01-01-00 Read Free

multiple layers of security, reaching the inner room, spilling its virulent contents into the network servers, following its directive to seek out the hard drives housing the complex programs that kept the nation’s capital’s rush-hour morning traffic from turning into havoc.
    The virus quickly began to replicate across the hundreds of thousands of files in the drive, disabling the automatic backup systems, which he himself had designed to enable the local traffic-light controllers in the event of a network failure. Next, the alien code struck the primary program of the control system, instantly forcing all traffic lights within a two-mile radius into a flashing-red pattern.
    Now let’s see you bastards try to figure this one out without the help of the programmers you laid off!
    Bloodaxe’s gaze returned to the digital display across the street, which he had grown accustomed to use as a counter while cooking or exercising. Today he used it to mark the time it took before the effects of his virus brought the city to its knees.
    Ten-foot-tall digital numbers flashed crimson waves of light as the counter’s two right-most digits, marking the hundredths of a second, constantly pulsated next to the steady rhythm of the seconds and the nearly constant glow of the minutes, hours, and days.
    In the minutes following the high-tech strike, traffic began to back up at all major intersections as the carefully designed traffic-light system turned into four-way stops. Within twenty minutes, Washington, D.C., had come to a standstill. While city officials struggled to enable the backup systems, the traffic flowing into the city clogged all access roads, from New York Avenue to Virginia and Constitution. In Dupont Circle angered drivers laid on their horns, kicking off a cacophony of sounds and shouts that mixed with those from other sections of the city. Amazingly, the first accident didn’t occur until thirty-one minutes after the sabotage, when traffic backed up a curved exit ramp from Highway 195, just out of sight from a minivan getting off the highway. The driver had taken this route countless times before on her way to Georgetown University, where she taught computer science. Although the posted speed limit on the exit ramp was thirty-five miles per hour, she usually took it at forty. Her husband, a federal agent from the Treasury Department, rode in the passenger seat. Their two-year-old daughter sat in the back. All three were wearing their safety belts.
    She slammed on the brakes but could not avoid crashing into the row of stopped vehicles on the ramp. The airbags mushroomed, sparing her from fatally crushing her face against the steering wheel. The airbag system also saved her husband’s life. The safety belt wrapped over her daughter’s shoulder kept her from bouncing inside the family vehicle.
    Unfortunately, the minivan collided while turning down the curved exit ramp. The impact did not stop the vehicle but simply deflected its momentum to the left, crashing it against a three-foot side wall, forcing it over the edge, plummeting a dozen feet to the ground below.
    All three were flown to nearby Georgetown University Hospital. The husband died en route from severe trauma to the head and torso. The daughter died that afternoon from internal bleeding. The driver spent two months in a coma.
    Before awakening to a nightmare.

Chapter One
    000001
    1
    Washington, D.C.
    The Walther PPK semiautomatic could hold seven rounds, but Susan Garnett thumbed only one into the magazine before jamming it into the gun’s grip. She flipped off the safety and pulled back the slide, chambering the cartridge. Keeping her finger off the trigger, she let her robe fall by her feet before stepping into the tub in her bathroom.
    Susan immersed herself in the lukewarm water, her dark olive skin momentarily goose-bumping. Inhaling deeply, she forced her mind to relax, finding it amazingly easy to do, a strange sense of