Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [108]
Outside, Manfield walked three blocks to a taxi stand. There he drew out his single die and rolled it into the palm of his other hand. Four. He went to the fourth taxi in line. “Driver, take me to Newark Airport.”
“Certainly, sir,” the dark-skinned man said as he got out to place Manfield’s luggage into the trunk, ignoring the shouting of the other drivers. As they sped off, Manfield sat back in his seat and replayed the events of that morning, wondering where he had gone wrong. It was the police officer, he decided. He’d made the assumption the man was incompetent. That had been his mistake.
* * *
On East Thirtieth Street, Officer Jerry Kowalski sat on the curb, still sucking in air when his uncle, the sergeant, arrived. “What the fuck happened?” he demanded. Jerry told him.
Afterward the sergeant said, “Shit! Fifteen years I been a cop and never fired my piece once. You’re on the force—what?—two years and you’re in a gunfight. And you didn’t hit shit, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know.” Jerry didn’t need to be reminded.
“At least you did something smart.”
“What’s that?”
“Your wore your fuckin’ bulletproof vest like I told you, that’s what. You struck two cars. Before you leave today I want a report. The owners are gonna be screaming about this.”
54
AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 19
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2
10:03 P.M.
At the ticket counter, Jeff paid to be upgraded to business class, since first class was closed. The flight left Newark at seven thirty that evening. Two hours out, they had dinner and shared a bottle of wine. Having talked it through before takeoff, they had nothing more to do until they reached Moscow. Daryl was in the window seat, covered with a blanket, her head wedged between the seat and the wall, sound asleep.
Jeff looked at her tenderly, realizing that he was more concerned for her personal safety than his own, or the fate of the world, for that matter. Was he right to bring her along? But was leaving her behind any safer? He just knew he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.
* * *
Jeff booted his notebook and for a few minutes tried to lose himself in Mega Destructor IV, but it was useless. His current world was too real for him to find release in one of fantasy.
He went online and checked the news. He could no longer consider any disaster without wondering if it was the Superphreak virus. A chip-manufacturing plant in Taiwan had shut down overnight. No deaths, but management wasn’t commenting on the cause. An entire office building in downtown Austin, Texas, had lost all power. More than thirty people had been trapped in elevators and had to be manually extracted. The building was evacuated by using the emergency stairs. A commuter plane had crashed in Kansas with seventeen dead. Which, if any, of these was Superphreak? How many others had occurred Jeff didn’t know about? How many had died?
Then a New York Times article caught his eye. Until now he’d wondered why no one was putting this all together. He and Daryl had the advantage of being on the inside, but it had been more than three weeks since the attacks started. The failure of the U.S. government security agencies to come on board was inexcusable, but how hard could it be for the media to start connecting the dots? Or at least to ask the right questions?
And there it was. Using the local computer-related hospital deaths as a hook, the reporter wrote about a series of unusual incidents nationwide. These included some Jeff already knew about but several he did not, including the apparent destruction of a Midwest bank’s database, the unscheduled shutdown of two more nuclear power plants, and the loss of several significant Internet routing systems.
“A source within the White House,” the article said, “confirms that the president has already directed that a