“Did he make it through?”
“I think so,” she nodded.
The knot in my gut lessened. Owen making it through TSA was half the battle. The other half was mine.
“Good. Briana will be happy to hear that her passport worked. Do you think they made it to the safe spot yet?”
“It’s only fifteen minutes away. They should be arriving there any minute. My cousins know what to do, their jobs are done. You can get the money Owen promised Briana and my cousins, right?”
“Of course I can,” I answered.
“Okay, I’ll wait for you here,” she said, adjusting her Dolphins cap she wore yesterday. “Good luck, Grey.”
“Thank you. Keep your head down and don’t look anyone in the eye.”
“I know,” she nodded.
I glanced down at my watch. It was 3:15.
“It’s 3:15. If I don’t come out in thirty minutes, assume I have been caught and get the hell out of here. Save yourself.”
“What?! Grey, don’t talk like that. You will be fine. Everything will work out.”
Her confidence in my abilities helped ease my anxiety, but my request was firm. She had to adhere to it because I knew what the consequences would be if she was caught. Owen wouldn’t want that.
“I know, but still. I’m leaving now. If I don’t come back by 3:45, leave without me. I will get my own cab. I’ll call you and get the address. It’s for your own safety, trust me.”
She blinked, and her big brown eyes showed uncertainty, but she nodded anyway.
“Okay. See you soon.”
“Yes, twenty-nine minutes from now,” I said and walked into the terminal. The AC hit me like an icy breeze and it was relieving from the heat outside. My pulse quickened and I headed for the ticket kiosks. I turned instinctually. I knew this airport like the back of my hand.
I was still wearing the Armani suit I wore last night, and I thought it was fitting. I looked just like any other businessman. Except, I didn’t have a briefcase. Just a ticket, a flash drive, and a plastic baggy in my left pocket that contained a crucial element of my plan. Every person I passed created wind that made my ticket crinkle and flap around in my hand. The code I constructed was delicate, and I hoped it wouldn’t mess it up. I was surprised the CIA hadn’t swarmed the building yet. Someone had to have been watching.
I found an open ticket kiosk and sat down. I let out a shuddering exhale and tried to balance my breath before I did the deed. My ticket wasn’t even a ticket, really. It was similar to a QR code, which would be scanned by the machine and print out my boarding pass. But, I designed my ticket to execute an SQL injection. It would never print out a ticket, just execute an action within the system, instead of query my flight information in the database.
My eyes scanned over the tiny black lines and squares that comprised the code, and I nervously pressed the button on the touch-screen that said Scan Confirmation Code.
I stuck the paper in the scanner. I heard a beep, and nothing happened. Nothing.
That was what I wanted, though. I wanted it to appear like nothing had happened to their system on the outside and to all the passengers. The beep made me tremble…for that small noise was an indication to me that my code was read. The system scanned it. Step one was done.
I stood up and hurriedly headed away from the ticket kiosks. I darted down a side hall that I had already walked through many times over. I had been in every bathroom in this airport, and there were dozens. This place was fucking massive. That was what Owen, Rachel, and her cousins didn’t know. It was the information I was so terrified of jinxing. During mine and Briana’s many trips around Miami in the previous days, we came here. We scoped this place out in depth. If we hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to attempt step two of my plan. I clenched the plastic baggy in my pocket with a sweaty palm and felt the latex glove beneath it. I grabbed the latex glove between my index and middle fingers, pulling it out.
As I approached the men’s restroom, I slipped the glove on my right hand. Stuck to the chrome door of the bathroom hung a sign that read, This restroom is currently being serviced. Please use one of the others nearby. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Perfect. The timing couldn’t have been any better. I forcefully swung open the door and saw a Haitian man mopping the floor. My heart was in my throat as his eyes met mine.
“This bathroom out of service, use other one please,” he said in his accent.
“I can’t hold it, I really have to go.” I walked towards him.
“No sir, chemicals on seats. You can’t.”
With my gloved hand, I grabbed the cloth within the baggy, clutching it tight.
“I have to, I’m sorry,” I walked around his cleaning cart.
“Sir,” he put down the mop and turned to me. I shoved the cloth in his face and used my free hand to grasp the back of his head, forcing him to breathe it in. His eyes closed, and his body went limp. I set him down gently and began to undress him.
Chloroform.
I slept in the living facilities last night. I hadn’t seen the sun in forty-eight hours. I was working what they called a double, but it felt like a triple. Since we were approaching the one-week mark of Owen and Rachel’s disappearance, Veronica had us searching day and night for them. Sure, she wasn’t here all the time. She’d leave sometime after midnight and return around noon. I was supposed to be home with my wife and kids right now. Ha. What a joke, because when I was home, I was sleeping. I hadn’t been home in almost three days. My wife was probably convincing my kids that they still had a father. I missed most of their fall break, and now they were back in school. Such bullshit. Yeah, it was overtime, but this was almost like forced labor. We couldn’t leave until she said we could.
She sat in her desk at the front of the room, just as she always did. The wall-to-wall projection screens surrounded her. Each with different camera feeds from different locations in Florida. They changed every few seconds. She had her hands over her forehead and her fingers dug into her hair. She probably had one of her migraines, which were frequent.
I would switch the feed on my computer every minute or so. I wasn’t eager to help her catch innocent people. What I desired was quite the opposite. Most of my colleagues were doing the same, but a few had that blind determination most young government employees had. You could see it, like a fervor bubbling within, they wanted to catch the bad guys. If only they would have woken the fuck up and realized the bad guy was in the same room as them.
“Ma’am…” A voice on the far side of the room spoke up. My stomach sank. Veronica’s head barely moved upwards to acknowledge him. “Facial recognition found a match at the Miami International Airport.”
The entire room went silent. Not even a click from the keyboards. Veronica slowly stood to her feet and shook her hair out of her eyes. “Blow it up on the big screen.”
The image appeared and my stomach wrenched. There he was. A bleach-blond Owen Marina stood frozen mid-stride as he approached the TSA security screening. My rational mind knew, this was game over for Owen.
“It’s him…” Veronica’s voice trembled with a frightening excitement. “And the girl?”
“She is with him. She is seen walking away from him a few frames before this one.”
“My God…” She uttered. “Why the fuck is Owen in an airport?! What is the time-stamp on this image?”
“Twenty minutes ago, ma’am.”
“Goddamn it!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Let’s get our shit in gear! Call the airport now, have them stop all outbound flights before it’s too late!”
“I’m on it,” the same, gung-ho newbie who found Owen responded to her. I glanced over at my colleague Kyle, who I’d worked with for years, and he shook his head in disapproval.
“You!” she pointed to some guy towards the front. “I want you on the phone with Miami PD and our offices in Miami, now!”
“Got it,” the man said.
“Ma’am,”
the newbie began, “I’ve called five different lines to the airport—they’re all dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?”
“Uh, every line I call is busy. I can’t dial in.”
I thought Veronica’s head was going to explode.
“You can’t be fucking kidding me!” she screamed and slammed her fists against the metal desk. She must have had permanent bruises because she did that so damn often. She reminded me of a spoiled brat who wasn’t getting her way.
“I want all law enforcement to go to the airport. Get SWAT down there, get every last agent we have down there! We are going to come down so hard and so fast on them Owen and Rachel will be in handcuffs before they can even fucking blink.”
A small smile began to emerge as I processed the newbie’s words. Every line he called was busy. There wasn’t a chance in Hell that was mere coincidence. I relished Veronica’s frustration, and although I struggled to find a way to revolt against her, I was pleased to know there were people out there working towards the same goal. Whoever was helping Owen and Rachel, they were good at what they did—great, actually. My smile turned into a grin, knowing that Owen and company were valiantly fighting against us. If only they knew, that someone on the inside was right there with them.
My excitement was practically overflowing, and I suppressed the urge to smile. I had prepared for a moment like this since I was fourteen. I dreamed of performing a hack this grand, and now I was a football field away from walking through the door where I could execute it.
That was what most people didn’t realize. The best hackers were experts in what we referred to as social engineering. Of course, we knew what we were doing, but the majority of our successes were dependent on whether or not we fooled the people we were trying to hack. The most famous hackers I have read about always worked their way from the inside out, and that was exactly what I did to prepare for this.
The laminated nametag clipped to my breast-pocket bounced around with every step. The uniform I was wearing was a little baggy, but I used my belt to tighten everything up. During mine and Briana’s excursions here, I discovered the janitorial staff and the maintenance staff wore identical uniforms. Navy khakis and a white polo tucked in. It was a fatal mistake on their part because I called the airport’s customer service line to complain.
I told them I had missed my five o’clock flight to JFK because two of the bathrooms nearest to my gate were being serviced by the janitors, and I had to walk to one far away. Of course, I made sure my flight information was accurate, and I gave the lady on the phone a hard time. She directed me to the manager. I let her know my fake title, then proceeded to tell her I frequented the airport often, and that I didn’t want it to happen again.
She made the mistake of giving me the hours the bathrooms were serviced daily, and that was all I needed. I knew someone would walk in on the janitor sooner or later, but by that time, I would be long gone. I neared the door to the security room that read Employees Only. On our second visit, Briana flirted with a maintenance man and got close enough to him to cut his ID tag that hung from his belt. When we got back to the loft, Briana implanted my picture on the ID and re-laminated it. All of this was what I was hiding from Owen and Rachel. They didn’t need to know the process, it just had to work. This was the final and most difficult step of my plan—step three.
I held the ID up to the wall scanner and the door clicked open. I quietly opened it and saw how much darker it was in here. Carefully, I closed the door behind me, trying not to draw any attention to myself. There were twenty or so employees sitting in front of a line of computers, facing away from me. On the back wall was a projected image from someone’s computer screen, which they were all staring at. I slipped in behind the crowd and looked at the script that was being displayed, the script that I created.
“We just don’t know where it came from,” a female adjacent to me announced. “What do you guys think?”
I had my arms crossed, just feeling things out before I made my move.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before.” A man standing a few feet beside me answered. I didn’t even see him there. “Pedro, can you tell where this came from?” he asked another man beside him.
“No way man, I have no idea. It almost seems like this code came from within, like maybe it’s a glitch or something.”
“Hell of a glitch,” the woman said, scratching the back of her head. I could only see her profile, but from what I could tell she was beautiful. Tan skin and long, black hair. I liked it. “No one can call out, and no calls can get in. Whatever it is, we have to get it fixed—soon.”
This was my chance.
“I think you’re right,” I spoke up. The sound of my own voice scared me. “It looks like a glitch, but, if you look at that piece of code right there,” I pointed toward the bottom of the screen. “The execution looks like it was directed through the mainframe.”
The Hispanic girl’s eyes were on me, as were many others. Her colleague who sat beside her wasn’t bad looking either. The man and his counterpart, Pedro, huffed in frustration.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Pedro groaned.
“Who is that guy?” one of the employees spoke up.
My gut clenched from his words. Who was I? I was the hacker posing as an employee who had just screwed up their system. Fuck.
“He’s the new guy,” the Hispanic girl replied. I was shocked. What a lifesaver.
“He’s cute,” the girl beside her murmured. I couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“Well,” Pedro and his counterpart walked behind me, roughly patting me on the back. “We can let the new guy fix it. Have fun with the mainframe.”
“Good luck,” his counterpart muttered.
I don’t need it.
“Yeah, you’re doing us a favor,” Pedro said and threw me a set of keys. “Let’s go for a smoke, Carlos.”
I turned awkwardly to face the crowd of employees that lined the computers. I glanced at the attractive face of the Hispanic woman and hoped that my question wouldn’t reveal I wasn’t an employee.
“They haven’t shown me where the mainframe is yet…” I admitted.
She pointed to a door in the far corner. “Down the hall, last door on the right. Get us up and running—fast.”
“Got it,” I nodded and headed for the door. Getting them up and running was the last thing I was going to do, but what they didn’t know, didn’t hurt them. I hurried down the long white hallway lit by bright fluorescent bulbs. I glanced at my watch—3:35. I had ten minutes. When I reached the door I saw that it needed a key to access. I became overwhelmed as I searched through the many keys on Pedro’s key-ring. What if someone saw me struggling to find it? They would know I’m not a real worker…
I painstakingly tried every key, rushing as quickly as I could. Finally, one of them slid all the way in. Thank God. I opened the door and was engulfed in darkness. The resonating hum of computer towers filled my ears, and when my eyes adjusted, the sheer size of the room was hard to take in. Rows upon rows of computer towers filled it, with only small walkways between for an employee to walk through. I could feel the heat emanating from them while simultaneously feeling the ice-cold AC blowing to keep the room at the ideal temperature. I walked down one of the aisles, grinning like a child in a candy store. Ah—pure power.
At the far end of the room, I found the main server. It had a large, flat-screen monitor, and three massive towers that formed a triangle. I moved the mouse, and the Windows home screen came alive. Immediately, I went to the command prompt. I grabbed the flash drive out of my pocket, found the USB slot on the mainframe, and shoved it in. The Windows desktop disappeared and was replaced by a black screen with green scripts racing downward.
“Yes!” I shouted and nervously checked behind me to make sure I was still alone. Suddenly, the script stopped, and the computer emitted a loud warning sound. I knew that sound. Something didn’t work. My heart pounded in my chest as I
glanced at the spacebar, flashing every second on the screen. I leaned in to see what it read.
/permission parameter invalid
My eyes grew wide and I controlled a trembling exhale. I was so close to finishing the job. Step three had to work. Trial and error was my only option.
/authorize
/denied
/reroute
/denied
“Fuck!” I suppressed the volume of my voice. I glanced down at my watch in the dim lighting. 3:40. Damn it! I only had five minutes left.
“Come on, Grey…” I whispered as I looked down at the time on the phone Briana bought me. Frustrated, I flipped it closed. Where was he? He was very stern in his intentions. 3:45 on the dot, then he wanted me to go without him.
Did they catch him? Did his plan work? He was so mysterious about the whole thing. I wished I knew what was going on. I chewed on my lower lip, giving into my anxiety. My eyes roamed over the patterns in the concrete because I was too afraid to look up. The last thing I desired was for someone to recognize me as Owen’s accomplice. I did glance to my left every minute or so, in hopes of spotting Grey coming out of the terminal.
My nerves were wrecked. I wouldn’t feel better until Grey was safe, but it gave me some relief knowing Owen was on his flight, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. It had been less than half an hour, and I already missed him more than I ever had another man. The closest comparison would be the emptiness I felt when I lost my father…but this was different, it was fresher, it stung like an open wound.
I flipped open the phone again. 3:46—I shook my head, contemplating my decision. I wanted to wait, but Grey’s request was non-negotiable. He knew what was best for the plan.
I stood up and waved my hand in the air. “Taxi!”
/administrator
The Gambit Page 28
