Covert Affairs: Partnership : A Covert Affairs Romance (Book One)

by Valerie Vaughn

  Syler raised a brow. He grinned, affecting the Director’s prim tone: “‘I meant women, Dufault. I don’t give a damn who you go home to in your off hours. Honestly, how stupid are the people you’ve reported to in the past?’ I signed the contract on the spot.”

  Syler couldn’t help it. He lost it, laughing hysterically at the spot on impression. Arthur joined in almost immediately. “It is,” he wheezed, pressed helplessly to the other man’s chest, “so incredibly reassuring to know she does that with everyone when she hires them.”

  Arthur snorted. “You should hear Benson’s retelling of Jeanette’s reaction to her engagement to Reyes’ sometime.”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah,” Arthur grinned, pressing a finger to the furrow in the other man’s brow. “You really should’ve figured that out by now, you blindly oblivious darling.”

  “They’re engaged?”

  “Well, they were. Two and a half years ago. They got married just before you were hired on. Seriously, it’s a running department joke to see how long it takes new hires to notice. You have the record by a landslide, S.”

  Syler sputtered, face absolutely tomato red. Arthur hauled him in for a kiss, delighted even when the other man shoved him off to fix him with a glare. “I hate all of you just so you know.”

  Blue eyes twinkled. “I don’t believe you for a minute, Mr. Perrin.” He ruffled Syler’s hair, amused when the slighter man tried to wriggle out of his grasp, pulling him in closer again. He eventually gave in, settling on top of his resident menace—his now, god help him—and kissed him soundly. He pulled back a while later, both wearing twin expressions of contentment.

  Their phones, of course, choose that moment to sound with an emergency alert.

  Twenty-Six

  “Boss, get your ass in here!” Miranda announced the instant he accepted the call.

  “Pyrona?” Syler replied, already resigned to the answer as he hauled on the first pair of pants he found. “Who the fuck launches an attack on the 1st of January?” Beside him, Arthur hustled himself into his own clothes, deep in a clipped conversation with the Director.

  “Opportunistic assholes. Jason and I have the firewalls, but they’re tearing through them faster than we can repair them.”

  “Be there in ten. I’ll log in on the drive.”

  “Five would be better!”

  “Can do,” Arthur cut in, loud enough for her to hear, already guiding them out of the apartment despite the fact Syler was still struggling to get his shirt on. He slung the younger man’s messenger bag over his shoulder as they passed the kitchen, while Syler keyed into their system from his tablet to survey the damage.

  Arthur directed him along to the car, belting him into his seat before he tore out of the garage. For the best really; Syler was entirely immersed in his conversation with Miranda and Jason. “Fucking shit, did they bring more friends?”

  “Sure looks like it. They’re focusing the brunt of the attack on our inter-agency communications system. They’ve already knocked most of it offline.”

  “Oh good.” Syler snipped, already tapping along through their system layers. “They’re trying to blockade us before they breach. Please tell me you two have got help down there right now?”

  “Maria just came through the door. Colonel’s on his way.”

  “Oh thank god. Maria, try to isolate where they’re coming from so we can launch a counter.”

  “Already on it,” she answered, voice thin over the speakers as the CIA’s best tracer went to work. Syler braced against the dash as Arthur took the turn into the agency parking garage entirely faster than physics advised, still thumbing through the reports.

  “Right Miranda, Jason, hold the firewalls. I’m on my way down.” Syler pulled off his seat belt before the car was fully parked, already rushing to the elevator, Arthur hot on his heels.

  He pushed through the door to the bullpen just after the Colonel and descended straight into the fray alongside his staff, directing the handful of junior techs on staff to start pulling the highest priority classified file servers offline. Their system was based on layered firewalls, each section partitioned off carefully, communications systems kept aside from project files kept aside from personnel information all kept well away from classified mission intelligence. The hackers were making an equal opportunity bid at breaching each one if the way they were hammering away at everything in sight was any indicator, though they did, indeed, seemed focused on shutting down communications first.

  “Why are they so focused on inter-agency?” Jason muttered, swearing as he tried to shore up another digital hole in blown wide in their firewalls.

  “Isolation,” the Colonel replied. “They want something from us and they don’t want us to have help keeping them out.”

  “What do we have that no one else does?” Arthur cut in.

  “The collective intelligence of the entire country and half the world. Would you like the list alphabetically or categorically?” Syler snarked.

  The lights flickered overhead suddenly. Non-essential monitors displaying mission read-outs on the sidewalls of the bullpen went dark, system programmed to prioritize power to the command stations. The steady hum of the generators coming from the main server room kicked on. Syler swore, moving from assessing their system to looking at the utility networks surrounding the agency. “They’re after the power grid now. Trying to lock them out of it.” A sudden surge ended in a muffled bang from the secondary server bank off to one wall, fully shutting down the equipment on the sidewalls of the bullpen.

  “Oh not today, you fuckers,” Thompson snarled, swearing for the first time in Syler’s memory, darting off in the direction of the main server room as he slipped on a headset, surprisingly quick for a man of his age. “If you honestly think you can short circuit equipment I built, you’ve got another thing coming. I’ll keep us up and running, you keep them out!”

  Syler held his position at the command desk, calling up the utility grid and pushing the surrounding area into a localized power outage, trusting that their back up generators would hold more reliably then he could keep a directed surge from frying their equipment. “Maria, any luck with isolating a location?”

  “No and it’s pissing me off!”

  “Boss,” Miranda called over the line, “they’ve started hitting the personnel file firewalls harder.”

  “Redirected?”

  “No, like they’ve added a half dozen players to the game. They’re still going just as hard on our communications.”

  “The code looks the same on every front. How are this many of them attacking this seamlessly?” Jason cut in, still trying to get communications online and call for back up from their sister agencies.

  “Fabulous question,” Syler muttered. “Alright, I don’t like playing defensively. What do you say we isolate them with a bait and switch trap?”

  “So very on board,” Miranda replied. “Shall I build a tempting box around the personnel files?”

  “Read my mind. Make it just tight enough to look like a flawed last minute defense. See if we can draw their attention,” Syler responded, pulling up a program of his own design. It generated a dummy file of the same size as the personnel files in the first layer, seamlessly swapping them out, as well as containing a tracer they could piggyback off of. Maria grinned as he built out the code, already prepared to chase the hacker so Syler could mount a penetrative hack of his own. “Ready everyone?” With the go ahead from his shift leads, he executed the code, timed to correspond with another wave of firewall volleys.

  “Oh, right for it,” Maria gloated. “Now let me just—son of a bitch!”

  Syler glanced over, watching in dawning horror as Maria’s entire station powered down. “What the fuck?” Attention drawn back to his station, he realized the hackers had used the location trace to jump directly into Maria’s terminal, remotely shutting it down. “That’s not possible. They’re reverse engineering my program live time! I spent month
s on that!”

  “S, they locked onto mine,” Jason called, frantically trying to key out of his station before he could be locked out of the system. Beside him, Miranda was similarly overwhelmed. Syler looked back at his monitor, executing the kill code on the program just before it could be used against him but too late to stop the lock out from taking out his colleagues.

  “They’re learning on the fly,” Maria murmured, stunned.

  “Not they,” Syler intoned, face alighting with the realization. The something that had been just out of reach in the log reviews struck him like a tsunami. “There’s only one. There was only ever one.”

  “That isn’t—”

  “Augmented AI,” he breathed, pulling up a command window “That’s why the encryption was so ballsy. There was no possibility of error. And that—” he frantically typed in the same code scheme that had been utilized to protect Pyrona’s networks, slamming the return key to execute it, “is how we stop it.”

  His screen went momentarily dark, system restarted when the trap code forced a lock out on the first incorrect password attempt. As his computer powered back on, every other station still connected to the back up generators did as well, coming to rest on the main login screen. A cursor appeared in the username box, and then a message:

  Clever.

  ---

  “Out of curiosity,” Arthur called from his spot against one of the desks, “what the hell did I just witness?”

  “I’d very much like to know that myself,” Thompson said, reappearing from the server room, the smell of ozone trailing after him.

  ‘Something must have caught fire again,’ Syler thought faintly. He glanced at his senior staff, all of them equally stunned, then gestured towards the central monitor where the message displayed. “I locked the hacker out. For now.”

  “Explain, Perrin.” Oh, good, Boothman was here. That was always a sign that things had well and truly gone to hell.

  “Augmented artificial intelligence,” he replied. “Someone has built an AI system capable of not only replicating the skill of the builder to launch multiple simultaneous attacks against a system, but also of adapting to and exploiting loopholes in counter-attacks faster than a human alone could. I shut them out by utilizing the same encryption scheme they used on theirs—an exceptionally long, error prone algorithm password with a single attempt before it boots everyone out of the system en mass. Even an augmented computer isn’t going to guess in one try.” He dropped into his chair heavily. “Whoever built this is—”

  “Exceptionally dangerous,” she finished. “How long are we secure using this?”

  “Indefinitely, but...”

  “But?”

  “If even one of us makes an incorrect login attempt at a given time, we shut down the whole system,” Maria cut in. “And that’s assuming no one outside of the agency picks up on the vulnerability to put us in an endless lock out loop by just putting in incorrect passwords.”

  “So we’re locked out of our own system,” Boothman concluded, scoffing.

  “I can set it so that it only executes if they launch another attack and put the lock out encryption behind the initial login to keep most other parties from noticing,” Syler offered up, “but, yes, if I do and they try again, we’re locked out for the duration.”

  The room lapsed into silence, all eyes turned towards the Director. “Start reviewing the logs. No one leaves until we have a plan.”

  Twenty-Seven

  A plan ended up taking the remainder of the day. The first order of business, inevitably, was carefully applying the lock out encryption only to necessary portions of the system, hopefully minimizing how much of their system was shut down during any follow up attack. While Syler did that, Maria went to work on the partial trace she’d started before she was locked out. Jason and the Colonel retreated to the server rooms, replacing and rewiring equipment that had been lost to the series of targeted power surges, while Miranda was tasked with implementing new firewalls strong enough to keep out all but the hacker behind Pyrona in the event of another attempted breach of their system.

  Arthur and Jeanette ensconced themselves in the briefing room, intent on reviewing the case in light of the latest breach. Or to work on damage control. Whatever it was that non-techie staff did to feel useful after a cyber attack, Syler thought.

  “Any luck on that trace, Maria?”

  She hummed. “Somewhere nearby, within a hundred miles. I got cut off before it could get closer, but I’m pulling data on anyone in that radius with a background in AI programming.”

  “Don’t bother,” the Director called, reappearing with Arthur in tow. The man looked mutinous. “We’ve been sent an invitation to meet.”

  Syler’s eyebrows went up. “Have we now?”

  “Yes, a message was delivered to my personal inbox with an attached flier. A small start up by the name of Pyrona Inc. is going to be hosting a booth at a D.C. tech conference starting tomorrow afternoon. Last minute addition to the roster, apparently.”

  “I’ll go, Jeanette,” Arthur immediately cut in. Syler’s brows went up further at his tone. What on earth?

  “The invitation was directed towards you, Perrin.”

  “Um,” he replied, wrong footed. “When you say directed towards me…?”

  “‘As per our recent engagement, I would be delighted to meet to discuss a potential collaboration with Mr. Perrin,’” she replied, quoting from the message on her tablet. “It would seem the attacker was behind our firewalls just long enough to see who forced the shut out. You’ve made an impression by being the first to rebuff this lunatic.”

  “And you want me to go?” Syler blinked, tone absolutely disbelieving. “Me?”

  The Director scoffed, seating herself at the command desk beside Thompson. “Do I want to send the Deputy Director of Operations into a blind meeting with a cyber terrorist? Of course not. Unfortunately, the bastard has us by the short hairs right now. We need to know who it is, and it’s unlikely he or she will reveal themselves if they’re not absolutely certain it’s you that they’re talking to, much less if we swarm the place with a team of agents.”

  Syler winced. “I see your point.”

  “You’ll be escorted, of course.” Arthur placed a hand on his shoulder, fixing Jeanette with a stare that dared her to send anyone else.

  “Oh for god’s sake. Yes, Dufault, I’ll be assigning a security detail.” She did not, Syler noticed, specify that it would be Arthur. “Now, let’s do some digging on this convention.”

  ---

  Arthur stalked Jeanette back into the briefing room once the operations staff had set to work prepping for Syler’s trip into D.C. the following afternoon. He had absolutely no intention of letting someone else take his handler.

  She sat down at the desk, fixing him with an intense look, accessing. “If I do assign you as his escort,” she began, “is that going to be a problem?”

  “No more than it was a problem when he was just my handler.”

  “That was three months and at least one night of debauchery ago.”

  Arthur glared. “Doubting me now, are you?”

  “Reminding you that I have eyes, Arthur. I don’t begrudge you caring about him, but it can’t supersede eliminating this hacker.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Good,” she stated, tone final. “Finding the main player behind Pyrona remains the primary directive. Bringing the Deputy Director back in one piece is a close second. Fail at either of them and I’ll string you up by your balls. Now let’s finalize this piss poor excuse for a plan—”

  ---

  The Colonel escorted Syler into the armory, shutting the door behind them with a resounding clang. “You don’t have to go, you understand?”

  The younger man snorted. “Sorry, are you going to do it? Jason could maybe pull it off, but AI is really my field. Besides, I have a standing invitation to this conference, for all that I normally never go. The bastard has my name, so it’s not
like sending someone else would go unnoticed.”

  Thompson sighed, nodding. “As long as you’re sure, Syler. Your contract was many things, but not field work. You’re under no obligation.” All the same, he turned towards the weapons rack, pulling the modified Sig he knew Syler favored on the testing range as well as a 3D printed compact frame 9mm. “Back up made of plastic to slip through security discreetly.”

  Syler smiled. “I’ll need a holster.”

  “You’ll also need something that won’t get taken the second you’re identified.”

  Both men grinned, turning towards the locker at the very back of the armory designated for special projects. “Glasses?”

  “They were one of my first designs,” Daniel noted, tone wistful as he unlocked the door to the division’s more unique items. “I might even get them back intact if I send them out with you.”

  He passed his protegee the glasses case. Syler flipped it open with no small degree of reverence. “I’ve heard stories about the engineering history on these.”

  “Mm, yes,” he replied, “modified as the technology advanced. GPS tracker embedded in the frame, as well as a back up communicator and a camera in the upper corner of the right lens. Also,” he winked conspiratorially, “the legs are sheathed knives with a high voltage taser built in the tips. I don’t suppose you mind wearing contacts this weekend?”

  ---

  Arthur was waiting for him outside of the armory, lounging against the wall like he hadn’t a care in the world, go-bag at his feet. Syler passed him a case containing his field kit, rolling his eyes. “I assume you’re coming with me.”

  “Try and stop me sweetheart.”

  “Waste of breath,” the younger man acknowledged, “and I know what I’m getting with you.”