If he thought Ivan’s suit was bad, he wasn’t sure how to describe the monstrosity this man wore. While the suit had been pressed, it gave off a subtle cheap look, and he guessed the man had only just recently purchased it, most likely for the meeting that was about to start. The suit had pinstripes down the length of the maroon fabric, and did nothing for his features, making him look like someone out of an Al Capone film, only with a smaller budget.
This American undoubtedly lacked taste, that much was clear.
Behind the not so well-dressed man stood another. This one did not try to disguise himself as anything other than what he was. The large man, his long oily ponytail hanging down his back, had to be hired muscle.
“Ivan Anisimov and Dmitry Ivanov?” the first man asked, his brown hair an inch too long for big business. “Stephen Hosking. We spoke on the phone.” He extended his arm, and Ivan shook his hand, followed by Dmitry.
He noted the man’s calloused palms and slightly dirty fingernails. He was accustomed to hard work. He frowned. Not the type to sit behind a desk all day. He glanced about the almost empty warehouse before turning back to his client, noting the wooden desk complete with a chair and a state-of-the-art computer system behind him, the only item which looked at odds to its surroundings.
“We’re a relatively new company,” the first man—Stephen—stated, once he noticed Dmitry take in their surroundings. “Still in the start-up phase, which is why we want you here. We’re interested in getting our entire system computerized, to be used autonomously. To lessen the supervision required.”
It sounded like something a lot of small time companies wanted, to limit the amount of employees they would need to pay. Especially in today’s economy and recession, a dollar saved is always best.
“Sounds doable.” His gaze swept the large, empty warehouse. Nothing had changed; he hadn’t missed anything since looking around a moment ago. A prickle of unease raced down his back.
His attention moved to the muscle, whose expression gave nothing away. He looked fierce, and Dmitry doubted it was an act, because he seemed like the type who chewed on nails for breakfast. He crossed his large, thick arms across his chest, causing his muscles to plump. If Dmitry hadn’t been Russian, he might have been scared or at least intimidated, but men like that grew on trees where he came from.
He shot Ivan a look as he and the client discussed the logistics company, noticing his friend’s manner appeared relaxed. Ivan didn’t seem worried about the situation. Dmitry started toward the computer, pushing aside his concerns and settled into a comfortable position in the chair, in front of the computer, while Ivan hung back.
“What kind of traffic are you looking at and how would you like this to be structured?” he asked as he began typing on the keyboard. He frowned when he saw how advanced—and expensive—the system was and knew immediately no start-up company could afford such an expenditure this early on. Not unless the company needed to hide sensitive information. Just what type of import and export business was the client running? His mind immediately went to drugs.
His stomach knotted, his concerns once again taking precedence, the feeling of impending doom washing over him that he couldn’t shake. He could no longer ignore his discomfort. The client’s phone beeped and the man glanced down and read the screen, his face changing in a heartbeat. He wondered what the message said. He and Ivan shared a glance.
“I believe, Mr. Ivanov, there has been a misunderstanding,” Stephen began, tucking the phone back into his pocket. “I regret the misleading circumstances of your being here, but what I want is rather sensitive, and I could hardly advertise for such a thing. I want you to locate something for me. I am prepared to pay handsomely for it.”
Dmitry’s face darkened and he tensed, ready for possible attack. An unconscious reaction, which came from growing up in Moscow. Anger bubbled to the surface. He didn’t like being played, especially as a fool. He’d accepted the job, wanting their business to succeed. He should’ve investigated his new client better instead of being blinded by money and prestige. He’d been careless.
Had the contents of the message the American received been a verification of his identity and Ivan’s? It would explain why the client had suddenly lost all pretense. The reasons why such a measure had been required made him worry, his blood chilling at the implications.
“Not everything is for sale,” he replied simply and truthfully. “I certainly am not.”
He stood, only able to guess what the man wanted him to do. There were only a few things one could not advertise for, and he wasn’t about to do something illegal for a man who misrepresented himself and his needs. He especially didn’t like to be fucked about, and he wasn’t even sure the man had given him his real name. He made his way toward Ivan.
“Wait,” Stephen said. He held up his hands in surrender. “I apologize. Please stay.”
Dmitry glanced over at Ivan, who shrugged, appearing perplexed. He turned to the American, preparing to hear him out. He would rather not waste the trip. So what if it was not quite the job he had been expecting? He could be flexible, depending on what the job entailed.
“What is it you want us to do exactly?” Dmitry asked.
He wouldn’t make promises. He was a man of principal and integrity. He may not be the Russian Federation’s man of the year, but there were certain things he would not do. Compromising innocent people was one of them. In fact, it was right up on the top of his list. He’d spent many nights knee-deep in illegal activities, so he wasn’t a saint, but his actions had never been for personal or even monetary gain. He just liked seeing if he could penetrate the most elaborate security systems in the world. He soon discovered he could and did so often.
The client produced a piece of paper from his chest pocket, and handed it to Dmitry. He took the scrap of paper from him and viewed it. His stomach clenched as he took in the IP address.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It became clear he and Ivan were in deep shit. If they didn’t watch themselves, they’d be buried in it. The IP was a government standard address; he knew the sequence of numbers well. The American couldn’t possibly want him to bypass a government firewall. He would be fucking crazy if he did.
“There’s been a mistake,” he said. “This is government. That most certainly wasn’t our deal.”
He waved the piece of paper in front of him, knowing things were going south fast. While he liked to think of himself as a grey hat—a person who sometimes crossed the line between legal and illegal—he knew well enough to let sleeping dogs lie, and to never mess with federal governments. Particularly the Americans. If there had ever been a nation he didn’t want to fuck over, it was them. Piss them off, and he’d have an enemy for life. He didn’t want to have a satellite aimed on him until a squadron could take him out.
“Well, I’m changing the deal,” the American declared, oblivious to the repercussions. Or he simply didn’t care.
Which made him worry all the more.
“Even I’m smart enough to know it’s stupid to fuck with the American government,” Dmitry replied. “It’s a good way to end up dead or have yourself and your family under surveillance for the next century. You Americans are not so forgiving as you let on to be.”
The American produced a Desert Eagle from the waistband of his pants and had it pointed at Ivan before Dmitry could blink. His hand remained steady as he held the heavy gun, obviously familiar with the weapon. Dmitry realized too late he’d been right. The man was not a businessman, at least not the type he’d been expecting. He knew the rough side of living, and it showed clearly now that he wasn’t trying to repress it.
“If you don’t do as I ask, your friend here dies,” he said, his voice cold and hard.
Dmitry held up his hands, not wanting the hot-headed American to get wound up and accidentally shoot Ivan. “Calm down. This won’t get you anywhere.”
The man’s cool gaze flicked over him. “I seriously doubt that. In my experi
ence, I rarely get any objections after I bring out my big gun.”
Ivan rolled his eyes in a gesture Dmitry recognized. His friend had become unimpressed and bored. Not good. Ivan could barely keep his mouth shut at the best of times, though he understood how he felt; it was hard to take the theatrics seriously.
“Where we come from, there are some actual scary mother-fuckers, not some two-bit wannabes like you,” Ivan said, his tone contemptuous.
Dmitry closed his eyes and counted to ten, letting his breath out slowly, trying to remain calm. It wasn’t working. His blood pressure shot through the roof and he could feel the tension in his muscles.
Way to open your mouth, Ivan. Talk about hot headed.
The American would surely shoot them just to prove the length of his manhood.
“Ivan,” Dmitry whispered, shaking his head slightly when his friend turned to look at him. Ivan, a man who could sell snow cones in the middle of a Russian winter, didn’t have much diplomacy when it came to these types of situations. Dmitry didn’t want him to say anything that could be regretted later.
“I have no time to mess around. One of you are going to get me what I want. I don’t care who or how, just fucking do it.”
“I’d tell you to get fucked but I don’t think it will do any good,” Ivan retorted. He took a stance of nonchalance, just a normal day for him.
The American poised his index finger on the trigger, tightening his grip, and a second later, a loud bang resounded. Blindsided, not expecting the man to follow through, he watched in horror, powerless to intercede, as Ivan crumpled to the floor. Blood stained his shirt, the crimson liquid bubbling and running out of the neat round bullet hole in his chest.
Chapter 5
“Ivan,” Dmitry shouted, dropping to his knees beside his best friend. Lifting Ivan’s head away from the hard floor, he pressed his palm to the wound in hopes of slowing the blood loss.
Ivan struggled to breathe, each attempt quick and uneasy. Tears gathered in Dmitry’s eyes, watching helplessly as his friend of over twenty years bled out onto the dusty concrete floor of the warehouse, the fluid seeping between his fingers.
He willed Ivan to live, praying, offering everything from his health to his first born child. He and Ivan had been through a lot together, were brothers in every way except blood, and here he was about to lose him.
This cannot be happening.
They were here for a job, just an easy reprogram. They had been so happy with their new business venture, ecstatic when they’d been offered the job in the States. Ivan had called it their adventure, and here he was about to die without really living it.
Dmitry thought back to that morning, when he had asked Ivan if he’d wanted to stay at the hotel. If he had, none of this would be happening. He shook his head to clear his errant thoughts. He couldn’t change what had happened, or go back in time to alter it. Tears rained down his cheeks, yet he barely noticed. His entire consciousness remained on the man before him, his friend and confidant. The man who had gotten him into trouble time and time again. This time, it was he who had gotten Ivan into trouble. It was his fault Ivan was here, his fault he’d taken the bullet.
His life dimmed. A range of emotions he generally kept bottled up ran hotly through his body. Anger. Fear. Rage. Hopelessness. He begged and prayed, threatened and promised, but Ivan’s blood continued to spill from his body. His skin felt cool to the touch while perspiration beaded on his forehead. His friend shook uncontrollably and Dmitry knew it wouldn’t be long now.
“Promise me you’ll get the sraka, Dmitry,” Ivan gasped, fighting for breath. A lone crimson trail escaped the side of his mouth and ran down his jaw.
He didn’t bother lying to Ivan, telling him it would be all right. It couldn’t be. He could only do his best to fulfill his friend’s last wish, and Dmitry planned to make the asshole responsible pay for his crime. Provided he himself was alive to do so.
He nodded. “I promise.”
With one last shuddering breath, Ivan’s eyes became glassy, staring sightlessly up at him. He slumped over, barely holding back a howl of anguish. He knew there was nothing he could’ve done. Even had he been free to go—which was impossible now—he would never have made it to a hospital in time. The American had been accurate with his shot, fully intending to kill.
The evil man didn’t even bat an eyelash. He turned the gun on Dmitry as he slowly rose to his feet. Dmitry kept his hands where they were, visible to the man wielding the weapon. He didn’t want to annoy the American any more than he already had and wanted the chance to walk away from this, even though he would do so without his best friend. He didn’t think his odds were great. He knew he was a dead man walking, and as soon as he gave the man what he wanted, he would end up just like Ivan.
“All that could have been avoided,” the suit told him. “Now do as I ask or you’ll be joining your friend.”
Dmitry silently prayed he would get out of this alive. Nothing would work out now that his best friend was dead at the hands of a deranged sociopath, but maybe Dmitry could live. He sent the American a glare, wanting so much to destroy the man who’d shot and killed Ivan.
Now is not the time. He was unarmed and outnumbered. Somewhere deep inside him, an almost animalistic urge roared, a burning rage to fight. He tampered down his emotions, vowing to live to fight another day, pushing all irrelevant feelings aside, blinking away the tears gathering in his eyes. Now was not the time to fall apart. There would be plenty of time for that later. Now was the time to use his brain.
He sat down at the chair by the desk and poised his fingers over the keyboard, waiting for instructions from the American. He tried not to think of Ivan lying dead only a few feet away. He tried to block out the awareness of the weapon trained on him, the same gun used to kill his friend. He could feel the damp sheen of nervous sweat coating his back and forehead and a chill ran down the length of his spine.
The American returned the piece of paper to him. He stared at the damning numbers and began to type. His fingers barely touched the keys as he blindly typed in a series of commands. He copied the IP address into the command box and soon found himself at the Department of Defense’s mainframe. He sucked in a deep breath.
Oh shit. The Pentagon. Great, just fucking fantastic. Of all the government agencies to hack, they had to choose DoD.
He bypassed the firewall in mere seconds. For the Pentagon, their security was not at all what it should have been. The firewall had been designed to keep hackers out. While it was strong and barred most, he found himself well past the firewall and now battling the antivirus software as he uploaded his own brand of DoS—a Denial of Service—which effectively bombarded the mainframe with external communications, rendering the system slow and non-responsive, allowing him unlimited access.
He found the government’s network-based intrusion-detection system laughable. He could write a better program in his sleep. Infiltrating the network was almost not worth his time, because any fool could do the job. He sure could show them a thing or two about security, and wondered once again why the American felt the need to hire an overseas team when a local one could have served just as well.
The answers that came to him made him sweat all the more. He certainly wasn’t liking any of the reasons that floated about his head. He needed a plan—a smart plan—and he needed it now. He didn’t have the luxury of believing he would get out of this warehouse alive, even though he hoped. He knew too much.
He added another set of commands. On a normal day, had his friend not just been murdered, and had he been doing this of his own free will, he would have enjoyed himself. Instead, he felt edgy and afraid, sensing the crosshairs of the gun. No matter what happened in the next hour, his life would be over. Even if he happened to get away, he would be forced to hide for the rest of his life. Every keystroke was another nail in his coffin.
“How long is this going to take?” the American demanded.
Had Rome been taken in a day?
Have some fucking patience.
“Even baking a cake takes forty minutes,” he replied, glancing at the hand holding the gun. “Also, I’m not used to working while I have a gun pointed at me.”
The American lowered his weapon, but didn’t holster it. “Hurry up about it,” he snapped, then paced back and forth behind him.
Dmitry turned his attention back to the black command box hovering in the top left hand corner of his screen, above the Department of Defense’s logo, and ignored his surroundings.
He opened the file marked System Administrator and created a new persona. He named it GreyHat01, the general ID he had for adding users. It kept things simple. He always knew what to look for when he needed to go back to wipe out his tracks. While this was his trademark, he wasn’t stupid enough to leave it where it could be found and traced back to him. If he ever got caught, he’d rather not be linked to all of his jobs.
Using his new status as an administrator, he uploaded a ghost—which if the DoD’s antivirus or system watcher detected the intrusion, would install a new ghost in milliseconds after the previous one had been deleted or flagged. The ghost’s job was to collect the information required in the quickest time possible. While he would normally upload his own brand of spyware, he didn’t have the timeframe needed. Spyware collected bits of information over a period of time, and due to the fact that the American stood agitated behind him, Dmitry didn’t think he had minutes let alone hours or even days, so he didn’t bother.
He sat back in his chair and looked over his shoulder at the man. “I’m in. What is it you need?”
The American smirked. “There’s a file imbedded somewhere deep in the system, marked by the name Sundown. I want you to retrieve the data. That’s it.”
Dmitry nodded and began to locate the ominous file. After three minutes of searching through the congestion of files on the server, he came across the file hidden amongst the yearly budget and staff directory. He had no idea what it could be, and had no time to flick through it, but he knew if the man behind him would kill for it, it had to be something pretty damn important.
American Law (Law #2) Page 3
