by S. L. Jones
“Copy that, over,” Millar confirmed.
“Keep the PMD right on top of me, twenty meters max, and tell me where the Tangos are. When I give you the signal, give them a haircut with the PMD on the side farthest from me, over.”
“Copy that, over,” Millar confirmed. His voice was shaky, showing the effects of knowing that someone’s life was hanging in the balance.
Turner knew this would be risky but considered it his best move, since they knew so little about the Bratva’s operation. He knew he could evade the security details for a while and possibly make it out, but there were no guarantees. There was another reason he wanted to make it inside sooner rather than later, and it came in the form of two words: Victoria Eden. This represented his only chance of pulling the violinist out of there before her nightmare became unforgettable.
If he didn’t make any mistakes, his plan would put him in control of the situation, and that’s the way he liked it.
Millar helped Trent navigate to a location he had made note of earlier. The operative considered his bold play as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Two men approaching fast from the east, over,” he said nervously as the men closed in.
“I’ve got visual, over,” Trent confirmed.
There was a tense pause.
“Poor Man, go, go, go,” Turner ordered as he stashed his comms under a fallen metal sign and switched the line to open mic in one motion. The operative charged the two soldiers, reaching them just as the PMD hit the apex of its dive.
Chapter 124
Downtown hotel, Chicago, IL
ETZY MILLAR AND Dennis Zander were stunned, mouths wide open, staring at the display. The last thing they saw before the video feed had frozen was Trent Turner’s aggressive approach toward the two men. They had followed the rest of the action with the sound transmitted by the operative’s microphone. First they heard a bunch of shouting, and then they sunk down in their chairs at the sound of gunshots. The scene had escalated, and muted conversations were heard in between commands that were barked out.
By the time the video feed had been restored, there were three bodies on the ground. Millar was scared. None of the men were moving. He thought Trent was the body sprawled out in the middle, but he couldn’t be sure.
The hackers were jolted from their immediate shock when the door opened and a dark figure entered the room.
“Nice work, Etzy,” Jack Turner said.
Millar started to breathe again when he recognized the voice. “Thanks, but Trent went down,” he said with grave concern.
Zander was speechless, his gaze darting between the two men and the computer screen.
Turner tightened his lips before he spoke. “Don’t worry. Trent knows what he’s doing.”
“But.” Millar gestured to the laptop’s display.
The three of them watched the video feed showing the three men being taken into the main building.
“It’s all going according to plan,” Jack said.
He looked like he believed what he said, but Zander wore a sour look of disbelief. “That’s crazy,” he said.
Turner smiled. “Trent would call it ballsy, so let’s humor him, okay?” He tossed his gear onto one of the beds. “Now we’ve got someone on the inside,” he said confidently.
The words did little to calm Millar down. “He wasn’t moving.”
“Over the years I’ve learned not to doubt that kid,” Turner said flatly. “He knows what he’s doing, there’s no doubt about it.”
“You’re not even the least bit concerned?” Millar asked.
“I didn’t say that.” Turner’s tone was measured. “He’s family—of course I’m concerned.” He sat on the bed and took off his boot to check his injury. “But I’m not worried.”
“I’m going to pick up some reinforcements,” Turner said. “I got a call on my way here and they’ll be at the airport within the hour. How much fly time does the saucer have left?” he asked as he slid his boot back on.
Millar looked at the readout from the PMD and said, “Not long. Twenty minutes.”
“Land it with some juice left, just in case,” Turner said as he grabbed a fresh battery from Trent’s bag. He pushed the button on its side to verify it had a full charge. He figured it should last a couple hours. “I’ll call you in a couple minutes so we can do a quick swap before I pick up the cavalry. We need to keep tabs on that compound.”
The hacker’s brain was still frazzled as he watched Jack Turner stand up with a pained grimace, grab one the bags at the foot of the bed and limp out the door.
Chapter 125
Kozlov Bratva compound, Chicago, Illinois
ABSOLUTE PERFECTION. SHE possessed the beauty of a goddess, but the cold metal chair she was perched upon told a less glamorous story. It had been a long time since Victoria Eden had felt so alone. The Russian had left her locked in the room, and she imagined the walls slowly closing in around her. She was a creative individual, so it wasn’t unusual for her to find herself lost in thought, but the fact that she had been unable to imagine anything other than her imminent demise had been disconcerting.
“Have you made up your mind?”
The sudden sound of his voice caused her to jump, but she didn’t turn around. She knew he had frightened her on purpose, and she wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing the fear in her eyes.
“Well, Victoria?” Pavel Kozlov pressed. There was a sudden sharpness in his voice.
She didn’t respond immediately, sensing the Russian was struggling with the situation. Her beauty had been an asset in life for the most part, but she was convinced his conflicted reaction was more than skin deep. He was one of those men who had decisiveness and brutality in their DNA. She decided it must have been the way she played the violin that had put indecision in play. She turned her head to him. Her eyes met his, and in a twisted moment, his gaze invaded her, and it was as if he were pondering the idea of somehow keeping her for his pet.
“Listen, thanks for letting me play in the show,” she said, her tone marked with frustration. “I really appreciate it, but I really should be going.” She turned away.
Kozlov laughed the sort of laugh that wasn’t intended to convey humor. Eden twitched when she felt something touch her hair. It must have been his hand, but she was too scared and repulsed to turn and look.
“Perhaps you need a little encouragement,” he said. His voice was cold and hostile.
The loud pounding of a fist on the door caused her to jump again. There was a sudden flurry of activity out in the hallway. Kozlov opened the door, and he spoke in Russian to someone. The tone was urgent, and he left without saying another word.
Chapter 126
TRENT TURNER BEGAN to regain consciousness as they strung him up. He wasn’t sure if they were securing him to a wall or some sort of torture device. He knew better than to open his eyes and try to assess the situation. Wherever he was, it was cold, and he could tell by the musty smell that it was damp. His body ached in several places, but physical abuse came with the territory, and he didn’t notice anything alarming.
He had taken two of their men out, so he had expected to be roughed up. He chose the route of incapacitation rather than elimination. Keeping them alive was something he thought might play in his favor. The Russians were just getting started with him, though, and his thoughts turned to how evil an interrogation by a man like Kozlov could be. Turner knew he would need to keep his head on straight, so he wiped the thought of extreme torture from his mind.
“He was alone,” a voice said.
“How can you be so sure?”
Turner recognized the second man. It was Pavel Kozlov.
“You know the layout. It doesn’t take long to clear this place with twenty men—”
“Eighteen,” Kozlov interrupted.
Turner could sense the tension build between the two men. Now he knew the amount of firepower they would be dealing with.
“Right,” the man s
aid. “Before we get too comfortable, forty grand. In cash.”
Trent Turner knew Russians were critical by nature and smiled inside as he listened to the Bratva leader size up the American. Treating him like shit wouldn’t do him any favors, so he was enjoying the radio show. He heard a rustling sound before Kozlov said, “Here’s your money, plus a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus.”
He felt a slap on his face he assumed was a stack of bills, before Kozlov said, “For him.”
Turner knew the money would smooth over the previous conversation, so a rift between them when the shit hit the fan would now be unlikely.
“Works for me,” the man said. “He didn’t have a radio or ID on him, so it looks like he was flying solo.”
Turner had to fight back a smile. He knew what the man had said would match any MO that Kozlov would have assumed for him. Based on the timing of events, the operative suspected it was his recent job in Europe that had exposed him. He had been there alone.
“I trust your people are in place to deal with any other unwanted visitors?” Kozlov said.
“That they are. I’ve given your men some radios so we can stay in touch.”
“Good, and the men he took down? They’ll be okay?”
“They’re unconscious but alive. They’ll live.”
“I’m impressed,” Kozlov admitted. “Most people who have had a run-in with him don’t survive.”
Turner could sense the Russian’s glare on him.
“We’ll be sure to tie up this loose end quickly,” Kozlov added. “We wouldn’t want any more surprises.”
Chapter 127
Downtown hotel, Chicago, IL
THINGS HAD FINALLY settled down enough for Etzy Millar to connect with The Shop using his computer. Dennis Zander was able to lay out what he knew about the underlying software that made up the Russian’s botnet. He had only been working on one aspect of the operation, information acquisition, but he made it a point to learn as much as he could from his roommate and the other hackers he had gotten to know. Zander was able to confirm much of the information they already knew but shared some new details with the analysts that he hoped would prove useful.
“It’s in Northern Virginia somewhere,” Zander said, referring to the Bratva’s backup location. “Near the airport. It’s off a main road close to one of the big data centers.”
“So you’ve been there?” Cynthia Grayson asked.
“Once,” Zander said dismissively. “It was at night. I rode in the car with the courier to set a server up with my stuff. I wasn’t familiar with the area, and he took a lot of back roads. The only thing I really remember was seeing signs for the airport.”
“Did you ever connect to the servers there to remotely transfer files?” she questioned.
“No. No way,” Zander said. “Dmitri, the Russian hacker guy who ran the operation, wouldn’t allow it. They were pretty paranoid about stuff like that. The funny part is that I was supposed to be blindfolded when we got close to the place, but the courier forgot to put it on, and by the time he realized what he’d done it was too late.” Zander thought about what else he knew that might be helpful. “I overheard a lot of their conversations. The backup location was to stay off-line, and they would only bring it up if something happened to the place in Chicago. I would encrypt the account files I was responsible for and put them on a USB drive for delivery. Same with the others.”
“You mentioned a courier?”
“Yeah. The courier drove back and forth with the files and the encryption key updates. He didn’t say much. I’m not really sure if he could speak English. I had to hit the bathroom on the way there, and it took me a minute to get him to understand.”
“Were they the encryption keys for the files?” Grayson asked.
Zander thought about it for a moment, knowing any details would help to narrow things down. “That and the botnet, I think. My Russian isn’t that great, so I’m not one hundred percent sure.”
“The keys were different? One for the files and one to control the bots?”
“I’m pretty sure. I overheard conversations to that effect. At least I think that’s what they said.”
“Did all of you use the same keys to encrypt the various files?” she pressed.
“Yeah, Dimitri wrote the encryption algorithm,” Zander said. “He’s really smart, arrogant too, but he knew his stuff.” He looked at Millar and shrugged. “There was an internal server that we’d browse to, similar to uploading a photo to Facebook or whatever. You’d select the files you wanted to encrypt and then click on a button to encrypt them. The server would do its thing and encrypt the files and then copy them onto the USB drive for you. It was pretty simple really. I couldn’t tell you if anyone else created files, though.”
“Were your files always the same name?”
“Yeah. The same name and listed by bank, by its ABA number, only it was backwards. Nothing complicated, just a way to hide them in plain sight in case someone happened onto the files somehow.” He thought some more and laughed. “In fact, the files I created were always the same.”
“What do you mean?” Grayson asked.
“Like I said before, I was trying to figure out how I could screw their operation up without getting caught, so I’d messed with my code in ways I thought I could get away with.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Dimitri didn’t trust anyone. The obvious place to hose up the account file was in the query I wrote that selected the accounts—you know, the accounts that were active—but the owners didn’t bother to check their balances very often.” He started to get animated. “I made sure that part was right, since I knew how critical it was to the operation. Instead of messing with the obvious, I tweaked the code that outputs the results to the file instead. It was supposed to use the data retrieved by the query to create the new file, but I coded it to load the accounts from the old file instead of the updated list of accounts from the query.” He smiled smugly at Millar. “That way the file would always have stale information. I don’t know. I was hoping it would trip them up somehow.”
They continued to pepper the hacker with questions about the various aspects of the operation. He named several target banks in the US that the team was unaware of and explained that the vector of the attack was centered on the browser. They had found an exploit and were able to manipulate the HTML and CSS so that what the user was presented with on the screen was different than the actual transactions that were being processed and sent to the server. The premise was simple. They used legitimate user credentials to post fraudulent transactions.
One other crucial detail Zander was able to confirm was that there was another operation going on in Europe. He didn’t have much detail other than it existed, but was able to provide the name for one of the foreign banks. The news raised more questions than answers, since the bank in question had already come up clean as part of their investigation, but now they knew they needed to dig deeper.
“So how soon do you think they could execute the operation?” Grayson asked.
“It would take some time for sure,” Zander said.
“Good,” Grayson said, her sense of relief evident.
The hacker realized his mistake—time was relative after all—and clarified. “My guess is if they started today, they wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow morning sometime. They couldn’t do it today. That’s what I meant.”
Grayson let out an audible sigh and said, “That’s what I was afraid of.”
Chapter 128
Kozlov Bratva compound, Chicago, Illinois
THEY LED HER down the hallway into another room. Her stomach knotted up when she peered through the one-way mirror. The stage was set for something evil, and Victoria Eden realized she would be an unwilling participant. She didn’t want to know what a man like Pavel Kozlov was capable of, but it became immediately apparent that she wouldn’t have a choice.
She recognized the man strung up in a crucifixion-like pose. He was t
he man from the airport whom she knew as Tony.
She never would have thought the connection they shared would lead to this. Until now Eden had enjoyed their meetings and thought of them as a challenge. Her fun-loving personality and persistence had their good points—and bad. She drew in a deep breath in contemplation. He was the reason she had gotten into this mess, but that didn’t matter. What mattered now was that she paid attention and looked for an opportunity. One of her many qualities was resourcefulness, and she knew, now more than ever, she would have to depend on it.
She turned to the door when it opened and Kozlov walked in. He looked more relaxed this time. He had changed into an Adidas tracksuit and moved with the same swagger as when they’d first met.
“You have a visitor,” he said. His voice was calm but cold.
She watched the Russian set Trent Turner’s clothes down on the table, and then she glanced at the operative on the other side of the two-way mirror. He was in perfect physical condition, and she was sure the series of marks that punctuated his chest would tell a story that, despite everything that had happened, she wanted to hear.
“I guess he was playing hard to get,” she said sarcastically.
She feared that he was about to get the life sucked out of him. His story, she thought to herself. Making sure she could hear his story was her motivation now. That would give her the determination she needed to make it through this. She closed her eyes, said a silent prayer, and resolved to herself that she would soon know who this man was.
“Ah, Victoria.” Kozlov clasped his hands in mock prayer. “It’s nice to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor in all of this.”
She held her breath for a moment before speaking. “You don’t get it, do you?” The remark wasn’t a question. “I don’t know this man, and whatever you and your Neanderthal cohorts are up to makes no difference to me.” She exhaled in frustration. “Well, correction. I only care about what you’re up to because you decided to kidnap me and lock me up in this shithole of a building.”
