Silver Shirts

by Lee Perry

  Jordan drew a deep breath and tried to relax; craning her neck, she looked up at the ceiling, surprised to see long metal louver slats cranked open and revealing blue sky. When she looked back at the cylinders of nitrogen, she saw rigid lines snaking along the floor, connecting the nitrogen to the giant quantum computer. Bundled wires, tubes and pipes snaked everywhere to and from the quantum computer and the containers of liquid nitrogen, crawling up the walls and leading to what Jordan could only guess were valves and vents for the dangerous cryogenic gas. She stared hard at the workstation Jeffers sat at; a narrow metal desk wedged between and in front of six-foot high stacks of traditional-looking servers that blinked merrily while he worked at the pullout drawer supporting the keyboard and mouse.

  If I’m gonna’ do this I better do it before the fourth guy gets back. She casually stepped back and into the guard behind her and just as he muttered an explicative under his breath she flung her head back, head butting him sharply and breaking his nose. She stepped to one side and crouching, added insult to injury by sharply elbowing the overweight man in the crotch.

  Parker cried out in pain and screamed in a high-pitched voice, “Fuckin’ bitch!” He dropped his gun and grabbed his suddenly bleeding nose, his other hand cupping his tenders.

  Andy Holden, career criminal and auto mechanic, pulled a heavy six-D cell flashlight from his belt and advanced on Jordan, “So you think you’re tough, huh?” He swung the flashlight at her head and she deftly jerked back, this time grunting at the pain in her stiff neck and shoulder. She kicked his knee and shouting in pain and anger, he swung the flashlight again and she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him in a boxer’s clinch. She pressed her face close to his and sneered,

  “Is this really all the skill you have?”

  His eyes blazed and with a roar, he flung her off, shoving with all his might. She let the energy propel her toward Jeffers and the workstation. She twisted and turned, and falling forward, rolled and skidded under his swivel chair, slamming into the stack of servers behind the workstation.

  “HEY!” Jeffers jumped and stood, backing away. “Get her back you stupid fuck!”

  Jordan had pulled the flash drive from her pants pocket in the clinch with Holden and she hurriedly jammed it in a USB port, praying with her soul that she pushed it in right side up and the server connected to the internet. Patton stood quietly, muscular arms crossed over his massive chest and when Johnson entered the cavernous lab, he gave him a nod, “Get her under control.” He ordered, continuing to watch passively. Johnson pulled his weapon just as Holden grabbed Jordan by the back of her jacket, dragging her away from the console to her feet. She turned and threw her weight against him again, and when he felt her rip the semi-automatic from his holster he dropped his flashlight and clamped his hands over hers, screaming over his shoulder,

  “HELP ME, YOU FUCK!”

  Jesus, Jeffers shook his head in disgust and sat back at the workstation, if they don’t survive this then good fucking riddance... Patton’s really the only one worth keeping here. He squinted at the data on the screen; He’s got to have some old army buddies we can recruit.

  Parker pulled Jordan’s service weapon from where he’d shoved it in his utility belt and just as he fired, Jordan threw her weight around Holden’s frame, turning him into the line of fire and he screamed when Parker shot him in the back.

  Jordan shoved Holden to one side and he fell to the floor just as Patton grabbed her by the hair and spinning her around, punched her hard in the abdomen. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath as the room tilted and her vision darkened threateningly at the edges.

  Jeffers felt his heart thud fearfully in his chest at the gunfire and he whirled in his seat, “FOR CHRISSAKES YOU STUPID FUCKS!” He screamed at the top of his lungs, “If you hit one of these tanks you’ll fucking kill us all!”

  Patton calmly pulled the gun from Jordan’s hand and straightened, shaking his head from side to side, “Let that be a lesson to you,” he turned a slow circle to look sternly at Johnson and Parker, “I told you training with guns was not enough.” He emitted a heavy sigh and lifting a booted foot, viciously kicked Jordan in the ribs, making her cry out and roll away, crawling painfully along the cold concrete floor. “That is an issue we are going to address, but not now.” He looked at where Jordan lay struggling to breathe, “First things first.”

  New York City, NY

  Catherine was still in the Project Room when Bea returned, “You still at it?”

  She shrugged, her eyes glued to the data that scrolled on the monitor, “Might as well.” She exhaled noisily, “At least until Jordan gets back.”

  Bea sat in the chair next to her, “I don’t know what help that notebook can possibly…”

  A jarring alarm sounded and both women jumped.

  Catherine’s jaw dropped open in shock and surprise, “Oh my god!” They both stared at the flashing text that filled the screen,

  JORDAN HAS ACTIVATED THE FLASH DRIVE

  “Jordan found the computer Jeffers is using?” Bea’s voice trailed away when understanding flooded her brain, making her dizzy, “Oh my god!” She grabbed the phone, her finger jabbing the extension for Stewart. “Catherine, get her address so I can call the local PD.” She watched Catherine’s fingers fly over the keyboard and nearly shouted when Stewart picked up, “It’s Bea, get up here NOW!”

  Catherine’s heart pounded so hard in her chest she could hardly hear Bea call the police department in White Plains and after identifying herself, demanded to talk to the chief. She determined the physical location where the flash drive was plugged in and pointed a shaking finger at the screen, “This is where she is…” She moved the window containing the map and address of the data center Jordan had driven to for her meeting with Arthur Mills to the monitor in front of Bea and returned to reading the code the program on her flash drive was sending her.

  She immediately recognized the data flooding the screen as Jeffers’s and her smile was tense, Okay, I know this… Her fingers flew over the keyboard and suddenly the monitor to her left filled with hundreds of small dialog boxes.

  Bea hung up the phone and stood, “What in the hell is that?”

  “All the PLC’s Jeffers has taken over…” Her voice drifted as she returned to scanning the code filling her central monitor, “This code,” she pointed at a section, her thumb and middle fingers bracketing the text, “is the playback of normal operation.”

  “Has he initiated the shutdowns yet?”

  “I don’t know,” Catherine’s fingers flew over the keyboard again, “I need to get his encryption code…” Her eyes bored into the screen, “Goddamit.”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess…”

  “I just need a second.” Catherine’s program had recorded Jeffers’s user name and password, and she snorted when she recognized he had pirated Nancy Ward’s company user name and password and had only slightly modified them. “There it is, but…”

  “Holy shit...” Bea muttered.

  “Where’s the solution?” Catherine stared at the screen.

  Stewart rushed in, breathless, “Where’s what?”

  Catherine felt cold. “This is Jeffers’s encryption code; it’s a very big semi prime and I would expect him to have stashed the solution, the very big prime numbers he used to get the semi, in here with it…” She quickly scrolled through the endless code, “But it’s not in here, he…” Her voice faded and Bea held up her hand, sensing Stewart was about to pepper her with questions.

  Catherine used her infiltration program to identify the computer Jeffers was using, “Oh, my god, he’s using a quantum computer.”

  Stewart looked at Bea and shrugged, mouthing, “So?”

  “Fine.” Catherine hissed at the screen, her fingers again flying over the keys, “I can play this game too.”

  White Plains, NY

  I still need to calibrate how much liquid nitrogen is in here so I can determine how much I can get don
e… He grinned, quantum mechanically-speaking. And I should prioritize ordering more shipments of liquid nitro… He turned to them and held his forefinger dramatically high over the keyboard, pointing down at the enter key, “Are we ready?” He grinned first at Patton, then at Jordan.

  “Ja, Herr Schmidt,” Patton stood behind Jordan’s crumpled form and he walked around her with slow reverence to where Jeffers sat, “Let it begin.”

  “Holy shit, Warren,” Jordan snorted weakly, blinking away the blood that ran into her left eye, “they think your name is Joseph Schmidt?”

  The mask of Bill Patton’s stoic demeanor slipped and he looked questioningly at Jeffers.

  “Don’t listen to her,” he waved his free hand dismissively, “she’s just trying to ruin our moment.” He turned back to the screen and pressed the enter key. The small dialog boxes representing hundreds of PLC’s began filling with new digital commands and he laughed, “This is it, my Silver Shirts… my SS.” He purred, “We begin our lives anew and we will rise, like the phoenix, victorious… and while the country is without power it will become humble to our will, the will of the Silver Legion… and I will have complete control over it all.”

  While he spoke, Parker and Johnson listened intently and Jordan inched her way across the freezing concrete floor to the flashlight. Easy now… she thought, not too fast, not too slow… just a few more inches… Once she wrapped her fingers around it, she scrambled to her feet and grunting with effort, threw it at the monitor. The screen exploded at the impact and the three men shielded themselves from the flying shards of glass.

  “Fool!” Jeffers laughed, “That won’t do anything! It’s begun! It’s too late! Your world is about to go dark…”

  “Fuck!” Johnson cried, feeling blood beading on his face, “You are fucking dead!” he glared at Jordan. He ran, launching himself at her and they crashed to the floor.

  Jordan saw a three-inch knife on his utility belt and blocking a punch with one hand, yanked the knife from its sheath with the other and rammed it into his diaphragm, pointing the blade up. His mouth opened wide but no sound came out and she rolled him off her, pulling the blade free.

  “Drop it, now.”

  She looked up to see Patton pointing a gun at her.

  “Kill her.” Jeffers waved a hand dismissively, “Take your pleasure with the devious cunt first, but then kill her. I want no more fuck-ups.”

  New York City, NY

  She hacked the quantum computer and entered the code Nancy Ward had used in her research for cracking enormous semi primes. When Catherine first found Jeffers’s initially unrecognizable chunk of code it never occurred to her that he could gain access to a giant quantum computer capable of taking over much more than just the nation’s power grid; Once he takes down the grid, where does he go next? The Pentagon? Nuclear weapons codes?

  She pasted the huge semi prime Jeffers used to control the PLC’s and posed the query by hitting the enter key. “Keep your fingers crossed.” She watched, as breathless as Bea and Stewart both standing behind her when the code-filled screen suddenly went blank.

  “Jesus.” Stewart whispered in a tiny voice, feeling dizzy and nauseous when text suddenly flooded the screen.

  “That’s it!” Catherine crowed softly, triumphant. Staring hard, she began typing faster and faster as she quickly overrode Jeffers’s recording of normal operations and shut them down. “Bea?” she said, her eyes never leaving the screen.

  “Yeah?”

  “You better get the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the phone.”

  “What do I tell him?”

  “Tell him all one hundred-four of his nuclear power plants were on the verge of shutting down for no reason and they should help them get back online if they are trying to reset. Reassure him nothing is wrong… Tell him what almost happened.” Her eyes shifted to the screen on the left and her voice faded for a moment, “Their backup systems are going to kick on,” she watched as Jeffers’s dialog boxes began rapidly winking out, “starting… now.”

  White Plains, NY

  Jeffers had moved to another workstation and he watched in horror as his dialog boxes began disappearing from the screen. “No!” He hissed, his fingers banging on the keys as he fought to bring them back.

  Bill Patton and John Parker were dragging Jordan under the arms to a worktable by the doors and Patton turned to look in Jeffers’s direction, “What?”

  “Something…” he whispered, his voice faint, “something’s wrong…”

  Patton let go of Jordan’s arm and walked over to stand behind Jeffers, “What’s wrong?”

  Parker gripped Jordan’s arms tightly in his hands and pressed close, “I am gonna fuck you with that flashlight so fucking hard before we kill you…” he sneered, his rank breath making her hold her own. “In every fucking hole, so help me you fucking cunt bitch…”

  Jordan suddenly lurched against him, sliding her arm around his wide girth to grab at her gun he had returned to the back of his belt. She pressed the barrel into his back and pulled the trigger. When he fell, she fell on top of him and rolling off to the side, took what cover she could behind his large protruding gut and began shooting at Patton. She shot him four times but he still managed to free his sidearm and level the gun at her before the fourth hollow-point she planted in his chest made him drop to his knees and fall, dead before he hit the cement floor.

  Jeffers stared in horror at Patton’s body, speechless as she struggled to her feet, “Warren Neville Jeffers,” she rasped, exhausted, “you are under arrest.”

  “NO!” He roared, lunging at her.

  She raised her weapon and fired.

  He screamed in pain, clutching his crotch as he fell to his knees, “YOU FUCKING BITCH!” He shrieked, “YOU SHOT MY COCK!”

  “Well,” she shrugged one-sidedly, “I’m really tired.” She could hear banging and raised voices of police entering the building, “Ah,” she smiled, “the old Knock and Announce procedure.” She winced as she fumbled to pull her badge wallet from her jacket pocket and held it up when officers flooded through the swinging doors, “FBI!” She cleared her throat and waved her gun weakly at the fallen Silver Shirts around her, “Some of these guys are gonna need paramedics…” She gulped, suddenly wanting to sit down, “And some won’t.”

  Epilogue

  Aftermath

  Millburn, NJ

  The phone rang and Jordan checked the caller ID before answering, “Hey, Stewart.”

  “Hey, hi, I’m on my way home but I wanted to check in and see how you’re doing.”

  “Fine, we just finished a great Thanksgiving dinner,” she watched Cameron playing with his stuffed animals and toy trucks on the living room floor while she spoke, “and I’m looking forward to leftovers later tonight… oh, jeez…” she groaned when she sat on the couch, “and tomorrow.”

  “You know, Jordan,” she heard the droll tone, “tomorrow is Thanksgiving.”

  “I know,” she snorted, “but when we ordered dinner from the caterer they gave us the option of having it delivered the day before cold and ready for the fridge so we could reheat it on Thanksgiving Day, or delivered the day before piping hot and ready to serve, so…” Jordan and Catherine spoke to the caterer on the phone’s speaker function and they had looked at each other for a long moment until Jordan piped up that they wanted dinner delivered hot, for sure. “Why not?” She shifted to a more comfortable position, “Cameron could care less about what day it is, so tomorrow we’re gonna’ enjoy Thanksgiving Day Leftovers…” She stopped and said earnestly, “The pumpkin and apple pies this place makes are unbelievable, Stewart.” She heard him laugh and added, “So when we’re not eating we’re gonna’ decorate the house and then Friday we’re getting the tree and spending the rest of the weekend decorating it.”

  “Sounds like a plan, but I meant how are you and your ribs doing?”

  Stewart arrived after Jeffers, Parker and Johnson were taken to the hospital under an armed es
cort of fourteen police officers, and it was well past midnight when he and Jordan decided they had finished processing the scene with Special Agent Mary Fielding and her scene investigation unit. They met with the data center’s superintendant and Dynamic Infrastructure’s CEO, explaining what had happened while the county coroner removed six bodies from the building. At one point Jordan handed over her phone so the superintendant could speak to Bea and Catherine on speaker function and better understand exactly what happened to his quantum computer. When Stewart decided they had done all they could to secure and process the crime scene he had one of the scene investigation members take the keys to Jordan’s bureau car so he could drive her to the local hospital. But when Jordan insisted the first aid she received from the paramedics was enough he compromised and drove her to the hospital closest to the bureau so Catherine could met them there, leaving the Assistant Director of the Cyber Division to watch over a sleeping Cameron in the bureau apartment.

  “Patton kicked me in the same ribs I broke at the Rossi compound shooting.” She shrugged on her good side, “Three of them broke next to the scar tissue, and for some reason the doctor explained that I still don’t understand, that’s makes them even more painful. So it’ll be awhile before I can throw myself around on concrete floors again.”