Текст книги "Independence Day "

Автор книги: Ben Coes

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

66

INVERNESS AIRPORT

INVERNESS, SCOTLAND

A light blue Bombardier Global 6000 cut down out of the gray clouds, then dropped in a tight line to the ground, coming to a thunderous stop on the tarmac at Inverness Airport. Legally speaking, the runway was too short for the jet. Its occupant, however, insisted on making the landing anyway, and when Derek Chalmers insisted on something, it usually ended up happening.

The MI6-owned jet taxied to a stop near the small one-story terminal.

Chalmers sat in a tan captain’s chair looking at an iPad. He was reading the files detailing everything Langley knew about Cloud, including photos and up-to-the-minute transcripts from the USS Hartford. There was also extensive biographical research on Katya Basaeyev.

Something troubled him, though he didn’t know what it was. Obviously, Cloud was a despicable figure, but it was the dancer who made him uneasy. How could she not have known?

“Director Chalmers?”

Chalmers looked up at the pilot.

“Yes, Brantley.”

“They’re on approach, sir.”

Chalmers nodded.

“Thank you.”

Chalmers turned off the device, then looked to a plain-looking middle-aged woman seated directly in front of him, Victoria Smythson, MI6’s head of clandestine operations. Though Chalmers was there to interrogate Katya, he thought whatever came out of the interrogation might spill into the need for mission work.

“Is Banchor Cottage ready?” asked Chalmers.

“Yes,” said Smythson. “The pharma squad is in place.”

“Who is it?”

“Dr. Robbins.”

“I thought he retired?”

“To Aberdeen,” said Smythson. “He agreed to help out.”

“I’d like not to have to use pharmaceuticals on her,” said Chalmers. “You read the files. What do you think?”

“You have a nuclear bomb en route to the United States,” said Smythson. “Less than three days until it arrives. If it were up to me, I’d have an IV in her arm the moment she walks through the door at Banchor.”

Chalmers stared at Smythson but didn’t react. He looked out the window as a dark green Range Rover sped across the runway and stopped next to the jet. A moment later came the low-pitched, high-decibel whirr of the Osprey V-22 on approach.

Chalmers stood and pulled on a dark blue Burberry trench coat. He climbed down out of the Bombardier, trailed by Smythson, as the Osprey roared out of the clouds and then seemed to stop overhead as its rotors suddenly tilted upward. The plane descended like a helicopter to the tarmac a few feet away.

Chalmers and Smythson walked beneath the tail of the plane, out of the rain. A moment later, the loading ramp at the back of the Osprey lowered. Standing at the top of the ramp, soldiers on both sides of her, was Katya.

Chalmers nodded to one of the soldiers, who said something to Katya. Slowly, she stepped down the ramp. She had on a pair of black Gore-Tex technical pants along with a gray sweatshirt. Her wrists and ankles were both cuffed. She was tiny, her skin as dark as leather, her eyes strikingly blue.

When she got to the bottom of the ramp, she glanced around the desolate airport as rain poured down. Seeing little of interest, she stepped before Chalmers and looked up at him, then at Smythson.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Scotland.”

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“Know what?”

“That he was going to kill the Americans. He’s not a terrorist. You have to believe me.”

Chalmers reached into his pocket. He pulled out his cell phone and showed her a photo of a room littered with corpses enclosed by walls splattered in blood. It was a photo from the Vietnamese scow. She gasped. She shook her head and closed her eyes, as if she could will away the memory.

Chalmers looked at Smythson.

“Let’s go,” he said.

67

ELEKTROSTAL

The icon flashed again on Cloud’s computer screen and he double-clicked it.

Cloud had stopped one of the CIA agents—Brainard—in Minsk. Fairweather, the other CIA man on his way to Moscow, was all that remained.

The agent had made a phone call from the Poznań–Ławica Airport in Poland. Cloud examined the time stamp on the call. It had been made more than an hour ago.

Cloud searched for flights between Poland and Moscow. There were none left. When he searched for earlier flights the CIA agent might’ve been able to take, there was one, an Aeroflot flight at 10:58 P.M.

It was now midnight.

Cloud scanned the Aeroflot flight manifest but was unable to find any record of Fairweather getting on a plane. When he ran the passenger manifest against the Aeroflot customer database, there was nothing suspicious. All the passengers on the flight were either Russian or Polish. Every passenger had flown Aeroflot on numerous previous occasions.

Cloud went to a Web site that tracked flights and entered the Aeroflot flight number. The plane was slightly ahead of schedule. It would land in fifteen minutes.

“How did I miss it?” he asked.

Cloud shut his eyes, remembering the day more than a decade before when he helped Al-Medi hack into U.S. air defenses on 9/11. The day he helped scramble radar at Griffiss Air Force Base and convince the men and women at Northeast Air Defense Sector that American Airlines flight 11 was twenty miles away, even as it bore down on the north tower of the World Trade Center.

It was the day Cloud understood how easy it was to use his computer to bring evil on an unsuspecting world.

When he opened his eyes, Sascha was staring at him.

“Is everything okay?” Sascha asked.

Cloud said nothing.

In 2001, Cloud was shocked to find that data signals between airplanes and control towers in the United States were for the most part unencrypted. Once he succeeded in hacking into the Griffiss tower through their ERP, he altered altitude, latitude, and longitude settings emitted by the plane, fooling everyone until it was too late.

Cloud had hacked into Aeroflot many years before, but altering the plane’s signals to the Moscow tower was the opposite of what he needed to do. Right now, he needed to fool the Aeroflot pilot, not the control tower.

“State ATM,” said Cloud, referring to the agency that controlled Russia’s airspace, similar to the FAA. “Have you ever attempted to penetrate it?”

“No,” said Sascha. “But I know someone who did.”

“Is it someone you trust?”

Sascha considered the question, then shrugged.

“Yes.”

“I need a trapdoor into ATM. I need it immediately.”

68

MISSION THEATER TARGA

LANGLEY

Polk hung up his phone after getting the update from Carter, his Minsk chief of station. He looked around the operations room.

“Brainard got blown. They stopped him at the airport.”

Polk was seated at a workstation inside the dimly lit command center. The room was half empty. In front of him was a carton of chicken fried rice, which he hadn’t touched. All he could do was stare at the screen on the front wall of the room. It showed a digital map tracking Tom Fairweather’s flight from Poland to Moscow.

“Ten minutes out,” said a case officer. “They’re on the final approach.”

“Check activity at the airport,” said Polk. “FSB and Customs. See if there’ve been any threat elevations.”

“No Customs flags in the past two hours, other than the one on Dewey. Ditto with FSB.”

Polk nodded, then picked up a bottle of Gatorade and took a sip.

“Come on, Tommy,” he whispered.

Brainard getting stopped by Belarus Customs angered Polk. Having a hacker inside the Agency was like running a race with a thousand-pound weight tied around your neck. Though no evidence existed, it was clear that Cloud had been behind Brainard’s removal from the Belavia flight. Polk had already spoken twice to the U.S. ambassador to Belarus about getting Brainard out of jail. Fairweather was different, and Polk felt more confident. The passport Fairweather used was purchased from a corrupt GRU administrator, its numbers clean and designed to withstand a so-called database back-pull at the Russian border.

Polk stood up, clutching the bottle of Gatorade. He stepped to the front of the room, just a few feet from the screen, watching as the flashing red dot—Aeroflot Flight 43—drew closer and closer to Moscow.

“Thirty seconds, sir.”

Polk adjusted his glasses. He knew the radar could sometimes show inaccuracies, and yet what he was seeing made a cold shiver run through his body.

He turned back to the case officer.

“They’re coming in low,” he said. “Are they too far left?”

The case officer highlighted the flight path. Suddenly, the plasma screen view zoomed close up. Lights on the plane’s wings became visible against the dark ground below. Digital numbers—representing speed and altitude—scrolled above the plane in bright red.

“They’re not going to make it, sir.”

*   *   *

Fairweather was asleep when the plane’s alarm went off. It was a piercing, high-pitched siren that shrieked so loudly it caused him to lurch involuntarily forward.

Then came the recorded words of a woman, first in Russian, then Polish, repeated over and over: “Emergency. Assume crash position.”

Screams engulfed the jet. Several passengers stood up, desperate to run somewhere, to escape, even though there was no place to go. Panic and terror consumed the plane. A man ran by Fairweather for the front of the plane. Several people opened overhead bins, grabbing their belongings.

Fairweather tried to remain calm. He looked out the window. They were flying just barely above a residential neighborhood. The lights of one home were so close he could see the colored movement of a TV show in an upstairs bedroom.

His eyes scanned. In the distance, at least half a mile away, he saw the airport’s strobe lights pulsing halogen into the night.

As the siren continued to wail, as the recorded voice repeated its warnings, as screams seemed to reach a crescendo, he felt a hand on his arm gently touching him. He turned. A young woman was clutching her child, her face stricken with fear.

“Is it going to be all right?” she whispered, in Polish.

Slowly, Fairweather nodded.

“Yes,” he said, willing himself to smile as he heard the sound of treetops brushing against the fuselage. “Everything is going to be fine.”

69

LANGLEY

Gant stepped through one of several back doors at CIA headquarters, swiping his badge. Rather than return to his office on the fourth floor, he went straight ahead and entered the Agency’s day-care center.

A woman was seated in a cubicle across from the glass-walled nursery, which was filled with children.

On seeing Gant, she stood up.

“Hello, Mr. Gant.”

Gant looked at her badge.

“Anne, is there an empty office where I can make a phone call? I don’t have time to run upstairs.”

“Of course,” she said.

She led Gant to an empty office down the hallway.

“Perfect,” he said.

He shut the door, then dialed.

“Senator Furr’s office.”

“It’s Josh Gant.”

“Yes, Mr. Gant. Please hold.”

Gant reached up and pushed his glasses higher on his nose.

“What is it?” asked Senator Furr.

“You need to cool down on the thing we’ve been working on.”

“Andreas?”

“Yes.”

“I just had my fucking counsel prepare a laundry list of requests—”

“There’s blowback, Senator. It will come back to bite us. Trust me.”

Furr was silent for several seconds.

“I can’t just—”

“Kill it,” said Gant.

70

SHENNAMERE ROAD

DARIEN, CONNECTICUT

Katie knocked on the door to the library.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes, yes. Of course.”

Katie stepped into the library. She had on green running shorts with yellow piping, a white tank top, and high-heeled leather sandals, all of which showed off her long, tan, muscled legs and arms. As she entered the room, Igor was staring at the computer screen.

She had two Starbucks cups. She stepped to Igor’s side and placed one of them on the desk.

Slowly, without taking his eyes off the screen, Igor reached for it. As he did, he accidentally touched Katie’s hand, which she had yet to remove from the cup. Igor looked at her fingers, then his eyes traced her tan, sinewy arm all the way up to her shoulder. Then their eyes met.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I found something.”

Igor pointed at the screen. On it was a block of computer code.

“This is the attack code that enabled Cloud to penetrate a Langley switch outside of Madrid,” explained Igor. “The penetration occurred fourteen months ago. He broke the encryption algorithm. It’s called a cold boot attack. He, or someone working for him, actually went to Madrid, found the switch, shut the power to it, then sucked the memory onto a USB. Once he did that, all he had to do was break the key, which he quickly did. He was inside within a week of the Madrid attack. Here’s the amazing thing. He didn’t alter the CIA encryption algorithm. Instead, he embedded a virus in the actual physical unit of the text. The virus was like a little spy, hiding in the physical representation of the text. It’s poetic, if you think about it. Spying on the spies. What appeared to be a relatively innocuous switch failure was quickly closed out and sanitized by Langley’s defense systems, its malware and other such useless things. In closing it out, it was, in fact, initiated.”

“That’s how they got inside the CIA?” asked Katie.

“Getting in was the easy part,” said Igor. “That code is how they remained, and how they did so without being noticed.”

Katie nodded.

“I’m impressed,” she said.

Igor looked up.

“Thank you.”

“So what’s next?”

“The virus that Cloud placed inside Langley is, in point of fact, just code. Like all computer code, it makes commands. For example, it tells certain internal Langley communications devices, phones on a specific channel, to transcribe their activities, then send those transcriptions, as they’re occurring, to him. What I need is to somehow hitch a ride on where they’re being sent. If I can do that, I will be able to get a peek at his defenses. His encryption protocols. That is when the real work begins.”

“Without being noticed.”

“Exactly.”

Igor looked up at Katie. She smiled.

“You have a nice smile,” Igor said.

Katie’s smile disappeared.

“I wasn’t smiling.”

“Yes, you were. You have a very hard time taking a compliment, don’t you? You should consider seeing a shrink. I see one.”

“You see one?” Katie asked, a bit surprised.

“Yes. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she said empathetically. “It’s brave to admit it. If you don’t mind my asking, why do you see one?”

“Sex addiction.”

Katie shook her head in disgust and turned to leave.

“By the way, there’s something else,” said Igor.

“What, I have a nice ass?” she asked sarcastically.

“You do have a sweet ass, yes, but no, I meant I found something else inside Langley.”

Katie stepped back to the table.

“Why are you being so mysterious?”

“I might have gone someplace I wasn’t supposed to.”

Katie crossed her arms.

“Inside the Agency?”

“Yes.”

Just then, the door to the library opened. Calibrisi and Tacoma stepped in. Both men looked visibly upset.

“Tommy’s dead,” said Tacoma, referring to Fairweather, an agent both he and Katie had worked with. Katie had recruited Fairweather.

“His plane crashed on approach to Moscow,” said Calibrisi. “A hundred and fifty-five passengers died, all to prevent Tommy from entering Russia.”

Silence took over the room.

“I need to get back to Washington,” said Calibrisi.

“Igor found something,” said Katie. “Inside Langley.”

Calibrisi shot Igor a look.

“You read Agency files?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s hear it,” said Calibrisi.

“I scanned Agency logs, archives, directories, stuff that was deleted, you name it. I found a blocked archive. Even with top secret access I wasn’t able to open it. Anyway, I figured out a way around it, of course. It’s a bunch of projects that were apparently the sort of projects you didn’t want anyone to know about.”

“What does it have to do with Cloud?”

“Something happened in 1986. Something involving a Russian nuclear scientist named Anuslav Vargarin. It was a project. They called it ‘Double Play.’ The Agency was recruiting Vargarin. He was supposed to defect and work out of Los Alamos.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. They destroyed everything else.”

Calibrisi took a sip from his coffee cup, thinking.

“There are plenty of Vargarins. How do you know he’s related?”

“He had a son named Pyotr.”

Calibrisi—momentarily taken aback—dropped the cup. It hit the floor and tumbled.

“Are you kidding?” he asked.

“I’m dead serious.”

“Show me the scan.”

Igor pointed at his screen, which Calibrisi quickly read. The file—what remained of it—was only a few words.

PROJECT 818:

DOUBLE PLAY

01/82—07/86

Recruitment of Vargarin, Anuslav, wife Sylvie, son Pyotr

“We need to know what happened,” Calibrisi said. “You need to find that case and decrypt it.”

“The data’s gone, Hector. Poof. Doesn’t exist. What you’re looking at is some sort of catalog key. They got rid of it, perhaps because it’s so old.”

“They didn’t get rid of it,” said Calibrisi. “I know where it is.”

Calibrisi looked at Katie and Tacoma.

“You two, you’re coming with me,” he said.

71

GEORGES BANK

ATLANTIC OCEAN

80 MILES EAST OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, CANADA

As dawn broke over the horizon, Faqir was already in the galley, making breakfast for the crew. It wasn’t fancy. He brewed a pot of coffee, then cooked oatmeal, which he ladled into six bowls and sprinkled with brown sugar.

At seven, he woke the men.

He left Poldark in his bed. The old professor was now too weak to get up. The night before, when he heard two of the Chechens debating how long it would take for Poldark to die, Faqir had slapped each man viciously across the face, telling them to keep their mouths shut.

Now, even he was beginning to feel the radiation sickness. Though he’d yet to vomit, the nausea had arrived in the middle of the night and hadn’t left. Faqir planned to make breakfast just once on the trip, on this day, a critical day, and now he realized it would probably be a waste. If the others felt anything like he did, they would have no appetite.

When they gathered around the galley table, only one man wanted oatmeal. The others weren’t hungry.

Faqir spoke in Chechen.

“I want every man ready,” he said. “That means weapons in hand, loaded. You wait belowdecks. When the boat arrives, you know what to do. Watch your field of fire.”

“How long until it happens?” asked one of the men.

“Who knows?” answered Faqir. “Could be soon. Could be all day.”

One of the Chechens leaned forward, then placed his head on the table. He groaned.

“What the fuck?” shouted another man.

Suddenly, the man began to throw up, coughing white, thick liquid out in an acrid, chunky splash across the table.

One of the others stood to run.

“Don’t move,” snapped Faqir, “until I tell you you can move. Do you understand?”

“But he just—”

“Don’t talk back either!” yelled Faqir, voice rising in anger. “Shut the fuck up and do your job.”

Faqir stepped to the sick man, grabbed his hair, and jerked him up.

“You too,” Faqir said, his teeth visible as a look of anger crossed his face. “We all feel sick. Either toughen up, or get off the fucking boat.”

“What about the old fuck downstairs?” complained one of the others. “Why isn’t he here?”

Faqir’s eyes moved slowly, deliberately, and hatefully to the young Chechen who’d just asked the question.

“That old man is the only reason any of us are here,” said Faqir.

He paused, then looked at all of the men.

“We’re about to make history on behalf of Allah,” said Faqir. “We will kill as many people as one hundred nine/elevens. You will all be famous. Each one of your names will be known around the world. Your actions today will be studied, hated, and reviled by the West. But they will know you. And where it matters most, you will be loved and honored, forever, by those who matter. Allah will greet you at the fourth gate.”

Faqir paused and stepped toward the man who’d mouthed off. He leaned toward him, an intense look, a savage expression on his face as he stared into the young man’s black eyes.

“Without the work of that old man, you would be nothing. You would do nothing. If any of you say even one word more of disrespect for him, the next thing you’ll know is the feeling of a bullet striking you in the head. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” said the young Chechen, bowing his head. “I’m very sorry.”

Faqir nodded, acknowledging—just barely—the apology.

“Now we begin,” he said calmly. He nodded toward the door. “Belowdecks. And remember, watch your field of fire.”

Back in the wheelhouse, Faqir moved the radio frequency to channel 16, reserved for marine distress calls. He picked up the mike.

“Mayday,” said Faqir. “Mayday. Is there anyone who can hear me?”

Over the next two hours, every minute or so, Faqir repeated the call for help. Finally, a faint, scratchy voice came over the radio.

“Roger on that mayday. Over. This is the Dogfish. I hear you. What’s the situation?”

“This is the Lonely Fisherman,” said Faqir. “We have a priority problem. We are in need of urgent assistance. Over.”

“What’s the problem, Captain?”

“We have fuel, but the pump is not transferring. We need a pump.”

“Where are you?”

“East of Newfoundland,” said Faqir. “Near the Flemish Cap.”

He gave the captain of the Dogfish his coordinates.

“Let me see what I can do,” said the captain. “We’re at the beginning of our trip and we’ll be heading a little south of you. Let me see if we can we spare a pump. Switch to forty-one.”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, the captain of the Dogfish came on channel 41.

“Fisherman, you there? This is the Dogfish. Over.”

“We’re here, Captain.”

“We have a pump we can spare. I expect to be compensated for it.”