CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1)

by Matthew Mather

  The hackers said they had compromised the GenCorp network—but months ago, far ahead of all this happening. They said they had a backdoor into the system, but that they didn’t want to contact the Russian or American authorities for fear of exposure, or legal action. Or worse.

  They’d seen Damon on video broadcasts, pushing the mesh-network, and had seen Terek in the background. Damon was famous, and he was a fellow hacker. He was the kind of guy that inspired trust.

  Terek explained the technical details of his idea to Damon, who said it was a long shot, but it was something. It seemed fanciful, maybe even dangerous. They said they needed to get somewhere with a high-bandwidth connection to explore the idea, to see if there was anything to it.

  And this begged the question: Where were the people at GenCorp?

  Now the Chechens had revealed their hand, every government person from the NSA to the CIA and every other three-letter agency here and in Russia and China had to be trying to disable those satellites.

  So why did these Russian hackers think they had an upper hand?

  Because they were in beforehand, Terek said. They were already inside the network. They left a secret backdoor they could open, which was inside the perimeter of the security the Chechen group had installed when they’d taken over GenCorp’s networks.

  They didn’t want to open it themselves, because they were in Russia. Which was where the Chechens were. The hackers didn’t fear the Russian police—they probably paid them—but Chechens were another story.

  “Dad.” Luke grabbed my shirt. “Hey, look.”

  He pointed into the haze. The smoke from the fires was getting thicker. A hundred feet in front of us, Oscar’s tractor growled behind the corn head, the two vehicles kicking up a choking cloud of dust that flowed into the swirling smoke. We needed to go in soon.

  I wiped the sweat away from my eyes.

  A white blur raced across the dirt, halfway between us and Oscar.

  I took my foot off the gas.

  “That’s Roosevelt!” Luke pulled on my shirt more urgently. “That’s Joe’s dog.”

  We slowed. Oscar’s tractor pulled away from us. We had driven into a bend in the field, a small divot that turned into the hills and forest.

  “Dad!”

  “I see him. I see him.”

  That was definitely Roosevelt. The little dog barked at us. I put my foot back on the gas.

  “Luke,” I said, “this is his place. His home. We don’t need to stop for him.”

  “He wants something.”

  “I’m not—”

  My arms slammed into my body. Face smacked into the windshield. A screech of metal. The tractor bucked sideways into the air. My stomach in the steering wheel, I grabbed wildly for Luke. The tractor catapulted and I fell sideways, half out of the open cabin.

  Luke grabbed my right hand. His face scrunched together with effort, he hauled me back as hard as he could. I scrambled into the seat and wiped my face with the back of my hand.

  It came away bloody. Again. “What the hell was that?”

  The tractor was at an angle. The plow gone.

  “You hit a stump,” Luke said matter-of-factly. “I told you to—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Roosevelt is still barking at us.”

  “Stay here.”

  I climbed out of the tractor to inspect. Found the plow. Ripped off and lodged between the front and back wheels on the left side. That’s what had rocketed us into the air.

  “Dad, Roosevelt wants something,” I heard Luke say from the cabin.

  “Don’t move, don’t—”

  I was on one knee, inspecting the damage. Two short legs appeared on the other side of the tractor.

  “I’m going to see what he wants.” Luke ran off after the dog.

  “Damn it, Luke, what did I say?”

  I took one step into the cabin to get the cell phone, but it had ripped loose. No sign of it. Luke disappeared into the trees to the side of the tractor. Roosevelt kept barking. What the hell was it with this kid and dogs?

  I grabbed the walkie-talkie, clambered down, and ran after my son.

  CHAPTER 28

  LAUREN COULDN’T SHAKE the feeling.

  Everyone here was being nice. Almost too nice. They called her Mrs. Mitchell and apologized and offered her food and asked if she wanted anything to drink. It reminded her of Emily, which took her back to wondering why the young woman hadn’t said goodbye. More than that, though, being here made her feel the way she had on the airplane.

  Trapped.

  Politely but firmly, the young men in black ballistic vests would tell her it wasn’t safe for her to leave the room. That there were things going on they couldn’t control. That she would have to be patient.

  It was the middle of the afternoon. She’d been in the house for over a day already. She desperately wanted to go out for a walk on the beach. Above all, she needed to get to her family. At least know they were safe.

  Yesterday, Billy, the young man with the rose tattoo on his neck, had helpfully provided a few books, said he’d enjoyed one of the thrillers. She tried to keep still and read it, but that nagging sensation wouldn’t go away.

  The door to her room opened. “Lunch?”

  A young man she hadn’t seen before offered a tray with a sandwich and a bottle of water.

  Lauren got up to take it. “Thank you.”

  Past the young man, on the ground floor of the house, she saw that more equipment and computers were being set up. She glimpsed a young woman with brown hair dart past without looking up. She looked familiar.

  “Can I talk to Billy?” Lauren asked.

  “Sure, give me a minute.” The young man smiled ingratiatingly and closed the door. Politely. But firmly.

  That was the last straw.

  Lauren picked up a chair and took it over to the window, which she found she could open, though it was too high to see out of. She stood on the chair and got up on her toes. Just high enough to see the beach and the backyard. A man in camouflage pants, a khaki shirt, and a black ballistic vest was dragging trash bags over to the back fence near the seawall.

  He tossed them onto a growing pile.

  The blood drained from Lauren’s face.

  In the middle of the pile of garbage bags was a tangle of red. Not leaves. Not garbage. Hair. Red hair. A head. The man glanced behind him. Lauren dropped off the chair and put her back to the wall, her heart thumping through her chest.

  Had she just seen what she thought she’d seen?

  The door to her room opened. Billy’s smiling face appeared. “Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Mitchell? I swear to God, we’re getting moving tonight. And I have news.”

  “News?” All Lauren could think about was the red hair in the pile of trash, curls spilling from the bag.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What news?”

  “Your husband. He’s in Virginia with your uncle and mother. We got word. They’re all at the house in McLean by the Potomac. I told you not to worry.”

  Lauren sat down on the chair. “I know we don’t have a phone line, but aren’t there computers? What about an email? Skype? VoIP?” She had left her laptop in her checked luggage. Hadn’t been able to recover it. Not that it would have helped.

  Billy said, “You’re right. I can get you a computer so you can send an email, but we can’t do voice calls. But anyhow, we’ll be gone soon. Is that all for now?”

  He gave her his best smile.

  Practiced. Forced. Nice. Too nice.

  Lauren’s skin crawled.

  “Where’s that accent from, Billy?”

  “Pittsburgh.”

  “You’re from Dirty ’Burgh? That’s where my husband is from.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “But there’s something else there.”

  He nodded, his perfect smile never wavering. “You got me. My mom’s from Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  “An
d my dad, he was Ukrainian. Maybe that’s what you hear.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, I gotta get back. We’re going to leave soon.”

  He closed the door.

  Lauren waited. Pittsburgh? He thought that accent sounded Pittsburghese? He was from where Mike was from? It was too much of a coincidence. And they had computers and email, but no Skype? No VoIP? No direct communications, even with all that gear?

  That neck tattoo didn’t look new. Visible tattoos like that were definitely against military regulations. Maybe he was a private contractor now, but what exactly did that mean?

  And that woman downstairs.

  The one with the brown hair.

  Lauren was good with faces. She was sure she’d seen that woman before. Her mind clicked another puzzle piece into place.

  That was it.

  The plane.

  The woman with the brown hair, Lauren saw in business class. Before Emily had closed the curtains. The image clear in her mind.

  Lauren got back up on the chair and looked out the window. The pile of garbage bags was still there, but no red hair. Maybe she was seeing things. She scanned the yard. Mike always said stress would make you see conspiracies around every—

  Across the sand, something red-white-and-blue.

  A kerchief fluttered away in the wind.

  CHAPTER 29

  DAMON INDIGO TOOK the offered cup of hot coffee.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The woman handing it to him let her hand linger. Their fingers touched.

  “No, thank you,” she replied in a lilting southern accent, then smiled a bewitching grin. “My name’s Pauline.”

  “I’m—”

  “I know who you are.” Pauline let her fingers slide away. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate you and your friends helping our town like this.”

  “It’s...I…”

  Damon was at a loss for words. Freckles were sprinkled across her nose under clear blue eyes. Her hair was in a long blond braid and she wore cut-off jean shorts and cowboy boots.

  “Pauline,” she repeated. “You remember that.”

  She sauntered into the dining room. Damon couldn’t not watch her go.

  “Wow,” Terek said. “She’s pretty.”

  “Yeah...ah…”

  It had been a long time since a woman had caught him off guard like that. Damon had immersed himself in his work these past years. He told himself he didn’t have time for relationships.

  If he was being honest, though, his fiancée’s death still haunted him. The memory pulled forever at the dark edges of his mind, digging its sharp claws deeper and deeper. Wasn’t time supposed to heal all wounds? Not this one. Work was the only thing that kept him from sinking completely.

  Pauline glanced over her shoulder as she went around the corner.

  “I think she likes you.” Terek poked him in the ribs.

  Damon blinked and shook his head. This wasn’t the time for whatever that was. Then again, he couldn’t stop staring at the spot where she had disappeared. He felt an unfamiliar wave of heat in his face.

  Shaking his head at himself, he returned his attention to his laptop.

  The corn head tractor wasn’t self-driving today. He was in control of it. They didn’t have GPS, but that morning he had flown one of the drones down the eastern edge of the farm near the forest and logged the data points he was able to map.

  His laptop screen showed the view from the camera mounted on the front of the corn head. The tractor followed a set of grid points now under his control, the instructions relayed from a drone that hovered near the middle of the fields. It followed a set path, but he turned off the auto-avoidance controls.

  He monitored and adjusted.

  They used two drones for communication, each fitted with a phone with extra memory and a signal booster, which provided coverage to everyone on the meshnet in direct line-of-sight and signal distance.

  They needed two, because the drones could only stay airborne for about an hour at a time. One recharged while the other flew.

  Damon managed the overall operation, but two of the town’s teenagers oversaw the launching, recovery, and recharging.

  Terek had gone earlier out with his sister and Ken and Oscar to talk to the townspeople, asking them to install the mesh app on their phones and explaining how to use it. It didn’t take long for them to figure it out, and Ken and Oscar continued the process, encouraging people to spread the word.

  While they did that, Damon finished reprogramming the corn head and set up a command center in the kitchen of the farmhouse. It was a cheerful space with sagging wooden beams, whitewashed walls, and handmade furniture.

  As soon as Terek got back, they set themselves up on the large pine table in the middle of the kitchen. They took the forty-inch flat screen TV from the living room and installed it in front of the raised fireplace by the pantry.

  Terek was in charge of the second set of drones. These patrolled the periphery of the farm, watching for any advancing spurts of fire. Terek used the VR goggles to fly them, but he projected the image onto the big screen so everyone else could keep an eye out for things he might miss.

  Another team watched these videos, did upkeep on the flying machines, and coordinated fire crews as they dispersed with vehicles and sand and water.

  Most of the time, Terek hovered the reconnaissance drone near Mike and Oscar as they drove two tractors behind the corn head Damon controlled, which plowed down the corn.

  Damon’s phone pinged.

  A message from Grandma Babet. “Port is a mess. Something strange is going on.”

  He typed back: Something strange? Explain?

  As they installed the meshnet on the townspeople’s phones, and some of the people started traveling south and east, small dribbles of network data began to arrive. He was glad to hear his grandma was okay. She was a tough nut. He didn’t need worry about her.

  But of course, he did.

  The message was odd, though.

  And it might take hours, or even days, to get a response.

  Voice calls worked locally over the meshnet, connecting one phone directly to another, or through a relay like he’d set up on the communications drone. Getting any data further across the ad hoc network required both luck and the goodwill of the people connecting to it.

  Luck, because it required one phone to pass the message and data to others. This spread randomly through the network, patching to the internet when an open connection was found. The system’s protocol searched for the unique address of the person who would receive the data.

  Only once a path through had been found, would a connection be established and the data passed. Which might require a pass-through of dozens of individual phones all the way from Kentucky to Louisiana.

  The average data rate was measured in bits per hour for a distance like that. Enough for simple text messages, but never for a phone call.

  And it required goodwill, because each person in the network needed to authorize their phone and individual meshnet to pass information from others through it, and because people near internet connections had to open their networks.

  But it was better than nothing.

  Terek was sitting next to him, controlling the overflight drone. The image from the drone’s camera played on the large screen they’d put in front of the kitchen fireplace. Two townspeople, Richard and Liz, scribbled notes and asked Terek to back up or go forward. They then made calls to direct the people moving in the fields.

  “Message from Babet?” Terek glanced at Damon’s phone.

  “Yeah,” Damon replied. “Something’s strange, she said.”

  “Strange?”

  “That’s what she said. At the port.”

  “Did she say what?”

  “I sent a message to ask.” Damon tapped his keyboard and edged the corn head to the right. It was driving too deep into the field. “Did you hear back from your Russian friends?”

 
“Not yet.”

  “How well do you know these people?”

  “Not very. Never met in person. Only by reputation.”

  “How?”

  “Online message boards. That sort of thing. I think they were more interested in you than me.”

  It was a vague answer, but it made some sense. Damon often visited message boards that were frequented by less than reputable characters. The seedy edges of the web were the most interesting, but also the most dangerous.

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” Damon said.

  “My Russian friends hacking GenCorp?”

  “Yeah. Or anyone. I went to GenCorp last year, and sent an email afterward to their security team. No answer, of course.”

  “What were you asking them about?”

  “I wasn’t asking, I was telling.”

  “Let me guess. Their security sucked?”

  “It’s not just information security that’s important, it’s physical security, too. I mean, you get to their headquarters, and it’s more like visiting a fancy nightclub than a secure facility. The parking lot attendant makes sure you’re on a list, but they don’t really check your ID. There’s a velvet rope you stand behind outside, and then a guy that looks like a bouncer calls people in.”

  “That does sound like a nightclub,” Terek said. “And I never get into them.”

  Damon laughed. Terek barely looked old enough to enter a bar. Six years younger than Damon, but he seemed even more. The way he always deferred, asked for his opinion. Mike felt like an older brother, but Terek was like the younger one he never had.

  “Then when they ask you in, there’s no biometrics. No picture taken. They didn’t even do a body search or take my phone. They should have mantraps at the doors, monitoring to prevent piggybacking. All the standard physical security.”

  “They didn’t take your phone?”

  “And didn’t search me. I could have had a Shark Jack, a USBdriveby, anything on me. I could have owned that place inside of an hour. It doesn’t surprise me they got hacked.”

  “It’s all about endpoint security,” Terek said. “Physical and digital.”