by Thomas Waite
Emma didn’t realize she’d spoken till Golden Voice, tape balled up in her hand, held her gaze.
“She’ll find you, Em. I promise.”
Words that sounded like murder.
CHIMES FROM LANA’S COMPUTER awakened her at three in the morning to a message from Steel Fist: “I have your daughter. We should talk.”
She sprang out of the bed that should have been Emma’s for the night.
“Son-of-a-bitch!”
Lana had been so consumed with concerns about radical Islamists or bounty hunters that they’d nudged aside the threat from the neo-Nazi. And what’s this ‘We should talk’ crap? Like he was a businessman setting up a meeting with an investor. No, you should die.
She tried contacting Emma again, to no avail. Her daughter’s phone might as well have been on Pluto. Emma was gone, and Steel Fist had apparently used a woman to grab her.
But he wants more than Em. He wants you, too, she reminded herself. So he’s going to be in touch.
She had to believe that. She couldn’t accept that Emma would simply disappear. Steel Fist wanted propaganda. And now he had the means to leverage Emma’s well-being to get Lana. And he would, because Lana was not going to back down. She’d find her daughter.
Whatever it takes.
She set up to work, once more, on the bed in Anna Hendrix’s house, this time to try to find the trail that Horvat’s message had taken through the cybersphere.
Without the slightest hesitation, given the hour, she first messaged Galina. Maybe she’d be up as she had been last night. Not this time. Sleeping, no doubt, as she should.
What about your sleep? Lana asked herself. An old line came to her—with fresh meaning: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
• • •
Emma awoke cold and short of breath. They must be flying awfully high. Can’t they do something about the cabin pressure in this thing? But she had an even more pressing need to pee. She yelled out that she had to go.
“You’re in that bag,” the woman shouted back. “Just pee in that.”
The body bag was zipped from her neck down. Emma didn’t argue. Her biggest fear was they’d tape her eyes and mouth shut again and zip up the bag.
That’s not your biggest fear. No, she was terrified that they’d kill her. She peed, unable to remember the last time she’d wet herself.
The back of the Beechcraft was black. No windows. The only light came from the instrument panel in front. Like the van. And to think Emma couldn’t have been more grateful when her “rescuer” had whipped out that gun.
What a sick joke.
But now Emma was going to have to depend on another tall, dark-haired woman: her mom, who had to be the real target. What good am I to them? The answer hammered her immediately: You’re the bait.
The realization was horrifying, as much for the slight comfort it provided—that they’d hold off killing her until they’d nabbed her mother—as the threat it represented to the one person who would do anything to save her.
• • •
Don checked on Sufyan, asleep in Emma’s bed. Not the first time, her father thought. The boy’s mother, Alimah, had a guest bedroom. He wished he could check on his daughter as easily, and that Lana hadn’t been forced to take off on crutches to try to find and protect her.
The feds had moved fast to get a construction crew to the house to fortify it on a temporary basis. A Bethesda Police Department officer sat in a cruiser outside, while an FBI agent had taken up station in the backyard.
At least we take care of our own.
Springsteen’s song came alive in Don’s mind. This early in the morning, he knew he’d be hearing the Boss’s catchy lyrics until he went back to bed to try to grab a few more winks, although that could be a challenge: those two law enforcement officers weren’t sufficient to make him feel safe. Not after the day he’d had. Front of the house ripped off. Two men shooting up Agent Maray. And then his own killing of the pair.
That was a first for Don. He’d held a gun on men twice while smuggling tons of pot up from Latin America, but he’d never shot anyone until yesterday morning.
He was surprised and grateful over how little he felt. No guilt. No regrets. There might have been if there had been another option. But those two had shot Maray a couple of times and were threatening a gruesome wound that would have killed him. Don had lined up his shots just in time.
We take care of our own.
Right now, he wished more than anything that he could have been with Lana so he could help take care of their child. Staying behind, no matter how necessary, made him feel useless.
But he also felt something worse: the first pulse of panic.
• • •
The landing jolted Emma. If daylight had come, it probably would have awakened her fully; but through her barely sentient fog she heard the guy saying he was fueling up. Weariness claimed her quickly, but not for long: shortness of breath and her worsening cramps made for fitful sleep. Finally, the cramps doubled her over in the bag.
“Help me. I’m having—” She didn’t want to say cramps and sound like some lame teenager. “I’ve got a really bad stomachache.”
“You sound like you’re having trouble breathing,” the pilot said, as if she were a friend he was taking for a ride, not someone the pair had forced into a body bag, cuffed at the ankles and wrists.
From then on, Emma scarcely slept at all. What a time to be sick.
They finally descended enough that she could breathe without gulping air, landing minutes later.
She tried to brace herself for the taping of her mouth and eyes, and the sealing of the bag.
But once the plane stopped rolling, the guy who’d worn the Barack Obama mask didn’t bother to put it on before he turned around to stare at her. That really scared Emma. When they showed their faces, didn’t that mean they’d decided to kill you?
The two of them climbed back into the cabin. He opened the door.
“You’re worried, aren’t you, Em?” the woman asked.
A cruel question. But she sounded like she’d enjoyed asking it. Em couldn’t help but nod.
“Well, now’s the time to be very, very worried. So you have good instincts.”
They hauled Emma from the plane. Not another person in sight, but in the distance she spotted snow-capped mountains whose peaks looked like the edge of a saw-tooth blade.
They carried her to the open trunk of a large car, laying her on the tarmac only long enough to tape up her mouth, take her photograph, and zip the bag.
Then they dumped her in the trunk.
• • •
I doubt she’s going to die back there, but even if she suffocates on her own vomit from that bellyache, there’s still plenty I can do with her body. That’s what I needed and that’s what I’ve got.
But before we move her any farther, I have to take care of a few items. It’s easier to work on my computer at this elevation than on that plane bouncing around at ten thousand feet. That kid wasn’t the only one having trouble breathing. Art said he had to fly at that altitude for “security reasons.” I told him just now I needed privacy in here for “security reasons.” I could tell he wasn’t pleased but he’s obedient and leaning against the trunk. Emma’s kicking up a storm back there. I’m not quite sure what she thinks she’s going to accomplish with that. She’s such a moaner.
It doesn’t take me long to get back into Vinko’s website. He changes his password routinely, but the predictive algorithms I’ve devised come up with his new ones quickly. He’s oddly unimaginative in that regard. Which I’m grateful for. He’s also a convenient ruse to communicate with Emma’s mother, though neither she nor Vinko knows they’re being duped.
It’s a pleasure to show off my skills, even if my audience consists mostly of me. Any hacker who denies the pure amusement that comes from deluding others is a liar. We all love it for that reason, among others, of course.
Vinko’s been so vocal about his hatred for
Lana and Emma—and his desire to see them truly hurt—that his old missives have done the cyber spadework for me. And his credibility with his followers is unquestioned—for now.
Let’s see who’s minding the Horvat store this morning …
What’s that? Emma has stopped kicking. Settling down or suffocating? I’m in no rush to find out. At least she’s in the body bag, if it’s the latter. No muss. No fuss.
So it’s the little Russian minx keeping her eye on Vinko, whom she knows as Steel Fist. He’d be so humbled if he knew how many of us are inside his system, which he believes so secure and sophisticated. NSA has some lines into it, too. I can see them, but they’re not as nimble as I am. Not even close.
I’m just going to focus on Galina Bortnik for the moment and use the pathways she’s forged. Minimize my presence. A few more clicks, a quick tour of some of Bortnik’s data exfiltration, and that’s all it takes. I’m back on your turf again, Vinko.
It’s high time for you to get busy because, if all goes well—and it will—your hands will be full.
And then you’ll be dead.
• • •
Galina was awake, alert, and active at her computer.
She’d only been slow in answering—busy, not asleep.
Now that’s devotion, thought Lana.
In response to Lana’s question, Galina messaged that Sufyan’s uncle Tahir was booked on an early flight to Boise, Idaho. “First thing smokin’,” was precisely how Galina put it, clearly sharpening her use of an American idiom.
“Boise? Are you sure?”
“Yes, and he has been hacking Steel Fist. So he might know something we do not. I used his entry point to get inside the Nazi’s site.”
“How long did it take you to do that?”
“Not long. It was fast today.”
“What are you seeing right now?”
“A message board. It is active. Creeps are logging on. Posting. I see some photos of slaves in metal collars and chains. Steel Fist is responding.”
“Anything of note?” Lana was surprised Steel Fist wasn’t bragging about Emma. She wouldn’t tell Galina about that, not at this point. It might affect her performance if it felt personal, and she was a mother, too. Lana needed pure, unemotional efforts from her.
“No, short messages. Same stupid Nazi stuff.”
“What worries me is when Jensen got in and shut him down, Steel Fist was back online in a few minutes. He clearly had great cyber resiliency. But you got in easy and you’re still in there.”
“No problem. Very simple today. Probably for Tahir, too.”
Maybe Galina’s better than Jeff, Lana thought. After all, Deputy Director Holmes, still recovering in the cardiac unit, had asked for Galina to take over the testing of NSA’s own cyberdefenses.
“Keep testing to see if you’re being led around.”
“Okay.”
“But stay on as long as you can.”
“Wait,” Galina said. “Here is an alert from Steel Fist. That is what he is calling it. Big black letters. They fill the screen. It says ‘THE PRIZE HAS ARRIVED.’ The prize?”
A sinking feeling overcame Lana. “Let’s see if he says anything—”
“He does,” Galina interrupted. “I am so sorry, Lana. He says he has Emma.”
“What does he say? Precisely?”
“This is bold too: ‘I HAVE THE BITCH, EMMA ELKINS. YOU WILL GET TO SEE HER DIE SLOWLY. TELL ALL THE SOLDIERS OF THE NEW AMERICA THAT THE TIME HAS COME TO SLAUGHTER OUR ENEMIES.’ There’s a picture of her, Lana. I’m so sorry. She—”
“Tell me.”
“Her mouth is taped. She is zipped up to her chin in a black bag of some kind.”
A body bag.
In seconds, Lana linked to the Steel Fist website and saw Emma herself. But her daughter looked so different. It wasn’t the duct tape wrapped around her head and mouth. It was the terror in Em’s eyes. Deep as the oceans.
“The data flows,” Lana said to Galina. “Can you access them?”
“Could be hard.”
I doubt that, Lana thought. He wants me to come, wherever they are. “I’ll hang on.”
Lana shared Galina’s screen but not her history of hacking this site. She had to sit back and wait, and she’d rarely considered patience a virtue.
“I am surprised. Here it is. See,” Galina said, bringing up lines curving across the country, growing dense in the Pacific Northwest. “It looks like Boise.”
He might as well have printed out an invitation.
“I’ve got to get moving. Let me know if anything else comes up.”
“To Boise?” Galina asked.
“Affirmative,” Lana replied, already sounding as though she were back in combat mode.
Chasing Tahir as well, it seemed. The Sudanese must have gleaned his own clues when he hacked the Steel Fist site, for he was already heading west.
Why? What game is he running? And who’s he bringing?
She cut her computer connection to Galina and reached for her phone when a second direct message from Steel Fist arrived on her screen: “Bring no one.”
Fat chance, you—
But Lana seized up over Steel Fist’s next words: “I’ll cut her open. I’ll kill her slowly. I want you. You come, she lives. You bring anyone, I’ll know and you’ll watch her die slowly.”
Lana’s screen went blank. When she reached for her phone a second time, she did make a call, but not the one she’d planned. She rousted Jeff, the decorated navy vet, to call upon whatever chits he might have at the Department of Defense to get Lana and Cairo on a military flight to Boise as soon as possible.
She wouldn’t bring anyone with her, but she would bring a dog.
• • •
Vinko was asleep while his alter ego online, Steel Fist, was busy conducting a forum for many of his followers. And before he awoke his system would lose every last trace of those exchanges. For Vinko, the activity might as well have been a dream that he’d never remember. After all, Golden Voice had organized all his replies from thousands of sessions, which left her fully equipped to field any query or expression of outrage with an appropriate response.
It had been an alpha test. And it worked splendidly.
• • •
Emma guessed the car was on the road for about twenty minutes, although it was hard for her to estimate with any confidence. Time felt borderless, so teeming with fear that she could have been suspended in a nightmare with no point of return.
Then they stopped and she expected to be pulled out of the trunk. Instead, the front passenger door, as much as she could tell, opened and closed, and the car sped up again.
So Art’s gone. Nothing else made sense.
It felt black as a hearse in that trunk, even with her eyes untaped, as if it were, in fact, a coffin.
At least she could breathe, but her cramps were extreme. Yet her fear overrode even that pain. I saw their faces. She kept coming back to that. They thought they’d be done with her … soon.
The car started down what felt like a dirt road. The shocks were working overtime. Then the vehicle slowed almost to a stop before rolling onto a smooth surface for a second or two.
A garage?
All but confirmed when she heard the door closing.
Then the trunk lock was popped and the driver’s-side door opened and closed.
The woman, who had yet to reveal her name, smiled at her as she lifted the trunk all the way up. It was the coldest smile Emma had ever seen.
She peeled the tape from Em’s mouth. “How’s your stomach?”
“Bad.”
“I’m going to move you. You do what I say and I won’t hurt you.”
Now. You mean you won’t hurt me right now. Just go ahead and tell me.
But Emma said none of that. Instead, she asked, “What’s your name?” Desperate as it seemed, she was trying to make a connection to her captor. She’d heard her mom talk about how that had saved the lives of some victims.
“My name? Let’s see. You can call me … Peggy.”
Emma doubted that was her name, figuring the woman was gaming her. But she did what Peggy asked, rolling onto her side and pulling her legs to her chest, which actually relieved the cramping a tiny bit.
The woman grabbed the bottom of the bag, propping Emma’s legs on the edge of the trunk, then reached in and grabbed the heavy black plastic by Emma’s shoulders. She hauled her into a sitting position with little apparent strain.
“Now I’m going to get you on your feet. Have they gone to sleep?”
“No.”
With her help, Emma stood, arms still cuffed behind her back. Peggy unzipped the bag all the way to the ground, then unfolded a pocketknife and sliced off the wet plastic cuffs on Emma’s ankles.
Facing forward, Em heard her fold up the blade, then felt a gun barrel against her back.
“Walk through that door.” It was straight ahead, already open.
In this manner Emma was directed down to a concrete basement with a drain in the middle of the floor, and an iron cage that looked like the one ISIS had used to burn to death an airman.
“Stop,” the woman ordered as they neared the cage. “I’m going to undress you and hose you down.”
“Can you take these off?” Emma asked, wiggling her hands behind her back.
“Once you’re locked in there, I’ll do that.”
Again, she handled Emma carefully, slicing off her pants, shirt, and underpants before spraying her with a garden hose. The water was cold. Emma shivered, marching into the cage as soon as Peggy opened it. More than anything, she wanted to get away from her.
As soon as Peggy closed it, she slipped a thick padlock between matching rings and snapped it shut.
“Turn around.” She reached in the cage and cut off the cuffs on Emma’s wrists. “Now take off your bra.”