Probably for the Mabahith, he thought. The Saudi secret police. Ruhi wouldn’t want to be grabbed by them. They had a well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness. But they were also reputed to work closely with U.S. intelligence services.
“ ‘Conveniently enough’? What isn’t planned for?” Ruhi asked rhetorically.
“An attack on our country,” Elkins responded flatly.
Both Ruhi and Candace nodded.
While his computer skills were reasonably sophisticated, by the time he finished with Elkins later in the afternoon, he realized that she’d primed him for an entirely new universe of knowledge.
“You’re a quick study,” she complimented him. “But you still might need me in a jam. That’s why I’ll be there.”
“And if I leave?”
“There are all kinds of ways for me to follow you,” she said, letting her long slender fingers drift over her keyboard.
At nine that night, Ruhi sat at a window seat on Saudi Arabian Airlines. Coach. Nothing fancy. Nothing to draw attention to him. Not many people were flying, not with the threat of planes dropping out of the air with the next cyberattack. He made an effort to put that fear aside. Foreign carriers were permitted in and out of a few key points on the Eastern Seaboard. Dulles was a principal hub. The Saudi airline was permitted one flight a day. Ruhi — and no doubt other passengers as well — hoped that the airlines had rejiggered their electronics to prevent penetration by cyberattackers. But who really knew? The lack of an answer probably explained the scores of empty seats.
He wore dark glasses and an oversize ball cap. He also had that dog “bite” in his right thigh. A doctor had dressed and then covered it with a white bandage. Thirteen stitches. Ruhi tried not to be superstitious about the number of sutures.
His testes had also taken a hit — of electricity — and were similarly bandaged. Thankfully they were still anaesthetized. Lying on his back, all Ruhi had seen of the “procedure,” as the doctor put it, were two perturbing tendrils of smoke rising from his crotch. The doc had given him a bottle of Tylenol 3, saying, “It’s not as bad as it looks or smells, and you won’t feel any pain in a couple of days.”
Doctor?
He had his doubts as he looked out the plane’s window. Ruhi had assumed that the white-coated man was a physician, but now realized that he could just as easily have been a veteran torturer. He’d certainly wielded those electrodes with alarming enthusiasm.
Ruhi’s fellow passengers gave no note of his presence. Most appeared studiously preoccupied with their tablets, smartphones, and laptops. He wondered how many of them were CIA agents keeping an eye on him — and other passengers.
Ruhi also wondered if his window seat had also been planned. All he noticed as the wide-bodied jet rose over the Washington area were fires. He quit counting when he reached twenty. Too depressing. One of the more recent ones occurred only this morning when a natural gas pipeline exploded in Alexandria, consuming most of the downtown.
The invasion by the cyberattackers might have been invisible, but it had brought all the brutal signs of real battle fully into view.
Death, fire, rage, and fear. All of them boiled below. But even that grisly toll — horrendous as it was — pale at the realization that control of the country’s own nuclear missiles now lay in the hands of its most vicious enemy ever.
CHAPTER 13
Lana looked at Emma, slouched on the couch watching TV, and wished more than anything that she could have evacuated her daughter from the Washington area. Their little burg of Kressinger lay well within the capital’s kill zone for nuclear missiles — or a cyberattack that could target the wickedly cruel stores of chemical and biological agents left over from the Cold War. Those nightmares included chimera viruses like Veepox, which combined smallpox and Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and could wipe out entire populations.
Horrific scenarios seemed never-ending, when Lana let herself consider the worst outcomes — and how could she not, when her only child could fall prey to them? Such was the unprecedented threat of a cyberattack: It could turn any or all of a country’s arsenals on itself. The stronger the nation, the more susceptible it became. Paradox had become the dominant paradigm. That was particularly true for the U.S., which had been the mightiest country on Earth less than a week ago. Now its very strength could turn it to cinders, or leave vast reaches rife with the dead and dying.
Lana and everyone in the intelligence services were in a race against time. How much time? Only unknown hands on unknown computers knew the answer to that question, leaving her and everyone else in the intelligence community acutely aware that the next second could be the last they lived.
She sat next to Emma and tried to hold her. Emma squirmed away. “When is she showing up?”
“She” had turned out to be the surprise caregiver. Bereft of options, Lana had decided to leave Emma at home, but that had necessitated finding a new person to keep watch on the girl. Irene was headed off to get help, if any drug and alcohol rehab centers actually remained open.
As part of Lana’s networking, which entailed calling and texting virtually everyone she knew, she had contacted Tanesa Weir yesterday afternoon. Tanesa was the young choir member who, along with others on her big blue bus, had saved Lana’s life, along with the lives of so many others during the first minutes of the cyberattack. She’d even been featured in the NPR report. Tanesa was such a responsible person, Lana thought she might know an older woman of like mind and spirit.
After a rushed, fifteen-minute discussion about the duties and compensation, though, Tanesa herself offered to take the job.
Lana was stunned. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” Tanesa replied.
Only three years older than Emma. But she seemed a lot more mature emotionally.
Lana had been in a supertight spot, expected to depart for Saudi Arabia ASAP, and everyone she knew was dealing with personal and professional emergencies, so she told Tanesa that she had the job, which had outraged Emma:
“I can’t believe you’re bringing someone that young in to take care of me.”
“Would you rather I find another fifty-six-year-old like Irene?” Lana had retorted.
“You don’t have to bring in anybody. I can do the job.”
“I don’t think so, Emma. Just last weekend you came home tipsy from drinking Palm Bays. Then you left the house in the middle of a crisis when I told you not to and almost got yourself killed. Those aren’t signs of someone who is ready to take care of herself. And Tanesa is very responsible. I’ve seen her in action.”
Glowering, Emma had stormed into her bedroom.
Lana had arranged to have Audrey, Jeff’s executive assistant, check in with Tanesa daily to make sure she had whatever she needed.
The young woman could take the position because, as a homeschooler, she had a highly flexible schedule. She had never sat in a classroom, yet had excelled on all the standardized tests administered by the school district. She seemed a fine choice, given the circumstances. Lana’s main regret was that she had no time to set up a meeting between Emma and Tanesa first. Technically speaking, they had met — at the hospital. But Emma had been so drugged at the time that she had no memory of the bright-eyed choir member.
The doorbell chimed. Both mother and daughter jumped up.
“Do you want to get it?” Lana asked.
Emma shook her head. She looked startled, or maybe it was sudden shyness. It still happened, though rarely.
When Lana opened the door, Tanesa stood there smiling. Behind her, an NSA driver waited in an unmarked car to whisk Lana to Andrews Air Force Base, about thirty minutes away.