Lethal Code

CHAPTER 19

Deputy director Holmes found himself flying in the copilot’s seat of a hurriedly revamped Boeing B-29 Superfortress that the agency had borrowed from a Smithsonian facility at Dulles. And not just any World War II — era B-29, either, but the Enola Gay, which had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Ironically enough, the NSA, the cybernetic heart of the intelligence services, needed a pre — computer age aircraft to fly Holmes safely over the latest disaster triggered by the escalating attacks of the invisible enemy. The White House had also plundered the Smithsonian, taking a Stinson L-5 Sentinel for the president’s use.

Holmes was headed into the heart of Dixie for an overflight that he already dreaded. Computer programs that controlled nine dams on the Tennessee River, all run by the Tennessee Valley Authority, had long been zealously guarded against terrorist bombs. But months ago — long before their first cyberattack — the unseen enemy had infiltrated the TVA’s extensive computer network with “bomblets” that thirty-six hours ago had stopped turbines from moving and closed off spillways and sluice gates. The buildup behind the dams had created crushing pressure until the great walls burst, one after another, like a series of deadly dominoes.

From Knoxville, Tennessee, all the way down to Paducah, Kentucky — more than 650 miles — walls of water had ripped through millions of tons of concrete and earth. The dream of providing electric power for much of the South in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s day became another means of sending furious torrents of terror through the heartland of the country in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

And there it is.

The damage filled his window. Sickening, like Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy, but far worse, because in river-valley towns the force of cascading water — not steadily rising seas — had torn houses and schools and hospitals from their firm foundations and sent the bodies of thousands of men, women, and children tumbling downriver in a viciously engineered maelstrom. Few survived the tsunami-force waters. Limp bodies were strewn like seaweed wherever he looked.

Souls.

Holmes, never much of a believer, once more heard the word repeating in his thoughts as he looked down at the devastation.

Hours after the dams had broken, another message arrived on the screens of the NSA. Nothing else worked on those computers, but someone, somewhere, had somehow executed a series of keystrokes that produced the same video of a burning American flag that had appeared on tens of thousands of Aramco’s screens. This time the flames were accompanied by the deep, unaccented voice of a man saying, “You are destined for a new kind of D-Day. We call it Death Day, when your country is obliterated, when your flag will look like this.” The burning Stars and Stripes turned to cinders with an audible whoosh, followed by the sound of a powerful bomb exploding. The voice had continued:

“You should keep your eyes on Appalachia. We are not done with your most-exploited citizens yet. So do not count your dead, because more will die. There is nothing you can do to stop us. You must see that by now. But you may wish to watch what we can do with the worst of your poisonous policies.”

“Rhetoric,” Teresa McGivern had spit as she turned to him in his office hours ago. She, along with other top members of his team, advised him to disregard the additional warning about Appalachia, telling him bluntly, if coldly, “It’s coal-mining country. Hitting that area would be the domestic equivalent of bombing Afghanistan, turning rubble into more rubble.”

But Holmes had insisted on seeing the region before flying back. Maybe he’d spot something. Maybe he could actually take action to prevent yet another catastrophe.

Given the threat to the region — and the invitation for it to be observed — Holmes did agree to have two World War II P-51 Mustangs join the Enola Gay for this leg of the journey. More than seventy years ago, the Mustangs had driven the Luftwaffe from the skies and been hailed as the greatest dogfighters of the European Theater. But when Holmes spotted them off the wings of the Superfortress, he experienced a powerful sense of displacement, a feeling that he’d stepped into a time capsule that had swept him back to an earlier era, even as he was observing the wretched results of the most advanced warfare in human history.

And here I am in a museum piece.

His eyes lowered to coal country. By any reasonable measure, there was not much to see, mostly a region ravaged by the brute claws of the coal industry. Holmes considered himself a forthright defender of his nation, but he couldn’t abide the greed of a young generation of corporate titans. Below him was reason number one: mountaintop removal. Everywhere he looked he saw moonscapes looming, the once picturesque region so damaged that it was inconceivable conditions could be worsened by a hacker sitting at a distant computer. The despoilment was so extensive that it could be seen from space. He wondered if the enemy just wanted a Washington official to eyeball the destruction.

What are they, environmentalists?

In minutes, he would learn that the answer was just the opposite. As the Enola Gay banked north — as it had once turned, high above its Hiroshima target — he watched a sludge pond filled with millions of gallons of toxic runoff burst the earthen walls that contained its liquid death.

“Circle back!” he ordered.

As the pilots complied, Holmes watched the black waters race down a chewed-up mountain and swallow entire towns. He beat his knees in frustration, realizing that the enemy had given him clues to their deadly plan that he’d never made sense of. First the TVA dams. Now this. He should have seen it coming.

But he knew, despite his roiling anger and regret, that even if he’d been able to imagine such grotesque disregard of human life, there was no way for anyone to have warned those poor people. Rural electric power throughout most of the South had failed when the TVA dams collapsed.

The sequence, Holmes knew at once, was part of the plan. The countdown was getting crueler. And the best scientists in the country had not been able to penetrate the firewalls thrown up by the enemy that had taken control of the nation’s nuclear arms.

The day’s damage was hardly done. Unknown to Holmes, the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, two thousand miles away, to the west of Phoenix, went into full-scale meltdown. The exodus from the city — already suffering from temperatures approaching 130 degrees, the highest in its broiling-hot history — had proved riotous and furiously violent. People with four-wheel-drive cars and SUVs tried to blast their way across open desert. Road rage took on new, even more lethal dimensions as racing gun battles ensued among carloads of men and families trying to shoot their way free of radiation sickness and death.

Palo Verde, with its containment buildings rising above the desert floor, was the first nuclear power plant to go into meltdown, but operators of other plants were also facing record-low river and lake levels — and doing all they could to try to keep their reactors cool enough to prevent catastrophes that could take thousands of years to recover from.

The helicopter with Lana and the SEALs landed in another desert half a world away. No landing strip, only three unmarked concrete helicopter pads. Two were occupied by Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks clad in radar-absorbent materials. In short, they were stealth birds, exactly like the one used on the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Lana wondered if they were the same Sikorskys.

A Quonset hut hangar was the only structure at the “base,” and she understood, as she walked across the searing Arabian Desert sand, that the hut could probably be dismantled and carted away in hours. The desert would have no difficulty burying the concrete pads on its own.

The hangar provided shade, but little relief from the scorching daytime heat.

She spotted unnerving evidence that the hangar had been a black site: Wall and ceiling-mounted pulleys lay on the floor; discarded steel cables and shackles collected dust nearby; and buckets and ragged towels that could have been used—No, they were. Don’t kid yourself—for waterboarding were jammed into a corner.

That was when she knew the hangar had been out there for some time, for who would have left behind a grisly display of evidence like that? It would never be a stop on a congressional junket that included U.S. military bases. The only people who would ever see the hangar were prisoners, those who minded them, and the intelligence personnel like her who used the hangar in emergencies.

She also realized that in all likelihood, they had landed in Yemen. The Saudis permitted U.S. drone bases on their desert, but their imperial pride never would have countenanced such a brazen display of antiterror tools — not evidence that could undermine the moral authority of the royal family.

A propane camp stove sat on a rudimentary counter.

“Coffee?” asked Gabe, the New Yorker who had held her life in his hands as they roared out of Riyadh. “Or do you wanna get some shut-eye?”

He nodded at cots with blindingly white sheets. Odd, she thought, for such an otherwise grungy redoubt.

Lana answered with her feet, trudging to the nearest cot to lie down, fully clothed. She might have fallen asleep before her head hit the pillow.

“You think she liked our song?” Gabe asked Travis.

“I sure hope so,” the commander replied. “Because there’s no encore. Sun goes down, and our bird goes up. And we’re not singing a single note on our way to Sana.”

Travis set up a computer with a satellite link. In minutes he clicked onto a European website and began to update his team on the embassy takeover: “They say they’re going to put the ambassador on trial.”

“Good; I hope they convict him of being a pussy,” said the SEAL who’d pushed Arpen against a wall to keep him from following the team assigned to rescue Lana.

The officer who’d driven the Delica carried over half a dozen folding chairs and doled them out.

“Nothing from the palace yet,” Travis went on, “so they’re letting all the action at the embassy play out.”

“Kissing some militant ass,” said the driver. “Anybody killed yet?”

“No reported deaths. Hey, that’s a good sign,” Travis offered.

“Only if you like Arpen,” Gabe volleyed. “I hate those Yalies.”

“He went to Harvard,” Travis replied. “Just like you. Christ, you make a lousy good ol’ boy, and I know my good ol’ boys.”

“Well, you make a lousy Aggie, and Arpen makes a lousy ambassador.”

“Okay, guys, here’s a German news report with video.” Travis pointed to the screen.

“What the fuck is that?” Gabe demanded, pointing to the screen, where it looked like thousands were rioting at Chicago O’Hare Airport.

“Veepox has hit the Windy City,” Travis said, back to watching the news scroll. “It’s under quarantine, and—”

“Those people are totally out of control,” Gabe finished Travis’s comment without looking away from the monitor. “And that’s Santa Monica,” he added when video appeared of an Army tank rolling down Highway 1.

“Right,” the driver said. “You know your cities.”

“And my beach towns. Tell you something else I know. I’ll never lose money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” Gabe shot back.

“And even an Aggie knows you ripped that line off from a guy named Mencken,” Travis said.

“It’s weird being where the action isn’t,” Gabe replied, ignoring the plagiarism charge.

“Don’t worry about that,” Travis told him. “We’ll be heading into the darkest night soon enough.”

A couple of hundred miles away, Ruhi still sat between two Mabahith agents in the Ford Expedition. Lennon, in the passenger seat, controlled the playlist, so Ruhi had been forced to listen to an endless stream of Arabic music, which he loathed. He was more of a Simon and Garfunkel fan, or just Simon would do. Maybe some John Denver. A girlfriend once told him that he had “atavistic taste.” He readily agreed. A loop of “Country Roads” might have played in his head if the racket from Lennon’s iPod could have been silenced.

He’d complained, of course, but Lennon had looked at him like he was a bug badly in need of insecticide.

But hard as Ruhi tried, he could not drive out the grating sounds of buzzes, dafs, tablahs, and the other screechy Arabic instruments ripping at his ears.

Signs for the Yemeni border appeared, now only a few kilometers away. Given its import, Ruhi would have liked a little more warning.

For what? He shrugged to himself. To get ready, I guess.

But as they pulled up to the border crossing, with its high walls and thick metal gate, he saw very quickly that there was little he could have done, except remain quiet — Lennon’s sole warning to him.

His minder handed documents and cash to one of the Yemeni guards. They were all dressed in desert camos and bore assault rifles and pistols.

The guard pocketed the cash, offered a cursory glance at the passports, and sent them on their way.

Ruhi dozed, escaping the grating music. When Lennon roused him an hour later, the iPod had been shut off. But whatever relief that might have provided was instantly supplanted by Lennon pointing out where the jihadists had abducted Candace. He explained what took place in some detail, and then finished by saying, “Everything happened in minutes.”

Not everything, Ruhi thought. What are they doing to her now? How many fingernails does she have left? How many ways are they violating her?

Then he asked himself one last unavoidable question: How many people did she give up?

As Ruhi closed his eyes, Lennon spoke up:

“Do not worry, Ruhi. We have ample protection. Yemen is a lawless nation, so we make sure we bring the law with us. Do you know what the law is down here?”

“Guns?”

Lennon laughed. “Yes, many, many guns and the men we pay to carry them for us.”

Ruhi glanced out the windows and saw yellowish mountains that looked incapable of supporting life of any kind, save the microbes that he thought would outlive all humanity.

Their destination, Sana, was already on the verge of perishing. Not from internal strife, of which Yemen had plenty, but from a simple lack of water. The World Bank said it was likely to become the first global capital to run completely dry, a terrifying prognostication for the city’s two million inhabitants.

It was already drained of law and order. Al Qaeda members routinely benefited from not-so-mysterious prison breaks on a nearly regular basis, and jihadists almost took armed control of Aden, the capital, in 2012. Aden was also the site of a 2000 suicide bombing against the U.S.S. Cole that claimed the lives of seventeen sailors and injured thirty-one others, for which Al Qaeda was quick to claim credit. It was the most lethal attack against a U.S. Navy vessel in the previous twenty-five years.

Yemen was now number one in U.S. concerns about terrorism. So it came as no surprise when Lennon casually informed Ruhi that the failing state was bin Laden’s ancestral home.

More recently, it had become the principal target for U.S. drone attacks, which the complacent government, such as it was, had tried to cover up by claiming that its own military was targeting its citizens. The ruse — promulgated in exchange for considerable U.S. military hardware — had failed miserably, and the government that offered the hapless lie was reputed to be hanging on by its fingernails.

Hardly a shock, then, when Lennon told him that Iran was also getting involved in Yemen, sending weapons, especially for the Huthis in the north, the very region they were traversing. That ragged crew took their inspiration from Hezbollah. The Saudis had fought the Huthis in the late 1990s but failed to defeat them.

“How much longer?” was Ruhi’s response, feeling like a kid again in the back of his parents’ minivan.

“Go back to sleep, Ruhi. Let him have the back row,” Lennon ordered the Mabahith officers on either side of him.

Ruhi climbed past the men and curled into a fetal position, the only way to accommodate his long legs.

Lennon returned his gaze to the road, searching. Always searching.

Hamza “the lion” held his pistol to the bus driver’s head as they rolled off I-295. The fuel tank was almost empty. The hijacker looked jumpy to Emma, which worried her because he was the one in charge.

His walkie-talkie had squawked an hour ago with news that diesel would be delivered to the Paulsboro Travel Center, a truck stop. Hamza had demanded that the entire lot be cleared of vehicles before they arrived. But as they pulled in, Emma spotted a tow truck racing away with an old Buick.

At a glance, the truck stop looked like a ghost town. Then, as they drew closer, she saw that the station’s big plate-glass windows were shattered, and realized that the store had been looted. Even the pumps looked vandalized.

But Hamza’s remote contact had assured him that the fuel would be available. Still, there were no signs of anyone. There were, however, a trailer sitting unhitched at the back of the lot and a cattle truck closer to the fuel island.

“I said I wanted everything out of here,” Hamza shouted into his mouthpiece. He looked scared — and that frightened Emma, too. It was like everything was out of control and getting crazier by the moment.

He looked at the ceiling of the bus. His lips moved rapidly. His walkie-talkie came alive with a screech that made him jump. She did, too.

His contact person said the “authorities,” whoever they were, had told him that they had just now located a tanker to carry the diesel he wanted.

“That’s a lie,” Hamza yelled. “A lie! Tell them I’ll take a life for every lie, starting now. Do you hear? A life for a lie.”

“Hamza.” A distinctly new voice came on. “We have your fuel. We also have your friend in custody. Listen to me carefully. If we wanted to do something stupid, we could have sent a team to move that tanker and cattle truck. But we’re guessing you don’t want us anywhere near there. If we had cell phone service, we could send you satellite photos of the lot before the first cyberattack and after, so you could see that those two trucks have been there for almost a week. The cattle truck won’t start, and we don’t have a tractor to drive away with that trailer. That’s why they haven’t moved. So please listen carefully. We have a diesel delivery lined up. But it’s coming down from Long Island. It’s at least four hours away. If you’ve followed any news at all, you know pumps are dry everywhere. But we got fuel from a New York State armory, okay?”

“No, it is not okay. I said I wanted fuel when we stopped. I said if it wasn’t here, I would start killing. Now you listen to me because I’m going to let you hear that I mean what I say.”

He switched the mouthpiece to “transmit,” clipped it to his shirt, and stormed down the aisle.

Emma started crying. She knew Hamza was going to murder someone. She could see it in his eyes. They were strangely blank and unblinking, yet intensely dark, like pools deeper than death.

He grabbed Pastor William Sr., using his filleting knife to slice the gag from his mouth with no regard for the man’s swollen cheeks. Blood spilled onto his black suit, white shirt, and splattered his shiny blue tie. Then Hamza dragged the bound man to the front of the bus. Pastor William Sr. stumbled but stayed on his feet. Two of Hamza’s cohorts kept their weapons trained on everyone, including the driver. The bomber had his hand on the bomb trigger, as if ready to blow them all up at any second.

“Open the door!” Hamza screamed.

The driver obeyed immediately.

Hamza shoved the pastor down the stairs. William Sr. fell hard. He couldn’t break his fall with his hands cuffed behind his back. His face hit the pavement, bloodying his nose and lips.

Hamza pounced on him like a jackal, dragging him upright, keeping the pastor in front of him.

“Tell them what I am doing,” Hamza demanded as he jammed the muzzle of his pistol into the back of Pastor William Sr.’s head.

Everybody in the bus stared out the window. Most of the kids prayed. Emma was on her feet, along with all the other choir members on the far side of the aisle. She didn’t want to watch, but she did. She could hear Pastor William Sr. clearly:

“He has a gun to my head.” The pastor’s words were shaky, but then he spoke quickly and decisively: “Don’t worry about me. Just do whatever you have to save these—”

Silenced by a gunshot.

Emma watched the pastor’s body slump to the ground.

Hamza jumped up the steps of the bus, as if fearful now that he had lost his human shield. He unclipped his mouthpiece.

“Did you hear? Did you?” he shouted. “The pastor is dead. We killed your first ‘hero.’ We’ll kill them all if you don’t listen.”

No answer came from the walkie-talkie.

Hamza’s eyes roved over every one of the choir members. Emma knew what he was doing — picking out his next victim. And then she was sure of it when his eyes landed on hers, and he nodded.

He came closer to her. “They know I am not kidding,” he said to her. “You and your friend”—he glared fiercely at Tanesa—“started this journey together, and if they don’t bring the diesel soon, you will end it together, too. Sit next to her,” he told Emma.

When she stood, shaking visibly, Hamza grabbed her arm and dragged her up to the next row. He jerked the girl sitting next to Tanesa from her seat and pushed her toward the one Emma had just vacated.

Emma sat with her shoulders curled forward, cowering. But when she looked over, Tanesa wasn’t slumping at all. She sat erect and kept her eyes staring straight ahead, not once glancing at Hamza, who still hovered over them in the aisle.

Then he moved toward the front of the bus.

Emma felt Tanesa’s hand rub against her back, and then she heard her caregiver’s faint whisper: “He’s not getting away with this.”

Tanesa nodded, so subtly that Emma scarcely noticed. But she did, and then Emma nodded in return.

Not getting away with it. No way.

Candace’s mouth had never felt so dry. Three hours without water. What are they waiting for?

To make me even weaker, she said to herself. What else?

Two of them walked out from the tent and started toward her. She stood and backed up, quickly hitting the limits of the small metal cage.

Each of their steps buried their boots in the fine soft sand. They moved only a few feet from their tent when the first rocket flew down from the sky. In a blazing flash, it incinerated them and their portable torture chamber, sending a storm of sand and debris over Candace and her cage.

A second rocket obliterated the other tent.

I’m next.

That was Candace’s fully justified fear. With her eyes on the sky, she screamed above the roaring flames and a man’s agonized cries.

But help did not descend from above. It rolled up in a battered old Jeep. Three men who looked more like office workers than operatives climbed out with an acetylene torch and wire cutters, freeing her in minutes.

“Who are you?”

“Can’t say exactly,” said the one with the torch.

“Just tell me this much: Are you Americans?”

He nodded.

Good enough for her.