The Leviathan Effect Read Online Free

was something else, too.
    It was a name she recalled from her time on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and which had resurfaced more recently in an inquiry from a colleague. A nickname that had been given to one of the most notorious computer hackers in the world. A renegade product of the Chinese military, groomed to infiltrate the networks of foreign intelligence services.
    She looked down at the blue screen glowing in her hand and read the message again, memorizing it. “The events that occur after Monday will devastate your country.”
    Monday is tomorrow
.
    “What is it?” Jamie asked. He was staring at her, two frown lines creasing his forehead. A row in front of them, Lila Hernandez stopped typing.
    “I think someone’s hacked into my BlackBerry,” Blaine said.
    There was a protocol to follow in the event of a network infiltration. First, she contacted the cyber security coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security on her other encrypted mobile. In a drone-like voice, he instructed her to disable the SME-PED and to use her other mobile device only if necessary.
    Six minutes after Blaine reported the breach, a call came in on her secure phone. It was the head of the Cyber Crime Command. Not at DHS—this time, it was the cyber security coordinator at the White House. The man the media called the US cyber czar, Dean Stiles, a gruff, blunt former military intelligence officer.
    “Your device has been fatally compromised,” he informed her. “We have remotely accessed and deactivated it. Proceed with caution in any further communications. You will be met at the airport with further instructions.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “You’ll be briefed and questioned upon your return.”
    Catherine Blaine clicked off and stared out at the dark gray clouds.
Questioned?
    “We have Internet access here, right?” she said to Jamie.
    “Sure,” he said. “Why?”
    “I want to run a check on something.”
    Blaine pulled out her private mobile device, and clicked open a Google screen. She keyed in NATURAL DISASTERS and then typed in the three dates from the email. 9/25, 9/28, 9/30.

2:39 P.M.
    The assassin watched from the next block as his target emerged from the suburban apartment building and rolled a medium-sized suitcase to his car, a blue Camry parked at the curb.
    He loaded the suitcase into the trunk and turned, surveying the street, his eyes seeming to linger on the assassin’s Range Rover for a moment—although, of course, he could see nothing through the tinted glass.
    This was unexpected: the journalist leaving early, attempting an escape, without knowing who or what was coming for him.
    Ultimately, it does not matter
, the assassin thought.
It just hastens the process
.
    The journalist, whose name was Jon Mallory, pulled quickly from the curb, driving away in the opposite direction.
    The assassin followed at a careful distance, feeling a charge of adrenaline. He was fully engaged now, on the other side of the partition. The assassin existed for only a few hours at a time—and in the end he didn’t really exist at all; in the end, he was an unknown soldier, a man whose purpose was to protect the mission. This was a containment exercise; a pre-empt.
Protect the mission
. Jon Mallory knew things that he shouldn’t know, and the cost of that knowledge was going to be very expensive for him.

THREE
    A S THE LANDING GEAR unfolded below the C-20F Gulfstream IV, Blaine realized that they were not coming in to Reagan National Airport as scheduled. She saw instead a familiar rectangular runway. Then barracks. Hangars. Military vehicles.
    Andrews
.
    She looked at Jamie, who mirrored her frown.
    They were landing at Joint Base Andrews—what used to be known as Andrews Air Force Base—eight miles outside of D.C. in Prince Georges County, Maryland. The forty-five-acre base was home to some twenty thousand active duty military people, civilian employees, and family members. Home base, too,