Kill Switch

by William Hertling

  She turned to Doug, her second-in-command, who studied a map display. He remained blissfully unaware of the nature of her relationship with Nathan, thinking Nathan was just one of many deep knowledge sources she managed.

  “You have a track?” She nodded toward the screen.

  “Yeah, her signal is loud and clear. She’s headed toward northeast Portland.”

  “Keep a car within five minutes of her,” Forrest said. “If she gets off that bike, I want to know where she goes. We have high altitude coverage?”

  “No, but we can requisition a drone from the local FBI office.”

  Forrest looked out the window. “I don’t want them to know we’re in town. Get another team in Portland by tomorrow. Have them bring a mobile ops kit.”

  “What are we going to list this as? No Such Agency’s going to see all this movement, it’ll have to be reconciled with management.”

  “Field training exercises, under my purview.”

  “Unscheduled?”

  “Yes, unscheduled. Can’t have my operatives knowing when there’s going to be a fire drill, can I?” She couldn’t keep the hostility out of her voice. Everyone was being watched these days. Nobody could do their job anymore. Who watched the watchers when the watchers were corrupt? “Sorry, Doug. Didn’t mean to jump at you.”

  He just nodded as he worked his computer.

  She kept Doug and the rest of her team isolated from the increasingly politicized operating environment in Washington. Everyone was expected to cooperate with the administration these days. You’d be out in a flash if anyone thought you were subversive. She’d seen it happen to other mid-level managers.

  The van’s big engine droned on as they made their way toward the airport.

  Everything was analyzed, correlated in the NSA’s huge machine learning farms. The watch lists started with civilians, of course. Then it was turned against the news outlets. Any leverage, no matter how small, to ensure the coverage the administration wanted. Then finally, turned inward, on the government itself. Career employees let go or pressured to leave.

  They were ten years into a total panopticon, and by now, anyone with secrets had them all logged somewhere in a computer. All it took was some suspicious behavior, not even anything that could get you fired or jailed, but enough that someone high up wanted you disappeared. Then you’d be gone, and quietly too, because even if you didn’t care about your own secrets, there’s was someone you cared about who had secrets.

  Forrest thought back to when she’d started working for the government. They fought crime, enemies of the state, entropy. Back then, they were fighting to create a better America. Now it mostly seemed like they fought each other. She tried to remember what it was like back then, but she couldn’t. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t live in the past, and she had no real hope to change the future. All she could do was try to stay viable in the present.

  Chapter 37

  Igloo raced back to the house where she’d borrowed the bike, returned it, and then jogged back to the warehouse with the shipping container. She glanced up at the sun. It was well into the afternoon. She’d been gone way longer than expected.

  Essie was outside the warehouse, sitting under the doorway awning. She stood as soon as she saw Igloo. “I was worried about you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Igloo said. “I had to run an errand and I didn’t have any way to get you a message. We need to get you a secure phone so we can stay in touch.”

  Essie held up a large insulated bag. “I didn’t know how to get in. I brought food. I…wasn’t sure what else we might need, so I packed a suitcase with clothes for a couple days, enough food for a week, and all the spare batteries and charging cables I could find at our place. It’s all in the trunk.”

  Igloo gave her a sweaty hug. “You did great, pet, really awesome. Thank you. Come inside. We’re not staying too long. I have to round up the team, then get everyone into hiding.”

  In the shipping container, Igloo grabbed a laptop and started the process of contacting everyone to tell them where to meet.

  When she glanced back to the desk next to her laptop, there was a chickpea salad sandwich, neatly cut in half on a sheet of aluminum foil, a cloth napkin, iced coffee in a mason jar, and a water bottle. Everything was laid out perfectly proper and neat, and while the only thing that differentiated the meal from any other to-go lunch was the cloth napkin, somehow the way everything had been laid out, the care with which the sandwich had been cut, and the fact that Essie had chosen her favorite things made her burst into tears.

  Essie came and hugged her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why do you take such good care of me?”

  “I love you.”

  “I don’t deserve it. I’ve been shitty to you with this whole poly thing.”

  “Of course you deserve it.” Essie squeezed her tight. “Poly has nothing to do with it. You’re a good person. We’re having a hard time. We’ve both made mistakes.”

  “Nobody has ever cared for me like this before.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re undeserving.” Essie took a deep breath. “We discover new things throughout our lives. If we found everything, had everything, did everything, and learned everything on day one, then there’d be nothing left to discover.”

  Igloo felt her heart was breaking.

  “Something’s wrong,” Essie said.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to lose you in all of this craziness.”

  “I’m afraid of losing you too,” Essie said, “but I’m trusting you to keep us safe and figure a way out. Now you can’t do that if you starve to death, so eat something.”

  Igloo nodded and dutifully took up the food.

  “Eat and work at the same time,” Essie said, pointing to Igloo’s computer. Then she took a bite of her own sandwich.

  Igloo hammered out a few more chat messages as Essie watched over her shoulder.

  “You getting everyone together here?”

  “No, I don’t want to chance it. It’s too remote. I’m afraid that if anyone is watching, we’ll all get arrested together. After we eat, we’re taking on a ride on Max.”

  The oldest segment of Portland’s light rail system ran east-west across the city. They could pick it up near the airport and ride it toward downtown.

  “We’re going to leave here in…fifteen minutes. You ready?”

  “You sure you want me to come? I could stay here if it would make anyone nervous. I know I’m not part of your group.”

  “No, it’s fine. I want them to know you’re vetted.”

  A distant part of Igloo’s mind recoiled at the thought, knowing how Angie would react to such a sloppy measure. But Igloo needed Essie, needed to know she had someone who was watching over her. And she could trust Essie. Essie had been there for her in every way for months now.

  “Let’s get going,” Igloo said.

  Chapter 38

  Robin washed her hands and blotted her face with a damp towel, her hands shaking only slightly.

  Eight months undercover. The longest by far of any assignment she’d ever taken. So much investment with so little payoff for so long. It was a miracle she’d been kept on duty. She wanted the whole sordid affair to be finished already.

  How to wrap this thing up? It wasn’t going to be simple.

  She booted an encrypted disk on her phone. It went into secure mode, read her fingerprint, scanned her profile from the front-facing camera and measured biometrics as she used the screen.

  Robin > Igloo agreed to the demand that she kill Tapestry 2.0, but she ran right back to the 2.0 chat room. They’re going to keep on working on it.

  Enso > Damn her. They already found a sympathetic judge. On a fucking Saturday, no less. They obtained a seven-day stay. Do you have the evidence we need to bring them all in?

  Robin > No.

  Enso > How can that be? You’re trusted.

  Robin > It’s compartmentalized on a need-to-access basis. No reason to give me access. T
hese people are coders. All the relationship skills in the world don’t mean shit to them.

  Enso > We can’t let them release. We have to pick them up. Every last one of them.

  Robin sighed. Enso was always impatient when he took direct interest.

  Robin > It’s iffy. Igloo could have a dead man switch. Besides, on what charges? You can’t disappear those developers without getting attention. Look, if they were ready to release, they would have done it already. They’re banking on more time. We can’t overreact.

  Enso’s reply was a long time coming.

  Enso > There’s too much momentum now for that. We have a joint conference coming up. I want you on that call.

  Chapter 39

  Forrest glanced at her screens, each monitor displaying a different team member. SigInt Director Feldson, aka Griz, occupied the left-hand display. Enso, on one of the two center monitors, was the lead for the Tapestry dark investigation. Robin, his undercover operative, held the next one over, but her window displayed only her codename with no video feed. Griz had explained that her identify was a closely guarded secret. On the far right was Agent Haldor, the official FBI lead on Tapestry, in the Intelligence division.

  Forrest, as special ops lead within the National Security Branch of the FBI, was technically the most junior person here, but her team came closest to what the FBI could scrap together for a black ops team.

  “Forrest, you’re not cleared for this operation.” It was no secret that Enso was unhappy that Forrest was attending and had been from the first moment he got wind of her involvement.

  “It’s all right,” Griz said. “I asked her to attend.”

  The reality was Forrest had planted the idea in Feldson’s mind, but she wasn’t going to remind him of that now.

  “She doesn’t have the required history on this operation.” Enso shook his head. “Please don’t tell me that she’s been briefed, because only the Director and I have authority to approve need-to-know on any BRI mission.”

  Griz smiled, an expression that made anyone reporting to him quake in their boots. “Agent Forrest has been briefed on the joint mission of the FBI and the NSA to bring Tapestry into alignment with standardized industry data access through a FISA court order. I’m not sure what this BRI is. Would you care to go into more detail?”

  Forrest suppressed a laugh at Enso’s discomfort. She shouldn’t officially know of BRI’s existence, as the dark agency didn’t have a formal charter or even staff. They were comprised of members from different agencies, reporting up through a parallel command structure. It was so black that she’d learned of BRI from Angie of all people, and only later confirmed it through government channels.

  The organization’s strength was also its weakness. People drafted into BRI didn’t know who the rest of the team was. Armed with a few names, she’d confirmed much of what Angie told her about BRI and their total lack of accountability.

  Enso shrugged. “Feldson, it’s on your head.” He swiped at the tablet in front of him. “We have a list of suspects for the T2 team. We want them picked up to forestall any attempt to release T2.”

  Forrest couldn’t let T2 fail. She also couldn’t believe she was considering undermining a government operation. At worst, if you believed the national security implications, then what she was doing was treasonous. But she’d stopped believing that. She’d seen too many information requests that came down to nothing more than political machinations. She’d been part of the task force to investigate abuse of intelligence in domestic violence cases inside the agency. She saw how this political administration was working against the best interests of American citizens.

  At some point, you had to draw a line. Sure, information could stop terrorists, but was it worth everything else? Security came at a cost.

  It was her sister Grace who had first exposed her to that idea. Grace let her ten-year-old son ride the city bus on weekends. Forrest had lectured her over breakfast, worked up over a kidnapping case she’d led the year before. Grace had fought back with statistics. The chance of her son being kidnapped by a stranger was less than being hit by lightning. Those minuscule odds could be slightly decreased by cultivating an awareness of stranger danger, keeping him at home except for carefully shepherded outings to safe and sanitized experiences.

  The cost of such risk reduction would be a life lived in certain and constant fear of people, strangers, and opportunities. A life in which he gains little experience or confidence negotiating new situations. Or he could experience a tiny risk of something terrible happening, but live life fully, unafraid, capable of handling new experiences on his own, and reach a fuller potential.

  Was the appearance of security worth the cost?

  They’d been talking about ten-year-old kids, but those words haunted Forrest ever since. Every terrorist threat meeting, every information security conference, every time the United States created new safeguards against domestic and foreign threats, she couldn’t help but wonder at the loss. How had people’s lives grown smaller as a result?

  Forrest had to do something this time around.

  Robin was speaking. “When Haldor and his team pick up Igloo, we need —”

  “Can you please call her by her real name?” Enso said.

  Robin ignored him and kept going. “We need a complete realtime filter on data into and out of Tapestry headquarters and all of their server providers for any anomalous traffic that could be a dead man’s switch.”

  Forrest figured this was her moment. “Sir,” and she was directing her words to Griz, “with all due respect, we only suspect which members are part of the T2 effort. There’s no guarantee we can catch them all. Acting now will alarm them and alert the remaining members, who are likely to go into hiding. I suggest we postpone until we have positive confirmation of the complete T2 roster.”

  “You recommend doing nothing?” Enso said. “So glad you’ve joined the team. I suppose you’d have us to sit back and wait for them to encrypt the entire Internet?”

  “No, I’m suggesting we redirect our efforts toward solidifying the identification of the T2 members. I have my team in Portland now. We can run track and trace on all members, reconcile all communications, and run a dragnet through their complete online presence.”

  “No!” Robin said. “Active electronic monitoring runs a substantial risk of alerting them. They will detect your surveillance.”

  “There’s a reason BRI is running this operation,” Enso said. “We suspect Angie infiltrated the government previously. That’s why we’re running dark.”

  “Except the one agency Angie penetrated was BRI,” Forrest said.

  Enso glanced at her, clearly surprised by her knowledge.

  Everyone was silent for a moment.

  “Is that true?” Griz asked, looking to Enso for a response.

  Enso hesitated before responding. “Yes, sir. But if she compromised BRI, then it’s likely she got through to the FBI too. We have no idea what she might have uncovered and then turned over to the rest of the T2 team to use.”

  To be fair, it was a reasonable argument. But to choose a known compromised organization versus a possibly compromised organization was still the worse bet. What would Griz decide?

  “Forrest,” Griz said, “you have twenty-four hours to investigate the T2 team members. Turn over your list to Haldor and Enso.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Enso gave her a brief glare. The meeting wrapped up, and she waited for Enso to disconnect. She didn’t dare leave the teleconference first, or Enso would try some last-ditch method to get Griz to change his mind.

  When everyone was gone, she disconnected and allowed herself to breathe a small sigh of relief. But only a small one, because she’d only bought herself a single day. In that day, she had to figure out who all the T2 members were, find them, get them to safe houses, and get them the untraceable internet access they needed, all without attracting the notice of BRI.

  Chapter 40

  I
gloo waited for Essie to finish using the restroom at the airport. When she came out, they nodded at each other and walked to the Max station.

  As the next train pulled in, they split up. Igloo entered through the rearmost door. Essie would enter through the front, and they’d meet in the middle. It was one of the newer, next-generation trains, half again as long as the old models. For a brief moment, as Igloo found herself pressed into the middle of a small crowd entering the train, Essie was out of sight, and Igloo’s heart fluttered in panic.

  She pushed her rolling suitcase in front of her. It was an awkward movement, but it allowed her to ensure that no one placed anything on or in the bag, and it let her keep an eye on the row of tiny green lights protruding from the top of the bag.

  The suitcase was an Angie classic, over-designed in every way. The indicator on top was for the custom-built hardware and software that sniffed data from every wireless transmission on the train, allowing them to track exactly what devices were onboard. It could differentiate between stationary and moving devices, and so once the train started moving, it would know exactly who and what was onboard, versus merely nearby. Deep within the rolling bag was a cell tower replicator, which spoofed nearby cell towers, so everyone’s phones onboard would prefer the stronger signal emanating from her suitcase, allowing her to intercept and record every connection made by anyone on the train. The third light turned yellow, indicating there were devices using encrypted VPN connections, but that was nothing too suspicious, especially these days. The indicator flickered back to green. The connections were using weak, well-known prime factors, and the hardware had just cracked them.

  Igloo realized she wasn’t going to get any more Angie hand-me-downs. There would be no new magic toys from the Batcave or wherever it was that Angie fabricated this stuff. She felt she was going to be sick. She breathed and suppressed her emotions. She’d deal with them later.