Oceans of Fire

by Don Pendleton

  “I appreciate your candor, Herr Brognola.” Deyn smiled. “But I assure you, we are all risking much.”

  Marx clicked keys on her board and watched her screen. “The team has passed the security gate. The gate guard has logged them in and IESHEN Group security net has accepted their identification and itinerary.” The computer expert leaned back in her chair. “They are in.”

  ABLE TEAM ASCENDED IESHEN Group headquarters via the service elevator. The four men wore white coveralls with matching caps. So far the paucity of German speakers wasn’t hurting them, but their greatest asset was that it was 2:47 a.m. and hardly anyone was around. Tenari’s German was limited but a grunted “Guten morgen” and a flash of their badges had gotten them past the gate guard and into the service area. The elevator gave a chime each time they passed a floor as it accelerated up into the Berlin skyline.

  Able Team tensed as the elevator pinged and gently came to a stop on the twenty-fifth floor. The door hissed open and a weary-looking young man in a suit stood holding a cup full of coffee. He smiled tiredly and began to speak in German.

  Lyons spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “T, what’s he talking about?”

  “He wants to know about this evening’s soccer scores.”

  The man cocked his head in confusion.

  Lyons smiled at the young office worker. “T.”

  The big Samoan buried his fist in the young man’s guts. His eyes bugged as the air gasped out of his lungs and he folded to his knees. Tenari dragged him inside and began tying him with plastic strip restraints. Schwarz pressed the up button and Able Team resumed its assent.

  Schwarz scowled as Tino gagged the hapless office worker with duct tape. “If he was working with someone, this may cut into our time window.”

  “Bound to happen.” Lyons shrugged fatalistically. “Let’s do this.”

  The elevator pinged onto the thirtieth floor. Tenari threw their captive over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and the four of them marched down the bleak gray access corridor to main security. A camera above the steel door swiveled to peer at them, but Schwarz marched straight to the door and swiped his magnetic card through the electronic lock. A fat, red-faced man in a black uniform blazer half stood from behind his bank of video monitors. His hand reached down to his control board. Lyons raised his silenced SOCOM .45. The guard stopped reaching for the alarm and desperately clawed at the leather flap of the holster on his hip.

  The Taser unit beneath Lyons’s barrel chuffed and the twin probes flew out trailing their wires. The barbs hit the guard’s center body mass and Lyons hit the juice. As the current raced through the guard’s body, he jerked and shuddered, going to his knees, his pistol clunking to the carpet. Lyons cut the juice, and Tenari dropped the office worker and jumped on the guard. Schwarz slid behind the security console. “Carl, there’s two chairs here. We’re missing a guard.”

  Lyons ejected his Taser’s spent cassette and snapped in a new one. “Is he on screen?”

  Schwarz swiftly hit keys and the video monitors flicked from camera to camera throughout IESHEN Group corporate area. “I don’t see him, but these two guys are supposed to be on the buddy system here in main security. He’s supposed to stay close.”

  “There won’t be any cameras in the toilets. Find me the closest.”

  Schwarz pulled up a schematic of the thirtieth floor. “There’s one right down this access corridor and to the left.”

  Tenari loomed up from the bound guard. “You want me to get him?”

  “You never leave his side.” Lyons pointed at Tokaido. “I got this one.”

  Lyons trotted down the corridor and found the men’s room. He silently opened the door and entered. The soft crepe soles of his boots made no noise as he crept in. A radio was playing and all the stall doors were open except one. He stepped up to the stall and kicked in the metal door. A young man wearing a black security blazer jerked up in horror from the German sports page he was reading.

  “Up!” Lyons roared. “Schnell!”

  The guard dropped his paper and grabbed for his pants. Lyons let him pull them up but not fasten them. A man holding up his pants wasn’t in a position to resist and even if he dropped them it was an instant hobble. Lyons grabbed the guard by his lapels and swung him out of the stall. He slammed his palm between the man’s shoulder blades and propelled him forward. “Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!”

  Lyons marched the pleading guard back to main security. “Tino, tie him up and put him with his friend. Gadgets, what have you got, did the translator software work?”

  Schwarz and Tokaido pushed away from the console.

  “The computer controlling internal security is pretty simple and not tied to the main system,” Schwarz stated. “It just collates the security logs and coordinates the cameras, alarms, fire suppression and sends out signals to local police and fire. Those two jokers don’t get relieved until 6:00 a.m. We own the building.”

  “Does this place have lockdown?”

  Schwarz pointed at a big red button. “Oh, yeah.”

  Lyons thumbed his com link. “Control, this is Ironman. The building is secure. Proceeding to target.”

  Hal Brognola’s voice came across the link. “Affirmative, Ironman.”

  Lyons jerked his head at Tokaido and Tenari. “Let’s do it.”

  The Able Team leader directed his men back to the elevator. IESHEN Group’s corporate mainframe was located on the floor just below the executive offices of the directors on the seventieth floor. The elevator came to a halt on the sixty-ninth. The service elevators didn’t reach the executive suites. They walked down the service corridor and entered the sixty-ninth floor. The stark gray corridor gave way to office hallways of plush carpet, teakwood walls and priceless art objects.

  Schwarz spoke from the security suite. “Corporate mainframe is at the end of the hall. I have you on camera.”

  “Roger that,” Lyons confirmed. At the end of the hall the expensive hardwoods of the office entries gave way to the cold steel of a double security door. Lyons took out his master magnetic card and swiped it. A red light blinked on the control panel and an electronic chime peeped unhappily. The door remained resolutely shut.

  Schwarz came across the line instantly. “Ironman, you just set off an unauthorized access alarm. I suppressed it. Try again.”

  “Affirmative.” Lyons swiped the card and nothing happened. “What’s happening?”

  “Hold on.”

  Schwarz thumbed his com link. “Control, this is Able Two. Key codes are not working.”

  In the remote communications van, Hal swiveled in his chair. “Mr. Deyn?”

  Laurentius Deyn glanced at Franka Marx. The computer expert sighed and shook her head. “We did not give them the access codes, Herr Deyn. We gave the Americans the electronic algorithms of the lock system. From that they designed their own master keys. If the door does not open, the error has to be on their end.”

  Brognola’s brows drew down. He’d known Gadgets Schwarz for a very long time. He’d met systems that had tested his limits. A lock whose electronic guts he’d already examined wasn’t one of them. “I find that difficult to accept.”

  Deyn shook his head slowly. “I find it difficult to accept that this mission may have been compromised, but it is a possibility we may be forced to accept. Perhaps your men should abort. Have them withdraw the same way they went in.”

  Brognola punched his link. “Ironman, this is control. There’s a possibility that the operation has been compromised. Our allies suggest you abort.”

  Carl Lyons stood in front of the steel doors. His blue eyes bore into them as he weighed his options. “No way. We own the building. I’m going in hard. Tell our allies that we may need tech support on the inside. Get Pol and the chopper here now. If you detect movement on the police bands, we’ll lockdown and keep crunching on the computer until the last second and then extract by air.”

  Brognola turned to Deyn. “You heard the man.”


  Deyn sat back in his seat and looked at his security man. Mahke’s voice rumbled like braking slate. “Risky.”

  “Your call, Ironman,” Brognola stated.

  Lyons faced the door. He thought for a moment before hitting his com link. “Gadgets, how many people are in the building?”

  “Not counting us, security logs show 115 including IESHEN employees, private security and cleaning services. You want a breakdown by floors?”

  “Negative.” Lyons pulled a length of flexible charge out of his coverall. “Gadgets, I need the fire alarm suppressed on the sixty-ninth floor, we’re going in hard.”

  “Affirmative, fire alarms are off.”

  Lyons pulled the safety strip off of the triangular cable of explosive to reveal its adhesive side. He pressed the five-foot length against the seam between the two steel doors and pushed in a detonator pin. Lyons took out his cell phone and pressed the star three times to arm the detonator. His team stepped back as he pressed the pound key.

  “Fire in the hole.”

  Fire spit along the five-foot cable and the charge hissed like an enraged rattlesnake as the shaped charge burned through the steel. The blackened doors fell open to reveal a Spartanly furnished room. Banks of rack-mounted servers took up a full wall with familiar green LED lights blinking and the whir of cooling fans. A table with three chairs faced three sets of monitors and keyboards. Tokaido took the central seat.

  Lyons peered over his shoulder. “What’ve you got?”

  “It’s big, but it’s a pretty straightforward business system. They’re running a very large Oracle database on top of Linux servers.”

  “How’re you going to hack it?”

  “Hacking a computer is a series of steps. The good news is you putting me physically in front of the target allows me to circumvent about ninety percent of them. We have two choices as I see it. One is, I can use cracking software. We push our way in through brute force. The software will generate millions of passwords based on number, letter and word sequences until we crack their security codes.”

  “Pros and cons?”

  “Pro? This is the safest route, detection-wise. Once we’re done I can easily convince the computer we were never here and the millions of code sequences were never run.”

  “Con?” Lyons probed.

  “The problem is that the process is like trying every possible combination on a lock. It can take time. Also, while most business systems operate in English, IESHEN Group is running their data core in German. I’ll have to use German language cracking software. It’s good, but not as comprehensive as my English language software. If I’d had more time, I could have expanded it.”

  “Time’s at a premium. What’s our other choice?”

  Tokaido smiled slyly and pulled out a gold-colored CD. “This.”

  Lyon’s arctic blue eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”

  “Why, it’s a bootable distro of a LINUX Operating System on CD.”

  “Lose the geek-speak.”

  The young hacker sighed patiently. “It’s pretty simple. Most of the time when you’re hacking you’re creeping around in someone else’s operating system trying not to get caught.”

  “And?”

  “I’m going to reboot the server with my own, customized Linux Operating System to bypass the IESHEN Group’s regular Linux and their built-in security levels entirely.”

  “You’ll own their computers.”

  “Like Able owns this building.” Tokaido grinned. “I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want.”

  “Yeah? So what’s the downside?”

  “Tomorrow they’ll know their system was rebooted.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Tokaido shrugged. “Exactly that. In the morning someone is going to see that the computer rebooted during the night. Of course, computers can reboot for lots of reasons, bugs in the system, power surges. They might get suspicious, but with luck they’ll never know we were here.”

  Lyons gazed back at the blackened security doors. “Tomorrow? They’re gonna know we were here.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “The reboot is quicker. Do it.”

  Tokaido paused. “See if you can get me linked with the remote van.”

  “Why?”

  “Like I said, all the data is in German. The Bear’s translation software is the best there is, but no translation is perfect. A native operator could speed things up by getting me past anything the software doesn’t recognize.”

  Lyons thumbed his mike. “Control, this is Ironman. We are going to install our own operating system. Requesting native translation support on your end.”

  “Hold on, Ironman.” In the control van, Hal Brognola turned to Deyn and arched a questioning eyebrow.

  Laurentius Deyn steepled his fingers. The plan had been to get the enemy into corporate headquarters. Once the Americans had found themselves unable to open the door to the corporate main computer complex, they would extract back down through the parking garage and find themselves face-to-face with a platoon of heavily armed men.

  Deyn hadn’t counted on the Americans bringing a flexible shaped charge with them.

  Deyn slid his gaze to Mahke. The big security man had been busily text-messaging on his cell phone and redistributing the teams for an assault on the building. He held up five fingers behind Brognola’s head. He needed five more minutes to position the teams. Deyn nodded. “Very well, Herr Brognola. Franka, establish a link with their computer man and give him whatever language support he needs.”

  “Establishing link.” Marx clicked a few keys and a real-time video window appeared in the top corner of her monitor. “I am ready to assist you.”

  Tokaido’s face went blank as he stared at the video window on his end. “Uh…One moment control.” He squelched his mike. “Carl, T.”

  The two men looked over. “What have you got?”

  “Tell me I’m hallucinating.”

  Tenari reared to his full height. “Jesus! It’s the cyberhottie!”

  Lyon’s blood ran cold. He flicked a dial on his com link so that only Able Team and Brognola could hear him. “This is a trap. Pol, we need helicopter extraction immediately. Gadgets, on my call, give me lockdown on the building. Hal…get out of there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Herr Deyn, I do not know what is happening. The Americans have turned off their microphone,” Franka Marx said, frowning.

  Deyn’s hand drifted underneath his coat. “Mr. Brognola?”

  “I don’t know.” The big Fed shrugged and tapped his earpiece. “I can’t hear anything, either. Maybe you should—” The man from Justice slapped leather for his .40-caliber Glock. One of Mahke’s men whipped up his weapon and the ruby beam of his laser sight gleamed into life. Brognola’s Glock roared three times in rapid succession and the .40-caliber flat-head bullets caved in the security man’s cranium. The second security guard swung his weapon in line with Brognola’s head. He slid down out of his seat as the submachine gun snarled and punched a line of holes in the side of the van. The Glock boomed as its trigger was double tapped. The two bullets punched through the guard’s throat and Marx screamed as she and her computer display were slopped with arterial spray.

  Brognola whipped his weapon around to bring down Deyn, but Mahke’s huge hand clamped around his wrist like a vise. Brognola was a big man but Mahke was huge. His size-seventeen shoe thudded into the Justice man’s chest and pinned him against the side of the van like an insect. His hand went numb as Mahke squeezed.

  “Drop it,” the German ordered.

  The big Fed struggled to bring his pistol to bear. Mahke pressed his thumb into Brognola’s ulnar nerve just below his hand and his fist opened of its own accord. The pistol clattered to the floor of the van. Laurentius Deyn leaned forward in his chair and pressed the cold muzzle of a Walther P-5 into the American’s temple.

  The back door of the van flew open and the two guards leveled their weapons.

&nb
sp; “Cease your struggling Herr Brognola. It is futile.”

  “Able, I’m compromised!” the big Fed snarled. “Lockdown and extrac—”

  Brognola’s vision went white as Mahke seized his jaw and squeezed both mandible hinges, stopping just short of popping his jaw from its moorings to his skull. Deyn leaned back in his chair and spoke into his microphone. “Forbes. Zabyshny.” Deyn pulled up his schematics of IESHEN Group corporate headquarters. “Full assault.”

  ALARMS RANG throughout the building as Schwarz initiated lockdown. All the doors on the ground floor instantly locked and steel-mesh security gates began lowering across them. Heavy iron bars began descended down over the entrance to the underground parking. All of the elevators froze on the floors they were on. Lyons, Tenari and Tokaido ran for the roof. “Pol! What’s your ETA!”

  “I am inbound! ETA three minutes!”

  “Gadgets!” Lyons ripped open the door to the stairs leading to the sixtieth floor. “Sitrep!”

  “We have men with guns inside the building! Some of the cleaning people and after-hour executives were plants! We should expect assault teams any second!”

  “Gadgets, what are you going to do?”

  “It’s thirty floors up to link up with you! I got armed men on the floors in between us! I think I’m going to head down. They won’t expect that!” Schwarz’s voice went cold. “Maybe I’ll go see how Hal is doing. They won’t expect that, either.”

  “Keep your com link open!”

  “Roger that.” Schwarz glanced around at his screens. There wasn’t much else he could do from here. He took the guard’s P-7 K-3 pistols and their spare magazine from their flap holsters. The little .380 automatics were dreadfully underpowered in Schwarz’s view of the world, but they beat a sack full of rocks, and he only had one spare magazine for his .45. He stopped a moment and stared at the smaller of the two bound and gagged guards. The wicked curve of his Emerson Tactical Persian folding knife snapped open with a flick of his wrist. “You.”

  CARL LYONS BURST into the executive suite. It was blissfully empty of enemies. Blancanales’s voice crackled across the com link. “Ironman! You have two helicopters landing on the roof! Armed and armored men deploying! Squad strength! I—Goddamn it! I’m taking fire! I’ve got company!”