Unholy Code

Chapter 24

Lana was up and performing her morning rituals by five-thirty, though greatly hampered by her crutches, cumbersome fixtures since the surgery on her calf. She had a six-thirty video teleconference scheduled with the President’s Chief of Staff William Evanson. She presumed the marginal, break-of-day appointment time reflected Evanson’s lack of priority on their meeting. But Lana found awakening so early a welcome change, even after her middle-of-the-night phone call with Galina. She liked the peace and quiet and trusted it would continue for at least a couple of hours.

With Don and Emma safely tucked away — and no hint of the mayhem at large in the world — Bethesda could seem like an oasis; one purchased, she understood, at the cost of bulletproof glass and steel doors. Recognizing this tempted Lana to check on Emma upstairs; but her daughter, once the proverbial log in bed, had become such a light sleeper that she didn’t want to disturb her. Em was, after all, fighting a stomach bug. And Lana didn’t relish navigating the stairs on one good foot and two clumsy crutches.

After arranging her hair carefully and applying lipstick and a bit of blush, she donned a blue blouse that she kept fully buttoned. For a videoconference, she only needed to look professional from the middle up—“table date acceptable,” as she and her friends had once joked about pear-shaped men. So her shorts would do fine and spare her the ordeal of putting slacks on over her wound.

Lana made short shrift of her first espresso before hobbling into her home office. She was adjusting the lighting for the computer camera to avoid freak-show shadows when she heard the front door burst open. She assumed it was Agent Robin Maray, but switched on the screen that showed her home’s entry points. Robin, indeed, was slamming the door behind him and yelling “Go to the safe room, I’ve got it opening right now.”

The panic room?

“What about Emma and Don?” Lana yelled, jamming her Sig Sauer into her shorts, grabbing her crutches, and starting down the hallway.

“I’ll get them. You get in there now.”

The steel cubicle had been placed off the living room behind a bookcase that swung open at the touch of a switch, a location central to the home’s traffic patterns.

“Emma,” Lana yelled as she limped along. “Emma!”

When Em didn’t reply, Lana launched herself toward the stairs. As quickly, Robin swept her up into his arms and carried her toward the door to the secure room.

“Sorry,” he said as he deposited her into the steel-reinforced confines, “but I said I’d get them, and I’ve got my orders.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, but Robin was already closing the panic room door.

Lana flipped on the room’s monitor and switched to her home’s exterior cameras as two men in black ski masks set off a charge by the big front window. She felt the violent vibration in the one foot she had on the floor and sheer panic at the sight of the pair piling into the house.

Switching quickly to a living room cam, she saw swirls of dust and Robin staggering across the floor toward the safe room with a long shard of glass sunk in his shoulder, blood already soaking his white shirt and darkening his suit jacket. She called 911 as he tripped on a length of mangled window frame and spilled to the debris-ridden floor, not far from where Cairo lay unmoving on more rubble. Wincing in pain, Robin tried to lift himself up and draw his gun. Too wounded and too late: before he could even raise it, the men ripped the gun from Robin’s hand and dragged him toward the safe room, visible through the broken remains of the bookcase. Volumes lay strewn on the floor. The men kicked them out of their way and stuck their guns to Robin’s head right in front of the cam that framed all three of them.

“We will kill him, if you don’t open up right now,” said a man who sounded like he was trying to affect a Middle Eastern accent — and failing miserably.

He pounded the door with the butt of his gun. Lana saw this on the screen, but barely heard the impact through the thick steel. She studied the features beneath the ski masks, searching for any evidence of beards. No billowing at all.

“Don’t open it,” Robin said in a barely audible voice.

Lana wouldn’t have, regardless. You never negotiated someone else’s release by offering yourself, but she didn’t recall from security briefings that a terrorist or money-grubbing criminal would — without further warning — shoot an FBI agent in the foot to demonstrate his viciousness.

Excruciating pain twisted Robin’s face. Lana saw him grinding his teeth but he didn’t make a sound. The gunman who’d shot him in the foot now offered a warning: “His knee is next. Then his balls.”

In his excitement, he’d abandoned any attempt at an accent. Which made her sick with worry about Emma.

Where is she? They’d do the same to her daughter if they got their hands on her. And where’s Don?

She hoped Emma was climbing out a window, running away as fast as she could. Lana could do nothing to protect her, not from in here, although she knew without question — or hesitation — that she’d give herself up for her daughter, no matter how fruitless the move might be.

But there was absolutely nothing she could do for Robin. Open the door and the gunmen would sell her to ISIS as fast as possible, and then those killers would do whatever they found necessary to drain every last secret of U.S. intelligence to which she’d ever been privy — along with her last pint of blood.

Good to his word, the eager gunman blew Robin’s knee apart on screen. Robin now howled and writhed in agony, still held tightly by the men.

The high-caliber bullet left a gaping wound in the agent’s leg.

And the gunman now pressed his weapon to Robin’s crotch.

With $100 million on the line, Lana couldn’t believe they’d shoot off his scrotum. Blood loss would likely kill him in minutes — and their chance at a monstrous payday. But the intruders were agitated, screaming for her to open the door: “We know you’re in there, bitch!”

She stared at the screen. The gunman had his eyes on his pistol, jamming it harder into Robin’s crotch. Then Lana glimpsed Don’s shadow fall on the rubble in the living room. His arms rose into view, a two-handed stance with the semi-automatic that Deputy Director Holmes had finessed for him. Don fired two fast head shots, spilling both gunmen to the floor, their last dying move.

Robin fell against the door to the safe room, barely holding himself up. Lana pulled out her phone again and called back 911: “FBI agent’s down. Shot in the foot and knee. Major blood loss.”

Don helped Robin from the door. Lana threw it open as a Bethesda police officer ran into the living room.

“Put down your gun!” he yelled at Don.

“He just saved an FBI agent’s life,” Lana shouted, pointing to Don, who dropped his weapon anyway.

Without lowering his own gun, the officer called for help.

Robin flashed his FBI badge at the cop. “He’s a good guy.” Then he looked at Lana. “You did right.” The agent’s pain was so grievous that he spoke through a locked jaw.

She thanked him for saving her. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything for you.”

“He did fine,” Robin managed, glancing at Don who was reaching with his free hand to clear debris that had been blown onto the couch. He eased the agent down onto a dusty cushion as Lana shuffled away, shouting for Emma, grateful she hadn’t tried to engage in any heroics like Don.

But after searching every corner of the house, she limped back into the bombed-out living room, accepting that Emma was gone, probably long before the shootings. The final clue was the absence of her phone.

She tried calling her. Got her voicemail.

Then she saw Cairo, draped in dust, but trying to stand. She rushed to help him; but when he growled, she kept her distance.

The old dog rose on his own and shook off the dust, as he might water from a splash in a lake. He took hesitant steps, as if taking inventory of his injuries, the way she would if she’d just regained consciousness. And then Cairo regained his stride and started sniffing, back on the job. Lana guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d found himself in the midst of an explosion. No more rattled by the experience than you’d expect from a grizzled old war vet.

Lana returned to her study and turned on her computer. The power had gone out briefly before the back-up batteries kicked in. It took her only a few minutes to discover that Emma had deactivated her “find my phone” app. Lana had installed the secure connection on her phone, so she needed only a couple minutes more to reconfigure it and switch the locator on.

With EMTs and a trauma doctor crowding the living room, Lana found Emma’s phone in downtown Baltimore. She used Google Earth to comb the area, searching for what might have attracted her daughter. The answer came in seconds: Planned Parenthood. There it stood, bold as brick.

Not sick, Lana thought as her own belly roiled in recognition of Emma’s plight: Pregnant.

Lana tried calling her again. Still no answer.

What about Sufyan?

She started to work on his phone, finding immediately that it had security protections, probably installed by Tahir.

She called Galina, rousting the Russian from bed, and put her on the task. Galina had already followed Tahir’s breach of the NSA so she was aware of the Sudanese’s techniques. Then Lana looked at her watch and saw that she had all of a minute before her videoconference with William Evanson.

She linked quickly to a secure server for the White House, to the extent that any lines of communication were actually safe anymore.

The chief of staff was not yet present. “He’s with the President,” Evanson’s personal assistant informed her. Like his boss, the young man had worked on the President’s campaign staff.

Lana started to tell him about the attack on her home, but was interrupted by Evanson’s appearance.

“We heard,” the chief of staff said, settling in. “You’re okay, and your husband is the man of the hour.”

“Yes,” Lana replied, realizing that Don had saved the life of the only man she’d cared about romantically in his absence.

“So what’s so critical that you requested the President’s time?”

Lana took a deep breath, knowing every word counted because anyone seeking the chief of staff’s time got about twenty seconds to make her case: “I wanted him to know that interim Deputy Director Marigold Winters is back-channeling a request to Senator Bob Ray Willens. He’s threatening to cancel medical care for Galina Bortnik’s cancer-stricken daughter, if her mother doesn’t go to work for the NSA.”

“And how do you know this?”

“I have her email.”

“Don’t make me ask the obvious,” Evanson said.

“You know perfectly well that’s privileged information.”

“You’re talking to me, Ms. Elkins.”

What an imperious ass. “I am because I know that you know what an egregious abuse of power this is and how poorly it could reflect on this administration, were it to be revealed.”

“Are you threatening us with its disclosure?”

“Of course not. But if I got my hands on it — and I did not hack either party — then others might get it as well.”

The most obvious suspect, Galina, was hiding in plain sight, but it was highly unlikely that Evanson would know of her secret assignment from Deputy Director Bob Holmes.

“I could have you polygraphed over this.”

“But I won’t be,” she shot back. Her boldness spoke of an underlying threat that all superb hackers could deliver — the unearthing of a powerful man or woman’s own secrets.

“Who else knows?”

“You and me and whoever did the hack.”

“A friend?”

“Are we playing twenty questions now?” she replied. “It might be safe to conclude that a friend gave it to me. It would not make it true. Look, Winters needs to be reined in.”

“Did it ever occur to you, Ms. Elkins, that you might be fighting above your weight?”

Lana smiled. “No.” She paused before going on: “But what has occurred to me is that this could look far worse for you and the President. And I know that you know that.”

“I’ll look into it. This will not involve the President. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely.”

Mission accomplished.

Senator Willens was up for reelection. If he wanted a wartime President throwing his considerable popularity behind him, he’d ignore Winters’s request — unless she had something on him.

Lana watched the chief of staff disappear from her screen, realizing with a glance at her watch that their conversation, barbed as it was, had taken less than ten minutes.

Back on her crutches, she emerged from her office to see Robin wheeled out on a gurney, lines running into his arms. That chunk of glass was still embedded in his shoulder.

She waved, surprised when he managed a thumbs-up.

Lana navigated around the rubble in her living room to the kitchen. Plopping onto a stool, she noticed how silent her home had become, as quiet as it had been at daybreak. The FBI’s Evidence Response Team hadn’t arrived yet. She expected them at any moment and knew they’d be working there the rest of the day.

She spotted Don outside talking to an FBI agent. The bureau would be reconstructing every step of this attack and studying it eventually at Quantico.

Lana’s phone buzzed. She turned from watching Don and checked the screen.

Galina.

Lana took the call.

“I got into Sufyan’s phone. Do you know Tahir hacked Emma’s last night?”

“He got into hers?” Now that alarmed Lana: Tahir knowing his son had impregnated her daughter.

“Yes, he got in.”

“Then he knows.”

“Yes, he knows,” Galina confirmed.

You must think we’re quite the American family. Galina had already alerted Lana that she’d hacked into her private phone — and no doubt learned that her boss had certain gambling issues. Now Galina had found out Emma was pregnant. Lana couldn’t help feeling that she’d failed as a person and, more important, as a parent.

“Has there been any communication from Sufyan to her? Or from Tahir to her, for that matter?” Is the boy’s uncle threatening Em?

“Only from Sufyan. He wants to talk to her. He keeps texting. She has not responded.”

“Any other content from him?”

“He has told her four times that everything is going to be okay.”

“Please keep monitoring him and Tahir. I need to know if either leaves Bethesda.”

Or both, Lana thought after hanging up.

I’ve monitored Emma since about four this morning. I’m still doing it as I drive once more to SeaTac, this time for a flight to Baltimore. But all I’m seeing are Sufyan Hijazi’s texts. He’s so lost, all but pleading for Emma to tell him what she’s doing. He wants to know why she won’t respond to his earnest entreaties. And there she is, trying to end her pregnancy in Mobtown. A dying city. A dying baby. He must suspect that, too.

But annihilating the innocent takes time. A day or two at least. The murderers at Planned Parenthood will insist that one of Emma’s parents at least acknowledge the dirty business their daughter is up to. And if I read Emma Elkins correctly, she’s going to resist those efforts. She’ll try to convince the staff that she’s very mature, perfectly capable of making a decision to kill her child. Why else would she have left Bethesda in the middle of the night all by her lonesome? That’s dangerous. Anything could happen to her. Terrible things.

I must beat Sufyan to her. I’ve known many Muslim men. They can take it very personally when a woman refuses his family seed.

What worries me even more, though, are Vinko’s efforts to hack into Emma’s phone. Minutes ago that was done by someone but it wasn’t him. I’ve set up alerts for any more exploits Vinko attempts to make on that device. He could use a back door into Emma’s world by hacking the hacker of her phone, or by accessing Sufyan’s. End runs abound in the cybersphere.

Unfortunately, there’s a limit to how much I can do while driving to an airport. This is high-end security work, but it’s not as important as the relatively simple task of finally putting my hands on Emma Elkins. The weakness in her security has been apparent to me for some time. Talk about a vulnerability. She’s been keeping it close, depending on it daily.

Get Emma and I’ll get Lana. Get them both and I’ll have all I need for a tremendous coup.

I will simply trust that Emma will proceed toward the murder of her child. I will simply trust that she’ll need more than a day to make that happen. And I will simply trust that by day’s end, she’ll be in my hands at last.

With those comforts now so close, I pull into the airport parking lot with ample time to board my plane. In fact, I can take my leisure in the airline’s private club, reserved for valued flyers like me.

But as I enter I receive another alert on my phone. With a single glance I look up at the big screens on the wall. Each is split between video of Lana Elkins’s home in Bethesda, which looks like its face has been ripped off, and aerial shots of that offshore platform that ISIS took over. Jimmy McMasters and one of the oil workers are trying to shoot their way down the side of that rig. I can hear the gunfire.

He’s such a nutbar, I can’t look away.

CNN goes full screen for the bang-bang. It’s live, happening right now.

And what a show it is.