I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on to alert Tristan. As my phone came to life, a light blinked with fifteen overlapping missed calls from Si Wilson and Tristan.
As I hit Reply on Tristan’s call, Meg looked up at me with bleary eyes and said, “Nat, we lost him.”
CHAPTER 55
Fort Meade, Maryland
The headquarters of the National Security Agency are hidden in plain sight, but the inner workings of that government institution are just plain hidden.
The Baltimore-Washington Parkway south of Baltimore has signs directingAUTHORIZED PERSONNELONLYto the NSA complex, but there are no visitor rooms or facility tours on-site like those offered at the Smithsonian or the Capitol or even the FBI.
Multiple defense screening systems protect the facility from external threats, while internal protocols make the interior virtually impenetrable by anyone without a need to know. Every room is equipped with alphanumeric placards that monitor the multiple cyber and biometric locks on every door.
The formidable fortifications of the manmade iceberg are mirrored in multiples beneath the surface of the Maryland countryside, where operations remain in full swing every hour of every day throughout every week, month, and year.
The long and short of it? We, the good guys, can monitor almost every piece of information that gets digitally passed around the world. Phone calls, emails, even encrypted communications can be tagged for further scrutiny if they pose a potential threat to our national security.
How it all happens or precisely what they can see and hear was beyond me, of course. All I knew was that somewhere about five stories below the parking lot existed a room where really smart people watched, read, and listened for blips in cyberspace.
And it was one of those subterranean eggheads who caught a glimpse of a blip that had originated a few miles off the coast of Nantucket. Whatever triggered the blip was enough to alert a team of analysts, hackers, and algorithm wizards to focus all their efforts on tracking the anomaly.
Whoever was going to receive the electrons racing through the atmosphere was no dummy. Apparently, the signal was bouncing around from London to Hong Kong and everywhere in between. Some complex system of loops and retransmission sites had been staged for this specific piece of digital information to pass from sender to receiver. It wasn’t impossible to track its journey, but it was almost impossible to pinpoint its final destination: The relays happened in a tenth of a second before traversing the heart of Europe and Asia.
At least, that’s what Tristan told me when I got him on the phone. All the good guys knew was where it had originated and where it was heading. They had no idea of its content.
That, unfortunately, was the intelligence they were looking to us to provide.
CHAPTER 56
Atlantic Ocean
“Harrison is dead. Nothing we could do, man. I’m sorry.”
“Got it,” Tristan said. “Give me the basics and I will let them know.”
Them,I assumed, meant the faceless and nameless decision-makers who protect the president’s liability.
“Tristan, here’s the deal. Harrison was snatched from his bed, moved offshore, tortured, and killed. And it looks like all of it was caught on video. We’re collecting as much intel as we can right now, and standing by for whatever you need. Tommy and Felix are still on station, but they’ve gotta be running low on fuel. Do you have anything on Rowan Anderson, the Secret Service agent?”
“Nothing, sorry. Send Falcon 3 and 4 back home to refuel. Navy ships are heading to the harbor to aid the Coast Guard in recovery; I’ll get one diverted to your position for extraction.Still a shit show on the island, but latest word as of about half an hour ago is that no one on the ferry survived. The airport is still shut down, so nothing’s flying but us and USCG.”
I took in that breaking news, then asked Tristan what the local cops knew.
“Short answer: They know there’s a national-security operation happening, and that a government unit is conducting sensitive missions. You’re the POC.”
I could tell there was more, and Tristan didn’t prove me wrong.
“The NSA caught a glimpse of some electronic data—obviously the video—and traced it back to your approximate position. They’re still trying to get a lock on it. Take everything you can back to your place, and call me when you get home. Put your thinking cap on, buddy.”
No sooner had Tristan hung up than my phone jumped to life again with a new call from Si Wilson.
“What do you have, Si?”
“Nat, it’s me. Did you find Harrison? I know where he is.”
I was so shocked to hear Rowan’s voice that I dropped my phone.
She’s alive—and on Si’s phone.As if in slow motion I bent to pick up my phone, seeing everything and everyone frame by frame: Meg exhausted and bloody next to Harrison’s body; Oliver collapsed on a couch, nursing his wounds; Wolf and JP taking turns pulling security and stuffing everything they could into whatever bags or boxes they could find. And I had just heard the voice of a dead woman turned sole survivor.
