Could he send them commands? Not just data requests? He’d requested data from satellites 0 to 1024. Why had he only received data up to 128? And why had it taken so long?
He was sure it was related to the ground stations.
There was no way the attackers were using GenCorp’s ground stations, which meant they must have their own. He couldn’t imagine a bunch of hackers setting up a global network of physical ground stations, so there was...at least one? Maybe two or three?
With the satellites orbiting every ninety minutes, and the Earth rotating underneath them every twenty-four hours, and with ten thousand satellites, there would always be one overhead somewhere.
Sending commands to all those birds from one base station would take days or weeks. An idea flashed through his mind: But not if they were using satellite-to-satellite communications, and flying the constellation using only one or two points to relay commands to the rest of the fleet.
The SatCom network was one of the first to use lasers to communicate directly between birds, flying in formations. If you extended the formation to all ten thousand, then you’d only need to communicate with one of them. That would explain why trying to overwhelm the antennas with radio jamming didn’t seem to affect their ability to operate, if they were talking to each other optically.
The constellation was operating semiautonomously. Exactly his specialty. But what to do?
And where the hell was Mike?
Damon sent another message to them, passing a high-priority request into the meshnet. A second later, a return message appeared from Mike: We just arrived and parked.
Good. At least they were safe.
The meshnet had found a path to connect them, but the bandwidth was sketchy. He checked the connection. Someone had left their Wi-Fi connection open, without a password. A home somewhere on Atlantic Avenue.
He flexed his fingers over the keyboard.
Usually a hack like this required moving with slug-like pace, but that wasn’t in the cards if he wanted to win the hand. Not only win the hand, but take the pot. Part of him wanted to contact the senator, but to say what, exactly? Bring in the cavalry, horns blaring and guns blazing?
That might trigger some other set of uncontrolled responses, which would spook the Russian team that had provided the hack in the first place. They were more terrified of the Chechens than anything else. The connection to the hackers was already tenuous.
He balled his fists.
Another ping on his computer. This one had a different alarm.
“Sonofa—”
A window popped up on his screen, a newly spawned UNIX shell and command line. Text began scrolling across his screen, but it wasn’t Damon typing. It was Terek, who was supposed to be sleeping upstairs.
Obviously, he wasn’t.
Unless he sleep-typed.
When Damon had spilled the coffee on Terek, he slipped a hand into his friend’s pocket to extract the suspicious USB stick he’d seen Terek using from time to time. Terek was fumbling with it, and when Damon splashed the scalding hot joe on him, Terek’s hand shot out of his pocket, predictably.
Damon patted him down, pretending to help him dry his pants, and took the USB key.
No matter how good your cyber perimeter might be, there was always the danger of a physical attack, like someone stealing something. Like a trusted friend spilling coffee on you and lifting something from your pocket when you were half-asleep. Damon had checked the USB stick as soon as Terek had gone upstairs.
It was a boot disk. Not really suspicious by itself.
It wasn’t unusual for someone like them to use a “live CD” image of a fresh operating system on a memory key, which was what was on it. It was a common way to log into networks anonymously, going from there into a Tor router from a public network access point. The thing that troubled Damon was the way that Terek seemed to keep it hidden.
So Damon installed a lightweight keystroke logger called Asciinema.
Then he left the USB stick on the floor under Terek’s chair. His friend came downstairs in a fresh set of jeans, made like he was coming to get some more coffee, and leaned over and picked up the USB stick. He glanced at Damon as he did it, but Damon had ignored him.
Damon watched the stream of terminal commands and waited. Everything was being recorded. Terek logged off after a few seconds. Damon went to work. Using Terek’s credentials, he opened a link to the dark site his friend had just been in. It was an HDFS interface, a common big data file system.
He had to be quick.
Damon scanned through a few tabs, clicked a link, and downloaded a data file. He logged off, then opened the file in a new instance of UNIX he started up, in case something malicious was in there.
A text file spread across his screen. Damon frowned and tried to decipher it. It looked like phone calls. Text messages. Data from a telco?
His stomach turned over in a lurch.
Not a telco.
This was data siphoned from Damon’s meshnet app. Not Damon’s own data, but a random snippet of data from any of the thousands of people who had connected using the app Damon had made available, or more accurately, that Terek had been making available on Damon’s behalf.
The room felt like it was sinking around him.
Data sent over the meshnet was encrypted end-to-end, but as one of the administrators of the new system, Terek had access to the keys. He had set up what looked like a backup, which was really siphoning data out.
Was this why his friend was so connected to the Russian hackers? Was Terek part of the hacker collective? That was forgivable, depending on the nature of what the group was up to, but why wouldn’t his friend have told him? Why the subterfuge?
But then there was another possibility.
Something tickled the back of his mind. That painful but disturbing feeling when he knew he’d missed something but didn’t know what it was. What...was…?
He shut down all the UNIX terminals, started his PC, and then opened his email to look at the picture of Lauren Terek had found.
Was Terek connected to the woman who’d taken the photo of Lauren, a flight attendant named Emily Simmons? The lady had beautiful red hair and a red-white-and-blue kerchief around her neck. In the picture, behind Lauren and Emily, was a blue building with bright blue awnings.
He looked closer. There. A satellite dish just visible on the roof.
What the hell—
“Everything okay?”
Terek sat down beside him.
Damon blinked. “Yeah, um, I’m...I’m looking at that picture of Lauren.”
“Have you heard from them?”
“Did you get a good sleep?”
“Like a log.”
Little footsteps pounded downstairs in a flurry, and a second later Luke came rocketing into the kitchen and launched himself into Terek’s lap. The Ukrainian tousled his hair.
“What?” Terek said to Damon. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He glanced behind himself, then rotated his eyes up in their sockets. “Is there something in my hair?”
Luke squirmed out of Terek’s arms and gave Damon a high five.
A voice began talking in monotone in the next room. Someone had turned on the TV. Damon heard snippets about food lines and fighting in the metro DC area.
“Hi boys, I just wanted to tell you we’re going out,” said a woman’s voice. Mrs. Seymour appeared, with Olivia in her arms. “Going to take the kids for a walk before the rain starts.”
“That’s a good idea,” Damon said. “Take the Secret Service guy with you?” He still couldn’t remember their names. He was terrible with them. Worse when he was under stress.
“Name’s Dunbar, but you can call me George,” the man said from around the corner.
Mrs. Seymour said, “You think we need to?”
Damon looked at Terek and then back at her. “I think you should.”
CHAPTER 38
LAUREN SPLASHED ACROSS the street through the calf-de
ep water, the shower curtain rod in her hand. She didn’t have much of a lead. She glanced behind her.
Someone opened the door of the blue house. A man came onto the patio and yelled. It was Billy, who told her to come back, his voice muted by the blasting wind shaking the palmettos. Another man came out and ran straight down the stairs.
She almost stopped in her tracks.
But it wasn’t her pursuers that gave her pause.
A colossal wall of clouds rotated high overhead. It engulfed the sky from horizon to horizon. A blast of wind staggered her. She turned.
And ran.
Or tried to.
Wedges and slacks weren’t the best outdoors escape outfit, not in driving rain and gale force winds. Bending over, she hopped from one foot to the other in the water. She pulled off her shoes and held them in the hand not gripping the metal rod.
Barefoot would be faster.
She stole another look behind her. The two men were already in the water. They both turned to gawk at the clouds.
“Help,” she called to anyone that might hear, and waved her wedges over her head.
Both men turned toward her.
The pelting rain intensified into a sleeting downpour.
She turned and danced through the water as fast as she could. She scanned the street, hoping someone would be out here, someone driving down the street, maybe packing their car—but realized that everyone with any sense would be gone by now.
Maybe not everybody.
Two hundred feet to her left was a huge steel truck. She thought of making for it, but she didn’t see anyone near it. It didn’t look like the kind of thing someone would leave the keys in. And going that way that would take her across the path of the men behind her.
In the parking area of the stilt-house across the street was an old sedan. Maybe there were people still in the house? Maybe there were keys in the car?
High-stepping through the water, she sprinted fifty feet and splashed to a stop, slamming into the side of the car. Switching her shoes to the hand holding the metal bar, she tried the driver’s side. Locked. Passenger side handle. Nothing.
Damn it.
She took two loping, sloshing steps over the water-covered cement to the downstairs door of the house. It was locked as well. She banged on the door. She heard splashing. Someone running toward her. She dropped her shoes, gripped the shower rod like a baseball bat, leaned her back against the wall, and gritted her teeth.
A head appeared.
She swung.
“Lauren!” I hollered as I rounded the corner.
Something flickered in my vision. I automatically leaned back and away. A long, thin bar grazed my temple and whacked into the aluminum siding of the vacation home’s wall behind me.
The glancing blow and my attempt to get out of the way toppled me sideways. I splayed face-first into water not quite deep enough to absorb the impact of my forty-something body as I slammed into the concrete slab of the parking garage. I felt my ankle turn, thudded awkwardly onto an elbow, and grazed the skin off my right palm.
But I didn’t feel a thing.
Seeing my wife’s face uncorked a surge of adrenaline into my bloodstream that felt like fireworks being set off in my veins. Even if she was trying to smash my head in. I rebounded off the concrete like rubber and spun around to face her.
There she stood, legs planted apart and knees bent, just like I’d told her to do when she wanted to crack a softball hard as possible. The index finger of her bottom hand slightly apart from the other fingers, her knuckles in line with the bar.
Perfect form.
She was beautiful. Her long hair was soaked in strands and whipping in the wind, her silk blouse stuck to her body. She was in gray slacks. A cork-soled wedge shoe floated by in front of her.
“Where are the kids?” Lauren took a step toward me, the metal bar still cocked.
I love you too. “They’re...I stopped at…” I limped and staggered like a drunk in the buffeting wind. “They’re fine. Safe. What the hell are you doing here?”
“You look terrible. What happened to your face?”
“It’s a long story. We don’t have time.”
“Are you alone?”
The wind gusted again and pushed me sideways. It whipped tiny waves across the water pooling in the parking structure. At least we were protected from the hammering downpour. A palmetto frond skittered by and stuck to me. “I’m with Chuck.”
She lowered the metal bar. “There are men, they took me. Mike, they’re coming.” She pointed behind her. “Do you have a gun?”
I shook my head.
Her look of incredulity momentarily eclipsed the growing roar of the hurricane. “You’re with Chuck and you don’t have a gun?”
“You know how I feel about guns.”
She threw her hands up in disbelief. “But Mike, there are times…”
Were we really about to have an argument right now? My phone pinged in my pocket. “Look, I’m sorry, but we need to go,” I said. “That’s our—”
“Do not move,” said a voice, loud enough to be heard over the wind.
A man stood twenty feet behind Lauren, his feet apart, his arms up, and his handgun leveled at us. He stepped through a waterfall of rain slicking down from the side of the building and into the parking structure. He had short black hair and a tattoo of a rose on his neck, small ears that stood out, and was dressed in tight-fitting camouflage top and bottom. He was slim. No taller than five-six.
I stepped by Lauren. Stood between her and the man. I held my hands out, palms toward him. “What do you want?”
He kept his gun trained on my chest and walked toward me. “Get down on your knees, hands in the air.”
Another man, much bulkier, splashed through the deluge twenty feet behind him. The wind howled.
I shouted again, “What do you want?”
“Get down, or I will—”
“Hey,” yelled someone to my left.
The rose-tattoo-neck guy kept his gun trained on me, but looked right. Chuck crouched over the hood of the car Lauren had tried to get into, a gun pointed at the guy. A deafening crack echoed.
The small man staggered sideways.
Another crack and glass shattered. The bigger man came splashing through the rain, his gun out. He fired again.
I roared, put my head down, and charged at the smaller guy with the tattoo.
I had never been a fighter, and probably couldn’t punch my way out of a paper bag, but when someone pointed a gun at my wife? I slammed into the guy as hard as I could, making sure to stay low and away from the gun in his hand. We fell together onto the cement, the water pancaking away from us.
What was my plan?
I had no plan.
Only blind rage.
I took him by surprise, but he spun with panther-like reflexes and slid his legs around my torso as I tried to jam my hands in his face. His legs gripped my midsection and he used the leverage to slam the butt of the gun against the side of my head. The blow stunned me. I slumped sideways, my fingers grappling at the slick, tight fabric of his camouflage top.
Didn’t Chuck just shoot this guy?
Two more gunshots. The cracks echoed in the closed space of the garage.
“Get the hell off my husband!” Lauren screamed.
She swung the metal bar, and must have caught him because his grip on me went slack. But only for an instant. I saw him bring his gun up.
I used the only move I knew.
The one Chuck had taught me.
I punched the guy as hard as I could, straight in the throat, and directed every ounce of fury I had at the man who had kidnapped the mother of my children. The effect was satisfyingly immediate.
His eyes went wide. Hands flew to his neck.
Lauren fell on top of him, pinning the hand with the gun to the floor. I rotated back on top of him as well and pushed his face sideways and down, under six inches of water. A savage thought surfaced—we just had t
o lie on top of his head and we could drown the bastard.
“Billy, you goddamn asshole, she was pregnant!” Lauren yelled.
“Billy?” I strained to hold his head down. “Who’s pregnant? You?”
Lauren shoved her elbow into the side of his head while she kept her knee on the arm holding the gun. “Not me,” she grunted.
I threw my weight on top of him.
Another gunshot rang out. Then another.
I ducked involuntarily and looked up from our squirming, gagging prey to see the big guy that had come behind this one. He staggered back, then crumpled to one knee. He fired his gun again, but the shot went wild and hit the ceiling of the parking structure.
Chuck stood twenty feet to my left, his weapon out and steady and trained on the guy.
“Put it down,” said another voice.
My excitement drained into the water around my knees. Two more burly men with short-cropped hair, dressed entirely in camouflage, stepped in from the rain. They didn’t have handguns, but bigger, meaner-looking weapons they held against their shoulders.
“Not so fast.”
A fresh surge of adrenaline hit my veins with renewed enthusiasm. Agent Coleman appeared through the downpour behind the two men, his own semiautomatic weapon raised and pointed chest high. The men quick-checked behind themselves, looked at us, and then back at Agent Coleman. He shook his head, don’t try it, the small but unmistakable gesture communicated.
They began to raise their arms, and had them halfway up just as two more figures emerged from the driving rain.
One of them was Irena, her hands held high.
A man in black had one forearm wrapped around her neck. The other hand held a gun point-blank against her temple.
CHAPTER 39
THE WIND OUTSIDE the kitchen patio doors whistled.
Damon blinked and looked away from Terek. “You want another coffee?”
“I’ll think I’ll get it myself.”
CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1) Page 25
