duncan begins to suspect his vice president of being the leaker. she is still bitter that duncan had beat her in the primaries, and she would take over as president if duncan were impeached. the cybersecurity team, with duncan's help, discover a way of rendering the virus ineffective, so they test it on a server at the pentagon. this test inadvertently sets off the virus throughout the nation, but it is suspended after deleting only a few files. if the correct disable keyword is not entered in thirty minutes, dark ages will wipe everything out. at the same time, bach and suliman's other mercenaries attack again to kill augie, but they are stopped by the secret service and a marine corps helicopter, and bach is captured. duncan assembles his top aides to try to guess the password, and at the last second his chief of staff correctly guesses the password and disables the virus.