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After I spent five years working overtime to modernize their traffic-light system.

Bloodaxe clenched his teeth in anger. Although it had not taken him long to secure a position with a private firm in Portland, Oregon, he still resented the city for the way it had discarded him and a dozen other programmers the moment the new system went on-line, without even having the decency of offering a severance package to tide him over while he looked for another job.

And now it's time for the bastards to feel a little pain.

The hacker reviewed the code once more, making certain that it would act just as he had programmed it. He wanted to punish city officials, not the general population of Washington, D.C. He wanted to attack the tumor without hurting the patient. And he felt convinced he possessed the skills and determination to do it, just as he had done it so many times in his not-so-distant past, a past he had worked very hard to keep buried. The authorities no longer looked for him, giving up after two years of unsuccessful high-tech tracking. Bloodaxe knew that today's strike would renew their search. Although he didn't plan to leave a personal signature with his work, he knew that once authorities captured a copy of the mutating virus, they would be able to compare this masterpiece with his previous work and make the connection, like matching high-tech fingerprints. But that was a risk Bloodaxe was more than willing to take to teach these city officials a lesson.

Satisfied, he enclosed a copy of the string in a software cocoon, designed to keep the virus contained until it reached its target system.

The next step was finding a way to pierce the city's software defense system—designed to keep hackers like Bloodaxe out of the nonpublic directories—and deliver his deadly software packet.

Logging on to the Internet, Bloodaxe dialed into one of several modems he suspected still existed at the city's central traffic-controlling branch. These modems were used exclusively by employees who wanted to log in from home to follow up on their work. Bloodaxe had owned one of these modem accounts once, but the system administrator had canceled it upon his termination. The sys admin, however, had only
canceled
Bloodaxe's account. He had not
removed
the modem's dial-in number from the system. Paranoid that someone might suspect him if he used his old dial-in number, Bloodaxe chose a different one, belonging to Bloodaxe's former boss, the manager of technical services.

Poetic justice.
The hacker smiled at the irony of using his former superior's system as the launching platform for his virus.

The beauty of modems was that a hacker could bypass the initial software firewall designed to protect a network from illegal Internet users trying to gain access through the system's “front door.” Modems accessed a network through a phone line connected directly to one of the computers of the network, not through the Ethernet server used by most users.

As the log-on screen for the city's traffic-controlling network greeted him, Bloodaxe typed in a shadow password, which he had left behind in all workstations as a “back door” in case he ever had to go in unannounced, gaining access to the Unix workstation. He knew that getting to this point was only half of the battle. He could easily fire his torpedo and its enclosed deadly packet of software into this system and kill it, along with probably dozens of other workstations linked to his old boss's system. But that would not accomplish his primary goal. Beyond the network's firewall was a software vault, or second firewall, accessible only to those users with the root password, where the large servers resided. The hacker so far had entered the building, roaming its hallways, inspecting the decor, but he could not yet penetrate the inner rooms, where the computers that controlled traffic hummed along protected from the intruder by this second firewall.

Aside from the system administrator, only two other people in the building had root privilege, the chief of security, and his former boss.

Adrenaline searing his veins, Bloodaxe breathed deeply to control his growing excitement. It'd been years since he had done this, and in a way he missed the thrill of it. With a few keystrokes, the hacker tricked his boss's system into crashing, forcing the Unix workstation to perform a core dump, the flushing of its random-access memory. Core dumps were designed to enable programmers to perform an electronic autopsy of the system's digital remains to learn why the system had crashed.

Bloodaxe read this core dump and transferred it to a file in his own home directory. Mixed with thousands of bytes of diagnostics and system logs were the passwords that his boss had last entered to gain access not just to his workstation, but also to the servers beyond the second firewall, the root password. Using a custom program appropriately named Extractor, the hacker gained root privilege in a few minutes. By then his boss's workstation had rebooted, allowing Bloodaxe to log in once more using the shadow password. This time, however, he also entered his newly acquired root privilege, opening the door to the servers for a direct torpedo shot. Before firing, however, he also changed the root password, locking out the system administrator and anyone who might try to attempt to stop his attack—at least for a little while.

With a single click of the mouse, he released the cocoon, which passed cleanly through the multiple layers of security, reaching the inner room, spilling its virulent contents into the network servers, following its directive to seek out the hard drives housing the complex programs that kept the nation's capital's rush-hour morning traffic from turning into havoc.

The virus quickly began to replicate across the hundreds of thousands of files in the drive, disabling the automatic backup systems, which he himself had designed to enable the local traffic-light controllers in the event of a network failure. Next, the alien code struck the primary program of the control system, instantly forcing all traffic lights within a two-mile radius into a flashing-red pattern.

Now let's see you bastards try to figure this one out without the help of the programmers you laid off!

Bloodaxe's gaze returned to the digital display across the street, which he had grown accustomed to use as a counter while cooking or exercising. Today he used it to mark the time it took before the effects of his virus brought the city to its knees.

Ten-foot-tall digital numbers flashed crimson waves of light as the counter's two right-most digits, marking the hundredths of a second, constantly pulsated next to the steady rhythm of the seconds and the nearly constant glow of the minutes, hours, and days.

In the minutes following the high-tech strike, traffic began to back up at all major intersections as the carefully designed traffic-light system turned into four-way stops. Within twenty minutes, Washington, D.C., had come to a standstill. While city officials struggled to enable the backup systems, the traffic flowing into the city clogged all access roads, from New York Avenue to Virginia and Constitution. In Dupont Circle angered drivers laid on their horns, kicking off a cacophony of sounds and shouts that mixed with those from other sections of the city. Amazingly, the first accident didn't occur until thirty-one minutes after the sabotage, when traffic backed up a curved exit ramp from Highway 195, just out of sight from a minivan getting off the highway. The driver had taken this route countless times before on her way to Georgetown University, where she taught computer science. Although the posted speed limit on the exit ramp was thirty-five miles per hour, she usually took it at forty. Her husband, a federal agent from the Treasury Department, rode in the passenger seat. Their two-year-old daughter sat in the back. All three were wearing their safety belts.

She slammed on the brakes but could not avoid crashing into the row of stopped vehicles on the ramp. The airbags mushroomed, sparing her from fatally crushing her face against the steering wheel. The airbag system also saved her husband's life. The safety belt wrapped over her daughter's shoulder kept her from bouncing inside the family vehicle.

Unfortunately, the minivan collided while turning down the curved exit ramp. The impact did not stop the vehicle but simply deflected its momentum to the left, crashing it against a three-foot side wall, forcing it over the edge, plummeting a dozen feet to the ground below.

All three were flown to nearby Georgetown University Hospital. The husband died en route from severe trauma to the head and torso. The daughter died that afternoon from internal bleeding. The driver spent two months in a coma.

Before awakening to a nightmare.

Chapter One

000001

1

Washington, D.C.

The Walther PPK semiautomatic could hold seven rounds, but Susan Garnett thumbed only one into the magazine before jamming it into the gun's grip. She flipped off the safety and pulled back the slide, chambering the cartridge. Keeping her finger off the trigger, she let her robe fall by her feet before stepping into the tub in her bathroom.

Susan immersed herself in the lukewarm water, her dark olive skin momentarily goose-bumping. Inhaling deeply, she forced her mind to relax, finding it amazingly easy to do, a strange sense of peace descending on her.

“Soon,” she whispered, her catlike eyes glaring at the framed picture on the small shelf over the toilet. “Soon it won't matter anymore.”

The slim gun fit comfortably in the palm of her right hand, which remained steady, like a surgeon's. With surprising calmness, Susan stared at her late husband's backup weapon, the one he'd always carried in an ankle holster while on duty at the Department of the Treasury, the same gun he had used to teach her how to shoot at a range in Virginia. The well-oiled PPK reflected the overheads as Susan slowly pointed the muzzle at the ceiling before placing it under her chin, remembering a story her husband had told her about a fellow agent who'd killed himself “the right way.” The officer had done it in the bathtub to avoid making a mess. He'd also used only one cartridge in the semiautomatic. When he'd fired it, the recoiling slide had extracted and ejected the spent case, but a new round had not been chambered, leaving behind a safe weapon instead of a loaded one. Lastly, the officer had fired the gun under his chin instead of against his temple, where the skull could deflect the round, preventing it from inflicting the desired fatal blow.

Susan closed her eyes, recalling that dreadful morning almost two years ago. She remembered Rebecca singing in the backseat while Tom checked his daily planner. She'd always dropped Rebecca at preschool first, then Tom at his work, before driving herself to the computer science building at Georgetown University to teach her daily classes.

The thirty-five-year-old woman began to cry, tears streaming down her cheeks. She could still see the curved exit ramp, the rear bumper of a car suddenly appearing in her field of view. She felt the initial impact, airbags blossoming with the sound of a gunshot, the sky and the ground swapping places as the minivan went over the edge. Then nothing. She could remember absolutely nothing, until she'd awakened from a deep coma.

“And into a nightmare that ends—”

The phone rang in the bedroom. She frowned at the intrusion but ignored it, keeping her eyes closed, fixing her index finger over the trigger, feeling the familiar resistance of the firing mechanism, knowing just how much pressure the PPK required to fire the cartridge. For the past two years she had controlled her suicidal thoughts by going to the shooting range and imagining that the paper silhouette hanging from the track was—

The phone rang a second time. The answering machine picked it up on the third ring.

Her index finger tensed over the trigger as she listened to her own voice in the greeting, followed by three short beeps.

“Pick up, Sue. I know you're home.”

She frowned at Troy Reid's voice echoing in her small apartment in downtown Washington. Reid, an old hand at the Bureau, ran the FBI's high-tech crime unit. Susan was one of his top analysts. Following the accident and her release from the hospital, Susan had switched careers, opting to devote all of her energy and skills to catching hackers, starting with the elusive David Canek, also known as Hans Bloodaxe, the man responsible for her family's death. She had immersed herself in her work as a way to forget the pain, the memories, the faces. As a way to purge her mind from a past that was simply too painful to remember, forcing all of her energy into achieving her personal vendetta. For months she'd set up traps at thousands of Internet service providers (ISPs) in the hope of finding her hacker. She'd eventually caught Bloodaxe with one of her software traps, buried deep inside an ISP in Portland, Oregon. Susan had also nailed over a hundred hackers in just under two years with the Bureau, earning a sterling reputation as top cybercop. But all of the fame and recognition didn't prevent her from spiraling into a deep depression after Bloodaxe was convicted and sentenced to life at a federal prison three months ago. She had come to the realization that the fire of retribution burning deep inside her had been the inner power that had fueled her desire to go on after the accident. Now that Bloodaxe was behind bars, Susan suddenly found herself without a reason for living.

“We've got what seems to be a global event, Sue. C'mon, pick up the phone. I know you've put in sixteen straight hours, but this is very hot. Gotta talk to you.”

Global event?
Susan cursed under her breath while lowering the gun and flipping on the safety with her thumb, setting it over a sealed envelope on the shelf above the toilet, next to the picture frame. Wrapping the robe around her, she walked to the bedroom and reached for the phone, noticing a slight tremble in her hand. Taking a deep breath, she said, “
Hello,
Troy.”

“You sound annoyed. Sorry, Sue. Were you sleeping?”