404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  He thought about his work at the FBI, which he had joined after graduating from Northwestern and a brief stint as a Quad Cities policeman. His training had taught him how to put on disguises, how to become different people as a way to adapt to mercurial landscapes. Decker was used to leading a double life. On the outside, he had recovered from the tragedy of his wife’s sudden passing, just as he had from the car accident which had resulted in his parents’ death years before.

  He touched the scar on his face.

  Now—at least on the surface—he appeared to be back to his ebullient self: the guy who remembered and organized birthday parties for friends and associates; always a reliable team-mate at work, unselfish and dedicated, unstinting with praise, though a bit OCD; good-looking and funny; well-read, a code whiz, a linguist, but not overly bookish; a black belt in Kung Fu; and humble—despite the fame that had been foisted upon him after the El Aqrab incident.

  But, on the inside, thought Decker, I’ve become...someone else.

  “Who are you?” he said aloud to the man in the mirror. “Is anybody in there?” He wiped his face with a towel. Then he smiled, feeling foolish, and turned out the light.

  CHAPTER 4

  Monday, December 2

  It was a cold, blustery day in Jackson, Mississippi. Mary-Lou Fleming was driving Katie and Cyrus to soccer practice, and she was—as per usual—kind of late. A slight woman, with natural blond hair and delicate features, she was dressed in a pair of unassuming gray sweatpants, a Saints flannel hoody and Nikes.

  They were traveling westbound down West County Line Road, just east of Billy Bell, when Mary-Lou spotted the crossing lights flashing. Her children were singing Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” as it played on the radio.

  Little did I know...that you were Romeo; you were throwing pebbles. And my daddy said, ‘Stay away from Juliet.” And I was crying on the staircase, begging you, ‘Pleeeease, don’t go...’

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Mary-Lou. “Can’t you sing something else?”

  The crossing gates chimed as the two gates descended. She pulled up to a stop. But the children were restless, implacable.

  As Mary-Lou reached out to select a new station, Katie lunged across the front seat, grabbed the knob, saying, “Don’t change it! I love that song. Please!”

  “You’re lovin’ it to death.”

  Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone...

  Mary-Lou groaned and looked down the tracks. Where’s that damn train? she thought. Soccer practice had already begun. But the long lines of pine trees paralleling the rails ran clear to the vanishing point.

  Katie and Cyrus started screaming in the back seat of the car. Katie, the eleven year old, was arguing with her eight year old brother about who was funnier: Sam or Carly.

  “Don’t make me come back there,” said Mary-Lou with a scowl in the mirror. “This is your last warning.”

  “Or what?” Katie asked.

  “I guess you don’t want anything for Christmas this year, smarty-pants. I’m not getting a bonus again so that suits me just fine.” Katie was her husband Tommy’s child from his first marriage.

  Mary-Lou reached for her cigarettes and then remembered that she didn’t smoke anymore. Not for a month. Instead, she pulled out another piece of Nicorette gum from her purse.

  First, she had woken up late. Tommy had already left for the day. Then, the dog had gotten into the neighbors’ yard...again. The kids had almost missed their bus. And, to top it all off, Tommy had taken the truck and left her with his beat-up, burnt orange Camaro.

  Mary-Lou hated driving stick. It always made her feel so damned nervous. And she hated the color burnt orange. Tommy’s ex had selected that too.

  Just then, the railroad gates started to rise and the red lights stopped flashing.

  Mary-Lou looked down the tracks. Nothing coming. That’s weird. The gates had come down for no reason. She checked once again, but both sides were clear.

  So, she slipped the ’95 Camaro into gear and started to creep across the tracks when the car suddenly stalled. “Shit!” she screamed.

  The children in the back seat grew quiet.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she exclaimed as she turned off the engine. She punched the clutch, turned the key and the car came to life, only to stall once again as she lifted her foot.

  The radio blared: So I sneak out to the garden to see you. We keep quiet ‘cause we’re dead if they knew. So close your eyes; escape this town for a little while...

  That’s when she first heard the train whistle blowing.

  Mary-Lou looked to the right.

  A light shone down the corridor of walnut and pine. The bells on the crossing gates chimed.

  “Mom,” Cyrus said. “The train’s coming.”

  “I know, I can see it,” she hissed, turning the key once again. “Buckle up.” But she’d forgotten the clutch. Nothing happened.

  “Mom!”

  The crossing gates started to fall. The train whistle hooted, and kept hooting and hooting.

  “Mommy!” Cyrus screamed.

  Mary-Lou took a deep breath, pressed the clutch, and turned the key with precision. The engine coughed, came to life. Then it roared. She slipped the car into first, grinding the gears, and carefully released the clutch. The car slowly rolled forward. She stepped on the gas—just as the crossing gate crashed through the windshield.

  There was an air-sucking crash as the windshield glass shattered. It cracked like a tablet of pond ice.

  Mary-Lou glanced to her right. The train was approaching just shy of track speed, over seventy. An Amtrak. Bright silver with red and blue stripes.

  She jumped on the gas pedal and the gate started bending, spraying daggers of windshield glass everywhere. She kept pressing her foot to the floor. The rear tires squealed, spun and shimmied.

  Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. I’ll be waiting; all there’s left to do is run. You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess. It’s a love story...

  The rear tires smoked as Mary-Lou stomped on the gas. The taste of acrid burnt rubber choked her nose and her throat. The car shuddered and groaned but the gate was too strong. They were stuck. And, besides, it was simply too late.

  The train hit the Camaro dead on. There was an ear-shattering crash as the frame of the old Chevrolet was flung up and flattened, sending all three of the passengers through the windows and window glass, up into the air.

  Cyrus and Katie vanished deep in the woods, their bodies cut to pieces by branches. The spark-spewing Camaro disintegrated. But Mary-Lou flew past the train—now, just a little bit slower, jarred as it was in its passage. She hovered directly in front of the engine, only inches away. For a fraction of a second, she was conscious and flying. Until the gap finally closed.

  CHAPTER 5

  Monday, December 2

  Decker sat at his workstation at the NCTC, with Vladimir Ivanov perched on a bright purple Pilates ball at his side. On loan from the NSA, the young Russian-American was Decker’s favorite code jockey—not so much for his computer skills, but for his wit and unconventional thinking. They were watching a host of computer terminals. One alternated between a satellite image of downtown Philadelphia, Center City, at Arch Street and Third—H2O2’s loft—and a view of the same building from a traffic cam down the street. Thermal imagery revealed a figure moving about in the kitchen area. Another three monitors displayed the screen content of H2O2’s three computers, courtesy of his ISP. And the last featured a video image of Special Agent Chip Armstrong in the apartment just down the hall, across from H2O2’s loft. Three other agents in body armor and helmets stood around him by the kitchen counter, drinking coffee.

  “So, how did you find this guy?” Armstrong asked.

  “It was Decker,” said Ivanov. “He wrote this tense algorithm that searches for code abnormalities. Go on, tell him. Frankly, I didn’t think it would work.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a candy bar.

  “The
re’s no food in the Crypt, Vlad,” said Decker.

  “This isn’t food. It’s a Snickers bar.” He ripped off the wrapper and took a large bite. Ivanov was barely in his twenties, and yet worked for one of the most secret intelligence-gathering agencies in the world. He wore a pair of black jeans so tight you could read the date on the quarter in his front pocket, a dark purple paisley shirt, and a skinny black leather tie. His head would have been remarkable as being rather too big for his body were it not for the glasses he favored. With black plastic rims and thick lenses, they dominated his face. He looked like a Russian Buddy Holly.

  “The NSA has other hackers you know,” Decker said. “You could always go back to Camp Stuxnet.”

  Ivanov blanched. “Gulag Stuxnet, you mean. You wouldn’t.” He stuffed the rest of the candy bar into his cavernous mouth. “Don’t get mad—get Vlad. You see.” He opened his mouth. “All gone, Mat.”

  “Mat? Eb tvoju mat’,” cursed Decker in Russian. His accent was flawless.

  “What’s Stuxnet?” asked Armstrong.

  “A computer worm designed to penetrate and slow down Iran’s nuclear efforts,” said Decker. “Came out of Bush’s Olympic Games program. Took out nearly a fifth of Iran’s centrifuges at Natanz before it somehow escaped.”

  “Escaped? You make it sound like a zoo animal,” Armstrong said. “What do you mean escaped?”

  “In the old days, CIA introduced faulty parts and such into Iran’s nuclear systems, but that didn’t do much,” said Ivanov. “Then, General Cartwright of StratCom persuaded George W to try a computer worm instead. Remember, this was after the President had been caught overstating Iraq’s WMDs. So, since he’d already cried wolf once with Saddam, Bush turned to cyberwarfare, figuring no one would believe him enough to support traditional attacks on Iran. The plan was to gain access to the Natanz plant’s computer controls and take down the centrifuges they were using to refine uranium. To dissuade the Israelis from carrying out their own preemptive military strike, the Shin Bet was brought into the program. That way the Israelis would know it was working. And, for a while, it sure did.”

  “What happened?” asked Armstrong.

  “In the summer of 2010, shortly after a new version of the worm had been activated, it escaped,” Ivanov said. “It was designed to stay in the Natanz machines but it spread to some engineer’s laptop when it was hooked up to the centrifuges. Later, when the engineer took his laptop home with him and went online, it jumped to the Net. For some reason, the worm failed to recognize the environment had changed.”

  “Bad programming by the Israelis,” Decker said. “That’s what I heard.”

  “It wasn’t Unit 8200,” countered Ivanov.

  “That’s Israel’s Cyber Warfare group,” Decker explained. “How do you know?”

  “Because I know those guys,” Ivanov said in a huff. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t their code.”

  “Then it must have been yours.” Decker suddenly remembered that Ivanov was Jewish. Russian, by way of Astoria, Queens.

  “Wasn’t ours either.”

  “Then who, Vlad? Someone messed up the code. It wasn’t the man on the moon.”

  The young Russian shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re still trying to figure that out. Maybe you should look into it.”

  “Me!” Decker laughed. “I’m not a programmer, Vlad.”

  “You got skills, yo. Go on. Tell Armstrong.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “About your new algorithm. It runs against server logs. Super elegant. Worked like a charm against Westlake. That’s how he spotted the break-in. It was simply a matter of waiting it out after that. How did you get the idea for it, anyway?”

  “The naseeb,” Decker answered.

  “The what?”

  “It’s a kind of pre-Islamic Arabic verse, a poetic convention. Functions like a Western ‘Once upon a time.’ You know.” He stared at Ivanov, then at Armstrong on screen. “It settles the audience by setting the scene with something familiar, in this case the revisiting of a deserted camp. The Tuareg use it all the time in their poetry.”

  “Oh, yeah. That cleared it right up,” Armstrong said.

  Decker sighed. “In the Tuareg oral tradition, since nothing’s been fixed, written down, the same poem changes with each recitation, with each poet. Different interpretations and styles. Different details. Different names, even, in some cases. But the themes remain constant. Like the one about revisiting a deserted old camp in the desert. One such poem begins, ‘Is it because of a deserted camp whose traces are erased/That you tarry in a hidden trap of ecstasy, of love,/A place where tears are shed.’ That’s what my program was intended to do. To look for abnormalities in programming themes, algorithms exhibiting cipher characteristics across server log data sets.”

  “Chasing pointers,” said Ivanov.

  “My brother-in-law owns a Touareg,” Armstrong said, slurping his coffee.

  “They’re a people,” said Decker. “Not just a VW SUV. They live in the Sahara.”

  “What turned you on to pre-Islamic Arabic verse?” queried Ivanov. “That’s arcane even by my standards. You don’t get out much, do you, Decker?”

  Decker laughed. “Not when you only count 3:00 AM raves.” Then, his crooked smile faded. “A suspect attached to the El Aqrab case was a Targui. That’s what they call Tuareg in the singular. Ali Hammel. From Algeria. I was studying his culture.”

  “I hate to break up this fascinating ethno-poetical analysis,” said Armstrong. “But isn’t it time yet?” He glanced at his watch. “Now I know why I opted to work in the field instead of hanging out with you analyst types back at headquarters. Arabic poetry. Saharan love themes. Vital to Homeland Security.”

  Ivanov leaned into Decker and stage-whispered, “I think Special Agent Armstrong mocking us.” His Russian accent was preposterously thick now. “I know my Engleesk not good but I can taste irony.” He stood up and put his nose to the camera. “He isn’t on yet. It’s only 2:30. He generally doesn’t get started again until 3:00.” Then he pulled back and stared blankly at Decker’s workstation panels, made of some gray washable fabric, at his orderly desk, lined with stack upon stack of tidy reports, color-coded, and finally at Decker himself.

  “Speaking of hidden traps of ecstasy and love, how come you don’t have any pictures up in your cube? Everyone else does.” Ivanov fell back on his ball, spun about. “Crandall and Peterson have their wives. Thompson and McCullough, their kids. Keene and Margolis, their girlfriends.” He nodded at the other workstations in the Cryptanalysis Section, or the Crypt, as it was commonly called. “Even Castro has her significant other. But not you.”

  “Haven’t found the time,” Decker answered.

  “You’ve been assigned to the NCTC for six years.”

  “Been busy, I guess.”

  Decker was relieved to hear a small ping coming out of his terminal. He glanced at the thermal image of H2O2’s loft. The red dot marking the suspect had moved back to the living room. “He’s online again,” Decker said.

  With the Associate Director’s approval, they had kept H2O2 under surveillance for the last seventy-two hours. During that period, he’d spent most of his time holed up in his loft in east Philly. His movements were becoming predictable. He generally woke up quite late, ate breakfast at home, and went online around noon. He surfed news sites and chat rooms, read email, and downloaded porn for the next hour or so before starting his serious hacking around 3:00. The day earlier, he had returned to the Westlake Defense Systems server at 2:53. It had only been for a minute or so, and he hadn’t entered any new code. He’d just lurked about for a while, no doubt checking to ensure things looked normal.

  “I still don’t see why we just don’t arrest him,” said Ivanov. “He crack-rooted a top secret facility.”

  “You know the procedure,” said Decker. “Stronger case when you catch them online, the connection still open. Otherwise they always claim they were out buying a taco some place at
the time. Someone else was using their terminal.”

  “I can tell that it’s him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “KRAP.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I used KRAP—my Keyboard Recognition Analysis Protocol. That code that I wrote over Thanksgiving, remember? Exploits Javascript timing features to measure the cadence of typing as users enter login credentials. By watching H2O2’s logins over the past three days, I’ve been able to categorize his cadences into a digital pattern. Maybe one in twenty thousand share the same pattern, but by appending other data, it’s probably closer to one in ten million. Believe me. It’s him.”

  Ivanov pointed at the red dot on the terminal. Almost as if on cue, the dot started to fade. “What the...Look at the thermal monitor.” He tapped at the screen. “He’s vanishing. Is the window open? What’s the temperature?”

  Decker glanced at a view of the loft from the traffic cam down the street. “No, it’s closed. And it isn’t that cold.”

  “He’s entering the Westlake Defense Systems server. Time to go, Armstrong,” Ivanov said.

  Special Agent Armstrong leaned forward, pressed a button, and the view on the monitor switched to the micro-cam fixed to his helmet. The view swiveled right as he reached for his M4 assault rifle. The other men picked up their weapons. Decker watched as they opened the door to the apartment and filed one by one into the corridor.

  Decker glanced at one of his other monitors. The screen featured lines of code as H2O2 used the Trojan he’d planted earlier to slip through the Westlake Defense Systems firewall. Moments later, he was in.

  “Clear,” someone said.

  Decker turned back to the first screen. Armstrong was out in the hall now. His camera jostled and bumped as he ran down the corridor. One of the other FBI agents stopped by apartment 5F. He was carrying a stout metal battering ram. He lifted it high in the air and pounded it with all of his might against the face of the door. The wooden frame crumbled and they were suddenly through.