The Code Within: A Thriller (Trent Turner Series)

by S. L. Jones

  “Screw it,” she said, feeling empowered once again. “You only live once.”

  Chapter 150

  PAVEL KOZLOV STARED at the bank of monitors in front of him. He had a grimace on his face from the pain in his leg, but aside from the injury, things had been looking up for the Russian. He was about to take care of the hacker who had thus far managed to elude his men. They just needed to buy a little more time and it would all be over.

  His men couldn’t simply put a bullet in his head. First they needed to find out what Francis Millar knew and what he might have done. But with him under their control, the biggest threat to their operation would be neutralized. The pain in Kozlov’s leg had been tempered by the fact that he had gotten the upper hand on The American this time. Too many of his communist brethren had died at his hands, and as he reflected on the accomplishment his lips nearly morphed into a smile.

  “What did he say?” Kozlov asked.

  Bruce Campbell shrugged his shoulders. “He wants us out front with the girls. He’s taking a cab.”

  The Bratva leader didn’t like the situation but knew they didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’ll give him hope that this will work out until we’ve got him where we want him,” Campbell said. “We’ll keep the guns put away so he doesn’t get skittish.” He knew the look he saw in his boss’s eyes all too well. “Don’t worry. I won’t fuck this up. We don’t want to spook him and have to chase him down again. A couple of your former Spetsnaz boys will be here with the girls directly.”

  Kozlov felt a little more at ease knowing the best the motherland had to offer would be involved.

  “We just need a little more time and it will be too late,” the Russian said. “Nobody will be able to stop the attack once it’s in motion. There’s no room for mistakes this time around.”

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “Enter,” Kozlov said.

  The door opened to show the three prisoners in the hallway guarded by two of his men.

  “We just needed the two younger girls,” Campbell scoffed.

  The Russians gave him a confused look. These men were old school, fresh from Russia, so their English was limited.

  Campbell waved his arm dismissively and said, “Never mind. Let’s get this over with.”

  Kozlov watched them leave the room and then turned to the bank of monitors in front of him. He looked down at the bandage on his leg and noted that his injury continued to bleed. It wasn’t the worst gunshot wound he’d had, but he’d need to see a doctor soon to get it stitched up and some better drugs to avoid infection. He reached for a bottle of pills and popped another antibiotic and a painkiller to take the edge off. He had enough time to see this through first. The Russian would stay off-line to avoid risk, and then he could celebrate his success in Europe with his comrade Yuri Khrushchev and the president.

  His men emerged from a dead spot in the camera’s view at the front of the compound. He reached over and turned up the volume on the camera’s microphone so he could follow things more closely. The three prisoners still had canvas hoods over their heads as the yellow cab came into view. He heard a cell phone ring, and his man answered.

  “Get out. Take ten steps toward us, and we’ll send the girls to the cab,” Campbell said.

  The cab came to a stop, and its back door opened. The driver looked around nervously. Millar got out and walked toward Kozlov’s men cautiously. There was a loud cracking sound, and the cab lurched forward before it coasted into a tree.

  The hacker turned around quickly and then back to the men. He pulled a gun from the small of his back and yelled, “Don’t move, or I’ll just start shooting.”

  Kozlov’s heart rate increased as he watched the scene unfold. His men had been caught off guard by the hacker, and their weapons were still tucked away. A standoff with an amateur was always unpredictable. It would be easy if they didn’t need to take him alive, but the operation was too important to risk the unknown.

  “Take off their hoods,” Millar shouted. “Do it now!”

  The Russians looked at one another and started to remove the canvas hoods one by one.

  “Don’t worry, Melody, Maria. I’ll figure this out, I promise,” Millar said in a panicked voice.

  His eyes burned with anger when he saw the black eye on Maria Soller’s face, and then his gaze went to his sister and his demeanor changed. His shoulders dropped and Pavel Kozlov knew for certain he was a beaten man.

  There was a sound coming through the microphone that he couldn’t quite place. He squinted at the monitor as an object came into view in the background. He got an uneasy feeling when he noticed the car was approaching a little faster than it should have been.

  It was the blur at the bottom of the monitor that caught his attention next. One of the prisoners had body checked his men to the side and began to sprint toward the hacker. She was on a direct path for them to intercept the convertible Audi S5 that was now in plain view. He realized it was the FBI agent by the time she lowered her shoulder on the hacker and launched them both into the backseat of the moving car.

  The Russian instantly recognized Victoria Eden, before she ducked down low in the driver’s seat and headed down the fire road connected to the back of the compound.

  Chapter 151

  THE STAKES HAD just been raised, and they were now working against the clock. It had been a long night, but at least the men had gotten some much-needed shut-eye on the plane.

  The Island Industries Gulfstream G650 had some unplanned guests on the flight from Chicago to Dulles Airport. The passengers included two rogue FBI operatives, a pair of hackers, and a strikingly beautiful violinist. A mechanical problem caused the pilots to delay their takeoff for several hours, but the plane still managed to make it to their destination before six in the morning.

  Once they arrived at the hangar, the plane’s occupants split up. The hackers and violinist were driven to the airport’s cab stand by Jack Turner, with Etzy Millar and Dennis Zander headed to The Shop’s secure location in Arlington, Virginia. The musician insisted on going home, still in a daze after what had happened during her Chicago visit. The remaining operatives headed to the Island Industries satellite location in Reston, Virginia to kit up and devise a plan.

  That was nearly an hour ago, and things had progressed rapidly over the past twenty minutes.

  The team of operatives had reviewed the satellite images of the Bratva compound and noted the two entrances. One was a gravel driveway directly off the main road, and the other a fire road that wound its way to the back of the building from a neighboring property. The latter provided the best opportunity to preserve the element of surprise when they made their move.

  The team had stopped half a kilometer from the compound and started to assemble and check their gear. The road was flanked by heavily wooded areas that offered good cover.

  Trent Turner and Brendan Manion were working their way back from a quick recce of the compound. It was the first time the close friends had a chance to talk without anyone else present since Chicago.

  “What happened over there?” Trent asked, curious about how the headlines had reported his death in the Middle East.

  “I lost my edge,” Manion said. “It’s hard to explain.”

  Trent shared a knowing look with him and said, “You don’t have to. I know what you mean. Did you hear about Ryan?”

  “I did. I’m sorry. I know you had hoped to one day…” He stopped short.

  Turner shrugged, acknowledging what was left unsaid. “That’s what got me into this business. When I realized he took a bullet for me, I started to lose myself. All I could think about was never having the opportunity to make things right between us. Never is a long fucking time.” He looked down, in deep thought, and then back to his friend, feeling for his loss. “Sorry about Katie,” he said, his tone softening. Manion hadn’t responded to anyone after his wife an
d unborn child had been murdered.

  The silence was thick as both men fought back emotion.

  “Yeah, me too…me too,” Manion said.

  Their situations were frighteningly similar. Each had lost someone they cared deeply for because of his job, and both men believed strongly in what they were doing.

  “Hey, man, I’m just happy to see you again,” Turner said with a smile. “How did Addy end up pulling you into The Island?”

  “When that reporter leaked my name and Katie was murdered, I was lost.”

  Turner could tell through his friend’s tentative voice that he wasn’t yet ready to open that wound.

  “First,” Brendan continued, “I wanted to hunt the bastards down and slit their throats, but the guys on the team talked me down.” Manion took a deep breath. “When that happened, my commander gave me some time, but I started drinking. I wasn’t doing what I was trained to do. In my state, it was too dangerous for the team to have me out there on operations.” He shook his head. “At first I didn’t see it that way. I just wanted to get out there and try to work through it, but this time it was different.”

  “The guilt?”

  “Yeah,” Manion said. “I mean it’s one thing when you lose a SEAL on the team, a fellow soldier, a friend. The scars are something we all have to live with.” He took another deep breath. “But when something you do on an operation bleeds into your life outside of your work. It reaches your loved ones, people who didn’t sign up for this shit.” He took a moment to reflect. “It fucks you up pretty bad, man. Pretty damn bad.”

  Trent turned to his friend and understood perfectly. “Ryan’s death—I don’t know, I’m still not sure how I’m going to file that one away. I almost got myself killed a couple of times going after the guy who did it,” Turner admitted. “My head wasn’t there. It’s just a good thing I wasn’t on an operation working with anyone else, or I could have gotten someone killed.”

  “And that was my problem. I was worried about my family at home. We’re so close, and it had me scared.” He shook his head. “Was some other terror cell going to come out of the woodwork and take out my family? Her family? Someone I cared about? It was a distraction that was weighing me down. I couldn’t function, and I was on my way to becoming an alcoholic.”

  Turner thought about his own situation and could easily see himself in Brendan’s shoes.

  “You can’t expect to eliminate a fanatic and not have his lemmings come for you,” Turner said. “The fucking press, they can be so ignorant.”

  Manion laughed, but there was no humor. “Some of them could stand for some common sense and decency,” he agreed. “My commander reached out to Addy before he approached me with the idea. You know, kill me off so I wouldn’t have to worry about my family anymore, so I wouldn’t have that hanging over my head.” He looked to Turner. “So that’s what we did. Addy’s got some serious pull and made it happen. I was listed as a casualty on a bird that went down.” He looked to the sky. “A lot of good soldiers lost their life on that Apache,” he said bitterly. “It’s ironic that they gave me mine back.”

  “Now you have all the more reason to make a difference,” Turner said.

  Manion nodded. “I’d been getting my feet wet doing some work in Afghanistan, and when you’re brother was killed Addy decided it was time to let the cat out of the bag and officially bring me on board.”

  “He’s a smart man. Jesus, it’s great to see you, Brendan,” Trent said as the two pounded fists.

  They had just made it back to the others when they heard the loud report of a weapon.

  Chapter 152

  The Shop, Northern VA

  “WE’VE GOT IT,” CDWG Director Cynthia Grayson said with a smile. “Nice work everyone, incredible job.”

  Her team had been working feverishly to break the encryption on the files they had intercepted from the Bratva just before their Chicago compound was destroyed. Hacker Dennis Zander had provided them with the crucial piece of information that led to their breakthrough. He had told them that the bank account numbers in the files the Russians were using for their operation never changed, and that detail ended up being the key to breaking the encryption relatively fast.

  The transmission they had intercepted had been done in haste just before the explosion at the Bratva’s compound in Chicago. The Shop had identified the communication from a USB modem when it connected to the same cell tower that Maria Soller’s phone had used. Once the team of analysts utilized an NSA back door to decrypt the secure copy between the computers, they quickly realized that some of the files had been sent unencrypted. From there, it was a matter of comparing an unencrypted file with an encrypted file that Zander had helped them identify from the financial institution data that had been archived in the NSA’s Top Secret Stellar Wind data collection program.

  Now it was time for Grayson to collect her thoughts and report on the progress. She headed into her office and went straight for the special phone on her desk. She pressed the button labeled “Situation Room” and eagerly awaited an answer.

  “Cyndi, good morning,” President Cross said.

  “Good morning, Mr. President. Do you have Addy with you?”

  “He’s here, and also Assistant Director Hood from the FBI.”

  “Gentlemen,” she said.

  “Good morning, Cyndi,” Addy Simpson chimed in. “I sure hope you have some good news for us.”

  She tried to quietly clear her throat. “I do, both good and bad. My team has broken the encryption on the files.”

  “Great news,” the president said before she continued.

  “We’ve also confirmed that they’re using the surgeon bots to modify the Automated Clearing House files from the Federal Reserve. You may know them as ACH files.”

  “ACH files?” Simpson said, and then paused as if the wheels were turning in his head. “Is that the system the Fed uses to distribute electronic transfers for payroll and payments?”

  “That’s right,” she confirmed. “The hacker we brought in from Chicago has been a big help. Between what he’s told us and the code the team here has reverse engineered, we’ve confirmed that the Russians plan to modify each of the target bank’s incoming ACH files. It looks like their plan is to change the amount of the transfers within each ACH file so it will take funds from and aggregate those funds into accounts that are seldom used.”

  “Wouldn’t that be easy to spot?” President Cross asked.

  “You would think so, but from what we’ve been able to determine, the way they’re going about this will maintain the correct amounts for total debits and credits for each ACH file, and that’s how the banks verify everything once the payment file is finished processing.”

  “You’re saying their overall numbers won’t be off, so it won’t immediately be brought to their attention?” Simpson said, pausing for a moment. “So, let’s say I’m supposed to get a thousand dollars,” he continued, “but instead they send it to another account that’s in the same file and zero out mine? They just swap the amounts out?”

  “That’s right, they’d send you something like twenty dollars and change, and the rest would go into some other account where they’re building up a large balance. These files can total tens of millions of dollars in transactions, and they typically process several per day, so it’s impossible to verify the amount for each individual account was correct.”

  “That sounds too easy,” the president said.

  “It’s not as hard as it should be,” Grayson agreed. “There should be more protective measures in place. Since they’re targeting accounts with low activity, it could be a week, maybe more, before the magnitude of what’s going on will be discovered.”

  The president took a long moment to respond. “Do you know how they plan to move the money around?”

  “I was just getting to that. Let me try to keep it simple,” she said. “The DataBank software application is accessed with a web browser. What they’re doing is injecting hi
dden transactions into the browser of a user who is legitimately authorized to do wire transfers.”

  “So they’re piggybacking off of a real transaction?” Simpson asked.

  “That, and not to get too technical, but they’ve cleverly manipulated the browsers to display what they want the user to see. In other words, at least initially, those extra transactions will be invisible on the screen.”

  “Got it,” Cross said. “They don’t need that much time.”

  “Correct. They just need the bank to process an ACH file, and typically you’re two people with the proper authorizations and a couple of clicks away from funneling out millions.”

  The president grunted his understanding. “Once the money is wired out into a money-laundering haven—take your pick, Lichtenburg, Switzerland, the Caribbean—it will be too late to pull it back.” Cross drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “Now for the most important question. Can you stop them?”

  “Well, sir, I believe they’ve already started with some financial institutions. My team is working on it, but it’s touch and go. I suppose the good news is that we’ll be able to figure out who was affected by this, but as far as stopping it without shutting down the banking system goes, we’re still working hard to figure that out. We won’t stop until we do.”

  Shutting down the banks posed many of the same risks as the attack itself did. The president drummed his fingers on the table as he considered the options.

  “Can you stop them from doing any more damage? Maybe block the ACH files from leaving the Fed in the first place.”

  “It’s going to be close,” Grayson said. “Most banks on the East Coast will start processing the files from the Fed soon. Once that starts, if they’ve got things ready to go and they’ve initiated the attack, we’ll need a miracle to stop them.”

  “Please figure this out fast,” the president said flatly. “We’re counting on you and your team. Do you have any details on the other matter?”

  “Yes, I do. Senator Soller was intoxicated when he was killed in the automobile accident,” Grayson explained. “Toxicology tests confirmed that he had no business being behind the wheel of a car.”