But he also felt something worse: the first pulse of panic.
The landing jolted Emma. If daylight had come, it probably would have awakened her fully; but through her barely sentient fog she heard the guy saying he was fueling up. Weariness claimed her quickly, but not for long: shortness of breath and her worsening cramps made for fitful sleep. Finally, the cramps doubled her over in the bag.
“Help me. I’m having—” She didn’t want to say cramps and sound like some lame teenager. “I’ve got a really bad stomachache.”
“You sound like you’re having trouble breathing,” the pilot said, as if she were a friend he was taking for a ride, not someone the pair had forced into a body bag, cuffed at the ankles and wrists.
From then on, Emma scarcely slept at all. What a time to be sick.
They finally descended enough that she could breathe without gulping air, landing minutes later.
She tried to brace herself for the taping of her mouth and eyes, and the sealing of the bag.
But once the plane stopped rolling, the guy who’d worn the Barack Obama mask didn’t bother to put it on before he turned around to stare at her. That really scared Emma. When they showed their faces, didn’t that mean they’d decided to kill you?
The two of them climbed back into the cabin. He opened the door.
“You’re worried, aren’t you, Em?” the woman asked.
A cruel question. But she sounded like she’d enjoyed asking it. Em couldn’t help but nod.
“Well, now’s the time to be very, very worried. So you have good instincts.”
They hauled Emma from the plane. Not another person in sight, but in the distance she spotted snow-capped mountains whose peaks looked like the edge of a saw-tooth blade.
They carried her to the open trunk of a large car, laying her on the tarmac only long enough to tape up her mouth, take her photograph, and zip the bag.
Then they dumped her in the trunk.
I doubt she’s going to die back there, but even if she suffocates on her own vomit from that bellyache, there’s still plenty I can do with her body. That’s what I needed and that’s what I’ve got.
But before we move her any farther, I have to take care of a few items. It’s easier to work on my computer at this elevation than on that plane bouncing around at ten thousand feet. That kid wasn’t the only one having trouble breathing. Art said he had to fly at that altitude for “security reasons.” I told him just now I needed privacy in here for “security reasons.” I could tell he wasn’t pleased but he’s obedient and leaning against the trunk. Emma’s kicking up a storm back there. I’m not quite sure what she thinks she’s going to accomplish with that. She’s such a moaner.
It doesn’t take me long to get back into Vinko’s website. He changes his password routinely, but the predictive algorithms I’ve devised come up with his new ones quickly. He’s oddly unimaginative in that regard. Which I’m grateful for. He’s also a convenient ruse to communicate with Emma’s mother, though neither she nor Vinko knows they’re being duped.
It’s a pleasure to show off my skills, even if my audience consists mostly of me. Any hacker who denies the pure amusement that comes from deluding others is a liar. We all love it for that reason, among others, of course.
Vinko’s been so vocal about his hatred for Lana and Emma — and his desire to see them truly hurt — that his old missives have done the cyber spadework for me. And his credibility with his followers is unquestioned — for now.
Let’s see who’s minding the Horvat store this morning…
What’s that? Emma has stopped kicking. Settling down or suffocating? I’m in no rush to find out. At least she’s in the body bag, if it’s the latter. No muss. No fuss.
So it’s the little Russian minx keeping her eye on Vinko, whom she knows as Steel Fist. He’d be so humbled if he knew how many of us are inside his system, which he believes so secure and sophisticated. NSA has some lines into it, too. I can see them, but they’re not as nimble as I am. Not even close.
I’m just going to focus on Galina Bortnik for the moment and use the pathways she’s forged. Minimize my presence. A few more clicks, a quick tour of some of Bortnik’s data exfiltration, and that’s all it takes. I’m back on your turf again, Vinko.
It’s high time for you to get busy because, if all goes well — and it will — your hands will be full.
And then you’ll be dead.
Galina was awake, alert, and active at her computer.
She’d only been slow in answering — busy, not asleep.
Now that’s devotion, thought Lana.
In response to Lana’s question, Galina messaged that Sufyan’s uncle Tahir was booked on an early flight to Boise, Idaho. “First thing smokin’,” was precisely how Galina put it, clearly sharpening her use of an American idiom.
“Boise? Are you sure?”
“Yes, and he has been hacking Steel Fist. So he might know something we do not. I used his entry point to get inside the Nazi’s site.”
“How long did it take you to do that?”
“Not long. It was fast today.”
“What are you seeing right now?”
“A message board. It is active. Creeps are logging on. Posting. I see some photos of slaves in metal collars and chains. Steel Fist is responding.”
“Anything of note?” Lana was surprised Steel Fist wasn’t bragging about Emma. She wouldn’t tell Galina about that, not at this point. It might affect her performance if it felt personal, and she was a mother, too. Lana needed pure, unemotional efforts from her.
“No, short messages. Same stupid Nazi stuff.”
“What worries me is when Jensen got in and shut him down, Steel Fist was back online in a few minutes. He clearly had great cyber resiliency. But you got in easy and you’re still in there.”
“No problem. Very simple today. Probably for Tahir, too.”
Maybe Galina’s better than Jeff, Lana thought. After all, Deputy Director Holmes, still recovering in the cardiac unit, had asked for Galina to take over the testing of NSA’s own cyberdefenses.
“Keep testing to see if you’re being led around.”
“Okay.”
“But stay on as long as you can.”
“Wait,” Galina said. “Here is an alert from Steel Fist. That is what he is calling it. Big black letters. They fill the screen. It says ‘THE PRIZE HAS ARRIVED.’ The prize?”
A sinking feeling overcame Lana. “Let’s see if he says anything—”
“He does,” Galina interrupted. “I am so sorry, Lana. He says he has Emma.”
“What does he say? Precisely?”
“This is bold too: ‘I HAVE THE BITCH, EMMA ELKINS. YOU WILL GET TO SEE HER DIE SLOWLY. TELL ALL THE SOLDIERS OF THE NEW AMERICA THAT THE TIME HAS COME TO SLAUGHTER OUR ENEMIES.’ There’s a picture of her, Lana. I’m so sorry. She—”
“Tell me.”
“Her mouth is taped. She is zipped up to her chin in a black bag of some kind.”
A body bag.
In seconds, Lana linked to the Steel Fist website and saw Emma herself. But her daughter looked so different. It wasn’t the duct tape wrapped around her head and mouth. It was the terror in Em’s eyes. Deep as the oceans.
“The data flows,” Lana said to Galina. “Can you access them?”
“Could be hard.”
I doubt that, Lana thought. He wants me to come, wherever they are. “I’ll hang on.”
Lana shared Galina’s screen but not her history of hacking this site. She had to sit back and wait, and she’d rarely considered patience a virtue.