“It gets better,” Rapp said. “Two Black Hawks full of SEAL Team 6 assaulters are en route to that same compound. We need to find the Iranians and remove them from the equation so that they’re not a factor in the SEAL raid. Best case, Ruyintan wants to warn bin Laden that we’re coming. Worse case, he knows about the raid and intends to shoot down the Black Hawks. Speaking of which, you might want to set your watch’s countdown timer for thirty minutes. That’s the strike package’s time on target.”
“Fuck me running,” Stan said. “I should have stayed in Vienna.”
“It’s gonna be close,” Derek said as the helicopter’s nose dipped. “I’m redlining the engine, but higher airspeed means a higher rate of fuel consumption. I think I can get us to Abbottabad about fifteen minutes before the strike package, but we’ll have less than ten minutes of gas.”
“Get us there as fast as you can,” Rapp said. “Stan and I will deal with the Iranians.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Hurley said.
The old codger really had a way with words.
CHAPTER 90
“MARCUS, it’s me.”
Rapp resisted the urge to shout into his headset’s mic. The noise-canceling algorithms did a fair job of negating the worst of the howling engine, but a helicopter’s cabin was no one’s idea of a library.
“Hey, Mitch. What’s up?”
Marcus Drummond had attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Rapp’s younger brother. But unlike Steven Rapp, who made his millions though legitimate investments in the stock market, Marcus had gone a different route—hacking. His criminal career, while illustrious from the standpoint of his successful hacks, had not been lengthy. After a string of successes, Marcus had soon found himself a target of the FBI and, shortly thereafter, in a jail cell.
After learning of his friend’s incarceration, Steven had suggested that Rapp might find a use for a cyber warrior of Marcus’s abilities. Rapp had given Marcus a trial run, and the hacker had proven his worth countless times since.
Rapp was hoping this would be another one of those times.
“I know you’re on vacation,” Rapp said, “but I need your help. Now.”
“Thank God. I can’t take much more of this family reunion. What’s up?”
“Do you have your laptop?” Rapp said.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just ask that. Tell me what you need.”
Rapp pictured the business card Ruyintan had given him what felt like a lifetime ago. The business card with a number scribbled across the front in the Iranian’s precise handwriting. “I need to lock down a phone that’s somewhere between Islamabad and Abbottabad. Ready to copy?”
“Shoot.”
Rapp relayed the string of digits.
“Got it,” Marcus said after reading them back. “Give me ten minutes.”
“You have five. No bullshit. This is a ticking-time-bomb sort of tasking. Invoke whatever protocols you need to bump this to the top of the list.”
“Up to and including the president?”
“Up to and including the Holy Trinity. I mean it, Marcus. We have to find this phone. Now.”
“All right, stand by.”
Rapp’s seat dropped out from beneath him like he was strapped into a runaway elevator. After a second of heart-stopping descent, the rotor noise increased and the helicopter clawed its way into a steep climb, pressing him into the upholstery.
“What the fuck?” Stan said.
“Sorry,” Derek answered. “Wasn’t expecting the downdraft. There’s a thunderstorm brewing over Islamabad. The air should be cleaner once we’re on the north side of this ridgeline.”
“Uhh, Mitch?” Marcus said. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What?” Rapp said.
“I can’t get a lock on the phone.”
Rapp cursed, angry at himself more than Marcus. Had he been in the Iranian’s place, Mitch would have pitched the phone, but he was hoping for a one-in-a-thousand chance that either Ruyintan had grown lazy or the number he’d given Mitch corresponded to his personal cell rather than a burner. Mitch should have known that someone who’d been in the game this long wouldn’t have made such a stupid mistake.
“Okay, no problem,” Mitch said. “Nash should already be uploading the contents from the five or so phones I recovered from the Iranians’ plane. Their owners all work for the same bad guy, so they’ve probably called him. Grab any numbers common across the phones’ call registries and check if those handsets ping the cell towers in the vicinity of Abbottabad, Pakistan. If so, give me a talk-on.”
Rapp was no cyber warrior, but he’d been hunting high-value targets long enough to at least be familiar with what was possible in the realm of digital exploitation. What he’d just suggested would require more effort on Marcus’s part, but the hacker was up for the task.
Assuming he had enough time.
“Sorry,” Marcus said. “I wasn’t clear before. The problem isn’t with the number you gave me. It’s with the cell phone towers. The ones servicing Abbottabad are intermittent. It’s like someone is randomly turning them on and off.”
Rapp could have kicked himself.
The cell towers looked as if someone was randomly turning them off and on because someone probably was. Someone located at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. An American strike package was about to hit a compound less than a mile from the Pakistani version of West Point. Even though it was just after midnight, the odds that two Black Hawks hovering over the city’s outskirts would go unnoticed were zilch. America’s premier keyboard warriors were undoubtedly doing what they could to stack the deck in the SEALs’ favor. This included randomly interrupting cell service in preparation for what would probably be a total blackout while the frogmen hit the compound.
Which would happen in less than twenty minutes.
Shit.
