Page 108 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
They were minutes away from the dam, and Gideon needed her on his side as quickly as possible.
“Send me the address,” she ordered. “I’ll watch it and call you back.”
After she hung up, Gideon texted the address. He looked down at his watch and grimaced. He knew the video took a minute and forty-three seconds to watch.
“Hey,” Jada whispered to him. She hugged his bicep. “We’re going to beat him. I know it.”
Gideon gritted his teeth and nodded, watching the second hand round the face of his watch. It was two minutes and five seconds after she’d hung up that the colonel called him back.
“This is real, isn’t it?” she said without preamble.
“Yes, it’s real,” Gideon answered.
“How do we stop him?” Her voice was pure steel.
“As I explained, my team and I have been working on this for a while now. We understand that he is implanting malware into these dam’s firmware. When that happens, he will be able to take control of the dam. We have had a head start on replicating the type of malware he has probably created so that we can counteract it by implanting a virus directly into each of the infected dam’s systems.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Here are the obstacles we need to overcome first. One, now that we know Kinzua has been infected, we finally have an opportunity to interact with the malware he has created. We’ve needed to do this in order—”
“To create the antidote. I get it. What are your other obstacles?”
“We don’t know the other dams that have been infected.”
“Yep, that’s an obstacle all right,” the colonel agreed. “I don’t mean to piss in your Cheerios, Chief, but what happens if you can’t come up with the antidote? That’s possible, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So the other way you stop them is turn off all of the computers. Just unplug them, right?”
“What happens to the dams?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” the colonel admitted. “You’re going to need a top-notch engineer with degrees in both electrical and mechanical engineering. That’s your best shot at knowing the best way to disconnect all of the computer systems. I have to tell you, these babies are set up with backup systems galore and many redundancies. This will be tricky. Now, are any of you qualified for this?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You have five hours and forty-eight minutes on the clock. I can get you one who’s good from Pittsburgh. They’ll be there in less than two hours.”
“Ma’am, it’s important—”
“That they know how to follow orders. I’ll make it clear. I’m not going to tell anyone what you’ve shared with me. If this gets out, the shitshow starts, and we don’t need that. I’m sending someone who used to work for me. She’s smart, she’ll be helpful, she’ll take orders and push back for the good of the cause.”
Gideon breathed a sigh of relief. Now that sounded like someone he could work with.
“Thank you, colonel.”
“Call me Alice. Now go save the world.”
