“Coffee?” Jake asked. “Not tea?”
“Guess you’re rubbing off on me.” She glanced back at him. “By all means, please sweeten it up.” She still couldn’t believe that it had only been a few days since she’d arrived at the cabin in Montana.
But maybe it would all be over soon. If Bekas was off the grid and his men had Xander, the countdown had already begun.
Xander . . . A stab of guilt spiraled through her. While she was joking around with Jake and kissing him, Xander was being held captive. Worse, he might be dead. Her body stilled, and she lifted her fingers from the keyboard. Her stomach grew nauseous, and she felt like she was on an out of control Ferris wheel, spinning round and round so fast she’d get chucked off.
He’s okay. He has to be. She drew up the image of her best friend in her mind. Funny and caring Xander. She wanted him to walk her down the aisle if she ever got married.
Marriage? Me? She stole another quick look at Jake as he worked at the coffee machine in the room. His back was to her, and she remembered the scars beneath the shirt. And it reminded her of exactly how dangerous @Anarchy was, which meant Xander was close to death. And she and Jake might be the only ones standing between whether he lived or died.
Her fingers trembled as they touched the keys again, and she forced herself to take in a few deep breaths. She had to get back in the zone if she’d get to Xander in time.
After ten minutes and a couple of sips of coffee later, Jake was standing next to her, his glasses on, his arms crossed. He leaned forward to get a better look at the screen as she studied the files she decrypted that the NSA had collected on @Anarchy. Maybe they had information that MI6 didn’t.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing right now. I’ve just got to look at this case from a different angle. There has to be something in here. Something I’ve missed.” She switched over to the information on the drone strike that killed Bekas’s wife and daughters. The evidence and documents were similar to those that MI6 had, but here she found that the key players involved on the American side were listed.
“Shit!” She frantically tapped at the keys. She pointed to a picture of a man in a naval uniform. He was tall and perhaps in his mid-thirties, with short blonde hair and a square jaw. “I know this guy. What was his name . . .?”
“What?”
Alexa switched back over to the @Anarchy files again. “It’s got to be in here,” she said as she scrolled through the folders. “Here.” She clicked open the file labeled, “Vegas March 2016.” “Remember when I told you that Anarchy had managed to kill people in Vegas all the way from Istanbul?”
“Yeah. How?”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about that for now. But look at who died in the explosion.”
“Don Turner. Vanessa Shane. Brett Reeds. Sylvia Herald. Spike Anderson,” Jake read down the list.
“Spike.” She flipped back to the screen of the man in uniform. “He was one of the drone pilots that killed Bekas’s family.”
“And then he died six months ago in an explosion that was connected to Anarchy?”
“Looks that way. That can’t be a coincidence, right?” Her body was thrumming to life as her brain worked faster than her fingers could move. “I didn’t know the names of the Americans involved in the drone strike—not until now. But what if—”
“Anarchy has been systematically targeting those responsible,” Jake finished. He cupped a hand over his mouth.
“It’s possible. Maybe not every hit targeted someone on the drone strike because it would have been obvious, but if he buried his true agenda in the midst of other random strikes . . .”
It was all making sense to her now. For Kemal Bekas, this had always been about revenge. He wanted every person who had been involved in the death of his family to suffer. So, he had used his brilliant computer skills to orchestrate the movements of a cyber-terrorist group, using the group as an elaborate cover for his fiendish retribution.
“If this is right, we need to see how many of the people on that list are still alive.” He raked a hand through his hair.
She would need to call MI6 after they confirmed their theory. They would need all the help they could get to stop the attack and rescue Xander.
“Where was the last attack?” Jake dragged a chair next to hers, offering another set of eyes on the case.
“India. A British bank.” She pulled up the list of deaths and shook her head. “Nope.”
“Before that?”
Alexa pulled up the next case, and they cross-referenced the deaths with the drone strike team members. “The pilot stationed in Afghanistan . . .” A lump formed in her throat as she processed Bekas’s killing spree.
After an hour of scouring every file, they found five more people who had died from the drone strike team. And those were just the attacks that Intelligence had been able to connect to @Anarchy.
“This bastard killed over seventy people just to cover his tracks.” Jake was on his feet, his face pulled together in anger. The vein in his neck was pulsing.
Once Alexa finished the records of known attacks, she started to search obituaries in both Britain and the U.S. for the remaining names on the list. She couldn’t sign into MI6 for additional assistance. Fortunately, the men she searched for weren’t undercover operatives. They were military and government employees. People who had Facebook pages and public lives.
Jake slammed a hand against the desk. “Jesus. Only one person is still alive. Goddamn.”
“One person,” she repeated in shock. A breath of air rushed from her lips. “And not just anyone. The General of CENTCOM.” She curled her hands into fists in her lap and pushed back from the desk. “Bekas wants to destroy Parliament for revenge—that’s an obvious target. But would killing an American general be enough for him?” The murder of anyone was horrific, but she’d expect Bekas to crave a bigger finale, to go out with a bang that would echo through the ages.
“I don’t know, but this man is the former General of CENTCOM. He retired.” Jake pointed at the image of the man in uniform on the screen. He had strong shoulders, a fit body, and silvery gray hair parted to the side, with a large nose and light green eyes. “He’s a friend of my family’s—I was at his retirement dinner two months ago.”
“Shit. He’s probably not part of the plan. I mean,” she stood, “they’ll try and kill him, so we need to alert your government. But that doesn’t help us figure out Bekas’s big target.”
Jake shook his head and moved to the side table and lifted the phone from the receiver. “We need to let everyone know what’s going on.” He held the phone in the air in her direction. “Go ahead. I’ll make the next call.”
She came in front of him and took the phone, wrapping the cord around her finger as she punched in the number, her heart like a storm in her chest, furious, the blood pumping so hard she could hardly even see.
When the call was picked up, she sputtered out her code: “Zero nine five three two eleven.”
“Access denied.”
The call ended.
She scrunched her brow and quickly jabbed at the numbers to ring the agency again.
Jake was studying her, worry flickering across his face.
“Zero nine five three two eleven,” she said in a rush.
“Access denied.”
Her skin flushed as she slammed the phone down and gritted her teeth. “I’ve been cut out.” She didn’t know if MI6 was doing this to protect her, not to mention the intel. Or if it was because she had been fired for not following orders. Either way, it wasn’t good.
“I guess I’ll have to call someone else.” Her mind spun as she tried to determine the best alternate course for communication. She had to alert them in one way or another, but she had wanted it to be secure. She had wanted to speak with Laney . . .
“It’s going to be okay.” He pressed his hands to her shoulders and slid them up her neck before cupping her face in his hands. “I promise, Alexa. E
verything is going to work out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was Jake’s turn to make the call.
He clutched the phone tight. He hadn’t spoken to Trent since the team had left for Barcelona, and he wondered if there was any news on his side. Maybe something good, for once.
Alexa was back in front of the computer, doing her best to discover Bekas’s target.
“Trent? It’s Jake,” he said once the line clicked over.
“Jesus Christ. What the hell happened? I’ve got guys in hospital beds in Barcelona, and no one knows what’s going on.”
“What do you mean? Didn’t Randall tell you?” Jake asked.
Alexa swiveled in her chair, looking over at him, concern spreading across her beautiful face. Jake’s chest tightened.
“Randall’s not with you? I thought if you were calling that meant—”
Don’t tell me . . . “Randall and I parted yesterday. He was supposed to go to the embassy and let you all know what was going on.”
Alexa was on her feet, her arms folded over her chest. She’d called London PD and asked them to get a message to MI6. The officer she had spoken to had been skeptical, but she believed they’d do due diligence and follow through. But what if Seth never made it to the British Consulate? Perhaps everyone was still in the dark.
“Well, Randall didn’t make it,” Trent said slowly.
Jake hung his head until it rested against his hand. “Any word from MI6 about their agents in Barcelona?”
“No. MI6 alerted us to the hacking issue, and we’ve identified and shut down the problem within our servers—well, at the NSA, which is all that Anarchy targeted, so it seems. We also know what Alpha and Beta teams could tell us—you were ambushed, everyone split up, and the targets were lost,” Trent answered.
“Well, it looks like Anarchy might be using Randall, Seth, and Xander as hostages.” And he had to think that because the alternative was that they were dead.
Alexa turned her back and crossed the room to stand in front of the window, which offered a view of the city sprawled out below. “We also think we know their end game. Sort of.” Jake’s stomach rolled. “Shit. I just realized that since Randall didn’t make it to you, you never got the message about the drones.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You need to ground all drones. Monitor them at the Sigonella base,” Jake said as fast he could.
“Hang on. What are you saying?” Trent’s voice cut through the phone, the deepness seeming to vibrate against Jake’s ear.
“The drone we used to try and take out Ansari in Libya from Sicily last month was hacked,” Jake said. “And if you had mentioned the drone back in Montana we might be sitting in a Goddamn different situation right now.” His heartbeat quickened as his anger ticked up a notch.
“Wait—you remember the mission?”
Jake should have lead with that. “I remember everything,” he said slowly—almost as if he didn’t believe it.
“That’s great, but . . . well, shit, we don’t know with all certainty the drone was ever hacked. It could have malfunctioned.”
“Trust me, Trent. It was hacked. Anarchy is going to hack it again, and this time it won’t be a trial run.” Jake’s gaze traveled back to Alexa. Her shoulders were hunched, her hand on the window pane.
“So, like I said, you need to get ahold of Sigonella and have them ground all drones. Lock them inside the damn hangars. I don’t know if Anarchy can pull off a hijacking, but let’s not wait and find out.” He heaved out a deep breath. “Oh, and—more bad news—find Frank Warren, the retired General of CENTCOM. Anarchy is coming after him. They’ve already targeted and murdered everyone who was a part of the drone strike that led to the death of Bekas’s family.”
Jake couldn’t believe he was saying this, that this was real and not some elaborate trial run like back in his Quantico days, when the government would throw every terrorist scenario at him, testing him on his ability to assess and handle the situation. He had graduated at the top of his class and even became one of the leading experts at counterterrorism in the U.S. He held seminars now at Quantico. But this . . . it was beyond anything he’d ever imagined, beyond even the farfetched trials at the FBI Academy.
Jake blinked a few times, squeezing his past from his mind.
Trent gasped. “Are you serious?”
Do I sound like I’m kidding? “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.
Trent took a long-winded breath, which crackled through the phone like feedback from a blender. Jake pulled the phone from his ear for a moment. “We’ll locate Frank, but the drones . . . that might not be so easy.” Trent’s words were followed by a soft hiss.
“Why?” Jake’s brows snapped together.
“Last month, the President finally agreed to order a massive strike against the ISIS compounds in Libya. We’ve been waiting for months to get this approval from the Italians and the President to finally go in and obliterate the ISIS military bases in Northern Libya.”
“Well, post-fucking-pone it!”
“I’ll see what I can do, but I think it’s happening soon. Like, tonight.”
“Do you not hear what I’m saying? This isn’t some fucking coincidence that there is a strike scheduled for tonight!” Jake shouted, not giving a damn if he pissed off his boss. Rank didn’t matter, not with lives on the line. To hell with the aftermath. “If those drones fly, you’re playing right into their hands. They hacked our servers, which means they knew about this attack in Libya. They’re counting on it. For once, we have the intel to stop them. For God’s sake, let’s use it!”
“I’ll need to go to the President on this.”
“Go to the Pope for all I care but call off the strike.”
“Watch it, Jake. We’re friends, but dammit—” Trent stopped himself. “Call me back in an hour. And . . . Jake? Don’t do anything fucking stupid.”
Jake slammed the phone down, anger billowing through him until he felt that he might erupt like one of the volcanoes nearby. Hell, maybe it should blow—and lava could pour right over Bekas and his damn men.
Jake pressed his palms to his temples, trying to lessen the intensity of his anger that flowed through him.
“We might be offering Anarchy a drone on a silver platter, so we need to find out where they’re planning to hit. I hope your guys back in London are handling Parliament.” His hands slipped down to his shoulders where he kneaded them, working at the tension.
He snapped his eyes shut as memories from the last twelve years ripped fresh wounds. So many men had given their lives for their country.
And Jake would be damned to hell if he refused to let anyone else die on his watch.
“You know this Bekas guy,” he said, his eyes still closed. “We know he has been out for revenge all along. Aside from the general, what would he want?” He slowly opened his eyes to find Alexa standing right in front of him.
“Well.” Alexa covered a hand to her mouth as her eyes darted to the ceiling in thought. Her eyes widened a little when her fingers slipped free from her lips. “Within a month after his family died, he began campaigning against the use of drone strikes. He even went to the media. He wanted his story shared. He hoped it would stop the strikes if the public knew more details about the deaths of his wife and children.”
“What happened?”
“The story made the news for maybe a day or two, and then people forgot. I can imagine that he was upset. He wanted an apology, and he wanted the world to know—”
“Which is why he wanted to use me as a delivery boy,” he interrupted, “to send some sort of message over live TV, maybe? He’s most likely making this a suicide mission, too. That, or he has plans to escape to some tropical island and never look back.”
Alexa tapped a short nail against her lip as she focused on Jake. “If he attacks the Palace of Westminster, it’ll be empty. Not easy, either. Security has tightened after previous attempts in the past.”
<
br /> “If they can pull it off, destroying that iconic building would be symbolic, though,” Jake said.
“Bloody hell. That’s it, isn’t it? He wants everyone to see the consequences of drone strikes. To put the fear of God into people, in the hope that the people will pressure our governments to stop using drones on enemy targets.”
“It’s a bit of an extreme way to get your point across, but we’re still back to the question of where he plans to use the drone.”
Alexa grumbled and grabbed a black hair tie from her wrist. She swept her hair up into a messy bun atop her head. “It has to be the American Embassy in Rome. It’s close, and it would send a message.”
“But we can prevent the loss of life by clearing it out. At this point, we have to assume he knows he probably won’t kill anyone in London. And I’m pretty sure this SOB will want the world to see a loss of life among the chaos.”
“Maybe a place where people feel safe. A target that people wouldn’t expect, which makes it all the more frightening,” she added. “Clubs, malls, markets . . .”
Jake wished he could forget all over again the drastic increase in terrorist attacks in the last several years. If the public knew how many had been stopped—all those that didn’t make the news—people would be scared to do almost anything at all.
“It doesn’t need to be a soft target since they’ll have a damn drone. But it has to be close because Bekas must know he won’t be able to override the drone for very long. The military will attempt to take down the drone’s satellite or the drone itself . . .”
“So where?”
His gaze trailed from her hand, which was slightly trembling as it pressed to her core.
“The drone strikes in Libya are tonight,” he said, reaching for her wrist to check the time on her watch, “which means we have about ten hours to figure it out.”
Darkness had fallen over the city and never before had Jake been so worried about the setting of the sun.
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