He opened his eyes in time to see a shingle explode near his right hand. He looked up at Ruth, who was still pulling him toward the wall of the neighboring house. "Take cover," he yelled at her. He pushed her toward the windows facing them and another bullet hole sprouted in the roof between them.
Ruth headed for the darkened window, but she didn't let him go. That was probably a good thing, because the impact had stunned him, and all Gideon could manage was a wild scramble, his bad leg doing little more than kicking weakly at the edge of the roof.
Just at the time that Gideon thought the sniper had enough time to aim a shot right into one of their heads, something else slammed into the roof. Gideon turned to see Alexander, and another shot go wild into the roof between them.
Glass shattered, and Gideon found himself half-led, half-pulled through a window into a darkened bedroom. He turned around, from where he had fallen on the floor, to see Alexander diving for the window.
He didn't make it.
A shot tore into his neck. He spun half away from them, falling out of sight beyond the window.
"What the fuck?" A man sprang out of the darkness, yelling at them. He was swinging something threateningly. Somehow, Gideon had managed to keep hold of the Uzi, and he swung it at the man.
"Shit, I'm cool—" The object, ax handle or baseball bat, dropped. It took a moment for Gideon to realize-that the man was completely naked.
He scrambled away from the window with Ruth, keeping the Uzi leveled at the bedroom's occupant. The man backed away from them as they reached the doorway. Outside, the sounds of sirens became louder and Gideon could hear the screech of the trucks pulling away from the house.
It took a few moments to get to his feet, even with Ruth helping him up. "I can't believe this is happening," Ruth said.
"You ain't the only one," said the naked man. He stood on a pile of blankets that had spilled from his bed. Behind him, Gideon could see someone else, probably his wife, cowering away from the two of them.
"Let's get out of here," Gideon said.
By the time they made it outside, the fire department had arrived, the IUF had gone, and the Israeli safe house was a blackened shell holding an inferno inside itself.
2.06 Thur. Mar. 19
C OLONEL Gregory Mecham stood at a podium in a small, secure meeting room at Fort Meade. The room was designed to hold about two hundred people; at the moment it held ten. In a meeting about Zimmerman, ten was a quorum. It consisted of the National Security Council and a few select people from the various intelligence agencies.
In particular, Mecham noticed a new face from the DISA who sat next to General Adrian Harris, Chairman of the JCS.
"This is what we have," Mecham said, switching on a remote that operated the screen behind him. Surveillance photographs crossed the screen. "We've received these pictures from the team observing Gideon Malcolm. The team on Malcolm was carefully chosen and isolated, our communication has been through uncompromised channels." Mecham manipulated a mouse pointer across the screen behind him, highlighting the pictures in turn. "While the hope was that Malcolm might uncover new intelligence by his investigation, he has—up until yesterday—been researching already well-covered ground.
He's visited Dr. Zimmerman's home and members of her family. . ."
Mecham clicked a button, and the pictures changed to street scenes in Greenwich Village. "The second hope, that allowing Malcolm to roam unhindered would draw out other forces interested in Dr. Zimmerman, has borne fruit." Mecham clicked the mouse on one picture of a man dressed in a jogging suit. The picture blew up and filled the whole screen with a grainy, but recognizable photo of one of the gunmen who had attacked Malcolm and Zimmerman's sister. "This man is named Lyaksandro Volynskji, born Ukrainian, but he's been a resident of various Islamic states, mostly parts of the old Soviet Union. He is a recognized assassin, he's worked in Bosnia, Palestine, and inside Russia. He's associated with the International Unification Front, a loose confederation of extra-national paramilitary groups that operate out of the Middle East. After some backtracking, we've pinpointed his entry into this country as December 3, last year. He came into Miami on a Cuban passport."
Mecham slid the mouse around and clicked on another photograph. This time another man's picture expanded to fill the screen. "Hashim Abu Bakr, Syrian. We suspect that he's been involved in organizing various terrorist training camps in Syria and Libya, part of the same IUF. He entered the country on a Palestinian passport on December 2, last year."
Mecham clicked the last picture and a young man with dark hair and intense black eyes filled the screen. "The third man hasn't been identified yet. However, it seems clear the IUF is responsible for killing at least three people involved with Zimmerman. Consulting with the CIA, we've positively identified Volynskji as the shooter in the assassination of Morris Kendal."
Mecham shut off the display and leaned forward on the podium. "I'll hand the floor over to the CIA's expert."
One of the ten people stood up and walked over to the podium. He was a short black man named Williams who was one of the CIA's resident experts on Middle East terrorist organizations. "Gentlemen, we
are dealing with a very dangerous situation here. While, over the past decade, the IUF has been shifting its focus to economic and technological espionage, they are still terrorists. While I understand the grave threat Dr. Zimmerman poses to our SIGINT capabilities, I think the presence of the IUF suggests a threat that's much graver than the exposure of our cryptographic resources."
What little noise there was in the room silenced. Mecham looked up at Williams. He knew what Williams meant. Ever since Zimmerman's disappearance, the fear had been that her mathematical work for the NSA might be exposed. For a few years before Dr. Zimmerman came to work for them, the NSA's mission had been hampered, especially with digital communication, by the presence of strong cryptographic methods. After Zimmerman came, there was no such thing as strong encryption.
But that wasn't the only thing that Zimmerman was working on.
"If crypto was all the IUF was interested in, Zimmerman would never had had to disappear. Zimmerman's work could be passed on a single CD. They didn't need her work, they needed her. And from all appearances, Zimmerman went willingly. They've since been trying to get access to a Daedalus supercomputer. That doesn't make any sense unless they were interested in Zimmerman's work in information warfare. The fact that they're still operating in the country means they haven't smuggled Zimmerman out. That implies that they have a definite plan, and they need a Daedalus to carry it out.
We've had a number of alerts recently, where it appeared that there were hostile forces attacking domestic information systems. The virus that instigated the Wall Street crash has only been the most public. Since Zimmerman's disappearance, we've had computer-related power failures at seven major facilities, lost two major air traffic control systems for over three hours, and—for five minutes—lost the entire long distance phone network between the Rockies and the Mississippi. These may all be related, and may only be tests." Williams paused for emphasis, then said, "If they get access to a Daedalus, I would consider it as much a threat to the United States as if they had access to a weapon of mass destruction in every major city in the country."
Colonel Mecham was back in his office before eight in the morning, and around eight-fifteen, Emmit D'Arcy was knocking on his door.
"Come in, sir," Mecham said, standing up to meet D'Arcy.
D'Arcy shut the door behind him and took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "I wanted to talk to you, Greg. I wanted your take on Williams' analysis."