Trident Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller)

by Thomas Waite

  With the last of her strength, Emma tried to beat on the lid, but even to her ears, just inches from the impact, the sound was muffled, weak, not enough to raise the nearly dead.

  “He’s got to have used a Trojan to get in there,” Lana said, her mind racing wildly for a way to stop Lisko as he sat in the Missile Control Center. Trojans were malware that were supposed to look like regular programs, but were designed to take out specific targets, including cyberdefenses. In her less frenetic moments, Lana thought of them as a cyberwarrior’s smart bombs. But if she or Galina could possibly find a Trojan that Oleg had inserted into his computer as a defense mechanism—and Galina was still working at a furious pace—they could activate its destructive potential, perhaps on a key part of the sub’s system.

  Galina was down to her last thumb drive. She must have read a thousand lines of code in the last minute because she’d been scrolling without stopping. “Maybe this,” Galina said, highlighting a line and shooting it over to Lana.

  Lana used it, knowing at this point she was relying completely on code Galina had culled from countless lines under enormous pressure.

  But she got you into his computer that way.

  In moments, Lana entered the line onto Oleg’s screen and activated the code. It felt like a shot in the dark. Then they waited to see if they’d collaborated successfully. What else could they do if the code didn’t work?

  The answer came to Lana in a flash: a kinetic attack. She messaged Holmes about the thick data stream the hacker had established with the submarine. If the NSA could detect it—and with extraordinary speed—they might stop the launch in time.

  As Lisko began to speak into the microphone again, the lights on the submarine went out. Blackness filled Oleg’s screen where Lisko’s head had been visible a blink before.

  “What does that mean?” Galina sounded as surprised as Lana felt. Had the sub’s missile launched? Or was the vessel dead in the water?

  Prince’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He figured he finally had Lana Elkins on the line. Bitch better be ready to do some business, use her clout to get his soldiers out of the federal pen down in Middleburg, Virginia.

  But it wasn’t Lana Elkins. It was freaking Don Fedder. What the fuck? Talk about prison . . . Prince hadn’t heard from him in years. “I can’t talk to you, man. I’m waiting for an important call, so adios amigo.” Last time he saw Fedder they’d shared a few cervezas down on a beach in Colombia as white as the coke Prince sold by the truckload. Fedder hadn’t been a competitor; he’d moved pot—tons of it.

  “No,” Don shouted. “I am that call. That girl you’ve got, the one named Emma Elkins, she’s mine. My kid!”

  Kid? Since when did Don ever have a kid? “You’re fuckin’ with me, right?” But hearing Fedder’s words worried Prince because Don was a lot of things, but never a bullshitter.

  “Listen to me carefully, Prince. We all make a mistake once in a while. It’s part of the game.” The “game,” what he and Fedder had called the drug trade back then. They’d never been super close, more like colleagues from different companies in the same industry. They’d only come to know each other as fellow expatriates down in South America. But Prince had liked Don. The guy’d known how to survive—till he got busted on his boat.

  That old familiar voice was growing more and more serious in his ear: “And you made a big mistake grabbing those two girls. That young black woman is Emma’s best friend.”

  Oh, shit. Prince saw where this was going. He shook his head.

  “You don’t believe me,” Don went on, “you ask Emma who her dad is.”

  “Okay, I got it,” Prince replied, still shaking his head, already imagining the fury on the faces of his men down in Middleburg.

  “Remember the deal I made with you six years ago? You got to keep your garden . . .” Prince’s coca plantation about a hundred miles from Cali. “And the road in and out of there . . .” His smuggling route. “And you gave me those addresses.” FARC jefes. “Remember?”

  “I hear you,” Prince replied noncommittally, not knowing who the fuck was listening in, but appreciating Don’s discretion on the line.

  “I’m glad you remember,” Fedder said, “because you’ve got to get Emma home. And I hope to hell you don’t have her in one of your coffins.”

  Don knew about them because Prince once told him they served three purposes: the first was to smuggle coke in the hollow walls, bottoms, and lids; the second was to imprison informants and scare them to death; and the third was to bury them, when necessary.

  Prince was already opening Emma’s lid and nodding at Ship to free her friend.

  “They’re out, even as we speak, Don.”

  “Let me talk to Emma.”

  “Here she is.”

  Prince stepped back while the girl, who sounded a little breathy to him, talked to her father. The sister looked shaky.

  “Shit, girl,” he said to Tanesa. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you all were tight with big Don Fedder.”

  Tanesa looked puzzled at Don’s name coming out of Prince’s mouth.

  Emma handed Prince’s phone back to him. Prince studied her face.

  She kind of looks like him. The shit you don’t know about people.

  “Like I say, Don, I didn’t know. She doesn’t have your name.”

  “Yeah, well, blame that one on her mom. One more thing, Prince.”

  “Yeah, you got it.”

  “You still have that bulletproof Hummer?”

  “Newer model.”

  “Armed guards.”

  “More than ever.”

  “Use all that to get those two back to my daughter’s house safely in Bethesda. You do that and I’ll help you with the feds, if you ever need it.”

  “You’re saying I’ve got a chit I can cash.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Good, but I was going to do it anyway, Don. I’d never leave them hanging around this hood.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Back atcha.”

  Prince put away his phone and looked at Emma and Tanesa. “Hey, you two, I’m sorry. Sometimes a man makes a mistake, so I’m going to take you home. Thing is, to seal the deal, you got to forget any of this happened. This place, all of it. You cool with that?”

  “My dad already told me, and I told her. We’re cool.”

  Tanesa was nodding beside Emma.

  A minute later they were back in the Hummer, just them and Prince and the rising waters of the Potomac parting for his beastly SUV.

  Lana waved Red into the cabin. He put the wheel on autopilot and hurried to the doorway. “It’s over,” she told him. “The Delphin was taken out by a P-8.” The navy jets had been airborne over the southern ocean since the news of the hijacking broke. “The sub-killer nailed it with a torpedo after locking onto the data stream.”

  “Nice work,” Red said.

  “The submarine? Sunk?” Galina asked.

  “Yes,” Lana replied. “It’s gone,” she added, as she messaged the news to Don.

  Red shook his head. “Man, the damage those sons of bitches did.”

  Lana nodded. “The next thing we’re going to hear, you watch, is the Russians saying Dernov was just another one of their rogue hackers working all on his own for patriotic purposes. They’ll be covering their crimes by providing some data after the damage was done, and the net result is we lose 150 or more sailors, a nuclear-armed sub, and the whole world is flooded. But fuck if they’ll get away with it,” Lana cursed. “We’ve got his computer. We’ll do the forensics. We got into it, and now we’ll track down his links to whoever he was working with, wherever they are.”

  But even as she spoke, Lana had her doubts. Shaking her head, she wondered how much cyberscrubbing was going on as she and Galina were working with tiny antennas and three laptops on
the high seas.

  Red looked up from a handheld device. “Here’s a report that Ukrainian separatists have abducted a hacker who goes by the handle Numero Uno across the border into Russia. I’m guessing he’s about to meet his new bosses.”

  Lana felt even more dejected. She had hoped to follow those data streams to Oleg’s other conspirator.

  She looked at Oleg’s black screen. There was nothing there, nothing for all the families of the men and women who’d died so miserably—and so publicly—on the Delphin. There would never be any body retrieval for any of them. She hoped Oleg was dying a death equal to all their pain. And then some.

  A message from Holmes brightened her mood immeasurably: Emma and Tanesa had just arrived back home. Lana shared it immediately with her companions on the trawler, then with Don on Storm Season, adding, “Thanks for whatever you did.”

  “You’re welcome,” Don texted back. “I’m just glad that nightmare is over. I know it’s been horrible for you. It’s been horrible for me.”

  She wanted to hug him. It scared her to realize that. Really hold him and let the swell rock them together.

  What are you thinking? she scolded herself.

  Red checked the autopilot and ducked back into the cabin. “Your ex must have some kind of clout with one of the heaviest hands in the DC drug trade.”

  Lana nodded. Mostly, she wondered if Don was starting to have that kind of clout with her heart. It was as if he’d slipped a rootkit into it. Information security specialists feared the damage rootkits could do once they were loose in a system. Lana worried Don’s own version was already breaking down the access controls surrounding her heart.

  No, she barked at herself. Don’t go confusing gratitude with . . . With what? she asked herself earnestly. With love? Lust? With wanting to have your family back together again?

  She sat in the cabin trembling, hoping neither Galina nor Red noticed.

  Look, she finally told herself in exasperation, he saved their lives. You’re hugely relieved. That’s all it is. Get a grip.

  That was her story, and for a few seconds—certainly no more—she stuck to it.

  Then she slipped past Red and stood near the stern, waiting. In seconds, Storm Season rose with the sea. She saw Don and waved, knowing she’d be on that swell soon enough.

  EPILOGUE

  LANA SAT WITH GALINA and Jeff Jensen at a large oval table in a secure conference room at CyberFortress, where they’d been working together since the seas stopped rising three weeks earlier. World leaders said earth was now in a “Post-Flood Era,” though “flood” felt inaccurate to Lana and most other scientists because it suggested the water that had surged across so many coastlines and overtaken so many cities would eventually recede. That was not going to happen in anything short of geologic time.

  The six glaciers of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet had been ruthlessly unsettled by the nuclear strike and might well have reached a tipping point that could lead to the loss of the entire WAIS and the eleven-foot rise in sea level. There was no question that the missile strike directly on Thwaites Glacier had sent it moving in fits and starts to the sea. Four feet of sea-level rise had been recorded so far, even more than scientists had feared. But Thwaites appeared to have stabilized, which was to say that it was still moving toward the Amundsen Sea but at a reduced rate. “Appeared to” was the language of uncertainty that kept scientists, political leaders, and informed citizens on tenterhooks.

  The death toll in the U.S. was estimated at 230,000, mostly from widespread drowning, though thousands had died of thirst and starvation in the ensuing mayhem. More would likely die from dysentery and other rapidly spreading diseases. Then there was the long-term impact of poisonous radiation spreading across the globe.

  At least the number of fatalities could be estimated. The damage to the country’s infrastructure was incalculable. Many trillions of dollars, at least. The damage was so extensive—and still getting surveyed—that nobody could estimate it more accurately so soon after the catastrophe.

  The Eastern Seaboard and West Coast had taken the hardest hits as the added weight to the oceans from the massive release of ice affected earth’s rotation, forcing its gravitational field northward. The subsidence of so much land along the Eastern Seaboard, which had been exacerbated by the drought-driven pumping of groundwater in recent years, compounded the damage from rising seas. More than ten million Americans had been forced from their homes in that part of the country alone. The central and southern California coast was also flooded, displacing six million and drowning at least twenty thousand. Rescue workers were still dredging for bodies along both of America’s coastlines.

  Lower Manhattan appeared lost forever, its poorest residents now crowded into shelters; their wealthier counterparts had fled to their second or third homes in dryer locales. While the value of the U.S. dollar was fluctuating wildly—measured against the Russian ruble, now the currency of choice worldwide—it could still buy a lot, but not luxurious apartments in a city in which absolutely none were available.

  There was even talk of moving the nation’s capital. Giant sump pumps had yet to drain most of the water from the National Mall. Many government offices, including the President’s, had already moved to more secure enclaves inland.

  More than $400 billion worth of Miami real estate, including the city’s iconic waterfront high-rises, had become complete write-offs with the flooding undermining the structural integrity of the buildings to such an extent that one had already toppled into the sea. Others were leaning at Pisa-like angles.

  Bad as conditions were in the U.S., Asia faced far greater crises. Four of the hardest-hit cities were in China: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Ningbo had suffered more than a million deaths. Fifteen million residents of those cities now found themselves homeless, starving, and dying by the thousands every day. Those tragedies were trumped only by the twin catastrophes of Dhaka, Bangladesh and Kolkata, India, where accurate body counts—certainly of many millions—might never be known, for the flooding that had claimed those low-lying cites also swept innumerable dead out to sea.

  South America and Europe were still reeling, too. The latter was besieged not only by internally displaced citizens but also by a massive number of refugees from Africa. Most European countries had tried to close their borders, if they still had them. Hardest hit, of course, was the Netherlands, with more than 60 percent of the country now underwater, where all those fields and towns and cities were destined to remain. Even the nation’s sophisticated system of dikes, dams, floodgates, and pumping stations had not withstood the towering tidal surges that came with the four-foot rise in sea levels.

  Neither had the Thames Barrier in London, where raging currents had rushed down the city’s historic streets, drowning thousands.

  Down Under was no different. Following storm surges the distinctive roof of Sydney’s famed opera house now rose from the flooded harbor like the dorsal fins of giant sharks, as if those carnivorous beasts had grown large on the feeding grounds of that dying city.

  It was difficult to point to any place on earth that remained unaffected, though Russia had escaped relatively unscathed. Which had led to a wholly different form of finger-pointing. Furious leaders from across the globe had been charging for weeks that Russia had nurtured the cyberterrorist who had turned the earth into a charnel house. Russia leaders, including its outspoken President, had just as vehemently denied the accusations, allowing only that “a terribly misguided rogue patriot might have wreaked such havoc.”

  Lana and her team had not found a smoking gun to prove otherwise; the trail in Oleg’s computer had turned cold. Even worse, they realized the files for the technology that over time would have sucked carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—and stopped the deadly thawing—had been deleted by a virtual trip wire in the mastermind’s laptop.

  “It was his final ‘fuck you’ to the world,”
Galina said, sitting back.

  “Would he really have done that?” Lana could hardly believe anyone would have taken such world-changing—world-saving—knowledge to the grave.

  “Control freak, in everything,” Galina replied, repeating words Lana had heard from her before.

  Despite the outcry and opposition, Russia had emerged as the world’s preeminent power. The U.S. still had the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, but was so consumed with delivering emergency relief to its citizens, while trying to maintain the integrity of its vastly shifting borders, that it could hardly mount a challenge to Russia’s overnight hegemony.

  Most of the U.S. Army had been deployed to try to maintain order. Breakdowns of every type were threatening the lives and livelihoods of almost all Americans. And with interstate and local highways underwater, the Air Force was making food drops all along the nation’s coastlines, which had led to wild gunfights over the scarce provisions.

  Lana had hoped for a breather after the Delphin’s sinking and Dernov’s death, which had been by the most medieval means possible. A video of his demise in a skull crusher had been posted on YouTube. But she and others in the intelligence community were witnessing a great unsettling spread across the world. Populations were on the move, hundreds of thousands in boats seeking homes wherever they could. Despite its problems, America remained the preferred destination for millions—and the target of terrorists whose hatred of the U.S. had only been whetted by the country’s sudden vulnerabilities.

  Only this morning Deputy Director Holmes had tasked Lana and her team with tracking the chatter of radical Islamists. Holmes had informed them the NSA had intercepted communications that made their violent intentions known, but not their precise targets or tools. “They did it in the most oblique language,” he’d explained. “It’ll make sense when you read the briefing paper I’ve had prepared for you.”