We have to shore up security for our power plants,” Kellerman said. “Who knows what’s going on, but if this is a test run to see how cutting off power to America affects us, it’s pretty obvious that it’s bad.”
Young tapped his index finger to his lips and nodded subtly.
Kellerman frowned. “What am I missing, sir? Because it’s apparent to me that you don’t seem to wholeheartedly agree here.”
“I’m considering all options,” Young said, “but never once has the idea emerged that this attack was due to tampering with power stations. And I’m certain that you understand that.”
Kellerman withdrew, wide-eyed. “Perhaps you misunderstood what I was saying, sir. I just meant that terrorists might see this as a viable way to attack us in the future.”
“I agree with your assessment there,” Young said, “but terrorists would have to knock out literally hundreds of power stations to create this same kind of effect. No, this was the doing of a cyberattack, which is why I was eager to talk with you about this since you purport yourself to be the nation’s authority on cybersecurity.”
“I am, sir, but I hadn’t considered the possibility of this since the three power grids in this country are closed networks, meaning hackers can’t infiltrate them from the outside. They’d have to all be on the inside, working together. It’s possible, but I think it’d be easy to pinpoint the source of such an attack.”
“At the moment, we’re still trying to gather information on this, but I do appreciate your insights,” Young said. “At the very least, we know this had to be an inside job, though it could be a simple glitch in the system. Now, I heard about your new software launch. Would that be able to detect a new virus being placed into a system like this?”
“Absolutely,” Kellerman said. “FortressNet will detect any abnormalities and check them against a vast database of viruses as well as virus-like code before installing it. You can also use our proprietary authentication device to ensure against nefarious uploads, allowing your company to fully control the individuals who can add outside code and software to the computers.”
“Sounds like this needs to be implemented immediately at the control centers for all the power plants across our power grids,” Young said.
“I can make that happen for you, Mr. President,” Kellerman said.
Young snapped his fingers and motioned for Woods. The three men discussed how to get Kellerman’s technology out to every power station on all
three grids as quickly as possible. When they were finished, Woods patted Young on the shoulder.
“See, sir, that’s the kind of thing you can do without challenging the constitution and sullying your image,” Woods said. “This will show you’re leading, even when Congress has tried to hamstring you with burdensome legislation.”
Young nodded and then thanked Kellerman for helping before slumping into a chair. The president stared at the images rolling across the television screen at the far end of the room. More chaos and destruction. He hated seeing the worst of Americans in a time of crisis. But he could only hope the situation would be short-lived and that the steps he was taking to address it would keep the power on indefinitely.
* * *
KELLERMAN CHECKED HIS phone as he exited the White House. By the time he reached his car, he noticed a message from his company’s chief financial officer, reporting that they were doing all they could to keep up with FortressNet sales. The new launch was on pace to shatter all sales records of any new product they’d released by a margin of four to one.
Kellerman smiled, though he felt guilty about it. Seeing the country plunged into a tailspin made him sad. But he was pleased that people could at least now see a tangible example of what happens when your networks are unguarded.
“If no one is minding the store, you’re inviting trouble.” That was Kellerman’s favorite line to use and help close deals with companies with a massive number of employees. But for the next few weeks, maybe even months, cybersecurity was all anyone would be talking about. The deals to implement FortressNet would close themselves.
He directed his driver to take him to the airport immediately. His company needed him—and he couldn’t wait to get back.
Tomorrow, we celebrate.
CHAPTER 33
Washington, D.C.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Blunt returned to the office with his team to see if they could get some answers about who was responsible. He had a meeting scheduled with President Young at the White House in the afternoon and wanted to present something to him. If Firestorm couldn’t prevent a crippling terrorist attack on the country, Blunt figured his clandestine organization ought to at least be able to figure out who was behind the blackouts.
Power Play (Titus Black Thriller series Book 7) Page 16