Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  “And?”

  “Thing is, RuggedCom is known to have an undocumented backdoor account with a factory-enabled password that’s dynamically generated based on the device’s address. A hacker like this guy who’s good with SCADA systems has to know about this vulnerability.”

  “And this software bomb?”

  She reached up with one hand and swished her hair awkwardly. Like a gesture she’d copied from a sultry movie star, then practiced in a mirror but hadn’t worked out all the kinks. “Software bombs have a trigger and a payload. The trigger for this one was a fluctuation in the electrical power. If the lights at Turkey Point flicker, even a little variation, this thing was set to go off. Pretty clever trigger.” Her eyes circled off as if she were watching an insect roaming the air.

  “And what was the payload?”

  “It’s set to delete files. You can delete so many it will render the entire system helpless. It’ll cause a general shutdown. But this code wasn’t written to do that. It was just set to delete some payroll stuff, some e-mails and general announcements. More like a paintball than a bomb.”

  “So it was harmless?”

  “Not exactly. See, I also found a signature. The guy’s nom de plume. And I did a search on him. I’d never heard of this guy before, but I’ve read up on him now. He’s been hacking for several years. Getting more sophisticated.

  “Last couple of years he’s specialized in infrastructure projects mainly in the western states. I sent you an e-mail with a list of all I could find. Ports, railroads, oil refineries. But he really gets off on water-treatment plants. He likes to contaminate water supplies, run trains with chemical cars off their tracks into lakes, redirect sewage lines into reservoirs. A lot of his early cyber attacks were crude, then the last year or two, they got better.

  “So you see the problem.”

  “The guy’s gotten slicker.”

  “That’s right, and it looks like he’s become so fanatical, once he gets inside a nuclear plant, and he’s gained administrative access to all the plant’s systems, well, to me it doesn’t make sense he’d leave something as simple and harmless as a software bomb that only deletes a few random files.”

  “So you think there’s more malicious code you didn’t find?”

  Angie did. She’d head back down there pronto and keep digging.

  When she was gone, Frank said, “You’re sure she’s our best?”

  “All I know,” Marta said, “some big shots at the National Security Agency keep trying to recruit her. Last time they offered her four times what she makes here, but she turned it down.”

  Frank went back to his chair and sat, waiting his turn on the hot seat.

  Five minutes, ten. Marta took a phone call. Listened, then hung up. “That was Angie. Back at her computer.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Some pipeline just blew up in the Keys. Water spraying in the air a hundred feet.”

  “So?”

  “She thought you’d be interested.”

  “What was it? A bomb?”

  “Cyber attack,” Marta said. “Angie’s on it. She’ll get back to you when she knows more. She said it had the hallmarks of our guy.”

  “Call her back. Tell her to forget the frigging pipeline. Get her skinny ass back to Turkey Point on the double.”

  “Those words?”

  Before he could answer, the door beside him opened and Nicole McIvey came in, glanced down at him, held his eyes for a moment. “Wow, that hangdog look, Frank. I’ve seen that expression before.”

  “Yeah? Where’s that?”

  “Troublemaker waiting to see the principal, bend over, grab his ankles.”

  “Call her back now,” he said to Marta. Then to Nicole: “I’m not scared of these guys. I’ve been paddled by the best.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  NICOLE TOOK THE SEAT BESIDE him, gave Marta a token smile, and they waited in silence for a while. Marta spoke to Angie Stevens on the phone, passed on Frank’s message, then she excused herself to take a bathroom break.

  “Alone at last,” Nicole said.

  “A software bomb. You know what that is?”

  Nicole said of course she knew what a software bomb was. Frank explained the rest of it. Malicious code that seemed harmless, possibly a red herring, something to waste their time. Which raised the likelihood that still more code was hidden somewhere in the power plant’s network.

  While she was digesting that, he told her about the Keys water pipeline. Saying it sounded like Wally was still in the vicinity.

  That got a scornful frown. “That’s not how he works. The raid on Prince Key spooked them. The Chee boys are long gone.”

  “You’re positive? You know these guys so well you can predict what they’ll do next?”

  A flush crept into her cheeks. With a tone he hadn’t before heard from her, as if she were indulging an addled child, she said, “The Keys pipeline thing, that could have been on a time delay, too. He could’ve set it long ago. Or pulled it off remotely. No reason he has to be nearby. Ask Magnuson if you don’t take my word for it. He’s studied Pauly’s movements. The guy’s gone. And his brother goes where he goes.”

  “Okay, tranquilo. I’m just raising the possibility.”

  “Don’t tranquilo me, Frank.”

  Dinkins came out. Someone inside the office shut the door firmly behind him.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Who can tell? Like I said, they seem to be circling Magnuson. But, hey, with pros like these, they’re asking shit so fast, one from this direction, one from that, rat-a-tat-tat, my head was coming unscrewed.”

  Door opened, the latter-day hippie curled his finger at Frank.

  “Kick ass,” Dinkins said.

  “Sit up straight,” Nicole said, smiling at Frank.

  “The Chee brothers are still around,” he said. “Believe it.”

  Her smile dwindled away.

  Frank followed the suspenders into his own damn office.

  When he entered, everyone was standing, and they stayed on their feet until Frank took a seat in a chair across from his desk. Like an all-rise moment in a courtroom. The silver-haired hipster from the Security Division sat behind Frank’s desk, tapping Frank’s favorite ballpoint pen against his ink blotter. The hippie was running the show. A surprise. Or maybe they’d been taking turns. Test-driving the desk of the special agent in charge of the Miami field office. See how it handled the tight turns.

  The others were arrayed in a semicircle with various views of Frank’s profile. He looked around his office, having never studied it from this angle before. Never tried to make his office a home away from home, but now he realized from this vantage point it looked stark, no knickknacks, nothing personal to soften it up, a little forbidding.

  Though he’d done it once when they’d first met, the security guy formally introduced himself, Miles Shuster, then went around the room naming everyone, giving their titles.

  “You understand, Agent Sheffield, we’re here to debrief you.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t take long. I’m not wearing underpants today.”

  Nobody smiled. Maybe they’d heard the line before. Or maybe they were professional sourpusses.

  It took Frank five minutes to lay out the order of events, the lead-up to the raid, the raid itself, the shooting, the aftermath. Shouldering the blame like a good soldier. Whole time he was telling the story, he was picturing the Silver Sands and hearing the sea breeze ticking through the palms, a whiff of coconut suntan oil. Come on, how bad was that? Fired from the FBI, forced to live full-time at the beach. Shit. He was burned out anyway. Do your worst, bureaucrats.

  The only thing tipping the scales the other way, okay, yeah, he wanted somebody to put these ELF assholes out of business before they exploded some nasty gadget and sent a plume of fallout over the city, and he wasn’t sure anybody else was up to the task. And, yes, he very much wanted to speak to Flynn Moss again, make sure the kid was okay.

 
“Before we begin, Agent Sheffield,” the aging hippie said, “I want you to take a look at something our forensics people found on Prince Key a few hours ago. It’s rather mystifying.”

  He reached into a brown paper sack and came out with a human arm. Small, slender, with a camouflage rubber bracelet around the wrist. He held it out, offering it to Sheffield. “Prints have been lifted, forensics done. You can handle it if you like.”

  Frank took the arm. It was fashioned from some kind of synthetic rubberized material. Had the weight and the feel of a real arm. The fingers were lifelike, nails and all. Not a mannequin, something much more realistic.

  “There’s an ID stamp on the stump,” the security man said. “Forensics did some calls, traced it to a local TV production company. They’re shooting some crime show here in Miami. It’s one of their props. Somebody reported it missing a few months ago.”

  The hippie asked Frank if he knew anything about the arm, but before Frank could answer, his office phone rang.

  The security hippie picked it up, listened, then held it out to Frank. “A message from a Mr. Juan Medira. Urgent.”

  “Building-code inspector. Probably my septic tank runneth over.” Frank took the phone, smiled at the humorless suits filling his room. “This better be good,” he said to Marta.

  “Oh, no, this is bad. This is very bad.”

  When she finished, Frank handed the phone back to Miles Shuster. Frank’s head was swimming. The room was ten degrees warmer and his face felt as if it had begun to slowly inflate.

  “Is there a problem?” Shuster said.

  Sheffield stood up. Jaw tight, grinding his teeth as he went from face to face. Sizing up this bunch of office dwellers who were deciding his fate and the fate of his field agents, these twerps insulated in the upper-floor offices, knowing nothing about the street, about kicking in doors, taking down an island full of bombmakers and assorted radicals in the total dark, the middle of a tropical storm.

  “Yeah, a problem,” Frank said. “That was Juan Medira, he’s a building-code inspector for Miami-Dade. I’m doing some construction at my place so Juan’s around a lot. He stopped by a few minutes ago to inspect some roof tile I installed, and he found a corpse on my front porch.”

  Nobody gasped, nobody did much of anything. As if corpses were someone else’s department.

  “I hope it wasn’t somebody you know.”

  “I knew him, but not very well. Agent Magnuson.”

  That got an eyebrow lift or two, some sideways glances, and a few looks of consternation.

  “Must have been suicide,” the security man said.

  The others murmured in agreement. Self-righteous pricks, proud of their power to intimidate and destroy.

  “No,” Frank said. “Magnuson was electrocuted. Looks like he walked into a booby trap intended for me.”

  * * *

  Sheffield sat at his concrete picnic table, watching the Miami-Dade homicide detectives and ID techs working alongside his own forensics team, taking photos of Magnuson’s twisted body with the burns and blisters on his right hand and arm and some kind of evil rash on his face, while other cops were still interviewing Juan Medira over by the swimming pool.

  Yellow crime-scene tape was strung from palm tree to palm tree. Cops going in and out of 106, all the usual state-of-the-art science, which had produced nothing at Marcus Bendell’s house and would produce nothing here. Some greasy substance had been found on the doorknob, probably electro gel from the same tube as that found on the ladder at Bendell’s.

  First time in Silver Sands’ long and not always stellar history there’d been crime-scene tape and cops parading around the place. His Eden was tainted. He wouldn’t be stretching out in his bed tonight in 106. Or anytime soon.

  From the start there’d been a killer floating around the edges of this ELF operation. A straight line from Marcus Bendell to Zach Magnuson. Was it an ecoterrorist? Leslie Levine? He doubted it. More likely the guy who rigged this trap was somebody who thought Frank was getting too close to discovering something. Which was nice to hear because he didn’t feel close to solving anything. The Bendell murder? Leslie Levine’s disappearance? The cartoon elf on the Turkey Point computer system? The software bomb? The Chee brothers? The guy that blew up the water pipeline in the Keys?

  This case had been scrambled from the minute Nicole picked him up last week, drove him down to Turkey Point.

  Sheffield tried it again, running through the last few days, the step-by-step replay of everything case-related since Nicole showed up, from Marcus Bendell’s electrocution to this electrocution, looking for the thread that had to be there, wishing he had his yellow legal pad so he could draw connecting lines between events. Then going back again to Nicole, the drive down to Turkey Point, the meeting with Sheen and Sellers, the whole force-on-force thing.

  Frank could feel a swell of heat in his chest. He was onto something, a glowing presence very close, like a word he’d been working to remember, fetching, fetching, until there it was, appearing from the haze but, damn it, still just beyond his grasp.

  Then a few yards behind him some grievous asshole pulled a big black Lincoln over the edge of the asphalt lot, rolling right onto the patch of pristine sod next to the shuffleboard court. The sod had been laid two weeks ago. The seams between the squares were still clearly visible. Sheffield had been watering that patch an hour a day. Religious about it.

  He stood up, ready to ream somebody out. But, no, it was the hippie security guy, Miles Shuster, and another guy from Professional Responsibility who got out of the Lincoln and ambled over.

  “Move your car. And do it slowly so you don’t dig up my new grass.”

  Miles looked back at the Lincoln. “Look, Frank,” the security man said, laying an unwelcome hand on his shoulder. “We came out here to let you know in person that with serious reservations, the panel has decided to clear the Prince Key case. We all agree there was a considerable dereliction and reckless disregard, and we may need to revisit the situation later after the field reports come in, but given these unfortunate circumstances with Agent Magnuson we’re suspending—”

  “Put it in a memo,” Frank said. “Just get your fucking gas hog off my new grass.”

  When they were gone, he checked the time, half past five, and called Marta. He knew she’d be in long past quitting time today, with an agent down.

  “Look up a number for me,” he said.

  “You okay?”

  “Everybody keeps asking that.”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Her name is Sheen. She’s NRC. I don’t know where she’s based. But this is her area, region two. Get her number and call me back.”

  “You sound frantic.”

  “The number, Marta.”

  She was back in five minutes with three numbers. Sheen’s home in Palm Beach, office in Lauderdale, and her cell.

  Frank tried her cell first. Got her right off. Good sign.

  “Agent Sheffield, how nice to hear from you.”

  “I’ve got a question.”

  “About Friday’s drill?”

  “That’s right. Friday’s drill.”

  “Well, shoot.” She chuckled. “No, no, I guess that’s the wrong thing to say to a federal agent.”

  Sheffield pushed on. “Whose idea was it, the force-on-force? The ELF logo shows up, then you guys got involved. It’s the NRC’s call, isn’t it, when to do a force-on-force?”

  “Yes. We’re charged with oversight. We make the determination when all such inspections or drills are required.”

  “And is that how it worked this time? Your call?”

  She said, “What’s the problem? You sound very stressed.”

  Frank closed his eyes and held the phone at arm’s length. Everybody concerned about his blood pressure. It just made the pressure worse.

  He brought the phone back to his ear in time to hear her say quietly, “Claude Sellers proposed the idea and Mr. Sellers set the date.”

/>   “And Agent McIvey?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was she collaborating with Mr. Sellers before you came on board?”

  “Collaborating?”

  “Did they double-team you? Pressure you to schedule the drill?”

  She was silent for a while. When she came back, her voice was firm and precise as if these words were being recorded for some official record. “I wouldn’t say pressure. But, yes, before I was consulted, Ms. McIvey and Mr. Sellers had discussed the situation and mutually agreed that such a drill was necessary. And they made their case to me very forcefully.”

  “So that was the purpose of the ELF logo, why they put it up there in the first place. To get everybody hot and bothered, to justify running the force-on-force.”

  “And why would anyone do that?” Sheen asked.

  “Why indeed?”

  THIRTY-SIX

  BY SUNDOWN THAT MONDAY WORK crews from the Aqueduct Authority along with engineers from South Florida Water Management had the pipeline repaired. The geyser sprouting above the treetops sagged, then sagged some more and disappeared.

  While it was still spewing, Prince had driven out to the highway and joined the crowd nosing around the rupture and gathered what information he could from cops and bystanders. He stayed for an hour watching the backhoes and the welders and the dozen guys in the shovel-wielding road crew.

  When he returned, he reported that the FKAA folks believed a software glitch was responsible for the mess. Apparently Wally’s high jinks would have no further repercussions. But Leslie warned Wally if he tried anything like that again, he’d be excluded from the operation.

  “You can’t cut me out. No way you could pull this off without me.”

  “You’re right,” Leslie said. “Which means I’ll yank the plug on the whole thing and walk away. If that’s what you and your brother want, then fine, just one more prank like that and it’s finished.”