“But we don’t even know if it’s wrong. They have regulations for handling those materials.”

“Leah, the port had a major screw up a few years ago. Remember when the containers of uranium hexafluoride were dropped by dock workers? Those are ingredients for nuclear fuel, for God’s sake.”

She was surprised at the intensity of his reaction. “Yes, but no one was harmed. It’s not very radioactive in that state.”

“But if it fell in the water…BOOM!” He made a mushroom shape with his hands.

“Not exactly. It creates highly corrosive gas. But it isn’t explosive.”

Irritation flashed in Aiden’s eyes. “I don’t know why you are defending these guys. We could have Halifax Explosion Version Two before we know it.”

“That was a century ago. They’ve never had another incident.”

“You know that hackers could take over a ship and make it collide into another one. We should hack into a ship just to demonstrate the risk that exists. And the fact that shipping companies are totally ignoring it.”

“You mean a preventative warning?”

He gave a thumbs up. “Yeah. Exactly. We take control of a container ship in the harbor and embarrass the authorities. It will force them to tighten up their systems.”

“Hmmm…how would we do that?” She asked partly out of intellectual curiosity, and partly to humor him.

“It’s easy for someone with your mad skills,” he had murmured.

Then he had told her exactly how to do it: using a vessel’s Maritime Mobile Service Identity number to send fake GPS coordinates over the system that provided shipping positions to avoid collisions. The hodgepodge of software applications and platforms used by ships from all over the world left backdoors open for hackers.

His scheme had been persuasive enough that it gave her chills. “It’s very risky,” she had said. “I’m not sure what good it would do. And what if we grounded a ship and caused an oil spill?”

As she relayed the conversation to her lawyer, she realized that Aiden had set her up. “It required more technical expertise than I think Aiden possessed to do this kind of exploit. He even admitted it to me.”

“So how would he accomplish this?”

“I think he convinced me to break in to the Owens’ house to give him leverage over me. He wanted to make me write the code for this exploit.” And it had been a good plan. But he was wrong about one thing: she would never have written that code for him.

“Do you think that an explosion in the harbor is the ultimate target?”

“It makes sense.”

Kate dialed Ellis’ number. “My God,” he said, when she filled him in. “I’m just outside the city limits. Pearson sent me back to deal with Leon. The Serious Incident Response Team has taken over the airport.”

Chapter 57

Chapter 57

4:33 a.m.