by A. J Tata
Misha contacted the administrator, went through a series of stupid questions to prove she wasn’t law enforcement, and then got down to business. Ultimately, these people turned out to be out-of-work actors from Southport, in Brunswick County.
It was all a show staged by Misha. The blood was real, but they had extracted that from her father earlier in the day. But the two men, the boat, everything . . . It was all an act.
Until her mother and Franco showed up.
Then things got real.
But right now, Jake Mahegan walked into the room and looked at her, as if he knew exactly everything she had just been thinking about. She slowly pulled herself out of recalling the memory, which was like watching a movie inside her head, and focused on the present moment with the giant man, Jake Mahegan, standing above her.
What she had told no one was that she had also made the code so that the cars and the birds could talk at the same time. She had made it as a backup in case it was all a trick. She knew that if she could see into the Cefiro database, they could probably see into hers, though they took extra precautions to hide their code in the very bottom of the Deep Web. But she had made the code and had the flash drive in her coat pocket when they left the house for the staged meeting.
Then Franco had knocked her out and had taken the flash drive, but at least her father was safe, she believed. The plan was for the actors to take him to Southport in the boat and keep him there until this was all done. They’d paid extra for that.
And if they could activate the code, which wasn’t easy, she wasn’t sure she could stop it from happening now, not without her computers in the basement or the computers she had seen in the research and development building two days ago.
There was only one way to stop the code from working, which was to get inside the Cefiro compound and delete it from the server.
But more important to her was making sure her father was safe.
She didn’t want anyone mad at her for lying to them about killing her father, but she had had to make it seem like he was dead so he could stay alive.
At least that had been her plan.
CHAPTER 28
JAKE MAHEGAN
BEFORE HEADING DOWN INTO THE BASEMENT, MAHEGAN CALLED Promise and spoke with her to check on her condition. She was fine and was improving by the minute, though she expressed concern about him and his head. He absently ran a hand across Casey Livingstone’s combo stitch and shave job. Perhaps she had reason to be concerned. He asked Detective Patterson if he could put some protection on Promise’s room, and he agreed that was a good idea.
Mahegan then called Patch using their secure encryption on the Zebra app and told him what he knew and what he was planning to do, so far.
“Got a confirmation that it is Mirza who is inside the research and development building,” Mahegan said, recalling the dying man on the beach.
“Not that there was any doubt,” Patch replied. “Where?”
“One of his heroes tried to kidnap Misha, and I asked him a few questions as he bled out,” Mahegan said. He didn’t utter the term heroes in a positive tone.
“Well, we both know that if he’s here, that’s not good for us in anyway, shape, or form.”
“Are we tracking Soleimani? Is he talking to Mirza?”
“We are, but we’ve seen no comms. They must have planned this thing to be executed on radio silence.”
Soleimani was Iran’s Quds Force leader. The fact that Mirza was a protégé of his was made even worse due to the lethargic response provided so far by the Department of Homeland Security.
“According to one of the fighters he killed, he’s definitely here, and he’s in the research and development facility at Cefiro. What is the issue with just making that place a hole in the ground?”
“Jake, you’ve got about twenty law enforcement types crawling around New Hanover County, looking for you. Never knew you were part of the Occupy Wall Street crowd,” Patch joked. “So we have to be very careful with what intel we pass. Savage is trying. The politicians are in the way. This was the first car manufacturing plant for the state of North Carolina. Sure, there’s interest and concern, but they’ve got the Homeland Security and Public Safety teams that have inspected the entire facility from top to bottom, they say, including the R & D building. Nothing. Nada. Everyone from the business community to state and federal politicians has been crawling all over themselves, patting themselves on the back about this deal and the number of jobs created and so on.”
“Come on. I saw these thugs infiltrate and attack the R & D building and seize it in classic military raid–style. It looked like something we would have done in our own day. They’ve got a tunnel connecting to the ammunition depot at Sunny Point. They’re using our own bombs to attack us. Can’t they go back and check for the tunnels again?”
“I get it, and I believe you, but Savage is trying to convince the ass hamsters on Capitol Hill that the threat is right there, right now.”
“We’ve got four ports closed, and they don’t see it yet? I know I’ve been out of the loop at the microlevel here, but somebody’s got to be going ape shit over this thing.”
“Well, so far it is a lot of talking heads and everyone blaming everyone else. Look, you asked me to look at the combinations of words that Promise had said, and both O’Malley and I agree that she said, ‘Saifu,’ which is a type of poisonous ant from Africa. Driver ant or army ant. Big, move in swarms of millions, and are carnivorous. It would fit with the whole ANTS theme of autonomous nanotechnology swarms.”
“And it would fit with any attack coming our way,” Mahegan said. “Like a code word. Look at the attacks on the ships. Swarming sparrows all diving for the same spot and exploding to sink the ships. Practically nothing that could be done. I’m guessing that some kind of tow plane or small cargo plane dumped these things out near the targets, using minimum fuel to home in on the ships.”
“I’m a step ahead of you there,” Patch said. “We’ve got sightings of CASA two-twelve aircraft within a few miles of each of these locations when the attacks occurred. That has to be the release vehicle.”
“Okay. Have we checked for where all these cars have been shipped to?”
“The weigh stations along I-ninety-five show over twenty Cefiro car carriers heading north and south, but several could have taken more rural routes and avoided the stations. That was a lucky hit for us. But you’ve got to figure about six to a carrier. That’s one hundred twenty car bombs.”
“Nothing lucky about that,” Mahegan said. “So I think the key here is to get inside the compound and disable their ability to communicate. My guess is that these cars are all loaded with explosives and have preprogrammed targets. Misha said that Cefiro had her working on making the cars and aerial systems able to communicate. It sounds like they want to attack, regroup, attack again, regroup, and so on, without stopping. It’s like a rolling thunder of the most accurate guided missiles in the world.”
“Depends on how these things are powered. From what we retrieved at the ship locations, each of the Sparrows has a fuel cell that lasts about thirty minutes, so unless there’s something else, I don’t see how they keep up with the cars, unless there are successive drops of Sparrows.”
Patch’s words “unless there’s something else” gave Mahegan pause. He had been a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, and he had also been a special operations soldier. In each case the mission was either to seize a lodgment and hold it, to operate behind enemy lines, or to do both. Thinking about the map of the Eastern Seaboard, from Savannah to Norfolk, he came to the conclusion that the Iranians had skipped Wilmington, not because it was smaller than the others, but precisely because it was the perfect lodgment, with a good port facility and a highway network connecting to the major interstates.
Which made him ask Patch, “Can you get a rundown on the ships coming into the Port of Wilmington? We could be facing something much bigger here. A car with a full tank of gas can make it to
Washington, DC. Bigger unmanned aerial systems can fly for hours. If the Sparrows are the tactical fighters, there may be bigger aircraft coming from somewhere, like a joint operation. We were usually more effective on the ground if we had air cover, and the airplanes usually were more effective if they had us flushing out the bad guys.”
“My sense is that this thing is moving faster than our politicians can react,” Patch said. “I think you know what we need to do.”
“I do,” he said. “Can Savage help at all?”
“I’ve asked him,” Patch said. “You know how he walks along the edge. You’ll know as soon as I do whether or not you’ve got backup.”
“Me and an eleven-year-old girl against the Iranians?”
“You’ve had tougher,” Patch said. Gallows humor. Always the anecdote when facing an intractable problem.
McCarthy and Patterson were standing near him, listening to the entire conversation, their jaws now slack, in shock.
Misha looked deep in thought as he stepped into the safe room. She had that inward-outward gaze again, like a child possessed.
McCarthy and Patterson followed him into the large room. It was outfitted with sofas, chairs, end tables, coffee tables, and artwork. It had an adjoining kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, like a small house within a large house. After the past forty-eight hours he guessed that this place was as safe as anywhere they could be right now. Plus, he could see plenty of gun cases and firearms. They could hold off an attacking regiment, if necessary, with the amount of weapons McCarthy kept stored there.
The three burgundy leather sofas formed a U shape that faced a large television. Casey pointed at the TV and said, “Those cars. They’re everywhere, apparently. Loaded with bombs.”
Everyone sat down as Casey pumped up the volume on a news channel. Misha stood in the far corner, looking at them from a forty-five-degree angle, her mind most likely churning at the speed of an Intel processor chip. It was one o’clock in the morning, and he knew that today was the day. Any operational commander that had experienced the disruption the Iranians had today would either quit and live to fight another day or would attack with whatever resources he had. His sense was that Mirza would attack.
He looked around the room and thought that just two days ago his life had been pretty carefree. Surfing. Swimming. Checking up on friends. Now he was standing in a safe room with a big-game hunter, a detective, a nurse, a psychiatrist, a wounded mother, and her savant child.
He turned to Casey and asked, “Is Layne doing okay?”
“She’s hanging tough,” she said. “Have you heard from Promise?”
“I have. She’s hanging tough, too. Awake and feeling better. The detective here is putting protection on her room.”
Casey looked at Patterson and nodded. The conversation was stilted, awkward. They were a group of strangers thrust into this situation, like random passengers clutching to a life raft off a sinking ship. Who was in charge? What to do?
Mahegan’s motto had always been “When in charge, be in charge.” Even though he was in McCarthy’s house, he got the impression that McCarthy didn’t want any part of this, other than to help his friend Tess. The detective was pursuing his case, which Mahegan admired, but with his age and local history, he had limited scope and physical abilities. Tess was a reluctant participant who had done wonders and acted bravely.
Casey, on the other hand, was a surfer, an explorer. She was adventurous and patriotic. She missed her marine and was mad that the world, and perhaps this same enemy, had taken him from her in Iraq. She was a recruit, in his mind.
With Misha, there was never a doubt. She needed to get into the computer system of Cefiro and shut down the operation, and she wanted her father back . . . alive.
“Misha, can you hack into Cefiro from here?” he asked.
She turned her head to look at him, then looked away and started rocking slowly. He saw her eyes briefly focus on him, so he knew he was communicating with her.
“Can you stop the attack?” he asked.
She reached out, in search of a phone. She had lost his burner cell in the boat escapade. Casey handed Misha her burner smartphone.
I can stop it only from where they have loaded the flash drive. The bearded man took the flash drive from me the night that we . . . met at the warehouse.
Her thumbs worked furiously. She would type, then back up and retype. If she were speaking, she would be stumbling over the words, and she would be doing so because she knew that he believed her father was still alive.
“So you need to be in the Cefiro headquarters to turn this off?” Mahegan asked.
“Hey, hey, no secrets,” Tess Hallowell said.
So he read aloud every time Misha typed.
Wherever they plugged in that flash drive.
“What’s the difference?” he asked her. “You’ve been remotely dancing all through their stuff, and now you’re telling me you have to physically be there?”
The difference is that I wrote this code. I made it secure so that no one, not even me, could hack it without being on the actual server. And I did so on the promise that I would get my daddy back alive.
After hearing him read Misha’s message, McCarthy said, “I believe that’s his cue. Detective, you take it from here.”
Patterson turned on a video monitor that showed Roger Constance gagged and tied in a concrete-block room that looked familiar. Perhaps it was one of the bunkers, the first one, Mahegan thought, that he had encountered.
Misha ran to the screen and shouted, “Daddy!” It sounded more like a deep- throated bass “Da-da.” She slapped at the screen.
“I just got a call from some anonymous number, telling me to look at a link,” Detective Patterson said. “I said, ‘A link? You mean like a sausage link?’ And they didn’t find that too funny. So they sent me a text with an Internet link, and it goes to this Web site.” Patterson pulled out his cell phone, fumbled with it for a second until he found the text, and showed it to the group.
Misha snatched Detective Patterson’s phone, stared at the text, and then typed.
It’s a dot-onion link, which means it’s from the Deep Web. My daddy was supposed to be safe. That was the whole purpose of the act of killing him.
Dot onion was the suffix to get into the Deep Web, like dot com was for normal users of the Internet, Mahegan knew. Her use of the word “act” concerned him.
“What act?” Mahegan asked.
“Misha, I think we need to be careful here,” Tess Hallowell said, realizing that faking someone’s death was a crime.
But Daddy was supposed to be safe. How did he get captured? She looked through the door into the next room, where her mother was lying unconscious. She typed with her face bunched tight, eyes squinting, cheeks puffing and red.
Misha then threw the phone at Mahegan, who caught it against his chest. He looked at it and read it aloud. “You did it!”
Misha was pointing at her mother as he read aloud the message.
“Misha, stop, honey. We don’t know who did it,” Tess said.
Mahegan tried to change the subject. “My guess is that the second dead body Detective Patterson found was that of the one who drove the boat in the video. Franco saw it, had it followed, captured your father as ransom for you not hacking the code, and killed the man, who is probably an actor in the local guild. I’m assuming it was pretty recent, because we’re just now receiving the information, and they are about to attack,” he said. “But what’s the play?” he asked both McCarthy and Patterson.
“The link says, and I’ll read it, ‘If the girl stops our attack, her father dies.’ Pretty straightforward,” Detective Patterson said.
“Misha’s our best weapon,” Mahegan said, perhaps not as politically correct as he might have been with her psychiatrist in the room.
“Misha is not a weapon!” Tess shot back. “She’s an eleven-year-old girl.”
Misha was staring at the video, a live feed, of her father’s grainy
black-and-white image. He was bound and gagged, had his head cast downward, and was dressed in the same clothes as in the other video at the warehouse. He wore a dark jacket, slacks, and a light dress shirt that was stained with dirt or blood or both. Misha reached out, and Mahegan handed her the phone.
I won’t stop the attack. De La Cruz whispered to me that if I did, they will kill my daddy. That she was Bouseh, the kiss of death.
Her countenance was firm, resolute.
That confirmed what Mahegan suspected, and he was glad he could clear Casey, Bisous, from his list of suspects in this attack. He focused on Misha.
“Misha, you’re a problem solver,” he said. “Instead of one problem, we now have two, right?”
She said nothing, just stared at him. Everyone in the room was silent.
“The first problem is getting your father back alive. Even if you don’t stop the attack, what do you think the chances are that they will let him live? He’s seen too much. So we have to go get him, anyway.”
Misha said nothing. She just stared at him, wheels in her mind spinning, calculating, assessing, crunching algorithms of probability, and doing a dozen other things he couldn’t comprehend.
“Second, and I know your daddy taught you this, is that this is a great country, and we need to protect it. We can do both things that need to be done. We must solve both problems, because if we don’t do both, then we will not solve either problem.”
Misha continued to stare at him, probably with a whole new set of calculations running through her mind. Maybe he had set her on a cognitive path toward thinking about solutions, instead of stopping at the terrorists’ “offer” and accepting it. Or maybe she was just staring at her father, wanting him to be okay. That would be a normal eleven-year-old response.
But Misha was not a normal eleven-year-old.
She nodded, looked at the phone, and typed.
I think I know how we can do this.
CHAPTER 29
JAKE MAHEGAN
“MISHA, I THINK WE NEED TO BORROW YOUR GLASSES. I KNOW how special they are to you,” Mahegan said to her in private. He knelt in front of her, putting her at his height.