William Weber - Zero Day

“You think I’m overreacting, don’t you?”

Nate pulled her into a hug. “Not at all. I think you’re one of the most level-headed people I know.”

She laughed. “You need to get out more.”

“Was there anything about the banks on the news?”

Amy dug her hands in her pockets and shook her head, sighing. “Only thing on the news is about the snowstorm. They say it’s gonna be…”

“The biggest storm we’ve seen in a century,” he said, finishing the sentence. “Candice at Casey’s gas station already filled me in.”

Amy’s expression soured. “I’m sure she did. I see you two are on a first-name basis now.”

“Now you are overreacting,” he said, winking as he kissed her and headed through the front entrance and up a short flight of stairs into the rest of the house.

A bright red warning sign had been flashing in Nate’s head since around the time he pulled out of Casey’s and started for home, a carryover, perhaps, from his days on the force. That innate sense honed from patrolling dangerous neighborhoods. That same uneasy feeling soldiers serving in Iraq often described moments before an ambush—a street eerily quiet, devoid of people, absent even the incessant sound of barking dogs. Some soldiers said they could feel it in their bones, a kind of static charge filling the empty space around them.

Nate had been sensing the same thing, although he wasn’t sure just yet what was causing the strange feeling. Could it be the snow? That seemed harmless enough. Life above a certain parallel in America came with an expectation of the white fluffy stuff in winter.

“Honey, where are you going?” Amy asked, moving up the stairs behind him.

“Got to check something,” he replied, not wanting to alarm her. If he was wrong they could get on with their evening in peace. On the other hand, if he expressed his concerns and freaked her out over nothing, she’d be on edge all night. That kind of emotional stress was surely not good for the baby.

Nate made his way down a long, carpeted hallway to his office. The room was small and sparsely furnished. An L-shaped desk hugged the far wall. Above that was a bookcase with tomes on police procedures and books on the ins and outs of freelance private investigation work: The Investigator’s Licensing Handbook, Analyzing Crime Scene Evidence, Dealing with Stalkers and plenty more. Every patch of real estate on the walls was filled with diplomas and certificates. He had duplicates at his office in town. That was where he would meet with clients. Not here. This was his sanctuary.

This was also where he kept his guns, housed in a safe seated to the right of his desk. You couldn’t follow people who were up to no good without expecting a little pushback from time to time. Sometimes a little more. But force was a last resort. Taking a life was no laughing matter. As any competent firearms instructor would tell you, if your finger touched the trigger, you’d better be ready to shoot. The acronym IAEF summed up his motto about as well as any could be expected to. It stood for “if all else fails”. Wasn’t it Clausewitz who’d once said, “War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means?”

Nate grew still until he heard the muffled drone from the other room as his wife returned to her television show. He’d meant it when he said she was the most level-headed person he knew. Calm, cool and collected, that was her baseline. He had tried not to show it, but seeing her on edge had rattled him. He returned his attention to the gun safe, running the combo and opening the door.

The contents included three weapons, along with several boxes of ammunition—his main sidearm, a Sig Sauer P320 with .45 ACP; his backup, a shortened version of the 1911, the Colt Defender; and his long gun, a Remington 870 shotgun loaded with double-aught buck.

Normally, the Sig with the Colt as backup was more than enough for the kind of work he did. That only changed if the subject in question was armed or a known felon. Otherwise the shotgun stayed home, since its primary purpose was for castle defense. The sheer intimidation factor that accompanied racking a round into the chamber was unmatched by any other weapon on the civilian market. Another reason it was such a hit: accuracy was far less of an issue than with other weapon systems. Once you leveled that barrel and squeezed the trigger, you were bound to get a piece of something.

The shotgun’s reputation ran further than the intimidating noise it made. The mess it made of a man had helped crystallize the weapon’s fearsome reputation in the popular consciousness, which in turn reduced the need to use it. “Talk softly and carry a big stick”—that was Teddy Roosevelt opining on foreign policy, but he might as well have been talking about a twelve-gauge loaded with double-aught buck.

The shrill sound of his wife’s scream from the other room made the smooth skin on Nate’s scalp draw tight.

Nate came charging into the family room, his Sig in the low ready position, his practiced eyes scanning the room for threats.

His wife stood pointing at the TV.

He put the pistol away, his heart beating a racket in his chest. “Geez Louise, babe, you had me thinking someone had broken in.” His eyes shifted to what she was seeing on the news.

“Police are calling it the largest ever cyber-attack on the US financial industry. Three of the nation’s largest banks, along with a half-dozen credit card companies, were struck this evening by an internet-based attack of unknown origin. Although the banking industry has attempted to downplay the damage, sources inside suggest the funds from millions of bank and investment accounts may have been wiped out. At this stage, spokesmen from the financial institutions affected will neither confirm nor deny the claim.”

Amy turned to him, shocked and confused. “What does that mean for us?”

“I’m not sure,” Nate replied. The notion of a cold sweat didn’t do justice to what he was feeling at this very moment. He felt his bum knee begin to buckle and set himself down on the couch.

Amy followed suit, sitting next to him. She took his hand and squeezed it. “How much of our money was sitting in bank accounts?” she asked, breathless.

Nate shook his head. “Between our personal accounts and the joint, maybe a few thousand. Just enough to pay the bills. Then there’s both of our 401ks.”

“How much cash do we have in the house?” she asked. Her mouth had gone dry, causing her words to stick together.

“Hard to say, but even if we had a million bucks hidden under our mattress it wouldn’t matter.”

“What do you mean?”

He squeezed her hand. “Whoever did this might have just wiped out the entire financial system. Most, if not all, of it is simply a bunch of zeros and ones held on hardened servers somewhere. If all that’s gone, any money we have won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Amy said, hopeful.

All at once Nate heard a chorus of pings from his phone as texts started pouring in. Then Amy’s phone started to ring. The landline soon followed. It seemed every communication device they owned had come to life at once. No doubt on the other end of the line was a mob of terrified friends, neighbors and family members, all reeling from the shocking news.

They didn’t answer them, not right away. Nate set his phone to silent and set it on the coffee table before him. “There’s something else too,” he said. The TV was still on, the volume down as the talking heads circled like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

“What is it?” Amy asked and Nate could see from the look on her weary face she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.