Twenty-four Days

by Jacqui Murray

  “No. Her step is lighter and shorter.”

  Kali poked her head out into the hall as a door snicked shut. “It must have been the grad student next door.”

  “No, Kali. I recognize Kurdo Pham’s footsteps. These correspond to an individual who weighs approximately one hundred ninety pounds.”

  More importantly, why had someone stood outside her door?

  "Good news, Otto.” Three hours and she’d made significant progress. “You have audio and visual,” the former complements of a microphone in its mouth and the latter a camcorder with forty degrees of rotation both directions.

  "I am sure I will have no problems in your three-dimensional world. I ran simulations in Second Life."

  The video phone vibrated and Eitan Sun’s melon-sized head atop a chubby, pear-shaped body appeared. He had the doughy complexion of a true geek unblemished by facial hair. Today, he wore a Giant’s ball cap atop a ragged fringe of baby-fine hair that fell to his shoulders.

  "Checking in on my shrewd friend, Otto."

  As usual, every flat surface of his geekosphere was buried in snack food and the endless supply of reading material that fed his voracious cerebral appetite.

  “I like today's t-shirt, Eitan." If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. The scientist chose his t-shirts carefully and appreciated when someone remarked, which few did.

  Eitan’s fingers flew over three keyboards. “Will Otto be mobile soon?” His huge eyes, made more so by his thick glasses, were soft, even kind, but represented the tip of his formidable attention, intimidating those unprepared for the scientist’s daunting intellect. Today, something flitted across his face. In anyone else, Kali would call it subterfuge, but Eitan was incapable of such a trait so she brushed it off to fatigue.

  "Yes, but not today. Something’s going on with Zeke. By the way, did Bobby check with you about using Otto this morning?"

  Eitan shook his head, but Otto made the whistling sound indicating a person’s words didn’t match their body language.

  “Um, was Kurdo in this evening?”

  Keys clattered. “He didn’t access the internet or servers. Why?”

  “Nothing.”

  Riverside Church chimed 7 p.m. Damn. Zeke would be at her house in an hour.

  Chapter 8

  Day Five, Friday, August 11th

  Columbia University

  Office of Dr. Eitan Sun

  Eitan Sun disconnected. It didn’t bother him Otto thought he lied. Kali knew there were topics he couldn’t talk about. Shrug.

  Two nuclear subs missing. Technically, they might be late calling in, or exercising their prerogative to move independently, but no one on James’ hastily assembled Task Force believed that, nor did they believe submarine captains from two countries would go rogue concurrently. In Sun’s entire career, he’d never seen a highjacking work as flawlessly as this.

  The nuclear warheads weren’t Sun’s greatest fear. Their complicated activation codes almost tamper-proof. No, the problem was the conventional weapons. The load-out on each sub was capable of wreaking worldwide havoc and many sailors knew how to fire them.

  Sun opened the email James had forwarded, titled ‘Help’, sent to the FBI’s general account after Triumph’s disappearance. He bounced in his chair and stuffed a handful of Cheetos into his mouth as a smiling boy-man appeared.

  “Hello, my friends! This is Eyad Obeid again. We’ve done it—NYU Abu Dhabi’s newest nuclear physics PhDs.” He panned over a group of squirming, happy, mostly-bespeckled men who looked like they’d hit the lottery. “We are in San Diego California, USA.”

  The sky was blue bursting with fluffy white clouds. A ship’s horn blew.

  “I wish you could smell the salt on the breeze. Everywhere is green—trees, plants, grass. These are my new BFFs—trainees on the great British submarine, HMS Triumph.”

  The camera zoomed out to take in Obeid’s Best Friends Forever, a group of British sailors. Smiles creased their faces. A few waved. One did a quick jig for the camera. Obeid giggled.

  “They spent two days telling me about the submariner life and then we toured the American Naval base. Now, we head for a farewell meal sponsored by Ankour Mohammed, our sponsor.”

  Obeid approached a blocky warehouse indistinguishable from every other building in the industrial complex. The man identified as Ankour Mohammed put a hand over the camera.

  “Turn that off!”

  The video ended. Did Obeid know his new BFFs were about to die?

  Sun rewound the video and paused when Mohammed came onscreen. His parents must be Asian and Middle Eastern. His eyes were cold, flat as pebbles, and devoid of emotion, like a man trained to follow orders, not think. His face was young, body solid. Sun knew the type. Properly motivated, he would see all ends as justifying the means. Sun’s skin prickled.

  He tapped the blog’s About page and got another video.

  “My name is Eyad Obeid. I was born in a tiny village in southern Iran. My family has no money, less food. There are no jobs here so my brothers did what all males in my village do when old enough—they joined the Muslim Society for World Peace. There, they received food, a place to live, the friendship of other jihadis and the warmth of Allah’s love as they devoted their lives to serving His needs. Within a year, they were all dead.

  “My parents assumed I would follow that path, but our imam took a personal interest in me.”

  Obeid held up a snapshot of a skinny pot-bellied toddler in the foyer of a beaten-down mosque. In his hand was a tattered Qur’an.

  “Before I could talk, I was reading the only book available, the Qur’an. When the imam asked me questions, I bowed as I had seen others do when speaking of Allah. From that day forth, the imam fed me, educated me, and secured my acceptance into the university in Abu Dhabi UAE. In return, he asked I spread Allah’s words to those who did not know his good work.

  “This blog is my effort to fulfill my promise, by interacting with you—who my religion calls ‘the infidel’.”

  Obeid’s face creased in confusion, head tilted as he stared hard into the camera.

  “My village says you are belligerent and superior, your conversations rough, and your actions amoral. I grew up on stories of your rudeness and hate. But that has not been my experience. From my first day at NYU, I found nothing but kindness, openness, and your willingness to listen. I have enjoyed our discussions on military strategy, politics, even current events, our shared struggles to learn nuclear physics, and the common wish for our futures with good spouses and honest children. As I graduate, I wonder how I ever considered differences in culture and religion as motive for man to turn against man. Together, we will make the world a better place. Praise to Allah!”

  The final entry on the ‘About’ page displayed a smiling clean-faced male, eyes bright with anticipation, Summa Cum Laude scarf proudly adorning his robes, graduation cap askew from the hugs of classmates. A tiny bearded male in traditional Muslim garb stood next to him, cold eyes fixed on the happy boy, hand on his shoulder as though taking ownership of a new tool.

  Sun flipped through the NYU Physics Department pages until he found a paper written by Obeid. He opened a proprietary program and backhacked to what likely was Obeid’s personal computer. It had no password so Sun scrolled unobstructed through the files until he found the email with the subject line ‘Help’. For some reason, Obeid suspected a problem and had programmed the post to dispatch automatically to the FBI. Obeid wanted help before it was too late.

  Too late, according to Obeid, was August 30th. Nineteen days from now.

  But what—

  Sun jerked. "Who's there?" The door to his lab creaked opened, despite 'Do not enter' on a sheet of 11x17 paper. Who would ignore two primes? Sun glared as the old man shuffled in, head down, back bent, dragging a wheeled bucket.

  "Get out!" Sun screamed. "Everything is clean!"

  "My job!" The man held his nose and pointed at crumpled candy wrappe
rs, crushed soda cans, paper plates of half-eaten food, even something green and fuzzy in a pizza box. "I fix!"

  "Touch nothing or I'll fire you!" The last time the cleaning crew straightened his lab, he had been unable to think for a week.

  The man scowled, wrote in a notebook, and left. Why did people invade his space? Maybe if he made a larger sign—17x19 or 23x29. Those were very nice primes also.

  He picked up the photo of his wife, her eyes dancing with the look that drove him crazy, wearing the string of pearls he gave her when she told him they were pregnant. He pushed ‘play’ on the photo. “Hello, sweetie. I have Season Six of Star Trek Voyager and popcorn. Get your work done and come home. I love you!”

  After three iterations, Sun tucked his feet under his bottom, bounced once in his thickly padded chair, and with a flurry of keystrokes, went off into the virtual world to find the breadcrumbs Triumph and Virginia must have left. He didn’t expect to find the subs themselves, rather indications of their presence like refueling ships, anomalous sightings, anything out of sync with the surroundings. With his clearances and hacking expertise, no internet-connected computer escaped his prying fingers. Data gushed like a broken anthill across the thirteen monitors in his workstation. He read twelve thousand words a minute, well short of Howard Stephen Berg’s 25,000 world record, but fast enough for these data streams. He searched for spikes not as they applied to anything in particular but as they existed, or patterns or lack of patterns or one there one moment and gone the next. Sun possessed the rare ability to absorb, retain, and index large amounts of data which he could mentally comb through to find context.

  Head back, mouth open, his magnificent brain browsed, tasting each bit of data for the right flavor. He scarcely registered the trill of phones, the footsteps of late-working colleagues, or the cough of the night watchman as he stuck his head in and left. A connection tripped up Sun’s cognitive stream. The missing Triumph could reach North Korea by the projected date of a North Korean missile launch if it transgressed the Suez Canal.

  Sun entered a code into his yellow keyboard and a counter popped up in the upper left corner of Monitor Thirteen.

  “Hello, Armaida.”

  Armaida purred silently; she had no vocal program. Her sole function was to analyze the probability of relatedness among events. He redirected the data streams from his research to her queue. Ten minutes later, Armaida’s counter stopped at fifty. That was inconclusive, as likely the data was related as unrelated.

  Sun popped an orange segment into his mouth. Usually, the clutter of his lab, the multiple monitors, and the digital jewelry that dangled everywhere brought him peace. Not today. Something niggled from Obeid’s auto-posted article. It was titled ‘Help’, but he mentioned nothing he needed help with. He went back to the email and perused the metadata. The video file size was larger than the content. Sun looked for Easter eggs—hidden files inserted by programmers activated with simple keystrokes. Obeid might include those to have fun with his colleagues, but none of the usual keystrokes worked.

  It might be steganography, data hidden in an image file which the recipient would then extract. Using a simple program he had created, Sun quickly found a hidden video. It started where the original stopped, after Mohammed told Obeid to turn off his recorder. In fact, Obeid had simply dropped the camera into his pocket, hiding the video but preserving audio.

  A door snicked closed, followed by shuffled steps, then yelps and grunts.

  “What are you doing?” Obeid’s voice. “Why are you beating our friends?”

  “Kneel!” A new voice snarled. The camera briefly revealed four muscular males, their ebony skin glistening under fluorescent factory lighting as they waived AK-47s at a frightened row of kneeling British sailors.

  Darkness again and Obeid shouted, “Stop!” Something crunched and then a painful cry from Obeid. When the camera again appeared, Obeid stood behind his University friends. All stared forward, shoulders rigid, legs stiff. Two hugged themselves. One stood in a dripping puddle Sun recognized as urine. About ten feet away were the British sailors, kneeling on a thick sheet of plastic. Mohammed sliced a knife through the air as he paced a circle around the captives’ shivering bodies.

  “You have the honor of being shahid in a glorious jihad,” and began a litany on the greatness of Allah.

  The visual disappeared, but a voice Sun recognized as Mohammed’s shouted, “La ilaha illa Allah.” There is no deity but God, and spouted the pro forma anti-Western rhetoric common among Muslim fringe elements.

  The camera appeared again, showing Mohammed praying. Another “La ilaha illa Allah,” this time parroted by Obeid’s University colleagues.

  “Today, your passing will provide the instrument of our jihad.”

  Mohammed approached one of the British captives. For the first time, an audio overlay of Obeid’s voice came on.

  “This is Haim, a nineteen-year-old boy. He enlisted in Her Majesty’s Navy a year ago and planned to marry his hometown sweetheart on his next leave. Please let his family know his passing was honorable.”

  Mohammed closed his eyes, knife raised. “I honor you, infidel, for you are the purest of your colleagues,” and slashed the boy’s neck. Blood exploded, covering Mohammed’s chest and face. “Take not these infidels who do not choose Allah's way to be your friends,” and he sliced another boy’s throat, the cut so deep, the head flopped back against his shoulder blades. “Take not from among them a friend or helper...”

  Obeid leaped forward, but his colleagues pulled him back. Obeid struggled against them, shrieking as all eight Brits were slaughtered. The surviving Muslims crowded together, some praying, others blaming the Brits for bringing Allah’s wrath upon them. Mohammed stripped himself of his stained clothes and replaced them with a brilliant white thoub, a short vest-like bisht, and the traditional kufi skull cap. The Kenyans wrapped the bodies in the plastic sheet and stuffed them into a small storage shed in a corner of the warehouse.

  The screen went black, but the audio recorded Mohammed’s voice, full, rich, joy overflowing. “Let us celebrate the beginning of our jihad over dinner,” and the video ended.

  A heavy darkness filled that same place where others might feel God. Sun rarely wished violence on another, but tonight, he heard Obeid’s plea and promised to avenge the massacre of his friends.

  A ping. Sean Delamagente, Kali’s son, had agreed to Sun’s terms. When the teenager started at the University of California San Diego, Sun told him to call anytime. Sun had once been sixteen and alone and wanted to support Sean in any way he could. A week later, Sean asked Sun to teach him hacking. After last year, the boy had a right to be paranoid so Sun sent him a list of ebooks and websites. Two days later, Sean asked for specific surveillance equipment. Again, Sun complied.

  He heard nothing else from Sean until this morning when the boy asked Sun to run some data through Armaida related to eight homicides near the naval base. Sun wanted to ask if they were British sailors, but instead told Sean to go to the police. Sean refused, calling the evidence unconvincing. Sun acquiesced, but told the boy his terms.

  He redirected Armaida to the analysis of Sean’s data, expecting it to reach thirty percent, or forty. It hit forty-five which was still inconclusive.

  And then it popped above fifty. Sun twisted in his chair. It would stop soon.

  Fifty-eight. Sixty-two. Sun’s head pounded. What had Sean stumbled on?

  Sixty-eight. Sun couldn't take his eyes off the screen.

  Seventy. He stared, willing it to stop.

  It stopped at seventy-two, reversed and dropped to sixty-nine, sixty-eight, and froze.

  He skimmed Armaida’s report and found connections to not only the San Diego naval base but the missing Triumph. Sun hadn’t purged that information from Armaida’s buffers because, well, why would the two data streams intersect?

  Worry. He texted Sean telling him to call the police and then told Bobby James’ voicemail Kali’s son was in danger.
/>   Chapter Nine

  Day Five, Friday, August 11th, afternoon

  San Diego, CA

  Apartment of Ankour Mohammed

  "Have you decided which ship best serves Allah’s purposes, Nasr?”

  The Princeton female—she insisted Mohammed call her Muffin—had gone too far. She called him constantly. If he didn’t answer, she texted. The last time they met, she grabbed his crotch. She had become a thorn in his shoe that kept him alert on a long walk, necessary but annoying. He eagerly awaited the day he could kill this fat, immoral female and lay her mutilated body next to the raven-haired whore.

  “Bunker Hill. You have nineteen days,” and he hung up.

  Mohammed breathed deeply, letting Allah’s goodness wash over him. He could not fail with his God guiding him. Mohammed arranged to meet Shalimar and the XO that evening. Then he called the Princeton female.

  “Muffin? I have a surprise for you.”

  “Anky! You calling is a surprise. You have never done that.”

  “I prepared dinner. Are you available?”

  He imagined her panting, fat bosom pressing against the tight uniform, double chin shaking as she visualized their evening.

  “How about an hour. I want to change.” She paused, catching her breath. “You never invited me over before, Anky. This must be special.”

  He laughed and gave her his address, then finished with, “Hurry.”

  The thought of how he had been forced to touch her and stroke her heathen hair disgusted him. He would like to torture her, but time had run out. He rolled industrial plastic across the living room floor, placed the saber, still crusted with the whore’s blood, on the kitchenette counter, and waited.