Is that your way of reminding me I owe you one? “Great, thank you.”
“Let me know if you need more.”
“We’ll be all right. Thanks, though.”
The air outside was crisp and fresh after the humidity of the crowded living room. Ethan took a deep breath, let it fill his lungs. Twilight was surrendering to night, the sky a deep indigo smeared with charcoal clouds. He held the storm door for Ranjeet, then let it swing shut behind them with a bang. The not-quite-quiet of the city surrounded them, faint traffic noises and a distant siren.
Ethan said, “Wow.”
Ranjeet nodded, reached into his pocket for cigarettes. He lit one with a yellow Bic, then offered the pack. Ethan shook his head. Up and down the block the houses looked warm and cozy, tri-ds flickering in living room windows, porch lights shining on well-tended yards.
“What that room needed,” Ranjeet said, “was a woman.”
“No kidding. One wife laughing and all that John Wayne machismo would have evaporated.” He shook his head. “And that thing from Lou, Je-sus. He’s the kind who when he plays basketball says he wants the black guy on his team.”
“Ah.” Ranjeet waved it away with a cigarette flourish. “Doesn’t matter. We’re toying with leaving town anyway. We have a timeshare in Florida and thought we might claim our turn.”
“Amy and I have been thinking the same. Go stay with her mom in Chicago. Don’t know why we haven’t yet.”
“Same reason we haven’t. You go to bed deciding to do it, but when you wake up, the sun is shining, and you figure, no way this can go on another day.”
“So how long do you keep doing that?”
“Until the freezer is empty, I guess.” Ranjeet shrugged. “You know, it will probably blow over tomorrow. By next summer we’ll have forgotten it. The Great Neighborhood Posse of 2013 will be a joke.”
“No doubt,” Ethan said. He was about to add, Everything will be okay, when in every house, every light went out.
Simultaneously.
CHAPTER 9
Air Force One was an hour shy of DC when the Secret Service agent told Cooper that he was wanted in the conference room.
Across a military and agency career, Cooper had ridden on posh private jets and rattling army transports, had soared in a glider over the Wyoming desert and jumped out of a perfectly good C-17 with a chute on his back. But Air Force One was unlike any aircraft he’d ever been on.
A customized 747, the plane had three decks, two galleys, luxury sleeping quarters, a fully equipped surgery, national broadcasting capabilities, first-class seating for the press corps and the Secret Service, and the capability to fly a third of the way around the world without refueling—which it could do midair.
Cooper unbuckled his seatbelt and walked fore. The agents at the door of the conference room nodded at him.
The room was a mobile version of the Situation Room, with a broad conference table and plush chairs. A holo-conferencing screen showed a sharp tri-d of Marla Keevers in her office at the White House. The president sat at the head of the table, with Owen Leahy at his right and Holden Archer at his left.
Archer glanced at him, said, “Tulsa, Fresno, and Cleveland have lost power.”
President Clay said, “Marla, how bad is it?”
“Based off satellite imagery, we estimate that the entire metro area of all three cities has gone dark.”
“Why based off satellite imagery?” Clay asked.
“Because engineers in charge of the power grid for each region report no unusual activity. All substations report back green.”
“A cyber attack,” Leahy said. “A virus tells the system to send massive amounts of power from the grid to individual transformers, blowing them out, while at the same time co-opting the safety systems so that there’s no warning indicator.”
“Yes,” Keevers said. “That’s what’s got the engineers rattled. Work crews say there’s no damage to the substations. The transformers are working. They’re just not providing power to the cities.”
“How is that possible?”
“The Children of Darwin,” Cooper said.
Keevers nodded. “It would appear our protocols have been rewritten. It would take abnorm programmers to pull that off.”
“So what you’re telling me,” the president said, “is that a terrorist organization has turned off three cities like they flipped a switch?”
“I’m afraid so, sir. With some anomalies. In each city, several regions still have power. Two in Fresno, three in Tulsa, and two in Cleveland.”
The image of Keevers was replaced by live satellite footage. The view was haunting. Instead of the riotous glow of cities at night, the holograms showed deep black marked by faint ribbons of light that must have been highways. The only bright spots were in discrete blocks, roughly rectangular, where things looked normal.
“So the virus wasn’t a hundred percent effective,” Archer said. “It’s a small comfort, but it’s something.”
Cooper leaned forward, staring at the maps. There was a pattern, he was—
Two areas in Fresno, three in Tulsa, two in Cleveland.
What connects them? Some are on major highways, some nowhere near. Some downtown, some not.
And yet this doesn’t look random. The virus was too successful everywhere else to have failed completely in these spots.
These areas were left powered on purpose. Which means that they hold some value.
So what unites these seven areas?
—certain. “Hospitals,” Cooper said.
Archer looked at the screens, then back at him. “What?”
“Those regions all contain major hospitals.”
“Why would terrorists take out the power to three cities but leave hospitals functioning?”
“Because they need them,” Leahy said. He turned to the president. “Sir, I’ve spoken to the director of the FBI and the DAR, as well as the head of the National Institutes of Health. They all believe, and I concur, that this may be the precursor to a biological attack.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Archer said. “Why leave the hospitals running if they’re trying to release a biological weapon?”
“Because,” Leahy retorted, “hospitals are the best way to spread one. People get sick, and they go to the hospital. While there they infect others. Doctors and nurses and receptionists and janitors and patients and families. With a really infectious biological agent, the number of cases can expand massively even under normal circumstances. But because these three cities are lacking food, and now power, the situation is far worse. Instead of resting at home, people will flee. They’ll go to stay with relatives, or to second homes. And in the process, they’ll swiftly vector the disease across the entire country. Sir, we believe the COD created this chaotic situation to mask their real attack.”
“That’s a huge stretch,” Cooper said. “Abnorms would be just as vulnerable to infection. What good would a biological attack do the COD?”
“I don’t know,” Leahy said, with a hard look at Cooper. “But the COD are terrorists. We don’t know what their endgame is.”
“Of course we do. They’re upset over the treatment of abnorms, and they want change.”
“What are you basing that on, Mr. Cooper? Abnorm intuition?” Leahy smiled coldly. “I understand your sympathy for their situation, but that can’t be allowed to color our response.”
Would you count my response colored if I called you a close-minded bigot mired in old-world thinking? Instead, Cooper said, “Response to what? You’re wasting time on a hypothetical situation when we have actual disasters in these cities. People are starving. With the power out, they’ll be freezing, getting desperate, violent. Instead of worrying about phantom attacks, why don’t we start getting them some goddamn food and blankets?”