Five in a Row

by Jan Coffey

  Out of the corner of his eye, Conor thought he saw one of the blinds move inside the cabana. His gaze focused on the window. The sun was shining on it and the trees behind him were reflected on the glass.

  He wondered if anyone lived in the cabana. It definitely didn’t look it. The metal furniture on the porch was stacked up. The grill was covered with a heavy tarp, too. A couple of birds were flitting around and playing in the gutter just above the doors and windows, and he decided it must have been them that caught his eye.

  The wet nose of one of the dogs touched his hand, and Conor jumped. He looked down at the half-chewed tennis ball Duke was holding in his mouth. He took the ball and threw it closer to the house. Queenie appeared and they both raced after it again.

  Conor wondered how his mom was doing. He hoped everything was okay in Wickfield. Following the dogs toward the house, he was suddenly feeling anxious to get back inside.

  Fifty-Two

  7:42 A.M.

  Emily tore her gaze from the clock and clicked through the screens on the computer as she demonstrated her discovery to the group gathered behind her.

  “Lyden Gray never suspected anyone would be playing around in his backyard, so this program is the least sophisticated of everything I’ve seen on his network. He simply modified a basic auto-racing video game to control the cars and linked it to a hybrid system that combines one of the independent navigation systems with the GPS satellite system.”

  Emily went through the steps to activate and then exit an automobile system they’d identified and tested in the lab’s parking lot.

  “It looks too simple,” Hinckey said, peering over her shoulder.

  “It was Ben’s genius to think of going this route,” Emily said. “Doing it this way is simple, especially once we write a sequence program that will automatically execute from the list of live components.”

  “The clock is still against us,” Ben said to everyone. It was 7:49. “If we do it manually, start to finish, Emily figures, the best we can do is twenty-five seconds per component. Done with a program, that could get reduced to…” he looked at her.

  “Maybe two or three hundred per minute. But that’s after some playing around with the program.” She turned to Hinckey. “The bottom line is we need more time. Are you doing anything about his demands?”

  The SAC shook his head. “We can’t. That’s too much money to transfer. And there’s no point sending another agent in your place. The first one is still en route to Grand Cayman. Gray could be arrested in the next couple of hours.”

  “If he’s there on the island,” Ben said, not sounding convinced. “He told your people that he knew Emily wasn’t on that flight.”

  “He could have been bluffing. He may have just assumed that Ms. Doyle would not go,” one of the agents answered. “He has no way of knowing where she is and what she is doing.”

  “I have no idea what he knows and what he doesn’t. But I do know he isn’t in the Grand Cayman Islands,” Emily said. “He’s just flexing his muscles, showing what he could do with all of this power. And when you think of it, isn’t it a lot easier to hide in this country than it would be on some little island?”

  No one said anything, but she could see the answer in Hinckey’s face.

  “You have to find a way to buy us some time,” Ben stressed to the Special Agent in Charge.

  “We just have to push ahead and take our chances,” Hinckey replied. “Washington is adamant that we will not respond to this kind of terrorist threat. They’re convinced that the nets we’re spreading are wide enough that it’ll only be a matter of time before we have him.”

  Emily and Ben looked up at the clock at the same time. It was already 7:55.

  Fifty-Three

  “Oh, my God. Look at that!”

  Ahmad Hamidi pointed down through the darkness at the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  A tanker truck was racing and weaving through the light traffic at breakneck speed, heading southward toward San Francisco.

  Ahmad glanced at his watch. 5:14. They were on their first run out to Sausalito. He’d been doing the morning traffic reports for almost two years, and he’d never seen anything like this.

  “Get us closer.” As the chopper swung down toward the bridge, Ahmad heard the pilot calling into the state police emergency dispatcher.

  Reaching behind his seat, Ahmad pulled out the video camera they kept stowed there. They carried it only for newsworthy shots. This definitely looked like it might fill the bill.

  “Get ahead of him,” he said to the pilot, pointing toward the center of the bridge.

  Ahmad switched on his recorder and started narrating even before the camera focused in.

  “This is Ahmad Hamidi reporting for KPIX in San Francisco. We’re looking at a speeding eighteen-wheeler nearing the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. The truck is pulling what appears to be gas or oil.”

  He zoomed in as the helicopter drew nearly alongside the speeding truck. This would be material for the TV-5 morning news, for sure, he thought. Any moment now, the local anchor would be cutting into the audio. It was 8:15 on the East Coast. He might even be linked into the Early Show in New York. That was too much to hope for.

  “The tanker truck is moving southbound on the bridge, at speeds in excess of…eighty-plus miles per hour. He’s weaving and…Oh, my God! The truck has clipped the tail end of a van and driven it into the guardrail. It’s spinning and…a northbound car has just slammed into the van.”

  Ahmad shifted the camera on his shoulder. The truck continued to race along the span, not slowing at all. The helicopter was flying alongside the bridge, parallel to the road and not fifty feet from the vehicle.

  “The tanker is now in the very center of the bridge. This driver has to be out of his mind. The thing looks like a runaway train.”

  The chopper continued to race the truck, and Ahmad was doing his best to keep his mind clear.

  “Hello, Ahmad,” the audio crackled in his headset. “This is Harry Smith in New York.”

  “Hi, Harry.” The CBS Early Show. Ahmad Hamidi on a national feed.

  “Ahmad, we’re looking at these pictures. We can see you’re flying over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Can you tell us what’s going on?”

  “Yes, I can, Harry. We’re looking at an eighteen-wheel gasoline tanker, doing nearly ninety now and—”

  The truck suddenly took a left turn on the span, jackknifing and going into a slide before hitting another oncoming car and turning over. The momentum carried the rolling truck along, and Ahmad could see it caroming off the guardrails as it slid. Then, like a scene from a high-budget disaster movie, the truck exploded in a fireball.

  The concussive force of the explosion drove the helicopter spinning away from the bridge, and Ahmad dropped the camera as the chopper bucked and began to plummet toward the bay.

  Fifty-Four

  “Turn on the TV,” someone called from the back of the lab. “CBS.”

  Emily shoved her chair back from the workstation and stood up. She stared through the glass divider at the TV that was on in the adjoining room. They were showing footage of the Golden Gate Bridge, taken from a helicopter. A tanker truck was swerving through traffic.

  Emily’s fingers went to her throat. She felt like she was fighting an invisible hand that was choking her. San Francisco was where her ex-husband David and his wife lived. Personal. Everything Lyden Gray did was personal. Everything was now a direct attack on her.

  “Come with me,” Ben was beside her. He took her hand and pulled her toward the door to the adjoining lab. Her feet were moving, but they seemed to be going of their own accord. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the TV screen. The truck was flipping over and exploding. And then there was another camera shot, this time apparently from an airplane. A huge fire was burning on the Golden Gate Bridge. You could see traffic backed up for miles at either end of the suspension bridge. There was nowhere for them to go.

  S
he went into the lab in front of Ben. Everyone was talking. Hinckey was on the phone, trying to concentrate on the conversation.

  “Yes, sir,” the SAC was saying to someone on the line. “Yes, sir. I’m clear on the orders.…Will do…Right.”

  Emily moved closer to the TV, trying to read the text scrolling at the bottom and listen to the reports at the same time.

  “The KPIX helicopter is in the water. A Coast Guard helicopter is here, and we’re told more rescue boats are on their way. We can’t tell if either the pilot or the reporter survived the crash.” There was a shot of the bay’s dark waters. Lights from a chopper were sweeping the surface of the bay. The close-up was too blurry to see anything.

  The text at the bottom read that the national terror-alert level had been raised to Red, the highest category. The screen split, and a reporter was speaking in front of the White House. A bulleted list came up, explaining the alert level, including the possible impact on the highways, trains and flights all across the country. The text at the bottom was reporting that the Golden Gate Bridge had been officially shut down. Over twenty injuries thus far. The fate of the truck driver was unknown. They were showing video footage. There was a large explosion on the screen, and Emily involuntarily stepped back. It was as if she could feel the heat. People were scrambling out of cars and running away. Fire was spreading on the leaking gasoline, consuming everything. Several cars were burning, as well. Tears were coursing steadily down her cheeks.

  A phone started ringing in the room. She whirled around, realizing it was the line from the café. Hinckey had ended the first call and was reaching for it himself.

  “I’ll do it,” she cried out. “Tell him to stop. I’ll do it. I’ll go.”

  Ben pulled her against him. He pressed her face against his chest.

  “Let them do their jobs,” he said to her quietly.

  “I can’t let people get hurt,” she said brokenly. “I have to stop this.”

  “You are stopping him, by doing what you’re best at. With every virus you disable, you’re cutting his power.”

  “It’s too slow.” She shook her head. They’d started running through the infected components. Not just from this location, but at a dozen other federal labs across the country. She was almost done with the program to run it automatically. But there were too many components. “We need time.”

  They both turned to Hinckey when the call ended. He looked at his people tracing the call. They were still working on it. But no one looked hopeful.

  “What’s he after now?” Ben asked.

  “Double again. Four hundred million,” the SAC answered. “I told him we’re ready to meet his initial demand of a hundred million. He’s not negotiating.”

  “Are you paying?” Emily asked.

  He nodded grimly. “Yes, we are. We’ll pay him now, then go after the bastard. And God help him when we catch him.”

  “How much time?”

  “We have until 9:00. We have to get the money transferred by then or he hits again.”

  It was already 8:41.

  “Can you do it that quickly?” Ben asked.

  “Washington says yes.” He gave a nod to one of the agents, who got on the phone right away. He turned to Emily. “Do you think he knows what we’re doing?”

  Emily nodded. “The components are on a database. He has a running count of everything that’s alive. It’s like playing Risk…he knows how many soldiers he has. He must see the numbers shrinking.”

  “That explains why he’s giving us less time,” Hinckey remarked.

  “How about his other demand?” Emily asked in a small voice.

  “His exact words were, ‘Emily should watch her computer for instructions.’”

  “That’s it?” Ben asked. “No going to the airport? No reserving a flight in her name?”

  Hinckey shook his head.

  Looking back at the fire raging on the bridge, Emily realized Lyden Gray was playing a new game. But she was damned if she knew the rules.

  Fifty-Five

  The computer clock clicked to 8:55. Lyden cracked all ten of his fingers in one swift movement and stared at the farthest left window on his laptop screen. It showed the bank account the money was supposed to be transferred into. Nothing yet.

  “Children on a school bus. That should get your attention. And there are plenty of them on the road at this time of the day.”

  He went back to his database of the components. The numbers were decreasing, but they weren’t even making a dent.

  “Arizona would have been my first choice,” he said. “I would have loved to visit your mom and dad, Emily, honey. But the timing won’t work. So we’ll just have to settle for Chicago.”

  He already had three different school buses lined up. There would be consecutive accidents. Probably some fatalities. A lot of headlines. And the money. He’d have to double it again. It was a matter of principle.

  8:59. He cracked his fingers once again before they moved over the keyboard. He was ready to play.

  It happened. The window on the left refreshed. The money was there. He stared at the bank account balance—at all those zeros.

  “Now we’re talking!” He stood up. “Four hundred million dollars. Just like that. I can’t fucking believe it.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. The ache in his shoulders was gone. He was no longer tired or hungry. There was so many things that he could do with that kind of money, so many places he could go.

  Lyden quickly sat down again. He had to distribute the funds to his other accounts first. He’d established them months ago. All part of the plan. Four complete identities and a dozen numbered accounts. He loved the Internet. It was amazing that with a few clicks of his mouse he could disperse that huge sum of money across seven continents.

  “Just try to trace it,” he challenged.

  It was 9:18 by the time he was finished with taking care of his finances. During his last conversation with Hinckey, he’d decided it was time to get down to business. Collecting the money was a must. Having Emily show up at some hotel room on Grand Cayman and wait for him—for however long he wanted and until he thought of somewhere else for her to go and wait—was just a game. Just a way to torment her, jerk her around a little. Like she’d been jerking him around. He now had a much better plan.

  Theoretically he was done. He could fade away and never be found. And it would be so easy. They’d expect him to get out of the country, but he was too smart for them. A couple of weeks of laying low in New England. Maybe a trip to Maine. Then maybe Canada would be next on the list. After that, he’d play it by ear. He would start traveling, maybe go to Australia. Or Europe. The skiing would be great in Gstaad.

  Lyden stood up again. He left the laptop open. He didn’t like unfinished business. He walked to the front end of the cottage. He couldn’t get away from the dank smell. At the same time, he couldn’t open any of the windows or the glass doors overlooking the pool deck.

  During the night, Lyden had turned off the security system in the cabana for only fifteen seconds and then turned it back on again. Just long enough for him to make himself at home.

  It was absurd how easy it was to find out where Emily had sent her son. The hospital records were all online. Typing in Conor’s social security number, Lyden had been able to read everything there was about the teenager’s injury and treatment. In the same file he’d found the address and phone numbers where the patient could be reached. Emily had used her own address and phone number. But there was a second phone number, as well. And this one belonged to John Colter in Westport, Connecticut.

  “Simpson, my ass,” Lyden muttered. “You’ve been fucking Colter the entire time, haven’t you?”

  She’d have to pay for that. Or someone would pay. And it might as well be her precious son.

  Two cars were parked on the cul-de-sac. Lyden figured they were probably cops or FBI. Whatever. Let them watch the house. He wasn’t stupid enough to walk up and knock on the front doo
r, especially not at 1:30 in the morning.

  The backyards were connected. A quick navigation satellite check and he knew every street and house in a one-mile radius. Lyden had left the rental car in a boatyard lot not a half mile away and found the place easily, coming in along a little dirt track leading up from the water. The closed cabana had been a bonus. It bought him enough time to settle one last score before starting on his new life.

  And the rest was history. He was in. The money was safe and waiting for him. All he had left now was to tie up a few loose ends.

  Lyden heard voices in the yard and moved closer to the window. Conor was heading this way with a white-haired guy. They passed the cabana without looking at it and went straight to the barn. Lyden had checked out the building last night. An attached four-car garage wasn’t big enough. These fucking people had to have a separate building to work on a car.

  He didn’t know why he was complaining. This was going to work out better for him, anyway.

  Fifty-Six

  No e-mail. No instant messages. It was 9:45 already, and no new accidents, either.

  It would be too optimistic, though, to assume it was over.

  Ben watched Emily as she explained the program she’d just created to one of the FBI computer engineers. Her gaze kept returning to the clock. She was as untrusting of Lyden Gray as he was.

  Hinckey was hovering around her, too. “How long before the program runs through the entire database?” he asked her.

  “Hypothetically, if every board on the database were alive and running, it’d go through it in less than thirty-two hours,” Emily explained, turning to look at him. “But we both know that’s not a likely scenario. There will be a lot of loose cannons out there lying dormant until someone decides to turn over the engine.”

  “So long as Gray isn’t sitting out there ready to jump in and take advantage of it, though, we’ll be okay,” Hinckey said, sounding like he wanted to reassure himself more than anyone else.