Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 01 - Flapjack

by Daniel Ganninger

  We began to panic as they hour stretched past 5 P.M. A full day could be lost, or suspicion could be raised, if Dart didn’t open the email attachment. It was time we didn’t have.

  Finally we saw words cross the screen in front of Alex’s computer as the keylogging program sent us Dart’s keyboard inputs. We knew Dart had read the message and almost simultaneously opened the attachment placed in the email.

  “Naughty, naughty. You should never open email attachments that are fishy,” Alex said.

  We had now added another broken law to our books, computer fraud. Dart accessed the email late enough in the day that he wouldn’t be able confirm its authenticity until the next day. If he had accessed it only a few hours earlier and did some investigating then we would have been sunk. Our timing couldn’t have been better.

  It was as if we had strings attached to Dart’s arms and legs. He rapidly sent off a reply to our email saying there was nothing in the attachment and questioning our role in the product. He wasn’t going to get a reply. We still needed Dart to want to check the authenticity of our fake schematics with the real plans. Again, our puppet didn’t fail to disappoint.

  Dart immediately logged into the Genesis system and meticulously keyed in his username and password for entry into the system. We all wrote the keystrokes down in unison, giddy at the find. He must have pulled up the plans for Adamanthea on his computer and looked them over and been thoroughly confused. Now we had to get into Genesis that night.

  -Chapter 14-

  We rented a van for the night’s stakeout operation, a nice white Ford van, disguised with a big dent in the side. Galveston had bought a big magnetic sticky pad for the sides of the van that read, “TS Services. You break it, we fix it”, and a fake number that would forward to our cell phone, just in case of snooping guards.

  Alex equipped two small cameras on the dash and tinting over the back rear door windows. Galveston loaded in some tools, pliers, rope, wire, and a couple of tool belts, along with three blue work shirts that read Dale, Joe, and Fred.

  I was in charge of food and drinks. I loaded the van with a cooler full of caffeine and sandwiches, a coffee pot, and figured some trashy reading material wouldn’t hurt. We were going to be in close quarters, for most likely, a large amount of time, and we had a long drive from San Diego to Los Angeles.

  No stone was left unturned and we didn’t want any surprise guests. We put on our TS Services shirts, I was Fred, Alex was Dale, and Galveston was Joe, as we made our way to our “target”, one of my new found vocabulary words.

  We pulled up in to Genesis at about 2 A.M., the witching hour. We felt we were prepared for this portion of the operation having also practiced it at our stronghold nights before. I had rehearsed my part in front of the mirror and even had written out some note cards just in case I forgot something.

  We arrived at Genesis, a large five story building brightly lit from the outside. A lone security guard sat at an oval desk watching an episode of Hogan’s Heroes on a small portable TV.

  The basic plan was this, Galveston would infiltrate the building, work his way to Dart’s office, log in to his computer, and install a program that would allow us to get into the system later and download the Adamanthea file. Alex could then hack into the internal servers of Genesis and cause a block in the system after we got the file. In addition, he had written a nasty little virus that Galveston would install, effectively shutting the entire network down. It would take Genesis days to figure out what happened to the network. By that time we would be long gone. This is exactly how we hoped it would go down.

  We had our bases covered and Galveston was prepared for anything, security cameras, keyless entries, or motion detectors. Luckily for us, janitors don’t make much money, and after paying off one of the Genesis janitor’s for a little information, under the guise of a federal agent, we had been able to obtain the location of Dart’s office, and a convenient entry point.

  Galveston planned to pose as a maintenance worker. He plied himself with a large amount of keys and an excessively large work belt.

  I parked the van a few spaces down from the front door of Genesis and set up the cameras toward the entrance to the complex, just as instructed by Alex. Galveston exited the van and made his way to the door, talking indiscriminately on his phone while looking and pointing, all part of the act. Alex sat in the back of the van in front of his laptop, ready to relay instructions to Galveston. The cameras were up and running and gave me a clear view of the surrounding area. Galveston had a small, discrete earpiece attached to his radio that allowed me to speak to him directly.

  “Alright Danny boy, all clear,” I said with an air of importance. “You have a guard at a table at your 9 o’clock, 300 feet away from your position.” I could really get into this, I thought, thinking back on the many spy movies I had seen on TV and in movies.

  Galveston turned toward the van and made an “L” sign with his hand on his forehead with a smile plastered on his face. I soon realized he had just called me a loser.

  “You know it hurts my feelings when you do things like that,” I quipped, keying the microphone. He turned and gave me the cut sign to his throat.

  Galveston walked to the door, jingling as he went. He got to the glass door of the building and rapped on it. The weary guard looked up, jolted from his seat, and walked to the door.

  “Can I help you?” he said, reaching at his belt in his grey uniform.

  “Hi. Yeah, I’m Joe Ghirardelli,” Galveston started, an ode to the Ghirardelli chocolate company of San Francisco, one of his favorites. “I was just called. I’m the electrician you guys called a while ago. I have a work order for something on the second floor, looks like a wiring problem in offices 214 to 216. Sorry I’m just getting here, but we had an emergency at the Aon Center.” The guard opened the door and let him in.

  “You know, I don’t got nothin’ about this. Follow me over and we’ll check it out,” he said motioning to the desk.

  Galveston walked inside and pulled his hat lower over his head hiding his face while not looking up. The guard was nice, pleasant, and helpful. This wasn’t something out of the ordinary. Most maintenance calls took place at this time of night. Galveston dropped his bags in front of the desk.

  “Yeah, you might have to call my dispatch. I mean, I’m only about six hours late. I wonder if they thought we had already been out,” he lied.

  “Let me check. Hold on.” The guard scanned a clipboard on the desk. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing here. What company are you from?”

  Now, we had done our homework on this one and knew that Genesis had its own Information Technology, or IT department. They were in charge of the networks and computer systems inside Genesis, but subcontracted to a company called TS Services to deal with wiring issues in the walls.

  “I’m here from TS Services. We’ve been here before. Are you sure there’s nothing in your log? It was an emergency call, something about a power flicker in the grid.” Now this was completely false and made up, but damn, it sounded good.

  “No, nothing,” the guard answered as he looked through papers on the desk.

  “Here,” Galveston handed him a fake work order. Alex had written a nice piece of fiction. It read:

  2nd story, offices 214-216, no LAN line power, grid fluctuations and

  overvolt conditions. APU powering down. Grid A7-A8. Diagnose

  and correct ASAP. Emergency call and pricing.

  “It’s all Greek to me. Let me call my supervisor and find out what to do,” the guard replied after reading the work order.

  “Between you and me, I wish you wouldn’t. I’m going to get in a heap of trouble if they find out we’re coming six hours late. My boss won’t understand either. He’ll chew my butt on taking so long on the Aon job. He’ll probably dock my pay,” Galveston pleaded, and confided to the guard’s blue collar side. “I tell you what, just let me look, and if it’s going to take too long you can call your supervisor to let them know we
’ll be upstairs for a while. These things are usually a quick fix, a loose connection, a reswitch, something like that. You can call my dispatch if you’re still not sure.”

  “Yeah, let me do that first, just so I have some confirmation. What’s the number?” the guard asked.

  “Right there,” Galveston said pointing at the work order. The guard dialed the number and the phone rang in the van. Here was my time to shine.

  “TS Services dispatch,” I answered reading from my script.

  “Ah, yeah, this is the security service at Genesis Software. I have a Joe here for some work?”

  “Joe? Oh no, is he just getting there? Yeah, he was supposed to be there six hours ago. Tell him that he has two more jobs to do before 6 A.M. He really needs to hurry. The Aon building needs him back quickly, they’re still having problems. What’s that work order number,” I inquired, hamming it up. The guard read the number and I read the work order verbatim.

  “If at all possible, could you get him in and out as soon as you can? I need him back on the road.”

  “Yeah, okay,” the guard answered slowly.

  “Just give us a call if there are any problems. Have a good night,” I quickly answered back.

  “Alright, you too,” the guard hung up the phone and looked at Galveston. “You have two more jobs,” he said smiling.

  “You’re kidding me. What a disastrous night,” Galveston feigned frustration. Do you think I can go up now?” He asked.

  “Yeah, I guess I’ll show you up. Let me call the other guard and tell him I’ll be away from the desk for a second. This won’t take long, right?”

  “Not long at all,” Galveston answered slyly, with a smile on his face.

  Galveston pushed one of the bags he brought under the front of the desk, out of sight of the guard. They made their way to the elevator and went to the second floor. The elevator opened up to a bank of cubicles and glassed offices looking to the outside. Galveston carefully timed how long it took to get to the second floor.

  “I’ll check each office. Then I’ll check the network room. How about we start with 214,” Galveston said.

  “Yeah, okay. Let me open it up.” The guard walked over to office 214, unlocked the door and flipped on the lights, illuminating a desk, work terminal with a keyboard, and a few chairs. There were no papers out and the office was neatly kept. Galveston walked in, set down his bag, and began looking through it.

  “Ah crap,” he said looking perturbed. Galveston pulled various items out of the bag, searching for something. “I left my other bag downstairs. Could you do me a huge favor and go down and grab it for me. I can go ahead and get started on this one.”

  “Ah, yeah, sure,” the guard answered, obviously uncomfortable. “Where did you leave it?” he asked.

  “At the desk and I forgot I even brought it in. It has my voltmeter in there. I can go ahead and check the connections here while I wait for you.”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll be right back.”

  “Great,” said Galveston, heading for the computer monitor in the office.

  The guard turned and left for the elevator. Galveston immediately assessed the situation. It was a workstation with a central processing unit, or CPU. This meant it was a standalone computer with its own hard drive instead of a terminal that was connected to a distant, host computer.

  “Skipper to the Professor and Mary Anne,” Galveston announced into a radio he pulled out of his bag.

  Our earpieces in the van sprang to life and blared out the speech. Alex and I looked at each other.

  “The Professor and Mary Anne?” I said to Alex, “I’m assuming I’m the Professor, you must be Mary Anne,” and I motioned to him.

  “Yeah, we’re here. What’s the story?” Alex asked.

  “This must be Mary Anne,” Galveston joked. “I’ve got a CPU.”

  “Thanks for that,” Mary Anne, clearly offended, cleared his throat. “Alright, listen up. Windows NT?” Alex inquired.

  “Yeah, I think,” Galveston answered.

  “Good. You should see a login icon for the system. Type in the username and password and then hit enter,” Alex said, beginning the instruction.

  “Hold please,” Galveston answered. He then did precisely what Alex asked. Galveston carefully keyed in each letter of the username and password from the one Dart gave us.

  “Okay, done.” Galveston checked his watch; he had two minutes left before the guard should return.

  “Next, plug in the flash drive to the USB port. The file, ‘Annie Oakley’, should pop up after you plug in the flash drive. Double click it, and it will load onto the computer,” Alex told him.

  “Okay, hold on.” Galveston again did as he was instructed. The “Annie Oakley” program started and he watched a status bar appear, apparently loading data on to the computer system. He checked his watch again as the status bar proceeded to move towards 100%. Galveston now had thirty seconds until the guard returned.

  “It’s almost loaded,” he said into the radio.

  “Pull the flash drive out when it’s done,” Alex began again.

  Just then the elevator door opened and the guard came out holding Galveston’s bag and began walking down the hall. Galveston cleared the screen and knelt down, pulled the flash drive out of the port, and reached to drop it in his tool belt. Instead of dropping noiselessly in a pocket of the tool belt, it dropped onto the carpeted floor. The guard appeared at the door and Galveston stepped stealthily on the flash drive, which was about the size of a cigarette lighter.

  “Here’s your bag,” the guard said.

  “Thanks for that. I think I already have the problem figured out.” He scooted his foot toward the bag and then crouched down, pulling the bag toward him.

  “Is that the network room?” He asked pointing to some closed doors by the elevator. As the guard turned he quickly grabbed the drive and threw it in the bag.

  “Uh, I don’t know. Do you need to find it?” the guard inquired.

  “No, I don’t think so. Let me just check the other offices and if they look alright, I think we’ll be done. The IT guys must have inadvertently fixed the problem,” Galveston fibbed.

  The pair moved to the other offices. Galveston entered each one and jiggled some wires, pulled out a voltmeter, and checked the wiring, having no clue what he was doing.

  “Yup, everything looks good. I think we’re done. I don’t see any problems,” Galveston shrugged his shoulders and grabbed his bags. The pair made their way to the elevator and took it back down to the lobby. As the door opened on the bottom floor, another guard was standing at the door.

  “Damn it,” Galveston thought, “it’s time to pull a rabbit out of the hat.”

  “Hey,” the first guard said, “we’re all done up there.”

  “I didn’t know we had any maintenance scheduled,” said the second guard, whose identification tag read Jeff.

  “Yeah, me neither, that’s why I’m six hours late,” Galveston interjected, giving a quick laugh, “and there’s nothing wrong,” he added, taking hold of the conversation. “I tell you what. I’ll just cancel out the work order. My bosses won’t like me doing that, but I know you guys have to keep a record of who was here. Somebody won’t be happy getting a bill for work that wasn’t done, or needed,” he lied. “If you give me the work order I’ll call the IT guys tomorrow.”

  Galveston needed that work order to make sure there was no record of him being there and to ensure a bit of safety. He hadn’t counted on dealing with two guards, but that was par for the course. Guard Jeff looked thoughtful.

  “I don’t know. I don’t care if they get charged, but if the work needed to be done, we need a record of it, even if it wasn’t needed,” guard Jeff responded.

  “Well to be honest with you, I want to cover my own ass too. I mean, I am six hours late. I was supposed to be here no later than eight and here I am at,” Dan looked at his watch, “two-thirty in the morning.” Galveston was pandering to the blue collar
tendencies of the men to help a poor schlub out.

  “I don’t see a problem with that,” the first guard answered.

  “Yeah, it’s okay, I guess,” guard Jeff said, after thinking for a moment.

  They gave Galveston the work order he brought with him and he asked for the IT department number just to make it look like he gave a crap.

  “Thanks fellas,” Galveston said while he gathered all his things. He hiked his bags onto his shoulders. “I’d say it was fun, but at this point I still have a long night ahead.” Galveston moved toward the front door and opened it. “Thanks again for the help.” He gave a friendly wave and turned to leave.

  Guard Jeff said loudly, “how’s Mike doing over there?”

  Without flinching Galveston turned, “Mike Fletcher? He’s alright. Damn fool broke his leg falling off a ladder. He’s in a cast up to his neck. You a friend of his?”

  “Uh, no,” guard Jeff stammered. “I meant another Mike.”

  “Who? Mike Jones? That’s the only other Mike I know. I haven’t been there very long though.”

  “No, you must not know him. Have a good night.”

  “You guys have a good night too. I hope you don’t get too bored.” Galveston gave another friendly wave and closed the door behind him. “Amateurs, but nice guys,” he thought. He had played off of confusion and empathy to get the job done. Lesson 112, he told me later. Galveston walked to the van and got in the front seat.

  “Professor, Mary Anne,” he announced to us, “we’re out of here. “

  -Chapter 15-

  We quickly began the long drive back to our fortress of solitude in San Diego. Unfortunately, we still had a lot of work to do. Alex set up his computers in the office living room and began pecking on the keys, as the clock passed 5 o’clock in the morning.

  He managed to get into the Genesis system easily using the “Annie Oakley” virus. Alex weaved his way through a series of backdoors and open ports allowing him to get into internal workings of the system. It was an easy task with the intricate knowledge Alex had of security systems.