24 Declassified: 03 - Trojan Horse (24 page)

“This virus is complex, though. A real mother,” Milo observed as more data appeared.

“Good thing we have a copy,” said Doris. “In the next five hours, I’m sure we can create some kind of firewall. That way the major ISPs will be shielded, at least...”

While the others were busy watching the screen, Lesser turned toward the computer at the vacant workstation—a computer still hooked into CTU’s mainframe. He quietly established a quick link to the CIA’s system in D.C., then smiled to himself.

The more chaos, the better.

He took one last glance around. Chappelle was still on the phone, talking intently. The others were hypnotized by the data unspooling on the monitor.

Reaching into his boot, he found the hidden pen drive. He pulled it out and plugged it into the computer’s USB port. He called up the execute file stored inside the drive and launched it.

With a satisfied grin, he unplugged the drive and tucked it back into his boot. Then Lesser faced the others again. The blind idiots hadn’t noticed a thing.

6:55:01
P
.
M
. PDT Terrence Alton Chamberlain Auditorium Los Angeles

Comedian Willy Diamond finished a hilarious monologue, the highlight of the evening. Special Agent Ron

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Birchwood hadn’t laughed or even smiled. In fact, he had barely uttered ten words since the Silver Screen Awards had begun.

Sitting in the Presidential Box directly behind the Vice President’s wife, he could see she was getting along well with Marina Katerine Novartov, whose English was better in a private conversation than in a public forum. The First Lady of Russia had discussed many topics with the Second Lady of the United States during the long, boring lags in the awards show.

At Birchwood’s side sat his counterpart, Russian se
curity chief Vladimir Borodin. Like Birchwood, he hadn’t laughed at a single joke since the awards ceremony began—and he’d uttered even fewer words. Language wasn’t the issue. Borodin spoke excellent English. Both men were absorbed in their jobs, watching the crowd, listening to the chatter in their earbuds, all channels open.

On stage, Willy Diamond bowed to thunderous applause. Then the orchestra struck up a reprise of the night’s ubiquitous Silver Screen Awards theme, and the event’s broadcast cut to a commercial.

As the audience buzzed with gossip, stagehands guided the giant camera prop to center stage on a motorized platform—the signal that another award was about to be presented after the commercial break.

Birchwood noticed a well-known movie star step out on stage for a moment to check the prompter’s position before returning to the wings. He couldn’t remember the actor’s name—Chad or Chip? That was it, he thought, Chip Manning. His preteen daughter had a poster of the handsome actor on her bedroom wall, next to a popular boy band group and a half-dozen photographs of rainbows.

She’d been so excited to hear that her dad would be at the famous awards show, taking care of security for the Vice President’s wife. He knew she was watching at home in Maryland, right now, with her mother and baby brother. He could just picture them, trying to spot him in the split-second shots of the awards show crowd. For the first time that evening, Ron Birchwood smiled.

The orchestra struck up again. As the broadcast came back from commercial, one of Birchwood’s detail, standing behind him in the Presidential Box, touched his shoulder. “Channel one, sir.”

An outside line?
Birchwood thumbed the transmitter, turned up the volume in his headset.

“Special Agent Birchwood? This is Ryan Chappelle, Regional Director, Counter Terrorist Unit, Los Angeles.”

To prove his identity, Chappelle gave the Secret Service agent his authorization code, which Birchwood confirmed on his PDA.

“What can I do for you, Director?”

“We have a credible threat that an attempt is about to be made on the life of the Vice President, or on the wife of the Russian President. Probably both.”

“How credible?”

“In the last hour, a CTU agent killed a terrorist who was in possession of elaborate blueprints of the auditorium you’re in. We have reason to believe the strike is imminent.”

Birchwood turned to Vladimir Borodin. “Sir, I—”

“Yes, I heard,” the Russian said, frowning. “I suggest we move now.”

Birchwood stood up, addressed the agent behind him. Borodin did the same.

“Get the women out of here now,” Birchwood

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commanded. “Orderly evacuation. No panic. Quick as you can.”

6:57:20
P
.
M
. PDT Avenue de Dante Tijuana, Mexico

For nearly an hour, Tony had been investigating the evidence in the room where he’d silenced Ray Dobyns.

He finally managed to crack the security protocol that guarded the system. He couldn’t go very deep into the files—too many of them had secondary security—but a few were not secured and Tony pe
rused them.

He learned Richard Lesser had created the virus he claimed Hasan had given him. He’d done it right here at this console; the set up at the brothel had been a ruse, or a back up system. From some unsecured notebook files Tony found Lesser’s notes. Most of them made no sense, but one file’s title grabbed Tony’s attention: ACTIVE CTU.

Amazingly the file was not locked. Someone had used it recently, and burned this data onto a disk, which was missing—the system was already asking if the user wanted a second disk burned. Tony opened the file and found a comprehensive dossier on Jack Bauer, taken right out of the CIA’s database.

“Son of a bitch.”

Another file, called TROJAN HORSE PART TWO, was also unsecured. Tony scanned the file, and his blood turned to ice.

This was it, the evidence that confirmed Dobyns’s claim was true. He snatched up the cell phone Dobyns had dropped on the carpet, punched in Ryan Chappelle’s number, and got Nina Myers.

“Nina, where’s Ryan?”

“He’s with the Crisis Management Team. I was on my way there when your call was forwarded to me—”

“Richard Lesser is a traitor. I’ve got hard evidence here. He’s only pretending to flip. He’s about to take down CTU’s computers, phones, and electronic communications. Everything. You’ve got to—”

The line went dead. Tony punched redial and got a busy signal. He punched in CTU’s emergency number. It was also busy—which was never supposed to happen.

Tony cursed, realizing his warning had come too late. CTU’s computer system was down. Lesser had unleashed his virus.

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLAC
E
BETWEEN THE HOURS OF
7 P.M. AND 8 P.M.
PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME

7:03:00
P
.
M
. PDT Television Control Booth Chamberlain Auditorium

“Cue camera three, pull back camera one. Get ready for a close up, camera five. On three, on two, one...”

From his cushioned chair, director Hal Green watched the main monitor that displayed the feed as it was going out to the network and millions of view
ers. He ignored the huge picture windows a few feet in front of him, though they offered a vista of center stage and almost the entire auditorium. He wanted to see what everyone else was seeing on their TV screens.

At the moment, the camera was focused on Chip Manning as he strode into view from stage left and moved toward the main podium. Manning was a popular actor, tall and muscular with dime-a-dozen cover-boy model features capped with hair in a Caesar cut. He’d paired his exquisitely tailored Helmut Lang suit with a white shirt, open at the collar, ostrich-skin cowboy boots and a salon-trimmed five o’clock shadow. The entire look had been carefully calculated by his stylist to accent Manning’s “casually-aloof-yet-elegant tough guy” persona.

“Cue camera five. Two, one...”

The camera focused on Ava Stanton, a long-limbed beauty in a daring fuchsia gown. The eyes of every technician in the control room remained fixed on Ava’s strapless décolleté, riding low on her ample cleavage. As the glammed-up actress teetered on her high heels in a shaky journey from stage right to center stage, the crew braced for a “costume malfunction” with a combination of FCC fear and hopeful anticipation.

“Cue camera one on the podium...”

Hal Green lowered one hand and rested it on the control board. With the other he sipped coffee from a thermal cup. Under bushy gray brows, his alert hazel eyes almost never left the main screen. When they did, it was only to check the view from another camera in one of six secondary monitors.

Ben Solomon, at the next console, groaned. “It’s going to get dicey here. Ava never gets it in one. And she flubbed her lines at both rehearsals. And look who she’s paired with. Chip Manning—”

Hal smiled at the remarks of his sixty-year-old assistant director. He’d heard several like it in the past ninety minutes. But that was Ben. After hiring the

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man for this job consistently for the past nine shows, Hal knew what to expect.

“It’s a crying shame what this business has come to,” Ben muttered. “Chip Manning teaches a couple of government trainees a few karate chops at a Sunset Strip dojo and his press agent calls him ‘a career mar
tial artist who advises members of America’s intelligence community.’ And Ava Stanton is nothing more than a glorified supermodel. She’s no Elizabeth Taylor, that’s for sure.”

“She’s no Elizabeth
Berkeley
,” Green replied, suppressing a laugh. “But that’s what we’ve got now, Ben. Ava Stanton wiggles her assets on a prime time soap and she’s a star.”

“Please,” Ben muttered in genuine horror. “Don’t use that term with me. I remember the real stars— Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Bergman—”

“What the hell is that?” Hal suddenly cried.

Rising to his feet, he lifted his gaze from the monitors to stare through the immense windows overlooking the auditorium. Ben tried to rise but got tangled in his headset. He heard confused cries, shouts, even nervous laughter from the audience.

Chip Manning and Ava Stanton had just launched into their scripted “off-the-cuff-sounding witty banter” when they’d been upstaged by a prop. Behind their backs, the top of the huge Silver Screen Awards sculpture had opened up and eight armed men wearing black masks had slid down short ropes to the stage.

This absurd, ridiculous, almost surreal scene had been greeted by nervous titters of laughter mingled with cries of surprise and alarm.
Is this all a part of the show?
the audience collectively wondered.
Maybe a publicity stunt for Chip Manning’s new movie?

“Clear the stage!” Hal Green shouted into his headset. “Security, get them off,
now
—”

Obeying the director, several security men rushed onto the stage to intercept the masked invaders. Armed only with nightsticks and electronic stunners, they’d never had a chance. Every trained assassin had dropped to one knee, raised his weapon, and fired into the uniformed ranks.

The explosion of weapons, then the red tracers warbling across the stage to rip through flesh, muscle, and bone had ended any notion that this was some sort of prearranged stunt. People in the audience stumbled into the aisles, trampled over each other, trying to flee the auditorium, only to be turned back at the doors by the handsome ushers and seat escorts provided by the Dodge Modeling Agency. These young men, who’d already donned black headscarves and green armbands, waved submachine guns, firing into the air in an effort to throw back the panicked mob.

Meanwhile, on stage, Chip Manning and his tough-guy five o’clock shadow were giving the world a demonstration of his martial arts skills. With lightning quick evasive maneuvers, he’d managed to flee the attacking gunmen faster than his lovely co-presenter who, hobbled by her high heels, was easily brought down by the butt of an assassin’s gun.

Up in the control booth, the director heard a crash, turned to find a trio of armed men breaking in. Black headscarves covered all but their eyes, and each carried some kind of machine gun with a banana clip and a big ring under its barrel.

The single security guard inside the booth aimed his sidearm. The chatter of a machine gun stopped him,

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eliciting cries of horror from everyone in the small space.

“Put your hands up!” One of the masked men was aiming his short, stubby machine gun at the control booth crew. The invader slapped a gloved hand on Hal’s shoulder and roughly yanked him off his chair, to the floor.

“Bastard,” Ben Solomon spat. He tried to strike back, but the terrorist threw the older man off, hitting him with the butt of his gun.

“Ben!” Hal cried.

Now both men were cowed and down on the floor. The masked man herded them into a corner. The sec
ond gunmen pushed the soundman and the rest of the staff into the opposite corner.

The third masked man strode to the center of the control booth, machine gun resting on his elbow. He scanned the room, then spoke.

“This auditorium, this event is now in the control of the United Liberation Front for a Free Chechnya. Cooperate and you may live. Resist and you will most surely die.”

7:05:09
P
.
M
. PDT Security Booth Chamberlain Auditorium

“LAPD respond! Respond!” cried the uniformed dispatcher over the radio. “This is an emergency, the Chamberlain Auditorium is under attack. There’s gunfire, officers down. Repeat. We are under assault.”

Static was the only answer.

Security Chief Tomas Morales squeezed the dispatcher’s shoulder. “The system’s down. Or the signal’s jammed. We can’t talk to the outside. I hope the cops figure out what’s going on. Until then, let’s open up the arsenal.”