Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

Price nodded. “He’s even scarier in person.”

Sebeck started crawling toward nearby bodies. “We can probably find a knife on one of these.”

“Hey, look.”

Emerging from the edges of the wood chip piles were a couple dozen armed men in Ghillie suits. As they got closer Sebeck realized their poncho-like suits were more than just physical camouflage—they appeared to reflect whatever was on the other side of them. They were translucent.

He could see their telltale HUD glasses. They had electronic multibarrel rifles slung across their chests and gave the thumbs-up sign to Sebeck and Price as they approached.

Several of them watched the horizon and skies as a tall, muscular-looking darknet operative came up to them and flipped up his bulletproof mask to reveal that he was African American. “Are either of you hurt?”

Sebeck shook his head. “No.”

“Are you The Unnamed One and Chunky Monkey?”

Price exhaled deeply. “That’s us, man.”

“I’m Taylor. An operative named Rakh sent us to get you.”

Sebeck nodded. Jon Ross.

He made motions with a gloved hand in D-Space as several other darknet operatives cut Sebeck and Price’s bonds. They also offered canteens to them.

He called to the others, “Morris, let’s get them some clothing and gear!”

“We’re on it.”

Price rubbed his wrists. “That was calling it pretty goddamned close!”

“Loki Stormbringer has gathered an army of machines. He’s going to attack. Many others are going to follow him in.”

“Attack? What attack?”

“We came to stop Operation Exorcist. Unmanned vehicles are opening up the roads. We’re pushing in overland.”

“You’re here for The Major and his men?”

“Yes. Have you seen him?”

Sebeck felt his temper starting to flare. “Yeah, and if you’re going after him, we’re going with you.”

Only on the Texas prairie could a three-thousand-square-foot home be called a bungalow. Natalie Philips’s quarters were located in a cluster of other bungalows, all done in Southwestern style—tiny Alamos of white plastered brick with flat roofs and a cosmetic bell tower. It was part of a subdivision of corporate residences located about a mile from the main house across landscaped grounds with fountains, ornamental gardens, and rows of poplars. Beyond the complex the prairie extended unbroken to the horizon. It was peaceful out here. Actual solitude.

The interiors of the bungalow were first-rate—hardwood planks, adobe walls, and hand-hewn beams. High ceilings, hand-woven rugs, and expensive-looking Southwestern art adorning the walls. The entertainment centers for each bungalow were insane. Seventy-inch plasma televisions with surround-sound stereo systems linked to an impressive music and movie library drawn off of some central server—but no Web access. No outside phone service, only in-house room service. There was a fully stocked bar and a small kitchenette with a microwave, as well as a disproportionately large dining room that could easily seat a dozen people. There was a separate servants’ entrance with a ramp for bringing in carts, connected to concealed servant paths that ran between the homes behind hedges and fences—as though they were modern Mad Ludwigs, unwilling to countenance the serving staff.

Philips sat alone at the dining room table looking at a powerful laptop linked in to the ranch’s expansive network. A laptop they’d given her and which she was certain was riddled with spyware.

Aldous Johnston had named half a dozen world-class cryptanalysts and software scientists working on Operation Exorcist—but she hadn’t actually seen any of them. She’d just been here, waiting. Even though this was supposed to be an emergency, they hadn’t asked her to do a damn thing. She’d left a dozen messages with Johnston’s admin assistant to find out when she’d be able to get an outside line to talk with Deputy Director Fulbright back at the NSA—as they agreed she could—but no one had gotten back to her. All she had was 24/7 access to food, music, and a huge library of movies.

With representative democracy about to be subverted, kicking back and watching television wasn’t high on her priority list. However, she’d turned on the news to give the impression that she was behaving normally. Recent experience had shown that predictable patterns of behavior were more likely to keep the data gods off her back, and she wanted to foster the belief that she could be trusted.

The news was all bad—civil unrest in the Midwest, the dollar had fallen to record lows against the euro and yuan, and stock markets around the world were incredibly volatile, spiking and falling. Chaos.

And the resounding theme of the media blitz was unmistakable: you are not safe—you need security.

Philips listened to the news as she sat at the dining room table examining the plastic RFID bracelet affixed to her wrist. She held it up to the light to try to see through the thin plastic band. Boynton had said it was tamper-resistant, and she assumed this meant it had a wire antenna braided into its length that would be severed if the bracelet were broken. The whole ranch complex was littered with RFID readers—she’d spotted no less than six here in the bungalow. The sudden loss of a signal would undoubtedly put her unique RFID number into alarm and summon security to investigate.

Unless she could slip this digital leash, she wasn’t going to be able to escape or do anything else without their knowledge. It was becoming apparent that she was under house arrest—at least until Operation Exorcist was completed. By then it would be too late. They would have taken over the Daemon and solidified their control.

Philips knew an RFID tag was just a circuit attached to an antenna. It used energy from a radio wave to activate the circuit and broadcast its unique ID on a specific frequency. That’s how it could broadcast its location to Sky Ranch Security without needing a battery.

The ISO 15693 standard common for RFID proximity cards and mobile payment systems meant this bracelet was probably operating at 13.56 MHz—which was a commercial frequency.

Philips had attended conferences where hacker groups demonstrated homemade devices able to harvest and spoof RFID tags at will. The question was whether Philips could build something similar with the materials here in the bungalow. If she could make them think she was home when she wasn’t, she might be able to trip up their plans.

The place was packed with consumer electronics—but not a lot of them wireless. She’d gathered the few wireless devices she had onto the dining room table to examine their FCC labels.

There was the cordless phone handset and its base station—a 1.9 GHz DECT unit. Not much use. Likewise, all of the television and stereo remotes were infrared, not radio based. There was the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi transmitter in the laptop. This was a decidedly more crowded spectrum here on the ranch, but also useless for interacting at 13.56 MHz. Of course, she also had her Acura TL car remote entry key, which she recalled worked somewhere in the 300-400 MHz range, but attached to the same key chain she had her RFID gas payment fob, which she had disassembled to reveal a tiny clear plastic bulb containing a spool of copper wire connected to a small circuit board. It was the proper frequency, but there was a problem: its code was burned into the circuitry at the factory. Unchangeable—at least theoretically. And she had no specialized tools.

Philips looked back up at the cable news playing on the television. Now in addition to the fighting in the Midwest, a series of major Internet outages had begun to “grip the nation”—or so the media claimed. It was being blamed on sabotage. On domestic “terrorists” blowing up critical fiber-optic lines at vulnerable junctions. The very things they were doing to stifle dissent were being used as the justification for making draconian measures permanent. And everywhere was video of smartly attired private security forces rushing to rescue besieged towns, to restore service. How was it possible that they could do all this? How could they possibly get away with it?