Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  “The tubular things attached to the guttering at the corners of houses.”

  “I meant you can’t be serious.”

  “Or I could kick out the louvers and we go through the attic,” Walker said. “How well do you know your neighbors?”

  “Not that well.”

  “Okay, well, Plan A it is,” Walker said, headed for the drain pipe at the front corner. He went first. It was made of plastic, with clamps and screws into the timber cladding of the house and the timber frame beneath. When Walker was halfway down, Monica started her descent. His feet touched the roof of the front porch and he let go of the drain pipe, then dropped down to the garden bed.

  Just as he caught Monica as she came down, two sharp bangs rang through the night. Flash-bang grenades. The guys were entering the attic and wanted to stun whoever was hiding up there.

  “What was—”

  “Come on,” Walker said. He led Monica through the front gate and along the footpath and turned up the hill, toward his car.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away from here.”

  Walker unlocked his door and leaned over and unlocked Monica’s. As she climbed in he put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn the engine over. Instead, he changed the gear into neutral and took the park brake off, then stepped back out of the car and, a hand on the steering wheel and his feet on the road, pushed. Once the inertia built up and the car was rolling down the hill he got back in and closed the door.

  They rolled down the hill with no engine power and no lights. The steering was heavy but he held it in a straight line, and the lack of engine noise allowed them to avoid alerting those back at the house. They had covered four blocks by the time the hill started to flatten out at the bottom, and he pressed the brakes for the first time. As soon as the car slowed he turned the key and shifted to second and gave it gas, put the headlights on and took the first right.

  Monica stared over her shoulder, only looking ahead once they’d made another turn, to the left, where Walker unwound the engine to put a bit of immediate distance between them and those at her house.

  “You okay?” Walker asked her. He was driving close to the limit, observing the road signs and traffic signals, heading east for the highway.

  “Who were they?”

  “Feds.”

  “FBI?”

  “I doubt it. This has become militarized.”

  “The military? This is a civilian problem.”

  Walker turned the radio up high to hear over the thrum of the Cuda’s big block V8. The newscaster was talking about what might happen in twenty minutes’ time. Monica sunk down into her seat.

  28

  They were fifteen miles north when Walker eased off the gas and reached down to turn up the radio again. The newscasters were still talking about Jasper and the cyber threat. And for good reason.

  It had ticked past the deadline for the second cyber attack.

  So far nothing had been reported.

  Monica had settled. She’d spent the ride watching out her side window, silent, still. Walker focused on the scene ahead with regular checks in his rear-vision mirrors. There was no sign of the Suburbans nor any other pursuing vehicles. Now it was past the deadline she was watching the radio, as though she could will some news of her brother to be broadcast. Walker had kept to suburban streets, presuming that any kind of dragnet would focus on the interstates. By now law-enforcement officers would have Monica’s ID on file and would be on the lookout. But why?

  The downtown streetlights strobed above them, a yellow glow cast over the road, the shadows between them far larger than the light that spilled like stepping stones ahead, flash-flash-flash as they drove under them, the rhythm soothing.

  As they slowed to a stop at a red light a car approached from behind. Low lights, a sedan, not one of the giant Suburbans. It changed lanes without indicating and pulled alongside. Cops. LAPD. There were no other cars around. No people. Monica saw them and then looked to Walker, and then dead ahead, as though unsure who her friends were now.

  Walker ignored the cops until the light changed to green. He shifted his foot, and immediately the police car bleeped its siren. The passenger wound down his window and signaled to Walker to do the same.

  Walker did so.

  The cop smiled. “Nice ride.”

  “Thanks.” Walker looked at the two uniformed police officers, ogling the car for the thing of beauty it was.

  “Seventy-one?”

  “Yep.”

  “Nice.” The cop looked to his partner, the driver, who had turned his attention to the computer bolted to the center console.

  Walker’s hands tensed a little at the wheel. The cops were listening to the radio and watching their screen. These guys were a highway patrol. Headed into town for food maybe.

  Still the newscasters were saying that neither the FBI nor Homeland Security had detected a second cyber attack.

  The cops were on their radio. To Walker the chatter was indistinguishable, but both cops were listening intently.

  The light was still green. A car approached from behind Walker, and flashed its lights for him to proceed.

  “Hey,” Walker called to the cop nearest him. “Are you guys on some kind of lookout for this next cyber attack?”

  “What?”

  “Like, some kind of Homeland Security protocol? Do you have to be on guard someplace?”

  The cops shared a look before they shook their heads and drove off, their car lit up with lights and siren, the roar of rubber and hot fumes left in their wake.

  Walker eased on the gas and wound up his window.

  Monica exhaled. “What does that mean?”

  “That those cops at your house got a bogus message to leave their posts.”

  “So those guys in black could take me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who could do that?”

  “The government.”

  “But I’m not the threat here!”

  Walker stared out at the road ahead, and said nothing.

  29

  At 2:09am the radio came to life as the newscaster announced that an unnamed government source had reported a hack on a federal database. That was the extent of it. By 2:11 the White House had announced it had no comment. By 2:13 the FBI and Homeland Security had said they were investigating a possible breach at the OPM. A minute later the news radio reported that people had found sites containing data from the OPM.

  “You heard of the OPM?” Walker said.

  “Office of Public Management,” Monica said. “That’s nothing vital, right? Some personal data, just like the last attack on social-media sites. Nothing immediately terrible about it . . .”

  Walker ran it through his mind. Sure, this wasn’t an attack on Pentagon networks, or the FBI, or even the IRS. Or stealing data from defense contractors and selling the plans of future weapons systems to a nation state or dumping them online to cause havoc. The first attack exposed personal data, embarrassing secrets that would cause mass noise and panic right in the homes of Americans. And this attack had specifically targeted federal employees . . .

  Walker said, “The OPM would have names, addresses, social-security numbers, psych profiles, security clearances. All that screening that every person has been through, it’s now out there. That’s what Jasper meant about the major attack on government.”

  Monica nodded and had a faraway look as though she was tallying the extent of this attack. “You’re right. Security-clearance forms contain people’s deepest and darkest secrets laid bare. Plenty of opportunity for blackmail.”

  “Not just ordinary people,” Walker said as he drove. “Every federal employee outside of perhaps the most sensitive positions, which you’d think, or hope, would be compartmentalized. Every person working in the White House and on Capitol Hill, every staffer, all the TSA officers and agents, postal workers, every Congressman and Senator, every Department Secretary and Agency Director. Operators at nuclear plants. Safety
inspectors at dams. FAA personnel in charge of the airspace and thousands of flights every day. Secret Service employees?”

  “Maybe, I’m not sure. I hope that’s compartmentalized. And DoE. And others. Who knows, right?”

  “Well, the millions that have been affected will make noise, from the lowest in the food chain right up to their superiors and then onward, all the way to the President. Every person investigating this hack and the abduction of your brother suddenly has every little secret out in the open.” Walker paused, checking his mirrors but seeing nothing unusual. “Again, this wasn’t about harming national security in a way that helps another nation. It’s about putting forty million federal employees at a megaphone to shout to the President: Do something about this—either find Jasper or turn off the Internet and block the access to our secrets.” Walker paused again, then added, “And this attack helps foreign nationals, nation states.”

  Monica turned away from the window to look at Walker. “How?”

  “Every person with a security clearance has to report every contact they have with a foreign national. That’s out there now. That means that China or Russia or Iran can see that some mid-level staffer in the White House has had contact with someone from their embassy—and that person will be hauled in and questioned and probably thrown in jail, just in case.”

  Monica was silent for a moment, then said, “I hadn’t thought about that. Damn. We’re talking forty million people plus. That will make this the biggest public data heist against a government network in cyber history. Their social-security numbers, family details, personal histories, passwords, fingerprints . . . all stolen from US personnel files containing the results of security background checks.”

  “Your ex-husband,” Walker said, thinking back to the photo of Monica’s daughter. “He’s Chinese?”

  Monica nodded.

  Walker was silent.

  “So?”

  “Just thinking,” Walker said. “Wondering. How did he get sole custody?”

  “Money,” Monica replied, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her tone. “And laws are different in China—she’s a dual citizen, born there, in Shanghai, and it’s ironclad. The law, and the money. Especially the latter. It’s old. From Mao’s time. You understand? He’s as good as untouchable. Right?”

  “But your dad—your family’s pedigree in the US. There’d be people and friends and favors owed. That’s got to have some sway.”

  “This is—politically—it’s bigger than me and my daughter,” Monica said. She turned back to stare out the window. “It took me a while to see it that way. But I can’t do anything . . . it’s complicated.”

  “Is he in politics?”

  “Everyone with power and money in China is in politics.”

  “But a member of the party?”

  “Isn’t it sad?” Monica said, after a moment’s thought. “That that’s all there is: ‘the’ party. Yes, I’m sure he’s a member and he’s got sway in those circles because of his family connections—that’s how the place works—that and money. But he is what we’d call a Congressman or Senator? No. He’s a businessman.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Government contracts. Big business. It’s all the same.”

  “Sounds like the same thing over there, government and business.”

  “You’re right. The line is blurred, there more than anywhere. It’s one and the same. Business. Politics. Money. Influence. Power. You have it until you fall out of favor.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  “After I finished at the DoD, I did a few years at a big firm that had an office in Shanghai. We met at the US consulate there, a gala.”

  “Was he intel for the Chinese government?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  She sighed. “We were married for four years. I don’t think I ever really knew him. I got pregnant and we got married.”

  “Like that . . .”

  Monica gave him a look.

  Walker said, “Sorry.”

  “You know this isn’t a nation state against us,” Monica said. “It’s a terror group that has abducted my brother. No demands. So, they seem like anarchists.”

  “They’ll have a motive of some sort.”

  “Do you think this cyber attack on a government network will change anything in the President’s thinking?” Monica said.

  “I’m sure we’ll soon find out,” Walker said. He saw a sign up ahead, lit up with a spotlight. He slowed the car. He wanted to ask her more about her husband but decided that could wait. “But I doubt it. It will take more than information. These attacks have been well planned.”

  “I mean, really, that was all?” Monica said, her thought process running along quickly. “Not a hack on the Department of Defense or something? I was expecting a power grid to go out. Airports to go haywire. Something that was more . . . tangible, as an attack.”

  “Me too,” Walker replied. “But this is smart. He’s getting the population onside. He’s heaping pressure on the politicians, and on the President. It’s making things easier and easier for the President to enact the kill switch. The attackers are thinking far ahead. Get the population onside with your demands, then start doing things that threaten their safety.”

  “It’s like chess . . .” Monica said absently. “Jasper always liked chess. But I just can’t see how this will force the President’s hand. No one can anticipate what’s coming, because whoever has Jasper is making him act six steps ahead.”

  “Time will tell.” Walker pulled into the car park of a chain motel five miles southeast of where they had seen the police—the opposite direction to the one he had been headed in when they had seen him. It was overly cautious perhaps, but Walker had not survived so many years in Special Operations and the CIA by not taking precautions.

  He parked the Cuda away from the office, in a space near the rooms, leaving Monica in the car with the radio on and the key in the ignition. He walked to the reception with his hands in his pockets. He was tired. Another night of not enough sleep. His mind started to wander back to this morning, when he’d woken in a hotel room with Eve. His wife? Ex-wife? He stopped himself. He had to focus on the here and now, the problems that were upon them and ahead of them.

  Those guys back at the house. The EMP on a drone. The flash-bang grenades.

  Feds. And not FBI or Homeland Security—surely they wouldn’t act out like that, turning off several blocks of power, no calls identifying themselves as they entered the house.

  So, who?

  The CIA didn’t operate on US soil like that. The NSA didn’t have armed operators like that. Either way, there were laws in place that regulated the intelligence officers from those agencies and what they could and could not do inside the United States.

  That left the military. Walker thought of all the possible units that were capable, those overt door-kickers and the black-bag types that operated off the books. There were a few likely candidates, all of them a worry. It didn’t bode well.

  Walker knew full well that while the Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Acts of the nineteenth century limited the powers of the federal government in using its military to act as domestic law-enforcement personnel, there was provision for the military to act as “advisers” on matters of national emergency. And, at the end of the day, the President could do as the office pleased, signing in an executive order to plug a legal loophole.

  Walker also knew that he needed to reach out to Bill McCorkell. McCorkell could look into who it could be, so that Walker could be better prepared, so that he knew who was coming and what he was dealing with.

  What it meant, Walker knew, as he neared the door to the reception office of the motel, was that the gloves were off. They were trying to stop Jasper and the terror cell that had him before a national disaster claimed countless lives. Perhaps the President had authorized an executive order permitting a select group of the DoD to deal with this na
tional threat.

  But would it be just because of the threats? Or because they knew just how capable Jasper was, what he could really do?

  With the Feds came Trapwire, that nifty little system that linked every camera and photo on the planet and filtered through with facial recognition to find a target. It could be a person walking by a traffic camera or the dash cam on someone’s car or a Facebook selfie that showed the target in the background. If it was on the network in any way, Trapwire could find it.

  The gritty car park scrunched under Walker’s boots as he approached the reception block. The lights were on inside but the doors were locked. He rapped on the glass, and a head appeared from behind the computer on the desk. Dark hair, round head; just a quick look. Then nothing. Walker went to knock again but then the owner of the head stood up. It was a short Hispanic woman who shuffled to the door in slippered feet. She stopped and looked at him through the locked plate-glass door. Waited. She was a foot and a half shorter than Walker and twice his age.

  “Can I get a room?” Walker asked.

  She looked past him, toward the car park. Walker realized that in seeing no car she was immediately suspicious—this wasn’t the kind of place that people checked into without a car, in the dead of night or otherwise.

  Walker pointed to the car parked by the motel rooms.

  The woman looked, and her eyes lingered, then she nodded and unlocked the door.

  “Can I get a room?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, heading back around her desk. “Just you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Just the one night?”

  “Three,” Walker said. He didn’t plan to stay the second or third nights but figured that it would be easier later if a law-enforcement person was tasked with checking all overnight bookings in motels within a hundred-mile radius of Monica’s home.

  “Name?”

  Walker handed over two crisp hundred-dollar bills.

  “Okay, Benjamin Dos,” she said, nonplussed, tapping away at the computer. The room was probably around sixty dollars for the night, and he presumed she was either entering the false name or simply blotting out a room for a non-existent maintenance issue. Either a small tip and a false name, or a large tip and no name registered at all. Either way, they had a room, off the grid. She opened a drawer and passed over a key on a large plastic key ring.