‘You mean we can’t even confirm if our money is still in the accounts?’ Mouser said in a cold whisper.
‘No. Not without knowing what the passwords are now. He took my name off and changed the access. I’m sure he’s hidden the funds. With that much money, Eric can hide forever, he can buy serious protection.’
‘How could he…?’
‘He’s an officer at the bank. He could manipulate the system to hide the money in a hundred places. I have one of our hackers trying to break into the bank’s database, so we can see if and where the money was transferred, but he’s had zero success.’
Mouser began to pace, a cold fury moving his legs. ‘Without the money, Hellfire doesn’t happen. Everything we’ve worked for doesn’t happen. Every risk we’ve taken… wasted.’
‘I want to aim you at the problem. Under one condition,’ Henry said.
‘What?’
‘No harm comes to my stepson.’
‘He can’t know about us, Henry. Not unless he joins us.’
‘I will deal with him. But you will not harm him. He could be very valuable to us.’
After a moment, Mouser nodded.
‘We need to find Eric and we need to find Luke.’
‘How?’
‘I’ve got a Night Road contact working on hacking the GPS system on Luke’s car, see where it is, see where it’s been. Then I want you to go find Luke and stash him somewhere so I can talk to him. Failing that – or if they’ve killed him – find his kidnappers. I will work on locating Eric.’
Snow said, ‘You turned down their ransom demand. They’ll have killed him.’
‘They won’t give up on fifty million just because I said no the first time. They might conclude I was worried about being taped or trapped. They’ll let me squirm, then send Luke’s finger to me, or an ear’ – Henry stopped a moment to steady his voice – ‘to prove the channels of negotiation are still open.’
‘All right.’
‘I am going to return to Washington. I’ll let you know what the hacker finds on Luke’s car. You are not to harm Luke and, if you find his kidnapper, keep him alive for questioning. Do you understand me?’
‘I’m taking an extra risk here,’ Mouser said.
‘And you’ll be rewarded with a greater share of money for your cause and glory.’
‘I need backup.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Snow said.
Mouser made a noise in his throat, lowered his voice. ‘No offense, but you’re a tech-head, a bomb maker.’
‘I’m a soldier, same as you,’ Snow said. ‘I know how to fight and fight hard. And no one is going to derail Hellfire. No one. Not after all the work I’ve done. I risked my life, every day, for weeks to build the bombs.’
‘I would rather you stay here,’ Mouser said. ‘You’ve got more work to do for Hellfire.’
‘Let me help you. We can make quick work of finding these people together.’
Henry said. ‘I agree with Snow. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.’
‘You sure got here quick,’ Mouser said. ‘Maybe you took the money, fed us this story, and you’re walking off with it.’ He put his hand back on his gun.
‘I wouldn’t have built the Night Road if I was going to betray it,’ Henry said. ‘I have to be back in Washington immediately, I can hitch a ride back on… a friend’s plane.’ He shook Mouser’s hand, Snow’s hand. ‘We’re off to a brilliant start today. We’ll get the money back, we’ll make Hellfire happen.’ He stood, leveled a look at them both. ‘Take care of Luke. No harm to him. I have your word.’
Henry left.
‘He must be scared to death. He could have told us this over the phone.’
‘Better to tell us face to face,’ Snow said. ‘Especially since he’s asking you to save his kid.’
Mouser considered. ‘You have a point. Disappointment is always easier in person.’
‘You want something to eat? I’m hungry. Gonna make me a sandwich,’ Snow said.
Mouser shook his head. She went into the kitchen. He sat on the edge of the couch and thought how he’d sunk from the joy of the bombing to the anger of the missing money. Rescue a snot-nosed grad student who had been taught in the Beast’s tax-funded universities, where his mind had been poisoned to think the Beast’s system was good and noble. Did Henry honestly think he’d let the kid live? If the kidnappers knew about the Night Road, then they were all at risk and Luke Dantry was just an unfortunate witness. A risk.
He walked back into the living room. Snow had opened him a beer, left it for him on the coffee table. She was watching the coverage from Ripley. ‘I might have put too much oomph in the baby. Ruptured two tanks for sure, they say now, but a lot of the chlorine must’ve burned off. It’s given them time to evacuate more people.’
‘Ripley’s served its purpose, drawn the Beast’s stare right where we want it to be.’
She glanced at him. ‘Poetic.’
Mouser made a face at the idea of being poetic, and she laughed. Quietly. He ignored it. ‘I need to crash here.’
‘Guest room’s down the hall.’ She put her eyes back to the television screen.
‘You sure you can help me if we run into trouble?’
‘I can be whatever life needs me to be,’ Snow said, watching the dying town on the television, not looking at him. ‘You’re gonna kill his kid.’
Mouser didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.
Henry Shawcross did not take a commercial flight back to Washington, as he had the day before. Rather, he returned to Washington the same way he’d flown down this morning: he went to the airport and boarded a Travport freight cargo jet by flashing an ID and driver’s license that confirmed him as a Travport consultant, entitled to fly at a moment’s notice on any of the carrier’s flights, domestic or international.
He sat in one of the few passenger seats, watched the plane fly over east Texas. He would be home in a few hours.
What’s wrong with you, Luke had screamed, give them what they want. His stepson’s pleas tore at his chest but he had to keep his heart of stone. I will get you back, he thought. I will get you back and I will make you understand, Luke.
He used the plane’s internet connection to watch the news coverage of the chlorine disaster in Ripley. The most visible attack so far in the first wave. The bomb had burned up more of the gas than it should have, but it had gotten the world’s attention. Security was being raised at chemical plants and railway stations and airports, analysts pontificated on news stations as to whether it was an al-Qaeda attack or another jihadist group or a domestic terrorist or an accident. Every chemical facility in the country would be on heightened alert. Too many cities, too many water treatment plants had massive stores of lethal chlorine and Henry had thought long that it was a terrible weakness of American infrastructure. He had written a paper about such a threat a month ago; he checked his email. Now his paper held an urgency it had not a month before. He’d been proven smart and in tune with terrorist thinking. He was being flooded with requests from new and old clients on how to deal with the threat, and what the next threat might be. He smiled, fleetingly, for the first time since Luke’s ransom call.
It was all a delicious prelude to Hellfire.
Very different from the first time he’d written a paper about the possibility of a major terrorist attack, and been ignored and jeered. He had been right then; he was making sure he was right now.
Now he had struck, made his point, and all the government’s resources would go to stop a repeat occurrence.
Which was perfect.
Henry arrived in DC, picked up his car, drove for an extra hour to be sure he wasn’t being followed, and went home.
He waited for another ransom call. He was prepared to talk this time; he knew what he would say that could shield him if the call was taped. He kept calling Eric Lindoe; no answer. He did not want to call the prince he’d met in the London park three days before and explain that the fifty million was missing. It would be an immediate death sentence. Unless he ran. But if he ran, Luke was dead.
He got up, paced his floors. He listened to Bach, to Mahler, to settle his mind, to try and determine what he could do.