“But you’re better.”
“I’m skilled in a different way. Last known IP address came from a motel in Lorton, Virginia. I heard they found the computer guy’s body—Andy Tate?”
“Right. They purchased DDoS attacks from Gunther Ansell, Tate loaded his own code next to it, and launched it into the systems. Ingenious plan.”
“Lot of moving parts,” Gray said. “But we’ve got them now.”
Nicholas said, “It does sound like we have nearly everything we need to wrap up this part of the investigation. Great work, thanks to both of you.”
Ben said, “Come on home, guys. We miss you. Mike, give the big Brit a smooch for me.”
Ben and Gray both laughed like loons, and Mike looked like she’d been shot. She punched off the cell.
“You want to talk about it?” Nicholas asked.
“No, there’s nothing to talk about, you know that. As for those two, they’re idiots.”
“No big smooch?”
“No more in this lifetime.”
“We’ll see. Now, how much time before the bomb at Yorktown?”
“Seventeen minutes, and there’s nothing to see.”
“Good, enough time to speak to Adam about a theory I have about how Spenser managed to break into the electrical grid and upload the worm to Air Force One’s flight computers.” He punched in Adam’s number.
Adam answered immediately. “I’ve been waiting for your call. Wow, that was some really gnarly coding, Nicholas. I’ve never seen anything like it. You two okay?”
Nicholas laughed. “Yes, we’re fine. Now tell me, how exactly did you see my code?”
“Dude, you’re an instant freaking legend! The entire hacker community knows what happened. They’re calling it the Swoop, and calling you Superman. Go into the darknet, check it out when you get a chance. It’s totally awesome. They are bowing at your feet. Reddit blew up with requests to join your forces of good—you now officially have minions.”
Nicholas cleared his throat. “Thank you for passing that along, Adam.” He decided having minions couldn’t hurt. “If you’re through, I need your help again. It shouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“Go for it, Superman, Sir Superman.”
“Shove it. Let’s see how clever you are. Is there anything Air Force One might have in common with Dominion Virginia Power and the attacked oil companies, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, etcetera?”
“Well—yeah, software, I suppose.”
“Exactly. And what do we do with software used for national security?”
“We run risk assessments constantly, like any other software, though at a much higher level, to make sure there are no breaches. It’s part of what I did when I was—ah, before. Break in, then show them the faults. For a price.”
“And is there a particular company who might be responsible for these risk assessments?”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Holy crap, Nicholas. Juno. It has to be, but you already figured that out, since Juno caters to all the high-end military and government installations, and has a number of private-sector contracts. They are the leader in the field of cyber-security.”
“Good, you agree with me. Here’s what I think. It’s not about Juno’s incompetence, no, I believe someone who worked the risk-assessment teams for all of the companies planted the bad code during the assessments. All Andy Tate had to do was upload Gunther Ansell’s code COE had purchased, and they were in.”
Adam whistled, long and low. “So someone left them keys to the back door. It makes sense.”
“Find out who it was for me, Adam. Look at all of Juno’s male employees thirty-five to fifty years old. I’m sending you a photo right now for comparison. Tear apart their financials. We’ll take care of the warrant on this end, but we need to find out who this man is, and find out now.”
“How did you get a photo of the man?”
“We have video from a café in Baltimore. Zahir Damari was meeting with him, and the man was passing him a tube that possibly had plans for Yorktown refinery inside, or plans for something else, we don’t know for sure. I’m willing to bet this is our guy and he works for Juno.”
“Got it.”
“Run the photo through their employee profile, Facebook page, everything. Cross-check against the risk assessment teams. Find out who this is.”
“Give me five minutes. You want to stay on the phone?”
Nicholas smiled at Mike. “I’m timing you. Go.”
It took Adam three minutes.
“Got him. His name is Woody Reading, works risk assessment out of the D.C. office. Sending you his particulars now.”
Mike watched Nicholas’s computer screen light up. “This has to be our mole,” she said. “You’re fast, Adam.”
Windows continued opening on the screen. Adam said, “Would you look at this—what an idiot. Guy has two houses, in Bethesda, no less, but only has enough money coming in from Juno to afford one of them. His financials are suspicious, Nicholas. You have everything I do now.”
“I see it all. This is great work, Adam. I’ll be in touch soon.”
“This was fun. And I am glad it’s all shaking out for us. Hey, am I your head minion? Direct all the other minions?”
“Go for it.” Nicholas hung up, grinned at Mike. She said, “You could have done that as fast as Adam.”
“Maybe, but my brain has been otherwise occupied. How much time until zero hour?”
“Four minutes. We’ve got our mole. Now all we have to do is tie the money to COE, which in turn ties to Zahir, and the Iranians and Hezbollah. Hard proof of their contract to assassinate the vice president. But we still don’t have Damari and we still don’t know about those bombs.”
“One problem at a time, Agent Caine. Now, since Woody Reading is local, we’ll have Sherlock send a team to grab him up, get him arrested and brought in. Zahir seems to like eliminating people he works with. We might be able to save this guy’s life.”
Mike shrugged. “Hopefully he’ll think being alive is better than being charged with high treason.”
Nicholas said, “Good point. When his world begins to unravel, he might not want his life saved.”
“Nicholas, we need to find what was in that tube Woody Reading gave to Zahir Damari, and fast. If it wasn’t plans for Yorktown, and I don’t think it was since Vanessa said they could get that information when COE took down the oil companies’ computers, then whatever the plans were, it can’t be good for us.”
“No, it can’t be good for us.”
In unison, they both looked at the countdown clock.
Two minutes to go.
Wednesday
4 p.m.–Midnight
75
KING TO D1
They had a bird’s-eye view from the satellite images over Yorktown. One of the screens now showed strategic areas around the plant and stress points, and listed the names of the various buildings, too. There was no movement. It looked deserted.
When they told Sherlock about what Adam Pearce had discovered, she rubbed her hands together. “Well done, Adam. We’ll send a team to grab Mr. Woody Reading as soon as the ink’s dry on the warrant.”
Nicholas said, “I’m beginning to think of Adam as our secret weapon.”
All eyes in the conference room were watching the countdown clock draw closer to four zeroes.
With every tick of the clock, more agents filed into the room. All the agents from the CAU came in, Jimmy Maitland with them. He said to Sherlock, “Savich called, said to keep him informed. He can’t get back in time.” He said aloud to the room, “No surprise, the media is going wild on the story of the president’s plane. They’ve only been told there was a mechanical problem, and they were forced to land in Nova Scotia. The press secretary’s statement assured the president is fine and resuming his sche
dule as soon as he’s back in D.C. However, apparently it’s all over the Internet what Superman here pulled off. They won’t be able to deny the truth of the attack much longer.”
Director Comey asked, “How did the media take the news about the cancellation of Yorktown?”
“Not a problem, sir,” Maitland said. “The president is being praised up and down, primarily for not backing down in the face of Iran’s provocation and walking out of the peace talks, and almost as important, for proving he’s not stupid for canceling Yorktown. Not in those exact words, of course. I believe the word more used was the president was prudent.”
Sherlock said, “It’s nearly four o’clock.”
Mike flashed on a memory of the high school principal gathering all the students in the gym to watch the Space Shuttle Columbia take off. She remembered clearly the heart-pounding excitement, wondering what it was like to be inside, a real live astronaut. And then, two weeks later, watching the shuttle return to earth, and with no warning, it exploded. Dead, all dead. Please, please, she prayed, staring at the countdown clock. Please.
The countdown ended.
The drone and satellite views drew closer to the facility.
Everyone was holding their breath.
Her prayer wasn’t answered.
It started in the western edge, a small plume of smoke, and then every screen flashed a blinding white, with yellow edges. A ball of fire consumed the plant entirely.
It was Bayway all over, only bigger, huge in fact, which meant Spenser used a larger portion of one of his bombs. What would a whole one do? Two of them? But this time she and Nicholas weren’t running through the flames, feeling the heat burn their lungs, singe their flesh, hearing screams, knowing people were dying, already dead, and the fear, the gut-wrenching fear.
She said aloud, “But where was the bomb?”
Nicholas said, “The smoke plume came from South Four-G. We need to find out what was stored there.”
Sherlock unrolled the plans for the plant. “Here’s Four-G. It’s a metal depot. They keep tungsten there, among other things.”
Director Comey said, “So that’s where Spenser put his bomb? In a mess of tungsten?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicholas said. “I imagine Spenser and probably Tate managed to deliver it in a shipment of metal—maybe even tungsten. It would be totally disguised. The agent undercover with COE told us the new bombs had tungsten components, and would be near on impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the metal.” And Nicholas would bet Nigel’s best bottle of Scotch Spenser had done it during the blackout when everything was down, all the cameras, everything, security precautions heightened but handicapped.
Mike read his mind, more likely their brains were running on the same track. “I’m betting Spenser and Tate took down the power grid so they could have easier access to the plant.”
Nicholas said to Mike, “And some very creative coding by Woody Reading at Juno that made the blackout spread so quickly. Hard to control an overload of outages like we had.”
Sherlock said, “We’ll start tracking all the tungsten shipments over the past week.”
Stunned silence continued in the conference room. The sheer enormity of the explosion, the complete destruction, it was hard to take in.
Mike said, “Matthew Spenser’s final roar and no one was hurt. That’s got to be a win for us.”
All the phones in the room began to ring.
• • •
Ten minutes after the annihilation of Yorktown, Vice President Sloane called Mike. She said only, “Thank you both for what you did today.”
The vice president was actually thanking them, live, on Mike’s own cell phone? Her heart speeded up. What an amazing feeling. “You’re welcome, ma’am,” and that sounded stupid, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Do you have any further word on the whereabouts of Zahir Damari?”
“I’m sorry, no, ma’am.”
“We have Homeland on the lookout for him. About half my advisers and half the CIA believe Damari will pack it up since it would be suicide for him to try and attack me now, with the entire world watching. However, I plan to be on the side of the other half who tell me he simply never gives up, not in his DNA. You can bet all my staff are on alert until he’s caught. Which assessment do you agree with, Agent Caine?”
“I come down with the side that says let’s take extreme care. Damari is the type of killer who has backups for his backups. Yes, he’s out there, somewhere, and he’s got a plan.”
“Thank you. Now, actually, I’m also calling you two to tell you the president would like to thank you himself for saving his life. He, and I, of course, would like you to join us at Camp David this evening. We’re having a small dinner, cocktails prior. It will be casual, only staff, a few people from the Hill. The president was planning on being at Camp David this weekend to, ah, recover from the peace talks. We’ve simply moved his schedule around to get him there a day early. Given what we know about Spenser and his group breaking into the POTUS scheduling, the prevailing wisdom says if we change our plans, there’s no way Zahir Damari can surprise us.”
Mike said, “But, ma’am, I didn’t think the president and vice president were allowed to be at Camp David at the same time.”
Callan laughed. “Well, what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. Tony Scarlatti, you remember him, my head of security? He felt it would be smart to keep me on a different schedule, too. Since it’s not protocol, we think it will be the safest place for me to be. Secret Service will pick you up—some of Tony’s guys—and we’ll chopper you in. Trust me, you don’t want to spend the afternoon hours driving up there, not in our traffic. This is much more efficient. You’re at the Hoover Building?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you so much for the invitation and the transportation.”
“The car will be there in thirty minutes. And Agent Caine? Thank you again. What you and Agent Drummond managed to do today, it will not go unrewarded.”
Could she mean a tax break? No, probably not.
Nicholas was watching her, an eyebrow raised. Mike slipped her cell into the back pocket of her jeans. “Well, that was the vice president.”
“Yes, I gathered. Why are you grinning like a loon?”
“I was just thinking about my taxes. Hey, you want to go to a party?”
76
BISHOP TO B3 CHECK
Catoctin Mountains
Over the past twenty-four hours, Zahir learned that Secret Service agents gossiped like hens. They spoke freely of myriad operational movements, schedules, and the people involved. Unwittingly they gave him an excellent understanding of everything going on in Washington. And he heard talk about himself. These guys evidently weren’t afraid of him, but it seemed everybody else was. He smiled. Just wait, boys, just you wait.
He learned that Matthew Spenser had been shot to death trying to kill Vanessa Graves. Andy Tate was dead, probably killed by Matthew, Ian McGuire was dead, and Vanessa was still alive. He had to admire her surviving not only a gunshot to the chest, but falling off that building. Except she was a CIA undercover agent and that rather pissed him off. Maybe as soon as he was done here, he’d head south to the hospital and get rid of her.
And the president’s plane hadn’t gone down in the Atlantic when Matthew had pressed the trigger. They wouldn’t shut up about a Brit FBI agent who’d managed computer magic, and saved the plane.
A failure, but when it came down to it, Zahir wasn’t all that disappointed.
Sorry, Matthew, you did try.
He had Plan B ready to put in motion. The only question he’d had, the only worry, was answered only minutes before. Both of them would be here. Both of them.
He had to move up the schedule based on the flurry of activity he’d heard, but he couldn’t be more pleased.
Zah
ir locked the bathroom door, an unnecessary security measure, but he hadn’t reached this ripe old age being stupid, and reached into the bag.
After nearly an hour of painstaking detail and concentration, he was done. He smiled at the face in the mirror. He looked again at the photograph, and nodded. Perfection.
He was ready.
He sat on the couch in the small cabin, and waited for the party to begin.
77
KING TO C1
Andrews Air Force Base
Outside Washington, D.C.
The Sea King, only known as Marine One or Marine Two if the president or vice president was aboard, was a luxury liner compared to the Little Bird that had flown them down to Washington, D.C. Once strapped in, Mike ran her hand over the soft leather, pulled back the blue drapers to look outside. “I could get used to this.”
“You enjoy being treated like the queen—whisked around from car to chopper, do you?”
“Better a chopper than a Gulfstream. I’ll never fly easy in one of those again.”
Nicholas remembered all too well the gut-wrenching fear. “I’m with you.”
The chopper’s liftoff was smooth, and a moment later they were heading northwest toward Camp David.
Mike watched Nicholas pull an orange file out of his laptop case. “What is that? And who was that man who gave it to you?”
“That was George Hempton from the British embassy. I’m very glad he caught us before we left the Hoover Building. My father sent it to me, said it was urgent. Let’s see what it has to say.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers and read aloud:
Nicholas,
Be very careful hunting Zahir Damari. He’s extremely intelligent, skilled with guns and knives, primarily, and has the disguise skills of a master Hollywood makeup technician, which you probably already know. But he’s better than you think, so be alert. Attached are a series of potential photographs. You’ll at least get a sense for his build, his movements.
The End Game Page 31