Chapter 31

Monitoring every radio and television signal and Internet communication on the planet was not a job for a couple of hackers squatting in a basement. While the National Military Command Center was located largely underground, it could not by any stretch of anyone's imagination be described as a basement. Row upon row of uniformed personnel sat quietly at multiple stations, their eyes fixed on numerous individual readouts, their sensitive headphones conveying to them the slightest of broadcast sounds even as both video and audio signals were being recorded for later deep study and analysis.

At a station set slightly apart from the rest, Maggie Madsen sat listening to the shrieking signal that had served as the electronic score to the attack on the SOCCENT base in Qatar. She had played it over and over, to near exhaustion. As a consequence, a growing numbness had manifested itself, but sadly not revelation. Worn out and frustrated, she pulled the headset off and laid it aside.

The analyst posted closest to her station took advantage of the break to lean toward her and ask a question. "What d'you think? Encrypted Mandarin? Amharic? Or maybe some obscure African language like !Xan or Twi?"

With half of her mind focused laserlike on the seemingly insoluble task at hand, she used the other to formu-late a reply. "No, no. This is nothing like Bantu-derived dialects or anything else African, or for that matter like anything the Chinese have been using. It's no more like a Xingiang dialect or Tibetan than it is the King's English. This is—something else."

To the disappointment of the analyst, who had been considering following his query about the signal with one involving dinner and maybe a drink afterward, she slipped the headphones back on and once more activated the playback. For the thousandth, or maybe the two thousandth time, she concentrated on trying to distill a comprehensible pattern from the wild, high-speed shriek.

Maggie muttered in frustration,"You should have been here, Alex."

The four supercharged engines of Air Force One generated shrieking of a different kind, though as it cruised in circles high and wide over the eastern seaboard the sound they produced was not noticed within the heavily soundproofed interior. On either side of the much bigger plane, fully armed F-22s kept effortless pace. The fighter escort was rotated every few hours so that fresh pilots were always in the air, always on watch. Inside the 747, a miniature version of the command center buried deep belowground near the capital monitored communications from all over the planet.

On one screen an air force general with two stars on each of his epaulets was addressing the chief communications officer. "Battle Group Truman is nearing the Arabian Gulf. Review in one hour for POTUS."

"Yessir." The major at the station acknowledged the information as succinctly as it was delivered.

As the day wore on, more messages were received, more directives exchanged, more orders passed. Adjust-ing her shirt slightly, an air force staff sergeant walked through the cabin where so many communiqués were being exchanged and made her way to another part of the big plane. Following a brief formal exchange with the Secret Service agent stationed there, she was allowed entrance. Inside the president's airborne stateroom, a single figure sat on the wide bed. She did not smile at the figure's stockinged feet, having encountered them on numerous previous occasions.

"Yes, Mr. President?" she asked politely by way of announcing her arrival. Engrossed in a thick printed file, the figure on the bed did not look up. "Think you can wrangle me up some Ding Dongs and a glass of milk?"

"Right away, sir." Only when she was once more outside the room and beyond hearing range of the agent stationed at the door did she allow herself to mutter, "I did not survive West Point for this." Keeping further opinions to herself, she strode past the Secret Service cabin. Within, other agents were busy at work or catching up on sleep. Agents were good at that: you slept when you could because you never knew when the next catastrophe might announce itself. No one was using the small boom box nestled under one seat. By the same token, no one noticed when its outlines began to shift and flow like silver-tinged oil, or when it astonishingly sprouted short legs and tiny feet. Unseen and unobserved, it lifted itself and scuttled crab-like behind the shoes of the agent seated nearby.

Only when it was well out of sight did it transform completely. The four-and-a-half-foot-tall Decepticon had assumed a terrestrial designation most accurately trans-latable as Frenzy. With its narrow body, and legs like steel sticks, it looked like some giant insect stepped straight out of the Carboniferous era. Silently, it scuttled off behind a row of unoccupied seats. Near the middle of the plane the staff sergeant paused for a moment to join other presidential aides. Some were sipping coffee or tea; most were chatting amiably. The sergeant announced her arrival with a roll of her eyes. "Yesterday it was Ho Hos. Today, Ding Dongs. The Republic is safe. What's tomorrow hold for us, ladies?"

Laughter accompanied her as she made her way through the room. "Anybody looks for me, I'll be in supply for a few minutes."

The tiny elevator carried her down into the belly of the plane. Exiting, she worked her way back through ranks of cabinets and storage freezers. The last in line yielded a Circle K counter's worth of snack food, the presidentially requested Ding Dongs among them. Hauling out a box, she started to remove several of the individually wrapped cakes, only to drop one and see it tumble across the floor to disappear beneath another cabinet. It immediately rolled back into view. With a sigh, she bent and picked it up. She did not notice the reed-like legs that had kicked it back out from beneath the cabinet. Recovering the wayward snack, she dusted it off, put it on a plate with the others, and returned to the elevator.

Only after the elevator had started up did Frenzy step out into the dim light of the storage area. Skittering along the floor, the Decepticon paused before a locked access panel labeled p.o.t.u.s. only. Digits fashioned of an alloy not forged on Earth probed the edges of the panel: testing, feeling, analyzing. Then they ripped it off. Revealed in the light of the storeroom was an open terminal.

A small sound of satisfaction, a muted, modulated electronic shriek, issued from the intruder. Maggie Madsen, among others, would have recognized it immediately as a greatly subdued and twisted version of the scream that had accompanied the assault on the base in Qatar. The terminal winked to life and a single small readout announced matter-offactly, connecting to pentagon secure network.

Somewhere in subterranean Virginia, the deputy director of operations paused before a certain usually innocuous monitor station. Something on the screen had caught his eye. As the incoming transmission announced itself, a similar report caused Maggie to sit bolt upright and press her headphones even more tightly against her head. What had drawn the deputy director's attention was a small pop-up identical to one that had appeared on her console. FOREIGN SIGNAL DETECTED Alert, completely awake, and no longer bored, her fingers flew over the keyboard before her. On the screen a pair of sound graphs appeared side by side, followed almost instantly by a single word: match. Her eyes widened. Without turning, she raised her voice to a yell. "THEY'RE HACKING THE NETWORK AGAIN!"

Within the storage room on board Air Force One, the probing shriek continued to emerge in a steady and unbroken aural scream-stream from the Decepticon called Frenzy. New words scrolled across the small readout. searching special access files. The shriek modulated slightly—digging deeper, demanding, insistent. At last the file heading the robot was seeking appeared on the readout. project ice man—top secret sci— sector seven access only. Inside the lower Pentagon the detected shriek screamed from every open speaker as Maggie typed furiously.

Expression grim, the deputy director had rushed to her position and was now leaning over her right shoulder, staring at her monitor. Others clustered nearby, straining to see. "Run a trace route!" he ordered her. She ignored the command. Not because it was a bad idea, but because she was way ahead of him. "I've been trying, but it's locking me out! The probe includes some kind of mobile, continuously adaptive firewall that responds differently to each trace attempt. The freakin' thing adapts every time you try something new."

Her fingers pounded away at different keys, continuously trying new combinations in the desperate hope that something would work, that something would slip past the probe's remarkable defenses. "It learns."

Concurrent with Maggie Madsen's frantic efforts at the Pentagon, a new window insert appeared on the small monitor within the storeroom terminal on Air Force One. transmitting local system corrupt to pentagon network. This announcement was followed by a continuous line of streaming destinations. U.S. CENTCOM, U.S. STRATCOM, U.S. SOCOM, U.S. . . .

On one of the screens at Maggie's console a normally placid data stream suddenly went insane. Without hesitating she turned to the tight-faced analyst closest to her. "Are you or anyone you're linked with running a systemwide diagnostic?" "No." He was taken aback by the intensity in her voice. "Do we need to?" Standing up, she shouted at the top of her voice. "IS ANYONE IN THIS ROOM RUNNING A SYSTEMS DIAGNOSTIC?" Startled by her accusatory exclamation, not to mention its volume, everyone looked up from their consoles. A few abandoned their positions to join the crowd that was now fighting for a look at her main monitor. Staring at the console, she sat down hard. "Oh my God—you have to activate thr Phalanx defense program!"

The deputy director gaped at her. "What? Are you kidding? I can't just do that. What've you got?"

Phalanx was still getting blocked by people from sector seven and Charlotte Mearing

Director of National Intelligence of the United States, she is pulling all strings and trying to find Alexander's real identity.

She ignored him, waving her hands at her console as if she could somehow reach inside and tear apart the offending data streams with her bare hands. "If you can't do it, then get some one who can! They breached the national defense firewall. I think they're planting a virus!" The deputy director stared at her. "A virus?" he echoed dumbly. She leaned forward. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. They're not just inserting— they're taking something, too! They're planting and they're taking, and I can't make any sense out of either one." Whirling in her seat, she stared up at him.

To his credit the deputy finally recovered from the initial shock her words had induced. He yelled into his headphone pickup. "Code Red! We have a full security breach. Cut all server hard lines now! Initiate full physical isolation!"

On board Air Force One the small secondary terminal was blinking out straightforward percentages: 75% . . . 90% . . . transmission complete. Next to it a secondary readout declared file found—project ice man. type speciman discovered 1897. first on site witwicky, archibald, cpt. Whoever actually cut the hard lines deep inside the Pentagon deserved more than a medal. At the moment, the names of the pertinent individuals were not important. Only the results of their desperate efforts mattered. The deputy director exhaled sharply as he made the announcement. "The Phalanx has been activated! Server protection is complete."

Frenzy's frustration as the terminal connection it was utilizing suddenly vanished was so absorbing that it failed to notice the arrival in the storage area of a Secret Service agent and a flight deck specialist. They, however, were not similarly preoccupied. They immediately noticed the broken lock that had fallen to the floor. Instantly the agent brought his wrist communicator up to his lips. "Break in sector two. Repeat: break in sector two."

8Seconds later a second agent was pounding down the stairway at the other end of the room, gun drawn. Emitting an electronic hiss, Frenzy spun behind the first two arrivals as they advanced. Impossibly thin, impossibly sharp metal discs shot from the Decepticon's upper torso. Both men went down as the agent at the other end of the room crouched and opened fire.