One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [139]
Stuffing passports and any other paper I could find into my backpack, I said again, “Come on, pack that computer up. We need to move.”
When I didn’t notice any movement, I said, “What’s up? We have got to go.”
“An e-mail just came in, from a different Yahoo! account. He’s still logged on and connected to the Internet.”
“Close it all up,” I said. “Don’t turn anything off, just close it up for travel. Maybe we can duplicate it at our hotel, but we don’t have time to mess with it now.”
Finishing up, I held the door open for Jennifer. Just prior to letting it close forever, she grabbed my arm.
“Wait.” She ran to the nightstand and grabbed a thumb drive. Holding it up, she said, “No telling what’s on this thing.”
“Good catch. That’s probably got their whole diabolical plan.”
She squinted like she was debating on whether to kick me in the nuts. Before she got the chance, I left the room. Once outside I turned left, choosing the opposite stairwell to the one by which we had arrived. We exited out the back, but were forced to walk through all the gawkers on the east side of the hotel to get to our vehicle. The smashed body hadn’t been moved, appearing just as it had when I’d looked out the window minutes before. We pretended to be just as shocked as everyone else until we were clear of the crowds and could sprint to our car. Fifteen minutes later we were back in our hotel room.
I set the laptop on the coffee table and brought it out of sleep mode. The last e-mail was still on the screen.
“Toss me that thumb drive.”
Putting it in the computer, I saw it was empty. So much for finding the diabolical plan. I copied the Arabic text from the e-mail onto the thumb drive, followed by the e-mail header information, then took the drive over to Jennifer, who had booted up our computer and was getting online.
“The thumb drive had nothing on it. Here’s the last e-mail that was on the screen, along with the header. Can you send this to the Taskforce? Kurt said he’d have analysts standing by. Time for them to earn their pay.”
“Sure. You think they’ll be able to get anything out of this?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to try to get back into the Yahoo! server and get all his e-mails before his password times out.”
She sent the e-mail, then asked me, “What was that Web site that did the magic stuff?”
“What is my IP address dot com. You remember how to use it?”
“Yeah, I think so. I’ll let you know if I get stuck.”
I was pulling up the wireless toolbar on the terrorist’s computer, attempting to get online, when Jennifer said, “The other guy, if that’s who sent the e-mail, is in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah, actually it does. That’s where all the muj went to during the Bosnian war. He’s probably got some contacts there.”
I tried to connect to the hotel wireless network but failed, being told it was “in use.” “Will this hotel network handle two computers with the same password at the same time?”
She was staring at our computer and gave me an absentminded answer. “I don’t know.”
“His damn password is going to time out. We’re going to lose the messages. Get off the Internet and let me go.”
“Wait. I’m getting a message. Don’t cut it yet. Why don’t you try using the Ethernet cable? That’s not tied to the wireless.”
I felt the press of time and was about to rip her computer out of the wall when what she’d said rooted home. Damn ... little brainiac might be right again. I plugged into the cable and began reconfiguring the terrorist computer, asking what the latest message said.
“It looks like that last message was from the other terrorist. He’s found some explosive material and is ready to meet the first guy—I guess the guy that jumped out the window.”
I continued messing with the other computer, only half listening to what she said.
“He’s ready to build the bomb, and the window-jumper here in Oslo has some connection who can get them into Israel. The guy in Tuzla is thanking him for the work.”
I saw the little wireless icon show a green connection.