Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Owen glanced at Asher riding shotgun in the other SUV behind the Escalade, both of which had been sent by POTUS. He tipped his head in greeting, but when he redirected his focus to Sam, she remained a statue before the door with Luke standing impatiently waiting for her to get inside.
Luke had pounded on their door not even three minutes ago, alerting him to their sudden trip to meet with the president. Jess hadn’t gotten ahold of Secretary Handlin, and Owen couldn’t help but assume the worst now.
She peeked at Owen from over her shoulder. “I still don’t get why we’re going to the White House.”
“Classified.” Luke’s jaw tightened, an obvious pinch of irritation. They were clearly in a hurry, and they needed to get their asses on the road, especially if they were being summoned by POTUS.
“This is Luke, by the way. Jessica’s brother.” Owen motioned to the door, hoping she’d finally slip inside the vehicle. “He’s not normally so curt, but—”
“We’re running late,” Luke said brusquely and left their sides to hop into the front passenger seat.
Once Sam finally slipped inside, Owen got in next to her and glanced at the Secret Service agent behind the wheel.
Her fingertips rubbed up and down her goose-bump-covered thighs. “Don’t you guys work in the private sector, though? I guess I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this.”
Luke twisted around to view both of them as the SUV rolled out of the parking garage. “Yeah, we do.” But the way he said it would’ve set off alarm bells for even the most na?ve of people, and Sam surely wasn’t one. “Secret Service will keep an eye on you while we’re with the president.”
Luke’s words had Sam looking out the tinted windows, and she kept her gaze locked there as the city of D.C. scrolled by all the way until they’d circled around to a private entrance.
And within ten minutes, Sam had been whisked away by agents, and he’d been ushered in a hurry to the Oval.
His gaze skated the room, taking in the rest of his team, who stood firm before the desk in a line as if waiting for a commander to yell at ease. Being inside the Oval, he felt like he was on the set of the show, West Wing. It was surreal, to say the least.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice.” President Rydell scratched at his chin and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk.
“Unfortunately, Secretary Handlin is in the hospital, but he’s not using his real name to protect his privacy.
” He allowed the information to settle in the room, for the team to absorb the news.
“We’re not optimistic he’ll be back any time soon.
We were speaking in my office last night when he collapsed.
We’d been discussing bringing you onto the case.
” His eyes met Owen’s, and the same look of concern in his eyes had been in Handlin’s yesterday.
The president was worried about bringing Owen on the op, wasn’t he?
Owen’s mouth went dry as he eyed him, his stomach twisting into a sailor’s knot.
“Will Secretary Handlin be okay?” Jess asked, speaking for the team.
“We’ll have to wait and see. And I’m sorry it took me so long to meet with you, but I’ve been held up in briefings with the Joint Chiefs since last night to strategize how to best navigate the situation at hand.
” He paused for a beat and closed his eyes.
“I’ve obviously decided to greenlight you for this op.
” When he opened his eyes, he looked straight at Owen. “All of you.”
Relief settled hard in his stomach, and he took a breath.
The president’s mouth tightened as he loosened his tie. “Yesterday, I commissioned all of our major agencies to double-check their servers to make sure they were secure—to make sure there wasn’t a breach we were unaware of.”
“We have the best cyber defense in the world,” Jess interrupted, and Owen swiveled his gaze to her, and she rushed out, “Sir,” at the last second.
“We do. But, in light of our current situation, Secretary Handlin and I had concerns someone may have hacked our systems and obtained the records of our missing men. We thought it was impossible, but we wanted to be sure.”
Oh, God. Was the photo Sam received from the government? Was it possible? Had someone hacked their servers and was now using their own intel against them as blackmail?
“My hunch is that JSOC was hit, but we can’t share the details of the operation that are of concern with federal agents, which I believe Handlin already mentioned to you.”
JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, was responsible for some of the most classified SEAL operations. But Owen had been under the assumption the government didn’t even maintain records of certain missions to avoid such a breach of intel.
“I thought we didn’t house entire operational JSOC missions within one server to safeguard the mission and the operatives?” Jess asked, her thoughts in line with Owen’s.
“Right. Highly classified operations are broken into multiple documents and scattered over various servers, as you said, and they’re heavily encrypted.”
“If it was a hacker, there’s only one guy in the world I know capable of pulling something like this off,” Jess, their cyber expert, blurted.
“Lin Yan Cheng,” Luke finished for her, then looked over his shoulder at Owen on his left, and he could tell Luke was thinking the same thing as him.
The picture of his brother from Ukraine . . . it was legit. It had to be.
Owen would follow Luke’s lead, though, on the news—and wait for him to share what they’d learned since Sam came into his life like a bulldozer.
The president rose, and his palms flattened onto his desk.
“I’ve been in talks with the Chinese all day.
But, without evidence to prove he’s our guy, especially since I can’t even verify a breach, we’re not making much progress with them.
And I can’t exactly send a team into Beijing to try and question him, either. ”
“Wasn’t it Cheng who hacked Russia two months ago?” Well, Owen’s source in Moscow told him, at least. Of course, the Russians denied the breach.
“And Israeli Intelligence, back in May?” Liam asked.
“Which is why we’re thinking there’s a connection to him and our missing men,” the president answered. “But we doubt he’s responsible for taking them.”
Jess broke their line of formation and edged to the center of the group, turning to the side to both face the team, while also maintaining a visual on the president.
“He’s notorious for getting onto government servers, downloading whatever intel he can get, and all within the span of thirty seconds.
He gets in and out quickly to avoid setting off alarms.”
“So he doesn’t go in with a specific objective?” Knox asked, and Jess glanced his way.
Her fingers slipped to her chest, and she rubbed the silver metal chain between her fingers as if channeling her thoughts. “No, it would take too long for him to search out specific intel.”
“His MO seems to be grab and go, and then parcel off whatever he finds to the highest bidder later,” Luke explained.
“This is just one avenue we’ve been pursuing,” the president said. “We have to explore every possibility to determine who may have our people, and why they have them.”
“Pick any terrorist. Who wouldn’t want two SEAL operatives and a CIA officer?” Asher grumbled, his voice a half a dozen octaves lower than normal.
“Well, we might have the evidence you need to prove JSOC was hacked.” Jess went over to where she’d set her computer bag by the couch at the center of the room.
“What are you talking about?” The president circled his desk to stand closer to the guys.
When Jess returned, she handed him the photo from the deliveryman. “A lot has happened since we met with Handlin yesterday, which is why we were trying to get ahold of him so desperately last night and today.”
The president remained quiet, but Owen could hear the fucks going on in the president’s head, flapping around, even if he didn’t say them.
“Is this image from JSOC, Mr. President?” she asked.
“Where’d you get this?” The muscles in his jaw clenched tight, and he lifted his eyes to look at Jess.
Jess peered over her shoulder at Owen, giving him the go-ahead to tell POTUS what he knew.
“Sir, if I may?” Owen stepped forward to confront the commander in chief.
The president’s eyes narrowed Owen’s way, and he tipped his head granting permission.
“Someone dropped this picture off at Samantha McCarthy’s office last Wednesday. She’s Brad Thompson’s fiancée, and her father—”
“I’m well aware of who she is,” he said, his voice borderline raspy. “Go on.”
Owen cleared his throat. “Someone’s trying to blackmail Samantha to get her off a proposal she’s working on.”
“Ukrainian-Russian relations.” The president’s forehead creased, irritation slipping to the surface beneath his normally composed mask.
“We believe whoever sent that image is the same person who phoned her this morning demanding she drop her proposal,” Owen explained. “Based on that photo, is it safe to assume everything is connected to our missing guys, and that JSOC was hacked?”
“This image isn’t from our files,” the president said, drawing collective breaths of surprise from the team.
Owen’s brows slanted inward. “So, the photo’s not real, sir?”