Unholy Code by Thomas Waite

The US is practically under siege. ISIS has sleeper cells all over the country. Terror attacks happen on almost a daily basis. And the attacks are getting creative.

Such as a nuke detonated in the South Pole setting numerous glaciers afloat, melting as they drift, raising ocean levels and scattering refugees inland in all the countries with a coastline, US included. Or the small boatload of Islamics off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. When confronted by the Coast Guard, they immediately surrender. No suicide vests. No weapons. Off to jail they go. And then everyone they meet in the legal process heads home, interacts with all their friends and their friend's friends. All now exposed, contracting, and dying from smallpox. Suicide 'bombers' don't always need explosives.

Lana Elkins runs a computer security company that contracts with NSA. She works the highest profile and most lethal attacks to the computer infrastructure. 'Steel Fist' is a blogger from the outback of Idaho who espouses violence of the worst kind. Genocide against anyone who doesn't look like him. And it's not like he's this generation's Unabomber. This guy has millions of followers. With every ISIS terror attack, the number of followers jump. And while he's technically good, he gets help from a mysterious guardian angel who is technically gifted. The Steel Fist gets shut down and within minutes he's back spouting his bile.

After getting attacked by Lana's company once again, the Steel Fist decides to take the glove off. He published pictures of Lana, her daughter, her daughter's route to/from school, where she hangs out, her boyfriend (high school classmate who immigrated from Sudan). Everything. And his followers are out in force primarily to kill her daughter. But her boyfriend has his own guardian angel. His uncle, a harsh man with a past tied to Al Queda. At times he's overly protective, other times he accepts what the two kids have with each other.

One of the Fist's followers manages to stage a successful kidnapping. To get her back, Lana has to go to Idaho alone.

This is the third 'Code' novel by Waite. It'd been awhile since I read Lethal Code (#1 in the series) and remember I liked it a lot. Well, Waite hasn't lost my attention. This is a tense, taut, light-speed story that sprints between Bethesda, the NSA, and Idaho. Numerous times. Lana and her daughter are no shrinking violets. Both are highly competant and resourceful with both a keyboard and a firearm. A serious story, serious actions, serious consequences.

I really need to find Trident Code.

ECD

available July 12, 2016

Lethal Code by Thomas Waite

Where would we be without the Internet and the rest of our power grid? What would happen if it was here today and gone tomorrow? Just like turning off a light switch.

A normal September Monday in the DC 'burbs. Lana Elkins, single mom, is struggling to get her 14yo daughter Emma set for school in an outfit that won't get either arrested when the lights flicker and go out in the kitchen, the house, the cul-de-sac, the neighborhood, the suburb, all of DC, the east coast . . . the entire country goes black. 

Lana isn't any ordinary soccer mom. She owns CyberFortress and does contract work for the NSA, specializing in digital security that Congress and the White House largely ignore. She knows this isn't some substation overload. Hackers. Big time hackers. Maybe even state-sponsored hackers. Trains collide, gas mains erupt, the mother of all traffic jams. Thousands die across the country. 

A Saudi-born American, Ruhi Mancur, is Director of Research at the Natural Resources Defense Council. An environmental lobby group. He is an American with no love for Islamic fundamentalists. But his cousin Ahmed, who bears a striking resemblance to OBL, is way high up in AQAP, al Qaeda Arab Peninsula and one of the most sought after terror planners by every Western intelligence agency. That blood connection puts Ruhi under the FBI's and the NSA's program of constant surveillance. After the power comes back, possible suspects to the attack include Ahmed and Ruhi's connection is blasted over the airwaves. Roving gangs of looters spot Ruhi and if not for the help of his neighbor (and wanna be girlfriend) Candace, might've been torn to pieces. Candace may be an intern on Capitol Hill, but was also an embassy guard in Afghanistan so she knows how to handle a gun. 

There is code amongst hackers: leave air travel and banks alone. The grid comes back online 24 hours to the second after all went black. An eerie voice announces across the TV feed that the last 24 hours were but a preview. In the coming days, the entire grid would not just be shut off. It would be destroyed. The US would be sent back to the 19th century and earlier. And this time, they won't be so nice. They'll cut off air travel, banking, nuclear power, but all that's just the appetizer. They also control labs around the country that house lethal viruses and the big one: the nuclear arsenal, which they've programmed to launch and hit American cities. The imminent and total destruction of America is at hand.

All that plus that the US is the primary target suggests a jihad factor. The US intelligence services round up suspects, Ruhi included, use extraordinary rendition techniques to find out what Ruhi has on his cousin. But the interrogators don't really want to know about Ahmed. They want to know what Ruhi can handle so he can be sent back to Riyadh, find his cousin and, with the help of Lana, uncover the cyber stronghold in order to hack the hackers and release control of the US networks.

Wow, that's a lot for one book. Waite starts us off with a push off a 100 mile/hour waterslide. No hope of stopping if you get going too fast. You start reading . . . and you are in. Better than our typical airplane read and if the next Lana Elkins book (Trident Code) is this good, Waite will leap into my power rotation of thriller writers. There were times when I had to remind myself to breathe. It's that gripping. Who cares if the hero isn't a walking bottle of pure testosterone. Rui, Lana, and daughter Emma, are as tough as they come.

You can bet I'm on the lookout for Trident Code.

East Coast Don