‘Nassir is believed to have reneged on a deal with the Chinese in order to obtain this technology for his own ends. That can’t have pleased the Chinese too much, so maybe they’re searching for him too?’
‘If so, they might get in the way,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Having a bunch of Communists running about DC looking for him isn’t going to help us any. They’re not going to be friendly.’
‘And they might have an agenda of their own,’ Ethan replied, ‘something more than just hunting Nassir down. They have the same technology that he does and might try something themselves while they’re here — they’ve hacked just about every other US computer system going, there’s only the minds of the people left.’
‘Get to DC,’ Jarvis advised. ‘There’s nothing else for it. We’ve got to assume that Nassir is heading there and that he’s planning to hit the President. I suggest that you split up, one of you staying by the President’s side and the other in the field, and liaise as best you can.’
‘Roger that,’ Ethan said. ‘We’re on our way. Stay in touch.’
The cell phone went silent and Ethan stared at it for a long moment.
‘What?’ Lopez asked.
For a moment Ethan could not reply as something nagged at him, a thought just out of reach. Lopez tugged at his arm.
‘C’mon,’ she urged. ‘We’ve gotta move.’
XXXVI
Abrahem Nassir hurried out of the back of an unmarked white van that had parked close to the sidewalk alongside a series of lock — ups near a shopping mall, the bright sunshine much like that of his desert home but tinted with the muddy stain of pollution and smog. He wasted no time in crossing the sidewalk and entering the sanctuary offered by lock up number four.
The location, like everything else, had been chosen long in advance. All of the buildings were privately rented and occupied by vehicle repair companies and dry cleaning firms, most of which were yet to open.
‘Salaam, my brother.’
Abrahem’s eyes adjusted to the gloom inside as he saw Tariq emerge from the shadows, the old man’s moustache gray against his dark skin.
‘Salaam,’ Abrahem smiled as they embraced. ‘Your journey was good?’
‘A touch more luxurious than yours, no doubt,’ Tariq replied as he looked the younger man up and down. ‘But then I am not yet a wanted man.’
‘Give it time, my friend. Soon they will be looking for you too.’
‘Which is why we must hurry,’ Tariq agreed. ‘Your work cannot be completed unless you remain in the shadows until the very last moment.’
Abrahem looked past Tariq to where a series of laptop computers were arrayed across a table, all of them switched on and their screens glowing in the otherwise dark room.
‘Is it done?’ he asked.
Behind the laptops sat two men, both of them typing quietly, their brows furrowed and their faces illuminated by the unnatural glow of the screens.
‘They are completing the task as we speak,’ Tariq replied. ‘They have done well, my friend. Soon we will have complete control.’
Abrahem moved closer and watched as the men worked feverishly, lines of code spilling like digital rain down the screens.
Abrahem had been fortunate enough to have been educated in Saudi Arabia at a private school funded by his late father. There he had learned much about the rest of the world and the technological wonders it held. Although he himself was by no means computer literate, in the sense that he could not program computers or write code, he knew enough to understand than in the digital age a mastery of computers was the key to true power. Vast amounts of data crossed the United States every single second of every day, held its infrastructure together, allowed people to communicate across immense distances without delay. The networks now installed allowed video conferencing and satellite links to the other side of the globe, and all of it was controlled by computers.
‘This is the future,’ Tariq said as he moved alongside his young companion. ‘No more bullets and bombs, no more thugs flying airplanes into buildings. With this technology we can strike at the very heart of our enemy with surgical precision, just as the Americans boast that they can do in our homelands.’
Abrahem nodded. He recalled his rage, boiling even now just out of sight beneath the lid he kept upon it, as he watched the images of American jets sending missiles with impossible accuracy into homes in Iraq, killing militants but also women and children. The Americans liked to play down how many civilian casualties had died in the Iraq wars, liked to pretend that their invasions had been clinically precise, but Abrahem knew that the figure was in the hundreds of thousands. Entire villages had been wiped out, generations of Iraqis lost to the hammer of America’s “shock and awe” campaign, often bitterly referred to as “shocking gore” by a media largely opposed to the invasions.
In return, the Islamist militias that had risen up in the crumbling ruins left behind when the Americans had withdrawn from Iraq had then begun an equally barbaric campaign of their own to grab power in the provinces. With Sharia Law their banner, they had murdered and tortured and maimed and oppressed with all of the fury their firebrand mullahs could wield, ending the lives of countless more of Iraq’s sons and daughters, until now all that remained was the battered, sun scorched remains of what had once been a strong and united country.
And all of it could be blamed upon one individual.
Now, Abrahem could strike back against that individual in a way that nobody had ever seen before. He smiled to himself, his fury momentarily satisfied as he thought of the carnage that he would cause so very soon. But in this horrendous act of international terrorism, unlike that of America’s, there would be no significant civilian casualties but for those who stood directly in his way. Their suffering would come in a different form, the psychological terror that their country was not just unsafe but that their very minds and bodies were no longer their own, that anybody could be controlled.
America had laid waste to Iraq. Now one Iraqi would lay waste to the American Dream forever.
‘How long before the networks are complete?’ he asked, eager to begin.
‘They will be at work for another hour,’ Tariq informed him, ‘and then it will be done. We will have control and nobody will know it.’
The screens to Abrahem’s right showed not data streams but maps of Washington DC, and on those maps were points of light that denoted areas known as “dead zones”, one of which they were occupying at that very moment. The dead zones were littered across the city and indeed every city in the western world, and Abrahem had selected two of them in Washington DC: Bethesda, and an area just to the north of Whitehaven Parkway on DC’s west side, close to the Potomac.
‘The direct links can be established after leaving the zones?’ Abrahem asked.
‘All is in hand,’ Tariq assured him. ‘Right now, all we have to do is ensure that the Americans are headed in precisely the wrong direction just when we want them to be. Before they know what they have done it will already be over, and every American in the country will experience a shock and awe all of their own as they watch their televisions and cower. The whole world will know what you have done my friend, for every single one of them will be watching it for years to come.’
Abrahem clenched his fists as a grim smile spread across his face and his dark eyes reflected the glow of the screens.
‘Where is she?’