Everything was on track and Zahir could see the colonel rubbing his hands.
Zahir found it delicious that the brilliant ideologue Matthew Spenser, hate-filled, yet so very na?ve, would be the lynchpin. He’d given Zahir—Darius—a coin bomb for a souvenir, now being disassembled in Iran, and Zahir had stolen a second one, currently residing in his pocket. Even though the coin he’d sent to Rahbar hadn’t as yet been tested, Zahir had known to his soul it would work, and he’d made doubly sure at Bayway, and when he’d texted colonel Rahbar with the result, he’d been elated.
Zahir fingered the coin in his pocket, smiled, and thought of Matthew’s finger pressing the button that would signal the beginning of the end of the earth as anyone knew it.
Yes, all his bases were covered, all contingencies dealt with, as the Americans said, and because the FBI could close in on Matthew before he could act, Zahir had his backup plan firmly in place. In fact, he rather hoped he would have to use it. More drama, more impact, the killing blow.
He sat back against an oak tree and closed his eyes, listening to the guards’ footsteps, their low voices, the dogs. Not much longer to wait.
He heard a dull thwap, then the buzzing stopped. Matthew had succeeded. The fence was down.
Shouts from the guards, movement all around. Now was the time. He had to move.
He knew their protocols: the guards would leave the fence in this quadrant. The left flank guard would cover the area of two while the guard closest to the camp turned on the generators. He watched him walk away, gun cradled in his arms, the dog following, tail wagging, liking the change of pace.
Three steps, two, one.
The guard was one hundred feet away now, the dog lunging toward the path.
Zahir ran out of the woods, went up and over the fence.
He lost his footing, landed hard on the other side, scrambled away as quietly as possible. He’d knocked out his breath, but the guard hadn’t seen him.
He was inside the perimeter.
When he could breathe easily again, he moved carefully, slowly, always out of sight. When he got close to the farthermost cabin, he put the earwig in, and sure enough, as Matthew had promised, the voices came through clear as a bell.
The door was unlocked, and he eased inside. No one would be out this far, they’d already done a sweep earlier. According to the notes he had, this area was checked only twice a day. He adjusted the earwig. He’d have plenty of time to move, since he could hear them coming now.
He reset his watch, started the timer.
Forty-eight hours and counting.
Tuesday
6 p.m.–Midnight
57
QUEEN TO D8 CHECK
Washington, D.C.
Driving through the city without power was eerie. Police were out in force, helping people try to get home. Savich navigated through the intersections carefully in Sherlock’s stalwart Volvo. Mike rode up front; Nicholas was in back with a laptop in his lap, monitoring the situation in Richmond.
“We’ve arrested the attack. I have a note here from Adam Pearce. He’s working on the threat assessment with Juno. I—”
Savich looked in the rearview. “What is it, Nicholas? You have something?”
“The risk assessment is bothering me. As you know, Dominion Virginia Power recently had one. They put in new firewalls, new safeguards, so an attack like this shouldn’t be able to happen. Yet it did, and it quickly became worst-case. You know Juno is very respected in the cyber-world. I don’t understand how they could have screwed up this badly.”
“You said yourself Gunther Ansell’s coding was world-class,” Mike said.
“I did, Mike, and it was. But to exploit a flaw and get the code in to begin with, you must get into a back door, whether one you create, or one left for emergency access—should something like this ever happen. We mentioned it and now I’m wondering if Juno’s programmers left a back door for their assessment and Andy Tate was smart enough to use it.”