Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2 (46 page)

When they got to the farmhouse, Cage stopped at the bottom of the front steps. "I don't know I should go in, Captain," he said. Like I told you before, I ain't much one for being inside anymore."

"That's fine, Mr. Cage," Joe answered. "You can have a seat right out here and I'll bring you a bowl if you're hungry. We're going to say the blessing first, though, and I thought you might want to be inside for it."

Cage hesitated for a moment but finally nodded. "Okay, but once you say the blessing, I'll come back outside and eat."

"Whatever you like," Joe said, holding the door open for the broad-shouldered man to step through.

Once they were inside, Beth raised a questioning eyebrow, but Joe raised a hand and she shrugged. He'd have time to tell her about Cage later, but for now it was enough to get him in the door. He needed to be around people and remember that he wasn't alone in the world. Somehow Joe felt that was very important at the moment.

As soon as Cage was through the door, some of the younger children began running behind him and playing an impromptu game of hide and seek. For his part, Cage chuckled a deep chuckle and smiled at the children, playing along with them. Joe walked over to Beth while he had a moment, kissed her cheek, and whispered that he'd explain later when they had a chance to talk.

Beth nodded and rubbed his back with a warm smile.

Within a few moments, the farmhouse was nearly full. Joe looked around at the people and silence fell slowly. As so often happened, without his asking for it, the spotlight had been thrust on him.

"I look around and I see all of these faces of friends and family," Joe began, "and I'm reminded of just how much we have to be thankful for. Every time we are able to come together like this, to share a meal and break bread with each other, it's a reason to be thankful. Every time we have a bite to eat or a drink of clear, clean water, it's a chance to be thankful. Every time we wake up for another day in this world, it's a cause to give thanks."

"I always enjoyed Thanksgiving when I was a kid," Joe continued. "We got to see family from all over that we never got to see on a regular basis, which was good, but it was the food that got me most. Turkey, stuffing, biscuits, sweet potatoes, cakes, brownies, every kind of good food you can imagine. We had all kinds of food and ten times what we could eat."

Most of the people were nodding and smiling at the shared memories of past holidays. "But looking back on it now," Joe said after a moment, "I wish I'd paid more attention to the people around the table than I did to the food that was on it. A lot of those people aren't around anymore, and that's a lost opportunity I'll never get back."

"So, I say we have a Thanksgiving every time we come together," Joe said. "Every time we sit down to share a meal, even if it's just a sandwich and a glass of water, I say we give special thanks for the opportunity and for the blessing. Thanksgiving can't be a day in November anymore, not for us. We've been through too much. For us, it's got to be how we live our lives."

"If we could bow our heads, please," Joe said, and every head bowed with him. "Lord, we give you thanks for the breath we breathe. We give you thanks for the friends and family we have standing around us today. We thank you for every blessing in our lives and that we can call on you today and do so with love and joy. So much in this world is broken, Lord, and so much is hurting and dying and in need of healing. Yet here we stand, together, provided for and safe. We know that is your doing more than it is ours, Lord, and we thank you for it. Help us to live each day to your service and to each other's. Thy will, not ours, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen."

Beth cleared her throat and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye. "Well, folks, we got three big pots of deer stew, biscuits, some late fried squash, stewed tomatoes and peppers, and turnip greens. Dig in and take all you want, but eat all you take."

Cage started to turn toward the door, but the kids began pulling on his pants legs, each one asking for him to sit with them. They finally reached a compromise of sitting in a circle with Cage in the family room on the floor while they all ate. Cage looked pleadingly at Joe for help, but Joe just smiled and shrugged.

"You don't want to upset the kids, do you?" he asked with a small grin.

Joe watched as his family, friends, and neighbors moved one by one through the line, taking a little stew, some vegetables, and a biscuit, all the while making sure to leave enough for those coming behind them. He felt the overwhelming weight of responsibility for these people who looked to him for order and safety. He'd taken them under his wing and promised to provide that safety and security when they needed it, and now that obligation was pressing on him.

Beth leaned over and kissed him soundly, forcing his eyes to find hers. "Whatever you're worried about," she said, patting his cheek with one hand, "let it go. You're not going to solve it or fix it right now, tonight, at the dinner table. Think about what you just told these people and pick up your head. Pay attention to the people, not the problems."

Joe nodded and kissed her back. He let Beth lead him around to the back of the line and they waited their turn to fill their plates.

Ch.77

Unlocking the Door

Commander Price sat at his desk, waiting, the cursor on his screen blinking at him. The program was complete, finally, and all he had to do was press the Enter key to compile the code and download it onto the secure network interface card. Once it was done, though, it could not be removed. He'd written the code so that once inside the backdoor that Terry had left open during system development, it would permanently delete that access path and close the breach for good. This was a one-way street, and once he started down it, not even Terry would be able to stop it.

The Commander closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed the key. When he opened his eyes again, there was a status bar on the screen that displayed the progress of the program encryption process. He watched as the status bar slowly ticked up a percent at the time. The program was being encrypted and written directly onto the onboard memory of the interface card. It would automatically install on the home system and be transmitted with the initial handshake request over the network. The other terminals wouldn't have a choice, they were hardwired to accept and integrate that initial message and they would take the hidden program along with the rest of the initial connection parameters.

The other three systems, unlike this one, all had a fiber optic connection going from the database backup banks to the secure network terminal, allowing for remote access by the home system. This was one of the failsafe measures to ensure data accuracy. The other three backups could be checked independently via the standalone DOD controlled facility.

It only took a few moments for the program to compile and encrypt. It was incredibly complex, but it was also elegant and condensed. It would encrypt the system of each backup center databank to its own unique, randomly chosen sequence of two point six million characters. The keys were stored on the primary facility's data backups as unnamed and encrypted files buried beneath multiple firewalls and isolation programs. The process of hiding the keys had been much more time consuming and elaborate than devising the code for the encryption. But, such was the way of locks. It's always more difficult to hide the key than it is to lock the door.

Commander Price disconnected the interface card and held it gingerly in his hands. It was slightly warm, but given what was inscribed in the ephemeral ones and zeroes, he would have expected it to burn his hands.

Once this virus was downloaded into the system, it couldn't be scrubbed. It was designed to rewrite key parts of the registry files to link to bits of its own coding, essentially becoming part of the host computer's identity. If a programmer tried to erase the one, it would erase the other as well. The data storage units and their operating systems would be the only systems affected, though. The communications terminals themselves would still function and talk back and forth, if the other side so chose. Once he exposed their weakness, though, Commander Price didn't expect them to keep the lines open.

  The Commander turned to the guards at the back of his office. "I'm going to step out for a bit," he said. "Anyone tries to come in here that's not me, you shoot them."

The two men nodded as one. "Yes sir," they said.

Commander Price stepped out into the antechamber to his office and nodded to Marcus and the Chief. "We're going for a walk, Chief," he said. "You keep an eye on things for me."

The Chief nodded. "Yes sir," he replied and turned to put his back to the Commander's open office door. "We'll keep it locked down, sir."

The halls were empty except for random security personnel. The workday was barely more than halfway through, so the one remaining work shift were all currently at their stations. They walked through the angled hallways, always headed farther down into the heart of the facility. They took turns Marcus had never seen before and went down two staircases hidden in the back of small, nondescript closets with simple locked doors.

For a time, the Commander walked a few paces ahead of Marcus, neither man speaking. Things had been strained between them the past few months, and it had eroded the closeness they both had once enjoyed. The Commander had expected that, though. It was one of the burdens of command.

As they made their way through the lowest halls and corridors, Marcus' curiosity got the better of him, and he couldn't contain it any more. "Commander, where are we going? I didn't even know levels this low existed. We're below the containment cells now, right?"

Commander Price slowed enough for Marcus to catch up to him and nodded. "Those two locked and hidden stairways don't exist on any of the drawings of this facility," Commander Price answered. "Not even the original blueprints. In fact, everything after the first hidden staircase is on a different set of engineering diagrams altogether. This is technically a different facility."

"What do you mean, a different facility?"  Marcus asked, confused.

"What's up top is just the icing," Commander Price said, "This is the cake."

They rounded a bend in the hallway and came face to face with a pair of heavy metal doors. Commander Price stepped over to a keypad set in the wall to the right of the door. He swiped his security card and keyed in his nine-digit access code. There was a series of thumps as the locks disengaged, and a hiss as the doors slid open on hydraulic hinges.

"When I say move, you get through the door, and you move quickly," Commander Price said, and Marcus nodded. "Okay, then. Move!"

The Commander stepped through the wide open door, Marcus tight on his heels. As soon as they crossed the threshold, the buzzer sounded and the doors started swinging slowly, implacably shut.

"Fifty thousand pounds of pressure," Commander Price said. "If you get caught in that door, it'll cut you clean in half. Nothing anyone can do to stop it once it starts moving."

"Where are we?"  Marcus asked looking around.

"Years ago," Commander Price said, "when you came to work for me and you asked what we did here, do you remember what I told you?"

Marcus nodded. "You said we don't keep information because it's not ours to keep. We're just the gate keepers."

Commander Price nodded. "Well, this is the gate," he said, pointing to the small computer terminal in one corner of the room. "You asked me to bring you in, to let you know what I was working on that was so secretive. This is it, Lt. Commander. I wanted you here to witness what I'm about to do."

"You're making me nervous, Commander," Marcus said honestly.

Commander Price smiled and pulled the network card from his pocket. "The other side is after the information stored in the data backup system you and I and the rest of our colleagues here developed. They want it to use it as a weapon, and I mean to deny them that power. This facility was built differently. Once we severed the connections to the backups after the dump, they were totally cut off from every outside system other than our own operations on site. The other systems are connected to this terminal for secure communication."

"And you're going to use that to infect their data? Why?"  Marcus asked, his eyes wide with shock.

"Because then this facility becomes the only one with usable information. And, if need be, we can destroy that too. If I had a way to physically destroy the other sites, I'd use it, but I don't. This is the best I can do, and it's got to be enough. If they're serious about it, they could eventually break through the code, but it would take them a long time. And if there are more than two incorrect attempts, the encryption scrambles the data randomly, and it's lost permanently.

"I'm going to take away the one thing they hoped to use," Commander Price continued, walking over to the terminal. "The information in these databanks is simply too dangerous to leave out there and available. The activation and launch codes for all of our nukes, everything is in these memory banks. If need be, I'll destroy it to keep it out of the wrong hands."

"Why am I here, Commander?"  Marcus asked.

"You're here so you can see it happen," Commander Price answered. "This is as hard as we can hit them right now, and I want you to be here for it. You earned this victory as much as I did, maybe more."

Marcus thought about that in silence for a moment, then finally nodded. "Okay," he said, "but if you leave this facility intact, won't they just come after it here?"

Commander Price smiled a wicked grin. "I certainly hope so," he said."

He powered on the terminal and waited as it went through the startup routine. Then, he plugged the network card in and watched as the auto-run feature launched. Marcus stepped up beside him to get a better view as well. Two of the three icons on the screen were still grayed out, but the third was operational. Commander Price selected it and a window opened. He began typing immediately, dictating as he keyed the words into the messenger window.