Seven Unholy Days (18 page)

31

3:42 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

              I waited as long as I could for Tark to get off the phone, but he was still talking. Mostly listening, actually, and taking lots of notes. I went back to the control room, sat down at my laptop, and sent a message to the big screen:

Abdul, I have a password for you to try. And put your main di
splay on screen so I can see what happens from here. You ready?

YES.

Okay, try the password WHITE HORSE.

He entered the phrase and the action began. Another grap
hic appeared, this one far more elaborate than the one from the 666 entry. From a cobalt blue background came an animated white horse, its rider wearing a golden crown and holding a bow. As he drew nearer on the screen he raised and pulled the bow, then let loose a flaming arrow that grew larger and larger until the flames filled the screen. The flames died down, revealing the unencrypted module of CEPOCS code. We were in.

Tark bounded in with his notebook, motioning for me to fo
llow him back into the hall. “Matthew,” he said, “the FBI is making some progress. I need to fill you in right away.”

“We got the password,” I said.

“What?”

“We got it. We’re into CEPOCS.”

“Well praise the Lord! What was it?” he said as we walked back toward the lounge.

“White horse. And I think I have a basic idea of what our guy is up to.”

“I’m all ears,” Tark said as we made it back to the lounge.

“Okay, you say that the antichrist is supposed to be the rider on the white horse; I think this sick puppy sees himself as the rider.”

“How so?”

“First of all, the chunk of malicious code is what we call a Trojan horse in the business. It was hidden inside our normal program, just waiting to come pouring out and causing grief. That’s what turned me on to trying the password. I kept looking at all those Revelation horses and it suddenly occurred to me that what we were looking for in the code was a Trojan horse.”

“But why a white horse?”

“Because this twisted bastard thinks he is the mighty warr
ior. He’s cooked up this apocalyptic bullshit and thinks he’s bouncing in the saddle of his precious white horse.”

Tark stroked his chin. “Yeah, I can see that. Maybe he sees himself as a bright shining light in the darkness. Darkness he created, of course.”

“That’s not all he created, Tark.” I walked to the whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and beside WHITE HORSE I wrote TUESDAY. “The white horse was the first step, his triumphant entrance amid the so-called Decree of Darkness.”

“Go on.”

“All right, what happened Wednesday?” I asked.

“The Los Angeles catastrophe.”

“Exactly. Catastrophe by a chemical weapon called—”

Tark figured it out before I could finish. “Red death,” he said, his mouth hung open. I wrote WEDNESDAY on the board beside RED HORSE.

“Red death, red horse, massive bloodshed, which fits the prediction,” I said.

“And then comes the black horse,” he said. “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny. Economic chaos. Black Thursday.” I wrote it in, THURSDAY.

“The pattern is unmistakable,” I said.

“It dang sure is, Matthew. He’s trying to enact the seven seal judgments.”

“You got it. One seal per day. We’re into day four now, the pale horse day.”

Tark leaned over the car-sized Bible and read aloud. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. That’s chapter six, verse eight.”

“Sword, hunger, death, and beasts, all wrapped up in one. Wonder how he plans to pull that one off?” I said.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t.”

“He hasn’t failed yet. Oh, what did the FBI want?”

“They said your finding the bug was a huge break, and not just in the sense of watching what we say. According to their technical people he has to be somewhere near New York or Los Angeles, so they’re concentrating the investigation on those two areas.”

“Say again?”

“They had a communications expert explaining that to me, and he said that the fact that our bad guy was able to monitor a ... hang on, let me get my notebook.” He flipped pages for a moment, then continued. “He was monitoring a live sound feed on fiber, so he must be within twenty miles of a class five fiber switch, the type that’s only found where the big transoceanic cables are.”

“Coms aren’t my specialty, but I find it hard to believe that there are only two top-level switches in the whole country.”

“Just telling you what he told me.”

“Let them proceed under that premise, but let’s you and I assume the guy could be anywhere.”

“I’m with you, Matthew.”

I liked Tark more all the time. He was straightforward, a human embodiment of the WYSIWYG design model. What you see is what you get. Very refreshing, and it felt good to have him on my side. He stood in front of the Bible, hands on the desk as he peered down through his reading glasses. Then he flipped back into the Old Testament.

“Why are you moving out of Revelation?” I said.

“John’s not the only one who had an apocalyptic vision. Way back when, a fellow named Daniel had quite a dream himself. Listen to this: And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.”

I leaned over and kept reading:

24  And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practice, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.

25  And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes, but he shall be broken without hand.

“That does sound like our boy,” I said, “but how does it help us?”

“Next time you swap emails with him, maybe you can use some of this to get under his skin a little bit.”

32

4:25 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

HART COMPLEX

              Jana knew daylight would soon come and destroy any chance of escape from the complex. She estimated twenty minutes since she heard the men searching the shed as she lay motionless underneath the big tractor’s cowling, on top of the six-cylinder diesel engine. Now she was easing her way out of the cramped quarters as quietly as possible. She dropped to the ground and stretched her aching muscles.

Peeking around the corner of the shed, she saw the play of flashlight beams behind the main building. The area between her shed and the building was clear. She made her way to the end of the shed farthest from the building, stepped outside, and set out in a dead run toward a barn about two hundred yards away. The oversized shoes flopped up and down on her heels as she ran, slowing her down.

Her thigh muscles were on fire by the time she reached the barn, her breath coming in short, hard gasps. It was the farthest and fastest she had run since winding up her track career in high school. In fact, despite being ten years older, she felt sure she had just run faster than she ever did on the asphalt oval at Itawamba High. Probably had something to do with motivation. There was a heck of a difference between running for Coach Gruber and running from Abraham Hart.

She pulled the barn door open just enough to slip inside and collapsed on the dirt floor. A rustling noise deeper inside the dark barn pumped the adrenaline again and she stood up quie
tly and flattened herself against a wall, listening. There it was again, only more of a shuffling sound this time. Her breathing began to slow and the smell of the barn registered. It was a stable. She moved closer to the shuffling sound and saw that it came from a horse. A big, beautiful white horse that shone in the moonlight streaming through the high vent windows in the barn.

Perhaps her luck was turning. All the tack needed to fit the horse for riding was right there in the barn. Jana had no trouble saddling and bridling him, having grown up on a farm where riding a horse was as common as riding a bicycle. The barn sat at an angle to the main building and its rear door offered an exit that was out of sight to the searchers.

She eased the horse away from the barn in a light trot for the first hundred yards before kicking him into a full gallop. The grassy field was open and flat and she could feel the fine spray of dew against her bare ankles as the mighty hooves ate up the distance. After about a mile she slowed down, afraid to push the horse any farther at full speed. Looking back, she saw no one in pursuit.

Her eyes had adjusted to the moonlight and she could clea
rly see a white pasture fence a few hundred yards ahead. After listening for a moment to be sure the horse’s breathing didn’t sound distressed she kicked him again and rode hard. When she was close enough she started looking for a gate in the fence and saw none. “Boy, can you jump?” she asked. “Sure hope so.”

She kept going, not slowing up, waiting to see what he would do. He gracefully cleared the fence as if he had done it a thousand times. Immediately past the fence was a road. Jana stopped and patted the horse, his coat wet with sweat, his big nostrils flared and sucking hard. She checked behind her and still saw no one coming, then looked left and right on the road, trying to spot any sign of civilization nearby. Nothing. She pulled the reins to the right, then reconsidered. Once they fi
gured out she was on the horse she would be an easy target if she stayed out in the open. Across the road was a stand of woods. She clucked her tongue, gave him a gentle nudge in the ribs, and said, “Let’s go there, boy. We need to find our way back to civilization.”

33

6:20 AM EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

SOUTH LAWN, THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

             
The manicured lawn was painted in the long shadows of early morning as the man walked with a tiny satphone held close to his ear.

“You are an insurance policy, one for which I am paying lofty premiums. Can you assure me that my benefits are being properly administered?” Hart said from over a thousand miles away.

“I have everything under control, but it’s time for you to wire the second installment. My risks are incredible.”

“Do not whine to me about risks. You knew them when you agreed to take my money. And there is no need to remind me when payment is due. I meet my obligations. Be certain that you meet yours. Is that clear?”

The man pursed his lips in a tight line, unaccustomed to being talked down to by anyone other than the President. “Is that clear?” Hart repeated.

“Yes.”

“Very well. Have a good day. Your funds will be wired shortly.”

He punched the phone off and dropped it in an inside poc
ket of his suit coat as he walked toward the service entrance of the White House. He still seethed, but he was dealing with it. No matter one’s station, a lot of pride could be swallowed when the price was right, and this one was so right. Today his Grand Cayman account would have a balance of twenty million dollars. Three days later, the final payment would push it to thirty.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it, George?” he said as the doorman opened the door for him.

“Yes sir, Mr. Brandon, it certainly is.”

5:38 AM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

The sun was coming up and I was spent. My mind was a mush of determination sprinkled with random thoughts of e
xhaustion, and the whole mix was something approaching delirium. I was suddenly very sick of it all. This mess. The world. My pitiful excuse of a life. I was slipping into middle age and couldn’t name five people in the world who I was sure really cared about me. Not my money. Not my company or my business. Just me, Matt Decker. Five? Get real. There was one. Norman. Then the list went flat when I remembered Norman was a dog. He was a great dog and I missed him and wished I was home with him, but he was still a dog.

I sat at the table in the lounge, straining every muscle in my face to keep my eyes open. I was so alone. My work was all I had and look what that work had done to the world. I was the one who dreamt up the system that broke down all to hell and back and put the world in a state of disaster. The whole world. Despite the fatigue—my eyelids felt like lead weights—a crystal memory surfaced, one I hadn’t thought of in ages.

On July 14, 1977, my father and I were sitting in the living room of our home, a modest three-bedroom job furnished by the church, watching the evening news. I was six years old, and the lead story transfixed me. The night before, multiple lightning strikes had started a chain reaction that eventually knocked out the power to New York City. They were playing a homemade film shot by a tourist from the top of the World Trade Center, and it captured these huge blocks of the city going from a lighted spectacle to eerie darkness. It was the most fascinating and terrifying thing I had ever seen, all those lights going off at once.

“Matty, I think I see a sermon in this,” Dad said.

“Where?” I squinted at the screen.

He laughed and whisked me from beside him onto his lap with one big strong hand. “I mean there’s a message for us in this.”

“I’m just six, Dad. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dad had a habit of getting over my head and sometimes I had to bring him back down to where I was.

“It’s like this. All those buildings and streets are still there, right?”

“Yes sir.” They were still there all right, with gosh knows what other kind of creatures of the dark running around in and between them.

“And we could still walk down those streets if we were there. It would just be harder. Right?”

I nodded.

“God is like everybody’s light, son. We can still stumble our way through life, but it sure is easier when we have the light to help us.”

“Ohhhh, I get it.” He just smiled, glad that I got it. Then he went to work on his sermon. And I kept thinking about how it looked when all those lights went off, and how all those people—Dad said there were millions of them in that one town—must be so scared without the lights. I thought about it long after the lights in New York came back on.

I still missed Dad so much. It wasn’t fair. Nor was it fair to all the people who were now in the dark because my system failed. It was my fault. All my fault. I was sorry, so very sorry.

“Matthew, wake up, son.”

“Dad?” I said, opening my eyes and finding Tark towering over me instead.

“You were moaning ‘I’m sorry’ over and over. This isn’t your fault.”

I shook my head and processed what he said. “Tark, that’s nice of you to say, but when all is said and done this is my sy
stem and my responsibility.”

“That’s horse hockey and you know it. If you hadn’t built the system, someone else would have. What was that company that fought you so hard for the contract?”

“Hardier. Big Israeli outfit that threw together a North American shell to try to undercut me.”

“Right, I remember now. The head honcho never showed at the hearings, kept sending busloads of lawyers.”

“That’s the one. I was outmanned but I called in a lot of chits and pulled it out. Maybe I should’ve let them have it.”

“And the same thing would have happened. And remember, the power grid is just one little piece of this puzzle.”

“Yeah, but it’s the power grid that brought everything grinding to a halt. You said yourself that the Bureau can’t even run a proper investigation. The fate of the world is at stake and everything is so crippled that they can’t even put up a decent fight.”

“There are supposed to be contingency plans in place for everything, including something like this, but the fact is our government let us down by not being ready, not you. That’s how it really is, Matthew.”

He leaned over and got right down in my face, eyeball to eyeball. “Do you hear me?”

What he was saying started making sense. My mind started clearing, my eyelids growing lighter as my fighting spirit gat
hered steam. “I do.”

“Good, let’s nail this son-of-a-buck.”

“Agreed.”

I stood and stretched, and Tark said, “You think we should bring the FBI up to speed on what we’ve found?”

“We better. They need the information. I’ll play it safe and send it directly to Brandon.”