Once resident on the target computer, the file executed, running two subroutines in quick succession. The first presented a set of phony user commands to the Windows-based program that manages DC Water’s analog industrial-control system. It initiated a cascading shutdown of every pump in the network, opening the fail-safe valves and linking the whole system for gravity feed from the highest pump station at Salem Park. The second subroutine destroyed the management program, locking DC Water’s maintenance personnel out of the system.
At 4:25 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, the first DC Water technician discovered the change in pump status. At 4:34, after realizing he was permanently locked out of the system, he contacted his supervisor. Thus, by 4:52, when Agent Celine Jameson called on behalf of the FBI to suggest the possibility of an attack on the city’s water supply, DC Water’s chief of maintenance had a wide-open mind.
Scott had put it all together during his flight back from London. The fragments of code he found on Grendel’s servers were not the type of code that would have crashed the London Stock Exchange. Grendel’s code was a Stuxnet knockoff, designed to attack an industrial system like a power grid or a pump network. The engineer realized that was why Kattan had appeared at the site of the suicide bombing, dressed as a first responder. The front door security at Health and Human Services had been decimated by the attack, and Kattan used the opening to access DC Water’s unhackable servers directly, the same trick he used at Paternoster Square to access the stock exchange.
Never one to present a theory without hard data, Scott wanted to compare the Second Sign Virus with Grendel’s code before briefing the team. Then the neurotoxin hit him and he never got the chance.
As the sun dipped down into the Potomac, CJ and seven members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team raced across the treetops in a dark blue Bell 412 helicopter, heading for the Salem Park pump station. All of them, including CJ, were dressed in black tactical gear and helmets. Walker and Heldner were en route as well, with a CDC hazmat van, but they would take at least forty minutes to reach the site.
CJ checked the smartscreen integrated into the sleeve of her tactical jacket. Infrared satellite imagery showed a single individual kneeling next to the chain-link fence that separated the pump station from the high school baseball field to the south. He appeared to be cutting through the wire. She unstrapped from her seat and stepped up between the pilots. “Step it up, gentlemen! This is about to be a wasted trip!”
As the pump-house tower appeared on the darkening northern horizon, the figure in the infrared video broke through the fence. CJ tapped the hostage rescue team sharpshooter on the shoulder and pointed to a steel-tube bench mounted on the helicopter skid outside the door. “Get ready!”
The pump station came up fast. As they passed the fence, the pilot turned and slid the chopper sideways while the copilot activated the powerful spotlight mounted on a turret under the nose. The blue-white beam fell on a scrawny individual in a parka and blue jeans. He carried a black backpack and walked at a plodding pace toward the station’s huge open reservoir. He paused in midstep when the light came on. Then he kept going.
CJ grabbed the microphone for the chopper’s PA system. “Stop where you are and lay down on the ground.”
The individual ignored the command, now only twenty meters from the reservoir, a short sprint away. He kept walking.
“Stop!” CJ repeated. “Lay down on the ground. If you do not comply, we will open fire.”
When the man still continued, CJ turned to the sharpshooter. He was seated on the helicopter floor with his feet on the external bench and his Remington M40 up and ready. “Can you take him down without hitting the backpack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then do it.”
“Ma’am, if I shoot now, I’ll be shooting him in the back,” argued the HRT man.
“His back is to us because he’s about to dump a bioweapon in that reservoir. Take the shot!”
An earsplitting crack rang out over the steady chop of the rotor blades. The terrorist went down, face first in the grass less than ten meters from the low concrete rise of the southern reservoir wall.
“Let’s go!” shouted CJ.
Unable to land because of the fence line, the chopper pilot hovered twenty feet off the grass. The HRT men unfurled three black ropes from each side, and six of them fast-roped down while CJ and the sharpshooter covered the unmoving terrorist. Once the rest were down and covering the suspect with their MP5s, the other two followed. On the ground, CJ signaled the sharpshooter and another team member to follow her. The rest of the team spread out to look for additional threats.
The suspect was alive, groaning, groping for the backpack lying in front of him. CJ nudged it away with her boot. When she did, the backpack felt light, empty. She picked it up with a gloved hand and pulled open the pockets one by one. There was no canister of virus, not even a glass vial. When she turned the bag upside down, nothing fell out but a worn Quran.
“Ma’am?” The sharpshooter’s face was stricken with guilt — worry that he had just shot a civilian who had done nothing but cut through a fence.
Refusing to accept that, CJ knelt over the suspect and rolled him over. For the first time, she got a good look at him. His face and arms were covered in boils, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. While she stared at him in shock, he gripped her arm with a cold hand and pulled himself up to a sitting position, closer to her face. “I am the third and final sign,” he said with a malevolent grin. “Now comes the Mahdi.” Then his body convulsed and a spout of blood erupted from his lips.
CHAPTER 66
See anything?”
“Not yet.”
Nick and Drake stood on an empty white beach a hundred meters south of the CIA refueling point, scanning the black waves for their transport to Israel. They had been on Cyprus for hours. The wait was maddening.
Unlike Farnborough, the Agency hangar on Cyprus was as rusty and dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside, nothing but four corrugated steel walls, a big rubber fuel bladder, and a drywall bathroom with a reeking, stopped-up toilet. When they first arrived, Nick had found a quiet corner of the hangar — as far from the bathroom as possible — and made several calls. He tried to contact his family, but his efforts were futile. Katy had no phone. The older Baron was not answering his cell. Why should he, after the way Nick had left things?
Nick left messages on his dad’s phone, at both hotel rooms, and the front desk. Never once did he get an actual human being on the line.
After his attempts at direct contact failed, Nick tried another tack. He called Walker and convinced him to try his contact at the Mossad. The result was disappointing. The colonel refused to tell the Israeli that a nuke was entering his country. Such a warning, if incorrect, had massive consequences, and the Triple Seven’s evidence was merely circumstantial. Instead, Walker told the Mossad agent that a bomb was headed for Jerusalem. The contact actually laughed. There was always a bomb headed for Jerusalem. The man thanked Walker for his call and told him that with the usual daily threats and with the massive influx of tourists for the eclipse, the Mossad did not have time to hunt down a dotard American professor and his daughter-in-law.
Later Walker had informed Nick that he and CJ had a lead on the virus. Scott had figured it out. Nick was relieved that the engineer had recovered, but he sensed that Walker was holding something back. When he asked about it, the colonel cut him off. Heldner’s CDC team was ready to roll. He had to go. That was the last Nick had heard from headquarters, more than an hour earlier. Now, standing on the beach in his bare feet with Drake, his phone rang again, but this was a call he expected, and it was not from Romeo Seven.