Terek pushed me away and slapped one arm and then another as he tried to swim away. I grabbed his shirt and pulled, and used my other hand to shove his head under the water. I kicked at him. Tried to scramble on top and launch off him toward my boy.
A deep thundering roar beyond the wind and rain.
The river opened up and slanted down. A churning mass of boiling white water. What had the senator said when we arrived? That aw-shucks story he must tell everyone who came into his house? Keep your toes up.
I swirled over the edge of the watery precipice and was pulled into the roiling maelstrom, turning and tumbling. No idea where my toes or feet or even head pointed. Flailed my arms and kicked in desperation.
Had I told my wife I loved her? My kids?
I swallowed a mouthful of water and screamed into the seething white. Please, God, I’m not ready. Turning and spinning, my last thoughts churned with me. Would I even know if I was gone?
Darkness closed in as I was dragged under. My body relaxed. My mind slid away. I love you, Lauren.
Luke, Olivia, I...I...
CHAPTER 47
DAMON HELD LAUREN’S shoulders as she gently opened the door to the darkened room. Intensive care. Machines beeped in the silence. Voices murmured in the hallway. Mike was on a gurney in the middle of the room, a nest of tubes and wires coming out of him. Her husband’s eyes were closed, a blue sheet drawn all the way to his neck. She brought one hand up to her mouth and held back tears.
After a few minutes, they closed the door behind them, leaving just the beeps of the machines.
Even through the thick glass of the hospital window, Damon heard the wind hiss and hum, trying to get in. Almost the middle of the night. The hurricane had passed. It had weakened as it had traveled inland but had flooded the entire Chesapeake area. Left shattered houses and ruined trees in its wake.
Damon hated hospitals.
The smell of antiseptic, the hushed voices. The quiet but polite way pretty women in scrubs told you things you never wanted to hear.
He retreated. To another hospital. He sat on his Grandma Babet’s lap. A nice lady asked to speak to her. Alone. So, Damon stayed on the chair. Alone. The lights bright white. And far away, way down the hall, Babet cried and cried and cried. And Damon knew. His mother was gone. He was six.
Years later, in the snowstorm. The train hammering off the tracks. Hands numb. Her face, her hair. A man in scrubs telling him to stay outside, just stay outside. What was the last thing he said to Cindy? He wanted a chocolate bar. I’ll go get a Twix, she said. So we can share. He’d rolled his eyes and laughed. He was still holding her half when the doctor told him. She was gone.
Damon hated hospitals.
Please, don’t let it happen again. He prayed, and he wasn’t a praying type.
A Styrofoam cup of weak coffee in his trembling hand. Fifteenth? Twentieth? Might as well start injecting caffeine. A nurse offered him anti-anxiety meds. He didn’t like taking pills, but maybe today would be the day.
The hallway of the intensive care unit was packed.
Men and women, all in dark suits. Secret Service. Local police. State. FBI. CIA. Every three-letter agency that saw fit to name itself, and probably some that didn’t. Lauren sat across the hall from Damon with Olivia in her lap, her face streaked with mud and tears.
Everyone, uniform or not, gave her space to breathe.
Two seats down, Senator Seymour stood to one side of his sister.
Damon heard the senator’s phone ping quietly. He held the device up and read something, glancing at Damon every few seconds. Then he pocketed the phone and walked over.
“Can I speak to you for a second?” the senator asked. “Somewhere more private?”
“With respect, sir, I’m not moving. Who are you going to keep a secret from? We’ve got half the country’s intelligence services in here.”
The senator admitted the point with a twitch of his shoulders. He leaned down, and said in a low voice, “It worked.”
Damon had almost forgotten. “What are you seeing?”
In an even lower voice, the senator said, “Lockheed reports radar bounce backs from a whole lot of the SatCom fleet. Maybe twelve thousand satellites left up there, but they’re all de-orbiting. This time tomorrow, most of the little bastards will be burning up in the atmosphere.”
“All of them?”
“Every one that we can see.”
Damon’s ploy must have succeeded.
He’d inverted the security breach, the one that had compromised him. Terek becoming his “friend” must have been a long-planned social engineering attack. It was a two-pronged assault, first to get access to the Space Surveillance Network data Damon had privileged access to, and then to implant themselves within the meshnet they knew Damon would become a focal point of, once the mobile networks went down.
It was the only thing that made sense.
When he realized what Terek was up to, Damon had set up a Trojan attack.
He had casually mentioned to Terek that he had not only space surveillance data, but also location data on US military satellites. That information was two levels of secret above his meager rating, but the attackers didn’t know that. It was a prize too valuable to resist, and Damon made it just difficult enough to get at.
He defended his system, watched them try to hack into it. Watched them steal his encryption keys on purpose. Once they’d taken the data, they must have unpacked it quickly in their system.
He faked as much data about military satellites as he could, and only in the second layer did he hide his exploit. A simple virus that replicated quickly and would be detected just as fast, but not before it spawned and executed a simple command protocol on every piece of equipment it could find.
End of life.
The “end of life” command sent to a satellite, and specifically the SatCom ones, was an irrevocable self-destruct signal. It triggered an automated feature that oriented the satellites relative to the Earth’s horizon and fired all thrusters to de-orbit the birds. Slowed them down until they dropped and burned in the atmosphere.
No other instructions needed.
He had needed a little luck, but only required one or two satellites still communicating with the ground station to be in range when his virus spread through their network before they could stop it.
Any other time, he would be jumping up and down with excitement, but right now, he hardly cared.
What had the victory cost? Was it worth it? If he hadn’t been so obsessed with the satellites, he might have been able to figure out some other way to help Mike and Chuck.
He had crashed that truck through the wall. Blunt force. Almost zero finesse. It wasn’t his normal style, but he had been in a hurry.
He hadn’t been able to control this future.
Did he hurry because he was obsessed with the thrill of defeating an adversary in cyberspace? He might have found a way to alert the authorities about the location of the terrorists sooner.
Not only that.
He was responsible.
He brought Terek and Irena into their lives. He’d been so stupid. He might be a genius behind the keyboard, but in real life? This was all his fault.
Damon said, “What about Irena? The terrorists? That house on Virginia Beach?”
It had only been about four hours since the events at the senator’s house, but in that short time, the whole world had changed.
“We sent in another SEAL team,” the senator said. “But that whole stretch was ground zero. The house is nothing but wooden posts and flotsam. The entire area still under six feet of water. The Russians say they found the group’s other bases in Chechnya and Ukraine. Wiped them out.”
“Did you get my voice files? The images? Have they been analyzed?” Damon had sent the video and audio from inside the house.
“We have teams working on that. We did get some papers out of the truck. They must have gotten in there when you smashed it through the walls of t
hat house. They were cleaning up.”
“What’s on them?”
“The names and addresses of US citizens, as if they were targeting them, but as far as we can see, those people are still around. It’s strange. The FBI is starting to round up the ones we have names for, see if we can find a pattern.”
“But you didn’t get any of the terrorists?”
“Only the one Mike landed the truck on top of. And your friend, Terek.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“They’re not going to get far. Trust me.”
It didn’t give Damon much comfort. Those animals were still out there somewhere, unless they’d been killed in the hurricane. He doubted it would be that easy. But they were on the run, and their weapon had been dismantled.
Damon asked, “Was Terek his real name? Irena? Are they even related?”
“All this is coming in live, but now we have a face and DNA. We got a thick file from the Russians. His name is Pyotr Okuev, and the woman you called Irena, her name is Amina. She’s an assassin. One of the top ten on Russia’s most wanted. We think she was the leader.”
“But Terek, I mean, Pyotr—is he really her brother?”
“Seems that way. She might have coerced him. Damn Russians are still barely speaking to us. Hard enough to get what we did. Their military still thinks there are bogeymen around every corner. Ours too. In a few weeks, we should be able to stabilize the situation.”
Stabilize. The word made Damon look at the ICU room’s door.
“I was so stupid,” Damon said.
“You identified them in the end. Slowed down enough that we can catch them.”
The door to the ICU room opened.
A doctor appeared and pulled down his surgical mask. The men and women in the hallway turned to him.
“He’s alive,” he said. “But I’m not sure for how much longer. He’s lost a huge amount of blood with that gunshot to the chest, so if you go in there, please, be mindful. I’m not even sure he’s going to wake up.”
CHAPTER 48
A BUBBLING CAULDRON hung over a fire, the heat searing into the bones of those trapped inside, the water churning and boiling and frothing.
I opened my eyes.
The mind-fog of the dream faded, replaced with a dim vision of squinting blue eyes, a mess of blond hair, and week-long stubble. I’d recognize that face anywhere.
“Am I in hell?” I croaked.
“What?”
“Because I figure this is what hell would look like.”
Chuck stood over me with his face inches from mine. “Is that a joke?”
“Does the pope poop?”
His face disappeared from view and I heard him whisper, “Guys, he’s awake.”
I closed my eyes and winced. My head throbbed. My entire body ached.
I fought my way back to consciousness and won the struggle to open my eyes again. It was dark. Not quite dark. I was flat on my back in a bed, in what had to be a hospital from the beeping machines and antiseptic stink. I smiled, or tried to. I managed a grin.
“You guys can turn the lights on,” I said in a thready voice.
Damon said in a hushed voice, “You sure?”
“Speak up. I think my ears are still full of water.”
Chuck said, louder, “You should have seen how much they pumped out of you. I didn’t think anyone could swallow that much.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Maybe four hours. Got you on the good stuff now.” Chuck pointed at an IV bag hanging next to a battery of beeping machines.
Someone flicked a switch. The fluorescent tubes in the ceiling blinked on. Chuck had a sling on his left arm, the prosthetic hand dangling in it.
My wife came rushing through the door. Lauren held her arms as wide as they could get and walked to me. “Oh, my baby.”
She started crying, leaned over, and gently scooped me into her arms. She kissed my cheek, my forehead, my eyes. Under a patina of hand soap, she still smelled of blood and sweat and vomit and I’d never smelled anything so sweet in all my life.
She squeezed my ribs. I grunted in a flash of pain.
She let go, gently. “The doctors say you’re going to be fine, honey. But we almost lost you.”
“Terek’s not going to be so lucky,” Damon said. “Docs say he has multiple organ failures. Might not wake up.”
“Good thing you brought most of Virginia’s finest with us to the house.” Chuck laughed encouragingly. “We had half a dozen EMTs on hand the second they fished you out.”
The memory was hazy.
Once we got Chuck’s amphibious monster truck back to land, we had raced back to the senator’s house. That damned truck, shot through and banged up and waterlogged, still managed over a hundred miles per hour on the highway and shoulders. There was even self-healing glue in the wheels. The doors almost flew off, but the thing held together.
We blew through police barricades.
By the time we turned off the highway to Potomac Road, we must’ve had a trail of twenty cruisers and State Troopers following in our wake.
“No sucking chest wounds?” I asked. “No limbs missing?”
I still had no idea what shape I was in, beyond Lauren assuring me I was going to be okay.
“Agent Coleman’s vest did its job,” Chuck replied, “but you’ll be sore for a while. Me too.” He tapped his arm in the sling. “Took one in the shoulder. Mostly a flesh wound.”
When I ran at Terek, I wasn’t suicidal. Not entirely.
I had taken Agent Coleman’s bulletproof vest, put it on in the mad drive back to the house. His idea. He wouldn’t be able to get out of the car, he said, as he had handed me his sidearm. Point and shoot. Make sure the safety was off.
I said, “Speaking of?”
“Agent Coleman is going to be okay,” Damon said. “He took three in the vest. One broke his clavicle, and another one in his arm caused all that bleeding. I mean, I’d be pretty much dead, but that guy will probably be doing laps at the Georgetown track next week.”
“Where’s Luke?” I asked.
“Over here, Pops.”
Pops? When had he started calling me Pops?
I strained to look left over my bed’s guard rail. I discovered a half-dozen wires and tubes coming out of me, like a science experiment gone wrong. Or maybe right. I was alive, whatever they’d done to me. Luke appeared from the dark corner of the room where the daybed was.
“He wouldn’t leave your side,” Lauren whispered and wiped away a tear.
“Dad, that was awesome.” Luke beamed his gap-toothed grin at me and raised both arms in a victory salute. “You were like Superman or something. You flew at that guy.”
“Your kid’s quite the swimmer,” Damon said.
Chuck said, “You got sucked down those rapids like a drunk possum, but Legook here swam his way out like a champ. He ran down through the woods and dove back in. He’s the one that got to you first in the pool at the bottom of the rapids. You know that?”
I didn’t know that.
My memory was blank after I went under.
My boy. The hero. I lifted my head and wanted to get up and hold him, but I was afraid I’d rip a tube out of me. I laid back down.
The door creaked open an inch. Senator Seymour came in, along with someone I didn’t recognize in a dark suit.
“You owe me a new truck, by the way,” Chuck said. “You definitely drove that one like a rental. Wheels shot through, windows wrecked, door falling off.”
“Done.” I laughed, then groaned in pain once more.
“Son,” Senator Seymour said, “I know this is a bit soon, but we have some questions for you. National security kind of stuff. The country is still in a shambles.”
I winced and tried to edge myself higher in my bed.
“You stay still. We have a few questions.”
The clean-cut man in the dark suit asked, “This man you called ‘Terek.’ Your first meeting with him was th
rough Mr. Damon Indigo?”
“That’s what I already said,” Damon protested.
“We need to verify, please.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s in the next room over. You put a bullet next to his heart, and while they got you out of the water quick, he was submerged for longer. He’s in and out of consciousness.”
They asked me questions about things I’d seen at the house, which wasn’t much, and whatever I could remember seemed more of a dream.
They explained how the Russians had stamped out what was left of the Islamic Brigade and that they had them on the run here. It had only been a few hours, so they hadn’t caught anyone but the guy I’d run over. Of course, they hadn’t really caught that guy as much as shoveled his remains off the cobblestone driveway.
And Terek. Or Pyotr, they explained, which was his real name.
I wondered why he would go to the trouble of changing his name, but then change it to a Chechen name, the name of the biggest river through that area, but everyone shrugged. People do stupid things, they said. I told them they insisted on speaking English. The clean-cut guy didn’t have an answer of why they did that either.
Then they told me how Damon had hacked back their satellites.
We won, the senator said.
“Are we getting GPS back?” I asked.
“It’s not that simple,” the senator replied. “We still have a few GPS satellites left up there, but we need more to re-establish location fixing. In big cities they’re starting to set up local GPS, and going forward, we’re switching to wired timing signals. Don’t need this mess again.”
“How long?”
“Weeks. Maybe months. Longer in rural areas. Heard you boys ran into some Kentucky militia?”
“I think I’m going to go back,” Damon said.
I was puzzled for a second, but then said, “Ah, that girl, Pauline.”
“To add to everything else, this hurricane has caused one hell of a nasty mess,” the senator said, “And like your friend Joe, it looks like we’ll lose a whole season’s crops. Whole country will be shut down for months. Again. People might go hungry for a bit, but we’re going to get those stock markets back open in a few weeks.”
CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1) Page 30