She looked at the timer she’d set on her phone, the numbers counting down until midnight. One hour, five minutes, and fifteen seconds. They only had a little more than an hour to figure this out.
“How much time on the timer?” she asked Evan and held her breath.
“It’s set to blow in sixty minutes.”
“Be careful,” she said again.
“Will do.”
“You seeing this?” Cam asked.
Kiley jerked her gaze back to the monitor. “No signs of an external hack in the recent past.”
Cam swiveled in his chair to look at her. “Okay, so these guys are either very good, and we need to dig deeper, or they didn’t hack the system from the outside.”
“You think it’s an inside job?” Sean asked.
“I think we need to look at both possibilities.” She faced Sean. “You concentrate on finding any internal changes. Cam, you take an external approach, and I’ll go through the notes I took from my interview with the system administrator when we arrived.”
She sat to take out her notepad, but her nerves propelled her back to her feet. She read the notes and paced the small room, fielding incoming requests and concerns from the sheriff and dam staff as she read.
“This thing has a timer, and it’s also cellphone- and Wi-Fi-enabled,” Evan said over her earbud. “Same switch as the Pittsburgh bomb.”
“Makes sense.” She didn’t like that the terrorists had multiple chances to detonate the bombs, also making it more difficult for Evan to disarm them.
“Sheriff got those cell signals jammed yet?”
“Not yet,” she replied and hated to tell Evan that with a bomb staring him in the face. “He said five or ten minutes.”
“Assuming he manages it, the bombers will have to be close enough to detonate if they plan to use their backup method,” Evan said.
Kiley ran through the Wi-Fi details she’d learned earlier. “Unless they have better technology, we’ll assume they can’t do more than a third of a mile on Wi-Fi. I’ll get the sheriff to patrol out to that range.”
“This may not be a remote attack,” Evan said, “but one carried out from the inside.”
Kiley considered the possibility of there being someone in the building who could set off the bomb. “We can’t stop a cellphone detonation, but, Sean, make sure the dam’s Wi-Fi is offline.”
“Already took it down, but I’ll check again.”
“FYI,” Evan said, “they’re using RDX. As powerful as it is, it would spray this phosphorus in a wide path.”
“So we were right. They must’ve been the guys who stole the RDX.”
“Yeah. I’m pocketing the glass jar containing the phosphorus to bring it in for safety’s sake.”
“Evan, I don’t like the thought of you carrying it.”
“It’s fine as long as I don’t break the glass.”
“But you’re climbing over steel girders. That could happen.” Kiley was shocked at the panic in her voice.
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”
He sounded so calm and confident. She had no idea how he could be, yet she was impressed by his determination. “Be extra careful, Evan.”
“Roger that. But you should know,” he added, “I just spotted a second device on the other end of the bridge.”
“Abort,” Kiley said. “If we lose the bridge, we lose the bridge.”
