Midnight Fire (21 page)

Summer contemplated that for a second. “So they would be fake identities.”

“Yeah.” Joe stretched the word out. He turned his head. “You sure, Felicity?”

The high-pitched female voice in the background became agitated, indignant.

The tablet was picked up and Metal’s face appeared. “Dude,” Metal said calmly to Joe. “Please. We’re talking Felicity here.”

In the little time Jack had been around the ASI crew, he’d learned that Felicity, Metal’s fiancée, was always right. She wasn’t arrogant and she was fun and she beat the pants off everyone at video games. And she was always right.

“What, darling?” Metal got up and walked over to Felicity, looked at something on her computer then walked back.

Felicity’s computer was like the magic dragons on
Game of Thrones
. A dangerous, mythical creature. It had been destroyed by Hector Blake and she’d had another one arrive from a secret lab in Hong Kong, more powerful than the last one. No one was allowed to touch Felicity’s computer. They weren’t even allowed to breathe on it. Jack had seen her work miracles with it. If Felicity and her computer said something was true, it was true.

“Dude,” Metal said again. His normally super placid face was furrowed. “The Ebola case is fake, too. Felicity just, um, checked the records of all the hospitals in Chicago.” By checked he meant hacked. “The footage is from the Ebola cases two years ago. And the train and plane wrecks—all fake. I think all of these disasters are fakes.”

Summer picked up the tablet. Jack made the intros. “Summer, this is Metal O’Brien, Felicity’s guy. Metal, this is Summer Redding.”

“Summer.” Metal dipped his head. “An honor. Everyone here reads
Area 8
. You do really good work.”

“Did,” Summer answered sadly. “Did do good work. For the time being,
Area 8
is down and I don’t know when it will go back up again. So, Metal, these attacks, fake attacks. Someone’s flooding the media with fake information, correct?”

“Looks like it.”

She leaned forward, beautiful face intense. “It’s a diversionary tactic. The media are kept confused. I have no doubt hazmat teams and SWAT teams and FEMA teams all over the country have been scrambled. If they have any smarts at all, these guys, the ones behind all this, will disable communications among them, just like they cut off cellphone and tablet connections during the Washington Massacre. Right now, all news teams are paralyzed. We’re really dependent on news feeds and tweets and Facebook postings. This looks like a team has been working on this for a long time, if Felicity says the tweeters have an established identity. How many fake identities do you think there are, Felicity?”

Felicity’s pretty face appeared, a hand on her guy’s shoulder. Metal reached up a big hand and covered hers.

“All the ones I looked at. This is bad juju. Law enforcement agencies will be called out and they won’t be able to tell the real thing from the fake. The entire country is on alert and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Pentagon raised the DEFCON Level to III.”

Metal and Joe nodded.

“How deep is this?” Summer asked.

“Depending on the prep time, which at this point I imagine is at least several months, it’s pretty deep. I’m guessing tens of thousands of fake identities. It doesn’t cost anything except in terms of manpower. I’ve followed some of the tweet identities back in time and they’ve got some generic responses to issues of the day and movies and music that have been retweeted over and over. Some of that can be done by bot, some was done by hand. Some of the responses were automated, didn’t make much sense in the context of the discussion, but it looks like each identity has been around a while. Legit. They’re mostly software.”

“Someone’s been planning this for a long time.” Summer said softly.

“Scary shit.” Joe turned to look into the camera directly. “Jack, whatever happens, I’ve got Isabel covered. She’s in the house, I just talked to her and you know we’ve got a good security system there. I’m going home right now and I’ll wait for you and Summer and everyone else. We’re meeting at Isabel’s for dinner.” He dipped his head. “Summer, nice meeting you. See you tonight.”

Summer nodded. “Joe. Nice meeting you, too. And tell Isabel I’m really looking forward to seeing her again.”

“Will do.”

He disappeared and Metal spoke. “So Jacko will be picking you guys up at the airport. Felicity wants to see Hector’s laptop and flash drives in the worst way. See you in about an hour.” The tablet screen went dark.

“Something really awful is happening,” Summer whispered. Her hand reached out for his and Jack took it. To give her comfort. To give himself comfort.

He nodded, kissed her on the forehead. “Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

Chapter Eleven

San Francisco
The Mission district

The soldiers arrived in the dead of night. They infiltrated via two two-man submersibles launched from a stealthed submarine. It was the equivalent of an ASDS, an Advanced SEAL Delivery System, with a few extra bells and whistles. They landed at 4:00 a.m. at Kellar Beach where a van was waiting for them. They had fifty kilos each of gear in big bags they loaded onto the van. Weapons, fifty thousand rounds of ammo, night vision gear, flashbangs, IR and thermal imagers.

They could withstand a siege, but they weren’t expecting one.

Zhang Wei and his men were technically PLA, of course. All of them had undergone training. But they were IT specialists and hadn’t undergone rigorous commando training like the four soldiers had.

The van parked in the back of the building, in the alleyway protected from overhead surveillance. No one would ever know that four soldiers from the PLA, bristling with weaponry and gear, had entered the building.

A soft knock and the first of the soldiers entered the command and control room. He was still in his dark wetsuit, though he’d taken off the mask.

Zhang Wei stood up, saluted. The four men in wetsuits had all entered the C2 room, lined up neatly along the wall. They saluted back.

Zhang Wei addressed their team leader. “We have prepared meals for you. You will also find four cots. Until the op commences, you will stay hidden undercover. Once we take down the grid, two men will deploy to the front and back entrances. There will be a sniper on the roof with night vision at all times. We estimate food and water in the city will run out in seventy-two hours but we are equipped for two months. By which time the PLAN ships will be moored offshore. When our military lands, you will liaise with them and you will receive further instructions. But until then, your mission is to protect us and protect our equipment.”

The soldier nodded, then his eyes drifted to the twenty big screens hung on the walls of the room. Each screen showed an emergency, with increasingly distraught newscasters trying to sift fact from fiction. The backdrop to each screen was a disaster—a downed plane, an explosion, emergency wards...

The soldier nodded to the screens. “Looks like the operation is off to an excellent start.” He turned on his heel and with his teammates descended down to the basement.

So much could be accomplished through leveraging the power of computers, Zhang Wei thought. Only a class of soldier that had grown up with computers could understand this.

The old guard did not want war. Nobody wanted war. War was destructive, eliminated resources that had taken generations to build up, killed indiscriminately. No. But by the same token, they didn’t understand that you could conquer without war. Using virtual resources very intelligently, destroying very little.

That was the beauty of General Chen Yi’s plan using Cyberwarfare Unit 61398. Using strength softly, with maximum sparing of infrastructure that would be used later, after victory. Takeover by stealth.

The General had already given the order to his opposite numbers in the navy. For the end stage, vast resources would be necessary. The officers would shift ships from the South Fleet and bolster the East Fleet. Two separate training maneuvers would be planned, both in the Pacific. So that when Zhang Wei turned the lights off all along the West Coast of the United States, the Chinese PLAN would arrive and keep a semblance of order, keep essential services running.

Zhang Wei could see it, picture it precisely. His would be the hand that pressed the button that started it all.

The entire West Coast electricity grid would go down. Irreparable damage to the breakers of generators, catastrophic failure of the generators and no spare parts available anywhere. The spare parts were all manufactured in China and the General had made sure that all generator spare parts were removed from the manufacturing process months ago. The West Coast of the United States would get its energy back when the People’s Republic decided it could. Not one minute earlier.

The scenario had even been played out by the American authorities. The Aurora Project, which showed how even a minor cyber attack on vulnerabilities in the grid system could take it down. The Americans had even gamed it for him.

The experiment had been very clear, a sort of step by step primer on how to take a country’s electrical grid down. The test was a cyber-attack that opened and closed breakers in an unsynchronized fashion, placing immense stress on the generators. Torque literally tore the generators apart, throwing pieces as far away as twenty meters, leaving the generators a smoking ruin inside of three minutes.

Zhang Wei was certain he could do it in one.

America was an unruly nation. Not a nation of civil order. And it was a nation full of guns. After the first twenty-four hours without power, utter chaos would reign.

When it was clear that power was not coming back anytime soon, when the gas pumps stopped pumping, when the food stores were looted and no supplies were coming, when the water system stopped supplying water, when all communications except for the few who owned satphones were cut off...that was when the Chinese Eastern Fleet would come to the rescue on the greatest humanitarian mission ever undertaken. Three Peace Ark hospital ships, four Xu Xiake barracks ships, two Yantai-class supply ships, four Tang class destroyers and five Leizhou-class tankers would anchor offshore the major West Coast cities and start supplying emergency electricity to hospitals, select civic centers and water pumping stations. There would be food distribution to the hungry, rationed water would start flowing.

The sight of Chinese soldiers—disciplined, carrying essential supplies—would be the most welcome sight imaginable. Welcomed with open arms. Never to leave again.

Let the games begin.

Portland
,
Oregon

The man who met them at the airport looked hard and dangerous. After they rolled to a stop in an empty part of the airport, Jack held up his hand, a sign to wait. He had already closed the window shutters and they sat and waited while the pilot opened the door that became a metal staircase. As soon as the staircase was open a man came up, nodded to the pilot, nodded to Jack.

He was dark-skinned, with a shaved head. He wasn’t tall but was immensely broad with huge biceps. Despite the cold weather he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans jacket. Summer could see part of a tribal tattoo where his neck met the collar of the tee and along both arms.

His face was closed, unsmiling. Not hostile, but not warm and fuzzy, either. Summer nearly took a step back when he entered the jet, but no one else seemed to find him disturbing so she forced herself to stay where she was.

He seemed very competent, so if he had been sent to kill them, he’d have done so already.

Jack slapped him on the back and though from his looks, Summer would not have been surprised if the man knocked Jack down with one blow, he didn’t. He just nodded and turned to her.

God, he was scary-looking. Summer’s skin prickled and she had to mentally nail her feet to the deck of the jet so she wouldn’t try to run past him and escape.

Jack put his hand on her arm. “Honey, I’d like you to meet one of the great guys at ASI. Morton Jackman. Jacko to his friends.”

His friends?
This man had
friends
?

“Jacko, meet Summer Redding.”

The man Jack called Jacko stuck out an enormous dark hand to her and said, “How do you do, ma’am? I’m a big admirer of
Area 8
.”

His voice was the deepest she’d ever heard. Jack had a deep voice, a very pleasant one. This guy seemed to subvocalize, like a human woofer.

In an act of amazing courage, Summer offered her hand, trying very hard not to tremble. “P-pleased to meet you, Jacko. Thank you for saying that about
Area 8
.”

Her hand disappeared in his and then an instant later he gave it back to her, none the worse for wear. Amazing.

He looked at both of them while he talked, which Summer appreciated. She hated it when men talked to each other over her.

“This is how it’s going to work,” he said in his
basso profundo
voice. “I’ve got an SUV with treated windows. I’m going to bring it to the bottom of the stairs. You guys stay here until I come back in to get you.” He handed them two broad-brimmed hats and long scarves. “Hide your faces with these until you get into the vehicle.” He turned to Summer and if she squinted, she thought maybe she could detect a hint of a smile in those black eyes. “Summer, I have about a billion bags from Macy’s for you. I swung by. And Isabel ordered some clothes for Jack. Said she’d had enough of that homeless look.”

He disappeared out the door and Summer waited obediently.

Jack took her hand. “It’s going to be okay. No, wait. I can’t guarantee that. But I can guarantee it’s going to be better. We have a team now.”

“I’m beginning to feel it,” she said. “I miss my own team, though. Are you sure I can’t—”

Jack shook his head sorrowfully. “No, sweetheart. A lot depends on you having disappeared. I’ll have Nick or someone in DC contact them. Be patient.”

Summer nodded. Jack had waited six months for justice. Was still waiting. She could wait a few days to contact Zac and Marcie.

Jacko stuck his head in the cabin then disappeared again.

Jack wrapped the scarf Jacko had brought around the lower part of her face, then put the felt wide-brimmed hat on her head. He stood back as if in admiration.

“You’re beautiful,” he pronounced.

Summer rolled her eyes. “I’m hidden beneath about a hundred pounds of material.”

“I know what’s under there. That’s what counts.” He wrapped his head so much he looked like the Mummy and put on his own hat over it. They were unrecognizable as they quickly moved down the stairs and into the SUV. Treated windows, Jacko had said. They weren’t treated, they looked perfectly normal. Except...she peered more closely. You couldn’t see inside. You couldn’t see anything, not even if there were people inside or not.

Jack rode shotgun and slid the backseat door open for her. When she climbed inside it was very light. Most SUVs had tinted windows, but this one had perfectly clear windows. Though they weren’t transparent from the outside.

Cool.

The third row seats had been lowered and she saw lots of huge white bags with the familiar red star. Their clothes. It would be nice to have clean clothes. She’d been wearing this outfit for over twenty-four hours. She’d been to Hector’s funeral, to Hector’s secret lair, Jack’s safe house. She’d made love to Jack and been flown across the country in these clothes.

So much had happened in the past day, most of it centered around the man sitting in front of her, conversing quietly with Jacko.

If she asked, they’d clue her in on the conversation, she knew that much. Or at least Jack would include her. But she was all convo’ed out. They were going to figure out what horrible things Hector had planned. Secretly, the FBI was all over it in the person of Nick Mancino and the Director. Jack was on it as were the people he thought of as his team.

She could stop trying to puzzle this thing out for the moment and focus on herself. And on her feelings for the big man sitting in front of her.

Jack. Jack Delvaux. The man who’d broken her heart. She hadn’t been kidding when she told him that. And to his credit, he’d understood.

But the girl whose heart had been broken had been a train wreck in waiting. She’d spent a miserable childhood under the uncertain protection of careless parents. Miss Darby’s school had given her a solid structure and allowed her to grow but there hadn’t been any boys to speak of and she’d had so little experience of them. They’d been like alien creatures to her.

That first week at Harvard, she’d been so lost and lonely. Boys had come on to her and she’d had no idea—no clue—how to respond. There seemed to be a code, a rhythm to it that escaped her completely. She’d been painfully aware of her virginity and unable to think of a way to overcome that handicap, how to date a man who’d understand and then, bam!

Jack had appeared right in front of her. Like magic.

Beautiful, kind Jack, who had immediately taken her under his wing, introduced her around, made her feel at ease around his friends.

And he’d seduced her. Yeah. She’d been so happy that Jack was her first lover. He’d been gentle and funny and tender. And oh so passionate. She couldn’t possibly have asked for a better introduction to sex.

Girls talked and not everyone’s first time was magic. If anything, the opposite.

She’d been so young and foolish and had somehow convinced herself that she and Jack were Meant To Be, when they’d been such
kids
.

Jack was right when he said he was a different person. He was. He and Jacko were discussing something quietly but every minute or so he turned slightly in his seat, as if to check to see whether monsters might have infiltrated the vehicle in the minute of time since he last looked.

He seemed more than willing to stay this time.

Was she?

He looked around again and this time met her eyes and smiled.

It wasn’t the patented, brilliant Jack Delvaux smile that dazzled everyone he came across. It was a man’s smile—someone who’d seen trouble and tragedy but could still smile.

Was she going to stick around afterward?

She smiled back at him.

Maybe.

“We’re here,” Jacko announced and Summer realized she hadn’t even noticed her surroundings. Jack had knocked her off kilter because she was always aware of where she was—a legacy of her troubled childhood.

Even in the midst of trouble, Jack had managed to make her feel safe enough to get lost in her thoughts.

The area was gentrifying. Low rise brick buildings at least a century old. Some abandoned, some done up. Jacko rounded a corner of a building that was surrounded by a twelve foot wall, pressed on the accelerator and drove straight into the wall.

Summer caught her breath to scream but before she could, a section of the wall simply opened, Jacko drove in fast and braked hard, slewing the car so that it fit precisely between the lines of a parking space.