by Camden Mays
“Yeah, even if it’s just me coming back for a few days. I know it’s important to you.”
“Good. I put in for the time off. Are you getting any closer to your objective?”
“Hope so.”
“I see you don’t have the earbuds in—you must be somewhere private.”
Cole grinned. “Yeah, I actually have my own room. It has a bathroom and everything.”
“Oh,” Hannah said, “now I feel guilty for talking about the Hilton reservations. I wish I were there with you. I miss you.”
“I think I’d rather be there with you in your condo.”
“Hey, are you sure this thing is completely secure?” Hannah tilted her head in doubt.
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Yeah, but consider the source,” Hannah said.
“What are you thinking?”
“Hang on a minute.” Hannah hit the button that paused her video feed. She moved the suitcase off of the bed, turned on music, putting on a short, red satin kimono for Cole’s enjoyment. She positioned the tablet for the best view as she sat on the bed and nervously pushed the button.
“Oh babe!” Cole threw his head back in disbelief and hit it on the wooden headboard.
She enjoyed seeing Cole’s reaction.
“Ow!” He rubbed the back of his head.
Hannah laughed. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah! Yeah! I’m good. Keep going,” Cole said, still rubbing the back of his head.
“You are such a typical guy.” Hannah laughed at him.
“Seriously, what’s underneath the robe?” Cole nodded toward the screen.
“Have you already forgotten, Mr. Cameron?” Hannah increased the volume on the background music and slowly pulled open the robe, letting it hang open to tease him.
Cole bit on his knuckle.
“Fallin’” by Alicia Keys began to play as Hannah lay down on the bed.
“Cole, how much time do you have?” she said softly.
“All night, babe,” he said in anticipation.
“Good. Because I’m going to show you how much I miss you.” She seductively bit her bottom lip and began moving slowly to the beat of the music. She wanted it to be a show that Cole would never forget.
✽✽✽
Beirut, Lebanon – US Embassy Compound
Cole’s team met for breakfast at the embassy cafeteria, enjoying the first day of relaxation in over two weeks. It lifted everyone’s spirits as they joked around.
“You’re sure in a good mood, Cole,” Capps said, noticing his friend’s persistent smile. Cole nodded.
“So, we’re going with Rebels for our call sign tomorrow, right?” Capps asked as he shoved nearly a whole pancake in his mouth.
“It’s Bulldogs for the Beirut operation,” Sara Wang said, taking the opportunity to make a dig at the big man.
“Huh?” Capps muffled through his full mouth and quickly forced it down.
“Bulldogs is Mississippi State or Georgia. We need the Ole Miss Rebels. We’ve already done Wildcats and Tigers. No one here even went to LSU or Auburn.”
“Yeah, but Wildcats was for Northwestern,” Robinson said referring to her alma mater.
“I know, but they’re in Kentucky, too,” Capps said.
“The man takes his SEC football serious, doesn’t he?” Cole said, laughing.
“Come on, Cole, I bet you as soon as we make the call sign Rebel, we’ll catch that Lion!”
“Sorry. It’s Sara’s call. She handles the comms.”
Capps just shook his head.
“Where did you grow up, Darryl?” Sinha asked.
“The Tupelo Mississippi Children’s Mansion.”
“Mansion?” Liski questioned.
“Yeah, it’s like an orphanage. I guess I was such a big baby my mama didn’t think she could feed me,” Capps said with a chuckle as the team listened, learning more about the affable warrior.
“Never got adopted. Most kids were only there for a couple of years, but I stayed until I graduated high school. It was a private Christian school. Real strict, too.”
“Is there any other kind?” Sinha joked.
“Well, I mean, they were some great people and all, but, like, no TV allowed, women had to wear dresses, and things like that.” Capps paused as he reflected on his youth.
“There was this one really sweet lady that cooked the food. She’d always make sure I had extra servings.” Capps saw that the team was genuinely interested, so he continued, “And another sweet Christian white woman helped me with my studies. She was tough, too. And really pretty.” Capps took another bite. “Yeah, Ms. Leigh Anne said I was destined to play left tackle for Ole Miss so I could protect the quarterback.” Capps dropped his head, but Cole tilted his.
Wang caught on. “Wait, left tackle? Ole Miss? That’s from that Sandra Bullock movie, The Blind Side.”
Capps busted out laughing.
“You big jerk! I was just about to change the call sign to Rebel for you,” Wang said, slugging him in the arm.
Capps continued to crack up. “Had y’all going, didn’t I?”
“So there’s no children’s mansion?” Robinson asked.
“Oh, there is. That’s all true except for where the pretty white lady came and helped me get into college!” The team laughed.
“No, I enlisted with the Navy and told the recruiter I wanted to be a Navy Seal. They have you get with a mentor who gives you regular PSTs.”
“PSTs?” Robinson asked.
“Physical Screening Tests,” Capps explained. “You have to pass the PST with your mentor to change your rating to SO, Special Operator. Then you have to pass the PST before you can go to boot camp, then on to BUDS at Coronado.” Capps was referring to the Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training in sunny Coronado California where BUDS was located.
“Whew, those were some tough days, man.” Capps shook his head, remembering the agony of pushing his physical limits.
“I did eight years, then decided not to reenlist. Instead, I used the GI bill to get my Bachelors in Business at Ole Miss. I was going to open a fried chicken place and franchise it out.”
“You’d eat up all the profits!” Robinson laughed.
“Well, an old teammate brought me into the CIA instead, and that was ten years ago. I’ve been hopping around the globe dreamin’ of fried chicken ever since.”
“We’re just glad you’re here with us now,” Cole said, patting his friend on the back.
Capps reflected on his fortune to have found a friend like Cole. He enjoyed working with Cole and admired how he had been a good father to Jess. He wondered if would be able to do the same if he ever had kids. The uncertainty influenced his desire to remain single.
Everyone was finished eating and ready to move on. Cole said, “If we’re all set logistically for Rasul’s arrival tomorrow, let’s enjoy the free time and plan on meeting for mission briefing tomorrow morning.”
✽✽✽
At the end of the evening, Cole finished up reports and other communication. Back in DC, the CTC was seven hours behind and running full steam, but he needed his rest. He wanted to take advantage of the accommodations while he had them. The private bathroom off of his room and hot running water was a luxury. He stripped down and stepped into the warm shower. He let the hot water beat upon his head and back, relieving some of the stress and tension. They needed to nail Rasul to find out who the Lion of Aden was and where he was held up.
Cole stepped out and dried off and tossed the towel, ready to climb in the bed. As he came into the room, he was greeted with a provocative surprise. Sasha Liski was lying seductively in his bed with the covers pulled back, revealing her attractive, invitingly positioned body.
Cole stood speechless for a second as the two of them looked at each other’s nude bodies.
“Well, this is awkward,” Cole said, breaking the silence. “I could have sworn this was my room.”
“The door was unlocked,” Liski
said in a softer tone that Cole had not heard her use before. “I know that we got off on the wrong foot. I thought we could mend the relationship.”
Cole said nothing but walked around the foot of the bed and stood next to Liski. He slowly bent down. Liski raised her head and closed her eyes to receive his kiss.
Instead, she received her clothes that Cole had picked up.
Expression pinched, she snatched up the clothes and stood, pulling her pants up her long legs and buttoning her shirt over her bare breasts. She stared at Cole as he climbed into the bed and leaned back in the spot she had lay waiting for him.
“You have no idea what you are missing.” She turned to leave.
“Liski,” Cole said, causing her to turn back around before reaching the door. “Thanks for warming up the bed.”
Liski stomped out, slamming the door behind her.
✽✽✽
Capps, Robinson, and Liski surveyed the arrival area at the Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport that sat nine kilometers from the city center in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Cole stayed with the car, sporting a ball cap and sunglasses. Wang and Sinha worked the equipment back at the embassy annex while Amy Wiggins and her team of analysts covered things at the CTC.
Rasul had flown to Cairo to connect to a flight to Beirut. As Cole sat in the car, he thought about his last call with Hannah and how he longed to see her. Then the image of Liski lying in his bed intruded his thoughts. Matilda!
“Bulldog One, this is base. We have a problem,” Wang injected.
“Go ahead.”
“The den is saying that the target never boarded the connecting flight.”
“What?”
“The target did not board the connecting flight. Instead of coming here, he is headed to Istanbul.”
“Dammit!”
“You want us back at the car?” Capps asked over the comm.
“Negative. Let’s stay in position in case it’s some kind of hat trick. The plane is scheduled to land in about forty minutes.”
“Copy that.”
The team remained in position for two and a half hours, watching arrivals of the scheduled flight. There was no sign of Rasul.
“Alright, let’s call it. Base, start packing up. Let’s see if we can’t catch up with the target in Turkey.”
The team joined Cole in the car, and they drove back to the embassy. Upon arrival, Cole was hit with another surprise. The team would go to Turkey without him. He was being called back to DC.
“Told you we should have done the Rebel call sign,” Capps said.
Chapter 21
Seattle, Washington
The data files scrolled down one of the three screens at Ty Reichert’s workstation. He glanced out the nine-foot glass window of the high-rise office edifice in downtown Seattle, hoping somehow the gray skies had magically turned blue. They had not. The Georgia Tech grad and southern transplant rolled the rubber band around his thumbs over and over while his special software ran one more check of the program.
He was a highly sought-after recruit out of college and leaped at the opportunity to work at Haslet Securities, as its trajectory of growth seemed most promising. Also, he had the privilege of working alongside some of the most talented programmers in the business. Most of his colleagues were from MIT, Caltech, or Stanford. During his first year, he endured the occasional hazing for his southern accent, but his team soon appreciated the skills he brought to the table.
Haslet recently took over an additional six floors for its headquarters in the newest downtown high-rise office, and the seats were already filled up with bodies. The building was wrapped in glass and towered forty-eight stories.
Seattle was a fine place for the twenty-seven-year-old, single Ty. He enjoyed the outdoor activities, when weather permitted, and the trendy nightlife in the city. But the gloomy weather seemed to wear him down, and over the last few months, the company had pushed its employees hard as they prepared for the new government cybersecurity contracts for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Energy (DOE), and several other federal agencies.
The new contracts were worth nearly one billion dollars in additional annual revenue, and with the press release, the company’s stock prices soared, much to the delight of Ty and all stock-option employees. However, the company had received some bad press when allegations of ties to Iran and China had surfaced. The company quickly dismissed them as false but was thwarted with investigations launched by Congress. The stock prices dropped and rose like a roller coaster for weeks on end as the saga played out to reevaluate the company’s reputation.
Then the cyberattacks hit. It was Haslet’s program that successfully rebuffed the denial-of-service attacks at the three power companies and the major financial institution. The quick victory gave the company the final shove it needed to get past the hurdles of the investigation. Members of Congress were worried that their investigations would actually cause more harm than good. Now with the wind in their sails again, Haslet Securities was in full implementation mode for its clients, loading its newly touted programs across the DOE, DHS, and other critical networks.
While the markets were still shaky after the recent cyberattacks, Haslet’s stock took off like a rocket. There were many happy employees at the Seattle office. Ty Reichert was one of them.
Ty was part of an elite team at Haslet that had been the driving force on the program development. The team lead, Timothy Lam, was a brilliant coder, and while it was a team effort, he was hands-on, reviewing coding lines and attaching a signature code of his own at the end as his stamp of approval.
Although his teammates saw Ty’s skills and valued his contributions, Lam was more difficult to impress. Lam favored the MIT and Caltech grads. When Ty developed a new super program for scrubbing out new strands of malware, he sought to demonstrate it for the team, and Lam shut him down. He had asked to run it on the program Haslet was releasing, but Lam had denied the request due to time constraints.
His colleagues were leaving for the evening. They had been in a sprint for the last few days, working long hard hours, and were heading out to get some well-earned rest.
But Ty had to wait for his program—nicknamed “Bee Sting”—to finish running on the software Haslet was installing in these critical networks. He circled the rubber band around and around, watching the lines flow across the screen.
“Let me guess, Bee Sting,” Gina whispered as she passed his station. She was one of the few female coders on his floor. Her eccentric wardrobe and spiked purple hair were always a gratifying distraction. Ty stopped twirling the rubber band and sat up, looking around to see if anyone else saw it.
“Just checking it out.”
“Well, you better hope Lam doesn’t catch you on it. He shut that program down.”
“He didn’t even look at it.”
“Sorry, Georgia boy. But if I were you, I’d let it go.” Gina repositioned her backpack and headed out.
“See you tomorrow, Gina.”
“OK. Good night, Ty.” He watched her walk out of the near-empty office floor, holding her fist up in the air like the iconic scene with rebel John in The Breakfast Club. Ty laughed out loud.
“Got to figure out how to improve the processing speed on this,” Ty said to himself as his software continued to scan through the files. It was a quarter till eleven, and the place was a ghost town of empty workstations in the dark open-office floor. Ty rubbed his screen-weary eyes and chugged down the last few ounces of his Mountain Dew.
“Crap.” He saw the program still had a way to go. He rolled his chair back, stood, and stretched, giving an unbridled yawn before heading to the break room to grab another bottle of the yellow-green liquid caffeine. He assumed he was the only one still on his floor, but a familiar voice in the hall that led from the breakroom to the elevator made him freeze.
It was Timothy Lam. Ty was going to poke his head around the corner to wave good night, but the tone of Lam’s voice mad
e him turn back to avoid interrupting. What he inadvertently overheard caused him to stop.
“As I said, the program is being implemented to all of our clients as you requested. Now when do I get the remainder of the cryptocurrency?” Lam whispered.
Unfortunately, Ty’s last step activated the light in the dark break room. The harsh bright light cast his shadow into the hallway, surely visible to Lam.
“I’ll call you back.” Lam tucked his cell phone and walked to the break room. He turned the corner to find Ty pulling another bottle of Mountain Dew out of the fridge.
“Ty, what are you still doing here? Hey, Ty!”
Ty turned around, jumped, and pulled his earbuds out.
“Geez, dude, you scared me. I thought I was here all by myself.” Ty acted out the scene.
“Yeah, so did I.” Lam looked relieved, assuming Ty had not overheard his conversation. “So why are you still here? What are you working on?”
“Ah, nothing really. Now that we got the program rolling out, I was just tinkering around with some pet projects.”
“Well, I’m heading out. Just remember, anything you work on here belongs to the company.”
“Understood. Have a good night.” Ty waved with the hand holding the Mountain Dew and put his earbuds back in, casually strolling back to his station. Thank God for high school drama classes.
Soon Ty was back to stretching and rolling the rubber band between his thumbs, only now the motion was much faster. He rocked back and forth in his chair as if his movements would speed the program along. What the hell was Lam into? he thought as the data flowed on the screens. The process continued for another three anxious hours, and at ten after two in the morning, his screen flashed.
His personal program, Bee Sting, had identified a payload in the software designed to open a window for hacker access. It was hidden in Timothy Lam’s signature code.
“Son of a bitch.”
✽✽✽
Seattle, Washington
The next day, Ty stepped out of elevator on the forty-second floor. The elegant style of the executive level stood in stark contrast to the fourteen floors below that Haslet Securities occupied in the new building. Ty had not seen it since it had been remodeled, and rumor had it that Haslet execs coveted the remaining top six floors, waiting for the existing tenant’s lease to expire so they could continue expanding. The sky seemed to be the limit with the recent positive PR and additional contracts.