Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(133)
“Heather! Snap out of it!”
The sting of the slap on her cheek brought with it a flash of light as Mark’s face swam into view.
His hand moved to slap her again, but this time she caught it.
“Ouch! What are you doing?”
Relief flooded Mark’s face. Beside him, Jennifer’s face had gone so white it looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“Jesus, you scared the hell out of us,” Mark managed. “One minute you were scanning the data and the next your eyes rolled back and you zoned into la-la land. That was fifteen minutes ago.”
Heather rubbed her cheek. “So you decided it was a good idea to beat the crap out of me?”
Mark looked offended. “We tried shaking you first.”
Heather started to give a sharp retort, but the memory of what she had seen brought her back to the moment. Moving closer to the laptop, Heather pointed at the screen.
“I broke the code. I know what Stephenson is doing.”
“Which is?” Jennifer asked, recovering her voice.
“He’s flooding the world with a carrier signal that can reprogram the nanites.”
“Which nanites?”
“All of them. At least the ones that our government is busy pumping into people’s veins all over the planet.”
“That f*cking bastard! He’s making a play for the world.” Don Espe?osa tried to jump to his feet, but the ropes stopped him.
“Sit still!” Mark gripped the drug baron’s arm and squeezed. “Move again and I’ll break your legs.”
“Easy, Mark,” Heather placed her hand on his arm. “I get it. Don Espe?osa has a dose of those new nanites—don’t you?”
The drug lord merely scowled back at her.
“So what are we going to do about it?” Jennifer asked.
Heather looked at her friend. “Anything that can be programmed can be shut down. We just need our little computer genius to figure out the shut-down command.”
“That’s not gonna help much,” Mark responded. “Not unless you can broadcast it to the world.”
“I can’t, but we know someone who might be able to, if we supply the program.”
“Jack!”
“And Janet.” Heather turned back to Jennifer. “You think you’re up to it?”
Jennifer nodded slowly. “If you help me with the decryption algorithm.”
“Let’s do it.”
As Jennifer turned her attention back to the laptop, Heather’s visions tugged at the drawstrings of her mind. If they were going to have any chance to put the dark genie back in the bottle, they’d better hurry.
Better hurry. Better hurry.
Heather forced herself to focus. But deep in her mind, the sound of distant laughter echoed.
139
“Got it!” Janet scanned the new files on her laptop. “Our wonder kids cracked the encryption.”
Jack nodded. “So what’s the bad news?”
“Dr. Stephenson’s new nanites are remotely programmable.”
“Let me guess. It’s related to the weird GPS signal embedding.”
“The GPS satellites are prepared to reprogram all the world’s newly inoculated populations with one massive broadcast.”
“So how do we stop it?”
“The kids uplinked their own reprogramming algorithm to my laptop. It’s designed to send the nanites a shutdown command. Once the nanites shut down, they can’t be restarted.”
“How do they know it’ll work?”
“They say they’ve already tested it on a subject.”
Jack whistled softly. “That’s still no good unless their program can be broadcast over the GPS link.”
Janet nodded. “That’s right. The note says we’ll need to hardwire a link into the GPS control antenna so that the kids can spoof the control center.”
“Why can’t they just remotely override the commands going to the satellites, the same way they’ve been hacking into classified systems around the world?”
“According to the message, they can hack into just about anything, read encrypted data, insert new signals on existing lines, but they can’t interrupt signals that are already on those networks. That means the new commands and the commands already being sent to the satellites would be going out on the same link. The control center would notice the status errors coming back on the downlink.”
“Makes sense.”
“So we have to physically cut the line and reroute it through my laptop. That way our young super-hackers can send all the normal satellite responses back to the control center while we are uplinking the new commands.”
“Where’s the main antenna?”
“Global Positioning System Control Center, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado.”
Jack stood up. “Grab your stuff. Let’s get going.”
Janet smiled as she clicked the shutdown button on the laptop. She’d almost forgotten how much she missed this.
“Give me five minutes.”
Janet slid the laptop into its case, then turned toward her bedroom. It didn’t take her long to pack. Being pregnant had already cut down on her clothes selection. And the Heckler & Koch 9mm Compact completed her outfit nicely. Giving her hair a quick twist, she slipped her special hairpin into place, glanced around one last time, then followed Jack out of the house.