Cyber Terror

by Rose, Malcolm

  Jordan was damp with sweat and he felt queasy. Some unseen torturer seemed to have placed a belt around his stomach and was pulling it tighter and tighter. Another imaginary band was squeezing his skull.

  Just as his bedroom curtain began to glow with morning sunshine, Jordan finally drifted into uneasy sleep. His internal clock woke him long before his body had refreshed itself. He felt groggy and grumpy as he dressed. He had no choice but to get up, though. It was Sunday and he was due to meet Angel and Raven in the bunker.

  They’d hardly begun to talk when Kate Stelfox called from the workshop above them. “I think you’d better come up,” she said. “There’s something you should see.”

  The three of them darted to the lift, went up to ground level and rushed into the garage.

  Jordan noticed straight away that the engineers had cleaned the inside of his car thoroughly. The awful stains had vanished completely. Anyone examining the Jaguar would not find a trace of what had happened to the passenger.

  One engineer was delving under the bonnet, like a pathologist examining a dead body. An IT specialist was conducting a post-mortem on the car’s computer and black-box recorder.

  Kate was holding three pieces of creased and tainted paper. “The photos you gave him, Jordan. Did you write anything on the back?”

  “No.”

  “Check out Paige Ottaway’s picture.”

  Jordan took it in his artificial hand and avoided touching the brown bloodstain. He turned the photograph over while Angel and Raven, standing either side of him, watched eagerly. He caught his breath when he realized that Phil Lazenby had jotted something on the reverse. He had written in clear block capitals: FOREW.

  “Forew? Why did he do that? What does it mean?”

  “Maybe it’s an acronym,” Angel said. “We’ll find out back in the bunker.”

  “Is it a word?” Jordan asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Angel replied. “It might not be complete. Perhaps he was interrupted when the car took off. Apparently, he had a pen in his hand when he died.”

  Kate said, “Was he dyslexic or anything? Maybe terrible at spelling?”

  “A pilot? Probably not. But we need to make sure.” Angel turned towards the door. “Come on. We’re going to look into the history of all four victims. That includes Phil Lazenby’s writing skills.” Over his shoulder, he said, “Thanks, Kate. Carry on with the car.”

  Back in the bunker, Raven soon completed a search. Scanning down the list of results, she said, “Forew’s a surname but it’s very uncommon. Mostly, the internet thinks it’s short for foreword. That’s all. It’s not a known acronym. Hang on. I’ll double-check in a dictionary.” Her fingers flew across the keypad again. “No,” she added a few moments later. “Nothing.”

  “Okay,” Angel replied. “We’re not getting anywhere with it right now. We need a change of direction.”

  “The Lemon Jelly song?” Raven suggested.

  Angel groaned. “Now Short Circuit’s struck in Ipswich – not in the lyrics – the song’s probably irrelevant. A red herring. Let’s get to the point. There’s got to be something common to Phil Lazenby, Victoria Truman, Carlton Reed and maybe Paige Ottaway as well.”

  Trying to lighten the mood, Raven said, “Yes. He can’t just be killing the people of Suffolk for painting their houses that horrible pink colour.”

  “He’s not doing it with an e-bomb either,” Angel said.

  Raven nodded. “An electronic bomb would cripple Jordan’s car, not make it go. We’re down to hacking or a hardware Trojan. Although...”

  “What?”

  “If it was a Trojan, it was an advanced one that allows you to take control of a circuit board, not just kill it. I don’t know how, but rumour has it that they exist.”

  Jordan shook his head. “I’m still trying to get used to the idea that it’s easier to down a great big plane than crash a car into a wall.”

  “It’s not the size of the target that’s important,” Raven explained. “It’s the complexity of the electronic attack.”

  “I guess so.” Surprising the other two, Jordan asked, “Is there a program called SetLink in my car?”

  Angel didn’t know. He turned to Raven.

  “SetLink?” she said. “Yes. It’s the industry standard for controlling systems, especially power.”

  “Who makes it?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s been targeted by a hacker before. That’s how the power station in Edinburgh copped it.”

  “How do you know?” Angel asked.

  “I spoke to a cyber joyrider.”

  He laughed. “Is that what they call themselves now?”

  Raven finished reading a webpage and then gazed at Jordan. “You might have a point. It’s made by WT Gaming and Programming – a very small family business in Bury St. Edmunds.”

  “Suffolk?”

  She nodded. “In one.”

  “We were going to try HiSpec as well,” said Jordan.

  “Home of a million microprocessors...”

  “With a factory in Cambridge,” Jordan added.

  Raven smiled. “I see where you’re going with this. It’s not far from Suffolk. It’d be easy to live in Suffolk and commute into Cambridge.”

  For a moment, Angel paused. Then he turned towards Jordan. “I’ll find you another car, but it won’t be like the Jag. It’ll take time to replace all those microchips and beef up its security, before you get the all-clear to drive it again. For now,” he said, “take the rest of the day off. It’s a weekend and you look terrible.”

  WT Gaming and Programming was named after the joint owners: the Warner twins. Ian and Neil were wearing identical smart but casual clothes, identical spectacles and identical heavily gelled hairstyles. They were obviously doing their best to confuse people. It also made them funny and sinister at the same time. Jordan could have been talking to one man standing next to a full-length mirror, except that they seemed to take it in turns to speak.

  “We don’t have a big crew,” Ian told him.

  “Big isn’t necessary,” said Neil in an identical accent.

  “Good is more important,” Ian continued. “We have few but good people.”

  “But you did have a problem with SetLink,” Jordan said.

  They nodded and glanced at each other. Ian replied, “When you phoned and said you’d got some information about a hacking incident, we were...”

  “Intrigued,” Neil put in.

  “Yes, intrigued. That’s why we agreed to see you.”

  Both twins turned their uncanny gaze on him, as if they expected Jordan to tell them everything he knew. But he knew very little. He’d bluffed his way into WT Gaming and Programming. “First, I want to ask you something,” Jordan said.

  “Do you now?”

  “Did you find out who hacked into Cockenzie’s SetLink?”

  “Sort of,” Ian answered warily.

  “He came to us,” Neil explained.

  Jordan nodded. “And you gave him a job?”

  “We might’ve done.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Jordan shifted his approach. “Is he here now?”

  The twins hesitated.

  “That means yes,” Jordan said. “I’d like to have a quick chat.”

  Half-heartedly, Ian said, “All right. I’ll go and get him.”

  Neil gave his brother a nod.

  Jordan suspected that the gesture conveyed more than just agreement but, if he was right, the twins were using a sign language that he didn’t understand.

  Neil sat down at his desk and gazed at Jordan, but didn’t say a word.

  Jordan didn’t trust the brothers. In the quiet, he adjusted his hearing to maximum. He wanted to find out if Ian and the programmer were talking nearby. He didn’t pick up any voices, though. He heard lorries and cars flying past on the A14, various unidentifiable industrial clunks, bangs and squeals coming
from the bigger factories on the estate, the wind whooshing around the buildings, a door slamming and footsteps. Someone was running away.

  At once, Jordan realized what the twins’ look had meant. They’d agreed silently to tip off their employee.

  Jordan jumped up. Sarcastically, he said, “Thanks for your help.” He crashed through the door and brushed past Ian, who was no doubt returning to tell Jordan that the man wasn’t available after all. Jordan dashed to the exit just in time to see someone jump into an old Vauxhall and slam the door shut. The sound of the engine revving was like the roar of a jet in Jordan’s ears. He turned down the volume as he sprinted towards the car.

  Weaving its way out of the twisty car park, the Vauxhall could not get up any great speed.

  Determined to cut off the worker’s retreat, Jordan made for the car park’s exit. The Vauxhall slowed to take the final bend and Jordan appeared at the driver’s window.

  Knowing that the car was about to accelerate away from the estate, Jordan had to make a quick decision. He raised his right arm and punched through the glass.

  9 DEEP WEB

  Splinters of glass flew everywhere. The driver was so surprised that he yanked on the steering wheel in an attempt to get away from Jordan. The car veered left and crashed into a bollard.

  Jordan bent down towards the broken window, watched the airbag deflate like a burst balloon, and said, “In a hurry to get away? That means you’ve done something bad.”

  The man at the wheel was about twenty-five. His seat belt and the airbag had pinned him down, so he wasn’t hurt in the low-speed collision. Even so, he seemed incapable of speech. His mouth hung open, but he couldn’t form words. He’d been stunned by Jordan’s ferocity and the accident.

  “What’s your name?”

  Surrounded by shiny fragments of glass, he struggled to reply, “Dipak Hardikar.”

  “I know you knocked out a power station in Edinburgh. I want to know what else you’ve done.” Jordan brushed away the remaining beads of glass from the lower edge of the window and then leaned on it with his right forearm.

  Dipak shifted his gaze to Jordan’s hand. Perhaps he was expecting blood and bruising, but he noticed for the first time that there was something different about Jordan’s whole arm. “Nothing,” he stammered.

  “Nothing? Perhaps you’re a bit hazy on the law about misusing computers. If the police take yours away, their specialists will have a field day, looking at what you’ve done.”

  He appeared to be recovering from the shock. “They won’t find anything.”

  “I know some experts who will.”

  “What do you want?”

  Jordan looked closely into Hardikar’s face as he replied. “I want to know what you’ve got against Phil Lazenby.”

  There was no sign of recognition at all. “Who?”

  “I want to know why you hacked into an aeroplane’s flight system.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Why did you run away? What have you done?”

  “Look. I...” He stared down at his lap, littered with glassy diamonds. “I don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m Jordan Stryker and I can turn pretty nasty.” He felt like a fraud because he never thought of himself as cruel.

  “All right. You see, I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t have all the papers to...”

  For a few seconds, Jordan didn’t realize what Dipak was trying to say. Then he twigged. “Oh. Okay. But if you’re an illegal immigrant, how come you’ve got a driving licence and a car?”

  Looking even more guilty, Dipak kept his head bowed. “The car’s not mine. It’s a friend’s.”

  Two people walking past stopped to get a good look at the accident. Realizing there was only a dent and a broken window, they moved on. The Warner twins gazed out of their unit’s window.

  Jordan laughed softly. “This is really piling up. I could get you into a mountain of trouble. I could tell the police you’re not supposed to be in the country, you’re driving without a licence and you go in for a lot of hacking.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.” He paused for two or three seconds before adding, “Unless you show me every cyber attack you’ve made this year.”

  Dipak groaned.

  “Do we have a bargain?”

  Clearly doubtful, Dipak hesitated.

  Jordan took out his mobile and pretended to get ready to make a call.

  “All right,” said Dipak.

  “Back to your place, is it?”

  “We can do it here, right now, if you want.”

  “How come?” Jordan asked.

  “I don’t keep records on a hard drive. Not safe enough. I hide my stuff in the deep web. I can access it from any computer.”

  “The deep web? What’s that?” Jordan paused and then added, “Don’t tell me here. Park the car – if it still goes – and we’ll sort it out inside.”

  Dipak did not look comfortable in jeans and sweatshirt. Most likely, he would have preferred to wear something more formal, but his circumstances probably prevented it.

  As he logged on, he spoke quietly and quickly. “When you surf the internet, that’s all you’re doing. Surfing. Skimming the surface. You’re seeing a tiny percentage of what’s really there. There’s this huge mass of stuff beyond the reach of normal search engines. It’s called the deep web. It’s made up of sites that don’t work any more, abandoned addresses, online businesses that have gone bust and that sort of thing. Quite a few are military sites from the early days of the internet – long since dumped and replaced by more secure technology. People like me dive down into it, drag up a dead site, revive it to do what we want and then sink it again. No one’s any the wiser. Back down in the depths, nobody else is going to come across it. It’s a drop of water in a great big ocean.”

  “Handy.”

  “Yes. There’s a lot of information down there. Lots of data and details of people’s lives in discarded sites. If you want someone else’s identity, there’s plenty to choose from. Lots of passwords as well. When people replace a website, they often keep the same password.”

  “So you go fishing for it?”

  “Exactly. Loads of spam comes from dead addresses. And the deep web is where you’ll find horrid sites as well.” He pulled a face and said, “You can guess the sort of thing.”

  Jordan began to warm to Dipak. He was keen, clear and convincing. No doubt he was a good hacker, but Jordan could not assume that he was as harmless as he seemed. Jordan had to continue playing the part of a bully. He had to remain suspicious.

  “There you are,” Dipak said, waving at the monitor. “It looks like a site for an old netball team. It is. But the team disbanded years ago. Now, I use the fixture list to log all my online activities. The results speak for themselves. A win’s where I broke in. A defeat’s where I didn’t get past security.”

  “What’s a draw?”

  “I didn’t get in, but there’s at least one loophole still to try. Look,” he said as he scrolled down, “there’s that Scottish power station. Cockenzie. A win.”

  Jordan nodded, but concentrated on the fixture list. On Monday 5th March – the date of the Edinburgh aeroplane crash – Dipak’s log showed that he was trying to muscle his way into the Indian government’s website. Last night, at the moment when Jordan’s car began to move mysteriously with its shocked passenger trapped inside, Dipak was wrestling with an online electronic store. The day before, when Victoria Truman’s high-tech home went up in flames, there was no record of what Dipak was doing. When Jordan queried it, Dipak said he was simply on his way home from work.

  Jordan knew that Dipak was familiar enough with computers to invent a false log of his activities, but it looked genuine and he’d had no time to fake it. “Have you heard of Forew?” Jordan spelled it out to make sure.

  “Yes.”

  Jordan’s heart leaped. “What is it?” He held his breath.

  “Shorthand for foreword. You see it a lot o
n the web.”

  “Oh.” Jordan’s anticipation evaporated at once because Raven had already mentioned that.

  “Have you seen what you want?” Dipak asked. “No aeroplanes or air traffic control systems.”

  “I guess so.”

  Dipak gazed at him. “Are you going to keep your word?”

  “Yes,” Jordan answered. Then he added a threat. “Unless I find out you haven’t been on the level with me.”

  Dipak nodded towards the screen. “I’ve shown you everything. Honest. Totally open.”

  “I hope so,” Jordan replied. “I’ll leave you to it now. But you’ve still got some explaining to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got to tell your mate what happened to his car.”

  HiSpec MicroSystems had refused to cooperate. According to Raven, the cagey company was not willing to provide a list of its employees. So Jordan had come up with a different tactic to find out who worked there.

  But, standing outside HiSpec’s factory on the outskirts of Cambridge, he might have been looking at a fortress or a prison. Even late at night, floodlights blazed all around the premises, illuminating the car park and every approach. Jordan could see two guards in the security block at the front of the main building. Set to maximum, his eyesight picked out closed-circuit TV cameras at every corner. Breaking into the company and stealing a list of its staff suddenly seemed ridiculous and impossible.

  Frustrated, he walked away with a sigh.

  But he wasn’t downhearted for long. He had another idea for discovering who worked for the electronics giant. All he needed was help from someone like Merrick Breeze or Dipak Hardikar. He chose Dipak.

  10 CYBER STORM

  On his mobile, Jordan said to Angel, “I’m staying in the Suffolk safe house tonight so I can see a hacker in the morning. He’ll get me into HiSpec’s files.”

  “A virtual break-in has its advantages. Was it Raven’s idea?”

  “No. Mine.”

  “Can you be sure your hacker’s not Short Circuit?” Angel asked.

  “Not totally, no. But I don’t think so.”