by Tim Washburn
Now bunched on either side of the entrance, Hank and his crew are waiting for the demolitions man to finish applying the charges to the door. Three of the men have flash-bang grenades in their hands and will toss them inside as soon as the door is blown. Everyone takes a step back when the guy placing the charges nods. He holds up three fingers and counts down. When his fist is closed the door explodes into the building and the three flash-bangs follow.
The flash-bangs explode with a flash of intense light and sound and the team enters the building, their rifles up in firing position. Hank didn’t hear the rifle fire from the snipers, but he assumes they were successful. Leapfrogging one another in twos, the well-rehearsed team makes entry into the target room. The three armed men are still armed, but their guns are silent, all three dead where they fell. Hank and the other members of the team work to quickly search and secure the remaining five men as other troops enter to clear the rest of the building.
Hank grabs the man he knows as Hassan and throws him facedown on the floor. He buries a knee in his back and pulls the man’s hands behind him and zip-ties his wrists. When the all clear is given, the five men are separated and taken to other parts of the building for interrogation. Hassan is mumbling something Hank can’t hear, his ears still ringing from the grenade blasts. As Paige and other computer experts swarm into the building, Hank grabs a chair and drags it into one of the smaller offices and forces Hassan to sit. Only then does he hear what Hassan is saying. He triggers his radio and says, “One bogie still unaccounted for.” Then he turns to his suspect.
Hassan is trembling, his crotch wet where he pissed himself. Hank takes a couple of calming breaths, allowing Hassan a moment to fully grasp the situation, then crosses his arms and leans against the wall. “Hello, Hassan.”
Hassan, his eyes wide in surprise, takes a close look at Hank and shakes his head. “How do you know my name?”
“We met at an Internet security conference two years ago. You never told me your last name.”
“It’s Ansari.” He looks down at a spot on the concrete for long few seconds. “He was going to kill us.”
“Who was?” Hank asks.
“His name is Basir Nazeri. Your men have to find him.”
“Was Nazeri callin’ the shots?” Hank asks.
Ansari nods. Over the next hour, Ansari lays out the entire plan, providing names, dates, and the other details of the attack. Hank does not take notes, nor does he record the conversation. It’s just he and Hassan speaking, man-to-man. Yes, it was Hassan who logged on to the satellite and yes, it was Nazeri who produced all of the zero-day vulnerabilities and mapped networks. As the story continues to unfold, Hank realizes that Basir Nazeri is a very dangerous man. Hank grills Hassan about Nazeri and is not really surprised to learn that Hassan doesn’t know much about the man.
“I have his picture,” Hassan blurts out.
“Where?” Hank asks.
“In an encrypted folder I keep in the cloud.”
Hank helps Hassan to stand and leads him back to the room where they had been working. The place is a whirlwind of activity with Paige standing in the center of the room calling the shots. He calls her over and explains what he needs.
“Where in the cloud?” Paige asks Hassan.
He explains how to find the folder and gives Paige his log-in credentials. Paige assures Hank she’ll send the pictures out immediately and Hank takes Hassan back to his chair. Hank learns about the drone strikes on Hassan’s family and the other four families and finally begins to understand some of the reasons for their actions. Once Hassan finishes his story, Hank probes for more information about Nazeri, digging for the tiny scraps that might provide a clue about his identity.
“When did you first meet him?” Hank asks.
“I told you. Six months ago. He showed up, called us together, and we started refining the malware.” Hassan goes on to explain about the scholarships and receiving the software during his final year of undergrad study. He ensures Hank that the story is the same for the other four members of the team.
“And you hadn’t met the other four students until six months ago when Nazeri arrived?”
“No,” Hassan says. “I knew we were developing malware, but I had no idea of the purpose. Three days ago, we arrived at this building and that is the same time we discovered Nazeri’s list of targets. We’ve been here since that day.”
“Who targeted the president?” Hank asks.
“So you know?” Hassan asks, arching his brows. “Nazeri. Is the president dead?”
Hank debates whether to tell him, but Hassan has been divulging information and nothing he’s said triggered Hank’s bullshit meter. “The last I heard he was still alive.”
“Good,” Hassan says.
“Anything else you can tell me about Nazeri? Where he’s from or who he was in contact with?”
Hassan shakes his head. “I attempted to find out more information about him and could not. Maybe you can find out by looking at the phone records.”
“What phone records? Was he in contact with someone else durin’ your stay here?”
“He was. He used a landline phone and some type of scrambler. I doubt you will find much in the way of content, but you might find whom he was calling. Nazeri is resourceful and extremely intelligent, but he could have made a mistake somewhere.”
“What about accents? Did he have one?”
“I did not detect one. He spoke perfect English.”
“American English?”
“Yes. I did notice that he did not use many contractions, if at all. That is common for some nonnative English speakers. My sense is that he has spent some time here in the States.”
“Anything else you can think of about Nazeri?”
Hassan shakes his head. “You have the pictures.”
“That was smart thinking on your part. What made you decide to do it?”
“A feeling. He became more belligerent as time went on. Yesterday, he told us he owned us. What do you do with something you own and no longer need?”
“Throw it away?” Hank asks.
“Yes. When the armed guards appeared, I knew our time was short. I did not know Nazeri had left the premises.”
“If you had to guess his origin, Hassan, what would you guess?”
“Middle Eastern. Maybe Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or another Gulf state.” Hassan looks up at Hank. “What happens now?”
“You and your cohorts will be transported to separate locations where the interrogations will continue.”
“Will I be killed?”
Hank hesitates for a moment then says, “No, Hassan, I don’t believe so. You’ll likely end up in prison somewhere.”
“Guantanamo?” Hassan asks.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Sit tight for a minute, Hassan,” Hank says. He waves over another FBI SWAT team member and asks him to keep an eye on the prisoner. He returns to the main room and pulls Paige aside.
“You wouldn’t believe the list of targets these guys were going after,” Paige whispers. “Yesterday was only the tip of the iceberg.”
“Did you e-mail those photos of Nazeri to headquarters?”
“I did. Who is he?”
Hank sighs. “The mastermind. And we may never find him.”
“I’m sure the agency is blanketing the world with his picture as we speak. Did you ask that terrorist you’re interrogating for details?”
Hank winces at her use of the word terrorist, but when he stops to ponder it a moment he realizes that’s how they’ll be branded. “Yes. He doesn’t know much about him. Which is not surprisin’. Will you show me the picture?”
“Hoping to imprint it in that big brain of yours?” Paige asks as she leads Hank over to one of the computers.
“Somethin’ like that,” Hank says. Paige pulls up the photos of Nazeri and watches Hank’s facial expressions while he scrolls through the images.
“You haven’t seen him before, have you?” Pai
ge asks when Hank finishes.
“No.”
“I could tell by reading your expression.”
“What? We’ve been together a couple of days and you now know all my tells?”
“Not all of them,” Paige says. “I’ve seen sad, angry, and slightly excited. Haven’t witnessed your happy yet.”
“Good to know,” Hank mutters. “Do you need my prisoner to help with any of their computer stuff?”
“I’d like for him to hang around a bit. Right now, we’re taking inventory of everything and then we’ll put it on a plane back to Fort Meade. We’ll wait to dissect most of it back there. Did you ask him if they’ve inserted any booby traps or anything else we need to be aware of?”
“No. C’mon, you can ask him yourself.”
Hank leads Paige back to the room and introduces her to Hassan. He finds another chair for Paige and drifts out of earshot while the two of them talk. While he’s waiting, he calls Mercer and fills her in on the latest.
“Is the president still among the livin’?” Hank asks.
“Yes. Who knew someone could hack a pacemaker?” Mercer says.
“Anything connected to the Internet—”
“Can be hacked,” Mercer says, finishing Hank’s sentence. “I know, I know, Hank. But damn, it has to stop somewhere, doesn’t it?”
“I doubt it. What’s to stop them?”
“I suppose you’re right, as always. How did our star programmer work out?” Mercer asks.
“She’s good. Terrific, in fact.”
“That’s good to hear, Hank.” There’s a long pause and Mercer says, “Umm . . . oh, never mind. When are you coming back?”
Hank knows exactly what she was going to say. “You’re worse than Nana, Elaine.”
“You aren’t getting any younger, Hank.”
Hank nips that conversation in the bud and tells Elaine of his plans then kills the call.
Paige stands from her chair and walks over. “If I didn’t know he was responsible for thousands of deaths, I’d think he was a nice, pleasant young man.”
“Yep,” Hank says. “He got in over his head and didn’t know how to get out. Do you want him to hang around?”
“Yes, for a while, in case we hit a snag.” She glances back at Hassan then turns to look Hank in the eye. “What’s going to happen to him and the rest of them?”
“They’ll be taken somewhere for further interrogation.”
“And after that?” Paige asks.
Hank shrugs. “Not up to me. Prison somewhere, most likely.”
“Are we flying back to Fort Meade together or are you staying here?”
“I’ll most likely be here until we can run this Nazeri guy to ground. How much longer are you goin’ to be here?”
“Most of the day, probably.”
“I guess I’ll either see you at the airport or I won’t. You did good, Paige.” Hank turns, walks over to the other guard, and tells him to keep an eye on the prisoner for a little while longer, and heads outside to confer with Reiley.
Paige watches Hank’s retreat and her emotions go all over the place. Rather than try to sort them out, she walks back to the main room and returns to the task at hand.
ONE WEEK LATER
CHAPTER 89
Chicago
Peyton was correct in her assumption—it’s a week later, and the power is still out in Chicago. Eric and Jordan have done a good job with gathering food, but it’s water they’re struggling to find. After spending all their lives taking it for granted that water will come out of the tap when you turn it on, it’s a shock when the tap runs dry. Being without electricity is a major inconvenience, but being without water is an absolute life-or-death matter.
Now it’s early afternoon and, after a lunch of canned chili cooked over a wood fire on Jordan’s gutted gas grill, the four are seated in the living room discussing strategies to address the critical water situation.
“What about the vending machine at the school down the street?” Peyton asks. Her feet are slowly healing, but it still hurts to walk. Luckily she wears the same shoe size as Allison, and, more important, Allison is willing to share.
“Already looted,” Eric says. “We checked.” His bullet wound is healing nicely and he’s dodged infection for now.
“What about the concession stands at Wrigley?” Allison asks.
“Same story,” Jordan says. “They were probably cleaned out by day two.”
The discussion drags on. Moments later, Peyton is struck by an idea. “We’ve been focused on finding bottled water and we haven’t contemplated other sources. We live blocks away from one of the largest freshwater lakes on the planet. Why not take water from the lake?”
That stirs a debate about E. coli, salmonella, giardiasis, cryptosporidium, and a long list of other nasty bacteria and microorganisms. Once that’s exhausted, the discussion moves to radium, lead, mercury, PCBs, arsenic, and other natural elements that might be present in the waters of Lake Michigan. But in the end, they are out of options.
“We’ll boil the water to purify it,” Peyton says.
“We need to run it through some type of filter first to filter out the larger debris,” Eric says.
“How long do you have to boil the water?” Allison asks.
Without thinking, Jordan pulls out his cell phone he keeps charged with a small portable solar panel to Google the question. Then he remembers they have no cell service and no Internet. Old habits are hard to break. “I don’t think you can overboil it, can you?”
“I don’t think so,” Peyton says. “But I think once the water is hot enough to boil that’ll kill all the bad bugs.”
“One other important question,” Eric says, “is how are we going to get the water from the lake to here?”
“We’ll have to carry it,” Jordan says. “I have some five-gallon buckets from Home Depot in the garage.”
“Five gallons of water is heavy as hell,” Eric says. “We need a wagon or something.”
“Didn’t we see a wagon in the Wallace family garage?” Jordan asks.
“We did,” Eric says. “Grab the shotgun and we’ll go get it. Peyton, will you and Allison gather up the buckets?”
Jordan stands and retreats down the corridor to their bedroom to grab the shotgun.
“Yes. We’ll make it a pleasant afternoon trip to the lake.”
“I don’t know about pleasant,” Eric says.
“Probably wouldn’t hurt if we got in and rinsed off, too. We’ll take a couple of towels.”
Eric sniffs under his arm. “You don’t like my manly odor?”
“Uh, no,” Peyton says. “Although I don’t smell much better. I’ll grab some soap and shampoo, too. We’ll bathe like the old-timers used to do.”
Jordan returns with the shotgun and he and Eric take off to grab the wagon. Although they carry the shotgun whenever they go out, they haven’t needed it—yet. That will most likely change as the days stretch out and they have to widen their search for food. There has been no sighting of the Singleton family and they don’t yet know their home no longer exists. Eric dreads that upcoming confrontation, but there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.
The still-absent Wallace family lives just down the street and it doesn’t take Eric and Jordan long to grab the wagon and return. Allison and Peyton meet them in the front yard with the buckets, towels, soap, and shampoo. They pile everything in the wagon and head for the lake, twenty-one blocks to the east.
When they reach the lake they’re amazed by all of the tents staked out along the shore. The area is jammed with people, pets, and garbage for as far as the eye can see. If they were concerned about the water quality before, now they’re doubly concerned. They spend several moments discussing the issue, but find no alternatives. They must have water.
Smoke lingers along the beach from the many campfires, and thousands of people are lounging around their campsites, swimming in the lake, or standing along the shore, fishing. That�
�s something Eric and Jordan hadn’t thought of and they file it away as a future food source. The afternoon is hot and humid and it doesn’t appear that any clothing standards are in force. Many people are walking around in their underwear and just as many have shed their clothing altogether. Most of those would have been better served, Peyton thinks, if they had chosen not to discard their clothing.
Eric takes the shotgun and stands guard over their pitiful little wagon while the other three strip down to their underwear, grab the soap and shampoo, and wade out into the water. Because of his bullet wound, Eric and Peyton decided that the risk of infection outweighs his need for a bath so he takes a seat on the sand and people-watches. Fearing conflict, he avoids speaking to anyone as he surveys the crowd, his gaze continually returning to Peyton and Allison as they bathe. Jordan can take care of himself, however, Eric fears for the women’s safety in this new world they’re living in. He’s not sensing any danger at the moment, but he knows that could change in a heartbeat.
The three eventually return and Jordan carries the buckets out to deeper water to fill them. Eric, still carrying the shotgun, helps Jordan lug the heavy buckets back to the wagon. Once everyone is dressed, Eric hands the shotgun off to Jordan and grabs the wagon handle, groaning to get it moving. It’s a struggle in the sand, but the situation improves dramatically when they hit the asphalt.
“You three go ahead,” Jordan says. “I’m going to make sure no one follows us.”
“You really think someone would come after us?” Allison asks.
Jordan points at the wagon laden with buckets of water. “The buckets and the wagon are hot commodities about now. Plus, where would you rather sleep? In a tent surrounded by thousands of others or in a comfy bed with some privacy?”
