Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) (37 page)

He backs up.

She picks up small pruning shears. “I will come in and cut it off completely if you don’t come out of there.”

Vinko Horvat, looking wretched, steps out of the cage.

She grabs his penis with her free hand. He twists away, which only stretches his organ, making it an easier target.

“I really don’t want your dick, Stinko. Just do what I say and you’ll get to keep it the rest of your life.”

Lana doubts that will be more than a few more minutes. She’s just spotted three more cameras in the cellar above the metal posts.

As ordered, Horvat lies on his back, the look of terror deepening in his eyes.

Always holding the gun on him, the woman clamps his hands with two quick snaps, then one leg as efficiently before Horvat explodes in panic.

He rears back with his free leg, kicking her hard enough to spill her across the floor. Rolling to his side, Horvat pounds the post holding his other leg with his foot. It doesn’t budge.

The woman stands and watches him exhaust himself, then seizes his leg and clamps it with practiced ease.

When he turns his horrified gaze on her, she leans forward, smiles, and shoots him in the crotch.

His muffled agony sounds like an earthquake is ripping him apart from the inside out. Gouts of blood spill onto the floor. He twists and yanks on the metal clamps, bloodying his hands and ankles down to the bone.

An Obama mask covers her face and hair. Waving away gun smoke, she ties on a full-length white splatter apron, then opens a wall console with a computer and works the keyboard. She stares at the screen for a few seconds before pulling on thick black rubber gloves. She looks Felliniesque, but for the chainsaw she quickly hoists. She jerks the starter rope. The saw’s roar fills the cellar, obliterating Horvat’s tortured moans.

She walks toward him, blade screaming, as though she’s committed this horror a hundred times before. She points the saw at the camera above him, then nods to Lana and yells,
“Now
we’re going live.”

DON’S FRANTIC. HE HASN’T
heard from Lana since yesterday. Can’t reach her. He’s tried over and over. Not a word from Emma, either. Wife and daughter have vanished.

He paces the kitchen, pulling out his phone—
again
—this time to call Jeff Jensen.

“Is she in Idaho?” Don demands.

“Idaho?”

“Don’t get coy with me,” Don says. “She texted me last night saying she was going after Emma out there. Has she found her? Are they okay?”

There’s a pause. In Don’s experience, that’s never a good thing.

Jensen clears his throat. “She’s in Idaho. We can’t say where right now.”

“Can’t or won’t? And don’t dance around this. We’re talking about my wife and kid.”

“Can’t. We’re waiting to hear from her.”

“I’m not hearing from her, either.” Don feels like putting his fist through a wall.

Sufyan rushes into the kitchen, holding his own phone, shaking his head and mouthing, “Nothing.” He’s been trying to reach Emma.

Jensen, a Mormon, swears, startling Don.

“What is it?” Don shouts.

“Something’s just come up on a website we’re monitoring.”

“Which one?” Don stops pacing at the cooking island and flips open a laptop.

“Steel Fist,” Jensen replies.

Don squeezes the edge of the island, then starts typing.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jensen says.

Hearing Jensen this upset freaks Don out in a serious way. Lana always said he was the coolest cucumber in the garden, no matter how hot it got.

“Shit-shit-
shit!
” Don’s staring at a live feed from the neo-Nazi’s website. Now he understands Jensen’s reaction. He looks away from the screen almost as fast as he glanced at it.

Sufyan is at his shoulder. They hear a woman screaming.

“That’s Emma!” Sufyan shouts.

“Is
that your daughter?” Jensen asks Don.

“Absolutely.” Don forces himself to look once more. He can’t see her, but Em’s clearly out of her mind with pain or fear—and for good reason: a decapitated body lies in a blanket-size pool of blood on the floor of a shadowy room. Male? Female? Don can’t tell. God, he hopes to Christ it isn’t Lana, which would explain Emma’s hysteria. There’s blood everywhere. All over the victim’s clothing.

With Emma still screaming, Don can’t help believing his wife is dead or dying. He looks up, dizzy, as Sufyan darts away, racing into the half-bath off the kitchen. Don hears him vomit. He can’t look at the screen anymore himself. This is sheer butchery. And whomever’s wielding the chainsaw is about to start again. No horror he’s ever seen rivals this. But he has to know if he’s staring at the remains of his wife, so he looks back. That’s when he sees some poor guy’s head sitting like a stump to the side.

Sufyan walks out of the bathroom, face wet from rinsing. His eyes are damp, too. “Is she going to be okay?”

Don can’t speak. Not a word in the world can make this better.

• • •

Cairo remains on the ground in the forest. But his head turns back, though not as far as it used to; he has arthritis in his cervical spine. He sees a border collie running toward him.

The elderly Malinois soldier stands, as if to say,
“Enough’s enough
.
”

The border collie is not alone. A stately blonde in camouflage pants and jacket with a short-barreled .357 Ruger is close behind. She stares at Cairo, who’s exchanging sniffs with the gray and white dog.

The border collie moves on, leading the woman to where his herding instincts may be telling him his master has gone. A scent seems to have him excited.

The Malinois trots along, not as fast as the smaller dog, but quicker than the woman, who ignores him. She has eyes only for the border collie.

Vinko Horvat told the woman to come back when her husband Bones Jackson died. He said he’d show her a good time. She’s determined to take him up on his offer—on her own terms.

And she has Horvat’s gun to return.

On her own terms.

• • •

With her hands cuffed behind her back, Lana can’t hold Emma. But she keeps warning her daughter not to look. Em’s eyes are buried in her mother’s shoulder, though they both hear the woman revving the chainsaw as she cuts off Horvat’s right arm, the last of his limbs. The body shows no signs of life.

The woman shuts off the saw and grabs his head from a rising pool of blood. When she sets it down on dry concrete, it makes a nauseating
splat
.

She walks to the console and speaks into the computer: “You have just watched me torture and kill the Nazi-lover and
kafir
Steel Fist.

“I openly declare war on the United States of America on behalf of all ISIS and Al Qaeda fighters who have joined together and authorized me to speak on their behalf today. Allah Himself has moved these great forces. Now we fight side by side against infidels and apostates and will soon declare victory over all non-believers. The caliphate must spread across all oceans.”

Lana startles. The woman is announcing precisely the nightmare the intelligence community has feared for so long: that the two Sunni factions would recognize they have far more in common than the differences that have kept them apart. For more than a year, Al Qaeda’s top leadership has been publicly extending an olive branch to the upstarts in ISIS, urging all jihadists to act together against their common enemy. Now they are, and the results, as Lana can see at a glance, are terrifying.

The ceiling cameras rotate from the vivisected body to the cage, a chilling sign of shifting interest, as the woman continues:

“I have captured Lana Elkins, one of our greatest enemies. The young woman holding onto her is her daughter, Emma. They, too, must die to advance the caliphate and stop the cyberattacks on our noble fighters.”

Lana realizes in a horrifying flash that the woman wants to incite neo-Nazis to attack and murder American Muslims to drive them into the arms of extremists. That was the same strategy jihadists, regardless of affiliation, used to bait the United States into launching wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, invasions that destroyed much of those regions and radicalized millions of Muslims. If the radical Islamists’ vicious strategy succeeds here at home, Lana knows it could spell the same kind of disaster for her own country.

If what the woman said were true.

• • •

It’s true.

On a hilltop less than a mile away, Tahir Hijazi looks up from his phone at twenty bearded men who have rendezvoused with him. They are ISIS’s and Al Qaeda’s top lieutenants, each carefully vetted for this mission by their commanders in Iraq and Syria and the U.S. They form the martial heart of their reconciliation movement.

Golden Voice has their admiration. Using her extraordinary hacking skills she’s made possible the final steps leading to the imminent slaughter of the Elkinses, a momentous victory struck in the very heart of satanic America. History is replete with examples of single, spirited actions triggering widespread revolt. In joining their forces together, the twenty know they are establishing a new and powerful fighting paradigm for the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. This has been approved by the highest councils of the two factions. Now the twenty know it’s their job to demonstrate the inability of America’s corrupt and failing government to protect Lana Elkins and her daughter. Torturing and murdering them will symbolize the pervasive weakness that lies at the fallow heart of the United States. Sleeper cells in cities across the land are waiting to witness this victory: then they will rise as well.

“I know this country,” Tahir assures them as they look at a bungalow in the distance. “Every drop of blood we spill will bring backlash, and that will drive millions of our weaker brothers into our ranks.”

The men on this hilltop have ample reason to believe this, for those dynamics have come into play time and again throughout the Middle East, where the middle ground was squeezed to death in every sense.

They look to Tahir Hijazi, who has performed well. For years now, he’s been insinuating himself into the darkest realms of Washington power on their behalf. He’s a legendary mujahid.

“Golden Voice has taken our first step,” Tahir says to the men around him.

“And we are the second,” an ISIS commander says.

Nods follow all around.

“But we must
win
here,” Tahir emphasizes.

Not a man of easy geniality, he offers a broad smile now. A great war for him is almost over. He keys in a required code.

They move out.

• • •

“You’ve got to say you’re Muslim,” Lana whispers to Emma as the woman wipes down the chainsaw. “You’ve got to tell her about Sufyan and Tahir and your daily prayers. You can claim conversion. Horvat ran photos of you and Sufyan. He threatened to kill you because you were with him. Throw it back at her, get it out there for the world to hear and you might survive. You’ve got to do it, Em, now while she’s going live. Scream it. Put her in a position where’s she’s
got
to let you live.”
Maybe
, Lana says to herself.

But Emma won’t let go of Lana, much less stand up to the woman. Em’s trembling horribly and clearly in shock from what she’s witnessed. Lana isn’t even sure Em heard a word of what she just told her.

“She’s going to kill me, Em. Don’t let me die without hope for you. Please.”

Pleading with all her heart, all her love, which is all Lana has left for her child at this moment—the worst she’s ever known.

The woman points her gun at Emma. “Lana Elkins, I will cut her to pieces if you don’t come out.”

Emma clings fiercely to her mother. Her strength is astonishing.

“I mean it—let me go!” Lana shouts at Em.

When she still holds on, Lana shoves her into the metal bars on the side of the cage. Emma loses her grip and Lana darts to the gate as the woman opens it.

“My daughter is Muslim,” Lana shouts to the cameras. “Her boyfriend is a young Muslim who helped convert her.” She looks at the killer in the mask.

“Say another word and she dies,” the woman says softly, wielding the same gun she used to destroy Horvat’s crotch before she cut him slowly to pieces. “I’ll shove it right up inside her and pull the trigger.”

The threat sickens Lana.

“Lie down.”

Lana obeys in the hope Emma will survive. Horvat’s blood has run across the concrete. It seeps into the back of her shirt.

First her feet are clamped, then her hands.

“I turned the mikes off,” the woman says to her. “Nobody heard a word you said.”

She walks over and pulls four more stakes from a cabinet and slides them into slots in the floor next to Lana, right below the third camera.

She was always going to kill us both
. Lana tries to think of something she can do, then tries to imagine what she could have done. She fails on both counts.

The woman picks up the blood-streaked chainsaw and starts it, sending a warm red mist into the air that settles on Lana’s face.

When she walks to the cage, Emma backs away.

“Do you remember how close I came to cutting off your foot?”