Unholy Code

Chapter 8

The sun’s low in the sky. I can see it shining directly into the windows of my log home in the distance. It’s been hot up here on the ridge. Summers are getting longer and the heat lingers late into the day. Right now it’s in the mid-nineties and it’s almost six o’clock. That surprised me when I first moved to the Pacific Northwest. I expected the worst heat at midday, but it’ll last into the early evening. The climate is deceptive that way.

I can appreciate that approach. I come at people slowly, too, building up the pressure as I move in on them. Hiking clears my mind when I need to think about my latest targets. The truth is, there’s not much to distract me. The beauty of April, May, and June has paled. That’s wildflower season when the Indian paintbrush, balsamroot, lupine, and a promiscuous variety of lilies drape the hillsides with reds, yellows, purples, and blues. When a thousand feet below me the apple, pear, and cherry trees bloom. Now they’re growing heavy with fruit.

It’s even warmer to the east because the ridge forms the border between the lush western part of the state and the drier expanses to the east, where ranching and wheat farming prevail. Within a mile or two I can move from one climate to another, though the differences at this time of year are minimal. The danger from wildfires is severe everywhere.

It’s been that way since mid-July. By then it gets so dry that I have to have everything cut down to the nubs — natural grasses, wilting wildflowers, bushes — in a three-hundred-foot swath around my house. It’s my first line of defense against fire. If I had Vinko’s goats I wouldn’t need to hire a guy to do it for me, but I can’t bear those creatures, their sour odors and noisy rutting. And I can’t abide goat milk.

I prefer to simply relish the solitude and slow flow of seasons up here. I’m completely off the grid. I have solar panels on my roof and a Powerwall from Tesla to store all that precious electricity. A well supplies my water, hikes give me a great deal of time to think.

I am an island.

And I’m concerned about Lana Elkins. She hasn’t placed a single bet since her $137 win. She’s installed an ad blocker to stop the targeted casino ads I’d been sending her. I looked for any indication that she’s been going to Gamblers Anonymous to avoid inflaming her relapse, but she appears to be doing nothing but working and sleeping, though clearly she could be slipping away to meetings. Maybe she’s focused on that ISIS brigade now held at Camp Blanding.

I’m sure the intelligence services are putting enormous resources into trying to figure out just what was going on down Louisiana way. Let them try-try-try. I’ve researched those men completely. Other than ISIS’s Fahad Kassab, they are a blank slate, the tabula rasa of terrorism. But Tahir Hijazi is not. Even if I knew nothing of him, his nephew’s and Emma Elkins’s many texts would tell me much about his role in their Romeo and Juliet playlet. The pair are fast and loose with their communications, as you’d expect from a couple of teens. That gives me ample insight not only into their movements and plans but also, by extension, into those of their caregivers, including Tahir. It’s another dimension of a most curious man.

Interesting, isn’t it, that he landed in Bethesda, Maryland? Doesn’t anybody wonder why an immigrant of severely modest means from a war-torn nation eventually ends up in a pricy suburb that’s home to so many spies and other government officials, including Lana Elkins? And that his nephew then starts seeing her daughter? Apparently not. He’s certainly active online, though even by my strict standards he has sophisticated encryption.

If I were Lana, I’d be wary of what he could put under my car, like a bomb or electronic locator. But I’m not her. I’m better at this game. And I’ve been playing it as long as she has. We have what you might call common roots. Which is to say that if I were her, I’d suspect there’s more at play here than Tahir’s objections to Sufyan’s love interest. In fact, wouldn’t the smart money — and Lana would certainly know about that — say the conflict over the teens could be nothing but a means for Tahir to draw attention from his real goals? Not that Tahir, a bona fide Muslim fundamentalist, doesn’t truly loathe the young white woman. But hate is rarely exclusive, and I rather like my confluences of interest with him. He certainly has some with Vinko in their genuine distaste, to put it mildly, for Lana Elkins.

My stomach tightens as I now walk up to my second defense against wildfires. It’s an emergency water tank sunk into the earth — eight feet across, fifteen feet deep, and lined with heavy black plastic. The nearest fire district ends twelve miles from here, so I’m glad I have the means of holding a lot of water, along with an engine to pump it through a hundred feet of thick fire hose.

Lately, the tank has also been holding a lot of dead rats. And… it’s no different today as I lift the heavy wooden cover.

The odor is abominable. The heat must be drying up every source of water for miles. My tank has become the Golden Gate Bridge for rats because once they take the plunge, they’re dead.

I’ve taken to keeping a long-handled fishing net nearby to pull out their rotting bodies. I count as I net them and throw them far from the tank. There, the seventeenth and last one — for today.

My task complete, I lower the cover and walk around it. I still can’t see how the rats can get inside this thing.

Too bad Vinko’s subscribers don’t avail themselves of drowning. It would be good to see his mindless millions similarly bloated. They’ve been chatting up a storm about his call-to-arms, along with vows to murder Lana Elkins, her daughter, and Tahir’s nephew. In yet another intriguing twist, I found Tahir himself mouthing off in chat rooms devoted to Steel Fist, doing a credible job of impersonating a white racist. He was actively joining the calls for violence against Lana and Emma, though even in his guise he said nothing of Sufyan. He certainly had the vernacular down, saying it was time to “take names and kick ass.” Does that sound like a Sudanese immigrant to you?

Tahir is intriguing. Not so much to me, but I would think Elkins would be playing catch-up as fast as she can. That he appears to be operating without any concentrated attention by Vinko or her speaks of blinkered obsession as much as anything else. But when a project consumes you, it’s easy to get blindsided. Both Lana and Vinko, from what I can see, are preoccupied with terrorists slipping across the country’s borders.

I have my own interests to consider. Some, as I said, could be served by Tahir, some only by Vinko. I find myself moving back and forth between those two political climates, much as I move between two real climates when I hike the acreage I call my own. On the western flank, fir trees common to coastal forests grow, while Ponderosa pines flourish in the warmer drier reaches to the east. But both political climates are moist with hate, arid of feeling.

Just the way I like them.