Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller

by Carolyn McCray

  “This is going to get bumpy,” the pilot warned as they dropped what little altitude they had.

  Soon, those little specks in the early morning light became cars. Lines and lines of cars. Zach surveyed the freeway as they flew parallel to it. The road was nothing more than a parking lot, though. All eight lanes were at a stand still. Then he spotted the roadblock. They were turning back all traffic exiting the city and putting those cars on the freeway going eastbound.

  A car tried to break past the roadblock and strike west over the uneven ground. They didn’t get far, though, as the National Guard fired, blowing out their tires. Jesus. What the hell had happened overnight?

  Then Zach saw what had happened.

  A line of bodies, covered in bright red tarps, stretched for as far as the eye could see. No, not just a line of bodies, but lines of bodies. As they flew further, they found bodies not covered by tarps. The corpses’ blue lips stood out against their stark, pale faces. Some were already bloating. Others looked like heat-baked dolls.

  The plague. Not the theoretical plague or the video footage of the plague, but the actual plague played out beneath them. The entire field surrounding the airport was a vast, grotesque morgue.

  They were barely over the last body when the wheels touched down on the Tarmac. The plane bounced once, and then settled on the ground as wind screeched in the downed flaps.

  Zach looked back at Ronnie, her eyes wide and glistening with tears. Their quest was no longer intellectual.

  As they rolled down the landing strip and turned toward the hangar, Quirk roused.

  “So, what did I miss?”

  No one had the heart to answer him.

  Pulling the plane to a stop, the pilot unstrapped himself. “I’ll go steal a helicopter.”

  * * *

  “Quirk. Stop looking down,” Ronnie reminded Quirk, but how could she expect him to not look out the helicopter window?

  New York, a city they had visited a million times over. A city they both loved, had turned into what looked like the set from a zombie apocalypse movie. Only the dead that littered the streets weren’t getting up again. They were dead. Gone. Died because Ronnie wasn’t smart enough to figure all this out. A vaccine was out there, but she couldn’t find it.

  How many other cities would suffer the same fate? How many would die because she couldn’t crack the angels’ code? Not that she believed the angels had actually sent the code. Because if they were really angels, why wouldn’t they just tell her where in the hell the vaccine was located?

  “Is it yellow?” Quirk slurred as he opened his mouth wide, sticking out his tongue.

  “For the tenth time, no, it looks fine.”

  Still, the young man went back to his compulsive checking of his lymph nodes. He grabbed her hand off her laptop and placed it against his forehead. “Do I feel warm? I think I feel warm.”

  Ronnie jerked her hand back. “Quirk, you are fine. We’ve barely been in contact with anyone.”

  Still, she wiped her palm onto her jeans. It was hard to delete from memory the sight of those bright red tarps and those blue, black lips of the dead. At least now they flew high above downtown Manhattan, so that the carnage below was only offered in fleeting glimpses of disarray.

  “Do we have an entrance strategy to the museum?” Zach asked.

  Right. They had to get his and everyone’s mind back to the task at hand rather than the grisly sight down below.

  Ronnie elbowed Quirk. “We are going in by the back loading dock.”

  Which sounded so confident, only it wasn’t. Sure, she’d figured out the guard’s inspection schedule based on key carding information, and Quirk had taped a loop of video feed for each of the rooms they were going to hit. He’s uploaded the footage to a backup drive inside the security hub.

  But the rest? The electronic, all-seeing, all-knowing, and ever-present security measures? Those were going to be a bitch to get around. Oh, how she wished they could do a smash and grab, like Graceland. Here, if they knocked out the building’s electricity, iron gates would lower at all the major junctures within the museum and would mechanically lock until an override was entered from inside the security office. Given that they needed to hit over eight of the nineteen departments, that just wasn’t going to work.

  If she had three weeks, Ronnie could breeze them in and out of there. But in these short hours? With these kinds of security measures? Not that Ronnie wouldn’t have minded a few weeks with Zach, a la Entrapment-style practice, the Met was possibly the most secure building in the world beyond the Pentagon. With art theft being a four-billion dollar a year business and the Met containing, what, forty billion dollars’ worth of art, the museum had every reason to be über-cautious.

  Which meant they had the most advanced technology installed. Motion sensors, optical lasers, vibration detectors, high-grade steel anchors for paintings, and a host of other preventive measures. The worst of it, though? The Met had adopted the Catch Me If You Can rotation of their security. Meaning a room that used to be equipped with lasers might now have vibration detectors. It forced any potential thief to worry about all security measures all the time.

  Since she was that potential thief, it was up to her to countermand every conceivable antitheft method known to mankind.

  And Quirk wondered why she had so many wrinkles.

  “Are you sure about the loading docks?” Zach asked as they flew over Central Park, which was eerily empty. Normally at this time of day there would be early-morning yoga classes, and Tai Chi groups scattered across the greens. Instead, the entire park had been cordoned off. But as the plague grew and the panic around it, how long would that last?

  Zach indicated across the street from the park to the large Greco-Roman building that housed the Met. The building dominated perhaps Ronnie’s favorite stretch of road in the world, the “Museum Mile.”

  “Shouldn’t we go in through the roof, or something?” Zach asked.

  Ronnie shook her head. She didn’t have time to explain the concept of a security “shell”—the tough outer coating of protection that museums used to keep thieves out. Well over 70 percent of museum break-ins were attempted from the roof, or the floor just below the roof. Clearly, way too many people had watched way too many Tom Cruise movies. Therefore, a museum’s thickest “shell” was protecting the roof or the floor just below the roof. The second area they secured the most tightly was the front entrance, since another good 15 percent of break-ins were smash and grabs like they’d done at Graceland. While the loading docks did account for over 5 percent of all break-ins, the museum relied on a heavy guard presence during transfers, but otherwise relied on fortified steel doors with elaborate, electronic-locking mechanisms.

  Basically, putty in her hands.

  Getting in the loading-dock doors never concerned Ronnie. Penetrating the shell was relatively simple. Once they got inside the museum? That’s when things got complicated and dicey. While the NYPD was extremely busy taking care of looters and rioters on the eastside, an alarm tripped at the Met would still be responded to in force.

  “All right. The loading dock it is,” Zach answered, seeming to understand her vigorous head shake.

  The helicopter barely bobbled as it landed on a flat patch of the park. The museum was directly across the street. Zach hopped out first, helping her, and then Quirk, of course now decked out in a makeshift surgical mask and gloves, and Francois out of the chopper. The pilot lifted off immediately, streaking away toward the 34th Street Helipad.

  Why did it feel like all hope left with him?

  * * *

  Zach stopped the foursome at the entrance to the alley. He looked down at Ronnie’s palmtop. Half of the screen showed what the cameras were picking up. The footage showed the four approaching from the north side. The other half of the screen showed what Ronnie was transmitting to the security hub—a perfectly empty street.

  “They’re only seeing what we want them to see. We’re good.” Quirk
reassured them, although it rang a little false, since he was saying it from behind a medical mask.

  The other problem was the sunrise. Very soon, their footage loop of early-morning glow wasn’t going to cut it.

  Francois went to step into the alleyway, but Zach had a tight grip on the edge of his sleeve. The guy was not going to rush them into anything this time. “Hold up. Let Ronnie do her stuff.”

  A smile swept over her lips. Then it was quickly replaced by the grimace that had sat there since landing. She was worried. Really worried, which made Zach extremely worried. The woman was usually all bluster and confidence, scoffing at any challenge to her skills with a keyboard.

  “Here goes,” Ronnie said as she entered in the last command.

  The tiniest click answered her maneuver. The small side doors to the museum popped open an inch. They all held their breath. Zach’s eyes scanned the half dozen screens that Quirk had open on his palmtop, showing each of the security boards. Not a single red light flashed.

  Step one, complete.

  He went to step out, but Ronnie hissed, “Wait.”

  “What is that security panel monitoring?” she asked her assistant.

  Quirk zoomed in on the set of controls which read “External laser scan.”

  So much for Step one.

  Quirk frowned. “They don’t have that one up on a scope. The computer must be scanning the laser feed continuously and only alerting them if there is some derivation in the mean movement.”

  Zach didn’t understand half of that. He just knew it was bad for them.

  “I am going to have to ping back the differential as we move forward to keep the mean above the white line.”

  Again, Zach didn’t know what she meant. However, Quirk nodded.

  “What do I have to do?” Zach asked.

  “Move very, very slowly, and in a straight line. We have got to follow within inches of each other. Otherwise, I won’t be able to keep up with the algorithm.”

  Zach turned to Francois. “Did you hear Ronnie?”

  “I might be borderline psychotic, my dear man, but I can hear.”

  Somehow, that didn’t comfort Zach in the least.

  * * *

  Quirk didn’t want to be within inches of anyone, even Ronnie. Yet here they were shuffling down the street like some kind of time-delayed conga line. Zach had taken Ronnie seriously about the very, very, very slowly part. If it took them much longer, they might as well head to Ronnie’s island and wait out the plague.

  Balancing his palmtop on one hand, Quirk checked the glands in his throat with the other. Was that left one just a bit larger? Were his cuticles turning darker— foreshadowing the black nails that spelled a quick death?

  He tapped his palmtop, bringing up his text program. Nothing new from his BFF. Usually, she was updating him every ten minutes with what an ass their CIA liaison was or how handsome their new director was in a Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood kind of way. Now silence. That couldn’t be good.

  “Stop,” Ronnie whispered.

  The group ground to a halt. What now?

  “I think I have built an evolving algorithm,” Ronnie said, not that anyone but Quirk would understand her. “Zach, take a step forward.”

  Quirk winced as the FBI agent lifted his foot. Ronnie took no countermeasures. Would her program really work, or was this one of those instances where her ego had slightly outgrown her skills?

  As the FBI agent moved forward, the bundle of data that streamed from the sensors to the security computers showed only a steady state.

  “Take another.”

  The program held, delivering the nice, boring data that they wanted it to deliver. Thank God. If Quirk had to smell the Frenchman’s odd aroma of stale smoke and pomegranates one more time… . They moved forward more quickly, loosening their formation until they made it to the opened door of the Met.

  Zach took their handy can of hair spray and shot it into the doorway this time—sans fire. Laser beams crisscrossed the inner doorway.

  “Ugh,” Ronnie groaned. “They must have upgraded.”

  “Oh, please,” Quirk said. What they had done was old school. These museum security companies loved to roll out the bright, shiny red laser beam grid. “Look how pretty they are. When in reality, well, over 90 percent of all museum heists were inside jobs. Quirk just needed to re-create the effect.

  Watching his palmtop that gave real-time footage of the door from inside the loading bay, Quirk stuck his hand through a gap in the laser sights, keyed in the correct code, and voilà, the lasers went to sleep. Ronnie, of course, compensated by sending packets of data that made it look like the lasers were still up and running.

  “Beauty before age,” Quirk said to Zach, happy to finally be out of the alley and into the interior of the Met, which had microfine, particle-filtered, and self-contained air flow. Pulling down his mask, Quirk took a nice, big gulp of sanitized air.

  * * *

  Ronnie set up shop just outside the European Masters’ gallery. The large, vaulted room held the bulk of the paintings they needed. The rest were scattered throughout the museum. Some were in the Islamic Art Wing, the Medieval Wing, and lastly, the new American Wing on the second floor. Those could wait until she “picked” the European Masters’ lock.

  Sitting cross-legged on the cool cream tile, Ronnie cracked her knuckles. She’d picked this hallway since the security measures were minimal because of the guards’ hourly physical inspections. Those guards walked by at staggered intervals, supposedly random, but humans were human and built for routine. And the one gallery they always passed by was the European Masters. Therefore, the defenses couldn’t be too complicated, since they needed to be reset hourly.

  However, any money the museum saved on protective measures in the hallway, they more than spent on the gallery’s interior defenses. First, Ronnie had to raise the large titanium lattice gate that blocked the entrance to the gallery. Actually opening the lattice would require only a few commands. Convincing the computer system that the gate was actually still down was quite another thing.

  The damn gate had something like fifteen sensors hooked to it. Even the air movement created by the gate rising was monitored by micro-barometers. If she didn’t disable or trick each and every one of them, each and every inch that they opened the gate…well…they definitely would not have time to grab the entire set of paintings they needed.

  And given the amount of “junk” code left, they needed as many symbols as possible. Whoever had created this cipher knew what they were doing. Because of the sophistication of the code, Ronnie knew that there were linchpins embedded. Symbols that linked to other symbols. Symbols that made sense of the cluster. The Elvis symbol represented one. There had to be more, though. This European gallery represented their best chance to find those invaluable linchpins.

  Ronnie was also beginning to formulate an idea that there might be a cipher within a cipher. That the date of the painting might be nearly as important as the symbol itself. If they burned them in chronological sequence, would that reveal a deeper layer to the code?

  Could she gain some insight into which of the locations held the best chance at harboring some of this elusive vaccine? Could it help her find a stash on this continent? Ronnie refused to think otherwise. There had to be a supply here.

  True, the Hidden Hand was maniacal and believed in a horrific vision of the world that rattled her marrow, but they were by no means stupid. Like all secret organizations, they had to by their nature be small, compact, and cloistered. If they truly wished to bring about a new world order, they were going to have to deputize a bunch of collaborators. Such as Hitler did in France during the Second World War.

  To remain the Hidden Hand, they had to stay small. Which meant that they simply didn’t have the manpower to take over the world, even if its population had been decimated by three quarters. Therefore, they must have a stash of vaccines in America. They would have to inoculate these collaborators, and most i
mportantly, their families, to have any leverage at all. At least that was what Ronnie chose to believe.

  With renewed vigor, Ronnie pinged the gate’s defenses, calibrating her attack so that once it launched, it would be flawless.

  * * *

  Zach studied Ronnie as she typed and typed and typed. Her posture rigid, she was in “the zone,” that was for sure. Unlike other times, though, Quirk paced back and forth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Quirk scowled. “She’s obsessing.”

  “Um,” Zach commented as he checked on Francois, making sure that the old man stayed on this side of the gate’s defenses. “I thought that’s what she did.”

  “Yes, when there are large number of factors to consider and correlate. But this? This is pure nerves.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Quirk showed him a screen, not that Zach could make heads or tails of it. “She isn’t calculating how to get in, she is calculating the risk to get in.”

  “I don’t understand.” Actually, that was an understatement, but it did give Quirk pause.

  More slowly, Quirk explained. “She keeps cycling scenarios over and over again, trying to get the risk of entry to zero. Which, of course…”

  Yeah, Zach knew what little chance any of them had to achieve zero risk.

  “But why?” Zach asked. “She’s used to this kind of pressure.”

  Quirk scoffed. “You are freaking kidding me, right?”

  “What am I missing?”

  “Um, the entire world depending on her?” Quirk explained. “I mean, if we try to hit a bank and we fail, the worst that happens is that other hackers make fun of us. But here?”