Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) (41 page)

Now the ring-bearer started up the aisle. The pastor needed but one small hand signal to bring the border collie—now named Good Boy—to the arch. Soft-gripped in his mouth, the dog held the handle of a small wicker basket carrying the wedding bands. When he heeled by the couple, Lana would have sworn the dog was smiling. His new master certainly was.

Lana’s own dog, Jojo, was back on his feet after more than a month of drug-induced immobility. When he rose for the first time at the veterinarian’s office, his legs were shaky as a newborn calf’s. But as soon as he steadied, he walked over to Emma. It was as if he sensed that she, more than anyone, needed to feel extra-protected. Jojo went almost everywhere with Em now, as much an emotional support dog as a guard.

Cairo was back in retirement at the kennel owned by Deputy Director Holmes’s son. The old Malinois and Bob were both in pretty good shape, considering all they’d been through. Holmes’s first act upon reassuming his duties was to force Marigold Winters to resign. She promptly took a position with a Washington think tank that shared her xenophobic beliefs.

Fortunately, she hadn’t had much to seize upon of late. For more than five months, the country had experienced a respite from radical Islamist violence, but Lana had not let down her guard. She knew the invisible invaders hadn’t disappeared. From her own cybersleuthing she’d gleaned that those men and women remained as determined as ever to defeat the U.S. and, like their kinetic counterparts, were doing all they could to learn from their failures so their successes could prove more deadly in the near future.

The other invisible invader was smallpox, but those outbreaks had become rarer and more tightly contained.

The pastor cleared his throat and the ceremony began. The bride and groom exchanged vows and rings and then kissed at the pastor’s invitation.

Lana marveled over the lovely couple.
Who would have thought?

She looked around, spotting a few smallpox survivors. They would always bear their scars, but some were luckier than others. Among the latter was Matt Lauer, leading the applause as the couple walked down the aisle together. Without him, Jimmy McMasters and Ludmila Migunov might never have met.

The Today Show
had dedicated an hour to the pair’s “spectacular bravery,” as Lauer called it, introducing them a couple of weeks after Hayden Lake and Jimmy’s long-odds heroics in the Gulf.

The boat racer had been brought on set first, appearing with his hands up and saying, “Don’t worry, Matt. No hugs today, I promise.”

Lauer had laughed and pulled Jimmy close for a squeeze. Ludmila, appearing seconds later, received a warm embrace as well.

Tasteful videos of Jimmy’s shootout on the oil rig—and quick thinking on the speed boat—earned the admiration of millions of viewers, as did Ludmila’s daring marksmanship in the basement that Fayah Kouri had turned into a torture chamber.

But the real excitement on set had taken place between the two heroes, who might have been on a dating show for all the chemistry that sparked during those sixty minutes.

By the show’s end, Lauer jokingly asked if a wedding would soon be in the works.

Indeed.

Ludmila had invited Lana and her family. For her part, Lana had been honored, but she also realized the wedding would make a likely target for terrorists. What better way to take revenge than by striking back at America’s newly crowned heroes?

So Lana’s Sig Sauer hid in her clutch, and ample agents had stationed themselves around the perimeter. Even a chopper had swept over the Oysterton park moments before the ceremony began.

But for now there were only best wishes for the couple and the country.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank my literary agent, Howard Morhaim, and his assistant, Kim-Mei Kirtland.

Most of all, I thank my readers for their encouragement and their word-of-mouth support.

A number of people were particularly helpful to me in researching and writing this novel. For details on technology and cybersecurity, I thank Ben Johnson, co-founder and Chief Security Strategist at the cybersecurity company Carbon Black. For insights into cell phone technology, I thank Quinn Mahoney, Security Researcher at the cybersolutions company Kyrus.

Any factual mistakes in this novel are mine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Waite’s critically praised debut novel,
Terminal Value
, reached #1 at Amazon. His bestselling thrillers
Lethal Code
and
Trident
Code
were also widely acclaimed by readers and critics alike.

Waite is a board director of, and an advisor to, a number of technology companies. His nonfiction work has been published in such publications as
The
New York Times
, the
Harvard
Business Review
,
The Boston Globe
, and
The Daily Beast
.

Unholy Code
is Waite’s third Lana Elkins thriller.