The President Is Missing(83)

She puts on the backpack again, and the rifle, and grips the rope. She’ll need to do this fast. It’s a lot of weight to put on the branch, so the less time it takes, the better.

She takes a breath. Her nausea has subsided, but she is bone-tired, weary and shaky. She fantasizes about sleep, about stretching out her legs and closing her eyes.

Her team may have had a point about her going it alone. They wanted to deploy a force of ten or twelve in the woods. That would have been fine with her, but the risk was too great. She couldn’t know how heavy the patrols of the woods would be. It was hard enough for her to make it to her spot alone without incident. Multiply one person by twelve, and that’s a dozen different opportunities for detection. It would only take one mistake, one person who was too loud or clumsy, and the entire operation would be blown.

She looks around one more time, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

She climbs the rope, inching upward, her arms straining, one hand over the other, legs scissored over the rope.

She’s just reaching for the branch when she hears it.

A noise, in the distance. Not the sound of small animals scurrying away. Not the low growl or angry bark of a predator.

Human voices, coming her way.

It’s a burst of laughter she first hears, then animated chatter, muted by distance.

Does she drop down and remove her sidearm? The rope would still be visible, dangling from a branch.

The voices get closer. More laughter.

She removes her feet from the rope and puts them taut against the tree to steady herself, feeling the strain of the branch. If she holds completely still, they may never see her. Movement draws the eye more than anything else, more than color or sound.

Still, if the tree branch snaps, the noise will be unmistakable.

She holds still, no small chore when suspended in the air, her arms straining, sweat dripping into her eyes.

She sees them now, two of them, through the trees to the west, semiautomatic weapons in their hands, their voices growing louder.

Her right hand lets go of the rope, moving to the grip of her sidearm.

She can’t dangle here forever. The branch won’t hold. And sooner or later, the one arm holding her up will give out, too.

She manages to pull her sidearm free.

They draw closer, not specifically walking in her direction—more of a southeasterly direction—but getting near. If she can see them, they can see her.

Trying to obscure the movement of the weapon, she holds it close to her side. She’ll have to take out both of them before they can rattle off a single round, before they can reach their radios.

And then she’ll have to figure out what happens next.





Chapter

70



I check my watch: nearly 3:00 p.m. The virus could go off any minute, but no later than nine hours from now.

And my people found the virus.

“So—that’s great, right?” I say to Devin and Casey. “You found it!”

“Yes, sir, great is the right word.” Casey pushes her glasses up against the bridge of her nose. “Thanks to Augie. We never would’ve located it ourselves. We tried for two weeks. We tried everything. We even did manual searches, we ran customized—”

“But now you found it.”

“Yes.” She nods. “So that’s step 1.”

“What’s step 2?”

“Neutralizing it. It’s not like we can just hit a Delete button and make it go away. And if we do it wrong, well—it’s like a bomb. If you don’t disable it properly, it goes off.”

“Right, okay,” I say. “So…”

Devin says, “So we’re trying to re-create the virus on the other computers.”

“Can Augie do that?”

“Augie was the hacker, sir, remember. Nina was the code writer. Actually, if anyone’s been most helpful, it’s the Russians.”

I cast a glance around me and lower my voice. “Are they really helping or just appearing to help? They could be taking you down the wrong road.”

“We’ve been on guard for that,” says Casey. “But it doesn’t seem like they’re misleading us. They’ve told us things we’ve never known about what they do. It seems like their orders were to do everything possible to help us.”

I nod. That’s certainly what I was aiming for. I can’t know if it’s true.

“But they didn’t write this code, either,” she adds. “This virus Nina created—Augie says she created it three years ago. It’s more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s quite amazing.”

“We can give her a posthumous award for best cyberterrorist ever when this is over, okay? Tell me what’s going to happen. You’re going to re-create the virus and then learn how to neutralize it. Like a simulated war game?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you have all the supplies you need?”

“I think we have enough laptops here, sir. And there are thousands at the Pentagon for the rest of the threat-response team.”

I had a hundred computers shipped here for this very purpose. We have another five hundred under Marine guard at the airport, not three miles away.

“And water, coffee, food—all that?” The last thing I need is for these experts to falter physically. They have enough pressure on them mentally. “Cigarettes?” I say, waving my hand at the stench.