It was the first time he dropped the “Mr. Ruhi Mancur” business. Ruhi wondered if the sudden depersonalization was a prelude to the worst waterboarding could offer, a psychological distancing that would allow Lennon to actually kill him.
“Names, Mancur,” he repeated.
Ruhi had to give up someone. He yelled out the name of the one person he thought might be protected.
“Lana Elkins.”
“Who is she?”
Ruhi told him. “I don’t know anybody in Al Qaeda but Ahmed. But she’s CIA, I think.”
Slowly, the straps came off. Slowly, he was allowed to sit in the white vinyl chair again.
Lana Elkins’s name traveled quickly, however. Within minutes it was heard on a blue bus almost seven thousand miles away.
CHAPTER 16
Deputy director Holmes was enduring more crises at one time than he’d ever known — and that was before Lana Elkins was ordered out of Saudi Arabia by the kingdom’s top cop. The king now knew that the U.S. was actively inserting operatives into his domain without prior approval, which violated a host of written and unwritten agreements.
But Holmes couldn’t simply pluck her out of the emirate, because planes were literally falling out of the sky. Not the commercial airliners — they were already grounded by the FAA — but two private jets had dropped like stones, killing all aboard. Both were owned by corporate titans who did not wish to be inconvenienced by a national catastrophe, and who had been assured by their cybersecurity teams that their onboard computer systems had not been tinkered with.
Holmes wasn’t even confident of the military’s aircraft. Though few knew it outside the upper echelons of the intelligence services, routine monitoring flights conducted by the U.S. around the world had been halted. Those surveillance sorties were the first line of defense.
No, not the first, Holmes corrected himself. The first line of defense was the one people never saw — cybersecurity — a word that he felt no U.S. official should use for the foreseeable future.
Defense of what? If the cyberterrorists weren’t stopped, there wouldn’t be a country left to defend.
With the countdown under way, panic had, once again, taken over much of the nation. The raw, unbridled reactions were like a volcano that had regained its force and now threatened to rain death and destruction on everyone. Rumors of a Chinese invasion spread with the speed of instant messaging — where ISPs were back up and running, that is. The rumors were false, but countering them with a fragmented national communications system proved extremely difficult. What really perplexed Holmes was how the rumors reached regions of the country that were essentially incommunicado because they still hadn’t recovered from the initial cyberattack. But the “news” spread there, too. What were those rumormongers using? Holmes wondered. Smoke signals?
Thankfully, no one outside security circles had learned that U.S. missiles were now targeting U.S. cities. But word about a potential Veepox epidemic was starting to leak, talk that appeared as difficult to contain as the disease itself.
The only “positive” development, in his view, was that it seemed a handful of America’s largest urban areas were all “rioted out,” as one of his aides put it.
Terrific, so a great mass of citizens were hiding in their homes and rationing their last few scraps of food because vast numbers of supermarkets had been plundered. And just when supply chains had started functioning again, the incremental destruction of the grid had begun anew, which immediately set off more madness in the streets. Police in New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Tacoma, Miami, and Cheyenne had walked off the job. The cops were reportedly terminally weary, understaffed, overworked, and, increasingly, the targets of armed and angry residents. For them, community service had become tantamount to suicide.
To make matters even worse, the end-of-summer weather was the hottest since record keeping began in the U.S. in 1895. The scorching heat had not helped the already sketchy national disposition. The wildfires in the West, set off by those natural gas explosions during the first cyberattack, were now raging out of control. Parts of Denver had been incinerated. Not that many miles away in the forest, smoke jumpers had become smoke hikers because there were no planes to ferry the men and women to the front lines. No aerial water tankers, either, to douse flames.
And now we’ve got to get Lana out of the kingdom.
But right then the news got grimmer: Holmes received an encrypted text message that Agent Fahim Al Juhani had been murdered on camera by AQAP — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Al Juhani was an operative whom Holmes had personally commended for outstanding bravery. The same crew had abducted Agent Candace Anders, also recorded for viewing by the faithful. Holmes’s text said the Islamists were bragging about the killing; apparently the entire abduction and murder was airing, at that very moment, on several Islamist websites. The terrorists even had it up on YouTube. Holmes watched it and felt sickened by what he saw. He found solace only in Anders’s stoicism. She remained composed throughout the ordeal. But that didn’t leave her any less abducted.
Holmes feared AQAP’s next video would feature Anders herself getting—
Teresa McGivern walked in, interrupting his dismal thoughts. The veteran analyst was trailed by Donna Warnes, his executive assistant. The latter looked flummoxed. McGivern? Unflappable.
“It’s not Donna’s fault,” she said, pushing her gray bob behind her ears. “I couldn’t stand on formality, so I barged in. We have to make a decision on Elkins. I just found out that thousands of Saudis are screaming for her head outside our embassy. Ambassador Arpen says he fears they’ll occupy it at any second. If they get their hands on Elkins, there’s no telling where she’ll end up, or whom they’ll hand her over to.”
“That would be a massive violation of international law.”
“A mob is a mob,” McGivern responded curtly, “and there are elements of the Saudi street who would love to curry favor with Al Qaeda by handing her over. As for the government, you might have already guessed that they’re saying we’re the ones who violated international law. The painful truth is—”
“We did. I know.”
McGivern went on: “The ambassador says it looks as bad as Tehran, 1979.”
“How would he know? He was in grade school,” Holmes growled. “You say there are thousands in the streets now?”
“More as we speak.”
“You’re right, we’ve got to get Elkins out of there, but we also need to keep her within easy reach of Mancur.”
“Why?” McGivern asked. “He may disappear down the Saudi shithole.”
“Not likely,” Holmes said with more assurance than he actually felt.
“You’re not thinking Yemen, are you?” McGivern asked.
“Show me a border that’s less porous,” Holmes responded.
“If we lose two people to that goddamn backwater, we’re going to end up spending the next twenty years in front of oversight committees. You know that, don’t you?”
Holmes eyed her steadily. “The sad truth is that we should have such problems.”
“Where in Yemen are we going to stick her? And how can you be so sure Mancur’s getting out, or the condition he’ll be in if he does get out? He could be a basket case. We could be risking Elkins on a hope and a prayer.”
“A hope and a prayer?” Holmes shook his head. “I’ve had to bank on less lately. If he gets out, he’ll be useless without Elkins. We have no way to resupply him with our sophisticated systems that are now in the hands of the Mabahith. Rest assured, the Saudis aren’t going to give him back his toys. They’ll have already started reverse-engineering everything Elkins put in them. And if they succeed, they’ll be generous in sharing their booty with all of our ‘friends’ in the Middle East.”