Now Galligher leaned back in the cushy seat of the jet with his eyes closed. He listened to the hum of the dual engines as the Citation X jet streaked through the night sky. But his mind clicked, mentally adding up all the things he didn’t know about this mission that was the brainchild of Ethan March. Like why he was going to Utah. And exactly what he would do when he got to his destination. And why Chiro’s computer was so critical. Which led him back to the issue of leadership.
Ethan March had better be right. About all of this.
He told himself he needed to close down his brain and get some sleep. Chiro, in the seat next to him, was already snoring. But a few minutes later Galligher opened his eyes, like he’d been slapped in the face.
This mission is going to be dangerous. Real rock ’em sock ’em. The president has been assassinated. America’s being sucked into the evil empire. And I’m supposed to bring a homemade computer created by my genius buddy Chiro down to a secret government installation, sneak it in, and hope that nobody minds.
It hit him once again that he needed to connect with Helen, his ex-wife, before it was too late. Things had been bad between them for a long time, but he needed to tell her something. Forget the fact that she basically hated him and had told him never to call again. This was too important to let that stop him. Considering what was up ahead, he just hoped he lived long enough to make that call.
He closed his eyes again. Maybe if he was lucky, he could get a three-hour nap.
IN THE SKY OVER UTAH
The sun was just breaking over the horizon. Ethan March had spent the flight praying and trying to figure out the details of his game plan. He figured the CIA transport plane could land him at the military airstrip right next to the National Data Center.
But then the CIA copilot received another classified bulletin and relayed the bad news. “Ethan, we already knew that our newly installed president has ordered a complete turnover of our National Data Center facility to the Global Alliance. But now he has forbidden any unauthorized personnel to set foot down there. That makes you persona non grata. So, barring new orders, we’ll have to take you directly to Washington. We’re going to turn this bird around and head east. Sorry about that.”
“Negative,” Ethan bulleted back. “I need to be down there on the ground in Utah.”
“We’re stuck with this directive from the White House. The CIA is not a domestic intelligence agency, so we’re already sticking our neck out by even transporting you over U.S. airspace. But now, with this new twist, completing the turnover of the Bluffdale computer headquarters to the Alliance, you’re shafted.”
“Hang on,” Ethan said. Then he hit the speed-dial number for Judge “Fort” Rice at the Roundtable headquarters at Hawk’s Nest, Joshua Jordan’s former Rocky Mountain lodge. A sleepy Rice answered and asked what time it was. “About five in the morning,” Ethan replied. He immediately briefed Rice on the current legal quagmire—that the new president had ordered the U.S. to join the Global Alliance and had turned over America’s computer headquarters to the Alliance, thus preventing any federal agency from interfering with that order.
“Give me a couple minutes to wake up, throw some water on my face, and figure this out,” Rice said. “I’ll call you back in fifteen.”
Ethan talked the agents into circling above Bluffdale while they waited for the return call from Rice. One thing Ethan knew about Rice from what Joshua Jordan had told him: even though the former Idaho Supreme Court justice was slow to make decisions, he was never late. Fourteen minutes later Rice called back. He told Ethan to put him on speaker phone. Now Ethan, the pilot, and the copilot were all listening.
“This is Fortis Rice speaking. Here’s what I’ve turned up. Back when Barack Obama was president, in his second term he tried to get Congress to give him sweeping powers to control the Internet in the event of a cyber attack. But the folks on Capitol Hill wouldn’t go for it. So politically he was forced to sign a much less drastic executive directive, giving the Department of Defense, rather than him, the power to oversee America’s Internet infrastructure in the event of a perceived cyber attack. To my knowledge, that directive was never rescinded by any of his successors. So that gives the DOD the trump card.”
No one in the airplane spoke for several seconds. Fort Rice asked, “Are you all there, or did we lose the call?”
“No, still here,” Ethan called out. “Thanks a million, Judge Rice.”
After Ethan clicked off his Allfone, he suggested that the two CIA operatives contact the DOD. If the Defense Department thought a cyber attack on America’s Internet infrastructure was imminent—in this case by Alexander Colliquin and the Global Alliance—then wasn’t the Department of Defense, rather than the president, authorized to thwart it by any means necessary, including using Ethan March and his compatriots?
The pilot and copilot conferred together. Then the copilot sent a rapid-fire series of text memos. As the plane continued to circle above Bluffdale, the copilot asked Ethan only one question: “Are you willing to swear that an attack on America’s Internet capabilities will be imminent unless you are allowed to intervene?”
“Absolutely,” Ethan said. “Without hesitation.”
A few minutes later the pilot spoke up. “Ethan, I’m afraid if we don’t get the okay from DOD to land you at Bluffdale in the next fifteen or so, we’re going to have to start heading east, and stat. Otherwise we may not have enough fuel to make the trip to Washington. And our agency has ordered us not to stop for refueling at any commercial airports along the way. Too many questions.”
MASTER CONTROL STUDIO—ALLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
New Babylon, Iraq
Alexander Colliquin was holding his final meeting with his digital communications staff. The newly appointed chief of digital imagery gave the briefing. “Mr. Chancellor, we will be ready to go live in the next two hours. I can assure you that no failures will occur, like that embarrassing incident with Ethan March in lab number six.”
“Which is why you are now in charge,” Colliquin replied. “Continue.”
As the new lab chief launched into his explanation, his voice bordered on the ecstatic. “In the next two hours we will simultaneously override all of the major root server addresses for the Internet around the world. A few in South America, Australia, and Africa, a number in the United States, and the remaining ones in Europe and Asia. That will effectively shut down the Internet and the World Wide Web across the globe. The shutdown will last approximately forty minutes. During that time we will program all of those servers to allow overrides from this office in New Babylon and to receive the reprogramming of the BIDTag grid so everyone with a laser imprint will be subject to your holographic 3-D image messages. The digital hub for this is, of course, the National Data Center in Utah. We have all seven of the ICANN Internet start-up codes, and we will use them to restart the Internet. Then you will commence your first global transmission. Your holographic image will appear to every person on the planet, wherever they happen to be situated—in deserts, cities, jungles, or on a mountain top. Our global GPS locator will target each of them via their BIDTag laser implants.”
“And those without the laser tag?”
“Well, those without—like the many Jesus Remnant rebels—will be located by blanket thermal imaging, which of course will immediately determine that they lack the necessary QR code data that is part of the BIDTag. Once identified, our computers will classify them as subversive nontaggers and present them with your holographic 3-D image, and then proceed to use the laser impulse from your image to directly control the neuromuscular response center of the brain. I am happy to announce that after the Ethan March debacle, I used this technique successfully on three human nontagger subjects.”
“Jesus nontaggers?” Colliquin asked hopefully.
“I’m afraid not, Your Excellency. Merely political dissidents.”
Colliquin sighed. “Let’s proceed as quickly as possible. Tell me when I can come into
the holographic studio to deliver my first message. I don’t want to be late.”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
In their little efficiency apartment off the Sunset Strip, Dillon Ritzian’s girlfriend, Darlene, was throwing everything at him she could lay her hands on—lamps, dishes, books.
“And to think I was planning on marrying you, you sick, pathetic scum of the earth!” she shouted as she tossed Dillon’s empty bowling bag at him.
“Come on, Darlene, give me a chance to explain,” he pleaded.
“Explain what?” she screamed. “That you sold out the United States of America for twenty thousand bucks?”
“Well, I was supposed to get another eighty grand if these guys ended up using my schematics to hack their way into the computer system, but with the new president bringing us into the Global Alliance, this mob enforcer guy, Henry Bender, said his people didn’t really need my information after all.”
“You’re not getting it!” Darlene shouted as she shoved him back with both hands. “My dad died a Marine, a hero for this country serving in Iraq when an IED exploded under his truck. I was just a kid when it happened, Dillon. And now I find out that my boyfriend’s a traitor to his country.”
“I needed the money for some gambling debts—”
“I don’t care if you needed it for a heart transplant! What kind of person are you? I’m seriously thinking about moving out. Going back to work at the nail salon.”
“Hey, Darlene, please let me make this up. I’m not a bad guy. How can I prove myself to you? Make this right?”
She grabbed her car keys and headed to the front door. “How about being a man? Use your brain to figure that out, and whatever guts you still have left, unless you’ve pawned those off too.” Then she was gone.
Dillon dejectedly dumped himself down onto the couch, clicked the web TV on, and perused the channels. He stopped on the AmeriNews network. A man in his late sixties was talking about the Global Alliance takeover of the United States and calling it “a crime against humanity.” Underneath his image the network flashed his name: Former Senator Alvin Leander.
As Leander lambasted the Alliance, Dillon Ritzian’s eyes widened and he leaned closer to the TV set.
SIXTY-ONE
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
The message from the plane carrying Ethan March streaked through the CIA and ended up on the desk of the director. The agency chief, William Tatter, had his own opinions about the killing of Hank Hewbright, even if he couldn’t prove it yet. But there was no way he was about to ignore a possible coup within the White House, especially now that the United States was on the verge of being absorbed into the Global Alliance empire.
He called Secretary of Defense Rollie Allenworth and laid out the three points: President Zandibar’s executive order turning America’s top secret national defense computer system at Bluffdale over to the Global Alliance; Ethan March’s plan to sabotage that Alliance takeover; and the rather dated but never rescinded presidential directive that gave the Department of Defense, rather than the White House, special powers to block any Internet cyber attack that threatened American national security.
“And this Ethan March fellow, he’s ready to enter the Bluffdale area?” Allenworth asked.
“He is. At this very moment. I have some people ready to drop him there, but not without your authorization.”
Allenworth mulled it over out loud. “It looks like we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Our new president has explicitly turned over our entire Bluffdale computer complex to the Alliance. But there’s also a prior executive directive that President Zandibar may not know about yet, but soon will, that gives me the authority, not him, to stop a hostile attack on America’s access to the Internet. And in the middle of all that, we have the murder of a sitting president that raises some very ugly questions. So how do we reconcile all of that?”
After a few moments the secretary of defense answered his own question. “Bill, remember your military history? During the eighteenth century, England would deputize privateers—private ships’ captains who were empowered to attack and plunder enemy ships on the high seas with only two stipulations: the attack had to be consistent with English interests, and the privateers had to split the loot with the English Crown.”
“Sounds intriguing,” William Tatter replied. “Ethan March as a privateer? The difference here is that there’s no loot to split.”
“I beg to differ,” the secretary of defense said. “Some things are more valuable than gold or silver.”
IN THE SKY OVER UTAH
The CIA plane had already turned eastward and was almost out of Utah airspace when a supervisor in clandestine services at Langley contacted the two agents and gave them the plan. The DOD was authorizing them, as “loaned agents” of DOD, to drop Ethan March as close to the National Data Center facility as possible, but under no circumstances to land at the military airstrip that was part of the National Guard facility located adjacent to the computer complex.
“So what, exactly, do they want us to do?” the copilot said.
“Seems clear to me. They want us to help Ethan March. But we’re supposed to stay invisible while we do it,” the pilot shot back. “In other words, we can get him to the target site, but we can’t land the plane.”
The copilot rolled his eyes as the plane slowly banked and then headed back toward Bluffdale. No one spoke until Ethan broke the silence.
“What’s in this box back here?” he asked, pointing to a large cargo case a few feet from him.
“Parachutes,” the copilot said.
Ethan smiled. “When I was training in the air force, I took a lot of jumps out of planes.”
“You don’t say,” the copilot said. Now he had a grin of his own.
BOUNTIFUL, UTAH
The charter jet carrying John Galligher, Chiro, and the quantum computer landed about thirty minutes outside of Bluffdale at the nearest civilian airport—Salt Lake Skypark Airport in a town called Bountiful. Galligher and Chiro carefully wheeled the C-Note computer down a little chute from the jet to the tarmac. It was big and bulky, but light enough for the two of them to manage.
Ethan had arranged for the Roundtable in Colorado to provide a truck for the mission; it was already on the tarmac waiting for them. Ethan had had his people print the words Triple T Construction on the side—the name of the primary contractor involved in the construction of the National Data Center. That, plus a file containing phony authorization papers lying on the front seat, would hopefully get them at least through the first security gate on the property. It was risky, but what option did they have?
Galligher and Chiro rolled the big black computer up the ramp and into the back of the truck, where they used four-inch straps to cinch it against one of the inside panels. Galligher had also put in a special request of his own to Alvin Leander and his Roundtable partners—he wanted a Croatian RT20 20mm elephant gun loaded into the rental truck. Galligher knew a former FBI buddy of his who had one at his retirement cabin in the Utah mountains. So when Galligher opened the double doors in the back of the truck, he smiled when he saw the big gun case waiting for him.
After the two men transferred a few toolboxes full of gadgets and equipment into the truck and laid a tarp over the gun case, Chiro insisted that he ride next to his computer in the back. Galligher pointed to the tall machine that was bigger than a refrigerator. “Make sure your child stays in his car seat,” he cracked before telling his partner he would see him in about half an hour. He shut the double doors in the back and slid the locking lever into place and then trotted to the driver’s side.
The rendezvous point with Ethan was supposed to be three miles outside of the National Data Center, but two miles past the first guardhouse. Galligher made it to that first security checkpoint in good time. The gated guard booth on Redwood Road was surrounded by a high razor-wire fence stretching into the Utah desert. The National Guard had previously manned that post, as Camp Williams was adjacent to the
computer complex, but now they had been replaced by Global Alliance security guards. Galligher handed over the phony paperwork. It contained a persuasive-looking order for him to repair a damaged fiber-optic line.
The two guards whispered something to each other. Then the one with the electronic clipboard said to Galligher in an Eastern Bloc accent, “But you are not on list.”
“Fine,” Galligher said. “When your computer system doesn’t work today, and New Babylon strings you up by your fingernails, don’t complain to me.”
More hushed whispers between the men. Finally the guy with the e-pad said, “When you report to operations department, have them call me. If you don’t do that, there will be big-time trouble.” Then he touched something in the booth and the gate over the road opened wide.
Galligher nodded, but added, “Okay. But it may be awhile. First, we’ve got to run some field tests on the outside connections.”
Galligher geared up the truck and took off down the paved stretch of Redwood Road that meandered through the desert until his odometer read two miles from the guardhouse. He climbed out and opened up the back door and told Chiro to sit tight while he checked things out.
Galligher could see, off in the distance, the mammoth computer complex on the rise of the plateau, with the mountains in the background. He used his high-powered binoculars to get a closer look at the computer headquarters that was several times larger than the Houston Space Center. There were ten huge buildings grouped together, and off to the side about a hundred yards sat two square, windowless structures that he figured might be power substations to run the digital intelligence center.