Albatross (27 page)

“Yes, sir,” was her response as she ran into the building. While in motion, she put her radio earpiece in so that she could talk to Becky.

Samantha asked one word, “Generator?”

Becky responded, “Yes. Ready for the rest and then mobilizing to rally point delta. Falcon is in candy land.”

That was it. As the crowds were moving by her and as she guided them to the front door, she made her way to the completely opened front desk. While she went against the tide of civilians, Samantha went completely unnoticed. She made it to the stairwell leading to the interrogation rooms. As she descended one flight, she tripped the switch to ready her transmitter. Before she walked down the flight of stairs, she stood near a ground-level window and spotted her car. Well within the line of sight and still no one around the car, she tripped the button from ready to fire.

She was about to hit the button when she looked out one more time to make sure the car was clear of people. Samantha’s heart stopped as she saw a white ball bounce toward her parked car and get stuck under the front wheel. Samantha immediately looked down to make sure her thumb was nowhere near the trigger. As beads of sweat burst on her forehead, she watched a little girl run toward the car to retrieve her ball. She was a little older than Emma.
Jesus
, she thought.

Samantha felt as if her bladder was going to burst as the little girl wedged herself under the car to get the jammed ball. Samantha watched, frozen in place for fear that any move she made would trigger the explosives. She watched helplessly as the little girl squished herself under the car and pulled at the ball. Suddenly, a woman, probably her mother, and a police officer came to the little girl’s assistance.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—” Samantha muttered under her breath.

As the woman pulled the little girl up from under the car and started scolding her, the police officer bent over to pull the ball from under the tire. Instead of bending to look under the car to see the ball, the officer squatted down to feel for the ball.

Samantha was barely breathing. Then she took a sharp intake of air and held it.

Unable to feel for the ball, the officer dropped to the ground and looked toward the front of the car, the woman and little girl waiting patiently. Samantha closed her eyes with a vision of the bomb being about five feet from the back of his head. If he just turned around, he would see it in plain view.

Then Samantha would have to make a decision—press the button and kill them all so she, David, Becky, Emma, and Burns could escape or spare these strangers and risk losing her loved ones.

Samantha opened her eyes to see if her fate or theirs had been sealed.
I don’t know,
she desperately thought.

The officer never looked behind his head as he immediately found the ball and pulled it out without an issue. As he stood up, he threw the ball to the happy girl, who held her outstretched hands to grab it. The woman and little girl kissed the officer.

“Oh, fuck. They’re a family,” Samantha muttered to herself.

The family started to amble away from Samantha’s car. As she anxiously watched the family retreat, Samantha closely watched the distance grow between them and the car. Samantha started to breathe again as she continued to watch to make sure no one else got close to the car. Once Samantha saw that the family was out of her line of vision and no one else was around, she pressed the button before anyone else tested her moral character.

One second later, there was a massive explosion in the parking lot, one made more spectacular by the explosives’ proximity to the gas tanks as well as the additional gas in the trunk.

Samantha felt pools of sweat under her armpits, and she immediately used her sleeves to wipe the perspiration off of her face. Samantha leaned heavily against the wall and took out her radio as she watched the blaze of fire consume the car. Her throat was dry, but she was able to croak out her message to Becky.

“Scarlett to Tiny. Backup,” which meant that she needed to get rid of the emergency backup generator.

“Done. Love, Tiny.”

Just then the remaining emergency lights flickered out, leaving everything pitch black with only the light from the ground window providing any illumination. As Samantha waited a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, a civilian was stumbling down below in the darkness. Samantha jumped back into character.

“Are you okay?” Samantha asked.

“Yeah … I got to get upstairs. Can you get the lieutenant and his prisoner? He is in one of the interrogation rooms?” The civilian, maybe some kind of computer guy, was focused on getting out of the building.

“No problem,” Samantha said as she helped him up the stairs and out to the lobby. Once alone, she took out two flashlights and headed to the target room. Her final objective of the mission was to liberate David. She was sure her acting as a cadet would be believable. Playing a part or a role was second nature to her.

Becky’s part as the lookout and trigger man was her only active part in this part of the mission, and it was now over. She was wrapping things up. She had all the laptops packed, all gear and clothes packed, and all she had to do now was get the car loaded and get Emma and her to rally point delta, which was Samantha’s off-site storage facility. That was where Burns, Samantha, and David would rendezvous, split up any cash, data, and treasure, change cars, and separate. David, Emma, and Becky would drive to Bethlehem, New Hampshire, where their off-site storage was. They would exchange the Massachusetts plates on their car for a family minivan’s with Canadian plates and cross into Canada. With Canadian passports, they would act as Canadian citizens who were “escaping the American terrorist attacks” and returning home to Montreal. It would be two and half hours to Bethlehem and then three and half hours to Montreal from there.

Once the car was packed and Emma was in her car seat, Becky debated turning the radio on to hear the news. She decided that knowledge would be better than any surprises at this point. The station she chose was just “concluding the emergency broadcasting alert” before it cut to a news reports in progress. Still, the newscasters were alerting the public about efforts to evacuate key areas of the Merrimack Valley. The anchor spoke of explosives, fires, cyber-attacks, and an assault on federal officers. The attack was being highlighted with reports from the computer virus protection companies that they were locking down and shutting off all their products as a result of a nasty worm called Albatross.

“Not only does this worm piggyback on the virus protection definitions, it then freezes and erases your hard drive of files and e-mails. Additionally, it changes your password, leaving you without any way of accessing it again,” one newscaster was wrapping up.

Another chimed in with how this worm was affecting anything that had any connection and use of commercial virus protection, including the once-thought invincible “cloud software” for remote access to computers. The second newscaster summed up the degree of damage in a few sentences: “All in all, this virus could easily affect, disable, and disrupt all personal computers for more than 70 percent of all home computers in America. That could be as many as 217 million computers. Military computers have their own separate system of protection, leaving them operational, but the president has put all domestic and foreign bases on the highest alert. Many critical systems at hospitals and airports seem to also be unaffected, though there is question if any fatalities may be a direct result of this attack. Early reports suggest that this attack may be a coordinated effort between Islamist fundamentalists, a North Korean splinter group, and possibly a domestic terrorist cell.”

Jesus … did I kill someone? That’s enough
, Becky thought as she turned off the car radio.

“God I hope no one is hurt. If we’re caught, we’re really fucked.” Becky panicked, and she looked back to see if Emma had heard her swear. Emma seemed to be preoccupied with her handheld game. Becky sighed. The last thing she needed was David asking her to please watch her language in front of the child.

Still, the thought of someone, maybe a child, being hurt was sickening to Becky. Becky did think that if she did cause someone harm, going to jail might be better than living free with the guilt. Becky’s mind jumped to how her sister was able to live with her actions. Becky knew that Samantha had killed at least two people in self-defense.
Could I really use the same excuse?
Becky thought. She knew herself well enough to know that the guilt would just kill her. Becky tried to push the thoughts out of her head and wondered if it was too soon for another antianxiety pill.

Becky had to admit that it was a pretty surreal thought to be a terrorist in the late morning and then to become a Canadian citizen having dinner, sipping wine on St. Catherine’s Street at 7:00 p.m. that night. Becky could not wait for that moment.

Chapter 17

Andersen was just outside
the interview room, and he was getting an update on the investigation when he reiterated his belief that David had been part of the crime and was not just a witness. This was not a case of a person being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was now close to 11:00 a.m., and in addition to his shoot-out with federal officers, member of organized crime, and someone who was still unknown, there was a burning building across the street from an evacuated hospital, a “smoking” truck in the town next door in North Andover, and a school in Andover that was under threat. To top things off, his boss was no longer deploying resources to his own and the neighboring town of Lawrence but was now in the middle of coordinating all resources with federal law enforcement agencies. The last piece of the “update” was that a convoy of FBI agents were en route to Andover to assist in the evacuation of a five-block radius while the governor had now deployed the US National Guard, Coast Guard, and all police departments and academies to assist in what the news was calling “the Merrimack Valley Crisis.” What really stunned Andersen was word that the regional FBI field operations were completely shut down by a cyber-attack. In conclusion to Dempsey’s report, he informed Andersen that there was nothing but a skeleton crew upstairs and that all the prisoners were fed earlier than scheduled and were now in lockdown until more resources became available. The second and third shifts were also coming in early, and the Red Cross was out with the other first responders setting up food stations.

“Oh, yeah, the counselor’s assistant showed up. She told the boss she was not able to access the files he asked for and needed to go to the office and bring back hard copies,” Dempsey said.

Andersen couldn’t stand it when Dempsey would leave the most relevant piece of data at the end.

“Did you get her name or what she looked like?” Andersen pressed.

“No, the boss spoke to her. She was pretty frazzled, and she had her kid. It got pretty busy upstairs. She was only there for ten or fifteen minutes or so.”

Andersen thanked Dempsey absently as he closed the interview door. He was clearly in deep thought when he walked around to his empty chair. Before he could say anything, David answered his nagging question. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t Becky and Emma.”

Andersen was beginning to dislike this David Caulfield with his crazy ability to predict thoughts and questions. But again, that was what a therapist should be able to do.

“Enough,” Andersen said sharply and hit the table with his open hand. Amazingly, David did not flinch. Was it possible that David had predicted that Andersen would be frustrated enough to bang his hand? Because he had expected it, was that why he hadn’t flinched? Andersen concluded that David was not only involved but that he was dangerous.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know you’re just a witness and not part of the problem? How do I know you’re not orchestrating everything right now?” Andersen questioned.

“Because—” David answered casually. “Becky and Emma left me four months ago.”

Andersen stopped cold. David went on without prompting to fill in the gaps.

“Once I was set up with assisted living, Rebecca and Emma left. I think Samantha is dead, and I hope Burns is either dead in that house or you find him and kill him. If he’s not dead, then he is more dangerous than ever. He is a ghost again.”

Andersen was quiet. David was now telling him that this team of terrorists was no longer in operation and that we were now dealing with a rogue operations specialist. Andersen was still trying to put it all together when David leaned forward again and began to explain, “This is what was supposed to happen. Here was the plan. We got four adults. One is a specialist in the area of destruction and mayhem, while three civilians have nothing to lose and all to gain. Once we found the operations center, we had to watch everything and everybody coming in and out of the building. We were looking for patterns, people, and routines that might lead us to the objective.”

“I thought the objective was to find the operations center,” Andersen interrupted.