“Strange. We’re obviously dealing with someone extremely sophisticated. Any idea how they got into the system of every major news outlet in the country?”
“If I was a betting man,” Dan said, “I’d bet it’s somehow related to the way they hacked into every Federal Reserve branch in the country.”
Sam considered this. While the banking industry’s computer networks were among the most secure on the planet, the news media’s systems weren’t far behind. The reason was obvious: whoever controlled the narrative, controlled the world.
“I’ll buy that. Both networks seem like they’d be ridiculously difficult to break into.”
“You can’t even imagine,” Dan said. “Everyone here is stumped.”
“You’re still at NSA?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re just pretending to be stumped.”
Dan laughed. “You’re such a misanthrope.”
“Learned, not inherited,” Sam said. Then a thought struck. “Anyone there have any idea where the transmission originated?”
“It appears to have originated from everywhere and nowhere. I’d like to meet the guy who engineered this thing, because it’s pure art. But near as the NSA people can tell, the video feed was parceled over millions of different computers. They all sent a piece of the cartoon into the network computer systems, where the virus compiled and played the video.”
Sam shook her head. “Sounds pretty unbelievable.”
“Next-level stuff, that’s for sure. I mean, nobody’s even heard of this kind of thing before.”
Sam laughed. “At least that’s what they’re telling you, Mr. Outsider.”
“Good point.”
“Any speculation on where the virus itself came from?”
Dan’s voice lowered conspiratorially. “Strange you should ask. A couple of mid-level people in the server farm brought something to management’s attention this morning – nobody knows what, exactly – but they were apparently given the rest of the day off as a reward for their efforts.”
“Strange.”
“That’s not all. There’s something like eight thousand NSA employees who didn’t make it into work today because of all the craziness in the district. They’re calling every one of them, and making them come in.”
Sam scrunched her face. “That’s not all that unusual, really. Homeland is calling all of its employees too, making sure they’re okay.”
“This is more than just accountability, Sam. They’re interviewing each one of them when they show up at the door. It’s a little bit creepy.”
“Keep an eye on things there and keep me posted.”
“I’m running out of pretext to be here,” Dan said. “They’re getting less cooperative by the minute.”
“I think the whole thing originated with NSA,” Sam said. “They’re running scared.”
“Yeah. I can see why. They’ve been in the press a lot lately.”
“Who knew spying on your own citizens was newsworthy?” Sam deadpanned.
“Can you imagine if that story broke? ‘NSA brings down the entire global economy’?”
“That would be slightly more than embarrassing. Call McClane and get him to pull some strings. I think it’s important that you stay plugged into whatever’s going on up there.”
“Will do,” Dan said. “Where are you headed?”
“Turns out that someone flew a cargo aircraft to Langley Air Force Base last night with an incomplete manifest.”
“Let me guess,” Dan said. “From Fort Worth, right?”
“Exactly. So I’m headed west.”
“You’re thinking it’s the stolen beam director?”
“No, I just want a good steak.”
“Be careful, boss.”
“You too.”
16
Banff, Canada
The Facilitator stepped from his private jet and into the chilly Canadian air. A limousine awaited, idling on the tarmac. Night fell with a vengeance in this part of the world, but the Facilitator liked the air’s stark bite.
It felt like reality, clearing out the fog of repetitive, useless thoughts that occupied his mind for entirely too much of the time.
“Good evening, sir,” the driver said. The Facilitator grunted his reply, and the large sedan powered off into the surrounding mountains.
He hadn’t fled, exactly, but he hadn’t precisely battened down the hatches at his US home, either. The Facilitator was far too old – and truth be told, far too frail – to be caught up in any of the hooliganism that had begun to spread like wildfire across the country. The Canadians were a more circumspect lot, in his experience. More polite. Had to be, to survive those winters, he theorized, sealed up in close proximity to each other for months on end.
He switched on the television in the back of the limousine. Riots dominated the news loop. The contagion had left the continent and spread to Tokyo, Beijing, Frankfurt, and even London. The major financial centers seemed to bear the brunt, undoubtedly because those closest to the big banks were first to realize what the dollar’s implosion really meant.
It meant that he, the Facilitator, was losing billions by the day. Maybe even hundreds of billions. It was difficult to say.
At least, that’s how it looked on paper. But he was well positioned to survive. Just because he’d spent most of his adult life subjugating most of the planet’s population beneath mountains of meaningless paper “assets” and debt-laden financial constructs, didn’t mean that he drank his own poison.
He had real things, useful things, the kinds of things that people would pay dearly in any surviving currency to use, and he owned them outright. Farms, apartments, hotels, airplanes, entire subdivisions. All his by the hundreds.
From a legal perspective, the ownership trail was convoluted, of course. It could be no other way, given the security demands of his position. But his operational control was anything but diluted. Without question, he called the shots.
One didn’t hold the world’s most powerful position any other way.
A day like today was inevitable, he felt. It had been for decades. It was simply a matter of mathematics. Fiat systems invariably ended this way.
But the end of this particular currency was far more than just an interesting side note in history. Dollars had spread like a virus around the globe, infecting every country on the planet. It was the financial equivalent of the Black Death.
Worse, today’s meltdown had the very real potential to incite significant, substantive changes to the order of things.
The Facilitator resolved to prevent that at all costs.
There would be blood. Probably a great deal of it. He regretted that, in a vague sense, but didn’t consider altering his course for a moment. Violence was a necessary ingredient.
Because even more than financial ruin, violence demanded a scapegoat.
It couldn’t be a puppet regime somewhere, toppled under false pretext to take the fall for the real culprit.
It couldn’t even be a person. The world would want much more definitive assurances than would be afforded by the head, served on a silver platter, of just a single man, or even a group of men. It was likely that not even the President of the United States and his entire cabinet would be a large enough sacrifice to appease the angry gods of Never Again.
It would have to be the whole thing. The whole freaking enchilada. And that would take some finesse.
The Facilitator sighed as he picked up the phone in the limousine’s armrest. It was a good run, he thought as he dialed. But it’s time to slay the beast.
The phone connected. A familiar voice answered: “Please hold for the President.”
Part II
17
The rest stop near Ardmore, Oklahoma
Stalwart heard the chains rattle through the handles on the other side of the double doors.
They were coming back.
He stood. Better to be standing, he thought, to face whatever was coming through the do
or.
He had no idea what time it was. His expensive watch was now in the possession of a gap-toothed slob who smelled like a goat. Several hours after nightfall was as close an estimate as he could manage. Impossible to tell, really. It was one of those nondescript hours when only your innate sense of time could help, and his wasn’t terribly innate.
Stalwart heard the chain fall into a heap on the floor beyond the doorway, and a door opened.
A small, slight figure stumbled into the dark room, tripping over other prisoners still sprawled shoeless and shirtless on the hard floor. The door slammed behind her, and the chain rattled loudly against the handles as their captors resealed the exit.
The stumbling person stopped and looked around, and Stalwart could see a girl’s figure swaying unsteadily in the dim moonlight seeping in the high window above.
“Daddy?” she slurred.
Motion off to his left, then a gruff male voice. “Baby?”
“Daddy,” the girl said, the word slow, exaggerated, unsteady. She stumbled toward the sound of her father’s voice.
“Jenna, baby, what’s happened?” The large, muscular man rose.
“They made me,” Jenna said. She reached her father’s arms, and he embraced her.
“They made me,” she said, starting to sob softly. “They wouldn’t stop.”
“Are you drunk?”
“I’m so sorry, daddy.” Her legs nearly gave out, and the large man caught her in his arms. “They sat on me and held my mouth open… I think they gave me too much… I don’t feel very good, daddy…”
“Oh my God, baby, oh my God.” Jenna’s father held her, rocking back and forth.
Stalwart’s heart sank. He thought of his own youngest daughter, fresh out of high school and making her way in college. He felt rage well within him.
And dread. He feared that he knew what was going to happen next.
“It hurts, daddy,” Jenna said.
Her father pulled away and looked at her face. “What hurts, baby girl?”
“They pulled off my clothes…”
A father’s anguished howl filled the room, echoed off the hard floor and the brick walls, reverberated in the hearts of every man in the room.
Jenna sank to the floor as her dad loosed his grip, bellowing in heart-rending agony, pacing, working himself into a frenzy.
Stalwart put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do it. Bide your time. Now is not the time.”
Jenna’s father muscled him aside and made for the chained doors.
“Jeff! Please don’t!” It was Stephanie’s voice, high and pleading, fear breaking around the edges of her words.
Stalwart stepped in front of him. “Listen, man. Think about it!” he exhorted. “The time will come. But not now! Jenna needs you to keep your head. Think of Steph and the kids! Don’t be stupid.”
Hands like cinder blocks crushed the air from his chest, and Stalwart flew backwards, tripping over still-seated prisoners, landing across a prone woman, cracking his elbow painfully on the floor.
Jenna’s father was all fists and flying feet, smashing the door with bone-jarring force, hollering and howling at the cowardly bastards who did this I’ll kill you with my bare fucking hands so help me God open this goddamned door you goddamned cowards!
Above the din of a father’s rage, Stalwart heard the rattling chain again, and the doglike calls of the hollering, drunken rednecks on the other side. He heard the chain drop to the floor once again.
It was already too late.
The door burst open, swinging inward with a vengeance, nearly clipping Jenna’s father, who was poised for his attack. His fist connected with Rat Face’s jaw. Stalwart heard it pop, heard something hard and plastic clatter on the floor, then heard a sickening thunk as Rat Face’s misshapen skull pounded onto the tile, his comatose body half inside the chamber and half in the hallway outside.
Stalwart steeled himself for what he knew would come next, rising to his feet to help, knowing he would never make it in time.
He heard the slide of a shotgun rack a shell into place, saw the blur of Jimbo’s big, slovenly frame jerking Rat Face’s limp body out into the hallway, saw Jenna’s father charge into the doorway, and saw the shotgun’s flash light the room for a brief, horrific second, illuminating the crimson mist that erupted around Jenna’s father’s chest.
He fell, silent, dead.
The doors slammed shut. As the chain snaked its way through the handles on the other side, a wail of grief and terror rose, the sound tearing Stalwart’s soul in half, a daughter’s mourning cry for her father. Jenna ran awkwardly to her dad, dodging well-intentioned men intending to intercept her, and fell on the blood-slicked floor. She wrapped her arm around her father’s body and buried her face in his bloody neck, her sobs muffled, joined by a sorrowful chorus of horrified onlookers.
Stalwart felt the tears flow, felt his chest constrict in painful sobs of his own. But his pain wasn’t merely from the terrible things he’d just witnessed.
His was the agony of responsibility.
This is on me. I freed these demons.
He sank to the floor, his heart deflating along with his body. He slumped against the wall, and his hand fell to the floor.
And brushed against something familiar.
Through the fog of his emotions, his mind insisted he pay attention to what his fingers had discovered. He moved his hand around on the cold tiles, searching in the darkness for the familiar shape.
He found it. His hands closed around the object, feeling its lines, drinking in the salvation it represented.
Rat Face’s cell phone.
18
Seattle, Washington
Sabot pressed the phone to his ear, counting the rings. Six. Seven. A groggy voice answered: “Adkins.”
“I need a ride. Can you come pick me up?” Sabot braced for what was bound to be an uncharitable response.
“Sabot, man, it’s one in the morning and with all the noise in the streets, I just got the kids to go to bed.”
“Sorry, bro. But this morning, see, I was fucking kidnapped by the people you’re working with, and I’ve spent the day locked in some kind of a fake office somewhere working for them. And now I need to get home.”
He heard Adkins sigh on the other end of the line. “First of all, they’re not my people you’re working with. And second, I understand they’re offering more than a reasonable incentive, so it isn’t like you’re some kind of slave over there. Anyway, how the hell would I know where to find you?”
“You don’t work for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, culero?”
Another sigh. “All right. Guess we did leave you a little high and dry.”
“See you in a few, esé.”
“You really should consider getting a car, Sabot,” Adkins groused, turning left out of the warehouse parking lot.
“Really, esé? Would it have made my kidnapping this morning more convenient?”
Adkins frowned in the driver’s seat. “Listen. Like I told you this morning, I had nothing to do with this, and I have absolutely no say in how it goes down. I’m here as your friend, giving you a ride in the middle of the night, but I’m no longer your supervisor. For the moment, anyway.”
Sabot looked out the window, suddenly recognizing the neighborhood. “Wanna be more pissed off? I coulda walked.”
Adkins chuckled. “That thought certainly crossed my mind. But it wouldn’t have been a good idea. Do you know what’s been going on?”
“Yeah, the dollar is falling, and shit like that.”
Adkins whistled. “Man, they did have you locked down tight today, didn’t they?”
“I had internet access, but I was busy working on something else.”
Adkins filled him in. “Society is really devolving. The politicians are calling it a liquidity crisis, but there are some dissenting opinions who are making a pretty compelling case that it’s much worse than that. It isn’t just that the dollar is falling, it’s
that the dollar has been virtually erased from the US economy.”
Sabot shook his head. “You’re gonna have to start paying me in tortillas.”
“That would be just as hard. People are breaking into grocery stores to steal food. They’re running out of stuff in the pantry, but nobody has access to their money, or really even knows how much money they’re supposed to have.”
Sabot thought about his earlier attempt to access his bank account. Completely frozen, with no estimate of when things might be back up and running. “I hope they get this shit figured out soon, man. I got bills coming due.”
“That’s just the thing,” Adkins said. “Some people think it’s not ever going to get figured out. They think that the account information for the entire system has been wiped clean. Except for the cash floating around the system, which isn’t much and is mostly held overseas, nobody has access to funds.”
Sabot pondered. He’d seen similar economic forces at work, albeit on a much smaller scale and not nearly to the same extent, in the impoverished inner city neighborhoods of his childhood. “Gangs will be the next thing,” he said.
“Absolutely right. That’s why it wouldn’t have been a good idea for you to walk home. But they’re not the kind of gangs you’re thinking of.”
Sabot arched his eyebrows, and Adkins went on. “These gangs are made up of suburban people. They have suits and ties and minivans and lawnmowers. But they’re roving around in each other’s neighborhoods, looking for food and supplies.”
“Violence?”
Adkins nodded. “Huge riot downtown. The local guys brought out the tear gas and water hoses.”
“Did the soccer dads disperse?” Sabot asked with a chuckle.
“Sure did. It was a dumb move on the cops’ part, really, because it just taught looters to move in smaller squads. That’s what’s happening now.”
“So lemme guess,” Sabot said. “They’re going to call in the national guard, or something like that?”
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 149