Insider X (31 page)

64

Golden Apple Grove

JOHNNY TWO-CAKES couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  The database held almost four billion fake profiles. 
Four billion
.
  Incredible.

He had expected a large trove of profiles, but nothing of this size.  Four billion was simply mind boggling.  That was more than half the population on earth.  All fake.  All created to influence and manipulate the minds of the real seven billion denizens of earth.

Facility 67096 had created this netizen army.  Less than five thousand individuals (a unit the size of a brigade) had created a shadow army that was almost a million times their actual number.  It was amazing.

A tremendous accomplishment.  Johnny Two-cakes found himself torn between two thoughts.  On one side, he admired the brilliance of such an elemental, yet ingenious operation.  It was truly visionary.  Akin to the biblical story of Gideon, where three hundred soldiers used artifice and subterfuge to appear like a vast multitude of men.  Using the cover of darkness, and simple implements: trumpets, clay jars and torches, they fooled the enemy into thinking they were a horde of many.  The simple ruse allowed them to rout their foes and win the day.

There was one main difference here, of course.  And that was his second thought.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that God did not approve of this facsimile, this crude copy of Gideon’s story.  Facility 67096 had created a multitude—not of women and men—but of monsters.  They had flipped humanity on its head.  Warped and distorted the inherent goodness of regular people into this virtual population of pettiness, ugliness, venom and bile.  They had tried to supplant the real population.  Tried to drown out the real voices with these fake voices.

There were times like this that Johnny Two-cakes had trouble separating his faith from his work.  Unknown to many, he was a deeply religious man with strong convictions.  He didn’t wear his faith on his sleeve, but he believed that God spoke in signs to His soldiers who defended His flock.

Was it just coincidence that what Facility 67096 was doing was so similar to the story of Gideon?  Gideon the Reluctant Warrior.  Gideon the doubter.  Gideon who put out the fleece and tested God.  Gideon who needed three signs from God to believe.  That man.  That story.

Was this coincidence?  Or was this a sign?

Johnny Two-cakes for all his pragmatism; for all his belief in the empirical power of numbers and the value of forensic science was a strange bird in the sense that all of that was trumped by his belief in God, and in his belief that God gave signs.  Because right now Johnny Two-cakes felt very strongly that God was giving him a sign.

That God was with him.  That he was doing God’s work here. 

This ugliness had to stop. 

This abomination had to be destroyed.

He was a soldier of God now.  Doing his small part.  Just like Lawrence was doing back at the ranch, Johnny Two-cakes was on task.  Completing one exploit at a time.

Exploit number 22 had just enabled him to obtain the database.  This was a chained exploit.  Links of a chain.  One vulnerability being exploited at a time, until eventually the objective was reached.

They had the database.  The profile names.  The usernames and passwords for all the accounts.

It was theirs.  Twenty plus years of nefarious online activity was about to be exposed.  Everything Facility 67096 had ever done was going to be visible to them.  Forget just pulling out samples and taking a peek at what they were doing now.  With the database in their hands, they would be able to see it all.  All their activity.  Every keystroke those profiles had ever done. 

Okay.  It was time to close the door.  End their duplicity; pull the plug on their lies.

He had the database.  It was time to corrupt theirs.  Make their database worthless.

He downloaded the package.  Special delivery, courtesy of GOD (Johnny Two-cakes just moonlighted for the NSA).  And that was it.  One last keystroke.  One final exploit.  Once downloaded, his malicious code (his “worm”) went to work and began to propagate and infiltrate their systems.  It would soon impact all the terminals on their end.  All except one.  An air-gap in their multi-layer security architecture prevented him from reaching that final copy on the database.  He couldn’t corrupt the master.

That task was up to Lip, Marks and Mei doing their part in this chained exploit.  It was in their hands now.  They had to bring this home.

God was counting on them.  Because one thing Johnny Two-cakes knew without a doubt.  God had a sense of humor.  It was no coincidence those three were doing His work.

God was showing His power. 
I’ll take these three.
 
He was saying.
 
That’s all I need.
 
Just like Gideon’s story where He trimmed Gideon’s army down to ‘three’ hundred.  So there would be no doubt who was responsible for the victory.

No doubt.

65

Duty Building

MEI AND LIP stepped to the side of the corridor with their comatose guard.  Marks did the same with his two boxes.  The soldiers, running with their rifles, ran right on by them as the alarm droned overhead.

Whoomp whoomp… whoomp whoomp…

Not a challenge… not a question… not a “what’s up with Mr. Nighty Night?” from the soldiers.  Marks watched as the soldiers turned the corner and disappeared from view.  Guess those gents had places to be.

“Time to lose our dead weight,” Marks said.

He took the lead.  Down a corridor and two turns later, he found an emergency stairwell.  Marks put the boxes down so he could open the door.  Mei and Lip squeezed through with the guard.  They dropped him in the stairwell and the three of them humped it down the stairs; Marks and Lip each with a box in tow and Mei holding the rifle.

At the next landing, Mei used the magnetic keycard she’d swiped from the guard to open the door.  The three of them stepped into another corridor.  Marks took a second to get his bearings.  Mei’s team had obtained plans of the joint.  Marks had digested them during their briefing.  It was a special talent of his.  He tended to remember things he saw.

“Left takes us to the scrubbers.  Right leads to the server room,” Marks said.

“Got it,” Lip said.  “Let’s keep to the plan.”

They went left towards the scrubbers.  Several turns later, they found the door they needed.  Turned out they didn’t need the keycard.  There was no security panel next to the door, just a push bar.

“Won’t that trigger the alarm?” Marks said.

“You mean like the one going off now?” Lip said with a smirk.  He butt opened the door.  The door led outside to an exterior courtyard. 

Marks took it in.  It was just like the plans had shown.  The courtyard was surrounded on two sides by Duty Building, and on the other two sides by louvered walls.  No windows from the building looked into the yard.  Just ribbed concrete that went several stories up.

In the center of the yard was the HVAC system that serviced the building.  Talk about sophisticated.  Place looked like an oil refinery.

There were several superstructures the size of double-wides that supported the enormous equipment.  Large tubes, some as big as three or four feet in diameter, tracked from the chillers.  Dozens of fans, heard but not seen, were on top of the chillers, going full bore.  Their sound, along with the sound of water falling from some of the other equipment, drowned out the sound of the alarm.

Marks and Lip had gone over the specs and knew exactly which piece of equipment they needed to exploit.  The scrubbers were located to the left of the chillers.  Lip headed towards the first one.  Behind him, Mei had the door propped open.

Marks glanced back at her.  “Close the door, and open in thirty.”

“What?” Mei said.  “We don’t have that sort of time.”

Marks smirked.  He was wasting time.  “Forgot it.  Leave it open.”

He followed Lip with his box.  Lip had pulled out a compact electric screwdriver and was removing the access panel to the scrubber.  The panel gave access to the HEPA filters.

Marks set his box down and started to empty its contents.  Under three wine bottles and some folded cardboard and straw were several canisters.  Lip removed the last screw and placed the access panel on the ground.  He reached inside the cabinet and with some effort pulled out one of the HEPA filters.  It was big with accordion baffles and was in the shape of a donut.  Was pretty clean too.  Must have just been changed recently.

Lip set it down on the ground, and Marks handed him the canisters from his box one by one.  They quickly emptied Lip’s box too.  Took a little longer than Marks had estimated.  Not thirty.  More like ninety.  Add another five and they were back at the door.

Mei smirked.  “You meant seconds.”

“Yep,” Marks said.

The three of them, sans boxes, went through the open door.  Lip handed out the respro masks he’d had at the bottom of his box.  They’d need them soon.  Things looked freaky when you put them on; made a person look like Bane from Batman.

Marks glanced at his timepiece.  In about three minutes the contents of those canisters would start entering the ventilation system.  When that happened, all sorts of chaos would break loose in this facility, if it wasn’t already.  Marks took the rifle Mei had been holding.  He knew she hated weapons of any kind.  Kind of funny.  Lady had no problems putting the hurt on somebody.  But no guns.  She didn’t like guns.

“Thank you,” Mei said.  “I hated carrying it.”

Marks nodded.  He took the lead again, and the three of them headed towards the server room.

66

Grounds, Facility 67096

THERE WAS FEAR and panic and complete pandemonium.  People were writhing on the ground; some were twitching and having spasms.  Na saw a girl vomiting.  A young guy was trying to help her, and suddenly he started vomiting too.

“What is going on?” Na said.

Huiliang grabbed Na’s hand.  “We can’t stay here,” Huiliang said.

Huiliang led Na through the crowd.  What was happening?  Why was that girl and guy vomiting?  Why were those people writhing on the ground?

A crowd was assembled outside the gymnasium building.  They had come from inside.  More people were spilling out from the doors; stumbling, trying to walk, but obviously having trouble.  Many were hacking and coughing and clutching at their chests.  Na saw guys and girls drooling, spitting up, crying; some were screaming.

Na thought of the two thermoses that Huiliang had placed back near the stores.

“I don’t understand,” Na said. 
Had all these people been poisoned… gassed?

Huiliang pulled Na.  “Come!”

Soldiers appeared.  Some of them were carrying stretchers.  Others were directing people.  Telling them to move… telling them to get away from the building.

Na looked over the grass, over the water features, back the way Huiliang and her had come from.  Dark grayish smoke was rising above the treetops.  It was coming from near the stores.  It was the smoke from the thermoses that Huiliang had placed on the esplanade, back at Luxury Lane.  The smoke was visible.  Ominous.  Someone near Na pointed towards the two mushrooming smoke clouds.  Others saw them too.

More screaming.  More chaos.  Huiliang pulled Na through the crowd as around them the alarm wailed.

67

Hive

THE LIEUTENANT FELT a sinking sensation as he walked from station to station and looked at what was being shown on the screens.  The surveillance cameras in Hive were coming back online, and they were getting their first glimpse at what was happening outside.  It was a grim picture.  On every soldier’s screen were variations of the same thing.

Disorder.  Confusion.  The scene outside the gymnasium was horrific.  People were down.  In other buildings, personnel were running in corridors.  Soldiers were responding to alarms.  Everywhere it seemed, people were running; some with hands over their mouths.

One of the vid feeds showed what appeared to be some sort of cylindrical object emitting smoke.  It almost looked like some sort of projectile.  The lieutenant asked the soldier to pan out, and he saw where the object was located.  It was in the grass near one of the running trails in Zone 5.

“There are more, sir,” the soldier said.  He pulled up other viewports.  The lieutenant saw more smoking cylindrical objects.  Some were by Luxury Lane.

“Where did those come from?” the lieutenant said.

“I don’t know, sir.  Perhaps from over the wall,” the soldier said.

“Sir!” the soldier to his left said.  “You have to see this.”

The lieutenant walked over to the soldier’s station.

“What is it?” the lieutenant said.

The soldier pointed to his screen.  He had the portal page for AIRCON open on his right monitor.  AIRCON monitored the ambient air throughout the facility.  It utilized Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers to identify any and all TIC and CWA threats.  TIC, as in ‘toxic industrial chemicals’, and CWA, as in ‘chemical warfare agents’.

The lieutenant’s jaw dropped.

“The electrochemical sensors are detecting a CWA, sir.”

“I can see that,” the lieutenant said.  “Where and what?”

“Eleven locations,” the soldier said.  He pulled up another screen.  “Correction, sir.  Twelve locations.”

“What?  What CWA has been detected?” the lieutenant said.

The soldier gulped.  “It is Sarin gas, sir.”