The clock began its countdown. What Novak had hoped were sixty minutes proved to be sixty seconds.
Michaels didn’t move, and Walter joined them. Everyone else was heading for the exit. Before anyone reached it, the big black door smoothly swung closed on pneumatic pistons…and its heavy locks clacked shut.
Žmaka shoved his way to the door, clutching his MP5, cursing venomously.
“That’s not good,” Walter said. “Now what?”
Novak ignored him, blocked out the pandemonium, stepped closer to the altar, and called out: “E!”
On the screen, the gallows refigured itself:
Damn. He focused on the blank lines beneath the gallows. Last year, he’d attended a cryptography primer at Quantico, where, among other things, they’d reviewed the most frequently used letters in the English language. At the time, it hadn’t seemed particularly useful. Until now.
“T!”
Which filled in one of the blanks for the second word.
Next: “A!”
One A appeared in the first word.
The acrid scent of burning plastic and metal laced the air, and out of the corner of his eye, Novak could see coils of smoke spinning out from the server cabinets, white sparks crackling. Were the servers somehow rigged to explode?
“She’s burning it down, Novak,” Walter said. “Keep going!”
“O!”
Two more blanks filled in.
Now small flames were rippling along the routers and hard drives, and noxious smoke began to permeate the room. Inside this windowless bunker, it wouldn’t take long for all of them to suffocate. Novak forged ahead.
“I!”
Another score.
He couldn’t remember if the next most common letter was H or N or S…
“S!”
“Shit!” Adrenaline was coursing through him, sharpening his senses but dulling his deductive capabilities, the hardwired primordial fight-or-flight instinct threatening to override all logic. He crouched to stay beneath the encroaching smoke.
The clock ticked to thirty seconds.
Žmaka and his men scrambled around the space, casting about for anything useful—fire extinguishers, alternate exits, anything. The cybertechs were shouting back and forth, circling the machines, futilely attempting to disable power to the servers, probably still hoping to salvage the equipment—the evidence—as well as stymie the burn. But the metal conduit shielding the electrical cables that snaked up into the rafters could likely be severed only with power tools.
Michaels pressed closer and squeezed his arm. “You can do this, Novak. Stay focused. Go with your gut.”
The ultimate puzzle…
“H!”
Not good. And Rhea drew two arms instead of one. Bad enough that she’d filled the whole face in right from the get-go.
“Hey!” Walter screamed, stabbing a finger at one of the cameras overhead. “That’s cheating!”
Novak felt his chest tightening with dread. He was sure that one more wrong guess meant two stick legs. That’s how Rhea played. End of challenge—game over. Think…THINK! But Walter’s words kept playing in his head: That’s cheating.
Cheating?
He reconsidered the clue: the ultimate puzzle. He studied the partial solution. Could it be that easy? The church felt like a sauna, with the servers now fully aflame. Novak could barely see the screen through the haze of smoke.
“G!”
Big score. And confirmation of his hunch. The ultimate puzzle. The impossible challenge. The legendary knot at the ancient Turkish capital of Gordium that no man had ever undone. Until Alexander the Great arrived on the scene like a goddamn rock star and sliced through the impenetrable tangle with one stroke of his sword. Cheating. Or simply, literally, cutting to the truth. The Alexandrian solution.
“I’ve got it,” Novak said.
Walter, in a prayer-like position on his knees, smoke haloing his Afro, threw up his hands. “For fuck’s sake, Novak, what you’ve got is fifteen seconds! Then fucking say it, will ya? Before we all suffocate!”
“Gordian knot!” Novak shouted.
Nothing happened.
Please don’t cheat, Agent Novak. You’ve seen what I do to cheaters.
Novak’s pulse drummed in his ears. He couldn’t tell what was happening on the screen. He strode up to the monitor, smoke be damned, and grabbed it, fully expecting to see the completed stick figure, game-ending legs and all. Even though he thought for sure he had it right.
Michaels followed him and grabbed his arm. “The countdown stopped at three seconds.”
“Then why isn’t anything happening?” Walter said, still low to the floor.
Not for the first time, Novak wondered if this was all another ruse Rhea had orchestrated to eliminate her most dangerous opponents. How about you, Agent Novak? You’ve been an interesting adversary. From the moment Chase Lombardi had gotten his head blown off, a trail of breadcrumbs had been leading them here, slowly and steadily—methodically. And he’d been obligingly following it. She lured us here.
The monitor went blank again—nothing but that damn blood-red screen.
Everyone in the room was down on the floor, with the smoke blanketing them. It wouldn’t take long now.
Barely visible through the haze, a new message appeared on the screen, letter by letter:
NICELY DONE, AGENT NOVAK.
Then the locks on the entryway snapped back, and the pistons retracted to pull the big black door open.
# 76.02
When they emerged from the church, Michaels took a deep breath of fresh air and hooked her arm through Novak’s to steady herself going down the steps. “Great job in there. Talk about staying cool under pressure.”
“You were damn steady yourself. I almost lost it, more than once,” he replied truthfully.
“But you didn’t.” She smiled and squeezed his arm. “I was starting to believe sweet Rhea was going to let us all die in there. Do you think she would have opened the door if you hadn’t solved the puzzle?”
“No. I think we’d all be dead.” And he meant it. “She plays for keeps.”
“Bitch.”
“Exactly.” He saw news cameras pointed in their direction, close to where Žmaka stood by a Humvee, barking commands through a walkie-talkie. The commander met his gaze, gave him a thumbs-up. Novak nodded.
“How did you know that answer, anyway?” she asked. “Gordian knot? I mean, that’s pretty obscure.”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. She was toying with me. She seems to know me real well and that I’d probably get it right. She also knew that if I got it right, I’d be coming for her. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
“Guys! Over here!” Walter, huddled at the CERT command truck with members of the cyber team, waved them over. “You need to look at this!”
# 76.03
“The website’s still up and running,” Walter informed them, pointing at his laptop. “Definitely a new set of servers. The ones inside are all toast.”
“Christ,” Novak said.
“But get this: the targets have changed,” Walter said. “She’s definitely not gunning for criminals anymore. Or you or me or Tim. See for yourself.” He handed the laptop to Novak.
On the Bounty4Justice home page, Novak still saw bounties ticking higher and higher. But the thumbnail head shots of criminals had been replaced by simple phrases like QUANTUM.LOCK and PORT.BLASTER and CHATTER.WORM.
“What do all those words mean?” Michaels asked.
“That’s the problem,” Walter said. “Those are the code names of covert surveillance algorithms used by the NSA and other intelligence agencies, internationally. Their arsenal. Looks as if Rhea’s posting the code in open source. And she’s paying big money to any hackers who disarm them.”
The New York Times @nytimes • 1hr
@Bounty4Justice lives on after standoff in Estonia—shifts bounties from vigilante justice to patching cybersecurity threats.
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nyti.ms/3jltP7i
PCMag @PCMag • 11m
@Bounty4Justice 2.0: a hacktivist’s relentless crusade to fortify the Internet…at any cost.
bit.ly/1frYRTl254t
# 77.01
@ Summit, New Jersey
Monday, 11/13/2017
11:05:01 EST
Novak was at the wheel, with his mom buckled tight in the passenger seat and his dad fidgeting in the backseat. He kept the Impala to the slow lane on Route 24.
“We’re running a bit early,” his dad said anxiously. “Appointment’s not till eleven-thirty. I figure today we’ll just get a feel for the place. You sure you don’t need to be at the office?”
“I’m sure, Dad,” Novak replied, making eye contact with him in the rearview mirror. It was the third time his dad had asked him that same question. Not for lack of memory.
“Hey, you know, I saw you on CNN again this morning,” his dad said. “They keep showing that same footage of you coming out of that church, with all those police. I’ve gotten a lot of calls about it from your aunts and uncles and cousins…the neighbors, too. They’re all very impressed. And you should see my Facebook page. I can barely keep up.”
So much for maintaining a low profile, thought Novak. That clip had quickly become a media bite for the good guys—the first positive portrayal of law enforcement in an otherwise long line of mishaps and dead ends.
“You should be proud. That’s an amazing thing you were part of, over there. Taking that thing down…putting an end to all that madness with people killing one another in the streets.”
“Well, it’s not over yet,” Novak said. Not until Rhea’s in custody.
“I’d say you’re off to a strong start. By the way, everyone’s asking who that pretty woman was beside you…the one with the short hair?”
“Rosemary Michaels. She’s another agent from work.”
“Man, is she a looker. She married?”
“No.”
“Good. Because you two looked nice together. You saw it, right, Patty?”
“Umm,” his mother replied, nodding slightly and giving Novak her best smile.
“I say go for it,” his dad said.
“Umm,” his mom added approvingly.
“It’s not that easy, Dad.”
“Eh, come on, Roman. Life’s too short. If you find someone who makes you happy, you grab them.”
“We’ll see,” Novak said. He exited the highway and proceeded along the suburban side roads. Ten minutes later, he turned through the gateway for the Spring Blossoms assisted living facility. Everyone remained quiet as he followed the signs for the main building.
“Your sister told us that this one’s got the best rating for quality of care,” his dad finally said. “And they just remodeled all the rooms.”
“Looks really nice,” Novak said truthfully. The grounds were meticulously kept, and the sprawling residential buildings looked practically new: immaculate stonework and siding, crisp architectural roof shingling, freshly painted trim—a portrait of order. He glanced over at his mother. She was doing her best to stay strong on the outside. But as he approached the visitors’ entrance and an attendant with an empty wheelchair waved him to a stop, he could see her eyes welling up. “It’s going to be okay, Mom,” he said. He put his hand on top of hers. “We’re all here for you.”
She nodded and gave his hand a tremulous squeeze.
“Okay. Let’s go on in and have a look,” his dad said as cheerily as he could manage.
Novak got out of the car, and a valet trotted over and handed him a parking chit. As they headed toward the entrance, his BlackBerry chimed the arrival of an email reply he’d been awaiting.
From: Joshua.L.Tierney@nsa.gov
Sent: November 13, 2017 at 11:21 AM
To: Tim Knight, Walter Koslowski, Roman Novak
Cc: Dilip Kapoor
Subject: Query requests 658YHRZJ405-001, 658YHRZJ405-002, 658YHRZJ405-003
: FIREWOLF.IP.query.results.pdf
: FIREWOLF.emails.pdf
: FIREWOLF.SingLao.pdf
: FIREWOLF.Mfg.China.pdf
: PIKE-JAM.Atlas5.chats.pdf
Team CLICKKILL,
I’ve attached network mapping and search results for the moniker “Firewolf,” scrubbed for relevance to your investigation. The same IP addresses appear in the hard drive seized from SingLao North American Shipping, Inc., in Canada as well as a manufacturing company in Shenzhen, China, named Chongxin Shenme. I’ve activated network sniffers to monitor future transmissions to these IPs and will consult with my superiors as to what intercept data might be made available to your task force.
I successfully recovered exchanges between Randall Scott (online handle “JAM”) and Jeremy Grimes (online handle “PIKE”) carried out over the past eighteen months on a VPN named Atlas-5. Those exchanges provide insight into how Razorwire was conceived and designed and contain numerous references to Firewolf, corroborating that this individual was funding Razorwire’s development. They also provide a timeline for what we now know to be the breach initiated by Rhea.
Regretfully, I cannot provide details concerning our internal investigations into Randall Scott’s procurement of proprietary algorithms that Rhea had stolen and incorporated into Bounty4Justice’s core coding (a.k.a. Razorwire). I have forwarded those inquiries to my superiors and am awaiting guidance.
Finally, I traced the text messages sent to Chase Lombardi’s phone on the day of his murder. Those transmissions originated on a secure satellite band reserved for domestic intelligence assets. In the interest of national security operations, I regretfully cannot investigate the matter further. However, during the course of my analysis, I was able to determine that in the month preceding Lombardi’s murder, someone had spoofed cipher keys to send secure directives to this intelligence asset. We can safely assume that the hacker and Rhea are one and the same. It seems that the compromised asset was fully unaware of the hack and that Chase Lombardi should be considered collateral damage of a very high-level security breach.
Best of luck,
Josh Tierney
Senior Digital Network Exploitation Analyst
The Denver Post @denverpost • 11m
Worldwide, the arrests keep coming as authorities pursue criminal targets deactivated by @Bounty4Justice.
dpo.st/1mplVXR54q
# 78.01
@ Lake City, Colorado
Friday, 11/17/2017
10:05:01 MST
Snow drifted gently earthward from steel-gray clouds, and it was slow going on Route 149, even with the rented Jeep’s four-wheel drive engaged. Michaels was at the wheel, bundled up, trailing alongside the roiling Lake Fork Gunnison River as it cut its way through the white-capped mountain peaks of the Continental Divide.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Novak peered out the window, studying the rugged, snow-blanketed terrain. Hinsdale County featured the fewest roads and the most mountains in all of Colorado, with barely more than eight hundred residents spread over its 1,123 square miles of rough-and-tumble wilderness of forests and lakes. The ideal sanctuary for an expert survivalist.
He looked over at Michaels. She caught him staring.
She smiled. “What?”
“You have plans for Thanksgiving?”
“Nothing set in stone. Didn’t want to overcommit with everything that’s going on. And my parents decided to go on a holiday cruise to the Caribbean. Why?”
“There’s an open seat at the Novak house,” he said. “If you don’t mind putting up with my chatty sister and her spoiled kids.”
Again, that smile. “I think I can handle that.”
He smiled back. “Sounds like a plan, then.”
They drove through Lake City—a historic small town with wooden storefronts stacked side by side and a saloon and a stone-block bank where prospectors once deposited gold and silver. Continuing farther downriver, Michaels, directed by the GPS, turne
d off on a side road that wound its way up along a steep mountain pass, up over a ridge, and along three miles of undulating twists and turns to the mailbox that marked their final destination. Set back nearly a hundred yards from the road stood a modest wood-planked cabin with a corrugated steel roof and smoke spinning out its brick chimney.
“That’s it,” Michaels said.
Novak took out his binoculars and scanned the area. There was a Chevy Tahoe parked near a stacked cord of quartered firewood and a snowmobile, too. He couldn’t see through the windows.
“Anything?” Michaels asked.
“Nothing.”
“We came here to talk to him, right?”
He looked at her. “We did.”
“Then let’s go talk to him.”
She turned at the mailbox and followed the tire ruts in the snow that led to the cabin.
When they were only halfway there, the front door opened. A wiry man, dressed in jeans and flannel, stepped out onto the porch. He had a crew cut and beard stubble. Novak saw the resemblance to David Furlong immediately.
# 78.02
The cabin’s interior had a simple floor plan, with exposed rafters and an open loft, walls covered in knotty pine, scuffed oak-plank floors. Novak didn’t see a computer or laptop or television, just some newspapers and magazines on an end table next to the leather sofa that faced the wood-burning stove.
“Can I make you some coffee?” Jonathan Farrell asked as Novak and Michaels took off their gloves and snow coats.
“That sounds wonderful,” Michaels said.
“Please,” Novak said.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” he said, pointing to the sofa.
The agents settled in as Farrell went over to scoop some grinds into his brewer’s filter basket.
“What brings you all the way out here?” asked Farrell.
Bounty Page 36
