Buzzworm (A Technology Thriller): Computer virus or serial killer? (23 page)

Buzzworm
was conducting.

It was one of those glorious moments when everything was in sync — everything flowed. He had Hyde and Strange on overhead visual on one big screen, a feed from GIPETTO that gave him precise positioning based on signals he was tracking from their cell phones. Off in the distance he had planted a fake position for the Vice President that he was feeding into Homeland Security’s data center. He knew they were freaking out. The faked photo of Hyde with the wires hanging out of his raincoat that he had sent to Homeland was true genius. Scammel’s software had made that a breeze.

There were now two Homeland agents vectoring in on Hyde’s position, both with itchy trigger fingers and revenge etched on their patriotic little hearts.

The FBI was close behind too, not wanting to miss out on the gory fun.

Jamming the phones of the two Homeland agents closest to Hyde was all about creating some tension, some well-deserved paranoia. Nothing like taking away a soldier’s view of the battlefield to raise tensions.

BW laughed. Military types called that
fog of war
. BW was in the fog business today, and he had the machines running full tilt. What would the two agents do now? They had lost communication and they believed the Vice President of the United States was only minutes away from being assassinated.

BW moved closer to a small microphone mounted on a stalk near his keyboard. He was patched into one of the VHF frequencies Homeland Security agencies used to stay in touch. He pressed a key and spoke into the ears of the two agents watching Hyde.

“McKinnon. Eppart. This is base command. Hostile forces are jamming you. We can’t maintain contact for long. And we can’t guarantee the safety of the Vice President. You must act now. Repeat. You must act now.”

Emile had moved in closer
to Number Two, his hands on his hips. “That’s the problem with people in this town,“ he fake gasped between breaths. “Everyone is so bloody rude. What’s your problem?”

Number Two tensed at that moment, his eyes off in the distance. He put his hand to his ear. Emile knew he was hearing something that was distracting him, something important, his line of sight moving in Hyde’s direction. What did they say about golfers? The ball goes where you look. Number Two was preparing to launch and it didn’t take much to figure out what the target was. Emile figured the time was as good as any to take this guy down.

“What the hell are you up to, buddy?” yelled Emile, pulling his gun out of his pocket. “Police. Put your hands up.”

That got Number Two’s attention. He froze for only a heartbeat, then turned to Emile. “I’m Homeland Security. I’m here on a matter of national security. Put that fucking toy away.”

“Fuck you, Serpico. Since when is national security about trailing a Washington cop in a public park. You drop the gun.”

Eppart straightened up, his hands still in his coat pockets. The ‘cop’ reference took a little wind out of his sails, but not enough. “I’m warning you, jerk-off. Somebody is fucking with Homeland Security communication and I’m not letting you get in the way of my job. So move aside.”

Emile straightened. “That’s not going to happen. Your target over there is my partner. He’s a detective with Washington Homicide. You’ve made a big mistake. But I hear that’s not something new to you guys.”

Eppart didn’t look conflicted, just pissed off. Then he suddenly threw his head back and grabbed at his ear with his right hand. Even Emile, standing several feet away could hear the agonizing squeal of the radio set in Number Two’s ear and see the grimace of pain on the man’s face. Something was clearly wrong. He was madly pulling at the side of his head, his face red, reaching for the radio bud that was imbedded in his ear and filling his head with agony. Emile took two steps forward just as Number Two succeeded in ripping out the offending speaker. He tossed it to the ground, then gave one furious glance at Emile, and took off in a run in the direction of the fountain. Emile sprang at him, all that nervous energy anxious to explode, and he tackled him hard from behind. Number Two met the turf face-first and hard, his sunglasses snapping into pieces. He rolled, trying to free his gun, but Emile saw what he was up to and pushed his weapon into the agent’s ear. Eppart froze.

“Call off your team,” growled Emile into the agent’s face.

“I can’t. My radio’s dead. It’s fucked.”

“Bullshit.” Emile pushed his hand into Number Two’s jacket, fishing for the microphone. He grabbed the thin black necklace and yanked it out into the open. He found the small microphone bud and brought it up to his lips.

“Homeland Security. This is detective Tantoon, Washington Police. Stand down. I repeat...” Before he could finish his order, a high powered rifle shot range out, and Emile’s body was flung suddenly sideways.

Eppart, the retort still ringing in his ears, rolled over thinking the shot was aimed at him. When he saw the other man’s ruined head, he knew the kill had been quite deliberate. A perfect headshot, high caliber. If he was next in line, there was nothing he could do. Later he would learn that an FBI sharpshooter with over twenty years experience had taken out his attacker, believing him to be a terrorist. Right now though, he thought the world had gone crazy — so he leapt up and headed in the direction of the asshole in the raincoat planning to assassinate the vice president.

McKinnon caught the action against his partner out of the corner of his eye as he moved up closer to the suspects. He too had ripped out his VHF ear bud, his head still ringing from the high-pitched squeal that felt like a knife being pushed into his ear canal. Now Eppart was down. McKinnon was trying to understand what was happening. He had been told earlier that the FBI might be nearby, but why would they take Eppart out? Was their communication failing as well? Then there was the rifle shot and the other man, the one standing over Eppart, had been tossed across the verge like a rag doll. McKinnon had frozen for a few seconds then, watching people dive for cover around him. One woman took off across the reflecting pond, losing her high heels in the process and plunging down into water with a shrill scream.

Then McKinnon saw Eppart up again, his gun drawn, and he was running full out in the direction of the two men they were following — who were now staring in his direction. McKinnon yelled into his microphone repeatedly, “Eppart. Stop”. But he realized then that Eppart had probably removed his ear bud, and they were now hopelessly out of touch. Then he was amazed to see the bigger man in the raincoat standing near the end of the Reflecting Pond, remove a gun from under his coat, coolly aim it at the zigzagging Eppart, and fire twice.

There’s no place to hide
at Metro.

After being grilled by Homeland Security for hours over the incident in the Memorial park, I tried to get away and get some sleep, but too many people were interested in what had happened to Emile. After being stopped by a number of off-duty beat cops and detectives in the halls, who came in purely out of curiosity, I ducked into an empty interview room and closed the door.

My phone buzzed the second I slumped into a metal folding chair. It was Ipscott. I laid the cell phone on the table and ignored it, watching the device vibrate and turn slowly on the scratched arborite surface. I was interviewed out. I’d fill him in tomorrow.

My head was wrapped with gauze where the medics had applied a bandage to the left side of my temple, covering a bloody patch where the Homeland Security agent’s bullet had taken a sizeable chunk out of my ear. I was lucky, of course. I was still alive. Unlike Emile, who was another victim of Washington D.C. madness.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax — to think. I gave my cell phone another flick and watched it spin, daring it to ring again. A few hours ago, I thought Roger’s theory about someone inside the CIA attacking the United States, was a video gamers’ delusion. Then within minutes of being told about Xavier, two Homeland Security agents, their communications system fried, try to kill me in a public park. If it weren’t for Emile playing offence and slowing down the dead agent, there is no question in my mind that Strange or I would be dead right now.

I can’t prove anything, but the attack felt to me like a purposeful attempt to take me out of the investigation. First
Buzzworm’
s bizarre conference call and his hollow threats. And now Emile is dead.

I needed to know more about Xavier. But that might be a problem right now. Today alone, I had heard a number of horror stories about problems with computers and communication within Washington Metro.

This morning, during a routine check, a traffic cop in Georgetown pulled over a car with a broken taillight. He checked the license plate for priors. It was clean. He then walked up to the driver’s door, where he was killed instantly with a blast from a sawed off shotgun.

The car was stolen and used in a recent getaway. The licensing system had been hacked and compromised. The poor traffic cop didn’t have a chance.

If you ask any peace officer in the District, they’ll tell you
the system
never worked that well. Bad guys always seemed back on the street too soon. Too much politics in the city water. But though the computer systems we used often seemed slow and poorly maintained, the stuff it eventually spit out seemed solid. Because street cops and desk jockeys were the ones entering the data; folks who wanted to choke back crime even by a few inches. If that was possible. But now it seemed like there was a big Mixmaster spinning the facts around and creating nothing but doubt
.
Using the crime system now was more like an act of faith. Personally, I figure relying on it was a waste of time.
And deadly to trust.

Thinking about our fucked up computer system reminded me of something. Three years ago I worked with an FBI agent on a case involving the kidnapping of a young girl – the Melody Hatcher case. Things went about as wrong as they could go in a kidnapping, so over the space of a rainy long weekend, we drowned our sorrows together in several bottles of single malt Scotch.

The agent’s name was Jann Stone. She worked out of the FBI Research Center at Quantico. She was a world-class researcher. And she liked Glenfiddich neat. I was never a big Scotch drinker, but now I can’t look at a bottle of Scotch without thinking about her.

I had been looking for an excuse to call her again. I should have tried harder. Three years was a long time to wait for a follow up call from a two-week act of desperation
.
Quantico is a town in Prince William County, Virginia, still officially within the jurisdiction of Washington. So it’s not like I was avoiding a long distance relationship. Either we were both cool with this or I was an unremitting jerk. I’m never sure which. I guess I’m going to find out.

When I dialed her cell number, damn it if she doesn’t pick up on the second ring.

"Jann, its Hyde."

Silence. "Greg. Man, I thought you’d joined the witness protection program and moved to New Mexico.” She sounded so casual. I was breaking into a sweat just hearing her voice again.

"Jann. Are you still running the evidence control unit?"

There was a slight pause before she answered. I knew she was surprised that I jumped into business mode so quickly. "You know better. This unit runs me. That's why I'm here 24/7 with nothing even resembling a life. Hold on a second — I want to secure our line." She punched a few numbers into her cell, probably some James Bond version of a Blackberry. She loved that stuff. Always had.

"Remember the room we used for surveillance in the Hatcher case? Don't say it. Just punch it in when you hear the beep. Good. Now no one can listen in. So what's up?"

"I'm working on a couple of suspicious deaths at the CIA. Hear anything about this?”

There was a long pause. For a minute, I thought I lost the connection. “Only what I read on the Net. And most of that is crap. Some suicides. Accidental manslaughter. Sounds a bit like a shooting gallery over there.”

“And to cap it all off, I was there today, at the Memorial Park shooting.”

I heard an intake of breath on her end. “You know the officer that was killed?”

“Former partner. Emile Tantoon. He saved my life. Again.”

She could hear the misery in my voice. I wasn’t covering that well. “I’m sorry, Greg. Really sorry. Are you all right? Were they terrorists?”

“Yeah. They were terrorists all right. Two Homeland Security agents out to revenge 9/11. And a crack team of FBI shooters with their wires crossed. The media are going to fall all over themselves on this story.”

I could hear her typing. There was another long pause, which I hated even more. It seemed pregnant with meaning, although I'm not sure what that meaning was. Typical of my feelings around female cops. Especially female cops that I had a history with.

Her voice had dropped a register, something she did when she was talking and crunching data at the same time. "Greg, you know I’ve always been interested in social network sites for research? Like Facebook?"

I didn’t have to answer. She was light years ahead of me on that kind of stuff although I couldn’t imagine what that had to do with the Memorial Park disaster. She continued, “There’s been a lot of chatter on Facebook lately about something called
Buzzworm
. A lot of it is coming from CIA staffers with Facebook pages. Would there be any connection with your case?”

That question surprised me. Had it occurred to anyone at the CIA to check Facebook? I tried to answer her question. "I don’t understand the details, but
Buzzworm
is some kind of virus that is infecting their computers and communication systems."

I could hear her hitting more keys. She could easily type ten times faster than me with one hand “Almost all of the info I have is from insiders at the CIA complaining about how messed up their system is. And a lot more about specific attacks on character and reputation, personal information that no one should know about, some on video. Do you know about this?”

I coughed, causing a stab of pain to blossom right behind my eyes. “One of the suicides is linked directly to
Buzzworm
. Somehow. I don’t understand the details. I can tell you that Frank Scammel, the victim, was some kind of wunderkind when it came to manipulating video. And the CIA employee who was killed by a stray bullet was victim of some other kind of inter-office communication snafu.”

Stone continued to read from her information. “Scammel didn’t apply to the CIA. They drafted him. Which is unusual. He got his degree courtesy of the CIA. He started out working for a military supplier in Florida for a few years that created wartime field simulations – virtual reality gaming in the early days. Soldiers use them to train. When the company he worked for tanked, the CIA hired him to further a couple of simulation projects at NPIC.”

She had obviously been compiling data on the situation at the CIA. Ever the cynic, I asked, “Any unsolved child molestation cases in Florida when he worked there?”

“I saw that entry in NCIC. About the sexual molestation charge. Which also refers to a David Xavier, who met with him while in the lockup. We have info on him as well.”

“You know about Xavier?”

“Yeah. He does covert work for the CIA internationally, which makes sense because he travels quite a bit. I tried making a request to him a few months ago, to see if I could establish contact, but he denied the security request saying he was currently active and wasn’t available.”

“Working for
Buzzworm
?”

“There’s a lot more. Xavier has been very busy lately. He has links to a number of CIA employees. Intimately. One connection is Mary Ellen Duke. That’s been going on for about a year. Also, the woman who was killed by the stray bullet in the cafeteria at Langley – Coyne. He also had an ongoing relationship with her. Spent a week in Cancun. And a couple of other brief affairs as well. Xavier’s your virus. He’s screwing his way right into the heart of the agency.”