Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

“Shh,” Linda says, looking around to see if anyone overheard. “Okay, not Tracy, then.”

Linda sighs in frustration. “There has to be someone you can confide in. What about your brother?”

“I can’t call him because there’s no phone service. I’ll get it worked out.”

Linda steps in closer and lowers her voice. “Bullshit.”

Butler holds his hands up about shoulder high. “Okay. I’ll talk to Freddy about it.”

“Good. Do I need to clue him in in case you forget?”

“No. I won’t forget.”

Linda leans in and gives Scott a peck on the lips. “If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t care.”

“I know. And I love you, too.” Butler takes a sip from his coffee cup. “What are we having for dinner?”

“Tonight I will be heating up the beef ravioli in meat sauce.”

Butler rubs his belly. “Sounds yummy. Can’t wait.”

Linda laughs. “I have to run. Love you, babe.”

“Love you, too. See you tonight.”

Butler takes off in search of Parker and finds him where he thought he would—at the nurses’ station. “Ready to roll, Freddy?” Butler asks.

“Yeah. Did you check on Clark and Perez?”

“We’ll come back later.”

“You mean when they brew a fresh pot of coffee?”

Butler shrugs. They make their way back to the truck and climb in. Freddy takes the wheel again and fires up the truck and pulls out of the parking lot. A mile down the road, Butler says, “Freddy, we probably ought to talk through some things…”

McLean

Despite a worldwide manhunt, the man known as Basir Nazeri remains at large. How he slipped the quickly closing net is still unknown. FBI agents viewed vast quantities of traffic and pedestrian camera footage in and around Boston and have yet to find any trace of Nazeri. Current thinking is that he may have slipped onto a ship in Boston Harbor, and with his computer skills could have easily erased or covered his tracks some other way. The FBI is still trying to trace the calls from the landline phone inside the building. The calls were bounced around the world several times and whom Nazeri was communicating with remains unknown. In fact, much remains unknown about the man who caused so much death and destruction.

The one spot of good news, depending on a person’s political perspective, is that the president will fully recover after having his pacemaker replaced with one the authorities say is unhackable. Paige has been working around the clock with others from the NSA to dissect the computers captured in the raid and to unravel the worm that has compromised a large number of the nation’s computer networks. The dissection is almost complete, but ferreting out the malware is a job that will take months, if not years.

Now back at her spacious condo after many days away, Paige Randall closes the lid of her laptop and returns to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. She’s been running on coffee and energy drinks for days on end and she knows she needs to slow her intake of acidic drinks to give her roiling stomach a break. After taking another sip of coffee, she pours the rest down the sink, vowing to stop the caffeine cascade this very moment.

As she cleans the coffeepot she wonders what Peyton and Eric are up to. After Paige reached out to the FBI’s Chicago field office, a couple of agents were sent out to find her sister. It didn’t take them long to locate Peyton and Eric, who were still in the neighborhood, staying with one of her sister’s friends. Paige was shocked to learn about their house burning down, but the agents insisted her sister and brother-in-law were doing just fine and Paige had passed that information on to her mother, Frances. Surprisingly, Champlain still has power and cell service. Paige had been so busy that she and Frances have talked only briefly during the week, but her mother did let on that she might be seeing someone.

Paige smiles at that thought as she puts the carafe back in place. She’s happy for her mother. Exiting the kitchen, Paige walks down the hallway, enters her bedroom, and turns into her closet, searching for the perfect outfit for today’s lunch meeting. After pawing through the rows of slacks and jeans, she turns in another direction and selects a simple skirt and a sleeveless top and pulls out a pair of Tory Burch three-inch espadrilles. After laying everything out on her bed she slips into her spacious bathroom to shower. She doesn’t know what to expect from today’s meeting, but she’s hoping it turns out well.

Across town, Hank Goodnight steps out of the shower in his apartment and grabs a towel. He had spent most of the week in Boston searching for any clues that would lead to the capture of Basir Nazeri. But the clues are few. If Hank and the FBI didn’t have a picture of him they would think he doesn’t exist—a ghost. However, they do have a picture of the man, thanks to Hassan Ansari, and it’s been plastered on newscasts and newspapers all across the globe.

Ansari and the other four members of the terrorist gang are still being held at undisclosed locations and the interrogations are ongoing. Their lives and past actions are undergoing intense scrutiny while authorities debate which legal forum would be best for prosecution. Regardless of which court forum is eventually chosen, all five will never enjoy a single day of freedom for as long as they live. There have been murmurs of prosecutors wanting to seek the death penalty, and Hank won’t be surprised if that does occur, but he’ll fight to keep Hassan away from the needle.

Hank wraps the towel around his waist and runs a comb through his hair. He has a few butterflies about the upcoming lunch meeting only because he doesn’t know what to expect. The power is still out in D.C. and many other cities and towns across the country. Some portions of the grid will be repaired much quicker than others and the thinking is the electricity in the nation’s capital could be restored within days. He spoke with Nana earlier today on a landline phone at tribal headquarters. Her generator is still humming along and the Chickasaw Nation still has a good supply of fuel.

The stock markets are still a mess and it will be months before active trading begins again, if ever. The malware destroyed millions of documents and what money belongs to whom may never be sorted out. Hank opens the closet door and doesn’t spend a long time worrying about what to wear. He grabs a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, and his cowboy boots. Elaine Mercer, his boss, hasn’t decided where his skills would be put to the best use, so Hank will continue his hunt for Nazeri until something new pops.

After slipping on his jeans and pulling on his shirt, Hank takes a seat on the edge of the bed to put his boots on. To say he was surprised about Natalie’s revelation that her sexual preferences have changed would be an understatement. Not that Hank cares. He’s a firm believer in love who you want to love and he’s happy that Natalie is happy. He has no tolerance for those people who denigrate another person’s choices. His biggest pet peeves are intolerance and hypocrisy and he’s not shy to let people know that. Hank stands and, after checking the mirror to make sure his shirt is not on inside out, he grabs his keys, his pistol, and exits his ground-floor apartment.

His Shelby Cobra chirps when he presses the key fob to unlock it. Stopping to inspect a suspicious stain on the hood, he discovers it’s a grease spot and he rubs it away with his thumb. With little thought, he wipes his thumb clean on his jeans and climbs behind the wheel. It’s hot outside and it’s about thirty degrees hotter inside, thanks to the black leather interior. Punching the start button, he fires up the massive engine and flips the air conditioner to max cold. After putting his pistol in the glove box, he reverses out of his parking spot and shifts the transmission into first gear, goosing the gas and steering the Mustang out of the parking lot. He shifts to third gear then fourth when he hits the main road. Traffic is light because most of the residents in McLean work in the now-dark D.C. area.