“Joseph Barsotti. Still searching for him. I’ve got Rhymer and Aguinaldo canvassing his known associates for an address or hangout.”
“And what about the dude who broke in to Lon King’s apartment?” asked Ochoa.
Heat registered Raley’s irritation at being pressed by his own partner in this way, which went beyond a simple request for information to touch upon the dynamics of their relationship—making her reconsider the wisdom of asking both of them to share the job of squad leader.
To his credit, Detective Raley remained professional, swallowed his anger, and swiveled to his computer. “Real Time Crime said they’d help run facial recog from the F train and tram cams. They should have gotten back to me by now. It’s not like them.” He tried to launch the intranet, but all that came up was a bouncing app icon, and the page failed to load. “That’s weird. This usually comes right up.”
“You probably screwed it up when you moved your computer,” said Ochoa. He moved to the computer on his own desk while Raley worked his jaw muscles and watched the spinning hourglass on his screen. “Huh,” said Ochoa. “Not getting anything here, either.”
Annette Caesar, the precinct switchboard operator, made a tentative step into the bull pen. “Excuse me, Captain Heat? There is a problem with the computers.”
“Here, too,” said Nikki. “Would you please put in an urgent call to MISD?” With so much reliance on technology, the department’s Management Information Systems Division—cop jargon for IT—was generally first-rate. Whatever this glitch was, they would be all over it.
“I did. They said the entire department is crashing. They’re not sure why, but they said it could be a hacking attack. Either way, all of NYPD tech is shut down, citywide.”
“Intranet’s back!” Raley hollered from the hallway. Nikki was in her office, vainly attempting to get a call connected to her district commander. She raced back into the squad room, where an antsy cluster of detectives and Rook stood around a desktop monitor as if witnessing the historic first broadcast of color television.
Just as Heat joined the semicircle, something happened to the screen. The dark blue top banner of the NYPD intranet homepage began to pixilate and the white-and-gold letters of its slogan, “The Nation’s Premier Crime Fighter,” digitally melted and began to streak down the right half of the display like candle wax. The screen went black, then flashed rapid-fire images of raised fists, bright flames, and a close-up of a human eye. Middle Eastern music blasted, and Raley reached out to turn down the ear-splitting volume on his external speakers.
Ochoa gestured around the room. Every flat screen was playing the same thing in unison. “What the fuck is this?”
The distorted music blared on, but the video gradually pulled back from the close-up of the human eye until a young man’s face came into view, trapped behind Photoshopped black bars of a jail cell, with bold script in both English and Arabic flashing over it: “FREE MEHMOUD!!!”
Detective Raley, ever the King of All Surveillance Media, circulated around the office, dialing down the tinny musical assault, but leaving the screens alive so that they could be monitored. But everyone knew what they were witnessing, even if they could hardly believe their eyes. The NYPD had been hacked.