Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(88)

Jennifer stepped from the northern tree line, seated herself on the curb, and popped open the stolen laptop, waiting fifteen seconds as it awoke from sleep mode. As Mark and Heather kept watch, she initiated the subspace receiver-transmitter SRT scan. With the SRT, she didn’t need any back doors or exploits such as her worm had exposed. Jennifer limited the search radius to one hundred meters, the grid filling with a list of programmable systems sorted by distance, the closest at the top.

People thought of cars as mechanical devices, and in the old days they had been. Now they were mobile computing platforms, brimming with programmable electronics. And anything that was programmable was reprogrammable. Most of these systems could be hacked by amateurs with inexpensive wireless interfaces. All of them were vulnerable to Jennifer, Mark, or Heather, armed with an SRT and a computing device.

The white Ford Fusion five parking spaces to Jennifer’s right gave a short squawk and blinked its lights.

“Looks like our ride is ready,” Mark said, leading the way.

“You drive,” said Heather. “Jen, you and the laptop get the backseat. I’ll take shotgun.”

Mark opened the driver’s door, slid inside, and pressed the START button.

“I-95 north?”

“No,” said Heather. “I want to stay on surface streets, at least until we’re north of Baltimore. You ready, Jen?”

Jennifer closed the door and leaned her back against it, positioning the laptop in her lap. “Give me a minute to bring up the traffic light grid and traffic cameras. Once I’ve completed the initial sort, it’ll be easy to re-sort as we move. This time of day I should be able to arrange for a delay-free trip.”

As she began to type, Jennifer felt her hands start to shake, tremors that migrated up into her arms and shoulders.

“Jen, you OK?” Heather reached into the back to place a hand on her leg.

Focusing her will, Jennifer damped down the shakes. They were still there, just not so obvious.

“Just coming off the drugs. Don’t worry. Nothing I can’t handle.”

Mark swung the car out of the lot and north onto Telegraph Road.

“If you need me to pull over or anything, let me know.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Heather shook her head. “Check the local police dispatcher logs.”

“Working on it.” Jennifer opened another window on her display. “Shit! We’ve got a problem.”

“What?”

“Bad luck. Our car’s owner must have seen us leave the lot and called the police. We’ve got a cruiser a half mile north, coming south on Telegraph.”

“Can you change the report?”

“Give me a minute,” Jen said.

Feeling Heather’s eyes on her, she scanned the police database for the record she wanted. Finding it, she typed in a few modifications, saved it, and fired off an update that would be picked up on every police-vehicle-mounted computer in the area.

“OK. Stolen car is now a red Ford Fiesta heading east on Donaldson Avenue, Virginia license plate EAN-7301, occupants two Latino males.”

“Our cop?”

“Still heading south on Telegraph...wait. He’s making a U-turn.”

“After he turns east on Donaldson, give him some engine trouble.”

Jennifer smiled. “He’s not driving the newest model on the Glen Burnie police force, but it’s got an electronic ignition system. Won’t be a problem.”

Heather settled back in the passenger seat, turning her attention to the road ahead. “Mark, once we pass Donaldson, take Aviation, then I-195 to the BWI parkway. I want to swap cars downtown. Then we’ll get up on I-83 to Harrisburg. What’s our hotel, Jen?”

“Nothing but the best. Motel Six on Briarsdale Road. In the morning we can swing by the Mail Boxes Etc. and pick up our new IDs. Then we’re going to need some new clothes.”

Mark nodded. “Sounds good.”

Jennifer felt a new round of shivers crawl beneath her skin, and this time she didn’t even try to contain them. She could tell Heather noticed, but to her credit Heather offered no unwanted assistance.

Jennifer knew she was in for a fight with her body’s need for heroin. For her, the NSA torture chamber was just getting warmed up.





Eileen Wu’s eyes hurt, but she didn’t feel tired. She felt like a hunting dog on the scent of a big cat. A really big cat.

She’d sensed something was wrong with the whole Al Qaeda escape scenario the moment she’d noticed that the two USB dongles had been taken from her lab. Those two missing USB devices screamed Jack Gregory’s name. But why take only the dongles? Nothing about them had stood out as special, so how special were they?

Eileen looked forward to reviewing all the recorded data from when she’d first turned on the Gregory laptop, but right now she was hot on the trail of the person or persons who had taken down all the sophisticated security systems within the Ice House.

In Eileen’s mind, it helped to put a face on her opponent. Maybe it was a bit of reverse sexism, but the face that came to her was a woman’s face, a face very much like her own. An avenging Valkyrie.

Whoever the Valkyrie was, she’d done more than cause the Ice House systems to malfunction. She’d used them as weapons to blind, confuse, even kill her enemies. Eileen had never seen anything like the sophistication of this hack. Even the legendary Stuxnet worm paled in comparison. While that worm had been targeted at very specific systems, this one had compromised every electronic system in the building, from cell phones and tablets to high-end computing systems, exploiting security holes across a wide variety of operating systems. The most impressive thing about this new worm was its ability to genetically adapt and hide itself.