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  “I’ve done it before,” Rapp said. “The good news is that it only has to happen once before word gets around.”

  “All right,” Alexander said, standing. “I’ve heard enough and I have to get on a helicopter in fifteen minutes. As much as I hate to say this, my sense is that Nahas has what he needs to carry out an attack on some level. Irene and Darren—find these psychopaths and send Mitch to deal with them. TJ and Jim, get your people together and figure out what we’re going to do if things don’t go our way. All hands on deck, right? If you have any problems or run into any roadblocks, contact me directly. I’m looking forward to my retirement and I’d rather not spend it in the dark.”

  CHAPTER 14

  SOUTHEASTERN OHIO

  USA

  “I JUST texted you the address,” John Alton said. “Key’s under the mat.”

  He disconnected the call and looked at his hand as he placed it back on the steering wheel. Shaking. With fear. With excitement. With anticipation. It was hard to believe that this thing was finally in motion. That it was really happening.

  He couldn’t get what had happened at the motel to stop playing out in his mind. The van’s impact and the lifeless body being spit from beneath its wheels had been thrilling for sure—just like in the movies.

  What hadn’t been so thrilling was the man who had come out of the room on the first floor. The speed he’d run at. The fact that getting shot hadn’t seemed to even faze him. But mostly the hazy image through the diner window of him executing a man crawling across the floor.

  Alton had walked off that mountain telling himself that everything he’d worked for was gone. The government was too close. And that man was too dangerous.

  He’d reminded himself that he was rich. That he never had to work another day in his life. He could sail around the Mediterranean in a yacht full of five-thousand-dollar-a-night whores. Kick back in his Mexican villa with servants waiting on him hand and foot. Whatever he wanted. He just had to reach out and take it.

  Power was a narcotic, though. Watching that man in the parking lot die and knowing it had happened because of a phone call he’d made was an incredible rush—a sensation that he had the ability to multiply a million times over. Not only did he possess the most devastating weapon in the history of the human race, but he had the ability to actually use it. Not like the nukes that had become little more than tedious theater or the bioweapons that no one had the guts to deploy. This was real.

  He eased to a stop at a red light and looked at the people in the cars around him. What would happen to them? Each one would live out what was to come in their own way. The couple in the minivan next to him. Would either of them survive? Maybe, but the two children watching videos in back wouldn’t.

  If he were to pull up to this exact intersection one year from now, what would it look like? He tried to picture it. Empty parking lots. Shattered windows. A few cars abandoned by the side of the road. Maybe a few scavenging dogs or wild animals.

  The rewards of this were infinite and after a number of sleepless nights going over every detail in his head, he had determined that the risks were acceptable. There seemed to be no plausible way that the government could know his identity or have tracked the men he was about to meet. It was safe.

  It had to be.

  * * *

  Everything seemed completely normal as Alton pulled into the remote hunting camp. He parked in the driveway next to a late-model Ford Explorer and stepped out into the cold. The dilapidated log structure looked unoccupied but the presence of the other car suggested that wasn’t the case. They were already inside. Waiting.

  His breath came out as a light fog as he jogged onto the porch and tested the front door. It was unlocked and he went inside, squinting through the gloom. He wanted to remember every detail. The deer head on the wall. The cabinets and kitchen full of mismatched appliances. But mostly the two men standing near the back.

  “You’re sure you weren’t followed?” Alton said.

  “Of course not,” the one on the right said. He had broad shoulders, a neatly trimmed beard, and dark eyes that seemed full of hate. Someone accustomed to being in charge. Of being feared and deferred to.

  The man standing next to him was different—taller, but slightly puffy and wearing glasses. ISIS’s second-string technology expert. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be a complete idiot.

  “Of course not,” Alton mocked. “I wouldn’t get too cocky after what happened in Virginia.”

  “What did happen there?”

  It was a reasonable question. There had been very little in the media about the incident. The cops were playing it as a couple of rednecks getting in an argument and shooting each other. Not particularly unusual or interesting, especially when compared to the lead story of the day—the unraveling of that bullshit story about the plane crash in Spain.

  “The government had people there waiting for you, just like I said. Your people only managed to kill one lousy person before they got taken out.”

  “You’re sure they’re dead?”

  “Very,” Alton said. “And all the people connected to those two men have been moved?”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my business.”

  “Someone needs to.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed, but he managed to control his anger. “Enough of this. Can you do what you say?”

  “Yes. Can you?”

  “You personally witnessed the devotion of my people.”

  “Well, you’re good at dying, I’ll give you that. The problem is that dying isn’t a great way of getting things done, is it? Maybe that’s why you spend your days riding around on camels and getting your asses kicked by the Jews.”

  “What do you know of my people?” the man said, sounding a little strangled as he reined in his rage.

  Alton didn’t bother to answer, instead retrieving a laptop from his courier bag and setting it on the table. Less than a minute later, it was booted up and he’d used his fingerprint to unlock it.

  “My entire plan is here. All the information on the grid, all the companies I’ve been able to penetrate. Most important, though, it’s got pictures and locations of critical infrastructure your people would need to destroy. Take a look. See if you’re satisfied and tell me if you’ve got the resources to hold up your end. If so, this could be the beginning of a very productive relationship.”

  The techy-looking guy sat down behind the computer and began working through the information stored there. Alton retreated to a sofa against the wall. Just like he had in the Russian meeting. But without the eye candy.

  “And what do you want in return for all this information?” the man staring down at him said.

  “Simple. I want to be in charge. You guys haven’t been able to pull off anything since Nine/Eleven and that, frankly, had all the sophistication of a sledgehammer. This plan has a scale and precision that you can’t even come close to handling.”

  “No?”

  “No. Now how many reliable followers do you have in the US?”

  “Enough.”

  “See? This is the kind of shit that worries me. Don’t tell me ‘enough’ when you don’t even know what the job is. And don’t tell me God will provide. If he was looking out for you, the Middle East wouldn’t be such a shithole.”

  “And so now you’re going to tell me about God?” he said.

  “Let’s cut through this crap, okay? If God wanted America destroyed, he’d do it himself. Do you really think the entity that created biology and black holes sits around worrying about your facial hair and whether or not you eat hot dogs? I’m doing this for me. And so are you. Now, I’m going to ask you one more time. How many people do you have?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And I assume they can do things like drive, shoot, and follow simple written instructions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is indeed a match made in heaven. I have the brains and you have the brawn.”

  The man looked behind
him and spoke to his companion, who was still staring into the glow of the laptop. “Is it really all there?”

  “Yes,” he responded, sounding a bit stunned. “I have access to everything. Even the passwords necessary to activate malware in individual power companies.”

  The ISIS leader seemed confused. “Are you saying that we have everything we need to carry out the attack ourselves?”

  “I… I’d have to confirm a few more things, but I would say yes.”

  A predictable smile spread across his face as he returned his attention to Alton. “You seem very confident in your intelligence, but I wonder how smart it was to make yourself redundant?”

  Alton frowned. “I’m not smart. I’m a fucking genius.” He pointed to the man behind the laptop. “Tell him.”

  He looked a little sheepish, but wasn’t willing to disagree. “Based on what I’ve seen, he is indeed a genius. What he’s accomplished here is staggering.”

  “And you,” Alton said, now aiming his wagging finger at the man hovering over him, “are a cartoon villain. You’ve got a problem, though.”

  The terrorist’s smile persisted. “Do I? And what problem is that?”

  “You can’t kill me.”

  “Ah, because you left out some critical piece of information, yes? A fragment of code. A password.” His gaze intensified. “I truly hope that’s the case. Because you have no idea how much pleasure I’m going to have extracting that information from you.”

  Alton shook his head disappointedly and held up his arms to expose devices attached to each wrist. “You probably think these are watches, but they’re actually heart rate monitors that upload data via a satellite connection.”

  “What data?”

  “My heart rate, dumbass. They’re heart rate monitors. Didn’t we just cover this? The part that’s important to you, though, is that they have alarms on them. If my heart rate goes too low—like if I was dead, for instance—a notification gets uploaded. And if it goes too high—like if I was being tortured—a similar notification gets uploaded.”

  “To what end?” he said, obviously starting to see his perceived advantage evaporate.

  “I’m glad you asked. If that notification goes out, an…” His voice faded for a moment. “… antidote for want of a better word gets sent to pretty much every government agency in the country.”

  “Antidote? What do you mean?”

  “Basically, all the information on that laptop, a detailed plan to route around all the damage, and the code necessary to bring all the power company computers back online.”

  The man turned to his tech guru. “Is this possible?”

  “Very much so.”

  That turned out to be too much for the terrorist. He grabbed Alton by the front of the jacket, lifted him from the couch, and slammed him against a wall.

  “Arrogant bastard!” he shouted, spraying Alton’s glasses with spit.

  “Careful, man. My heart rate’s going up. You don’t want to scare me, do you?”

  The Arab just stood there with his fists tangled in the fabric of Alton’s coat.

  “You can either destroy the Great Satan or you can kill me. It can’t be both, asshole.”

  His grip began to relax and Alton looked directly into his eyes. He thought he was such a badass—just like so many others Alton had crossed paths with over the years. The high school football players. The corporate CEOs and government muckety-mucks. Men whose unwavering confidence made them blind and stupid.

  Alton slipped a hunting knife from his waistband and rammed it upward into the man’s stomach. It sunk to the hilt, but the Arab was too dumb to understand what had happened. Too much the alpha male. He just stood there, his grip failing and his dark eyes losing their intensity.

  Alton stepped to the side and the man collapsed, landing on his back and looking at the knife protruding from him. Surprise more than anything else registered on his face.

  “Didn’t see that coming, did you?” Alton said.

  He felt exhilarated. Sure, he’d been ultimately responsible for the deaths at that motel, but this was a completely different sensation. He’d been fantasizing about killing another human being since he was a kid. At first those fantasies had revolved around the people who picked on him at school, but later they became less focused. People he glimpsed on the street. People he saw on TV. It was the act that fascinated him. Not the victim.

  He glanced down at his wrist and confirmed that his heart rate was still well below the upper limit he’d set. When he looked up again, he saw the man behind the laptop staring at him. Frozen.

  “What’s your name?”

  He didn’t respond at first, clearly unsure what to do. It wasn’t until the man on the floor went still that he finally spoke. “Feisal Ibrahim.”

  The young Arab looked a bit like a caged animal. And why not? America had pretty much eradicated ISIS and what was left of its leadership was bleeding out on the floor. What was left for him? A short life spent searching the sky for the drone that would kill him. Unless there was no one left to fly those drones.

  “So, what do you think, Feisal? About me being in charge, I mean. Do you have a problem with that?”

  He thought about it for a few seconds and then just shook his head.

  CHAPTER 15

  NORTH OF FREDERICK

  MARYLAND

  USA

  A GPS coordinate had been provided in lieu of an address and Alton followed his phone’s instruction to turn onto a nondescript, tree-lined road. The landscape around him was largely agricultural and he passed a number of farms before passing through the open whitewashed gate of one with no signage.

  The slight queasiness he’d been feeling since he left home increased, causing trickles of sweat to run down his sides. The hour-and-a-half drive had given him plenty of time to think and he’d used it to scrutinize every potential mistake. Every complexity. Every risk.

  And he’d come up with nothing—not a single plausible reason that he would be summoned to a secret meeting in rural Maryland. The ISIS man’s body had been disposed of without incident and his technology henchman seemed to be following orders. Even if the government had uncovered his plan, why would they have him drive to his own demise? Seems like that was what the black helicopters were for.

  He came around a corner and saw a group of agricultural buildings that looked very much like all the others in the area. The only difference was that these were surrounded by a tall chain link fence with a posted guard. And not the overweight twelve-dollar-an-hour variety. This one looked capable of twisting a man’s head off like a bottle cap.

  Alton rolled down his window and let the vehicle begin to coast, but he was just waved through. Instead of returning his foot to the gas, though, he gazed through the windshield at the main building. There were a few cars parked out front, gleaming dully under overcast skies. Toward the north end, he spotted Janice Crane’s Audi. Its presence calmed him enough to accelerate again. Throwing bags over people’s heads and tossing them in holes wasn’t her part of the bureaucracy. He just needed to stay cool and on his toes. Whatever was happening here, it was going to be fine.

  He took the closest empty spot to the door and got out. The wind went right through his suit jacket, but it wasn’t enough to prompt him to move at much more than a shuffle. When he finally reached the front door, no one was there to greet him so he took hold of the knob and reluctantly twisted.

  The reception area he entered was completely unremarkable and dominated by a single desk. The smiling woman behind it held out a plastic badge emblazoned with his name.

  “You’re running a bit late, Mr. Alton. I suggest you hurry.”

  He did as he was told, speed-walking down a nondescript hallway until he was intercepted by a man in a military uniform. He didn’t really know much about soldiers—just a bunch of low-class cannon fodder, as far as he was concerned—so he couldn’t identify the branch or rank.

  “If you could just follow me, please,
sir.”

  The place was a lot bigger than it appeared from the outside and smelled vaguely of fresh paint and new carpet. He didn’t see anything more threatening than some bad landscape paintings, but he had to admit that he didn’t really know what to look for. His knowledge of clandestine government operations came entirely from Hollywood.

  When they reached what seemed to be the back of the building, the soldier opened a door and motioned him inside. The room was about twenty-five feet square, furnished with little more than a conference table, chairs, and a water cooler. Janice Crane was sitting near the far end next to a black guy with an Afro. They were surrounded primarily by generic people in generic suits, with a few soldiers thrown in for good measure. These men were older than the one who had escorted him there and their uniforms were fancier. His attention shifted to a man standing against the back wall but he immediately averted his eyes.

  Fuck.

  He was the one from the motel. The one who had gotten shot and then executed the man in the diner. Alton focused on keeping his expression serene, but that got even harder when a woman to his left greeted him. He recognized her from the news. Irene Kennedy. The director of the CIA.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Alton,” she said politely. “Take any empty seat.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then chose the chair farthest from the man staring at him from the back wall.

  “We’ve all gone over the report you did for Congress,” Kennedy continued. “And it’s extremely thorough. Congratulations on a job well done.”

  He nodded uncomfortably.

  “In the long term, we hope to implement all your recommendations, but we’d like your thoughts on what we could do in the short term. Protocols that could be quickly and easily implemented to improve the security of our grid. Obviously, we’re looking at half measures here, but something is better than nothing, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Again, he nodded, surprise starting to overshadow his discomfort. Holy mother of God. They’d called him here to help them. To ask him how to stop an attack that he himself was going to carry out. The urge to laugh was overwhelming but quickly faded when he thought a little deeper about his situation.