Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller)

by Thomas Waite

  Without looking down, Ed said, “Jojo, sit.”

  He turned to Don and Emma. “Let’s walk away.”

  Jojo stared intently at the departing trio.

  Ed stopped after they’d moved about twenty feet. “You notice I didn’t say ‘stay.’ Just ‘sit.’ This is as basic as it gets, but that’s where we have to start. If you command him to sit, he’ll sit. Don’t confuse that with the stay command. If you order him to lie down, he’ll lie down. The same goes for all basic obedience commands. Forget ‘stay.’ That’s always his default mode.”

  “Can I pet him too?” Emma asked. “Or is that off limits?”

  “Absolutely you can pet him. Say, ‘Jojo, come.’”

  Emma complied. The dog raced up and sat right in front of her.

  “Go ahead and pet him,” Ed said.

  Emma surprised Don by stroking Jojo’s head confidently, then using both hands to rub his scruff.

  Ed ran Jojo, Emma, and Don through the rest of the dog’s basic obedience, which included the command “quiet.”

  “What you need to know about the Malinois,” he added, “or a breed like the German shepherd and Doberman pinscher, is that most will naturally protect their families. What we do with our dogs destined for that kind of duty is evaluate them in this regard.”

  “How do you do that?” Don asked.

  “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”

  That must have been the cue, because a large man in a protection suit stormed around the barn and ran toward them. Jojo raced toward him and bit a camouflaged protection sleeve—and hung on. The man stopped resisting.

  “Stand down,” Ed commanded.

  Jojo released his bite and stared at the man.

  Ed put Jojo in the heel and went on. “We evaluated him for the first time when he was about nine months old. That was precisely how he reacted when one of my trainers launched himself at me. So we knew he had plenty of natural drive for protection. That’s when we started working on the stand-down command.”

  Without warning the man in the protection suit ran toward them again. Jojo raced toward him. Ed shouted “Down.” Jojo dropped to all fours.

  “That’s critical, too,” Ed explained. “You’ve got to be able to stop his attack.”

  “He’d protect me like that?” Emma said.

  “He’d give his life for you,” Ed replied. “Usually we want to work with you for at least two long sessions before turning over a family security dog. We don’t have that luxury with you. You need help as in yesterday, as I understand it from my father. That’s one of the reasons you’re getting Jojo. He’s got a great temperament. We’ve tested him at each stage of his training. You’ll also get a manual that you’re going to have to study. Your mom, too,” he said to Emma. “This is serious business. By the way,” he added to Emma, “he likes you.”

  “I’ll bet he likes all the girls,” Em replied.

  “Only the one’s he’s going to be protecting.”

  “What about my friends, if we’re horsing around and I shout or something?”

  “That’s an excellent question. He’ll be good with them. They can pet him, but you’ll notice he’s standoffish around them.”

  In the next two hours, Ed ran them through all the advanced obedience, which included hand signals for each command. Then he put Jojo through his security-dog paces, including preventing a suspect from moving by barking aggressively at him from about three inches away, backing a suspect up, and chasing one down.

  By mid-afternoon Don and Emma had worked with Jojo for several hours and fed him for the first time.

  “You two and your wife will be the only ones he’ll take food from. We always worry about poisoning. He’s poison-proof. But you guys can’t let anyone else feed him. If someone tries to give him a treat, it won’t be an issue because he won’t take it. But to keep him poison-proof, you guys have to be the ones to feed him. If you have to leave him for a vacation or for any other reason, you leave him with us.”

  “I’m guessing you have a lot of demand for dogs like him these days,” Don said.

  “A lot of demand is right, but we’ve always sold every dog we’ve bred and trained, unless they were unfit for service. And we’re still very careful about who gets them.”

  Don leaned over to pet Jojo. He could’ve sworn the dog was looking right through him. When he straightened Don saw the old dog wandering back up, as if to say good-bye.

  “How old is he?” Don asked.

  “Old as the hills. He’s got some health issues. He’s not going to be around much longer, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s so sad,” Emma said. “Can I give him a hug?”

  “Nope. Sorry,” Ed replied. “Good you asked, though. That old salt was trained for much harder stuff than hugging, so we don’t push our faces into theirs. Family security dogs are different. You can hug Jojo. But this old guy?” Ed shook his head. “He’s just not the cuddly type. You can high-five him good-bye.”

  Emma and Don both did. Then she asked for a picture of her with the dogs. Ed nodded his approval and Don took it with his daughter’s phone. Ed snapped one of father, daughter, and Jojo.

  It was now Don’s turn to take the lead, this time to Bethesda. Jojo shared the pickup cab with his new owners.

  Don wasn’t the only one watching their backs now.

  • • •

  Lana settled into researching Tahir. She had Maureen combing through the posts of Steel Fist’s fans, Galina trying to penetrate the NSA’s military-grade encryption, and Jeff Jensen back to his primary role of insuring CF’s own cyberdefense, a constant struggle.

  Lana found it easy enough to check on Tahir’s record in the U.S. It was in all the papers he’d submitted for political asylum, along with his background in Sudan. He’d run an import/export business there, as he had since coming to the States. He’d done well enough by Sudanese standards to have been considered a successful entrepreneur in sub-Saharan Africa. He now had a small shop in a mini-mall on the outskirts of Bethesda, where he sold African artifacts, carpets, and hand-carved furniture. Not bad for a man whose home country’s chief exports were little more than peanuts and impoverished people.

  He was Nubian from Khartoum in the north, Sudan proper, as opposed to South Sudan, which had been established after two civil wars had torn the country apart. Khartoum was the city to which Tahir had threatened to return with Sufyan. Lana didn’t believe he’d actually do that. He was clearly devoted to the boy’s future, and Sudan was plagued by the same problems afflicting much of the sub-Sahara: poverty, drought, hunger, war, inadequate medical care. Misery appeared to penetrate every realm of Sudanese life.

  As she looked at Tahir’s history, she was reminded immediately that Osama bin Laden and the core of Al Qaeda’s leadership had headquartered in Sudan from 1991 to 1996. Bin Laden himself had been instrumental in seeing to the construction of two hundred miles of highway in the largely roadless land.

  But what really grabbed Lana’s interest was when she read that in addition to a construction company and massive farms, Al Qaeda had helped support itself by setting up an import/export business. How many people in Sudan could have been involved in that line of work back then? There were also news reports that in the pre-9/11 era, Al Qaeda had used the cover of legitimate businesses to smuggle weapons. She would have been surprised if they hadn’t. But had Tahir been involved with that? An even more critical question concerned Tahir’s import/export business now. Carpets, cabinets, and chests could be used to move bomb-making materials, including weapons of mass destruction.

  But surely the CIA and FBI had vetted him for any kind of nefarious activity. Which had Lana asking herself whether she really wanted to re-invent that particular wheel by doing research that likely had been done by others. If the NSA knew about any of that, she should have been informed of it. She also knew that if she penetrated the NSA defenses right now, she would have some cover: Holmes himself wanted to see how porous the agency’s cyb
er perimeter had become.

  But that was for domestic surveillance files.

  Correct, but she knew that a lot about Tahir could fit under that rubric.

  She chose to share none of this with Galina, undertaking her own efforts in her quiet cubicle just feet from the industrious Russian émigrée.

  Using codes she had been privy to in the past, Lana accessed the NSA system with ease. This was no violation of the spirit or letter of the law. As a prime contractor she was well within her purview. What she found in the next hour was ample official attention on Tahir, which came as no surprise. What she couldn’t grasp was why—if he warranted so much focus—he’d even been permitted into the U.S. But as Lana worked, each step along the cyber highway became slower and more difficult to take. She did manage to unveil pertinent data repositories, which led her to a surprising keyhole. She hesitated only briefly before entering it.

  More like a black hole. For Lana was swept in a nanosecond into the CIA network. But there she faced dense encryption.

  “Aha,” she said to herself softly when she realized the formidable security was a variation of code she’d written under contract for the NSA. A smile widened her face.

  Adjusting quickly, she navigated for another twenty minutes before unearthing Tahir’s CIA files. The revelations proved stunning.

  In situ agents and their intrepid informants had linked Tahir to Al Qaeda in Khartoum in the two years preceding bin Laden’s arrival. Tahir, in fact, appeared instrumental in setting up the terrorist group’s import/export business, exactly as she’d suspected at first glance. He’d even rolled his own firm into what became Al Qaeda’s.

  But what chilled Lana to her fingertips and left her staring dumbfounded at her screen was learning that in 1996, when bin Laden and his two hundred closest supporters fled Sudan for Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Tahir and his brother went with them—and stayed with Al Qaeda as the group established itself as the guests of the Taliban.

  It was from that base of operations that Al Qaeda had launched its September 11 attacks five years later. Both Tahir and Sufyan’s father were full-fledged members of America’s sworn enemies. American bombs then killed the brother when the U.S. struck back at the Afghan militants who’d provided safe haven to those who had organized, trained, and dispatched the box-cutter brigade. So, in fact, his brother hadn’t been killed in their home village but by U.S. warplanes. Ample cause for anger.

  But the rabbit hole Lana had plunged into then took an even more unexpected twist. In the month after his brother perished at American hands, Tahir became a CIA asset, providing information to an agent whose name was not revealed in the file.

  Tahir had switched sides.

  Or had he? People who changed their loyalties worried Lana. How pliable were their beliefs? Most jihadists who’d lost loved ones became more determined than ever to defeat their kuffar enemies. But according to these documents, Tahir had embraced the U.S. Did he do it because he felt deep responsibility for his brother’s son and wife, which was certainly part of his Muslim and Nubian traditions? Or was Tahir playing a longer game?

  Whatever the reason, the U.S. had soon paid a huge price to protect him, Lana learned when she began to read a file earmarked “Top Secret.” It reported that Tahir had been among the Al Qaeda members, led by bin Laden, that had been run to ground by U.S. military forces at Tora Bora near the northwestern Pakistan border. The failure to deploy an adequate force of U.S. troops to tear the raggedy remains of the terrorist group from those mountain caves had long been the subject of great criticism and speculation. While two hundred jihadis were listed as killed, bin Laden and his key lieutenants, including Tahir, had escaped into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

  Scores of commentators in the U.S. and abroad had wondered openly why the U.S. could possibly have let the reviled terrorists slip away. Lana now stared at the answer: to protect Tahir Hijazi, a spy for the U.S. in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism.

  According to the top-secret report, Tahir had been prominent among bin Laden’s advisors in urging the retreat to Tora Bora and, therefore, had come under deadly suspicion by his fellow jihadis when their forces were attacked at the infamous cave complex. Tahir saved his own life, and the lives of his nephew and sister-in-law, by contacting an agency operative and hammering out a deal—quickly approved by the highest U.S. military command—to let the shredded Al Qaeda leadership escape to Pakistan. That deal protected not only Sufyan and the boy’s mother, but preserved Tahir’s invaluable role.

  In exchange, though, he also had to agree to the devilishly tricky role of becoming a lifelong double agent under deep cover, a commitment to the agency that had saved the three of them. In the years that followed, Tahir’s loyalty turned him into the most important spy in the U.S. War on Terror. It also placed Tahir firmly in CIA hands. He could never waver from his assignment without risking the lives of those he loved most.

  But he’s reneging on that now, Lana thought. He’s backing away from whatever he once agreed to. No CIA asset threatens the life of a young woman who’s the daughter of a major player in the country’s intelligence community, not if he’s trying to become a good citizen of his newly adopted land.

  Maybe there were other motivations for Tahir’s desire to return to the Sudan. And maybe because of her personal link to him, she’d glimpsed a whole lot more of what he was really up to than the CIA operatives who were running him now.

  Lana wondered if Bob Holmes knew. If he did and had hidden it from her, it would only reinforce the veracity of what she just read because it would strongly indicate that Tahir was known only to the highest echelon of the intelligence community.

  And if that’s the case, he’s not going to confirm anything.

  But Lana had known Bob for more than two decades. She might be able to read the old spymaster’s reaction.

  Donna Warnes put her right through to her boss. Bob sounded as tired as he’d appeared when she’d seen him yesterday.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Fine, fine,” he replied quickly, always dismissing any interest in his health. “Do you have Galina trying to hack into this place?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Don just picked up my son’s best family-security dog. I told Ed to send the bill to us.”

  “I appreciate that.” A fully trained adult Malinois could easily cost more than $25,000.

  “They’re on the way home now, in case you’re wondering. Ed sent me a photo of Emma with her new dog. She looks really happy. What’s up on your end?”

  “It’s Tahir Hijazi. Do you know anything about him being a CIA asset?”

  “Only that it sounds possible. Why do you ask?”

  “Because given where he’s from, and where he’s ended up, it makes sense that he could have been, or still is, on the payroll.”

  “I could look into it.”

  “Would you? I’d also like to know if it was ever confirmed that he was Al Qaeda.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  She wondered if Bob were phrasing his answers carefully, or just as casually curious as he sounded. “It’s important,” she went on, “because he threatened to kill Emma yesterday afternoon if she keeps seeing his nephew.”

  Bob groaned. To Lana he sounded like a man who’d just learned that someone he’d had on a short leash had just bolted away. But she couldn’t challenge him further without heightening the risk that he would figure out what she’d found. Besides, if the deputy director were dancing around his replies, pressing him harder would achieve nothing. So she tried to sound concerned, but companionable:

  “I know. It scares me, too.”

  “Don’t let Emma out of your sight.”

  “That’s hardly practical, Bob. But we’re doing all we can to try to keep her safe. Don’s on the job. Thanks for rushing through his license.”

  Lana ended the call and sat back, wondering …

  But not for long: Maureen, t
hough only across the room at her workstation, sent her a screen shot from Steel Fist’s website. A photo had been posted showing Em with the dogs in front of a barn. Don’s pickup and an SUV were parked in the background.

  The message below the photo read:

  “Lana Elkins’s daughter, Emma, just got a guard dog from a CIA-connected breeder and trainer in northern Maryland. Look at the plates on the pickup and SUV. The pickup is registered to the girl’s father, Don Fedder, a convicted drug dealer who just got out of federal prison. He’s back living with the kid and his ex-wife, Lana Elkins. The SUV belongs to Ed Holmes, the breeder working for a government that can’t keep you safe, but is doling out thousands of dollars for a damn dog to protect the daughter of a drug pusher and her black Muslim boyfriend. Holmes is the son of Robert Holmes, a deputy director of the NSA. These people are all in bed together in every possible way.

  “So the Elkinses now have a dog at your expense. Look at that kid. Don’t you want to just wipe that smile right off that rich bitch’s face? You can because we don’t need a dog that can bite. We’ve got bullets!

  “Ammo up!”

  VINKO STOOD UP FROM his computer and stretched. It was true: a chain was only as strong as its weakest link. And right now Lana Elkins’s weakest link was her kid.

  Emma Elkins represented everything he’d always hated about a certain sort of girl. Brought up rich, or nearly so, and goddamn beautiful—if he were feeling generous, which he was not—she’d already chosen at age seventeen to live in the world of mongrels.

  How pathetic is that?

  And from what Vinko had gleaned from intercepting her texts, she was smart, too, but not in the most important ways when you lived—and died—based on your online privacy. Emma was too lazy to even bother using her tight-ass OpSec—operational security—most of the time. He guessed her mother had put it on her phone because it sure wasn’t standard-issue. But guess what, Emma? It’s just like a condom: you don’t use them, you don’t have any protection. And that means you get seriously fucked. He figured she was realizing that right about now.