Extinction Crisis

The threat of a hostile computer takeover was something that the Department of Energy was aware of since the old DARPA days of the Internet. Not only did the agency have on-call Nuclear Emergency Special Teams capable of countering terrorists like a national SWAT team, but they had electronic warfare and cybernetic infiltration experts on hand to keep the control apparatus of the nation’s nuclear power secure. Even then, Stony Man had to work with the DoE on multiple occasions against threats too great even for the NEST squads to deal with, such as the ninja-skilled Tigers of Justice or KGB-backed forces out to force meltdowns of reactors.

Kurtzman shot a glance to Huntington Wethers, who was at his workstation, his unblinking eyes focused on his monitor. “Hunt, did you notice any errant lines of code in the system?”

“None so far. I’m barely halfway through my search, however, Aaron,” Wethers replied. He gnawed on the stem of his pipe, not looking away from his monitor as he scanned the DoE operating system for any recent changes.

Kurtzman rubbed his forehead and rolled his wheelchair over to the coffeepot where Carmen Delahunt was mixing cold water with the freshly brewed chai tea she’d brought to the computer center. “Anything on the crispy critters that Lyons and the boys left behind in D.C.?”

“Not a thing. The explosion removed everything that could have identified them quickly. We’re stuck with DNA coding, and CODIS is nowhere near as fast as it appears to be on TV crime procedurals,” Delahunt answered. She took a sip of her tea and licked her lips.

“So, we’ve got at least three days before we can figure out if the dead perps are somehow in the DNA database,” Kurtzman murmured. He sighed. “By then, we could have a China syndrome incident four times over.”

“Which is why Carl and the boys are pounding the street and going through the likely goons who would have made a fake UPS truck,” Delahunt told him. “Sometimes, all we can do is pore over computer programs looking for kinky programming and viruses left behind. All the satellites and computerized search engines in the world aren’t going to replace shoe leather on a sidewalk and a shotgun in your fists doing the real work.”

“Nope,” Kurtzman said. “But don’t tell Barb that. She thinks we can do anything.” He paused to pour himself a mug of his high-octane sludge, then took a sip and sighed. “I’m going to see what Akira has on the French situation.”

“The new Directorates talk a big game about operational security, but Akira’s been tap-dancing through their systems pretty easily,” Delahunt said.

Kurtzman nodded. “It’s all that twitchiness in his reflexes. He’s too fast for their system to adapt to. Quick and low profile is the way things work best, at least when you’re in a hostile land.”

“The same applies to David, Gary and T.J.,” Delahunt noted. “They slipped into France, and now they’re gearing up with a nonstandard supplier. Akira’s doing his best to give them targets to look at, but mostly, it’s up to those three.”

“Once again, we’re batting cleanup and doing the boring work,” Kurtzman complained. “Any word from Cal and Rafe?”

“Nothing after they took out the probe team,” Delahunt explained. “Right now, they’re with Unit 777 looking over the infiltration robots, but considering how badly they damaged them, we’re not going to have too much success figuring out the origins of their components or who built them.”

“How badly damaged?” Kurtzman asked.

“Each took about 120 to 150 hits from rifle and handgun rounds,” Delahunt replied.

“That much?” Kurtzman exclaimed.

“That’s how long the robots kept shooting back,” Delahunt explained.

Kurtzman frowned. He remembered the faxed scans of the designs whipped up by Schwarz based on Lyons’s description of the robots. “Okay, that makes sense. It also makes them scarier. You’d need a heavy machine gun to take out one of those things.”

“Wouldn’t that be the point? You don’t want a soap bubble sent in. It takes a knock in a vent, and you’ve wasted the effort. Force four people to pour bullets into one robot, maybe even more, and you’ve tied up half a SWAT team,” Delahunt replied. “They probably have redundant communications, as well, making it harder to jam whatever signals are being directed toward them.”

“Encizo also noticed a UAV over the truck, correct?” Kurtzman asked.

“Extra complication,” Delahunt admitted. “Akira’s got a search running for missing UAVs in the area, but this might be some leftovers from the last missing bits from a U.S. military shipment to Egypt that Striker encountered.”

“I thought we tied up all of those loose ends,” Kurtzman groaned.

“You put a lot of military tech on the black market, you have to deal with trickles of it for years,” Delahunt grumbled.

“Well, at least we have records. I’ll see if we can find back-door commands to get into the UAV CPUs,” Kurtzman said. “There’s a possibility that they haven’t gone completely over to a new operating system to run the stolen birds.”

“Though if they’re good, they’ll have gone through and closed those loopholes,” Delahunt noted. “And they might well be the best. They found the DoE agent on their case.”

Kurtzman grimaced. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up. Maybe they’ve left a hole as bait for us. They’ll know that someone would be on their case in cyberspace. It’s a good bet they’ll want a shot at their competition.”

“So there’s a chance we might have to go on viral lockdown again?” Delahunt asked.

“Better us than someone who can’t handle a worm or logic bomb,” Kurtzman explained. “We can cordon off any infection. The FBI or CIA get hit, and there’s a chance we lose half the intel that Homeland Security somehow managed to gather.”

“Half of nothing, you mean?” Delahunt asked. “I fail to see how bloating the intelligence-gathering process does anything for securing our national security.”

“Don’t say that too loud,” Kurtzman replied. “There are still types who’d rather trade their freedom for security up the road.”

Delahunt made a face. “You’d have thought after eight years of that kind of ineptitude, we’d be done with it by now.”

“Promises made are just pillow talk. Politics is still the Greek term for many blood-sucking insects, not many truth speakers,” Kurtzman growled.

“Back to work?” Delahunt asked.

Kurtzman sighed. “The bad guys aren’t going to find themselves for us, are they?”

“Nope,” Delahunt answered.

The two computer experts returned to their workstations, toiling on in the search for any link to the robot masters.

D ARRIN H OMM LOOKED OVER the UAV footage from Egypt. Though the images were grainy due to the lack of finesse inherent to night vision, he still had height and weight estimations thanks to computerized parallax analysis relating the images to known objects on the ground around them. He entered the data into a search program that contained dossiers for known current and past agents of a half-dozen governments.

With that particular information, the computer mastermind turned to his partner, Mischa Shenck, putting the pictures down in front of the engineer. Shenck looked at the printed photos, then raised an eyebrow.

“An African in Africa?” the Russian-born cyberneticist asked.

“African-American,” Homm replied. “But black Americans are usually tourists, and Egypt doesn’t let tourists run around with state-of-the-art assault rifles.”

Shenck looked at the picture. “So, he’d be an American CIA agent? Special Forces?”

“Special Forces is straight Army. Get the facts straight,” Homm growled.

Shenck sighed, knowing the computer expert’s obsessive-compulsive disdain for improper terminology. “Sorry. Special operations.”

“Likely special operations. I put that face through recognition software, but it’s come back as a null return,” Homm said. “That marks him as a sanitized operative since he doesn’t even register on recognition patterns.”

“So, you want me to help you figure out who he is?” Shenck asked. “He’s been sanitized by professionals if he’s a nonentity in your recognition program. Whoever wiped him out of the database would have been thorough.”

Homm nodded. “If anything, they are working closely with the Egyptian authorities. Their driver is a member of Unit 777.”

“It’s not much to go on,” Shenck said.

“Bullshit it’s not. Somehow, two Americans brought their own personal weapons, because SIG-Sauer is not standard Egyptian gear, even for their high-speed, low-drag units,” Homm said. “And they were on watch for our robots.”

“Which means we’re not talking about a large agency here,” Shenck said. “The Americans at the Department of Energy had only encountered the other robot a few hours ago. Intelligence agencies take days to get word to units in other cities, let alone other countries.”

“Hence the logic of a small agency or a tightly knit department,” Homm suggested.

“Something around twenty people,” Shenck mused. “Half in the field, half working cyber support. They undoubtedly have an efficient and secure communications network, as well, so tapping them will be nearly impossible.”

“They might be hard to trace, but they have their own contacts and allies abroad,” Homm stated. “So we should be able to tap whomever they’re working with.”

“Breaking the DoE and Egyptian military intelligence networks to figure out who they’re interfacing with will be your job, but this group does sound sort of familiar,” Shenck said. “Did you only get a picture of the black man?”

“There was an Israeli woman. I managed to pry her identity from Mossad’s computers,” Homm said. “And she was with another man.”

“Did you run him through?” Shenck asked.

“He also had a zero response,” Homm answered. “He was of average height and build, though.”

Shenck looked at the second American’s photo. He smiled. “Just what I expected.”

“Who did you think you would find?” Homm asked.

“The Latino member of the team,” Shenck answered.

“One black. One Latino. And three sort of average white men as partners?” Homm suggested.

“Exactly,” Shenck replied. “We’ve come up against the urban legend known as Phoenix Force.”

Homm punched the desk between them. “Damn! That means the big blond guy who didn’t even stop when we hit him with the Taser must have been from their so-called sister team, Able.”

“Presumably the same Mr. Stone who my former friends in the KGB despised so deeply,” Shenck said. “Stone or iron or some such invulnerable material fits the description of a man who shrugged off twenty thousand volts through a Taser.”

“So those two groups are allied?” Homm asked.

“Considering that they are aspects of the same myth, it is a likelihood,” Shenck said.

“These groups aren’t myths. We have photographs of them,” Homm growled.

“We’ve seen the basis for the mythology,” Shenck countered. “But the facts are not so clear in regard to what the nature of their organization is.”

“Their agency is large enough to operate in Washington, D.C., and outside of Inshas, Egypt, but they are still small enough to quickly communicate across the Atlantic Ocean. They also have their pulse on things, because Hirtenberg was investigating our touches on the DoE’s security system and they hooked up with the Mossad after the Negev near-incident,” Homm speculated.

“So they know all about our infiltration, the nature of the attack robots and our deal with local terror groups,” Shenck mused.

“They also know that we have Global Hawk UAV drones,” Homm said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have excellent face shots if they weren’t looking directly at the drone.”

“How screwed are we?” Shenck asked.

“It all depends on operations in France,” Homm replied. “And if they have their teams granulated enough to have a presence in Europe, as well.”

“You believe the teams have split?” Shenck asked.

“There’s only two visible in Egypt. We can’t discount the remainder of Phoenix Force being elsewhere, especially in the wake of the violence committed in Paris,” Homm sighed.

“What do we do?” Shenck asked.

“Adapt. Which means I call in some extra help on my side, and you utilize some of those upgrades which I thought would be too flashy,” Homm replied.

“What about Inshas?” Shenck asked.

“It gets hit with upgraded robots, but only once we’ve made certain that everyone is locked into Washington, D.C., and France,” Homm told him.

“So the Middle East will start suffering meltdowns, while our efforts in the U.S. and France are blunted?” Shenck asked.

“The U.S. operation is too widespread to be easily stopped, and France right now is on high alert. They’re not accepting help from the U.S.,” Homm said. “France might just be pulled off, and we have the flexibility in the States to do whatever we want.”

“Just have to know what we’re dealing with,” Shenck said. “All right. I’ve got some quick module ideas that we can send out.”

Homm smiled. After this, the panic against nuclear power would paralyze alternative power technology around the world.

The nightmare would only make them the most influential men in future technologies. If they somehow managed to survive the effort.

CHAPTER FIVE

David McCarter watched T. J. Hawkins finish scrubbing down and lubricating every bit of mechanism of the high-tech, polymer-composite Steyr AUG A-3 rifle in his possession. When the Southern Phoenix Force pro was concentrating on his weapons maintenance, there were few things that could distract the young man from his task.

Gary Manning turned off his cell phone and removed the wireless headset from his ear. “The Security Directorate isn’t aware of any outside investigation occuring within Paris at this moment. We’re pretty much in the clear.”

“Wouldn’t asking about their awareness put them on alert?” Hawkins asked as he reassembled his rifle.

“There is that worry, but don’t forget, not every organization is Stony Man,” Manning returned. “By the time they send through memos and requests for recognition, it will have been two or three days before we encounter any official interference.”

“That’s from the authorities themselves,” McCarter mused. “The DoE is the same kind of bloated, fragmented beauracracy as the new French internal security agency, but our opponents discovered the agent looking into their backtrail fast enough to send a killer robot snake after her.”

Manning nodded. “Which is why I routed the phone call through my cabin outside of Toronto. Whoever the opposition is, they might be genuinely misdirected for a few hours.”

McCarter watched the mechanical precision with which Hawkins worked on the AUG A-3 carbine. “I wouldn’t underestimate them. If Stony Man could catch a whiff of their interest in Europe’s nuclear reactor programs, then there’s a strong possibility that we’re going to have some drama on our end here.”

“So why are you looking at Hawkins’s rifle like it were some long-lost lover?” Manning asked.

“’Cause I cleaned it so well that it shines like a diamond,” Hawkins answered.

“No. I’m worried that according to Rafe and Cal, a 5.56 mm doesn’t have enough immediate punch to slow down one of those robots. The round’s fine for antipersonnel use at close range, but we’re dealing with small, tough-skinned mechanisms which contain redundant systems,” McCarter corrected.

Manning nodded. “Which is why you’re not the only one here who has friends in France with access to powerful guns.”

McCarter raised an eyebrow. “What are you thinking of?”

“We want a big, metal-crunching punch, so I arranged for a friend of mine to drop off something,” Manning said.

There was a knock at the back door and McCarter glanced toward it. Manning rose and went to answer. Over the big Canadian’s shoulder, the Briton could see a pretty woman with long, sable dark hair and glimmering blue eyes hand him a rectangular, gift-wrapped box.

Manning greeted her in French, and McCarter could hear enough to know that the brawny Canadian was telling her sweet nothings. Whatever compliments that Manning had for the woman could hardly be classified as lies, judging from the brief glimpses he caught of her. Manning gave the woman a kiss on her cheek, and closed the door.

“How do I arrange a delivery like that?” Hawkins asked.

“You know a beautiful, intelligent woman? Shame that you can’t find those with your looks and manners,” Manning responded.

“Southern charm mean anything to y’all?” Hawkins asked.

“You’ve never shown it,” Manning said with a wink.

McCarter grinned at the jab as Hawkins waved off the Canadian’s verbal barb. “We going to give the robots flowers and hope they contract hay fever?”

Manning sighed. “You know, that’s a good idea. Too bad my plan was more pedestrian.”

He opened the box and McCarter looked at the pistol-grip, folding-stock pump shotgun within and nodded. The Briton picked up a box of ammunition that was sitting next to the weapon in the gift-wrapped container. “Twelve-gauge slugs. Innocuous for deer hunting, but it’s also strong enough to smash what passes for engines in European automobiles.”

“Or smashing the self-destruct charge out of a killer snake robot,” Hawkins noted.

“Really?” Manning asked. “I never would have thought of that.”

Hawkins rolled his eyes. “Did you ever do this to James when he was still the youngest member of the team?”

“No. But then, Cal’s laid-back, experienced and worldly,” McCarter replied.

“Plus, we’re jealous of Gadgets and Pol and all the piss they take out of Carl,” Manning added.

“That, too,” McCarter agreed. “Can’t let the Yanks have all the fun.”

Hawkins rolled his eyes and went back to fieldstripping his SIG. “Pistol-grip pump?”

“With a Knoxx Comp-stock and a folding shoulder stock,” Manning said. “It can be fired like a handgun if need be. Lyons thinks the world of his Remington with the Comp.”

“Lyons also has been known to break coconuts in two with his bare hands,” Hawkins grumbled.

“Can’t everyone?” Manning asked.

“I forgot. You’ve got more muscles than Paul Bunyan. You just dress to hide ’em,” Hawkins said.

“All right. Enough chin wag.” McCarter cut his friends off. “We’ve got leads to run down and people to beat up.”

C ARL L YONS LET THE BEAST out, and right now the rage he felt against the conspiracy that murdered a fellow investigator came down in concentrated agony on the shoulder and elbow of Darius Morrison. The chicken-wing armlock applied to him bent the two joints at angles they could barely support, tendons stretched to the snapping point.

“I know you have something to say to me, Darius,” Lyons growled, his gas mask distorting his voice to make it even more animalistic. “The only question is whether you’ll ever be able to use your arm again after your rotator cuff is permanently torn.”

“You didn’t even ask a question!” Morrison howled in pain. Tears and mucus ran from his eyes and nose as capsaicin burned the tender tissues of his face. He coughed and sputtered, suffering from the effects of riot control gas and feeling the ache from where a neoprene baton had battered several ribs.

Lyons looked toward Schwarz and Blancanales, also disguised and concealed behind their own gas masks protecting them from the remaining wisps of burning chemical smoke. “I didn’t ask him anything?”

“Nope,” Schwarz answered.

“Well, you did say hit the floor when we poured tear gas, flash-bangs and riot batons into this bunch,” Blancanales pointed out. “But you haven’t asked a question since you crippled Mickey Giardelli.”

“Giardelli?” Morrison asked. “But he has an army—”

“Had an army,” Lyons snarled, the gas mask turning the response into a gutteral reply from a ferocious beast. “They’re being hosed off the concrete, along with Giardelli’s arms and legs. Pol, you have the rubber tubing?”

Blancanales held up the pale yellow tourniquets. Morrison saw Schwarz stroke the blade of a blood-crusted saw.

“The fuck you going to do?” Morrison whined.

“Keep you from bleeding to death,” Lyons told him. “That way, we can tell our boss that we didn’t kill anyone this week.”

“Not personally,” Schwarz added. “How was I to know that someone switched the first batch of tear gas for high-explosive fragmentation?”

“Don’t tell me that it’s your fault we have a half-dozen bodies jammed into the back of our van to dump in the river,” Lyons snapped at Schwarz.

Morrison twisted and struggled in the ex-cop’s grasp. “Wait! Wait! What vehicle are you looking for?”

“A brown delivery van,” Blancanales said.

“Don’t tell him before we take his legs off at least!” Lyons bellowed. The hollow echo of the gas mask amplified the yell to a roar against the side of Morrison’s head.

“No, the brown van? Man, they picked that up two days ago! Look in the office!” Morrison said. “You want the password? Ecclesiastic!”

Schwarz tilted his head. “What?”

“From that movie. Where they wanted the safe word…but had to go with snakebite ’cause the snitch was too stupid?” Morrison asked.

“Spell it,” Schwarz said.

Morrison did so. He didn’t even realize that Lyons had let up the pressure on his arm.

“Aw hell, you’re going to shoot me in the head,” Morrison muttered.

Lyons shrugged. “Why would I do that?”

“And, for our edification, Mickey Giardelli coughed you up, and we didn’t even have to pretend to be a SWAT team,” Blancanales said.

Morrison’s eyes widened. “Aw shit…”

“You’ve got a choice, son,” Lyons told him, slapping him on the shoulder to focus his attention. “Stay free, and maybe have the pricks who you delivered the truck to think you gave them up—which you did—or do some prison time for running a chop shop. One ends with you sitting safe in a box for six months. The other has guys willing to murder federal agents wanting to shut you up so you don’t testify.”

“I’ll take the safe option, thank you very much,” Morrison stated.

Lyons smiled. “Beautiful.”

Morrison mopped his brow as Schwarz broke into his computer.

K URTZMAN PICKED UP THE secure, direct connection from the field. Schwarz had activated an encryption protocol that turned the line his computer was on into a shielded transmission conduit. Hackers attempting to penetrate the electronic security locks and creating interference with the direct connection would alert Stony Man Farm to the intrusion and render themselves open to a salvo of countersurveillance programs guaranteed to crash even the most powerful processors set to the task.

“Gadgets,” Kurtzman greeted over the tight-band video chat. “Nice design extrapolation on the robot snake.”

“Thanks,” Schwarz replied. “You should have seen the picture of Carl as Captain Caveman that he destroyed.”

“I bet it would have been a hoot,” Kurtzman admitted.

Schwarz grinned. “Since I drew it on a tablet computer, I’ll upload it to you for a screen saver.”

Kurtzman chuckled. “Lyons would take my head off if he found that.”

“You told him how to understand the magic box?” Schwarz asked.

There was a grunt on the other end, and Lyons appeared on camera as Schwarz winced and rubbed his shoulder.

“There’ll be time for jokes later,” Lyons grunted. “You have access to Morrison’s hard drives?”

“Yeah,” Kurtzman said. “We’ve located the account which paid for the delivery truck, but we’re looking at an offshore bank with some paranoid security.”

“Paranoid is a walk in the park for you guys, isn’t it?” Lyons asked.

“Not these banks,” Kurtzman replied. “They’ve been upgrading their black ice, and I’m not afraid to say that they’re making us work for our paycheck, even if it is just a false front.”

“So, the conspirators dumped cash into an account for their dead buddies to pull out,” Lyons said. “How’ll you be able to track the money trail?”