Zero Day: A Novel Read online

  Daryl licked her lips. “You’re staring at me,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it. You’re embarrassing me.”

  Jeff crossed his fingers. “I’ll stop.”

  She rolled on her back, then kept turning until she stopped on her left side. Her back, Jeff decided, was as beautiful as the rest of her. “Promise me something,” she said, her voice soft and low.

  “Anything.” He uncrossed his fingers.

  Daryl jerked her head toward him and opened her eyes. “Careful what you say there, dude.”

  “Anything.”

  “It’s pretty simple, actually. Don’t worship me, okay?”

  Jeff laughed. “You mean like a goddess or something?”

  “More like an object of beauty or something. Okay?”

  “I see,” Jeff said, though he wasn’t sure he did. “All right then, to me you are a hag. We need to turn out the lights to do it or put a paper sack over your head. Better?”

  She grinned. “Perfect. Don’t look, I’ve got to use the bathroom.”

  Jeff closed his eyes, then peeked the moment she stepped off the bed. Amazing.

  * * *

  Once Manfield was satisfied Jeff Aiken and the blond woman weren’t coming back out anytime soon, he’d gone to his hotel and slept five hours. He’d returned to his position at six that morning, where he waited patiently. It had been a risk, he knew, but he’d been too exhausted to maintain the watch any longer. He was reasonably certain his target had not left while he’d been gone.

  * * *

  “Now what?” Daryl asked. She was scrubbed and dressed, though in yesterday’s clothes and still felt grubby. “Go to the police?”

  Jeff had considered that at some length. “I can’t think why. Would you believe our story of cyber terrorists attacking the United States, unleashing assassins to murder computer programmers and managing partners of law firms?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh a little at the description. “When you put it like that, I guess not. So what do we do?”

  “Eat. I’ve done enough thinking on an empty stomach. Maybe we’ll come up with an action plan over an old-fashioned American breakfast.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Coffee and bagels haven’t been doing me much good lately. Time for some bacon and eggs. I know just the place.”

  * * *

  Officer Jerry Kowalski moved to the corner of the intersection as far from the dirt and dust as he could manage. The overtime for covering street construction was welcome, but he hated the noise and grime. He was wearing old shoes and an unofficial pair of trousers close to the official blue of his standard uniform. Better they took the beating than the ones he wore on duty.

  He idly wondered if he could get away with wearing one of those surgical masks that people wore in Japan and Hong Kong. He decided he’d look stupid, and his uncle, the sergeant, would ream him out good, and the union would bump him to the bottom of the overtime list. As his uncle often said about the force, “Better not to stand out.”

  The jackhammer started up again and he slipped in his earplugs. Noise. And dirt. What a mess.

  Then, across and down East Thirtieth Street, for the third time he spotted the same guy hanging out in the alley. His partner had told him not to ignore his instincts. “If you’re drawn to something, there’s a reason. Don’t talk yourself out of it,” he’d say, then tell Jerry to stop staring at the babes and, for a change, try looking for illegal activity or scumbags up to no good.

  In Jerry’s opinion this guy really stuck out. For one, he was neatly dressed in a blue windbreaker, tan pants, and very white sneakers. Not the typical alley cretin living out of his shopping cart. For another, though he moved from time to time, he was pretty cool about it all, trying to be discreet without being obvious. The guy had to be up to something.

  The first time Jerry spotted him all he’d seen was some subtle movement where it shouldn’t be. It was as if he was waiting for someone. Yeah, Jerry thought, waiting in a skanky alley for his date. Something was going down for sure, though just what he couldn’t decide.

  Across the street from the alley was the Hotel Luxor, and Jerry figured that someone in there had something to do with why the guy was waiting. With nothing better to do he’d run down in his mind the possibilities. The guy could be a process server in a divorce action or lawsuit; that struck him as pretty logical. The guy was dressed too neatly to be a panhandler, but upon reconsideration, he was also dressed too neatly to be a process server. Those guys were usually pretty ratty.

  He could be a jilted boyfriend—that was the one Jerry liked best. The guy was waiting for his girlfriend to get off work so he could corner her and have a few words. Or, Jerry thought, maybe she was shacked up with some guy and what the man in the alley had in mind was something other than a few words.

  Just then the doorman opened the doors and out of the hotel walked a stunning couple. The blonde was lovely, while the guy looked as if he could be a model or something. Both were trim, fit, looking the way everybody secretly wanted to look.

  Across the street the guy in the alley stirred, and Jerry’s eyes went straight to him. Alley guy started across the street, not looking as if he were moving fast, yet covering the distance to the other side quickly, moving to intercept the couple. Jerry froze for a second, not certain what he should do. He spotted the guy slip his right hand into his jacket pocket.

  “Don’t be a spectator,” his partner was always telling him. “You want to watch crime, watch Law and Order on TV.” Jerry moved toward the couple, not even realizing that as he did so, he placed his hand on his gun.

  Alley guy was picking up his pace and Jerry could see he was angling to reach the sidewalk just behind the couple, his hand coming out of the pocket now. Jerry felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his skin prickle. A man in an alley, a couple, people walking back and forth on the street. Nothing was odd about the movement itself, Jerry saw it a thousand times a day on patrol, but this was different. He knew it. Jerry drew his weapon.

  Jerry himself was almost across the street, about thirty feet in front of and to the left of the laughing couple. Alley guy was maybe twenty feet away from them, still in the street but almost to the cars parked along that side. His hand was in view now and Jerry saw the pistol with the big nose on the barrel. A silencer, he knew, never having seen one in action before, but the entire gun looked just like one with a silencer they’d shown his class at the academy.

  “You!” Jerry shouted. “Drop that gun! Freeze!”

  On the sidewalk, Jeff heard the officer and turned toward him. The uniformed man was pointing his gun behind them, yelling at someone. Jeff looked and saw a man just reaching the parked cars, a gun in his hand. The man turned toward the cop and Jeff heard three pops like subdued firecrackers, sensed rather than saw the officer struck with bullets. Then the officer’s gun fired in a loud explosion, then fired again, and again and again as he tumbled onto the pavement, landing on his back.

  Jeff pushed Daryl forward without thinking. “Run! Run!” he said as the pair broke into a sprint down the street, then around the first corner.

  * * *

  Jerry felt the bullets striking him across the chest like heavy blows. Alley guy had been incredibly fast. Jerry cursed himself for missing him. The only bullet he’d fired that was even close was the first, but he knew it had gone high and wide. The others had gone into the cars or pavement as he lost his balance and fell. Shit!

  * * *

  The cop had come out of nowhere. Manfield had seen him standing watch over the construction site and assumed he was some kind of traffic officer, which, in England, were always unarmed. Even if he was armed, Manfield had decided that with the noise and traffic it was unlikely the cop would even see what he was up to. If he did, it would all be over before he could respond.

  Spotting the couple coming out of the hotel, Manfield had focused only on them. His
instincts told him to kill both of them, but the man first, since he was the target. He moved across the street as quickly as he dared, drew his weapon, then heard the cop. He couldn’t believe the man had actually been watching him. Spinning, he’d shot him three times in the heart, saw him topple over, then had taken off after the running couple, ignoring the gunshots in his direction as they weren’t even close.

  At the corner he turned and saw they were already well down the street. He looked back and saw the officer flop over on his back. He was talking into a communication device of some kind. At the construction site, the workers had stopped; it was silent. They were staring straight at Manfield and pointing.

  Pursuing the couple meant drawing the police to him, and a running gunfight in midtown Manhattan made no sense. Manfield ran back up the street, then disappeared into the alley. Along the way he wiped, then ditched, first the pistol, then his windbreaker. Emerging on the other side, he flagged down a taxi. “Trump Tower,” he said, then sat back in the seat and watched for trouble.

  Fifteen minutes later he paid the driver, then entered the lobby of Trump Tower. There he drew out his cell phone and punched in the numbers. After several rings a man answered. Manfield quietly explained what had just happened. He listened, then turned off the phone and put it away. He walked the five blocks to his hotel, ridding himself of the knife and the cell phone along the way. In his room, he showered, changed, then checked out.

  Outside, Manfield walked three blocks to a taxi stand. There he drew out his single die and rolled it into the palm of his other hand. Four. He went to the fourth taxi in line. “Driver, take me to Newark Airport.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the dark-skinned man said as he got out to place Manfield’s luggage into the trunk, ignoring the shouting of the other drivers. As they sped off, Manfield sat back in his seat and replayed the events of that morning, wondering where he had gone wrong. It was the police officer, he decided. He’d made the assumption the man was incompetent. That had been his mistake.

  * * *

  On East Thirtieth Street, Officer Jerry Kowalski sat on the curb, still sucking in air when his uncle, the sergeant, arrived. “What the fuck happened?” he demanded. Jerry told him.

  Afterward the sergeant said, “Shit! Fifteen years I been a cop and never fired my piece once. You’re on the force—what?—two years and you’re in a gunfight. And you didn’t hit shit, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know.” Jerry didn’t need to be reminded.

  “At least you did something smart.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your wore your fuckin’ bulletproof vest like I told you, that’s what. You struck two cars. Before you leave today I want a report. The owners are gonna be screaming about this.”

  54

  AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 19

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

  10:03 P.M.

  At the ticket counter, Jeff paid to be upgraded to business class, since first class was closed. The flight left Newark at seven thirty that evening. Two hours out, they had dinner and shared a bottle of wine. Having talked it through before takeoff, they had nothing more to do until they reached Moscow. Daryl was in the window seat, covered with a blanket, her head wedged between the seat and the wall, sound asleep.

  Jeff looked at her tenderly, realizing that he was more concerned for her personal safety than his own, or the fate of the world, for that matter. Was he right to bring her along? But was leaving her behind any safer? He just knew he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.

  * * *

  Jeff booted his notebook and for a few minutes tried to lose himself in Mega Destructor IV, but it was useless. His current world was too real for him to find release in one of fantasy.

  He went online and checked the news. He could no longer consider any disaster without wondering if it was the Superphreak virus. A chip-manufacturing plant in Taiwan had shut down overnight. No deaths, but management wasn’t commenting on the cause. An entire office building in downtown Austin, Texas, had lost all power. More than thirty people had been trapped in elevators and had to be manually extracted. The building was evacuated by using the emergency stairs. A commuter plane had crashed in Kansas with seventeen dead. Which, if any, of these was Superphreak? How many others had occurred Jeff didn’t know about? How many had died?

  Then a New York Times article caught his eye. Until now he’d wondered why no one was putting this all together. He and Daryl had the advantage of being on the inside, but it had been more than three weeks since the attacks started. The failure of the U.S. government security agencies to come on board was inexcusable, but how hard could it be for the media to start connecting the dots? Or at least to ask the right questions?

  And there it was. Using the local computer-related hospital deaths as a hook, the reporter wrote about a series of unusual incidents nationwide. These included some Jeff already knew about but several he did not, including the apparent destruction of a Midwest bank’s database, the unscheduled shutdown of two more nuclear power plants, and the loss of several significant Internet routing systems.

  “A source within the White House,” the article said, “confirms that the president has already directed that a national security assessment report be submitted to him as quickly as it can be prepared. The source would neither confirm nor deny that the many incidents are related nor comment on another report that they are part of a coordinated effort directed against computers worldwide.”

  That, at least, is something, Jeff thought as he closed the computer, put it away, then leaned back in his seat. They still haven’t put it together but are starting to. When someone finally did, Jeff couldn’t help but wonder how much damage the reaction itself would cause.

  He listened to the engines for several minutes, then glanced over at Daryl again. This is crazy, he thought for the hundredth time since hearing the shots. We’re not secret agents.

  Earlier, once they’d been satisfied no one was chasing them, Jeff had grabbed a taxi and had them dropped off at Central Park. He’d found a large open field, and from there, convinced he could see anyone approaching, trusting the outdoors rather than a closed space, he and Daryl had discussed what to do.

  “Do you think we should go to the cops?” she asked, even though, when she’d suggested this earlier, in Jeff’s hotel room, they’d dismissed the suggestion. But bullets fired from an assassin’s gun now gave weight to what then had seemed a far-fetched scenario.

  “No. They wouldn’t believe us. We might be detained as witnesses or even suspects, and there’s no time to lose right now. If we don’t put a stop to this, no one will. There’s simply too much at stake to take such a chance.”

  Sue’s face was tight with anxiety. They stood in silence for a long minute.

  “Do you think the cop is dead?” Daryl finally asked. “What happened to the other man? The one who was chasing us.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know about the cop. He went down. The other guy ran to the corner, but it didn’t look like he chased us past that.”

  “Who do you think he is?”

  “The same guy who killed Sue and Joshua Greene.”

  Daryl nodded. “Me too. But why us?”

  “Sue and Greene were tortured. Sue must have told him who was helping her.”

  “Maybe we should get a gun. I mean, if it’s up to us to defend ourselves.”

  “In Manhattan? And, trust me, I’d be more a threat to us with a gun than anyone else. I’ve never so much as shot one.” He scanned the park and saw no one approaching them.

  “You should warn Harold—that’s his name, right?”

  “Good thinking.” Jeff called the IT Center and reached Harold, who’d had no trouble accepting the need to disappear. He’d told Jeff he was already considering it and had just the place.

  Daryl sat on the grass. Thirty feet away, a young couple were helping their child learn to walk, clapping with pleasure every time he managed three or four steps. Jeff started
working his BlackBerry with his thumbs. “I’ve got us on a flight to Moscow, leaving from Newark tonight. You got your passport?”

  Daryl looked at him with excitement. “Never leave home without it. Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  “Our problem isn’t that someone’s trying to kill us. Our problem, Daryl, is that in nine days Muslim terrorists are going to unleash an enormous, sophisticated attack on the Internet and the United States. And we’re the only ones in a position to do something about it. If you’ve got a better idea, I’d like to hear it.”

  Much had happened since Jeff had first set foot in that Manhattan law office. In some ways it was a lifetime. He’d gone from a significant, if relatively mundane, job to realizing that his life was on the line, though he was still just a small part of the solution to a much bigger and more important problem. But there was more. He finally understood where he’d gone wrong in the weeks and days leading up to 9/11. He’d been too passive, too trusting. He’d looked to others for solutions.

  Now he understood he should have raised holy hell. When Carlton had ignored him, he should have gone up the chain and kept going up until someone listened. If that had not been possible, he should have gone public, no matter what the risk to his career.

  He’d known he was right and he’d known what needed to be done. If nothing else, a public disclosure of what he’d found might very well have frightened the terrorists off, caused them to delay their attack. Who knew what would have happened then?

  That was the true source of his anger, he realized. Some part of him had always known he’d sold himself short and, in so doing, had doomed more than three thousand people, including the woman he’d loved.

  That was all changed. No more would he sit back and play the guilt-ridden victim.