Triple Threat (12 page)

Visions of wildfires he had seen in Montana played through Josh's mind. “Let's pray they don't.”

 

****

 

From her chair in the interrogation room, Katie heard the rapid staccato of a helicopter rotor. Her heart shifted into a higher gear. “I hope this goes well. For the first time, I don't know how to handle Peterson or what to expect from him.”

Josh sat beside her, his big hand on her shoulder. “Just tell him what you found, Kate. He can't come down too hard on us after he hears—”

“But I can't disclose all of it here in front of a foreign country's police. This is sensitive information.”

“Then tell him how sensitive your information is and let him decide where you brief him.” Josh paused. “Kate?”

She looked up at him.

He grinned as if something amused him. “Despite everything that happened, I'm glad I came up here with you.”

She returned his grin with a smile, then felt it fade away as images of Josh's body falling from the gondola, or riddled with bullets, played in her mind. “And I'm glad I didn't get you killed. What was I thinking, endangering you…”

Peterson's booming voice sounded somewhere outside the interrogation room.

Josh took her hand, squeezed it, and gave her a tight-lipped smile.

The door swung open and a tall figure filled the doorway.

Katie gripped Josh's hand as she met Peterson's gaze.

“Katie Brandt, tell me one good reason why I shouldn't arrest you right now.” He stared at her, hands on hips.

She tried to grin, but didn't know what expression her face actually held. “Uh… Because, if you do, I won't tell you certain information.”

“We're not playing games here.” He closed the door behind him, pulled up a chair, and sat beside the table. “Keep your voice down and answer my questions. I'll stop you if we need to move to a more secure location.”

She studied the tall agent's eyes. “So my arrest is no longer imminent?”

His look softened and once again, he appeared as the man who was her adopted godfather and mentor. “Not if you cooperate and behave. Now, you mentioned fires and terrorists. Before I can even consider your information, I need to know how you obtained it.”

“I tracked them down using their Internet communications by identifying patterns of collaboration.”

“That's what Jennifer used to do, but she had access to NSA's classified database. Katie, you don't even have a clearance.”

She met Peterson's gaze, trying to portray confidence. “But I have my own database.”

“Please tell me that you didn't borrow it.”

“No. I extended Jennifer's doctoral work. You know, the work she never finished because she went to work for NSA and got married.”

“Extended it? So you created your own database from your own research?”

“I didn't have any other option if I was going to prove my work could deter real threats.”

“Where is this database?” His voice became demanding. The softness was gone from his eyes.

Katie looked down at the floor. “Don't worry. It's encrypted and in a safe place.”

“Katie, you're in way too deep.”

Josh cut in. “That's what I've been trying to tell her.”

“At least your boyfriend has common sense.”

Her head popped back up. “Who said he was my boyfriend?”

“I have some evidence to that effect.” Josh squeezed her hand.

She pulled her hand from his. “Be quiet, Josh. That's not fair, not even real.”

“We're getting off track here.” Peterson looked from Josh to her. “You two can discuss your personal issues later. Right now, Katie, I need you to tell me everything you've learned about this conspiracy. And if you've drawn conclusions, I need to know your justification.”

“Justification?”

“Yes. You've taken some rather extreme measures. Risked your life by coming up here. Josh's life, too. I want to know what was so compelling that you would do that.”

Katie drew a deep breath and blew it back out. She wasn't at all sure this was the appropriate place to have this discussion. “I'll need to start at the beginning. Are you sure you want me to do that here?”

“Yes. I'll stop you if I think that's necessary.”

At best, this would not paint her in a good light. At worst—she wasn't ready to go there yet, and she prayed Peterson wouldn't actually put her there. “OK. I enhanced Jennifer's software that detects collaboration on the Internet. In parallel, I built my own database of terrorists, starting with IP addresses of known terrorist organizations at various locations, initially IP addresses I could easily scavenge from the Internet. The communication patterns I found identified more terrorist locations. Once I had what looked like the complete set of conspirators, I needed to know what they were plotting. So…I hacked a mail server and examined some of their email.”

“You knew that was illegal.” He shook his head at her.

She would not be shamed or intimidated. “Not illegal here. Illegal in Iran, maybe. But not in the United States.”

“Iran? Katie, you are playing with fire. And the legality, that's a matter of interpretation.”

“And who's going to interpret what I did as being illegal?”

Peterson's body stiffened. “The people who are trying to kill you.”

“He's got a point,” Josh said.

She shot him a frown. “Whose side are you on, Josh?”

“Yours.” Josh blew out a blast of air. “Somebody needs to be or you won't live very long, Kate.”

Katie glared at Josh. “And who saved your life when you almost fell off the gondola?”

Peterson pounded on the table. “You two are both lucky to be alive. I don't think I want to hear what happened on the gondola. But what I need to hear is a complete debriefing back at the Seattle field office, followed by a promise from both of you to stop hacking terrorist websites.”

Peterson still didn't understand the scope of the danger. Katie shook her head. “There's a lot more to this conspiracy than starting a forest fire, than even starting thirty or forty forest fires. Give me a little more time. I know I can prove it.”

“You're not getting any more time, young lady. You're going to give all of your information to me and let the FBI handle this.”

She feared this is how this conversation might end. She nodded her assent, but mentally ran through her remaining options. This threat was too serious to let Peterson stop her. The FBI would probably run out of time before they could spin up on this.

Josh looked from her to Peterson, and then sighed. “Kate, it's best that you give this to the FBI. I'm glad you won't be taking any more risks like—”

“But, Josh, you said…” She didn't finish. Maybe Josh hadn't really meant all of the things he said earlier. He had some explaining to do.

Peterson stood. Their meeting here was obviously over. “I want to return both of you safely to Seattle. Agent Ruska will drive Josh's car back. Katie, you and Josh will fly back to Seattle with me and we'll debrief there.” He gave her his stern look. “Then you will turn over all of your findings and your database to the FBI.”

Again, Katie nodded her compliance, but deep inside she knew the FBI, even with all of its resources, could not flesh out the conspirators and their plans as quickly as she could. Despite her incomplete traffic data and limited database, the tools she used were an order of magnitude more powerful, and would be more productive than what the FBI or NSA were using. She didn't intend to have any more “Whistler” incidents. But she couldn't just drop this. Josh could bail if he wanted to, but Katie would continue her work until she knew the full scope of this conspiracy.

 

 

 

 

15

 

Five years ago, the FBI SWAT team had come in a van, so Katie hadn't gotten a helicopter ride out of the human trafficking incident on the Olympic Peninsula. Though she had never ridden in one, something about the look of the big chopper sitting on the grass in Whistler gave her a sense of foreboding.

Katie wouldn't tell anyone, especially Josh, that the thought of the chopper ride made her nervous. She hurried up the steps and sat in the second seat.

Josh climbed in beside her.

Peterson plopped down in front of them, beside the pilot, and turned toward her as the whining engine spun the rotor. “I called Jennifer on the way up here. You scared her to death.”

“So did you, especially if you told her we were evading gunmen by riding the peak-to-peak at Whistler. You shouldn't have called her, Peterson. Not yet.”

The rotor began the whopping sound, the helicopter tilted forward, and they lifted off.

Peterson looked at her incredulously, “And do you know what would have happened to me if I knew you were in danger and didn't call her?”

Katie glanced at Josh. “Mom can get a little intense.”

“A little intense?” Peterson blasted out. “She would have probably
shot
me, or let your granddad kick my head off.”

Josh stuck his head between Katie and the tall FBI agent. “Your family sounds almost as wild and wacky as you, Kate.”

Katie sighed in resignation as she pictured how things would play out in Seattle. “You can see for yourself when we get to Seattle. I know Mom's going to pop in on us.”

After fifteen minutes of the rotor's incessant drumbeat on her head, Katie had developed a headache. As the headache grew, her stomach became queasy.

The noise inside the cabin restricted all but the most important communication, so their conversation ended.

Glad for the respite, Katie leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and tried not to puke.

“Kate?” Josh whispered into her ear.

She turned her head and opened her eyes. Josh's forehead bumped against hers.

What was he doing? Surely not trying to kiss her. Her stomach quivered from the nausea. If he tried, Josh might get more than he bargained for.

“You look sick, Kate.”

She didn't reply, didn't dare speak or move. She closed her eyes again.

“Don't close your eyes. It's the worst thing you can do. Focus on something in the distance.” He pointed ahead to their right. “There's Howe Sound and beyond it, Vancouver.”

She chose Vancouver and tried to focus on the city. Her stomach churned. Katie grabbed her stomach as a powerful contraction began.

“Kate's sick!” Josh yelled ahead.

“Bag's in front of you, Joshua,” the pilot yelled back.

Josh reached for the bag.

“Oh crud!” She puked with an impressive barfing sound, as Josh pulled the bag open for her.

Katie tried to aim for the bag. She hit it for the most part. But the rest splattered on Josh's hand.

She ripped the bag from Josh's grip and pulled it to her mouth, then retched again.

Peterson tossed a box of tissues to Josh. “Close the bag, Katie or you'll make us all sick.”

She choked the bag off and fell back in her seat as her head swam through waves of nausea.

Josh furiously wiped his hand with several tissues.

Puking in front of Josh embarrassed her. Puking on him was even worse. But she dare not speak to apologize. The situation with her stomach remained too tenuous. After Katie focused on one of the Cascade peaks in the distance for a few minutes, she won the battle with nausea. In its place, a dull headache lingered.

“You OK, Kate?” Josh whispered in her ear.

“Josh…I'm so sorry. I…”

“It's OK.”

“No, it's not,” she whispered back. “I just puked all over your hand. That's so gross. You'll probably never want to—”

“No, Kate. Nothing you could ever do would do that. But, it
was
a first for me. I've never kissed a girl and had her puke on me the same day. At least you didn't do it right after the kiss.”

He was only trying to make her feel better, but Josh's self-deprecating humor wasn't enough to make her laugh. She gave him a weak smile for his effort and made another entry in her growing list of Josh's great qualities.

When the chopper sat down at Boeing Field, a black sedan was waiting on the tarmac. It whisked them downtown to the field office, where Peterson let them clean up, before ushering them into a conference room.

Katie had just taken a seat beside Josh when the conference room door flew open and Jennifer barged in, eyes flashing like lasers. “They said out front that you hadn't started yet.”

Peterson, across the table from Katie, stood and faced Jennifer. “No we haven't, Jennifer, but—”

“I know. You don't have to tell me…I'm cleared for this but have no need to know. I just had to be certain they were OK.” The twin lasers focused on Katie. “We'll talk about this later, Katie. You've got a lot to explain.”

Lee's and Jenn's grilling at home would make Peterson's feel like a cool, refreshing breeze. She tried to defuse the situation. “We're fine, Mom. Really.”

“It's nearly 7:00. You two missed dinner, tonight. Granddad hasn't been this upset since Maui five years ago.” She turned her attention to Josh. “Tomorrow is Katie's twenty-first birthday. You're invited to dinner, Joshua…again. 7:00 PM.” She glanced at Peterson as she turned toward the door. “As you were.” Jennifer left as quickly as she entered, closing the door behind her.

Josh looked around the room. “Wow. Shouldn't someone have called the room to attention or something?”

Peterson chuckled and looked across the table at Katie. “I don't envy you, young lady.”

Peterson launched into his interrogation. It lasted nearly an hour, but didn't pull any new information from her or Josh, only a few more clarifying details. Nevertheless, the tall FBI agent took copious notes this time.