“We are not raiding the neighbors’ pantry.”
“The bread will be stale before they get back,” Eric whines.
“No, Eric.”
Eric shifts around on the sofa, trying to find a comfortable position. “It’s too damn hot to eat anyway.”
“I agree. Besides, I think I drank too much water back at the police station.” Seeing her husband’s discomfort, Peyton asks, “Would it be more comfortable if you stretched out on the bed for a bit?”
“Maybe.”
Peyton stands and helps Eric off the couch. She grabs the flashlight from the kitchen counter and lights their way down the hall to the bedroom. Eric kicks off his shoes, slips off his slacks, and flops down on the bed. Peyton decides to stretch out for a few minutes to give her aching feet a break. She lies down beside him and clicks off the flashlight. The heat, mingled with their exhaustion and the dark, is a recipe for sleep and, within moments, both are snoring.
Sometime later, Peyton stirs awake, an alarm going off in her head. She sits up and that’s when she smells it. Smoke! She jumps off the bed and races down the hall, the smoke growing heavier and filling her lungs with each breath. She turns into the living room and her heart stutters when she discovers the living room engulfed in flames.
She screams Eric’s name and turns, racing back to the bedroom. “Eric, Eric, get up. The condo’s on fire. Hurry, Eric. Wake up! We have to get out!” She scrambles to find the flashlight and clicks it on to see the room filling quickly with smoke.
Eric struggles to sit up. “Call 911!”
“We can’t.” She grabs Eric’s hand, helps him off the bed, and pulls him down the hallway.
“My shoes,” Eric says, trying to free his hand.
“No time,” Peyton shouts, giving his arm a hard tug. “C’mon.”
Entering the living room, Peyton discovers that the fire is spreading rapidly, with two walls now engulfed and flames flickering across the ceiling. With smoke stinging their eyes and filling their lungs, Peyton grabs Eric’s hand and pulls him out the door. When they reach the ground, they stagger onto the front lawn and collapse to their knees, coughing, as the fire roars behind them.
CHAPTER 69
With much work to do, Hank and Paige snap out of their melancholy moods as they board the agency plane at the private jet terminal at Newark International Airport. That location was chosen for one reason — New Jersey still has power. Hank follows Paige up the jet stairs. The pilot takes one look at Paige’s grease-stained clothes and says, “Rough day?”
“You could say that,” Paige says, dumping her bag on one of the seats and plopping down. This is a different jet and a different flight crew from this morning’s flight. Hank steps inside and offers his hand. “How ya doin’, Michelle?”
“Still waiting on my phone to ring, Hank. You?” Michelle Miller asks.
“Been a long day. I still have your number, I just haven’t had the time.”
Michelle smiles. “You’re a busy man, Hank. Are we going back to Davison?”
“No, Baltimore. Is that a problem?”
“No, I just need to modify the flight plan. We loaded on some food. You two make yourselves comfortable and we’ll be in the air momentarily.”
Hank ducks his head inside the cockpit and the copilot, Carlos Torres, turns in his seat. “Damn, Hank, you travel more than the president.”
“You may be right, Carlos. You doin’ all right?”
“Living the dream, Hank. Living the dream.”
Hank walks deeper into the cabin and drops his bag on the floor and takes the seat diagonally opposite from Paige. This jet has seating for eight with two clusters of four leather chairs that face one another.
“How do you remember all their nam — never mind. Forget I asked. But, hell, you can’t do that, either.”
Hank offers her a tired smile as he digs out his cell phone. “There’s food.”
“I heard. Don’t have much of an appetite at the moment.”
“Can’t blame you for that.” Hank powers on his phone and finds a dozen missed calls and ten text messages, most from Elaine Mercer, but a couple of the recent calls are from Nana. He decides to return her call first. He touches Nana’s picture, puts the phone to his ear, and the call goes straight to voice mail. He disconnects and tries her home phone, but the call won’t go through. Worried, he scrolls quickly through his text messages and finds out why Nana isn’t answering in Mercer’s last text. “Looks like the hackers have been busy.”
“What now?” Paige asks.
“They’ve taken down more power grids. This time they hit the heartland.”
“Figured that was coming sooner or later.”
“Yeah, me, too. Do you think they’re going to take them all down?” Hank asks.
Paige pulls out her smartphone and turns it on. “I don’t see why not. Anything else from Mercer?”
Hank scrolls through the messages. “Looks like they hit two more nuclear power plants, one in Arkansas and the other in San Diego.” Hank tosses his phone onto a nearby seat and stands. He steps over to the small galley area, grabs two bottles of water from the mini fridge, and hands one to Paige. “You callin’ Natalie?”
Paige takes the bottle, unscrews the lid, and takes a long drink. “Yeah, as soon as I recharge my batteries a bit. I’m physically and mentally exhausted.”
“We both need to eat somethin’.” Hank drains his water, screws the lid back on, and walks back to the small galley area. He pulls open the warming drawer and the doughy, cheesy aroma from the pizza inside instantaneously triggers his hunger button. He pulls the large box out and lifts the lid to see a half-dozen different slices of deep-dish pizza inside. He grabs a couple of plates from the overhead cabinet and carries it all back to his seat. After handing Paige a plate he offers her first choice and she selects a slice of sausage and mushroom.
“Change your mind about bein’ hungry?”
“I didn’t think I was hungry until I smelled the pizza,” Paige says, scrolling through her e-mails, hoping to see one from her sister, Peyton. No such luck.
“Works every time.” Hank grabs a slice of meat lover’s, closes the lid, and returns the box to the warming drawer. He grabs two beers from the fridge and returns to his seat, passing a cold brew to Paige. Once they’ve eaten their fill and drained their beers, both pull out their laptops and sign on to the jet’s secure Wi-Fi network.
Paige shoots off an e-mail to Natalie while Hank does a little digging into the operation of the nation’s power grids, hoping to prove his theory that the hackers are targeting specific PLCs. What he finds only reinforces his original theory. No matter the fuel source — coal, natural gas, nuclear — the heat they generate is used to create steam that powers a spinning electrical generator, most often a steam turbine. And the same principle applies to hydroelectric facilities although the movement of water is the fuel that spins the electrical generators. But, no matter the source, they all rely on some type of controller to regulate the speeds of those spinning devices and those controllers are interfaced into the facility’s computer networks for ease of use.
After a little more digging, Hank discovers that only a handful of companies actually make the PLCs that are used to manufacture everything from dog food to the power that enters a person’s home. Hank sits back and thinks about that for a moment. He glances at Paige and says, “What do you know about programmable logic controllers?”
“Other than the fact that they control almost everything on the planet, not much.”
“Easy to hack?”
“Of course. They’re simple devices that operate on a few lines of code. Are you back to your theory the hackers are targeting PLCs?”