Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) (29 page)

“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.

JIMMY HAD NEVER DRAWN
a gun from his belt so fast. He didn’t now, either. That was all Cal’s doing. When the ISIS fighter looked down from the ledge, the oil worker Jimmy had just saved shot the bearded jihadist right between the eyes.

“Nice aim,” Jimmy had said in open astonishment.

“Top of my class, Southeast Shooting Regionals, High School Division.”

Now they were descending the platform’s anchor chains. Cal was right below him.

“They actually have that in schools here?” Jimmy asked.

“Don’t know about
here
, but in my part of ’Bama they sure as hell do.”

“We gotta move a little faster,” Jimmy told him.

Trouble was, Cal’s skinless calf, which looked like one of those healthy chicken thighs Jimmy never much cared for, was dripping blood on the links below, making them slippery as seagull spatter.

Jimmy tried to avoid both the human and avian splotches while keeping his AK-47 raised up so he could spray any gunmen appearing above them.

Oh, shit. Here they come.

He heard their footfalls on the metal catwalk up there. Could have done without seeing their bearded faces or weapons—but both appeared a second later. M-16s, if Jimmy glimpsed that right.

Wasting no time, he sprayed the whole area, hoping the bullets wouldn’t catch him on the rebound. He got lucky, as you could with a barrage, splitting open the face of a man who peered over the catwalk’s rail.

The rest nosed their barrels down at them, popping off single rounds, frugal with their firepower. Parceling out your ammo might be smart, Jimmy realized, because he had no idea how many rounds were left in the Kalashnikov’s magazine. And those
pop-pop-pops 
were keeping him and Cal clinging to the links for cover, which made for a hellishly slow descent.

“Keep moving,” Jimmy urged, unleashing another round while the
whup-whup-whups 
formed a bizarre contrapuntal response to the
pop-pop-pops
.

From the catwalk, one of the gunmen nailed Cal with a round that tore into his left triceps, leaving inches of flesh to dangle grotesquely. Looked like bait in the hands of a dolphin trainer.

Now the young marksman, grimacing even more, was forced to wrap his arm around each link as if he held them in a series of headlocks. In that awkward manner, he kept sliding down to the loading area, which seemed a lot safer than remaining open targets on the chain, though there was no telling when someone might come out that door to the deck.