Zero Day: A Novel

by Mark Russinovich

  It was as if he’d been hit with a heavy hammer. The air rushed from his lungs as Dufour fell back and toppled to the floor.

  “Get her!” Fajer shouted in Arabic as he moved forward. Labib rushed Ivana, reaching her just as she swung the gun toward him and fired, the shot winging over his left shoulder. He grabbed her in a sort of tackle and the two of them struck the wall beside the door heavily. Ivana moved the gun against the man’s side and pulled the trigger. The explosion was loud and Labib screamed as he released her and began to fall, clutching at her clothing as he did.

  Across the entryway Fajer was cursing his own stupidity as he launched himself at the Russian woman. He should have brought a gun. With a sinking heart he saw Labib fall, but by then he was only two short steps away, the shafra held aloft, ready to slash across the woman’s throat.

  Labib was gripping Ivana’s jacket as if clinging to a lifeline. She pulled the trigger a fourth time, the bullet striking the Arab in the side of his head. He fell to the floor, a loud gurgling sound coming from deep in his throat.

  Ivana could see the third man, the one with the killer’s face, almost on top of her. She managed to raise the revolver and fire the final two shots. One went into the floor, the other missed him widely to the left. She saw the flash of the blade and knew she was dead.

  * * *

  Jeff rushed through the back office, down the short hallway, and entered the front office as Ivana fired the sixth and final shot from her gun. He sensed one man lying to his left, a second moaning, lying almost at the woman’s feet, and saw the motion of the third man as he stabbed at Ivana.

  “Stop!” he shouted as he rushed at the man. Instinctively, Fajer turned toward the sound, causing his knife to strike Ivana on the shoulder. She screamed.

  * * *

  Daryl heard the shots in rapid succession. Hesitating at the entrance, not sure what to do, she had no idea if Jeff had found the back way in. Then she heard the struggle at the door and Jeff’s voice shout, “Stop!”

  Without thinking, she ran the few short steps to the door and threw herself against it. The door flew open and she sprawled into the entryway, just beside the startled Fajer and screaming Ivana. When she saw Jeff leaping across the short distance from the desk at the fair-skinned Arab, Daryl threw herself at him as well.

  * * *

  Where had the devils come from? Fajer wanted to know.

  One moment it was the three of them against the little woman, the next Dufour was dead, his brother dying. His own attack had been thwarted, but he could not return to the woman until he had killed the man. But as he whipped his blade in front of him, the front door exploded open. In rushed a blond apparition that threw itself at him, too. He didn’t know which threat to respond to, and in that moment of indecision, Jeff flew into him, bowling the man over, crashing hard with him into the wall.

  Ivana grabbed her shoulder. The pain seared her flesh. She let herself fall to the floor, where she curled into a tight ball as she felt the bodies struggling above her.

  Jeff smelled the fear as he struck the man. The pair of them grappled for the knife. All the while the man was swearing in Arabic. Determined as he was, Jeff was stronger; if he could avoid getting disemboweled, he’d have the better of the Arab in seconds. He twisted the man’s wrist again, so hard he expected to hear the snap of bone. The Arab grunted in pain. Jeff heard the knife clatter to the floor and a moment later felt hands seize his throat and begin to squeeze like a vise.

  * * *

  Daryl was grabbing at the Arab, trying to find some way to help Jeff, when she saw him put his hands around Jeff’s throat. At her feet lay the knife he’d had. She reached down and picked up the strange-looking weapon.

  Beside her, Jeff grunted. Daryl grimaced, then plunged the knife into the Arab’s stomach.

  * * *

  Fajer had never before experienced such pain. Releasing the man, he clutched at his side, pulling away from everyone. The blond woman held in her hand his knife, the one that he realized had taken his life.

  Blood flowed from him in a torrent. He prayed in Arabic as he attempted to stanch it. Within moments he became lightheaded, then sleepy.

  The jihad, he thought. It is unleashed whether I live or not. This is Allah’s will.

  He swayed on his feet, then toppled over, falling across the dead body of his brother Labib.

  67

  PARIS, FRANCE

  HILTON HOTEL

  CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

  2:43 P.M.

  Jeff watched the Arab die without emotion, then checked on the other Arab lying on the floor. He was dead as well. The third man was also lifeless.

  “Jeff!” Daryl said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. You?”

  “Me too. I think he stabbed Ivana, though.” She squatted down beside the Russian woman, who was still curled in a ball. “Let me help,” Daryl whispered.

  “We have to get out of here,” Jeff interrupted her. “The police will arrive any second.” He checked the floor, slippery with blood. Spotting the external drive, he grabbed it and thrust it into his pants pocket. “Let’s go. Now!”

  Already they could hear the siren of a Paris police car. He helped lift Ivana, who moaned and winced at the touch of his arm around her. “I can walk,” she murmured in halting English.

  The three of them hurried out the back and into the alley. “Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “Daryl, put pressure on the wound. I’ll be right back.” He rushed off. When he returned, he was carrying their two travel bags, which they’d left on the street. Moving as quickly as they could, they fled the death and chaos.

  * * *

  Five blocks away, they stopped at a fountain and washed as well as they were able to. Daryl removed Ivana’s bloody jacket and threw it away. Jeff reached for his undershirt, tore most of it off, and tied it against her wound to stem the bleeding. Then Daryl took her jacket off and slipped it over the Russian.

  “Let’s flag a taxi while we can,” Daryl said. “We look presentable enough. It will take the police a few minutes to figure out what happened.”

  Jeff moved to a wider street, where he spotted a taxi stand and waved.

  “Act like we’ve been nightclubbing,” he said. “We don’t want to be especially memorable, at least not for the wrong reason.”

  A moment later the car approached and the three entered, all laughing. Despite her pain, Ivana put a smile on her face.

  “Where to?” the driver asked in French.

  Daryl thought for a moment. “The Hilton.” She looked at Jeff and shrugged. They must have a Hilton somewhere.

  “There are five,” the driver said. “Which one?”

  Daryl thought for a moment again. “The one by the airport.”

  The driver audibly sighed. “Which airport? There are two with Hiltons.”

  “Charles de Gaulle.” That, Daryl decided, should be far enough away.

  * * *

  Daryl checked them into a suite, then helped Jeff bring Ivana to their room. Removing the shower curtain, Jeff spread it across one of the two beds and helped Daryl lay the Russian there.

  As Daryl began removing Ivana’s clothing, Jeff went back downstairs, asked the desk clerk where he might find an all-night pharmacy, and walked the two blocks to it. There an Arab clerk rang up his collection of bandages, Tylenol, and tape.

  “Here,” Jeff said as he entered their room. The wound was still oozing blood from around the wet towel Ivana had pressed to her shoulder. “I’ll be in the business suite if you need me,” he said, to give the women privacy as Daryl closed and taped the wound.

  The business suite was open twenty-four hours a day. A sleepy young woman smiled and asked him to enter his room number and name on the sign-in sheet as she gestured toward any of the free computers. Jeff had the room to himself. At one of the computers he connected the precious hard drive and scanned it for content. Separating the source code and exec
utable files, he zipped them, then uploaded the files by FTP to a secure drop site. He sent an e-mail to Daryl’s office alerting them to its presence, even though she’d be calling in a few minutes. The simple process seemed anticlimactic to him after so much running and so many deaths. He felt let down and stupefied, didn’t move from his seat for a few minutes.

  When he returned to the room, Daryl had finished. Ivana was sipping from a cup and gave Jeff a weak smile before collapsing onto the pillows. Within minutes she was asleep.

  “It’s off,” he said. He still couldn’t believe that part had come so easily. After all the blood, there should have been more to it. He was exhausted and imagined Daryl must be too. He tentatively examined his shoulder. The wound had bled a little again, but otherwise didn’t feel too bad.

  Daryl nodded. “I’ll call the office, then take a shower.”

  Later, Daryl and Jeff lay in bed, speaking in whispers. “Does she need a doctor?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. She wasn’t cut very deeply, and the bleeding’s stopped. She won’t go to one, anyway.”

  Jeff said nothing for a long time. He felt Daryl’s deep, steady breathing and decided she’d fallen asleep. Almost to himself he said, “We were very lucky.”

  “Yes, we were,” she murmured.

  * * *

  “You don’t have to leave just yet,” Jeff said at the airport the next day. Daryl was back at the hotel, in contact with her office.

  “I do,” Ivana said. “I have a father and husband to bury.” She was dressed in clothes Daryl had bought that morning and looked exhausted. “And my mother needs me.”

  Jeff took her arm and drifted with her to a wall away from the busy concourse. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened.”

  “It was not your fault. It is fate. You helped kill the assassins. I am in your debt.” She looked at this American and wondered how he could have done such things. He seemed so gentle.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” Jeff didn’t want to let Ivana go, for reasons he couldn’t fathom. She’d shown a toughness he’d never imagined possible for someone who was so clearly not usually a violent person. He wondered for a moment what the world would think if they knew the whole story. Would they condemn her husband for what he’d done? Or laud her for risking everything to undo it? He doubted that in all his life he’d ever meet someone like her again.

  “Nothing.” Ivana leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “God bless you both.”

  * * *

  “Did she get off?” Daryl asked as Jeff entered the suite.

  “Yes. She hid the pain very well, I think.”

  “She’s a tough lady.”

  “That would describe her. For sure…” Jeff’s voice trailed off. “Any progress with saving the world?”

  Daryl looked tired, but had that determined look he’d grown to know when she was on a mission. “The code is encrypted, but NSA’s working on cracking it full-time, I’m proud to say. My team at US-CERT is spreading the word to the security vendors. When NSA has clean code for us, we’ll disseminate it to the vendors, then they’ll get the signatures ready and released, in quick time.”

  Jeff thought back to the small space where, for all he knew, three dead bodies still lay soaking in blood on the floor. “Did you get a look at that office?”

  “Not really.” Daryl shook her head. “It all happened so fast. It was terrible, just terrible.”

  For the first time since all this had started, Jeff saw Daryl’s face start to crumble. He took her into his arms and held her as close as he could. After a moment he said, “I was thinking about the virus attack. Altogether it was just three men, and perhaps four computers. That’s all it took.” He paused. “There’s only four days to go.”

  “I know,” she said softly against his chest.

  Jeff thought back to the day he’d first walked into the law firm and met with Sue Tabor and Joshua Greene. It was as if a lifetime had passed since then. For years he’d focused on Internet and computer security, for years he’d anticipated just such a coordinated attack against the fragile infrastructure of the West. When it came, it hadn’t originated from a rogue nation nor had it taken substantial resources. It had come from a small back office in Paris. And it had not been stopped by a firewall or antivirus software. In the end it had taken the two of them, risking everything and nearly coming up short. It seemed incredible to him.

  How long could they stay lucky? This very minute in Singapore, or China, or at any American college campus, some geek could be developing or releasing a destructive virus that used a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability to spread—a new virus for which by definition they had no protection on the always-lagging antivirus signatures, one against which no superheroics could save them.

  In the end the Arabs had been unlucky, nothing more. No great feats of software engineering had saved the West. And if it hadn’t been for Ivana’s single-mindedness, he and Daryl would never have found the Arabs or would have been too late. Even now they might not have done enough.

  He held Daryl more tightly. At least, finally, he’d found this. The coming days were uncertain. There’d be little time to think about the two of them. But whatever happened from here on, he believed, nothing would change that it was now we instead of I, and some consolation was to be found in that.

  “Will this do enough good, do you think?” she asked.

  “Some. Better than nothing.” He met her eyes. “All we can really do now is wait. Together.” Daryl nodded. “Wait,” he said, his voice flat. “But know that if not this time, then next.”

  ZERO DAY

  DHS ASSURES NO THREAT OF CYBER-ATTACK

  By Isidro Lama

  Internet News Service

  September 10

  A report released Friday assures that neither Al Qaeda nor any other terrorist organization possesses the ability to significantly harm American computers or the infrastructure of the Internet.

  “Statements that we are vulnerable to a so-called cyber-attack are simply unfounded,” said the executive assistant director of the Department of Homeland Security, Roger Witherspoon, in a press release Friday. “Security has never been higher and such groups lack the sophistication and expertise to exploit what vulnerabilities remain, ones we are in the process of closing.”

  The increasing use of viruses for financial scams is the major concern now facing the industry, said Witherspoon, responsible for the overall security of the network, which connects millions of computers worldwide. He dismissed recent assertions that the nation is vulnerable to even a modest attack because so many computers and computer networks lack even basic security software.

  “Such talk is counterproductive,” he said. “The various security-software vendors are cooperating completely with DHS and we can be assured that we are secure.”

  Internet News Service, Inc. All rights reserved.

  68

  PATERSON, NEW JERSEY

  CONSOLIDATED BANKING SERVICES CENTER

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  12:01 A.M.

  From her perch above the rest of the employees, Margaret Harper glanced across the darkened room, taking in the screens of eighty-three computers in a glance.

  Everything was normal, as it usually was this time of night. One shift was leaving as another arrived. Forty-eight personnel, mostly women, had just eased away from their stations, to be replaced by just thirteen until six in the morning, when the room would go to full complement.

  Margaret’s part of CBSC was to handle the few customer-service needs for those banking customers with problems who managed to clear the numerous hurdles their local bank had created to keep them from actually talking to a real live human being. More than a dozen banks outsourced their customer service to CBSC from 9:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m., Monday through Friday, and Margaret was responsible for making it all work.

  It was not an especially demanding job, and given her hours, none of the other supervisors we
re clamoring for it. The 10 percent pay differential made it worth her while. She couldn’t sleep nights anyway.

  “Maggie?” one of the representatives who’d been stuck on a call said into her headset.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got a live one. He insists his statement is off three cents. I’m afraid I was a little testy with him and offered to give him the three cents myself. He says that’s not the point and wants to talk to my supervisor. Sorry.”

  Margaret chuckled. “I’ll take him.” But just as she heard the unpleasant voice of the customer on the line, the screens across the room flickered, turned blue, then read:

  Rebooting …

  After a few seconds, the screens flickered again, and read:

  NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND.

  Then the screens turned black.

  Margaret disconnected the call without comment. “I’m calling tech support!” she shouted over the sudden chatter that filled the room.

  SUBMARINE GROUP 10

  NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE KING’S BAY

  SOUTHEAST GEORGIA

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  12:01 A.M.

  Petty Officer Third Class Russell Winters leaned back in his swivel chair and yawned. As always, day or night, the lights in the communications room were subdued with a certain surreal quality he had some difficulty adjusting to. He’d just come on duty and was already ready for a nap. That wouldn’t do. He took a long sip of the strong black coffee with which he began every shift and turned back to his computer screen.

  This was a quiet time for the submarine net spread across the Atlantic. Winters manned the very low frequency, or VLF, radio for the ballistic-missile submarines known as boomers. The screen placed each boomer by location, while the silence in his earphones told him no one was calling home. No one was expected to be calling in, so in this case silence was golden.

  Six communications specialists were on duty, along with Lieutenant Commander Danielle Alvarado. She ran a quiet station, which was just as well with Winters. His personal life had all the drama he could manage for now.