Page 108 of The Devil's Ransom

“I don’t know. He’s an American hacker. He gave us a Zero Day, no-click exploit and then gave us the gateway.”

Which was interesting. I leaned into him and said, “Who is he?”

He’d recoiled, saying, “I don’t know! I’d tell you if I did. I want no part of killing people.”

I thought about it, realizing that Sphinx was the hundred-meter target, and I needed to take care of the five-meter one first. I said, “Okay, look, you just get rid of the ransomware. We have about four hours left before they abort that spacecraft and it burns up in the sky.”

He said, “How? I need something to work with.”

Brett handed him the single laptop we’d taken from Split—the one that we’d saved from burning up—and he said, “I need an internet connection. And all four computers. Not just this one.”

I’d already thought about the Wi-Fi problem, and decided that our aircraft was the best bet. It had a communications architecture that rivaled Air Force One, with satellite internet just like that aircraft used, including a bandwidth that would make Google proud. It would take some time to get airborne, but I thought that was a better choice than pulling over to the nearest hotel and taking a gamble that the Wi-Fi wasn’t crappy. And it would allow us to get out of Croatia before someone started connecting the dots to all the dead bodies scattered around the country.

The computers, however, were another problem.

I’d said, “You’ll get the Wi-Fi, but your buddy burned up the other three computers with some self-destruct device.”

He’d nodded, not liking the answer, saying, “I don’t know if this will be enough.”

Three hours into the flight, and his statement was proving true. He was on a chat with Creed in the rear, and they were both trying to duplicate the other computers that had burned up, using Creed’s systems, but so far it hadn’t worked.

My whole team stood around him, watching him work, all ofus feeling helpless because we couldn’t do anything. I said, “How are we looking?”

He rattled off a bunch of geek code crap to me that made no sense. I said, “Just tell me if you’re making progress.”

He said, “Working with this system, Creed has managed to duplicate some of the protocols, so we’re moving forward. That’s all I can say.”

He went back to the chat, typing furiously, and I called Wolffe to give him an update.

He answered and I said, “We’re still working the issue, making progress, but I don’t know if it’ll be quick enough. How’s it going back there?”

“Not well. Not well at all. The PMUs in Iraq have started lobbing rockets into the Green Zone, targeting our embassy, and Hezbollah has launched a swarm of drones across the Lebanese border into Israel. And the IRGC are using their fast boats all over the Hormuz Strait, threatening our ships. Luckily, so far they haven’t done anything kinetic.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I meant with the space capsule.”

“POTUS sent a crystal-clear message to Iran that if the capsule crashes, either here on earth or into the space station, he was going to hold Iran responsible. And Iran is reacting to that.”

“I told you it wasn’t the damn Iranians! Who’s the adult in the room back there? You guys are going to start a war for something they have no control over.”

“Look, Pike, I understand your thinking, and that was presented to the president, but we have proof it’s the Iranians, and that’s what took precedence. We’re just one opinion of many. The president had to weigh them and make a decision.”

“And he made it based ononeopinion from some computer geek?”

“Unfortunately, yes. With some lukewarm concurrence of NSA and Cyber Command.”

I shook my head, amazed that one guy could use some computer gobbledygook to sway the entire national security architecture of the United States. I said, “How long do we have?”

“The abort didn’t work. We have about thirty minutes before the capsule leaves orbit and begins flying to the space station. After that, it’s over.”

I hung up and looked at Branko, saying, “You have less than thirty minutes. If you don’t solve this problem, I’ll kill you myself.”

Chapter64

The NASA liaison Gordon Dillard listened to the crescendo of shouting in the room and thought,We’dnever panic like this.

Auriga mission control was in absolute chaos, with every person behind a computer arguing with someone else or pounding the keyboard in a futile attempt to get something—anything—to work.

There had been a debate over when to attempt the abort, and Gordon was surprised to see the captain of the ship, Clay Hutmacher, overruled by Skyler Fitch. He’d known Clay when he was an actual NASA astronaut, and thought he was one of the coolest pilots under pressure he’d ever seen—and Gordon had seen a lot. He’d thought the callsign of Fabio was ridiculous because there was nothing whimsical about the man. He was pure business, and if he wanted to initiate at the beginning of the abort window, then Gordon thought they should have.

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