by Reece Hirsch
This information was being shared with the agents by Ian McIlwane, Con Edison’s IT director, who was clearly having the worst day of his professional life.
“We can see how the virus is installing now, but there’s nothing that we can do to stop it, short of pulling the plug on the entire control system.”
“Is that a viable option?” Hazlitt asked.
“No, it would be as certain to crash the grid as anything the virus could do,” McIlwane said. “Even under normal circumstances, the grid can be fragile. Remember the 2003 Northeast blackout? It started with a tree falling on a sagging power line and it cascaded from there across eight states. And that tree—it was in Ohio.”
McIlwane was a wiry, red-faced man whose default facial expression was a scowl. Under the pressure of the crisis, that scowl was screwed on so tightly that he looked like he was about to pull a muscle in his jaw. In a career-meltdown moment, Hazlitt knew that some men retreat into themselves. They stop working the problem and start spinning the postmortem. McIlwane still seemed to be working the problem, and that was something.
“Now that you know how the virus works, can’t you develop a patch?” Falacci asked.
“We could develop a patch, but not in time to stop what’s already in process,” McIlwane said. “The entire control system is infected.”
“So what’s the plan for tonight?” Falacci asked. “There is a plan, right?”
Hazlitt knew the answer before it arrived. McIlwane shot his hands into his pockets and removed them just as quickly, a nervous tic. “We’re experimenting with some quick fixes,” he said. “It may be too late, but we’re still pitching.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Hazlitt asked.
“It means that, realistically, our best shot at this point is that the virus just doesn’t work as intended. And if it does work, then we’ll just have to remediate the situation as best we can.”
“That sounds pretty lame,” Falacci said.
“Well, it’s the best we can do,” McIlwane said, his frustration showing.
“Any progress on the fake call center scam?” Hazlitt asked.
McIlwane shook his head. “No, they’ve pulled out. We have some IP addresses, but they’re all dead ends, as expected. Your FBI team is working that.”
Hazlitt, Falacci, and McIlwane were standing at the back of the control center when they heard the sound, and all three of them looked up simultaneously. It was a murmur rising from the technicians around the control room—the sound of bad news. When Hazlitt looked up at the Big Board, it was clear that what they had feared most was happening. Red lights flashed, starting on the right-hand side, which represented Harlem, and spreading quickly to the Upper East Side. There were scattered curses and exclamations from the Con Edison team, but nobody was at their keyboards anymore. Everyone was just standing and watching the disaster unfold.
Next, the red lights appeared on the left side of the board—lower Manhattan. It took no more than three minutes for the fields of red to converge on Midtown, and when the red wave passed over the location of the Con Ed headquarters, there was a queasy buzz and flicker as the lights went down for an instant before the backup generator kicked in. Although there were no windows in the control center, everyone in the room knew that outside, the entire island of Manhattan, from Battery Park to Harlem, had just been cast into complete and total darkness.
“It’s a total blackout,” McIlwane said, seemingly to himself.
“What now?” Hazlitt asked.
“We try to reinstall the operating system on all of the computers, but that’s going to take a while.”
“How long before the power’s up again?”
“It could be hours, it could be days. It’s impossible to know at this point. It depends on the extent of the damage to the infrastructure.”
“How does that happen?”
Hazlitt’s question was answered by a video feed that appeared in one corner of the Big Board. It was a crisp video image shot on a smartphone. It began with a shaky close-up of a young Con Edison field worker in a hard hat, holding out his camera at arm’s length.
“This is Reynaldo Cruz and I’m at East Forty-Third and First. Power is down everywhere I can see—and there’s a major fire here in Tudor City.”
The image took a vertiginous swoop as Cruz turned his camera on what was before him. The screen filled with the historic Tudor City apartment buildings, home to more than five thousand residents and topped by the landmark “Tudor City” sign looking down on East Forty-Second Street. The entire area around the base of the towers was engulfed in flames. The Chrysler Building glinted in the background like a fifties fantasy of a rocket ship.
“It started in the shops here, but it’s spreading to the apartment buildings,” Cruz shouted. “There’s a downed power line that caused it. If a fire crew doesn’t get here soon, the whole block could go. The residents are being evacuated.”
Hazlitt and Falacci were mere bystanders now as the Con Ed team sprang into frantic action. Most of the technicians were on cell phones, coordinating with crews in the field, NYPD, NYFD, and reports from observers around the city. Some video screens on the Big Board were tuned to CNN and local news stations, which were already beginning to report the story, first from anchor desks and soon from reporters in the street.
After a couple of tries, Hazlitt managed to get a call through to US Cyber Command headquarters, which was operated by the Defense Department and charged with cyberspace defense. The director that he had spoken with had a broader view of the scope of the event, and he sounded shaken. All of Manhattan and a good portion of New Jersey were completely without power. Workers were stranded in high-rise buildings. Electric-powered gas pumps at gas stations weren’t operating. There were massive traffic jams and traffic accidents everywhere. The air traffic control systems at JFK and LaGuardia were down. Midair collisions had been avoided thus far, but just barely. A chemical plant in Newark had been compromised and was emitting a toxic cloud of chlorine gas that was leading to evacuations. Fortunately, the winds had not sent the cloud across the river into Manhattan yet.
Most distressing of all, the officer on the other end of the line said something about “unidentified complications” at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which was on the Hudson River just south of Peekskill, thirty-eight miles north of Manhattan.
“What sort of complications?” Hazlitt asked.
“It may still be nothing, and you don’t need to know, anyway. You are not to repeat that to anyone, you understand? We don’t want to create a panic.”
“Got it.” Hazlitt had more questions for Cyber Command, but he didn’t have a chance to ask them—the line went dead.
“What are we supposed to do now? Just stand around and watch as everything goes to hell?” Falacci asked.
Falacci was right. Now that the blackout had descended, they no longer served a useful purpose at Con Edison. Hazlitt didn’t want to disobey a standing order from Quantico, but if Blanksy was at the W Hotel in Times Square, he couldn’t let the opportunity go. After an attack like this, if he had any sense, the hacker would go to ground, and it could be months or years before they had another opportunity like this one.
Hazlitt checked his watch. The call that Bruen had placed from Brooklyn had come in only twenty minutes ago. Bruen and Doucet most likely hadn’t reached the hotel yet. Other agents were undoubtedly on their way to Times Square, but with all of the chaos of that night, who knew when they would arrive? Hazlitt and his partner were still probably the agents closest to the hotel, and their window of opportunity to catch the hacker was probably closing fast.
“C’mon, we’re getting out of here,” Hazlitt said. “We’re going to Times Square. And if they ask you about this later, and they will, just tell them that I never told you that we were ordered to stay here. This one’s on me.”
CHAPTER 46
Chris had visited Times Square innumerable times but, as they walked up Broadway past
West Forty-Second Street, he had never seen it like this.
Instead of being visually assaulted by walls of shimmering LCD screens, Times Square was in near darkness. The primary source of light was a van that was on fire in the middle of Broadway. The flames flickered in the plate glass windows of the stores. A few cars had their headlights on, but most had been abandoned in the streets. There was an orange glow on the horizon to the east in the direction of the neighborhood known as Tudor City. Chris knew that if the fire was that visible from Times Square, it must be enormous.
It seemed that the city had been returned to the natural world. Times Square was like a long, dark canyon bounded by the sheer faces of the surrounding towers, which deepened the shadows. An NYPD helicopter hovered overhead and strafed a spotlight over the thinning crowd in the square. The streets were no longer streaming with cars and taxis. When the traffic lights went out, collisions had clogged the intersections. Drivers had abandoned their cars in the middle of the street rather than attempt to drive in the chaos, bringing traffic to a complete standstill.
Chris and Zoey walked toward the center of Times Square and the red bleachers that adjoined the TKTS booth. A beer bottle shattered on the sidewalk nearby, thrown by some people who were sitting and drinking on the bleachers. Chris tried to make them out in the gloom, but it appeared that the bottle hadn’t been directed at them. An Indian cabbie sat in a yellow cab watching them pass, apparently unwilling to abandon his car and his livelihood to vandals. A policeman strode across Broadway, heading east. Chris wondered why there wasn’t more of a police presence on the streets, but then he realized that all available resources were probably being dedicated to combating the blaze in Tudor City or assisting the injured passengers from the subway car crash.
Four figures emerged from the darkness before them covered in makeup and faux animal skins. The mutant band consisted of a woman costumed as a cheetah and three men who were attired as a gibbon, and the head and tail, respectively, of a giraffe. Apparently, the cast of The Lion King had fled their darkened theater.
Chris and Zoey hurried onward to the W Hotel. The hotel’s restaurant, Blue Fin, was located on the ground floor with big windows looking out on Times Square.
The burning van was in the middle of Broadway directly in front of the hotel, the flames still crackling, casting flickering reflections on the windows. If someone was watching from inside the restaurant, it was impossible to see them.
Chris and Zoey observed the entrance to the restaurant for a while from behind a parked car.
“Do you think he’s in there?” Zoey asked.
“Probably. And if he is in there, he’ll probably have a gun.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Well, from this vantage point we can watch the door of the restaurant and the hotel entrance on Forty-Seventh. I don’t think he could leave without us spotting him. I’m going to call Hazlitt and Falacci, see how long it’s going to take them to get over here. We know they have guns.”
“Oh, they have guns all right,” Zoey said. “And they’ll probably use them to shoot at us.”
Chris dialed Hazlitt, but the line was busy, or maybe the cell towers were down. He tried sending a text: “We’re outside the W watching for Blanksy. Can you get here?”
He watched his phone’s display, but there was no response. With the city in the state that it was in, there was no telling where the FBI agents were, or when they might be able to make it to Times Square.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Zoey asked.
“All of Manhattan must be down.”
They heard a footstep and turned.
The first thing Chris saw was the TEC-9 semiautomatic pistol pointed at them. It was in the hands of a man in his late thirties with a short, neatly trimmed beard, mustache, receding hairline, and close-cropped brown hair. In his other hand, he carried a green nylon Nike gym bag. The man was wearing a brown leather jacket over a burnt orange T-shirt, and he was smiling at Chris and Zoey like he knew them. The smile seemed to say that they should know him, too.
“Nice night, isn’t it?” The voice was high and slightly adenoidal, and Chris felt certain that he had heard it somewhere before.
Chris inched his hand toward the computer bag that held the Taser.
“I wouldn’t do that. TEC-9 beats Taser every time.”
Chris suddenly knew where he had heard the voice—on the other side of the door of Pietr Middendorf’s apartment in Amsterdam and in a series of phone calls. “Blanksy,” he said.
CHAPTER 47
“I was wondering how long it would take you to recognize me,” Blanksy said. “When I spoke to you as Enigma, I used a filter to disguise my voice.”
Chris concentrated on how Blanksy held the gun, looking for an opportunity.
“C’mon, toss that bag over,” Blanksy said. “Don’t make me shoot you here.”
Chris slowly slid the computer bag to Blanksy.
Blanksy smiled. “Zoey. Nice to finally put a face to the name.”
“You’ve moved down in the world,” Zoey said. “Last time we met, you were just a thief. Now you’re a mass murderer.”
He wasn’t as young as Chris had imagined from their phone conversations, and he could see now that the Blanksy he had known had been a complete fabrication. Blanksy didn’t look like a killer or even a vandal. He looked like the office IT guy or any thirtysomething NYU graduate student you would find in a coffee shop on Bleecker Street. If he was walking on the street in the middle of this turmoil, he probably wouldn’t draw a second glance from the police. However, graduate students didn’t usually look so comfortable carrying automatic weapons.
“Turn around,” Blanksy said. “Both of you.”
“Can’t look us in the eye?” Chris said.
“I’m not going to shoot you, at least not yet,” Blanksy said. Still holding the gun in his right hand, Blanksy patted them down with his left. He wasn’t able to do a very thorough job, and Chris was glad that he missed the thin cell phone in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Is there anyone with you?” Blanksy asked.
“No, we came alone,” Chris said.
“Maybe so, but I have to assume that others will follow, including those two FBI agents.” He pointed with the gun toward the hotel, “Let’s go. This way.”
Blanksy marched Chris and Zoey into the restaurant. As they passed the burning van, Chris felt the heat on his face and smelled the gasoline. He looked around to see if anyone was observing them enter the building, but no one was.
It took a minute to make things out in the gloom, because the blazing car fire outside had dazzled his eyes. As his vision adjusted, he could see that the restaurant was a large, high-ceilinged room with modern, dark wood tables and booths on either side. To the right was an open kitchen.
“How did you know to find me here?” Blanksy asked.
“Your friend with the Russian accent. We found the hotel’s number on his cell phone.”
Blanksy nodded. “With a plan this big, you know that something is going to go wrong, but you just never know what.”
“But it only takes the one thing, doesn’t it?” Chris said.
Blanksy directed them through the restaurant to the hotel lobby, an expansive room with modern furniture in neon colors that were muted in the gloom. The lobbies of W Hotels were always dimly lit, so all the place was missing was some well-placed halogen spotlights and a few black-clad staff and it could have been business as usual.
There were still a handful of lost-looking guests wandering through the lobby, trying to find missing friends or a safe place to wait out the blackout. A member of the hotel staff was ushering the last of the stragglers out of the hotel, urging them to take refuge in one of several impromptu shelters that had been established until the power returned.
Blanksy leaned in close and shoved the muzzle of the gun into Chris’s spine. “If you want these people to die, just try calling out to them.”
&n
bsp; They entered a stairwell near the elevators and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Blanksy held a flashlight in one hand and the gun in the other.
Chris thought he knew what Blanksy was thinking. He probably wasn’t certain whether they had alerted law enforcement to the location, but he had to assume that they had. He had probably considered taking them elsewhere, but that was risky. The agents wouldn’t know what Blanksy looked like, but they would certainly know Chris and Zoey. If he walked them through Times Square, it would be like wearing a sign. His safest bet was to keep them out of view and take them someplace where they wouldn’t be immediately discovered, like a room upstairs. Then, after he killed them, he could stroll out into the night like he was just another hotel guest.
“Room 217,” Blanksy said. They walked slowly down the dark hallway and stopped in front of the door.
Blanksy produced a plastic card key and tossed it at Zoey’s feet. “Open it.”
Zoey leaned down and picked up the key, then she let it dangle at her side, rubbing it against her pants pocket. It was an unnatural movement, and Chris noticed it. Smart girl, he thought. She’s trying to demagnetize the key.
Blanksy had also missed Zoey’s cell phone, which was inside the pocket. Zoey inserted the key in the electronic lock and the tiny LED flashed red. The door locks were powered by internal batteries, so they were still functioning.
“No go,” Zoey said. “You want to try it?”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Blanksy said. “I have another copy.” Blanksy extended his hand. “Give me the phone.”
Zoey handed it over, then Blanksy gave her another key. “If you demagnetize this one,” Blanksy said, “I’ll make sure you regret it.”
Zoey nodded, neither admitting nor denying. She tried the other key. The LED flashed green and the lock clicked.
They stepped inside the room, followed by Blanksy. “Sit,” he said, motioning to two chairs by the window.