Линкольн Чайлд - Crooked River

“ Holy jeez ,” breathed Lam.

Gladstone could hardly believe it. All of a sudden, her model had worked beautifully: all the squiggly lines coming out of Crooked River and twenty-five days later converging on Captiva Island.

“It appears,” said Pendergast, “the feet weren’t dumped at sea. They were flushed out of Crooked River in that flood. I believe we may have our factor.” His eyes, still unusually restless, had been focusing on Lam. “Dr. Lam, you seemed frustrated with your computer just now. Is it operating unusually slowly?”

“Yeah, they must be running some big simulations over at the university. It’s been like this for a day or two.”

Pendergast went still. “A day or two?”

“Yes. I think. I didn’t pay much attention at first.”

“And you’ve noticed this on which systems, exactly?”

“All of them. At least, the ones tied into the university — which is almost everything.”

“I see. Excuse me while I make a call.” Pendergast slipped his cell phone out of his pocket, dialed a number, and turned away. He murmured quietly into the phone for a while. Then he turned back and handed it to Lam.

“What’s up?” Lam asked.

“A computer expert in my employ, specializing in cybersecurity and cyberwarfare. His name is Mime. He wishes to examine your system. I can assure you he is entirely trustworthy.”

“Maybe. But I’m the computer expert around here.” Even so, Lam took the phone with a puzzled expression. Gladstone watched as the person on the other end gave Lam detailed instructions, which he tapped onto the keyboard. It appeared that the anonymous person began controlling the computer remotely after a few moments, because suddenly Lam was no longer typing, just watching as his screen filled with windows dense with scrolling computer code. After ten long minutes, Lam handed the phone back to Pendergast, who spoke into it and then hung up.

“It seems your system has been hacked,” Pendergast informed them as he replaced the phone in his pocket, along with the printout. “By an expert — most likely, someone with government or military expertise.”

“What kind of a hack?”

“Mime called it a ‘cocktail of zero-day exploits,’ but the most pernicious actors were keyloggers attached to every input device.”

“Son of a bitch ,” said Lam. “So some bastard has been keeping track of everything I type? Who the hell would want to steal a bunch of drift data?”

“Who, indeed?”

This was said in such an uncharacteristic tone of voice that Gladstone looked over at Pendergast. The wariness she’d noticed earlier had turned into alarm. The FBI agent stared at both of them in turn. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that the time has come for our departure.”

“Departure?” Gladstone asked. “Where?”

“Away from here. And right now .” Then, before she could react, he had taken her arm and hustled her out the door.

Coldmoon gripped the armrests while the plane once again rebounded in turbulence, the captain’s calm voice reminding everyone to keep their seat belts fastened. Christ, he hated flying almost as much as boating. The only reasonable way to travel, he thought, was by foot or car — or horse. Everything else was bullshit.

Back on the rez, there had been a lot of horses wandering around, free for the borrowing. Most were a bit wild, unshod and half-crazy, leftovers from the days when horses were sacred to the Lakota. Now people kept them for no good reason beyond tradition and nostalgia. But Coldmoon and his friends, as a lot of kids did in those days, would occasionally rope a random horse, bridle and throw a blanket on him, and ride him somewhere — if they could stay on — as an alternative to hitchhiking or walking. There was one horse in particular Coldmoon was fond of — he called him Mop because of the massive mane of blond hair. He fed him oats from time to time, which made it easier to catch him by shaking the bucket, and he trimmed his splayed hooves and wormed him. He didn’t know whom Mop belonged to, nobody did, but he wasn’t a bad horse. Riding him was fun. You didn’t get motion sick on a horse the way you did on a plane or boat, and you were in control, at least sort of. The idea of being thirty thousand feet up in a plane, strapped into a seat with nothing between you and the ground six miles down, where you were at the complete mercy of the pilots, and the air traffic controllers, and the mechanics who took care of the plane, and the engineers who designed it, and the weather, and bird strikes, and terrorists, and even to an extent the other passengers, freaked him out almost as much as the bottomless black water underneath a ship — where, with even the smallest boat, all it would take was one hole. And as boats got bigger and bigger they just had more systems that could break, or catch fire, or lose power and drift, or hit an iceberg, or fall to a rogue wave, or encounter Somali pirates, and then, boy, that’s all she wrote...

Another rumble and shake abruptly brought Coldmoon out of these morbid thoughts as the plane passed through more turbulence. They were above the clouds, and great thunderheads rose all around like gigantic fairy towers of white. Clearly the pilots were trying to make their way around a stormy area, and it looked pretty bad, with some clouds flattening into an anvil shape, signifying serious thunderstorms.

Lovely.

He forced his mind back to the case. In his conversation with Pendergast, he had relayed all he’d learned from his trip to Guatemala and Mexico. It was becoming quite clear this case involved something as big as it was bizarre — backed by a powerful, well financed, and widespread organization. Who they were, and what they were up to, remained as crazy a mystery as before. A hundred and twelve feet, crudely chopped off by their owners, deep-frozen, and then set adrift at sea. Why? And how the hell did everything link up: from Guatemala, coyotes and secret border crossings, unexpected apprehensions, to hacked-off feet floating in the Gulf of Mexico? In a criminal investigation, one of the first questions you asked yourself was: who benefits from this crime? But how would anyone benefit from people chopping off their own feet? For what purpose except to free themselves from shackles in the most extreme possible way — but even that had been ruled out.

Another jolt, and the voice of the captain came over the system, announcing that, due to severe thunderstorms, the flight was being diverted from Fort Myers to Tallahassee. There were the usual apologies while the passengers groaned and hissed.

Tallahassee . Where the hell was that in relation to Fort Myers? Coldmoon fished out the in-flight magazine and looked it up, then cursed under his breath. It was way up in the Panhandle, hundreds of miles to the north, a five-hour drive at least.

Another reason to hate flying , he thought.

What’s going on?” Gladstone demanded as Pendergast ushered them out of the lab and into the parking lot. She noticed his piercing eyes casting about. “Are we in some sort of danger?”

Without answering, he unlocked his car: a new Range Rover, both sturdy and sleek. “Get in. Both of you.”

She slid into the passenger seat while Lam got in the back. Pendergast started the engine and headed out of the lot, driving slowly.

“We’re dealing,” he said, “with a powerful organization. Through hacking your system, they now know that we know their location — somewhere up Crooked River. I have no doubt they’re reacting to that information as we speak, which puts all of us in immediate danger. Both of you must go to ground.”