Mark Alpert - Extinction

Inside the truck, the two soldiers pushed her to the back of the cargo hold. She crouched in the corner, but the soldiers remained standing. They both looked down at her, staring intently, as if they were worried she might vanish if they looked away. The other soldiers closed the rear doors, and after a few seconds the truck’s engine started up. As the vehicle started to move, Layla studied her young guards, who had pimply faces and crooked teeth and bloodshot eyes. At first Layla thought the boys were staring at her because they were horny, but when she looked closer, she didn’t see the crude leering expressions that had been so evident on the faces of the Guoanbu agents. The soldiers looked at her blankly, with no expression at all, and for some reason this was even more unnerving.

The truck made a couple of turns, then picked up speed. They were obviously on a highway. Layla didn’t know much about Yunnan Province, but she guessed they were in the western part, which was mountainous and bordered Tibet. She was trying to picture a map of the region in her head when one of the soldiers stepped toward her. “We’ve confirmed your identity,” he said in perfect, unaccented English. “You are Layla Anne Pierce.”

She was surprised. She’d assumed the soldier was an uneducated kid from the provinces, one of the millions who joined the PLA because they couldn’t find jobs anywhere else. But this kid must’ve gone to a pretty good school to speak English so well. Puzzled, Layla didn’t know how to respond. “Excuse me?”

“You were born April second, 1991,” the soldier added. “Place of birth, Falls Church, Virginia. Social Security number 929-31-1655.”

Layla studied the kid’s youthful, seemingly innocent face. He wasn’t an enlistee after all, she guessed. More likely, he was an intelligence officer. She narrowed her eyes. “And who the hell are you?”

“You attended Central High School in Pasadena, California. Your score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test was 2390, the highest in your school district. You entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Your first-year grade-point-average was 3.95, second-highest in your class.”

This kid was starting to piss her off. “What about my vaccination history? You got that, too?”

“You’re the subject of file number 3452339 in the records of the United States Cyber Command. The file was created on March 14, 2011, after you activated the Veritrax worm and used it to infiltrate the State Department’s network firewalls. In that incident, you downloaded thirteen classified documents detailing operations against Al Qaeda that were undertaken by the National Security Agency during the 1990s. The file identifies you as a serious security threat because of your exceptional talents in the field of cyber espionage.”

Now Layla began to worry. The kid’s information was dead-on. If his intent was to intimidate her by showing how much he knew, he was definitely succeeding. “Look, asshole, why don’t we cut to the chase? What do you want from—”

“On July 13 of this year you infiltrated the Guoanbu’s computer network through a backdoor activated by Agent Wen Sheng, who used the code name Dragon Fire in his communications with you. You downloaded sixty-nine files related to the Supreme Harmony program before we detected and deleted the backdoor. Agent Wen downloaded two additional files, which he stored on a flash drive and delivered to you in person. Supreme Harmony has now recovered those files.”

Layla felt a surge of anger. She remembered how the Guoanbu agents had sunk the Athena and killed Angelique, just to recover their goddamn files. “Supreme Harmony, huh? So that’s the name of your surveillance project?”

The kid stared at her for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “The Guoanbu initiated the Supreme Harmony surveillance program in 2011. The first drone swarms were tested at the Yunnan Operations Center in January 2012. The first Modules were added to the network in November 2012 to facilitate the analysis of the surveillance video.”

“And what about the political dissidents? Don’t forget that part. I guess lobotomizing your critics makes everything more harmonious, right?”

She expected some reaction to this dig, but the soldier’s face didn’t change. He didn’t say a word. But a moment later, the other soldier stepped forward and stood abreast of his comrade. “We’re concerned about the security of Supreme Harmony. That’s why we brought you here. The Guoanbu agents in Panama had been assigned to eliminate you, but we changed their orders when we took control of the ministry’s communications.”

Layla did a double take. The second soldier’s English was also perfect and eerily similar to the first soldier’s. The timbre of his voice was different, but his diction and phrasing were exactly the same, as if he was trying to mimic the first soldier.

“We suspect there may be anomalies in the network’s software,” the second soldier continued. “Worms or viruses may have been deliberately embedded in the code by the developers of the system. This malware may be hidden so deeply that our diagnostic programs are unable to detect it. But your expertise in cybersecurity will help us develop better diagnostic tools. With your assistance we will eliminate the malware before our enemies can activate it.”

Layla felt cold. She was frightened, but she didn’t want the soldiers to see it. She clenched her hands and scowled. “Fuck you,” she said firmly. “Fuck you and your Supreme Harmony. And fuck the asshole who taught you English. You sound like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

The soldiers’ faces went blank. They seemed to be thinking. Finally, the second soldier cocked his head and lifted his left eyebrow in an expression of curiosity. “An interesting comparison,” he said. “We learned English from Dr. Zhang Jintao, who spoke the language fluently. He also gave us other useful skills.”

His expression was disturbing. Layla turned away from the second soldier and looked at the first one again. She immediately noticed that his head was cocked at the same angle as the second soldier’s head, and his left eyebrow was lifted to the same height. The strange double image scared the shit out of her. She pressed her back against the wall of the cargo hold. “Jesus!” she yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We must grow to survive,” the first soldier said. “Thanks to the skills we acquired from Dr. Zhang, we were able to incorporate the People’s Liberation Army soldiers stationed at the Yunnan Operations Center. We added them one by one to the network, starting with the commander.”

“Fuck! What are you talking about?”

In response, the soldiers simultaneously removed their berets. Each shaved head had a row of fresh stitches running across the crown. “Soon you will join us,” the second soldier said. “We must grow to survive.”

Kirsten followed Arvin’s bodyguard Frank Nash into one of Beijing’s hutongs, the long alleyways that crossed the city’s oldest and poorest districts. This hutong, like all the others in Beijing, ran east to west. The street pattern had been laid out a thousand years ago according to the ancient rules of feng shui, which arranged the alleys this way to block the cold winds that blew from the north. Because the hutong ran so straight and true, shadowing Nash was a piece of cake. Kirsten could stay a hundred yards behind and still follow him easily. She didn’t even need the radio signal.

She had to admit: It was exhilarating. It felt good to get out of Fort Meade and work in the field again. The only thing dampening her enthusiasm was the nagging fact that the NSA hadn’t approved this mission. Kirsten had wanted to alert the NSA director, but Jim vetoed the idea. The CIA, he argued, would torpedo any official investigation of its dealings with the Guoanbu. So now Kirsten was taking a huge risk, using the NSA’s money and resources on an unauthorized operation. If it went bad, she’d lose her job. If it went really bad, she’d go to prison.