F Wilson - Fatal Error

"Watch."

He saw some guy with his head and face wrapped in a patterned white keffiyeh babbling in a foreign language. What was this? Another al Qaeda slimeball with a threat against the world?

"What language is that? Arabic? You going to translate for me?"

He knew Arabic was one of the half dozen or so languages she spoke.

"I don't have to. He starts repeating it in English just about… now."

And sure enough, he broke into pretty decent English. He rambled on about Jihad4/20, the virus he'd released into the "Godless Internet," and how on April twentieth it would awaken and exorcise Satan and his demons from the world's computers by filling them with prayers of praise to Allah.

"So I was right," Jack said as the video ended. "The virus is some sort of prayer wheel. But instead of 'Cthulhu fhtagn,' it'll be 'Allah Akbar' or the like over and over."

She was staring at him.

"What?" he said.

"You're not serious."

He decided against putting her on any longer. She didn't seem in the mood. And besides… this wasn't funny.

"Of course not."

She looked relieved. "I never know with you."

"The video's bullshit."

She nodded as she glanced at her monitor. "Yes, it's bullshit. But remarkable bullshit. When I first watched it I thought of Eddie. You said he told you he'd overheard something about 'jihad' at the Lodge. This has to be it."

"And mentioning it to someone in the Order is most likely what earned him a death sentence."

"Poor Eddie," she said. "He had no idea what he was getting into."

"None of us did. Or do. What's this all about?"

"I don't think there can be any doubt: They're going to try to crash the Internet."

"But how? Not with prayers to Allah. And what's with the four/twenty? What's that mean?"

"April twentieth is Mohammed's birthday by the Gregorian calendar. At least it's supposed to be. I don't think anyone knows his exact birth date for sure. Happens to be Hitler's too, by the way. And the date of the Columbine massacre."

Anyone else and Jack would assume she'd Googled it before he came in, but he knew if he asked Weezy how she knew she'd just tell him she'd "read it somewhere."

"Well," he said, "the video with the Islamic angle is brilliant. It gives the virus a name, it gives the hacker a face-sort of-and makes praising Allah the motivation."

"Exactly. And so we all pigeonhole the group behind it as Islamic nuts and look no further."

Another angle hit him. "And maybe people don't look so hard for a cure because it's only going to be prayers, and they have a couple of months before anything happens."

"Do you believe that?"

He shook his head. "No way. If they've found a way to crash the Internet with this virus, they're not going to wait until April twentieth. They'll go for it ASAP."

"Exactly."

"But what are they going to do?"

Weezy shrugged. "I have to assume it has something to do with Munir Habib's video transfer code, but how they intend to use it, I haven't the vaguest."

"Maybe his code is a red herring. Get the experts looking at that, thinking it'll be used to download the promised praise-Allah video, when all the while the virus is really aimed at something else."

"Like what?"

"Like wiping a zillion hard drives."

Weezy shook her head. "But that will affect only the infected computers, leaving the Internet up and running for the uninfected. And the fix for a wiped drive is a simple reinstall of software. Traffic would be back to normal in no time. The Internet itself has to be the target."

As he listened, a depressing thought took hold.

"Even if we knew what the Order was going to do, could we stop it?"

"Not unless we can convince everyone with an infected computer to turn it off and keep it off."

Jack made a face. "Oh, yeah. That'll happen."

"Even that might not work, because the virus could have the ability to turn on infected machines."

"So unless everyone unplugs their computer, we're screwed."

Weezy shrugged and looked down. "On that front, yes, considering the number of computers already infected. Plus we're a couple of nobodies against a global organization."

"Then we're back to finding Dawn's baby."

She nodded. "Speaking of which, she'll be here any minute."

Dawn arrived right on time.

Jack had managed only a brief glance at her yesterday-just long enough to recognize her face-but now he could see she'd put on a good twenty pounds since last summer. He rose as she entered the room.

"Dawn," Weezy said, "this is my friend, Jack."

Dawn frowned at him as they shook hands. "Do I know you? You look familiar."

"We met last spring in a bar in Queens… a place called Work."

A pause, and then her eyes widened and she stepped back. "You're that friend of Jerry's."

"I wouldn't say 'friend.' "

She took another backward step as she looked from Jack to Weezy. "Hey, what's going on here?"

"Just coffee and conversation," Weezy said. "Jack recognized you yesterday but wasn't sure you'd remember him."

"And I am no friend of Jerry's," he said. "Not by a long shot."

She stopped her retreat and pointed at him. "That's right! He went after you with a tire iron and you totally beat the crap out of him!"

That surprised him. He hadn't noticed her around at the time, but figured Jerry would have made up a story about being jumped or sucker punched. He hadn't known he'd had a witness. Jack had planned to tell her that he'd done that. Looked like he wouldn't have to.

"How nice," Weezy said.

"No, it was awesome! Like a jerk I felt sorry for Jerry then, but now I wish you'd wailed on him with his own tire iron."

"You saw that?"

"Yes! I was waiting in the car. But… but your name wasn't Jack, it was Joe something."

"Yeah. Joe Henry or something like that. I was, um, undercover."

"You're a cop?"

"No…" Here comes the hard part, the tough sell. "I was hired to check out Jerry Bethlehem. To dig up some dirt on him."

"That shouldn't have been too hard. He was a world-class creep. But who-?" Her already pale skin blanched a little further. "Oh, no. You're not going to tell me it was my mother."

"Afraid I am. She wanted something to use to drive a wedge between you two."

She looked shaky.

"Maybe you should sit down," Weezy said, stepping closer with a concerned look.

Dawn held up a hand. "No, I should go. Because you're lying to me."

"Hey, look," he said. "Maybe your mother could have handled it differently, but she was worried-"

"Oh, I know she hired someone. It just wasn't you."

Baffled, Jack looked for a way to respond.

"Um, yeah, it was," he said slowly. "When she approached me, she told me she needed to keep her daughter from making a terrible mistake. That sound familiar?"

He could tell by her expression that it did.

He related the details of what Christy Pickering had told him about how Jerry had insinuated himself into Dawn's life with the ploy of designing a video game together. He could see his words hitting home, but she still wasn't sold.

"Jerry could have told you that."

"Yeah, he could have, but he didn't." Time to start fudging the truth. "When I did a background check on him I couldn't learn anything about him-like he had no past. But eventually I found out he wasn't who he said he was."

"Who was he then?"

He didn't want to open that can of worms.

"A wanted criminal."

That didn't seem to faze her. "I'm so not surprised. Did you tell my mom?"

"I didn't get the chance. She was… gone before I could reach her."

He figured it best to keep the part about finding her body to himself.

She sat down, looking shaky again. "Then what?"

"I went looking for you but you dropped off the face of the Earth."