29

 

What was Josh really thinking after their discussion? While the helicopter landed outside, Josh studied the floor, obviously engrossed in some mental struggle.

As Lee had taught her, Katie hadn’t left Josh any wiggle room, none of the existential or intellectual arguments that atheists throw at theists. But then that blasted helicopter arrived. She fired a short prayer for Josh as the helicopter rotor spun down.

Men’s voices came from outside the building. One booming voice sounded above the others, Peterson’s.

Katie steeled herself for the onslaught of questions and threats.

The door to their room swung open. Peterson and Ruska stepped in and Agent Ruska closed the door behind them.

The tall FBI agent walked across the room toward her.

Katie sat up and stiffened in her chair as Peterson approached.

He put a hand on her shoulder.

She looked up into eyes that only held concern, not anger.

“Are you OK, Katie?”

Ruska stood on the other side of the room, arms folded across his chest, silent but watching.

Was this the calm before the storm?

“I’m OK. Josh saved me…from being shot. A couple of times.”

Peterson looked down at Josh. “And you didn’t get hit, Josh?”

“No, sir. Only sprayed with some shattered glass.”

“We’ll have to keep your car. Forensics.”

“Yeah. I suspected that. You’ve taken it before.”

“That was the Seattle police who took it.” Peterson turned his attention back to her. “I need a concise description of what you discovered. Then we can finish the debriefing back at the field office.”

Katie looked up at Peterson, sensing that everyone’s gazes were on her. Where should she begin? She waited for the words to come.

“Kate…” Josh stood, “…if you’re not going to tell him, I am.”

She took Josh’s hand and pulled him back into his chair. “The two who chased Josh and me were functioning as command and control over a three-pronged attack coordinating elements of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram, funded by Shiites in Iran and Sunnis in Saudi.”

Peterson shook his head. Was it disbelief or disapproval?

Katie continued before he could inject his thoughts. “The weapons and points of attack include nearly all the Western forests. They plan to use radio-controlled planes as fire bombs, planes having six-foot wing spans. Second, weaponized smallpox, variola major, using a Russian-made deployment mechanism. We think it’s some type of explosive, but we’re not sure. Third, a large-scale cyber attack against SCADA systems. The attack is designed to take down much of our power grid.” She pressed her lips together and met Peterson’s gaze.

“Heaven help us.” She’d only heard Peterson pray once, but his voice sounded like a prayer.

“Yeah. Heaven help us.” Ruska echoed.

Peterson blew out a blast of air. “When, Katie? Do you know their schedule?”

“They have to launch it now or lose their entire investment of people, time, and money. I don’t know how quickly they can initiate the attack. Another uncertainty is that I turned loose a piece of malware that should have wiped out the hard drive on the guy’s laptop.”

“But they probably have redundancy built into their plan,” Josh said, leaning forward in his chair. “He’ll just get another laptop.”

She nodded. “But it will cost him a few hours.”

The room went silent.

Peterson paced back and forth across the room, pinching his chin. After nearly a minute, he stopped. “Ruska, take care of the forensics on Josh’s car. Make sure you have a police escort when you tow it back to Seattle. You two…” he looked down at Josh and her, “…come with me. I’ll alert DHS and some other people. We’ll need to have a video conference back in Seattle as we mobilize to stop the attack. Katie, Josh, you’ll both need to be there.”

Katie looked up at him. “We aren’t cleared.”

“But your knowledge of the conspiracy is critical. I’ll handle the clearance issues. Now tell me…is there any way we can locate the people in the field who will be carrying out the attacks?”

Katie looked at Josh and gave him a hands up gesture.

When Josh didn’t respond, she focused on Peterson. “The commander will give them the go ahead in some planned sequence. But the problem is they switched to peer-to-peer communications using a client that communicates with unencrypted HTTP.”

“Is there any way, Katie, to find their communications in near real time?”

She looked at Josh wondering if he would speak up.

His wide eyes said no. But Josh knew he was their only hope.

“Josh’s new algorithm might be able to do that, but my database is too—”

“Forget your database.” Peterson’s voice crescendoed. “What if you had access to NSA’s resources?”

She smiled at Josh. “Can you believe this? The first full-scale test of your algorithm is going to—”

“Might be, Kate.” Josh shook his head. “There is no guarantee this stuff is ready for the big leagues, but we probably don’t have any better option if we want to locate the participants in the attack.” Josh stood and became animated explaining how they would need to configure the required resources to run his software.

“Josh’s algorithm is plan number one.” Peterson said. “I’ll get a backup plan going with DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement while we fly back to Seattle. And…I’ll clear things with NSA. But to interface quickly with their data we’ll need Jennifer’s help. She knows their data like…well, like Jennifer knows everything, in great detail.” He motioned toward the door. “Outside you two. We’ve got a chopper to catch.”

Katie took Josh’s hand as they walked out of the room. She gave him a probing glance, then a smile. “Looks like you’re the hero tonight. You’re already my hero, even if you did mash my face into the seat.”

“You’d better pray my algorithm finds them.”

She squeezed his hand as they walked toward the helicopter. “I will, Josh. You can count on it.”

“My code implementing the algorithm could have used some more testing before we had to rely on it.”

“I have faith in you, Josh.”

“Kate Brandt, a woman of faith.” He gave her a weak smile.

“We still have a conversation to finish.”

“Yeah.” Some of the excitement left Josh’s eyes. “Kate, can your mom really help me interface to the NSA database?”

Katie nodded. “She can probably even give you the code to do it. You did design your code using an object-oriented approach?”

“Yeah.”

“Then don’t worry, Josh.”

“Somebody has to.”

When they approached the helicopter, Josh turned to face her. “You’re not going to throw up on me again, are you, Kate?”

“No. I promise.”

“The way my stomach feels after you volunteered my algorithm, maybe you should watch out on this chopper ride.” He turned and pulled Kate toward the big helicopter as the rotor whined its starting complaint.