“I’ll humor you, if you must.”
“I have drones approaching that are locked in on your location. You have one minute to evacuate the house. If you don’t, I will order them to fire.”
“Must be nice having the U.S. military at your disposal,” Kozlov said.
“That’s not an answer,” Black said with a growl. “My trust only goes so far, so I’m going to make you trust me now. You leave now and I won’t kill you. You call me with the instructions on how to remove the code, and I promise not to hunt you down and kill you. Otherwise, all bets are off. Your minute starts now.”
Black hung up.
“Do you think he’ll call your bluff?” Shields asked.
“I’ll let you know in fifty-five seconds and counting.”
Black and Shields crept around the back of the barn and watched for any movement. With about twenty seconds left on Black’s count, Kozlov tore around the side of the house with Katarina riding in the passenger’s seat, leaving a wake of dust behind them.
“What if they rigged the house to blow?” Shields asked.
“That’s why I only gave them a minute,” Black said as he ran toward the front door. He kicked it in and entered the house with Shields right behind him. In an office down the hall, they found several large computer monitors set up on a desk.
Shields sat down and started typing. “It’s password encrypted.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” Black said. “But we’ll deal with that in a minute.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make sure Kozlov doesn’t get away.”
Black sprinted back to the barn and hustled to get the motorcycle outside. After kicking the starter a few times, the engine sputtered to life. He revved the engine before hopping onto the seat and speeding down the driveway after Kozlov.
The more nimble motorcycle gave Black the opportunity to catch Kozlov, who had to be careful to navigate the terrain in his black Toyota Forerunner.
Black moved stealthily, hiding within the wall of dust behind Kozlov’s vehicle. In less than a minute, Black had caught up with the duo. For a brief moment, Black thought he might overtake Kozlov, but then the Russian sped up. Black eased off the gas and waited for Kozlov to swing wide right around a corner in order to get a cleaner shot.
As the broadside of Kozlov’s SUV came into view, Black fired three shots. The first one missed, but the next two pierced the front tire, sending the car into a spin. When it finally came to a stop, Black’s mouth fell agape. The front half of the vehicle was suspended over the edge of a cliff. Kozlov had almost made it to the bridge that spanned the two sides but instead was now teetering on plunging into the ravine.
Black skidded to a stop. Seconds later, his phone buzzed.
“I thought we had an agreement,” Kozlov said.
“We did, but I changed my mind,” Black said. “I’m not about to let you get away. You need to pay for what you did.”
“Your government murdered my father. You don’t really have any moral high ground here.”
“He was a spy. You are no more than a meddling thief. And I’m not about to let you escape after what you did to this country.”
“Oh, no. You have it all wrong, Agent Black. I’m merely an opportunist. Mr. Kellerman presented me with an opportunity. And I took it. Simple as that.”
“Only you took it further than he intended. Kellerman just wanted to scare everyone into buying his product. You want to burn down the civilized world.”
“If that’s how you see it, that’s your prerogative, but you’d be lying to yourself.”
“You got an innocent man in Turkey killed with your lies.”
“He wasn’t innocent.”
“Who was he?” Black asked.
“Does it matter? He was a useful pawn, just like you were—only I was beginning to grow fond of you. Needless to say, that fondness has worn off now.”
Black noticed the vehicle teetering again.
“Likewise,” Black said. “Now, give me the passcode to stop the attack on our power grid, and I’ll get you some help.”
“No, you help me or else your power will be turned off in less than twenty-four hours,” Kozlov said. “You could have an army of experts working around the clock to find what I planted in the code—and you wouldn’t find it.”
“I’ll tell you the code,” shouted Katarina.
Black smiled at his good fortune. “Put the call on speaker.”
“Shut up, woman,” Kozlov said. Then Black heard the sound of a slap.
“Hitting a pregnant woman?” Black said. “That’s not a way to curry favor with me.”
Kozlov snickered. “She’s not pregnant, you fool. We told you that to play upon your sympathies. And it worked exactly as we planned. And because of you, we were able to do more damage to your country. It’ll be years before you figure it out, but you’ll know it when you see it.”
“The code,” Black said. “Give me the code if you want me to help you get pulled to safety. I can have a team of people here in a matter of minutes if you just say the word.”
“You’re never getting the code until you help us out. That’s how this is going to work.”
“You’re not the one in the power seat to negotiate this time,” Black said.
As soon as he finished speaking, he noticed an object emerging from the driver’s side window. Black dove to the ground as several shots whistled past him. He scrambled to take cover behind the motorcycle.
“I’m the only one who can help you right now,” Black said. “Shooting me is a good way to ensure that you’ll die at the bottom of that ravine.”
“This is your last chance, Agent Black. Go get us help or your whole country will suffer.”
Black didn’t flinch—that is until he heard a gunshot from the vehicle.
A few seconds later, he heard Katarina’s voice coming from the phone.
“Agent Black, this is Katarina. I’m sorry about my husband. He’s dead now. Please help me. I will tell you everything you need to know.”
Using his motorcycle as protection in case he got shot at again, Black eased toward the passenger side. He could see Kozlov slumped over, head against the steering wheel. Katarina had both hands raised, panic painted across her face.
“Just get me out,” she pleaded. She unbuckled her seatbelt and tossed her gun outside of the vehicle. She clung to the outside door frame, her eyes begging for help.
As Black hustled closer, he noticed movement coming from the driver’s side.
“You ungrateful traitor,” Kozlov said with a snarl.
“Katarina, look out,” Black shouted as he dove to the ground.
Before she turned around, Kozlov put a bullet in the back of her head. She let go of the frame and collapsed into the dashboard. The slight weight shift was just enough to send the vehicle plunging down into the ravine.
Black walked near the edge to see the aftermath. At the bottom of the ravine was nothing but a pile of twisted metal. He sighed but was all too aware his relief was likely to be short-lived.
Black turned on his coms. “How’s it coming?”
“Not good,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to hack into this computer any time soon. And by then, it might be too late.”
CHAPTER 39
BLACK LEFT A TRAIL of dust behind him as he sped back toward the ranch house. Shields was in the office trying to hack into the computer when he rushed inside.
“Any luck yet?” Black asked.
“Other than finally locating a countdown clock, nothing yet,” she said.
“How much time do we have?”
“A little under four hours now.”
Black smiled. “That should be plenty of time then, right?”
Shields shot him a sideways glance. “To find a viral code created by one of the world’s greatest hackers? I honestly need four months, but beggars can�
�t be choosers.”
“Well, did you forget about this?” he asked as he placed Jana’s bypass device on the desk.
Shields shrieked. “I did forget about that. Time to see if it works.”
She plugged the device into an open port and waited.
After a minute, Black pulled up a chair next to her. “How long do you think this will take?”
“No idea. But it’s probably going to happen more quickly than if I’d kept trying on my own.”
Another minute elapsed before a dialogue box appeared on the screen, allowing her access to the computer’s mainframe. Her fingers flew across the screen as she began to search for the code.
Black called Blunt and gave him the news.
“So, let me get this straight,” Blunt said. “You killed Kozlov and his wife, the only two people who could help us more quickly identify the virus being uploaded to the grid, and you have less than an hour to identify it before the power goes out. Does that about sum it up?”
“Pretty much,” Black said. “But Shields is working from one of their computers now.”
“What a disaster,” Blunt said with a growl.
“It’s not over yet, sir. Shields is working on it.
“We could patch you into Besserman’s analysts to see if they could help.”
“I doubt it,” Black said. “That’d take more valuable time away from Shields to solve this thing.”
“She’s not gonna solve this on her own,” Blunt said. “You need their help. At least see if they know anything.”
A shout of joy from Shields caught Black off guard, and he turned and looked at her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m officially in,” she said. “I’ve already identified where the code would be. I just need to pick it out.”
“So you think you can do this in time?”
“Finding a code buried like this is kind of like searching for a needle in a haystack,” she said. “But now that I know where it’s at, it’s more like a clothespin in a haystack.”
“What’s going on?” Blunt asked.
Black turned his attention back to his director. “Shields is making progress, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”
“I’m going to call Besserman and have someone on his team speak with you,” Blunt said. “They might be able to help.”
“Do it quickly,” Black said. “We’re running out of time.”
Two minutes later, Black’s phone buzzed with a call from Langley. He put the call on speaker.
“Agent Black, this is Patricia Collinsworth from the CIA. We’ve been analyzing pieces of this code over the past few days and we think we might have it isolated.”
“But that’s the old code,” Shields said. “There’s a piece of this code that Kozlov didn’t upload or activate until now. I need to do a dynamic code analysis on this, but I can’t unless it’s running.”
“We’ve been following DarkNite’s virus codes forever, and we think we might be able to help you identify it.”
Shields’ fingers continued to fly across the keyboard. “Give me what you’ve got. Maybe I can do a search for it and get lucky.”
Patricia forwarded a few lines of code to Shields. She then ran a search for it and found it.
“Would you look at that?” Shields said.
“Did you find it?” Patricia asked.
“Sure did. I’m deleting it now to see what happens.”
A few seconds passed, and then Shields let out a string of expletives.
“What happened?” Patricia asked.
“The countdown just went all the way down to sixty minutes.”
Black cursed under his breath as he paced around the room. “There has to be something we can do.”
Shields slapped the desk with the palms of her hands. “Go to the wreckage site and get Kozlov’s cell phone. He has to have the kill code stored on there, if there was one.”
“But his car is at the bottom of the ravine. It’ll take me an hour just to get down there.”
A wry grin spread across Shields’ face. “Maybe not.”
“What are you thinking?”
“If Besserman has a team on standby, use them. I’m sure they have access to a chopper. Repel down there and grab it.”
* * *
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Black was hitched into a harness and being lowered into the ravine. As he eased downward, the winds blowing across the prairie shook the helicopter. It rolled from side to side before the pilot steadied the bird. Black nearly smacked off the side of the canyon wall, averting a solid hit by kicking off it with his feet.
The process took about five minutes to get him to the bottom of the ravine, which Black estimated to be about three hundred feet. Then he unclipped himself and climbed over some boulders to the wreckage. He found the SUV on its roof, which was compressed down to the height of the doors.
With the vehicle so mangled that the doors couldn’t open, Black’s only way in was through the windshield, which had spidered but remained intact. He kicked the glass a few times before it gave way.
The scene was gruesome, especially Katarina’s body, which was upside down. Her eyes were still open, haunting Black. He glanced at her stomach to confirm what Kozlov had said—she wasn’t pregnant.
Black then searched Kozlov’s body and found his phone.
“I got it,” Black said over the coms.
“Excellent,” Shields said. “Can you access it?”
Black tapped on the phone’s screen and realized it was accessed through facial recognition. “Hopefully a dead man’s face works.”
“His eyes don’t have to be open,” Shields said.
“Do I want to know how you know this?” he asked as he held the phone in front of Kozlov’s face.
“I tried it myself. I know, I know. I’m weird like that and do crazy stuff when I’m bored.”
“I’m in,” Black said.
“Now, you can’t stop looking at it or the phone will lock down again. And unless you want to sever Kozlov’s head, we’re going to need that phone unlocked for me to find what we need.”
Black rushed back over the line and hooked it back up to his harness. With a tug, the chopper began to reel him up. Once Black was clear of the ravine, the chopper ferried him over to the ranch house.
“How much time do we have?” Black asked Shields over the coms.
“I’ve got eight minutes left. It’s not much time, but it should be enough.”
As soon as the helicopter slowed to a hover near the front of the house, Black released himself from the line and raced inside, keeping the phone focused on his face. Once inside, he handed the device off to Shields, who started swiping through different folders.
“Come on, come on,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Have you found anything yet?” Black asked.
“Nope. And I’ve only got two minutes left to find it. Now, is there any word or phrase that might be meaningful to Kozlov?”
Black thought for a moment. “He worshipped his father, the KGB agent who was killed by the feds.”
“What’s his father’s name?” Shields asked.
“I don’t know. Let me call someone.”
In a matter of seconds, Black was corresponding with Besserman, who patched him to one of the CIA’s best analysts to look up the information.
“His father’s name was Dimitri Smirnoff,” the man said. “Apparently, Kozlov changed his name because he wanted to get out from underneath his father’s shadow, according to the interviews we did with him at our black site.”
“Thanks,” Black said before hanging up and turning to Shields. “Try Dimitri or Dimitri Smirnoff.”
Shields hammered away with her thumbs on the screen before shouting with excitement. “I’ve got it. This folder named Dimitri is full of kill codes.”
Shields started entering them into the code one by one, hoping to stop the virus. However, the countdown clock continued.
“Twe
nty seconds to launch,” Black said. “How close are we?”
Shields growled. “None of these are working.”
At fifteen seconds, the computer started an audible countdown: “Fifteen seconds to launch. Fourteen … thirteen …”
Shields didn’t stop, entering in one code right after the other and then praying aloud each one worked. When she reached the bottom, there were only two left, and she had time for one more entry.
“Which one do I choose?” she said.
Black was looking over her shoulder.
“Eight … seven …” the computer said.
“Go with the last one,” Black said.
Shields typed furiously, getting it in just as the computer neared the end of the countdown.
“Two … one …”
Then the power went out.
CHAPTER 40
BLACK CLENCHED HIS FISTS and closed his eyes as he screamed. He’d done everything right until the last moment. He had an instinct to choose the last code and he’d failed.
Shields looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. “We did the best we could.”
Black opened his eyes. The room was lit only by the sun starting to fade into the valley below.
“But it wasn’t good enough,” he said as he punched the wall. “Where does that leave us now?”
“We’ll need to power the main computers at the control centers back on, sync them up, and then see if we can stop the virus by entering this final code.”
“How long will that take?”
Shields’ lips quivered. “I don’t know without communications being operational. Days, weeks maybe. This is unprecedented.”
Black leaned against the wall and slumped to the floor. He was exhausted and angry, frustrated that he’d been outwitted by a Russian con man. After a deep breath, he exhaled slowly. Shields and Blunt and the rest of the Firestorm team might tell Black that it wasn’t his fault, but he knew better. He may have killed the world’s greatest hacker, but not before he pulled off the world’s greatest hack.
Black buried his head in his hands, certain that he had just taken part in his last operation. Besserman and everyone else in Washington would be looking for someone to blame. And Black was an easy target—and a justifiable one, too.
Power Play (Titus Black Thriller series Book 7) Page 20