Page 117 of The Devil's Ransom

I hung up the phone and said, “What was the name of that guy that helped us with our ransomware and then helped the NSC? Wasn’t it Dylan?”

Wolffe said, “Yeah, Dylan Hobbes. Why?”

I looked at Knuckles and said, “Head upstairs to the team rooms. Get a low-vis package for the team.” I turned to Blaine, saying, “Show him what we can steal.”

Blaine led the team out of the room and I said, “What’s his company? Where is it? It’s here in DC, isn’t it?”

“It’s called Second Day Solutions and yeah, it’s here in DC. Why?”

I turned to the computer on the desk and googled the name, saying, “The Russian said his first name was Dylan, he was a computer genius, and he had a DC area code. That’s our target. That’s Sphinx.”

“Dylan Hobbes? That’s insane. He has a security clearance higher than God. He worked for both the NSA and Cyber Command. He’s been briefing the president of the United States, for Christ’s sake.”

I saw the address in Tysons Corner, about twenty minutes away. I said, “And what’s he been briefing? He’s the one that’s been talking about Iran. All the proof of the so-called Iranian penetration came from him. He’s the reason we’re about to be at war.”

I stood up and Wolffe said, “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. You can’t conduct an assault on United States soil. It’s against the charter and might very well compromise the Taskforce. Let me call the DC police. Get a SWAT team on it.”

I looked at my watch and said, “It took Kerry Bostwick an hour to track down that number. It’s going to take me twenty minutes just to get there. It’ll take you at least an hour to get through the red tape, and we don’t have that sort of time.”

I hollered down the hall, “Creed, get your ass in here!”

“Creed? What’s he going to do?”

“He’s going to help me stop the ransomware.”

Fabio looked at his watch and called mission control, his eyes on the abort button. “Mission control, mission control, how are we looking?”

“The PONR is in thirty minutes,” meaning point of no return.

Skyler heard the transmission and said, “Hit it now, just in case we’re in the same boat we were before. Give us some time to fix it if it doesn’t fire.”

Fabio said, “No. Let them work the problem.”

Skyler lost his calm demeanor, saying, “Press that damn button! If we wait and it doesn’t work, we’re going into the space station!”

Fabio turned to him and said, “I’m not pressing that button until NASA instructs me to do so.”

Skyler got on the radio and said, “Mission control, mission control, this is Skyler.”

“This is mission control, go.”

“Get that NASA guy on the net. Tell him to tell this asshole to press the button.”

We went racing out of the parking garage in two cars, getting on Interstate 66 toward Tysons Corner, me talking on the radio the whole way.

“Okay, we’re going to get there with about five minutes to spare. We go in hard, no knock and wait. If the door to the office is locked, we breach it explosively. You all have Dylan’s picture. Just control anyone else. Get them on the floor and move on. There are no hostiles here.”

I got head nods in my vehicle and a “roger” from the one following.

We reached the 495 loop and I said, “Five minutes out. Anyone who gets jackpot call Creed forward. Creed, you wait at the breach with Jennifer until we call.”

I turned around and looked at him. He nodded, childlike glee on his face from being involved in an operation on the ground instead of staring at a computer screen.

Behind the wheel, Jennifer exited 495, passed the National Counterterrorism Center, then said, “That’s it. That’s the building.”

I looked at the structure, seeing what appeared to be a warehouse instead of some sleek, modern building housing a cutting-edge computer company. I said, “You sure? That’s not what I thought it would look like.”

“That’s the address.”

---