Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller)

by Thomas Waite

  “I’ll follow. I’ve got a Charger, but you won’t lose me this time.”

  What’s he saying?

  As they stepped outside NSA headquarters, he spoke up more directly. The timing was not coincidence: he was sparing them both surveillance within the building.

  “You didn’t even use your real first name,” he said quietly.

  “I know.”

  “Do you remember what you did use?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Lucinda. Don’t you remember my saying that I loved Lucinda Williams and had been listening to Car Wheels on a Gravel Road?”

  “Nope.” But Lana was lying because the conversation they’d had was coming back to her. So were other memories, like cinders in a burn pile of forgotten feelings. She didn’t need any sparks right now. She and Don had talked of remarrying. Which prompted a question from her that could keep things simple: “Are you married?”

  “No,” Robin said. “I’ve been waiting for the right one. Actually, I thought I’d met her in a bar in Georgetown.”

  • • •

  Don received a call from Donna Warnes, who identified herself as Deputy Director Holmes’s executive assistant.

  “He asked me to tell you about his son, a Malinois breeder and trainer up near Hagerstown. He said the dogs come from a strong bloodline and there are three good possibilities for family security work.”

  Don thanked her and went online, pleased the younger Holmes had video of the three dogs in question, but only them. He figured the ones headed for secret government work were not made public, a thought that sent him on a diverting Google search, which revealed that the dog on the bin Laden raid had been a Malinois named Cairo. It boggled Don’s mind to think the government hadn’t kept that secret. None of the SEALs’ names had been made public, not by the feds, anyway. Don could only imagine what jihadists would do to Cairo if they ever had the chance.

  He returned to the breeder’s site, deciding he liked the look of Jojo, the biggest dog. Also his name: two syllables with two hard vowels. Easy for a dog to hear, and Jojo was an unusual enough sound to stand out when a command had to be heard.

  The dog also had an intensely alert look. He’d peered into the camera lens as if he were trying to solve the mystery of sight itself.

  Don called and made an appointment to meet the dogs tomorrow afternoon, no sooner hanging up than his phone rang. Warnes again: “The deputy director just asked me to tell you that you’re approved to carry. I’m sending a courier to your home with the necessary materials.”

  “When?”

  “He should arrive in about forty-five minutes.”

  “Could he meet me at the corner of Waverly and the East-West Highway instead?”

  “In forty-five minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  Twenty minutes later Don slipped the loaded shotgun into the cab of the pickup and backed out of the three-bay garage. A beautiful late-summer day, balmy as he headed to the high school. He planned to trail Emma as she drove to Anacostia for choir practice. Bizarre, he realized, to think she’d be attending Quran study in two days.

  He arrived at the school about ten minutes early to make sure he snagged a place across the street from the parking lot. He was sure a vehicle with a shotgun was verboten on campus.

  It’s not legal out here, either, he reminded himself. Till you see that courier.

  He discreetly pulled out his compact binoculars and scanned the lot for Emma’s white car. He found one in the third row from the street. Don couldn’t see the plate so he glassed the rest of the lot to make sure there weren’t two white ones.

  He expected her to be moving along quickly because of choir, especially with Sufyan not around to lure her attention. She’d told her parents that he and the rest of the team were scheduled for pre-season physicals today. Don remembered them from his own playing days, squirming when he recalled the command “Cough, son.”

  There she is. Emma was rushing toward her car. Then she turned; Don thought another student must have called to her. But it was Sufyan’s uncle Tahir, hurrying up to her. Grabbing her arm.

  Don swore and threw open the old Chevy’s door. He locked it and sprinted across the street in seconds, dodging kids driving away from school as fast as they could.

  “Let me go!” were the first words he heard as he moved within earshot.

  Tahir looked up and saw Don running toward them. He let go of Emma’s arm. She backed away, rubbing a red mark above her wrist.

  “What did I say about threatening my family?” Don stepped just within striking distance of Tahir, who was a couple of inches shorter than him and lighter. He told Emma to get in the car. “And lock up.”

  Emma jumped behind the wheel.

  “She didn’t listen when I told her to stay away from my nephew,” Tahir said. “She picked him up this morning.”

  “I’m proud of her for that,” Don said, glancing quickly around them. “She’s not going to let you intimidate her.” Nobody was paying attention to the two adults. Satisfied, Don delivered a sharp blow to Tahir’s mid-section, expecting to fold him over, the best position, he’d learned, for talking sense into bullies. But to his astonishment, his fist felt as if it had struck a knight’s breastplate. Tahir didn’t even flinch.

  “Don’t do that again,” the Sudanese said evenly.

  Don had fought FARC guerillas and unscrupulous drug dealers in Colombia—the kind who’d tried to rip off honest pot pirates, as he’d viewed himself back then—but he’d never punched anyone that hard to no avail. “Next time I’ll take you down for good,” he said with measured calm. “I know what you survived. But you don’t know what I’ve done. She doesn’t even know.” Don nodded toward the car; Emma had started the engine. “If you think I’m going to let you hurt my kid, you’re dangerously mistaken.”

  Tahir walked away unbowed. Don knew that as surely as he’d read the murderous anger on the man’s face. Don turned back to the car. Emma was gripping the wheel. She looked terrified. He realized that she and her boyfriend were caught between two veterans of violence.

  As long as they’re not caught in the crossfire.

  He slid into the Fusion’s passenger seat.

  “You punched him.” Emma looked as if she’d been struck.

  Don nodded. “He threatened you. I threatened him. We speak the same language.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Making sure you’re safe.”

  She dropped her forehead to the steering wheel and started crying.

  “Em, I’m sorry, but that guy—”

  “He said he was going to kill me if I didn’t leave Sufyan alone. I’m not stalking him! He loves me.”

  “I know. Tahir’s got to know that, too. But it’s not just him I’m worried about. We’ve got those neo-Nazis, too.”

  “I know.” She sat back and wiped her eyes. “I feel like I’ve got a big bullseye on my butt.” A smile creased her lips.

  Don was glad to see the levity. It showed that his daughter hadn’t lost her grit.

  “You might as well go with me in this car to choir,” Emma said, “since you really are a stalker.”

  Don’s turn to smile. “Do you want me to drive? I have two quick stops.”

  “No, I can drive. Where? They’ve really got to be quick.”

  The first was at his truck; he couldn’t leave his weapon in the cab in front of a high school, of all places. He rested it between the two front seats.

  “So you’re actually riding shotgun?” Emma said, resting her hand on the barrel.

  “Looks like it.”

  The second stop came at Waverly Street and the highway, where the courier was waiting. He handed Don a padded envelope. Don signed for it, knowing from the weight that more than a gun license was sealed inside.

  He climbed back into the car and pulled out a Glock G30S semi-automatic. He checked the magazine: packed with .45s ready to pop. A spare had also been included in the envelope. Lana rea
lly did have clout with a capital C these days.

  “Jesus, Dad. Things have sure changed since you got back.” She didn’t sound so approving now. Sometimes reality set in slowly.

  “I didn’t bring any trouble with me, Em. I’m just here to make sure none of it sticks to us.”

  “Can you really do that?”

  He nodded. So did she. She believed him. Trust was a good place to start. It meant she’d probably listen to him if things got bad.

  Emma merged back into traffic, heading toward the city.

  “We’ll get an injunction against Tahir,” Don said.

  “An injunction? Are you kidding?”

  Emma was right: a court order would never stop him.

  “We’ll have him arrested.”

  “Don’t!” She turned to him. “Then he’ll be deported.”

  “Watch the road.”

  “He told me he’d take Sufyan back to Khartoum if I kept seeing him. It’s like Mom says—caught between a rock and a hard place.”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  Don glanced down at the Glock, wondering if the best solution lay on his lap.

  Son-of-a-bitch might have a hard body but he’s not made of Kevlar.

  • • •

  Lana pulled up to CyberFortress with Robin right behind her in his broad-bodied Charger. He hurried ahead to get the door, which she didn’t mind because she had both her shoulder and laptop bags in tow.

  His eyes roved over everything in sight but her, and she realized that getting the door gave him an opportunity to scan behind them without drawing attention to what he was doing. An important skill when a man with ten million hateful subscribers was calling for her death and the murder of her daughter and Sufyan.

  She brushed past the FBI agent wondering Why Robin? Of all the possible agents? What were the odds? Worse than craps. But she’d have to grant Robin this much: he’d taken her mind off gambling with cards or dice, perhaps because her strongest impulse right now was to gamble with her heart.

  Lana had never told a soul about him. At times she’d wished she had a close friend to confide in, but she didn’t. And her work had trained her long ago not to talk, not to give away much of anything to the everyday world of her fellow citizens. Maybe that was why she’d given everything but her heart during those steamy hours with Robin.

  She waved Jeff Jensen and Galina Bortnik out of the war room to introduce them to Robin. Galina gave him a big smile, which Robin didn’t appear to notice.

  “I need to talk to them privately,” she said to him.

  “I’ll park myself outside,” he replied equably.

  Once settled with Jeff and Galina in her office, Lana asked for an update on the ISIS men in Louisiana. “The last I heard, they were being transported to Camp Blanding by an army detachment.”

  “That’s right, a big military escort,” Jeff agreed, “plus the sheriff, who insisted on going with them. Turned out he even had his picture taken with some of his prisoners.”

  “Are you—”

  “Nope, not kidding.”

  “Otherwise, everything went okay?” Lana asked.

  “One of the prisoners was sick by the time they got to Blanding. He’s on lockdown in sick bay. They’re going to hold them all there for questioning, then they’ll be taken to the supermax in Florence.”

  She nodded. The supermaximum prison in Florence, Colorado, had become the detention facility of choice for terrorists awaiting trial or serving time.

  “What’s the prisoner in sick bay for?” Lana asked.

  “A bad sunburn,” Jeff said. “A few of them did. It sounds like he had heatstroke, too. I guess they didn’t have much cover on their boat.”

  “Do they know where they sailed from?” she asked.

  “They’re still working on that. Nobody’s talking.”

  “What about your work?’ she asked Galina, whom she’d tasked with trying to run down Steel Fist.

  “He’s not working alone.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He’s secretive, right? Never gives away a location. Could be in St. Petersburg for all we know. He has all this data uploading, but he’s the destination of streaming data, too.”

  “From NSA?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Galina replied. “Could be from other places but it’s hard to tell. So many people support him and they fill the Web with chatter. Ten million subscribers, and they are active. It’s like a big cyber smokescreen. Hard to run trace routes against the various streams.”

  “Or he could be scattering it himself,” Jeff said. “Throwing up his own camouflage.”

  “Yes, could be,” Galina agreed. “He is slippery. He is good.”

  “Jeff, we’ve got a change in plans. Holmes wants Galina to try to crack NSA security, specifically anything related to files on domestic intelligence gathering.”

  “I already tried, remember?”

  “I do, and Holmes does, too. But he wants a fresh approach. She’s had no experience with NSA.”

  As soon as she spoke, it occurred to Lana that she was making an assumption about Galina that might not be true. Galina could have gone after the agency when she was hacking in Russia. “Have you ever hacked NSA?” she asked her directly.

  “No, only the professor,” she answered. A Harvard computer engineering genius, whose murder had been ordered by the man employing Galina.

  “A lack of experience is supposed to be an advantage?” Jeff asked. He didn’t sound affronted, only surprised.

  “He thinks it might be. Galina, I’ll take over your work on Steel Fist. You get on those NSA files. You’re free to use any attack vector you want. I’ll give you the rundown when we get back to the war room.”

  As they started there, Don texted her about Tahir.

  Goddamn him.

  She was grateful Don had been with Em, replying to him accordingly.

  When she caught up with her colleagues at the war room, Galina was talking to Robin, asking about his job, making sure her hair was in place, and smiling as she had earlier.

  Flirting. Unabashedly.

  Lana filled with a most unfamiliar feeling: jealousy.

  What am I turning into? What is this place turning into?

  “Galina, we need to get moving here.”

  The young woman appeared to snap out of a trance, wheeling around and heading toward her workstation. Lana couldn’t read Robin’s reaction, and tried to tell herself that she didn’t care, but the jealousy wouldn’t let her.

  She did explain to him that he wouldn’t be permitted in the war room, either. He caught her eye as she talked. She tried to look away but was drawn right back.

  No, she told herself sternly. A thousand times no.

  But her arm brushed against the sleeve of his navy blazer as she walked past him. Wholly unintentional and wholly unnerving.

  Lana worked hard in the next few minutes to put aside these fleeting excitements. She contacted her liaison at the CIA to see if they’d learned anything more about Tahir’s history in Sudan.

  “The jury’s still out,” the voice on the other end of the line replied.

  Like Holmes said.

  Lana hung up, shaking her head. The CIA strongly suspected Tahir had been Al Qaeda in Sudan. And he was behaving like a jihadist toward her daughter. And the jury’s still out?

  Wouldn’t the agency want to know everything possible about a man with that background now living so close to the nation’s capital?

  Time to do her own digging. Time to go as deep as she could. As deep as she needed to. Her daughter’s life might be on the line. She doubted anybody in the CIA possessed her fear-fueled motivation.

  Despite the liaison’s words, Lana strongly suspected the “jury” at the highly driven agency had heard all the staggering evidence against Tahir and rendered its verdict.

  If so, the only question remaining was the nature of the sentence—and who would bear the full brunt of its potentially letha
l burden.

  THE SUN’S LOW IN the sky. I can see it shining directly into the windows of my log home in the distance. It’s been hot up here on the ridge. Summers are getting longer and the heat lingers late into the day. Right now it’s in the mid-nineties and it’s almost six o’clock. That surprised me when I first moved to the Pacific Northwest. I expected the worst heat at midday, but it’ll last into the early evening. The climate is deceptive that way.

  I can appreciate that approach. I come at people slowly, too, building up the pressure as I move in on them. Hiking clears my mind when I need to think about my latest targets. The truth is, there’s not much to distract me. The beauty of April, May, and June has paled. That’s wildflower season when the Indian paintbrush, balsamroot, lupine, and a promiscuous variety of lilies drape the hillsides with reds, yellows, purples, and blues. When a thousand feet below me the apple, pear, and cherry trees bloom. Now they’re growing heavy with fruit.

  It’s even warmer to the east because the ridge forms the border between the lush western part of the state and the drier expanses to the east, where ranching and wheat farming prevail. Within a mile or two I can move from one climate to another, though the differences at this time of year are minimal. The danger from wildfires is severe everywhere.

  It’s been that way since mid-July. By then it gets so dry that I have to have everything cut down to the nubs—natural grasses, wilting wildflowers, bushes—in a three-hundred-foot swath around my house. It’s my first line of defense against fire. If I had Vinko’s goats I wouldn’t need to hire a guy to do it for me, but I can’t bear those creatures, their sour odors and noisy rutting. And I can’t abide goat milk.

  I prefer to simply relish the solitude and slow flow of seasons up here. I’m completely off the grid. I have solar panels on my roof and a Powerwall from Tesla to store all that precious electricity. A well supplies my water, hikes give me a great deal of time to think.

  I am an island.

  And I’m concerned about Lana Elkins. She hasn’t placed a single bet since her $137 win. She’s installed an ad blocker to stop the targeted casino ads I’d been sending her. I looked for any indication that she’s been going to Gamblers Anonymous to avoid inflaming her relapse, but she appears to be doing nothing but working and sleeping, though clearly she could be slipping away to meetings. Maybe she’s focused on that ISIS brigade now held at Camp Blanding.