Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) (26 page)

That grim account was followed by a report of an assault on Ed Holmes’s kennel near Hagerstown by two self-styled, homegrown ISIS terrorists, one of whom had posted on Facebook a minute before the attack took place that they were going to kill the dog that had gone after bin Laden.

And claim the reward
, she thought.

When they didn’t find Cairo—saved by the call of duty down in Bethesda—they killed a ten-week-old Malinois puppy. Two retired Army Rottweilers ambushed the pair, killing the one who’d left the Facebook message.

Reuters reported paramedics on the scene had balked at treating the Islamist radical who’d survived. Despite severe wounds, the man was vociferously taking credit for the attack on the puppy.

Police officers forced the EMTs to offer him emergency medical measures and take him to a nearby hospital.

Lana heard Cairo heading up the stairs slowly.

It’s come to that? Killing a puppy?

She checked on Deputy Director Bob Holmes, who was still in the ICU and still seeing only family, which in his case included Donna Warnes.

Lana then received an email from park ranger Harry Riggs, who said Jojo remained immobilized. The dog’s spine had been almost severed during the knife attack. No word on whether he’d ever walk again. Riggs said Jojo would be kept sedated until he’d healed enough to safely assess his mobility.

Lana thanked Harry and checked the time, 4:42 p.m., before turning her thoughts to what she’d say to the President, if she ever got the chance for an Oval Office meeting.

• • •

Jimmy drew within ten miles of the rig. He spied the sky turning from starlit black to the darkest shade of gray. He had to risk racing closer without lights. He needed to reach that platform before they could see him. Otherwise, his mission would fail.

And they’ll have a boatload of fun killing you.

He gunned
Sexy Streak
up to 140 mph, racing blind until he shut down the engines one mile out. He let momentum and current take over from there. Normal security would have alerted those on the platform to an incoming vessel, but he hoped ISIS would be ill equipped to take over the more technical aspects of perimeter security, after killing almost everyone up there. Even more likely was that a specialist had activated a self-destruct program before ISIS could take full control of the facility.

Jimmy thought the odds
might
favor him so far.

A little more than a half-mile from the installation, 
Sexy Streak
slowed almost to a stop. He stripped to his briefs, tied a line around his waist and the end to the bow, and slipped into the water.

The Gulf felt cold, which he attributed to his low-grade fever more than the water, which had been warmed by unseasonable highs all summer.

With the current still running with him, he started swimming and towing the boat toward the pontoons that supported the BP operation looming before him. If all went well, he’d have
Sexy Streak
tied up under them before dawn made visibility his greatest enemy.

And if things go to shit, Jimmy boy?

Then nothing’s gonna matter
, he answered himself.
Least of all you
.

JIMMY WAS SHIVERING BY
the time he towed
Sexy Streak
under the Blue Ring oil platform and hauled himself up onto a floating dock, tie line hanging from his hips.

Happy Daze
, the forty-two-foot cabin cruiser that ISIS had hijacked to launch its assault on the rig, rested in a slip some twenty feet away. Jimmy had no intentions of leaving it afloat so ISIS could escape. That boat was getting a stick of dynamite on his way out.

If you get that far.

The oil rig was similar to BP’s ill-fated Horizon, which blew, burned, and killed eleven oil workers in 2010 before spilling five million barrels of crude into the Gulf. But Blue Ring’s potential for catastrophe was even greater—all ISIS had to do was sabotage the rig’s automatic shut-off valves, called BOPs, or “blowout preventers,” before destroying the oil pipe proper and subsea wellhead.

Jimmy figured if he knew that much from working just three weeks on a rig, then ISIS would likely know even more because the execution of the group’s plans—and most of the rig’s employees—had so far been both grisly and flawless. And the terrorists had made clear their desire to turn the Gulf into petroleum goo. But if Jimmy could blow the oil pipe running up to the platform before ISIS disabled the BOPs, the sudden change in pipe pressure should trigger the fail-safe mechanisms, if the oil companies had actually upgraded them after Horizon.

A big “if
,
”
he thought. But another “if” came to mind:
If
there had ever been a time to bank on hope, it had arrived this morning in all its shaky glory.

To get started, he tied up
Sexy Streak
and threw on his clothes, grateful for the warmth. Then he headed toward the nearest door, stilled by the sound of someone trying to key the lock.

Jimmy dug into his pocket and pulled out the Saturday night special the cantankerous Burr had loaned him, trusting the cheap .38 wouldn’t jam or backfire and blow off his face. No choice about using it, though: Anyone stepping through that door would see the race boat at a glance.

But they don’t need to see you.

He dashed to the side of the door that would open in front of him and give Jimmy cover for precious seconds. The person on the other side seemed to be trying a second key.

Must be ISIS
. A Blue Ring employee wouldn’t have been fiddling around.

Now a third key. Jimmy was sweating now instead of shivering.

The lock opened and the steel door swung toward him. He caught a glimpse of a lone man with black hair and beard stepping out to the boarding area holding a Kalashnikov by his side. As the door slowly closed behind the fighter, Jimmy watched him turn toward 
Sexy Streak
.

“Don’t move,” Jimmy said.

The man froze. The door swung back slowly.
Too
slowly. Jimmy wanted it closed to block the sound of gunfire.

“Drop the gun and turn toward me.”

The Kalashnikov clattered on the deck.

Jimmy aimed right between the man’s eyes, but another pair greeted his gaze: The fighter had a head hanging by his side, middle and ring fingers plunged into each socket and his thumb hooked into the mouth. Could have been a bowling ball.

A beat later the door did click shut.

Jimmy fired exactly where he’d aimed, and one of ISIS’s finest crumpled to the deck. The head he’d been holding started rolling toward the water.

Jimmy swore and lunged for it. The last thing he wanted was to fish it out. Right before it would have fallen off, he grabbed a shock of hair and rested the head upright on the deck so it wouldn’t take off on him again, though it now gave the distinct appearance of bearing witness to the macabre goings-on in the immediate vicinity. Only then did Jimmy recognize the victim from television as one of the two oil workers who’d been taken prisoner with the rig’s chief engineer.

Jimmy commandeered the Kalashnikov and a beauty of a Browning 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, then tore open the dead killer’s shirt hoping to find body armor. None. But he spotted a long knife sheathed in black leather and pulled the blade out, wondering how many heads it had severed. The knife was clean. He slipped it back in the sheath and hung it from his belt.

With a wary eye on the door, he climbed back on
Sexy Streak
, put in one ear bud, and scanned news channels to try to find out the extent of the violence up above. Had all three been killed?

An AP report on a New Orleans radio station said an oil worker had been beheaded because the chief engineer had claimed he couldn’t shut down the BOPs.

Just as Jimmy wondered why they hadn’t dropped the head into the Gulf, as they had the others, the reporter quoted from a terrorist communiqué: “We will use the heads of the last three men on this rig as soccer balls on the White House lawn as soon as we take Washington.”

“You’re not getting anywhere near the White House, you sons-of-bitches,” Jimmy said to the dead man. “And neither are you,” he added in more soothing tones to the roughneck’s head a few feet away.

He checked out the Kalashnikov. He’d never handled one but knew their reputation for reliability, as well as a lack of accuracy.

Are you really going to use that?

Jimmy had no choice, not in any world in which he wanted to live. They’d started killing the innocent again. He couldn’t in good conscience merely blow the oil pipe and leave. He’d have to go up to that platform and do whatever he could to save the last two men and the Gulf of Mexico, which he loved as much as the Louisiana land on which he’d been born.

He grabbed the keys from the dead man and headed back toward the door.

• • •

Emma had stuffed the essentials into her book backpack: change of clothes, phone, makeup, toiletries, and an extra pair of shoes. After silencing the security alarm to give her thirty seconds to slip out of the house, she’d eased out the back door, held her breath, and stood in the darkness, hoping her mother and father were still asleep.

Cairo, thankfully, hadn’t barked as she left. He simply watched her. That was when she realized he’d been making sure she was okay. She wished she could have taken him with her. She felt safer with him around, and she needed to get to Planned Parenthood in Baltimore. Em figured if she tried any of the agency’s clinics in DC, Sufyan would find her and try to stop her from ending the pregnancy. He’d been adamant that she should have the baby.

“I’m seventeen,” she’d pleaded. “I have my whole life ahead of me. I can’t have a baby.”

He’d glowered at her for the first time. “Our baby has her whole life ahead of her, too.”

Why’d he think it was a girl? It was a collection of cells. Still, aborting was a horribly hard decision, but also heartrending because she loved Sufyan and wanted to have a family with him someday. Not now, though, not in high school.

That’s crazy.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the night as she headed down the street to where she’d left the car. Her mother’s mobility was limited, and Emma had correctly foreseen that Lana wouldn’t drag herself to the garage to check on the Fusion. Or her father, for that matter. They trusted her, which made her feel even guiltier.

Earlier, Emma had parked two blocks away, then came in through the garage, as she did every time she came home. She’d known better than to think she could raise the garage door in the middle of the night without setting off alarms and Cairo.

The engine started smoothly. She drove away with her pack beside her, tears blurring her vision. She wiped them away, not so much scared as sad. She didn’t know Baltimore well, and now that she was on the interstate, every minute was taking her a mile closer. In an hour she’d be there. The sky was graying. She’d have to hide out till the clinic opened.

And then what?

Would she have to wait a day or two? She didn’t want to make her parents insane with worry. Maybe she’d just call them from a pay phone, if she could find one, and leave a message that she was all right and would be home soon. She didn’t want them coming after her, either. She’d already shut off her “find my phone” app.

When it was all over, and her mom recovered fully from the grenade attack, she’d tell her about the pregnancy. But right now Em needed to be alone.

And she thought she was.

I’M GLAD EMMA ELKINS
switched off that app. Of course shutting it down didn’t stop me at all. What Emma couldn’t know (without a great level of cybertise) was that I could just as easily track her movements by hacking her car’s computer system. I’ve found the Ford Fusion easy to access remotely and was delighted when I realized her mother had bought it for her. Now, of course, the sleek-looking coupe was about to become the Achilles’ heel of the whole family. Lana Elkins was renowned for providing superb cybersecurity on an international scale—and she had avoided the Jeep Cherokee, which had made headlines for getting hacked at speed—but when it came to the Fusion? Not nearly so wary. And why would she have been? The Fusion had escaped notice until recently. Not by me, though.