Lethal Code

CHAPTER 21

Lana and the SEALs sighted little more than glimmers of light as they neared Sana in the Black Hawk, hinting that the capital might be suffering one of its chronic power outages. No more equipped for final hours of night than a medieval city.

The chopper was the quietest bird Lana had ever flown in. Specially designed blades reduced the whup-whup-whup to a mere whisper. They were to sound what the dark, radar-absorbent material that coated the copter was to electronic detection.

Not that Yemen had a military of note, much less an air force or sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry, though the lack of arms or service personnel trained to use them was not for want of U.S. funding. The last time Lana had checked, the Department of Defense had channeled hundreds of millions of dollars into the dying desert kingdom — for all the good it had done.

Look at us, she said to herself. Trying to chase down the worst attack on the U.S. ever—here. So counterintuitive that she felt certain it would flummox historians for generations to come. Of all places. It was almost as if the Pentagon’s millions for Yemen had actually produced the enemy, rather than softened or eliminated it.

“We’re not going into the city,” Travis reminded her over the headset. He had made no effort to hide his relief at avoiding what he called the “Sana cesspool.”

She nodded, but also gazed out the windows as the high-tech helicopter carved a wide arc of airspace and headed west of Sana’s sprawl. She saw the day’s first light on the ocher-colored mountains and terraced farms, doubting the latter would survive much longer with Sana sucking up the last drops of groundwater.

The Black Hawk eased toward a landing zone far from any dwellings. The pilot set the bird down so softly he might have been laying a newborn in a bassinet. Maternal memories for a mother who could do nothing to save her child.

No, not nothing, she forced herself to remember. Just nothing that you can do directly.

When the dust cleared, she saw another hangar and assumed that she was at a second black site, undoubtedly where some of those millions had ended up. But they had no plans for a stopover, no time for a nap or a satellite hookup to view video of the bus on which her daughter was held captive.

Travis led a quick exit from the chopper into a desert camo — painted Humvee. They were joined by almost half the team, including Gabe from New York. The rest rode in the hulking vehicle’s twin.

The drivers raced side by side, low beams blazing across the flatlands, never taking a road.

“We’re heading for an underground bunker,” Travis informed her. “Without GPS, you could drive right over it and never know it was there. But it has electronics. Crude stuff compared to what you’re used to, but by Yemeni standards, they’re absolutely deluxe.”

“What about Mancur? Where is he?”

“He’s in the city at another location. You’ll be linked up in minutes.”

Ruhi turned on his computer, satisfied when it fired up properly. That gave him great hope in the dim confines of the small room he shared with Lennon, the other four Mabahith officers, and his cousin Ahmed.

Ruhi nodded approvingly as documents appeared on the desktop and opened readily. He looked up as a candle fluttered on the lone windowsill, marveling over the strange juxtaposition: perhaps the world’s most sophisticated laptop, powered by the building’s generator, but a lone candle because the light fixture didn’t work and sunrise was only beginning to brighten the horizon.

But now he found himself waiting… and waiting… and waiting to link to the network established for Lana and him. He clicked on it again… and again… and again, to no avail.

He scratched his head. A familiar impatience overcame him, as it often did whenever a computer failed at what it was supposed to do.

“What’s wrong?” Lennon asked.

“It’s not connecting.” Ruhi had to unclench his jaw to respond.

“She might not be in Yemen yet.”

“This should work if she’s anywhere outside the U.S.” He didn’t need to say why: the decimated grid. “I should be able to reach her, even if she were at Amundsen-Scott.”

“Amundsen what?” Lennon asked.

“The U.S. camp in Antarctica. Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s not working here. Did your people sabotage this?” Then he looked at Ahmed, sitting on the couch across from him, pious in his head scarf. Or you?

Lennon, so confident on his own soil, turned away for the first time. Ruhi wondered if his most recent torturer just realized that Al Qaeda’s penetration of his agency might have gone deeper than he’d thought. It was one thing to leak information that a U.S. spy in your custody had a computer so powerful that both the man and his weapon might be worth scooping up — if you were launching cyberattacks to murder America. But it was quite another matter if Al Qaeda operatives or sympathizers in your agency had sabotaged the network program most critical to the mission’s success.

“They wouldn’t have to be super techs to just screw it up,” Ruhi said. “Did you get anywhere near this?” he asked Ahmed.

“Ruhi, how can you accuse me of such a crime?” Ahmed spoke soothingly, in such a practiced voice that Ruhi knew his cousin had used it many times before to try to deflect suspicion. “I would—”

“How can I accuse you?” Ruhi fired back. “I’m here because of you.”

Ahmed shook his head, looking offended. “No, Ruhi, we were both moved like chess pieces. I assure you, this is the first time I have ever seen your computer.”

Lennon nodded. But of course he would agree if the two were in cahoots.

What a hall of mirrors.

What could he possibly make of his cousin’s double-agent claims? Though they might explain why Ahmed escaped from his family’s home on the night Lennon nabbed Ruhi — and then turned him into a double agent.

But if Ahmed really was working both sides of the battle, he was playing a much more treacherous game than Ruhi, if that were even possible. That’s because Ahmed was answering to Al Qaeda and the Mabahith, two bitterly opposed forces — notwithstanding the latter’s traitors — while Ruhi was providing information to U.S. intelligence and the Saudis, who shared a common interest in stopping the cyberattacks.

“Your master technicians,” Ruhi said to Lennon in a lacerating voice, “probably fucked it up when they were trying to get past the firewalls. So if I’m grabbed now, do you know what that means? This thing”—he almost pounded the laptop—“won’t perform, but they won’t believe me, so they’ll torture me to try to get me to do the impossible. And then there’ll be no way to stop the destruction of my country.”

Lana walked down narrow concrete-block stairs lit by bluish light, entering an extensive bunker nestled below the drifting sands of the Arabian Desert. It was carved out of the denser earth below. She found the walls, tinted gold and orange, almost beautiful, but crumbly to the touch.

Before she could take more than a breath, the CIA station chief, a squat man so pale that he might never have emerged from the underground labyrinth that he called home for weeks at a time, handed her a document. He did the same for all the SEALs.

“Just sign them. ‘Sheep-dipping’ time.”

Turning each of them into CIA functionaries. That would be to abide, on paper at least, with both U.S. and foreign covenants. Thus, with the stroke of a pen the SEALs and Lana became employees of the agency.

Lana signed under shadowy light, hearing the low hum of generators.

My God, she thought as she settled at a desk with her computer, there’s even an espresso maker. But as she turned on her laptop, she realized that what the bunker did not provide, most assuredly, was any connection to Ruhi Mancur’s device, a veritable clone of her own computer. She scrambled for another minute to try to find a link, looking up at the chief in exasperation.

“I can link to ISPs in five European countries. What I can’t do is link to Mancur. Do we even know whether he’s in Sana?”

The chief, laying the signed documents on a cabinet, affirmed that Mancur was in the city.

“How far away is he?” Lana had little sense of distance down there. From the bird, Sana had appeared large, mushrooming into the surrounding sands with what looked like a dense maze of arteries radiating from the city’s heart.

“Forty-five, fifty minutes at this time of day.”

“Either you move him here or you move me there, but we have to get his computer in my hands so I can work on it.” All along the plan had been for her to take control of his laptop, even if she were hundreds of miles from him. But her inability to link to it made that impossible, so now she’d have to get her hands on it to enable her to have remote access later.

The station chief wiped his lower face so forcefully that he peeled his lower lip open. Then, in an even more unflattering move, he tugged on his ample wattle, repeating the tug twice more. “There are huge risks in taking you into Sana.” He worked his wattle again, adding, “But it’s an even bigger roll of the dice to extract him. We don’t want to do that until he’s taken.”

Bizarre, she thought: The plan to bait the attackers might be too successful too soon.

“You’ve got them,” the chief said to her, glancing at the SEALs. “So you get moving.”

She and the SEALs dashed back up the stairs into the dawn.

“We’re not going into the city,” Travis had reminded her with evident relief on the chopper.

Yes, we are, Lana said to herself now. Right into the Sana cesspool.

Emma could see most of the kids in the bus, plus the hijackers, now that the tanker truck’s headlights were pouring through the windows. She’d seen Hamza’s animated face and heard his back-and-forth with the female driver. Why would they send a woman? All Emma could figure was that whoever was trying to save them didn’t want the terrorists to freak out by having some macho guy show up. But for that very reason, she wished a dude like Daniel Craig’s 007 had come to the rescue. Her mom’s big crush, though she’d never admit it. But Emma had caught her watching that movie for the third time the day before the first cyberattack.

She wondered what her mom was doing right now. Probably scared to death, if she knew her daughter was on this bus. But her mother had always been trying to get her to join some kind of activity.

So I did, she thought. Great timing, huh, Mom? Sorry.

Emma meant it, too, stripped down now to longing and love and a deep desire to throw her arms around her mother again.

Whatever her mom was doing had to be better than this, right? Sitting on a bus with a suicide bomber holding a frickin’ nuke.

Emma looked back at the guy with the backpack and trigger in his hand. He’d fallen asleep. Thank God. His head hung forward, chin to chest, and his hands—

Jesus H. Christ. His finger was resting on the trigger.

“Hamza,” she said as respectfully as possible.

He’d moved down the bus steps and poked his head out an inch or two, staring intently as the truck driver set up to fill the tank.

“Hamza, sir?” she called out louder.

His eyes turned to her, feasted on her. A wide, dark, murderous gaze. He hauled himself up into the bus proper and headed toward her, pulling out the filleting knife.

“Trying to distract me? What kind of plan do you have, spy’s daughter?” He raised the knife. He’d already cut her neck.

“No plan,” she pleaded. “Look!” She pointed to the bomber.

Hamza yelped. Emma heard the panic catch in his throat. He rushed past her.

Kalisa Harris saw Hamza, the Lion King, or whatever the hell he called himself, running toward the back of the bus. She’d been waiting for some kind of ruckus, and his pounding feet would do. She clamped a magnetic bomb with a locator to the chassis. Once she’d heard that Geiger counter click, she knew she would have to set the plastique as soon as possible, because the bus couldn’t go anywhere with a nuclear bomb aboard. Computers had firewalls, but so did an operation like this, except the backup security that she’d just put in place was as basic as mud pudding — by the standards of contemporary computer wizardry. Old-style war versus cyberterror.

She grabbed the fuel hose to try to make up for lost seconds, but the commotion inside froze her in place. She placed her hand on the bus. The pounding had stopped, but there were still vibrations. Some kind of tussle in the back, where the bomber was. She saw her life, those kids, and most of central New Jersey vaporized.

Get a grip, she warned herself. If it goes, it goes.

Travis did not like the latest turn of events. Lana could tell, even before he spoke up.

“We did not plan on taking you in there. That place has more random elements than the Hadron Collider.”

He sounded disgusted and looked away as their driver veered sharply right, angling across the desert toward Sana, blanketed by haze.

The Humvees were leaving the safety and relative anonymity of the sands behind. She stared ahead, their destination somewhere in that vast urban maze. With so few towers and smokestacks, it looked wide and flat, like a magic carpet of myth, but deeply soiled by all the ill effects of modernity.

“So what are you saying?” she asked Travis. That we’re about to get caught in a crossfire from hell?

“He’s saying it’s going to get interesting,” Gabe said in the voice of some silly Russian antagonist.

She wasn’t up for humor in any guise. Neither was Travis, apparently:

“Not now,” he said brusquely. After the briefest pause, he went on: “It’s not so much a physical security issue. We’ll get you there. It’s just that we’re going to be noticed. There’s no slipping in and out on such short notice.”

“Just get me close, and I can walk in on my own.”

“And not be noticed? You? No,” Travis said. “You may have been sheep-dipped, but you’re no spy. Not for the streets, anyway.” He poked her shoulder. She winced. “We’re going to stay as close to you as blood to bone.”

A dune suddenly reared up before them. She hadn’t noticed it. At the last moment, their driver swerved left.

“What’s he doing? Playing chicken with the desert?” she asked.

“Diversionary driving,” Gabe advised. “Staying unpredictable, wherever he can. Like this assignment of ours. It’s improv all the way.”

“I’ll bet they’ve got drones watching every step,” she replied. Yemen was now the epicenter for Predator activity, although Africa was catching up fast.

“No doubt,” Travis said. “But they can’t use them on Sana. The collateral would have the rest of the world swearing bloody murder.”

For good reason. But she kept that comment to herself, considering the company and the exigencies of the moment.

Lana saw the poor making their trek to the city from shantytowns and tents or, for the most miserable, berths on bare sand.

Most looked too weary to even note the Humvees. Lana understood that kind of profound tiredness. She’d felt plenty of it herself of late. But now she was as alert as she’d ever been, endowed with what felt like preternatural awareness seeded into every pore of her skin.

Even with the absence of traffic, it took the full fifty minutes to make their destination. In the sharply angled morning light, the building they pulled up to looked beautiful, with its ornate arcade and inlaid Arabic designs. But the pleasure of that glimpse passed quickly.

Travis readied his gun. So did the others.

“Gabe’s going to be by your side at all times,” the commander said. “You stick with him. This is all catch-as-catch-can. We have to take them by surprise.”

“The Mabahith?”

“We hope it’s only them,” Travis answered. “Our people have tracked them, but it’s not like we could tell them we were stopping by. They’re not exactly trustworthy, and every agency has its own proprietary interests. Theirs is to run Ruhi, even if they think we don’t know that. But they’re about to find out.”

They rushed through the arcade, past wooden doors, and started up the stairs, SEALs in front of her, SEALs in back of her, SEALs, including Gabe, to her sides.

They stayed in formation till they reached the top floor, the fifth by her count.

Travis led two of his men to the end of the hallway. A single bulb burned in the ceiling. The building was far more attractive from outside. Crouched as she was in the hallway, it felt claustrophobic with secrets and threats.

Bam.

Travis kicked open a door. The sound of shocked breaths was so sharp it raised the hair on Lana’s neck fifty feet away.

Gabe escorted her to the doorway. Holding her back with one hand, he peered into the room. Gently, he tugged her forward.

It was crowded with men; she guessed some hailed from the Mabahith. Only the SEALs, though, had their guns drawn. They’d gotten the jump on everyone.

They kept their aim as a tall thin man, hands raised to show he was unarmed, slowly stood.

“I’m Ruhi,” he said, looking into Lana’s eyes. “Ruhi Mancur.”

Hamza jerked the trigger from the bomber’s hand. Close, so close. Thank you, Allah.

“Ibrahim, this is not New York,” he told the bomber in the next breath. The fool didn’t hear him. He was still sleeping. “Not New York, Ibrahim. You idiot. Not New York,” Hamza kept repeating.

“What? What?” Ibrahim mumbled in Arabic.

“You had the trigger on your lap. It could have gone off accidentally.”

To think an infidel spy’s daughter had saved the whole mission, made it possible to go on to New York City and blow up that den of iniquity. That was the final proof — if any were even needed — that this was a plan born in the Prophet Mohammed’s own sweet bosom. Peace and blessings be upon Him. Thank you, oh blessed one, for making this miracle possible for such a worthy martyr as I.

“But I must be ready at all times,” Ibrahim said, holding the trigger back up in front of him.

“Stay awake,” Hamza ordered.

Ibrahim nodded.

“Sleep again and I will kill you.”

“Coffee,” Ibrahim said. “I have been awake for two nights now.”

“No, you have not been awake. That is the problem. That is why I am here. That is why Allah has granted us the miracle of the infidel spy’s daughter.”

That last befuddled Ibrahim the bomber, but his next words hinted that he wanted more than just threats and reminders from Hamza. “How are you staying awake?”

“By the power of my great belief.”

Ibrahim shook his head. “By Red Bull. I know you. Give me Red Bull. I am the supreme martyr here. Red Bull.”

Hamza still had the knife in his hand. All along, he’d been planning to use it on the white girl, but now he had to fight an urge to stab Ibrahim in the heart. Saying he’s the supreme martyr of them all. What heresy. Who made the plans? Who handed him the bomb? Is the grantor of such an honor the honoree supreme, or the one who sits there dumb as a stump and takes it? Any fool knows the answer.

“I’ll be back,” Hamza said so angrily he could have spit.

He brushed by the miracle of the infidel spy’s daughter, who had been watching the whole time, probably planning to beg him for mercy now, but mercy for infidels was definitely not in Mohammed’s sweet bosom.

Hamza grabbed a Red Bull from his pack and walked back to Ibrahim.

“Here, drink Red Bull. Fall asleep, and you will never wake up to kill yourself and so many others. And keep your finger off the trigger until I say so.”

Ibrahim glared at him.

Emma turned away before Hamza started back to the front of the bus again. His hand was on the hilt of his knife.

Turning away didn’t save Emma from his attention. He stopped by her side and placed the tip of the blade under her chin, just like last time. He raised it up until she was staring at the ceiling, headlights streaking on the gray surface. Then he nicked her skin.

“Thank you,” he said to her. “You saved our mission. Allah has worked his will through Godless filth. As smart as I am, sometimes I do not understand His wisdom. How does it feel to be the savior of such divine intentions?”

She tried to speak, but moving her mouth made her feel the blade, which hurt horribly. Blood was already running down her neck again, warm as sweat.

“Speak.”

“Good. Good.” It was all she could think to say.

Tanesa was staring at Hamza’s back. Emma could just glimpse her caretaker out of the corner of her eye. But the other two “martyrs” were watching as well. Droopy-eyed, though. They looked like they could use some Red Bull.

Hamza backed away from Emma. “I’m saving you,” he said. “I’m saving you so I can offer you up to Allah at the right time. You will pay for the sins of your mother even as she is butchered alive.”

Emma had her hand on her chin. Her fingers were wet and sticky. She hated him so much it made her feel crazy. She’d never known hate like this. She could hardly sit still for it.

Tanesa also looked ready to leap.

A noise sounded outside by the fuel tank.

Hamza rushed to the door. “Fill it up!” he yelled. “You’re taking too long.”

The woman truck driver said something to him. Emma didn’t catch it, but she heard Hamza’s reply:

“Do it faster, or I will throw another body out there.”

The plan had been for Kalisa Harris to delay as much as might seem reasonable with the fuel delivery, but morning was still a few hours off. So now she would keep her headlights on the bus as long as she could to help the snipers with their night scopes. And she’d milk another minute or two topping off the tank with a blend containing just enough diesel to make it smell real. The rest was water — the bus would never move.

That was Washington’s decision: to make absolutely sure the bus never left the truck stop. First the bomb, and now the “fuel.” Kalisa had no quarrel with the call, but it made every moment that she could stall all the more precious, because who could say what Hamza and the others would do when the driver couldn’t get the bus started again?

She reached down to scratch her leg, a motion to cover the reassuring touch of her .45 semiautomatic.

Kalisa said a prayer. Not one prescribed by any church that she’d ever heard of, but the only one she could offer at that moment. She’d said it once before — in Cleveland.

Sweet Jesus, let me kill the bastards and save those kids. After that, You can do what You want with me.

With her heart and soul on the line, she didn’t stop to wonder how many times an agent could put herself in this kind of jeopardy and survive.

Seconds after Ruhi introduced himself, an explosion rocked the hallway. Six SEALs went down in a blinding instant. One of them lay bleeding from the neck, legs jerking. An assailant shot him in the head as she watched.

The detonation blew Lana into Ruhi, tumbling them both onto the couch. Lana, stunned, wasn’t sure she was alive until she heard shouting in Arabic. Gunfire filled the fifth floor.

Travis was at the doorway, shooting back with two of his men.

Thank God.

Then Travis and the man to his right were hit by a fusillade.

It sounded like an army out there. A thousand rounds a second. Lana looked around frantically for a way out. Only the window — shattered by gunfire — looked like a possibility.

The top floor.

She crawled to it anyway and peered out, expecting to be shot in the back any second. She saw a rusty six-inch pipe running up the length of the building.

When she turned to signal Ruhi, only Gabe was still standing; none of the other SEALs or Mabahith officers had survived. One of the latter had died with his handgun by his side. She grabbed it.

“Go!” Gabe yelled.

“Mancur, move!” she said.

Lana poured herself out the opening, grabbed the pipe, and pressed herself against the brick, fully expecting the bolts, also rusty, to rip loose. She heard a loud creak, but the pipe didn’t pull away.

She had thought she would climb down, but saw she was only about six feet from the flat roof and would likely be killed or taken prisoner if she dared a descent.

Jamming her knees into the brick, she clawed inches upward, making enough room for Ruhi.

He pressed up below her. “Use my head,” he gasped.

She did, pressing her foot down. Seized by strength and fear, she climbed toward the edge of the roof.

More gunfire, a harsh spate of it, and then heavy steps sounded in the room. Shouts. None in English. Gabe, she knew, was dead.

She reached up and grabbed the chiseled edge. Again, she stepped on Ruhi’s head, gaining inches more precious than air. She was up and over.

Immediately, she reached for him, grabbing his underarms to get him up.

As he rolled over the edge, she pulled the gun from her pants — a Browning Hi Power — and racked the slide. The Mabahith officer had never gotten off a shot.

Without a word, they crept away. Then, when she judged they were no longer above the room, she started running. So did Ruhi.

For their lives.