Page 109 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
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Tanner’s auntdefinitely had some pull. She’d already gotten in touch with the Deputy District Engineer of the Pittsburgh District, who had tapped Allen Adams, the man currently running things at the dam since his supervisor was on vacation. When Jada and Kane introduced themselves, they stuck close to the truth and told him they were currently evaluating the public works projects’ systems’ firewalls and security for the entire Pittsburgh District.
Allen had been told to give Jada and Kane complete access to the Kinzua Dam’s system and answer any and all questions that they may have. As for the other people who came with them, they were there to oversee the project, as well as tour the dam. Jada and Kane had been logged into Kinzua’s system for less than twenty minutes when they discovered the malware, and as they suspected it was a botnet. Their system had already been taken over and no one, not even their computer support analyst, realized it.
“There, do you see it?” Jada pointed to a section of code on her screen.
Kane nodded. “Shit, let me get to it on my screen. This looks like a thing of beauty, but it’s going to take more than a minute to figure out what he’s done besides the obvious.”
“Yeah, I can see where the malware has been installed, but what it is and what it does is something else, and we’re going to need to know that to write alternate code to stop it.”
“Hey, chin up,” Kane smiled. “Who knows, maybe he embedded a kill-switch, and we can just use that.”
“Yeah, like that would have happened,” Jada said sarcastically.
“But we can dream, right?” Kane said.
Jada nodded.
“You ready to dive in?” he asked.
“Try and stop me.”
She looked at the clock on the computer screen. They had five hours and ten minutes before this dam was due to fail.
* * *
Allen Adams tuckedJada and Kane away in the software analyst’s office. He left Gideon, Commander Clark, Kostya, Nolan, and Ryker in his office, which barely fit them all. Still, they all appreciated the privacy.
“Jada told me that Kendall has remote access to the dam and could be anywhere. She would have given Clint and the team remote access to the server so that they could try to track it back to where Kendall might be like they’re doing on all the other sites, but she and Kane agreed that would be a bad idea. I agree with them.”
“Why?” Kostya asked Gideon.
“Because Kendall has access to the whole set-up here, so he might notice if someone else was granted permission to the system,” Gideon answered.
“If that’s the case, aren’t they going to notice Kane and Jada creeping around?” Nolan asked.
“No, they’re too good to be caught,” Gideon assured Nolan and the rest of the men.
“So, what are we going to be doing?” the typically restless Ryker asked. “Stand around with our—?”
“Don’t say it,” Kostya interrupted Ryker before he could say the colorful phrase in front of their Commander.
Simon just laughed. “You know I’ve used that saying myself, right, Kostya? I also have to agree with Ryker at the moment—how can we be of use?”
“I’m not sure.” Gideon was frustrated as all hell. “Part of me says that Kendall will still be somewhere in Manhattan because that’s what he knows, and he’ll want to be in the United States to watch the mayhem. Another part of me says he’ll be here in Pennsylvania because he’ll want to see the destruction that will follow after this dam’s failure.”
“Do we know how the dam is going to fail?” Kostya asked.
“That’s something that Kane and Jada are going to tell us when they find the script. There are two types of turbines, and it depends on what kind they have here, and how they have it set up. The engineer that Tanner’s aunt knows will be here and she can school us.”
“But it could be that he just set explosives, right?” Nolan asked.
“There is always that possibility,” Gideon agreed.
“Righteous! That means we could be looking for C-4,” Ryker said with a grin. “I brought my full backpack with me—I have my scuba gear.”
“Of course, you did,” Kostya muttered.
