Albatross (24 page)

Then there was silence. Everything was quiet for at least a moment. Helms took in the severity of the situation before he spoke again. He looked at his people’s young faces as they gave an “end of days” expression and pushed buttons on inoperative equipment. Helms likened the expression to a marine caught in a firefight with defective ammunition—pulling the trigger but with no discharge. The only one not absently pushing buttons was Janeson. She had taken out a pen and a legal-sized pad of paper. She was figuring something out.

“All right,” Helms said to himself. “We’ll do it old school.”

Helms stood tall, his hands squarely placed on his hips, and issued next steps in the darkened, silent cavern. “All right, people. Get out of the control room and find any space, any laptop not connected to our servers and get those kids out of that school. I want that area evacuated and locked down!”

Helms started herding all of his team out of the “more technologically advanced cave” that man had made. Helms hoped the offices still had paper directories and telephone hard-lines in the building. He also wondered if his control room was the only one that had fallen to this attack.

Janeson was the last one out. She wanted his attention, so she waited to be last.

Helms looked down at the pad of paper she had been feverishly writing on.

“Sir,” Janeson started, “the Arabic writing seen at the hospital, truck, and other crimes scenes translates to ‘I remember everything that happened on May 2.’”

Helms looked at her, hoping she knew what it meant. Janeson was the smartest on the team and the best at these kinds of puzzles. In a rare moment of accurately reading and displaying nonverbal communication, Janeson shook her head, indicating that she didn’t know the date’s meaning and that she was baffled by its mention. Helms was too, but he could tell Janeson would not let this task go unchallenged. She started to walk ahead of him, making a list of important events that had occurred on May 2 throughout history.

Once outside of the control room, Helms started walking from cubicle to cubicle, getting an update on what was happening. He was relieved that his team had located and rerouted resources to the school. School staff had been notified and had evacuated the buildings.

Helms had to think. His Boston office was without computers, and for all intents and purposes, it was dead. With the control room and its resources nullified, he had to do something. Then it hit him.

In a set of cubicles, Helms stood erect and barreled out orders. “I need five people to stay in the office and man the phones. Everyone else, we are going mobile. Get the cars ready and bring your weapons and tactical gear.”

“Sir,” Gilmore said, “where are we going?”

“We are going to Andover to secure the crime scene, and then we are going to catch the bastards who are doing this,” Helms said casually.

“Fucking A,” said Crepes, who had returned with Martin from the room with the servers.

As his team began to reorganize, Helms walked to his office alone. Once in his office, he put on his tactical vest, semiautomatic sidearm, and the standard FBI windbreaker. He was ready to hit the field. At least that would be doing something. He just wanted a moment to collect his thoughts before he left. He spent about twenty minutes on his cell phone, bringing his boss up to speed about how anything electronic and computer-driven, even the digital office phones and cable television in the offices, were now inoperable. The attack that had hit him had taken about a minute to nuke everything once it had been discovered. At least his boss and the rest of the intelligence and defense community had a heads-up.
Miserable day
, he thought.

As Helms started to walk to get his troops moving, he remained perplexed by the May 2 date. He was close though. There was something about that date that did have meaning. And it was personal to him. May Day was typically a day of celebrating spring in the United States, Canada, and parts of Western Europe. Cinco de Mayo was May 5, and that too celebrated May, particularly in Mexico but also in the United States. His attention came back when his boss called him to briefly informed Helms that all planes had been grounded as a result of the attack they had just endured.

Helms was in the car when it became clear. “Fuck me!” Helms uttered. Helms knew that his team would not be surprised by the expletives he uttered. He did that a lot. It was the sudden burst that surprised the driver and the other occupants. More swears spilled out in rapid succession as Helms fumbled for his cell phone. No one said anything for fear of their boss losing his train of thought. Janeson didn’t seem to even notice. She kept writing lists, Helms noticed.

Helms finally had his boss’s secretary on the phone, and he was really getting pissed now. Was his boss at the Pentagon or the situation room or the bathroom? Helms demanded to know. Then Helms couldn’t take it anymore and finally said it out loud, “Tell the director the date May 2 is the date Oman Sharif Sudani was killed. May 2, 2011.”

Janeson, who had been squished in the backseat, looked up and yelled out, “Shit!” It was clear that she was annoyed that she had missed something so obvious. She was pissed at how simple it was and that she had not gotten the answer. Oman Sharif Sudani was one of the key architects of domestic and foreign terrorist attacks. Sudani was a walking “command and control center,” and he was notorious for being the best in terrorism. All of his operations were the most coordinated, organized, and logistically planned. Today’s events looked a lot like his work.
But he’s dead
, Helms reminded himself. The day he was killed, the world became a safer place. His terrorist hierarchy fell apart, and the free world was able to rapidly disassemble his terrorist network piece by piece. Still, Helms was surprised how rapidly Sudani’s network fell apart.

Helms smiled—the first smile all day.

He looked back at Janeson, who was now looking out the window.
Is she actually pouting?
Helms wondered.

“Throw me a bone here, Janeson. It’s the only thing I got today.”

Janeson smiled as well. That was another surprise because Janeson never smiled.
Quite a range of emotions she’s demonstrating today
, Helms thought.

Becky was back from her second run in that day. Everything had gone better than expected. The car was in place for the extraction. She had Emma in the jogger, and she had made it the police department in great time. She looked disheveled, heated, and flustered, exactly the way they had scripted. It got easier when she told the officer at the desk that she was there for Mr. Coleridge and he wanted some information that might be helpful. The guy buzzed her in and told her to wait by the office. She asked if she could borrow a computer to get the information from her e-mail, and to her surprise, he offered no resistance and said, “Sure.” He brought her over to an empty desk. Because of the crisis, nearly all first responders were out in the field, leaving nearly all the desks vacated. Becky had her choice of computers, and she got on the Internet, where she opened an e-mail address.

At the beginning of this phase of the operation, Becky almost expected that police would surround her and someone would pay close attention to every move she made. The officer started talking to another officer and then returned to the front desk. There were a number of other civilians calling the stations and asking what was going on in their town and the neighboring towns. As the officer at the front desk became engrossed in another call and the other two remaining officers quickly got their gear on and left, Becky was left alone with Emma, who at that very moment was giving her best rendition of some classic rock ’n’ roll song: “You check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.” While she loved the fact that David loved Emma and Emma just adored David, his insistence that she learn these classic songs, poems, and different languages could come up at the worst time. As Emma sang, Becky had to contain the urge to tell her to be quiet so that she wouldn’t draw any unwanted attention.

By design, Becky “dropped her keys” under the desk near the CPU tower of the desktop, where she was able to quickly plug in a flash drive without incident. Once done, Becky patiently waited for the computer to ask if she wanted to recognize the new software and if she wanted to run the new program. She said yes to both questions. Then the longest two minutes elapsed as Becky patiently watched the rotating circle spin endlessly, indicating it was processing the software. If it hadn’t been for the antianxiety medication flowing through her brain and bloodstream, Becky knew she would be jumping out of her skin. Failure was not an option; if she or anyone else didn’t do their part in this mission, they would all either get killed or go to jail.
What would happen to Emma?
she thought.
Foster care? Different homes … just like Samantha. No, it had to work. I can’t fail.

Finally, the moment came: “New software successfully installed.” Becky then went to the programs menu to unhighlight the new program named Albatross.

Once completed, Becky had the urge just to make sure the new software and program was actually working. This time, Becky “accidentally” dropped her sunglasses so she could look over to the backside of the CPU to reassure the drive was working. Becky was now convinced it was actually operational. She could easily see that the unobtrusive red light of the flash drive was on.

Relieved, she got up, left the computer on, and exited the large room. She told the officer at the front desk that she was leaving because she was unable to access her boss’s e-mail and that she would be back with hard copies.

Once outside, Becky started breathing again and began a slow start of her run toward the path as soon as she could without looking as if she was running from a crime scene. Becky only started to relax when she was within the confines of the team’s office. She put Emma in the smaller room, where she could play without getting into trouble. Becky then looked out the windows, and she took off her hat and oversized tee shirt when she saw a convoy of black and blue SUVs and sedans that clearly looked like law enforcement. She held her breath again as she took out the binoculars to see if they were heading to her exit. Fortunately, they blew right by it. Becky immediately got on the two-way radio.

“Guys … a whole bunch of federal types just blew by the exit.”

“Which town? Andover?” Burns was the first to respond.

“Yes.” Becky said. She was still watching through her binoculars and trying to count how many vehicles there were in total.

Then she heard him ask, “Are you on the road, Scarlett?”

Becky had to remember that her sister was queen of wigs and that she was now sporting a red one.

“I’m gone and heading to our rendezvous,” Samantha responded.

Becky waited. Burns was quiet, probably because he was thinking. He did not say his usual okay, indicating the plan was to move ahead with no deviations. Maybe it was the large number of government cars that were en route.

“Were there more than five transports?” Burns finally asked.

Becky had to remember, but then she readily recalled. “There were at least seven,” she replied. Espionage was really not her best talent.

There was more silence. To Becky’s relief, Burns finally spoke. For him, he was actually chatty. “All is well. Change of plans. Scarlett, go pick up the package now. Tiny, break down the laptops and then push the button. I’m going to the candy land. See you all on the other side.”

Becky’s legs felt weak for a moment. She knew this sudden fatigue was not the result of two runs and her medication. It was the anticipation and stress of years of work coming to a head. Becky knew that everyone she cared for would either be safer with the stolen leverage or dead within the hour.

Becky remembered that Burns had always said that the success or failure of an operation was in knowing when to stay the course and when to alter the plan based on new data. The heavy response as measured by the large number of cars reacting to the last text and attack must have altered the plan. It took Becky five minutes to shut the laptops down. All the newscasts stopped as she methodically shut down each laptop. The last news report she heard said that all air travel in and out of Boston had now been grounded. With that ringing in her ears, she went to the desktop and hit enter, and a program that had been poised for five and half hours was now running.

Becky knew that the flash drive she had installed in the police computer was now on and sending a message that, if traced, would show that it was originating from the police department and transmitting to a homeland security link. From what Burns had told Becky, this agency would isolate the key words and immediately forward a message to the Department of Defense’s operation center: “I remember everything on May 2, 2011. Operation center, foreign intelligence agency, all present foreign operations are compromised. Cyber-attack imminent.”

Attached to that message was a computer virus/worm from hell. Becky experienced some anxiety that bordered on panic. She had just started a war with an armed federal agency as well as the citizens of the United States. The attack she had just unleashed would start infecting various virus protectors to conceal and distribute a terrible worm. Burns was meticulous in explaining that this attack was more powerful than the one they had perpetrated against the bureau. This program would lock out people from their computers and freeze them only so that they could watch their files disappear unless they somehow completely shut down their power. Because Becky had once been a paralegal, she knew that her actions qualified as an act of terror. All Becky had wanted was to get her life back. She wanted Emma and her sister to live again. She hoped David would want to be a part of her and Emma’s life too.