He was also the most sensitive guy she’d ever met. Sufyan was the first man she’d ever made love to. “Same here,” he’d revealed as they cuddled on her bed afterward. He believed their lovemaking had formed a sacred bond between them. That a guy could even talk in such terms proved no small part of Emma’s sudden interest in Islam. There was nothing remotely “hook-up” about him.
Sufyan wrapped his arm around her back to escort Emma to her first class, AP World History. That was where her friend, Mindy Wellstrom, stood waiting.
“Did you see this?” she asked Emma as the bell sounded. She was holding up her phone, hand visibly shaking.
Sufyan took hold of the young woman’s wrist so they could see the screen.
“Shit!” Emma said to Sufyan’s immediate consternation. She was staring at a Washington Post headline: “Suburban Teens Targeted for Terror.”
Lana laid her Sig Sauer 9 millimeter semi-automatic under a nubby summer-weight sweater that she’d draped casually across the passenger seat of her Prius. Looking around, she backed out of the garage. It was about fifteen minutes after Em had left with Don on her heels. He’d already texted to say the young couple arrived safely at school.
As Lana drew within feet of the tree-shaded street, Em also texted: “See WA Post.”
Lana braked, groaning at the headline and photo. She scanned the story and texted Emma to avoid reporters.
Lana took side streets through Bethesda, eyeing the rear-view mirror as much as the lovely gardens in their fading summer glory.
She made decent time to Fort Meade, passing through security at the gate. The Marine guard knew she was licensed to carry her gun.
“Keeping that close to you today?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“We all are,” he replied, perhaps to reassure her. He failed, but she doubted any comfort would come until Steel Fist was identified and arrested.
Or killed.
Lana hurried straight up to Holmes’s office. His longtime executive assistant Donna Warnes waved her in to see their boss.
He looked up, every one of his seventy-eight years imprinted in the lines on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. The bags under his eyes looked packed, the orbs themselves weary as a winter sky.
She noticed his electric razor sitting on his desk and guessed he’d slept on the base. It was an option for all of them whenever circumstances grew especially tense. Bob, as she called him when they were alone, might not have moved farther from his duties than the long leather couch nestled against a wall.
“You’re getting protection,” he told her without preamble. “So’s Emma and Don when you’re all together. It’ll be 24/7 for the foreseeable future.”
“You saw the Post?”
“We’ve already contacted the publisher. Showing those kids like that, a pair of seventeen-year-olds?” He shook his head. “How’s Emma doing?”
“Emma’s in love, so that’s all she’s really thinking about.”
“He seems like a nice young man,” Holmes said, as if by rote, though Lana figured he’d probably had Sufyan thoroughly vetted.
“He is. His uncle’s a handful.” Which Lana guessed would come as no surprise to Bob, either. She filled him in on last night’s confrontation.
The deputy director leaned back. “He could be more than just a handful. The CIA thinks he was Al Qaeda in Sudan. He was on their radar long before his nephew took up with Emma. Now that there’s a link directly to you, the FBI is keeping a very close eye on him.”
“Seriously? Al Qaeda?”
“The uncle and the boy’s dead father.”
“What about his mother?”
“Nothing, but if it’s true she must have known. The agency’s still digging.”
“And Sufyan?”
“Nothing on him yet, but they could be using him.”
“To get to me?”
Bob nodded.
“I don’t think so. The uncle was really agitated last night. Either that or it was an Oscar-winning performance. He forbade Sufyan to see Emma again.”
“How did she react?”
“She shrugged that off and picked him up for school today as always.”
“So the boy was allowed to go with her after his uncle’s big display in your living room?”
“They’re seventeen, Bob. I don’t know how it was when you were raising yours, but there’s no forbidding a romance at that age now unless you’re part of some fundamentalist religious community.”
“Which they are. They’re Sunnis.”
Neither spoke for long seconds. It was hard for Lana to imagine the young man as a zealot when he’d been up in Emma’s bedroom breaking all his faith’s rules about premarital sex.
“I’m not saying the boy knows,” Bob went on. “He probably doesn’t. I’m not even saying Tahir is Al Qaeda now, much less when he was back in Sudan. I’m just saying Sufyan and his uncle and mother are being watched. And now I’m hearing Tahir’s been in your home.”
Lana’s turn to nod — uneasily. Al Qaeda in my house? A chilling thought. “Don should be licensed to carry.”
“I’ll make sure we talk to the Bureau of Prisons. It’s definitely subject to parole conditions.”
“He was armed on the Black Sea.” Don had been doing a six-year federal sentence when his drug contacts in Colombia had made him valuable to the DEA. Then his high seas sailing skills made him even more useful to the Defense Department.
“That was then and this is now,” Bob replied.
“They make exceptions,” she said.
“And he’d be a good candidate for that. We’ll do what we can.”
In Lana’s experience, that meant Don would be locked and loaded by nightfall.
“Tell me about the security detail you’re arranging for us.”
“Three rotating one-man shifts per day.”
“A little on the thin side with Emma, Don, and me coming and going,” Lana said.
“I agree, but getting any coverage is really tough with our domestic challenges. The threats to just about everyone on Capitol Hill are increasing almost every day. And the White House?” He waved his hand as if there were no telling the level of hatred directed toward the incumbent.
“Don’s thinking we should get a Malinois.”
“I can help you with that.” Holmes was smiling for the first time in days. He suddenly looked years younger. “I had one myself for eleven years. His name was Bingo, like the old song. My son raises them up near Hagerstown. Superb dogs.”
“We’re going to need an adult for guard duty.”
“He trains them for that if they don’t go to the military. Or for special security details if clients have unusual requirements. He may have one suitable for family work. I’ll check.”
“So what did you want see me about?” Lana asked.
“Steel Fist.”
“Of course… ”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not buying that any one person is capable of what he’s done. The release of all those files on citizens was not supposed to be possible. You told me so yourself.”
At Bob’s request, Jeff Jensen had tried to hack NSA’s domestic surveillance files last month, though neither Lana nor Jeff had any idea of the extreme nature of their contents. He’d failed to make a dent in the agency’s deeply layered encryptions. It irked her to no end that another hacker had succeeded.
“So all that private data was real?” Lana said. “Not some stab at propaganda?”
“They were old. They were supposed to have been destroyed. Now members in both houses are demanding to know why we ignored the post-Snowden reforms.”