They heard a female’s voice and then three pairs of hands slowly raised up from inside the convertible. Sanders and Pagano approached cautiously with their suppressed Heckler & Koch MP7A1s trained on the vehicle. As Sanders crept toward the car, his eyes filled with surprise, and he lowered his weapon.
“Holy shit. Cathy?” he said, recognizing the FBI agent.
“Don’t forget to mention Etzy and Victoria, lover boy,” Pagano joked.
“Hey guys,” Victoria Eden said. “I saw that beast of a truck”—she motioned to Jack Turner’s Hemi—“and I figured it might be a good idea to stop in case those assholes came after us. They’ve still got Melody and Maria in there.” Her voice conveyed fear and desperation. “Those poor girls need your help.”
She scanned around the area expectantly with a look of disappointment on her face, until Trent Turner emerged from a thicket of bushes. She cocked her head to the side and produced a smile that could thaw a glacier. After what she’d seen last night, she knew the girls would need him for the best chance to survive.
Trent looked to the sky with a shake of his head and said, “I’ll give it to you, you sure know how to make a guy feel stalked.” He couldn’t help but laugh at the improbability of seeing her again. “How in the hell did you end up here?”
“My phone,” she said. “It must have fallen out in your uncle’s truck when he gave us a ride to catch a cab. I looked it up online, and it led me to that building back there.” She motioned toward the compound. “I guess that’s the closest house to this yellow beast,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.
The operatives listened to see if they could hear anything coming, when the silence was broken by the ring of a cell phone.
Chapter 154
Pavel Kozlov grabbed the iPad that displayed the video streams throughout the compound and quickly limped to the basement room where they held the prisoners. Inside, Dimitri Sokov sat at a metal desk, and two laptops were plugged into a switch connecting them to the Ethernet jack on the wall. The Russian’s fingers pecked away at the keyboard in a constant rhythm. He was a picture of focus as he prepared the backup command-and-control server to send out its final instruction to the botnet. He had only been able to get the commands out for a handful of banks thus far. This time, with a single keystroke, the Russian would set a chain of events in motion that would turn the United States of America into a third-world country.
“Dimitri, how much longer until you’re finished?” Kozlov asked in Russian.
“Very soon, very soon,” he responded, completely engrossed in what he was doing.
Kozlov’s brow creased. This time his voice carried a hint of anger. “How long, Dimitri? I need to know how long.”
The hacker snapped out of his rhythm and turned to his boss. His eyes expressed shock, and Kozlov understood it was due to his pale, sweaty appearance. The effects of his wound had been worsening.
“It will be just a couple of minutes,” he said. “I’m almost finished. Then there will be no way to stop the attack from happening.”
“Good. Hurry,” Kozlov said. “We don’t have much time.”
Bruce Campbell entered the room with the remaining two prisoners who were flanked by the two Russians.
Kozlov’s expression turned angry. The American looked too content for his liking.
“Why have you not gone after them?” he spat, his eyes seething with rage.
Campbell reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “Why waste the energy when we can get him to come back voluntarily?” He motioned to the hacker’s sister and girlfriend. “We’re only a phone call away. Shall we?”
Kozlov almost smiled. Sometimes the solution to a problem was so obvious, you failed to see it. He observed Campbell curiously as he worked the phone’s display.
“No signal,” Campbell said. “Looks like we’ll have to go upstairs.”
Kozlov followed him out of the room, up the stairs and to the control room on the first floor.
“We’ve got a signal here,” Campbell confirmed. He worked the touch screen to return Etzy Millar’s call and put the phone on speaker. “You can do the honors, boss.”
The phone rang five times before Etzy Millar answered.
“Hello,” he said.
“It would be a shame if something unspeakable happened to these two young ladies with me here, now wouldn’t it?” Kozlov said.
His plan was to put the hacker off-balance.
“Please—”
Kozlov’s tone turned sadistic. “Did you know there are several men here with me, very large and strong men, who haven’t had the pleasure of a woman in months? I suspect they would appreciate some fresh meat to entertain themselves with.”
There was a short pause before the hacker spoke, his voice shaky. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt them.”
A smile formed a slash across the Russian’s pale face. “Come back here now, and bring the two women with you, or the next time you see your sister and girlfriend will be on the Internet. I doubt either one of them has made a sex video. Maybe they’re exhibitionists at heart — what do you think? It could be an enjoyable final salvo, something dramatic and titillating for the world to remember them by.” He waited to see if the hacker would respond, but he didn’t. “If that’s not how you want them to live out their last few moments, I suggest you turn the car around. You have five minutes. We start with your girlfriend. She could use a couple of men to warm her up before the finale.”
He didn’t wait for an answer before he ended the call.
“Do you think the police are on their way?” Campbell asked.
“I have no idea, but we should proceed as if they are,” Kozlov said. “Make sure the men are ready for anything.”
Campbell nodded to Kozlov. They heard a single shot come from outside.
“Do you think the cops could be here already?” Campbell asked.
The Russian looked down at the display on his iPad and flipped through the screen. He didn’t see anyone on the cameras trained outside.
“Nothing here. Come, let’s check on Dimitri’s progress. You can take a couple of men and find out what he was shooting at.”
The two men headed back downstairs, Kozlov enduring the excruciating pain from his leg. Once they made it to the room with the laptops, Dimitri Sokov turned around with a smile.
“Dimitri, have you done it?” Kozlov asked with an air of satisfaction in his voice.
“Yes, Pavel. It’s done.”
“Is there anyone who can stop this now?”
“No. We are in the clear. Nobody can stop us.”
Kozlov stared at his comrade in deep thought and said, “Can you stop this from happening?”
Sokov looked at him with a nervous smile that faded quickly. His mouth transformed into a thin slit of tension, and sweat formed on his brow.
“Thank you for your service to Mother Russia,” Kozlov said.
Sokov exhaled in relief and began to breathe again. Just as he turned back to his laptop, the Bratva boss leveled a Makarov pistol at his head and squeezed the trigger. He immediately turned the weapon on the remaining hacker and hammered a round into his head. He shot a quick glance toward the corner of the room and saw Millar and Soller huddled together. Scared — just how he wanted them.
“Get outside and bring some men,” he told Campbell. “I’ll keep the prisoners here with me.”
Chapter 155