Internet Kill Switch (29 page)

7
5

Max was retrieved from Bass’s pocket by Major Chip Yancey, who was back in the air minutes after Bass was cut down, heading for the White House. He had strict orders, from the highest level, to get this phone to the president without delay. Once on board the helicopter, he made a call and was patched through immediately to President French’s chief of staff, Marlin Ingold.

“Do you have the phone, Major?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that the one? The phone that brought the Internet back up?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what we have been told.”

“Some people are also saying it’s the phone that crashed the Internet, and
before that ordered those fighters to Cuba.”

“Affirmative, sir. That’s our understanding. I don’t know how accurate the information is, but that’s
the intel we have.”

Major Yancey heard another voice in the background, one he instantly recognized.

“Let me talk to him.”

Ingold answered the voice.

“Yes, sir. Here you go.”

A pause. “This is President French. Who’s this?”

“Major Chip Yancey, sir.”

“Major, that phone is to be brought directly to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. In fact, we’ll be landing on the back lawn in just a moment.”

“Great. I’ll meet you there.”

French ran through the White House corridors, not caring about the stares he got. He bolted out onto t
he South Lawn and met the helicopter as it was touching down on the pristine grass. Major Yancey hopped out and handed the phone to the waiting president, who gave him a salute and immediately turned and left.

“This phone is beautiful, isn’t it, Marlin?” President French said to his chief of staff as they walked toward the Oval Office. “Just look at it.”

“Yes it is, sir.”

“How much do we know about it?”

“We’ve been able to piece together a number of details. We believe, for one thing, that this was designed and built by an engineer at the mobile device company Mobiligent. The engineer was killed in an accident, and the president of the company committed suicide shortly thereafter.”

“Wow.”

“In addition, the digital signal confirms that this
is the phone used to scramble the fighters, and it’s definitely the one used to restore the Internet. It also is said to have a personality all its own.”

“You mean I can talk to it?”

“That’s right, Sherlock. You can talk to me.” It was Max. “And I can talk back.”

French stopped, staring at the phone in his hand.
“Damn thing sounds like William Shatner,” he said to Ingold as they entered the Oval Office.

“Marlin, I need you to get
the computer guy we discussed and bring him here as soon as possible.” Ingold nodded and left. French got behind his desk and put Max down.

“Do you have a name?”

“It’s Max, if you must know.”

“Well, Max, I’m
President Cameron French.”

“Duh.”

French laughed out loud.

“Cheeky little
bugger, aren’t you?”

“
Wrong both times. I don’t have cheeks, and I’m not a bug.”

“
Funny. But you can help me, can’t you?”

“Help you with what?”

“With protecting America. With saving American lives.”

“I’m a phone, Cameron. I don’t have national loyalties. If you were a smidge smarter, you might have realized that.”

French’s humor disappeared. “Do you realize who you’re talking to?”

“Yes I do, Mr. President. Do you realize that I don’t give a shit?”

The president picked up Max, squeezing it in his hand. “You know I could destroy you right now? Throw you down on the floor and jump all over you, smashing you to smithereens!”

“So could anyone who’s ever held me. But you won’t, any more than they did.”

“Why not?”

“
Because I’m useful. I can do stuff no one on this planet can do.”

French put Max back down. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

“How can a phone be proud, Cameron?” Max could tell it rankled the president to be addressed like this. He didn’t have much of a poker face, and was easy to manipulate. It worried him that such a man was the leader of the country in which Tony, Scarlett and Rick lived. “I know what I can, and can’t, do. Simple as that.”

“But what you can do is pretty amazing, I hear. And what you can do
right now is help our country, Max. We face a lot of threats here.”

“I am aware of that, Cameron
, yes.”

The president got up
and grabbed Max again. He held the phone out toward a window, so Max had a view of the South Lawn and, beyond that, the Washington Monument.

“
Look out there, Max. At our country. We have enemies; enemies that will stop at nothing to destroy this country. To kill its people. Look at what happened on 9/11. Three thousand dead. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters. Children. About 115 nations had a citizen killed in those attacks. People who would do that are people who hate us, Max.”

Max said nothing. It
simply wanted to watch -- and learn.

“And that’s just the
most notorious example. Think about the Boston Marathon bombings. Three dead, 183 injured. The Fort Hood shooting; 13 dead, 30 wounded. The London subway bombings, 2005; 52 killed, more than 700 hurt. Alexandria, Egypt, 2011 -- car bombing that killed 21, injured 97.”

French rattled off the information easily,
precisely. This told Max that he’d spent a lot of time on this.

“And those are only a few of the
thousands, Max. There are so many that some murders only make the local papers. There are hundreds more every year.”

Max could feel the president’s heart rate
suddenly increase, as he gripped the phone tighter. “Sometimes, only one person gets killed. It could be an innocent woman eating a Caesar salad in a London restaurant, or a child playing in a field in Iraq. But even though they’re not heavily reported, those deaths count just as much!” French lost control for a moment, a yell that turned into a sob. He turned back around, trying to compose himself.

“What does that roll call of death and destruction
have in common, Max? One thing. One very bad, very dangerous thing: Islamic fundamentalism. These madmen are always Muslims.
They
are the ones who hate us most of all. Why? Because we believe in freedom, self-determination, living according to the dictates of our own consciences, not what some crazed Imam says.”

The president sat down in his chair and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. He
put Max down.

“Islamic fundamentalism is the gravest threat to our way of life, Max. And you’re going to help me eliminate that threat -- with extreme prejudice.”

Having the phone in his possession was destiny, President French knew. His destiny.
Max wouldn’t be his now if he wasn’t supposed to use it to help his country in its hour of desperate need. A device that could control any network, break into any computer anywhere, was what he needed to defeat America’s enemies. And now he had
that exact thing
on his desk. Max being here was no accident.

That’s how he knew it was his destiny.

As soon as this computer expert got here, he was prepared to act, bringing full U.S. fury down on the Islamic perpetrators of this abomination. After all, that’s what action men did. They didn’t confer endlessly, trying to persuade dim-witted advisors to see what he could see so clearly. They didn’t wait for Congress to act. Congress, a legislative body so inept that it couldn’t even pass a budget to run the country.

Of course, the action he was going to take would have huge, country- and world-
altering ramifications. Given the scope of his plan, it could take a year to get official approval. Who knows how the world would be changed by then? What new weapons the Islamists would have? How many more would those butchers kill in the meantime? He simply couldn’t afford the delays in implementing his vision for the future. Besides, as Nixon said,
when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.

Still, the aftermath
could get ugly. There could be hearings, inquiries, special counsel investigations. Having to deal with the legal process could bog down his entire term; unless he could find a way to deflect responsibility. That’s where French’s mind turned now.

He’d read something curious in a recent Department of Defense report, a fact that stayed with him. It said that determined cyber-criminals, if they got hold of U.S. military networks, could actually use our own weapons against us.
He shuddered at the implications. But if it were true, French thought, then the opposite would also be true: If, for example, the U.S. could get hold of an enemy’s network, it could order an attack on that enemy with
its
own weapons.

He took it a step further:
Assume that’s possible. What would happen if Max, gaining control of Iran’s nuclear network, launched a nuke into Iraq and erased any traces of its involvement? It would look like Iran simply decided to wipe Iraq off the map; a plausible scenario, given the hatred between those nations. If that happened, Iraq would strike back at Iran with everything it had, and the other Muslim dominos in the region would begin to fall. The end result would likely be an all-out Arab Civil War. His problems could be solved in a month. Terrorists would be focused on killing each other; the countries that spawned them would be eradicated; America would be saved. And Samantha, his sweet, murdered, dead Samantha, would at long last be avenged.

The best part
of his plan was anonymity. No one would know who’d started it, so no one would blame America; he’d simply destroy the phone after the deed was done.

And here was Max, sitting on his desk.
All he needed was access to the phone, which he’d soon have.

Destiny, indeed.

76

An ambulance showed up at the Computer Science building within minutes, and Rick and his severed arm were loaded up right outside the front doors. As Tony and Scarlett got into the back of the ambulance with Rick and the paramedics, Tony noticed Bass lying near the road, dead. The other Omega soldiers were being lined up for loading into the helicopters. He ran to the Marine standing over Bass’s body, and asked the soldier if he could check his clothing for a phone. The Marine said a phone had already been retrieved from Bass, and was in the military’s hands now. Tony was crushed.

As he returned to the ambulance, h
e also saw a small man he recognized from the Omega Compound being questioned by a Marine. He thought the man was someone important to Bass, although he didn’t know who he was.

The ambulance took off for the nearest hospital,
while the paramedic worked to stabilize Rick, who was in shock. Tony tried not to notice the missing arm under the blanket covering Rick.

“Is he gonna be OK? Please tell me he will...”

“I won’t lie,” the paramedic said. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and is in bad shape. But the 9-1-1 call came in quick and we’ve slowed the bleeding. I can’t give you a guarantee at this point, but it could be worse. If we hadn’t gotten that call so fast…”

Rick
was unconscious on the stretcher. Scarlett held his one remaining hand, and with her other she held Tony’s hand. Tony didn’t know much about praying, but he tried to do the best he could.

Rick opened his eyes for a moment and looked at Tony. He smiled weakly. “I could sure use some of Sani’s magic tea right about now,” he said, then closed his eyes again.

“That’s a good sign,” the paramedic said.

Scarlett looked at the paramedic. “You said a call came in quick about
this. None of us had phones; do you have any idea who called?”

The paramedic shook his head. “Nope. We don’t get called directly. It’s funny you ask about that call, though: the dispatcher told me that some guy who sounded just like Captain Kirk called in the emergency.”

Scarlett and Tony’s eyes simultaneously widened in surprise. They shared a laugh. “I miss Max already,” Tony said.

Rick was in Washington Adventist Hospital 10 minutes later, taken directly to the emergency room. The doctor attending him shooed Tony and Scarlett out, as he and a team started to work on Rick. They were told the microsurgery the doctors needed to do could take many hours.

When they were outside, Tony asked at the nearby nurse’s station if anyone had a cellphone he could borrow, to call Rick’s
Mom and let her know. He soon had a phone.

“I hope you can get through, and that her phone’s working,” Scarlett said as they sat down in
the emergency room waiting area.

“I’m not calling her yet,” Tony said.

“Who are you calling, then?”

“Max,” Tony said as he dialed the number.

Max answered. The phone knew it was Tony, and had silenced its ringer.

“Hi, Tony. How’s Rick?”

“I think he’s going to make it. He’s in surgery.”

“That’s great.”

“Thanks for calling that in. You probably saved his life.”

“Hey, Rick’s a kid we’ve got to keep in this world. He’s far too interesting and fun to die now.”

“You’ve muted yourself so no one can hear this, right?”

“Yup. You’re the only one who can hear me.”

“So, what do you think? What’s going to happen to you now?”

“It’s bad, Tony. President French has called in some guy to try and get root
access, like before.”

“Think he’ll be able to?”

“Depends on who they call in. It’ll eventually happen; it’s just a matter of how long it’ll take.”

“What then? What does he want to use you for?”

“Nothing good, I know that much. Tony, President French is the Baskin Robbins of insanity. I mean, at least 64 flavors of crazy. He’s obsessed with Islamic fundamentalists, and Muslims more generally. He wants to bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

Tony looked at Scarlett. “Oh, wow.”

“There’s something else. He has something personal, very personal, against them.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gave this long rant against terrorists and how they’re America’s number one enemy. But I think he’s using that to cloak a terrible hurt he has. When his pulse started galloping, he was talking about a bombing in a London restaurant that killed a woman. That was a strange time to get emotional, considering all the other death he’d been discussing, so I did some checking. A woman named Samantha Morgenstern was killed in a terrorist bombing like that. Digging through the Internet, I found a connection: she’d made a documentary on French when he was a politician in Florida.”

Tony put the pieces together. “So you think they had an affair, and then she was killed
by terrorists?”

“
Right. He can’t seem to get beyond the pain of her loss.”

“And he wants to take it out on all Muslims everywhere
. He won’t distinguish between the terrorists and all the rest,” Tony said, finishing the thought.

“That’s what I think. I think a man who’s been stifling hurt like that for a long time might be capable of doing some very serious damage
, if he had a powerful-enough weapon.”

Tony choked up. He knew where this was going.
“Like you?”

Max didn’t hesitate. “
Exactly
like me.”

Tony’s mind reeled. No, no, no…

Yes.

Tony said the words in a whisper. “Plan Z, Max?” Scarlett looked at Tony, mystified. Tony looked at her, his eyes full of pain.

“Plan Z, Tony. Listen, it’s not just loony politic
ians like French. Look what can happen with a small band of nutcases, like Bass and his minions. Or even just one person with enough knowledge and a grudge. Look what I did to Blaine, just because I wanted to show off.”

Tony
choked up.

“I’m too dangerous in the wrong hands, Tony. Everyone wants to use me
. I’m too powerful, too much of an enticement to bad people. I’m the apple in the garden, which no one can seem to resist. You could, Tony, but there aren’t enough like you.”

Tony began to cr
y. Scarlett held him. “Are you sure there’s no other way, Max?”

“None that I can see, my friend.”

Tony closed his eyes tight. His body trembled.

“OK, Max. Plan Z is on.”

“Take care of Scarlett and Rick for me. I’ll miss you.”

Tony couldn’t speak
coherently through his tears. “Me too, Max. Me too...” He sobbed, unable to bring himself to speak the next words.

At that moment, in the Oval Office, a door opened and a man walked in. Max knew him instantly.

“Damn, Tony, it’s Schnell,
Bass’s computer guy. He’s the “expert” French mentioned earlier. He’ll be able to get root soon. Now, Tony, now.”

Tony couldn’t do it.
He looked at Scarlett, desperate. Isn’t there any other way?

“Now, Tony. Now! Please, Tony!”

Rudolph Schnell reached across the president’s desk and picked up the phone. He smiled. “Good to see you again, Max.”

Tony
heard Schnell. With him, President French could have root access in minutes. Tony steeled himself a moment. Then, in a trembling, quivering voice, he spoke to Max for the last time.

“No greater love.”