All around the Exchange, undercover FBI agents and policemen converged on their targets. Groups of three, four, and five officers swarmed each assailant. Alex was watching a violent flash mob in reverse. Instead of standing apart from the crowd, the bad guys disappeared from it, thrown to the pavement, hands pulled behind their backs and cuffed. Those law enforcement agents not tracking a suspect rushed among the bewildered pedestrians, seeking out the nine remaining assailants.
Alex ran to the security checkpoint at the corner of Broad and Wall. She eyed a woman looking much too calm in the melee erupting all around her.
Baggy shirt. Check.
Cap. Check.
Sunglasses. Check.
Athletic bag. Check.
The woman’s hands delved into the bag.
Alex leaped the barricade and drew her Glock, advancing on the woman. “Freeze. Let me see your hands.”
In an instant three other agents surrounded the suspect. The woman raised her hands high. Alex ripped the bag off her shoulder. Inside was a submachine gun. The other agents pushed the woman to the ground and cuffed her.
The first gunshot sounded.
Alex turned to see where it had come from and saw a man running toward Broadway. He carried a submachine gun in one hand. And then he was down, shot by one of three policemen almost before the welter of gunshots exploded.
“I’m hit,” a man shouted.
Alex saw one of her agents clutching his leg. A policeman ran to his side and administered aid.
“Give me a count,” she said.
“Ten down.”
Alex returned to Exchange Place. She turned the corner to the main entrance as a woman screamed. A blond man held the woman to his chest and pointed a pistol at her head. A dozen officers surrounded him in seconds. Alex approached him, her pistol at her side.
“Your move,” she said.
The blond mercenary looked around him. He was young and handsome, by all accounts someone who had the world before him. He smiled sadly, realizing that he was hopelessly outnumbered. He put the pistol beneath his chin. “Ah, fuck it.”
It wasn’t the Exchange.
Astor stood at the window of his office looking down toward the Stock Exchange. From his aerie sixty stories above the ground, all looked calm, peaceful, and orderly. It didn’t make sense. Magnus Lee’s and Septimus Reventlow’s strategy was to buy a controlling interest in a company, place a man inside, and use the Empire Platform to see into and, when needed, control its operations. An outright Mumbai-style attack on the Stock Exchange might shut down trading for a few days, even sow doubt in investors’ minds about the invincibility of the United States, but it would do nothing to enable Lee and his brother to gain control over the entire trading system. And yet Palantir and Astor’s father had been sure that their target was the Exchange. This belief was reinforced by the CIC’s last investment, in Matronix, the company that manufactured the servers and hardware recently installed to run the New York Stock Exchange’s trading platform.
A line from Palantir’s report was stuck in his mind: “…and though there is no question about the depth and extent of the penetration of critical national systems, the aggressor cannot use TEP to trigger a modal system-wide default until a source code is introduced.”
TEP, for The Empire Platform.
But an outright physical assault wasn’t enough.
Astor looked at his television. It was 9:30 a.m., and he watched as the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange was rung by United States Navy Master Chief Ron Blackburn, a member of SEAL Team Six and the nation’s most recent recipient of the Medal of Honor. Accompanying him on the dais were his wife and child, as well as the man who had replaced Edward Astor as CEO of the NYSE. After an initial surge of energy, the floor grew quiet. Each year fewer and fewer men and women were required to supervise the trades. More and more of the work was done by computers.
He left his office and hurried across the floor. By the time he reached Ivan Davidoff’s office, he was running. “Ivan, you free?”
“Sure, boss,” said the bespectacled IT professional.
“You familiar with a company called Matronix?”
“Of course. Their machines run the most sophisticated trading systems in the world.”
“And we just bought a bunch of them—I mean, my father did.”
“Yes, they’re housed in New Jersey.”
“No,” said Astor. “I mean here in Manhattan. The ones housed at the Exchange.”
“There are only a few there. Traders on the floor use remote terminals to input orders. The heart of the machinery is at the trading center in Mahwah.”
“Where?”
“Mahwah, New Jersey. All trading moved there two years ago.”