I take my phone out and turn it on to call Ailes.

“Thank God you’re okay. We never should have let you go,” he says. His voice is apologetic.

“Stop that. Someone had to go. Thankfully I have smart people to work with.”

“Hopefully. We ended up making a virtual version of his entire network and overrunning the routers he was sending traffic through. The satellite was the tricky part, but Jennifer managed that. I won’t get into the details.”

“I’m not sure I’d understand,” I admit.

“The short of it is that his software patches were a few months old. He got a little busy and forgot to update them.”

“It’s good to know he’s just as forgetful as the rest of us. Did anyone have a chance to go over Danielle’s footage?”

“We’ve been making a map of the floor plan. Besides Times Square, we think we can make out some outlines where he traced the observation deck on the Empire State Building.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I reply.

“We’ve been looking at 3-D models of that junkyard of his trying to figure out exactly what he’s got piled out there. We found a stack of aluminum piping cut to the same size as the rails of the observation deck and some screen. He may have actually built a model of the deck and placed projection screens to simulate the walls of the lobby and the outside view.”

“To fake footage?”

“Not quite good enough. More for a practice run. A really intense practice run. The same for Times Square. He probably projected images of buildings and traffic lights to make sure everything would work just right. It’s insane. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“Yeah. Remind me sometime to tell you about my rehearsals in my grandfather’s basement.”

“Well, the one bright ray of light in all this is that we’re pretty sure some of that IP traffic from the warehouse was being routed to Texas.”

“So everything is still a go?”

“It looks that way. Unless we think revealing his Michigan hideout will deter him, we’re still on the hunt there.”

I turn to Danielle. “How quick can we get to the airport?”

52

I LOCK THE DOOR of my motel room and check my wig in the mirror. It’s dirty blond and much shorter than my own hair. With a pair of librarian glasses, I was able to fool Agent Knoll in the Quantico command center. As I was the most recognizable person on the task force, he didn’t want to send me to south Texas.

Agreeing to use a disguise, plus the fact that the Warlock practically told us where he was going to strike next, convinced him to let me at least come as close as our field command post six miles away. I’m in a motel that’s across the road from a Texas Highway Patrol station. This seemed to be the place we’d be least likely to run into him.