Seven Unholy Days (2 page)

All states were back online and I could restore the CEPOCS code to its original state. Some P.R. damage control lay ahead, but I had friends in the media—along with a few vulnerable non-friends. I’d gotten off easy. Lurking in the rear chambers of my mind, however, was a nagging buzz: CEPOCS was Decker Digital’s flagship project, and until I could find the hole and plug it, the system was vulnerable.

After three trips around the room Beeman eased into his chair and hunched over the keyboard, his shoulders drawn in tight. Why was he still so worked up? He looked back and I caught his eye. I started toward him.

“Hey, Harold.” He turned his back. His hand was on the mouse, clicking away with jerky movements. Closing programs. Purging files as fast as he could type and click.

I was behind him in two big strides. “Beem—”

He sprang from the chair, sending it careening into my shins. I fell back against a support column. He bolted from the room. I shoved the chair out of the way and went after him. A high-security program had just been hacked and here was a freaky-acting geek.

I made it to the parking lot just in time to see him whiz by, firing a panicky look my way as his car fishtailed past.

Tarkleton came up behind me, panting, his dead pipe still clenched in his teeth. “What’s going on?”

I watched Beeman blow through the main gate and hang a hard turn onto the main road doing about fifty. “I’d say—”

“Matt Decker!” I turned around and saw Abidi in the doorway, motioning frantically. “Come here quickly!”

2

2:42 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

             
Abdul pointed to the display. The sixteen states were gone. In their place was a black screen filled with bright red letters, a sickly animated font that seemed to drip and run down the screen like a bloody message on the wall of a murder scene:

SEVEN DAYS OF PERDITION

“You better get Washington on the line,” I said to Tarkleton. “This is a nasty bunch.”

“Looks like some kind of religious nut,” he said.

“Hardly. There’s a group on the Internet called the ‘Sons of Perdition.’  They claim to be environmentalists trying to stop mankind’s ‘damnation of the Earth.’”

Abdul nodded. “I have read of them.”

“In reality,” I said, “they’re nothing but a gaggle of cyber-thugs who get off on hitting systems, the bigger the better. Corporate servers have borne the brunt of their attacks so far, but they’re getting braver and the infrastructure is a natural target.”

Tarkleton flicked a lighter and sucked the flame down into the bowl of his pipe. “If you say so, but perdition, even ‘sons of perdition’ for that matter, has biblical meaning too.”

“Washington will bring in the FBI, and I’m sure they’ll check all angles. If you’ll get that ball rolling, I need to spend some time inside Beeman’s station and the other systems. Our rollback was a finger in the dam. I want to close the hole for good.”

He puffed and nodded.

“By the way,” I said, “I think we should ask local law enforcement to bring Beeman in so we can find out what he knows.”

“I know where he lives. After we get caught up here, let’s go find him ourselves.”

A knock sounded at the doorway and I looked that way. Standing there was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

“Mr. Tarkleton, you mind if I speak to Brett for just a m
inute?” she said.

Her voice was smooth, almost melodious. The sight of her, the sound of her, captivated me.

“Hey Jana,” Tarkleton said. “Come on in.”

She walked by on her way to Brett and smiled briefly as she passed. Shoulder-length blond hair, tan skin the texture of bu
tter, eyes I can’t find words to describe. They talked quietly for a moment, and he handed her a key. Girlfriend or wife? On her way out she caught me off guard by stopping.

“Where have I seen you?” she said.

“On TV,” Tarkleton said. “This is Matthew Decker.”

“Really, the computer guy?” she said.

I nodded and smiled. She extended her hand. “I’m Jana Fulton. Very good to meet you, Mr. Decker.” Fulton. Damn.

“My pleasure, Jana.” Her touch was like everything else about her, and another of my senses flooded with unfamiliar feelings. Our eyes locked for the briefest moment and I didn’t care that her jerk of a husband was fifteen feet away. I wanted to believe she didn’t care either, but I couldn’t trust my whirling psyche. She smiled again, and then she was gone.

I glanced toward Brett. He was oblivious.

4:30 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

THE PEABODY HOTEL

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Abraham Hart sat on the Victorian leather sofa in a white linen suit, dark hands laid neatly on his lap. Parked unde
rneath coal-black eyebrows, his startling blue eyes flicked back and forth, looking first at Dane, then Riff. Both men looked hardcore military: sturdy frames, buzz cuts, Dane in blue jeans and a desert-camo fatigue jacket, Riff in black cargo pants and a painted-on black tee.

“Messers Christian,” Hart said, “perhaps you can explain this to me,” pointing a manicured fingertip at a lamp on an end table, unremarkable except for the fact it was on.

“Remember, sir, this was a test,” Dane said, “and quite successful.”

Hart slowly moved the pointing finger in front of his face, bringing it to his lips in a call for silence. “Mr. Christian, I never classified this as a test. I classified it as step one. My tests were carried out some time ago.”

Another staring session, as Hart reflected on a series of mysterious power outages in the western states a few years earlier, and another more recent string of failures on the Atlantic seaboard. Mysterious to some, not to him. “You are handsomely paid. I did not hire you for a display of trial-and-error buffoonery.”

Riff was turning red, his eyes narrowing. “Now look—”

Hart raised his finger back to his lips. “No.” Civilizations rose and fell during the silence. Finally he resumed, punctuating each word with an angry tap of his finger on the table. “You look. My instructions were specific. Three states. Three hours. I got less than one hour. Why?”

“Sir, this is a minor asset problem,” Dane said. “We have two people at Central, neither one aware of the other. Both failed to effectively limit Decker.”

“I see.”

Dane hesitated before continuing. “I must remind you that this game with Decker is—”

Hart drew a sharp breath and raised his hand. “Do not presume to lecture me. Simply explain how you plan to restore the primary code.”

“I’ll reinstall it myself. There’s no indication our code has been discovered at the other three centers, but as a precaution I’m going with the propagation code on the re-install. It will spread to the other three centers, as well as the archival code. By zero-hour, our code will be in place in all four centers as well as the archives, and the system will be locked.”

“What about the failed assets?”

“Riff and I will deal with them. As for Decker—”

“I will deal with Decker.” Hart tapped his lip. “Personally.”

Dane nodded. “Everything will be in order, sir. We guara
ntee it.”

Hart closed his eyes and drew a slow, deep breath through his nostrils. The eyelids slowly raised and he stared at neither man, instead gazing at the space between them. “Be very sure that it is, Messers Christian. Leave me now.”

Hart sat alone in the lavish hotel room and evaluated the afternoon’s events. The three states were of course a test, a very successful one and the last step before the Glorious Beginning, even though he dared not let the Christian brothers know. The flock deserved praise and encouragement. Barbaric mercenaries deserved nothing.

Decker had behaved predictably. He checked his watch and smiled—mere hours remained before the public’s love affair with that silly little wunderkind would lurch to a halt. Over the course of the coming week, destiny would be fulfilled, and in the process he would crush Decker like a cockroach beneath his mighty sole. The next few hours, however, were critical. Pe
rhaps a bit of diversion was in order, something to occupy Decker’s mind until the plan was fully in motion.

Hart opened and booted his laptop, then established a link to his main personal computer seven hundred miles away. He composed an email, and through a series of tunneled co
mmands, ordered the remote machine to rebuild and send the message via an elaborate network of anonymizers that would eliminate any chance for his crafty adversary to track its origin.

He shut down the laptop and switched on the television to CNN. File video footage of the Yellow Creek facility was pla
ying while the anchor talked. “Join us this evening for in-depth coverage of today’s blackout in the South. Up next, we take a look at televangelism. Is it about God or about dollars?”

Hart switched off the set, walked to the window, and looked to the sky. “God,” he said with a sneer, “you had your chance and look what a mess you made. Prepare to step aside, old man.”

3

8:40 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

IUKA COUNTRY INN

FIFTEEN MILES SOUTHEAST OF YELLOW CREEK

             
I combed Beeman’s station for clues and found none. Whatever he deleted, he did thoroughly. Nor did I find irregularities—beyond the one nasty bug—during an exhaustive check of every system in the plant. Plugging the hole presented a problem: I had to find it first.

Now, on Tarkleton’s recommendation, here I sat in a closet-sized room at the Iuka Country Inn. He was due at nine-thirty for a trip to Beeman’s house.

I showered, put on jeans and a tee-shirt, and powered up my laptop. My plan was to get in a bit of research on the GCE control crew, especially Harold Beeman, before Tarkleton arrived.

“You have new mail,” the laptop announced. There were o
nly eighteen, so I decided to take care of them first. I moved through the list quickly, answering the ones that warranted it, filing some, trashing some.

Number sixteen broke the routine. It was from a gibberish Hotmail address and had no subject:

Return-Path:

Delivered-To: x7ijljAweRRv -deckerdigital:[email protected]

X-Envelope-To: [email protected]

X-Originating-IP: [66.156.171.40]

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject:

Never more horror, nor worse of days

Than those to come to he who stays.

Your filthy secrets Are in jeopardy.

The prickly hairs on the back of my neck stood up and a chill rippled down my spine. This was my private address; only a handful of people had access to it. No one accidentally emails [email protected], and I did have some features in my past best left alone. Nothing that rose to the level of “filthy secrets” as far as I was concerned, but not good for bus
iness, either.

What the hell was going on? This didn’t fit the Sons of Perd
ition. I could burn every one of them and they knew it. They wouldn’t confront me directly.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
The knocks shook the door in its frame, and I jumped six inches off the chair. I went to the door and looked through the peephole. Tarkleton was early.

“Come in, Mr. Tarkleton.”

“Thanks, but you’re supposed to be calling me Tark now, remember?”

“Tark it is. Listen, I’m sorry we got off to a rough start t
oday.”

“Not a problem, it was edgy for all of us.” He cocked his head and looked at me. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You look a little pale.”

“It’s been a long day. I’m fine, really. Ready to go see Beeman?”

“I tried his cell phone about ten times. He’s not answering. I’ll get the sheriff looking for him.”

“By the way, I think you’re right. This doesn’t really fit for the Sons of Perdition gang I mentioned earlier.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Just thinking it over. Doesn’t feel right.”

We wrapped up the conversation and he left. I almost told him about the email, but I decided to keep it to myself for the time being. Tarkleton was beginning to seem like a nice enough fellow, but I’ve found it’s best to build trust the same way you build a house of cards: very carefully.

Back in front of the laptop, I went to work backtracking the email. It was naturally from an anonymous email provider, in this case Hotmail. Fortunately (for me, anyway), a lot of these brand-name systems aren’t as secure as they would have people believe. I was inside their traceroute log files within forty seconds, ready to see where the sender of that email came from when he logged onto the Hotmail server.

I found the IP easily enough and ran a quick trace on it. That was where I hit a brick wall. Whoever it was had the good sense to come into Hotmail from a cloaking service that hid his ident
ity. I could punch through that brick wall, but it carried a detection risk and, depending on how many anonymizers they bounced through on the way to Hotmail, it could take a lot of time and crunching numbers. I decided it wasn’t worth it. Yet.

Checking out Beeman was next on my list. CEPOCS wasn’t my first government contract, and I had left a few back doors scattered about. It took two minutes to pull up a detailed doss
ier on Mr. Beeman from the Department of Public Utilities database. His DOPU file was unremarkable: a bunch of typical tech training and certifications, dependable worker, and no arrest record, not even a traffic ticket, IQ 121. Married, no kids. The file had a picture of his wife, Mary, who looked to be about the size of a Volkswagen. Harold better stick with the missionary position.

Abdul Abidi’s research was more interesting. He came to the U.S. from Iran on a student visa and eventually became a cit
izen. He had more than typical tech training. He was Dr. Abidi, with a Ph.D. in applied computer science from none other than MIT. Noteworthy, to say the least. IQ 154, single, parents and a number of siblings still back home in Iran. Lots of speeding tickets, but nothing more serious. What was an MIT Ph.D. doing in the GCE control room? I downloaded his file to the hard drive for easy access and a deeper look later on.

The file on Brett Fulton was as shallow as he appeared to be. He had an associate’s degree in information technology from Itawamba Community College, Fulton, Mississippi, not far from where I sat. Football star there in the junior college division, no 1-A scholarship offers when he finished his second year. Walked on at Ole Miss, got cut, took a swing at the head coach, got suspended from school and never came back. No IQ listed. Boring jock who wasn’t even good enough at that. The bottom of each file had a row of thumbnail images of family members and one of them drew my cursor to it like a magnet.

I clicked to open it, and Jana Fulton’s picture filled the screen. Twenty-seven, a trauma nurse, and
sister
of a prick. I stared at the picture for another couple of minutes, then saved her file to the hard drive, too.

It had been a hectic day and I was worn out, but I decided to go ahead and include Tarkleton in my brief investigation. “NO MATCH” was the surprising result of the search. I made a note to re-run the search later. There was obviously an error of some sort. Anyone associated with the power grid had a file. That i
ncluded me, although my files were somewhat sanitized.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! The door shook just like last time, for good reason. Tark was back. I opened the door and he burst into the room, breathing hard, his pale blue shirt drenched with sweat and stuck to the big hairy belly underneath. I r
emembered that his name was all over the screen of my laptop, so I closed the lid as quickly and discreetly as I could. He was looking that way, but I couldn’t tell if he saw anything or not. I hoped not.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” he said. “Harold Beeman is dead.”