Wolfe Trap

by S L Shelton

  “I really didn’t have much of a choice,” I continued. “I didn’t mean to upset you—especially after you went to such lengths to be…”

  She stared at me suspiciously for a moment before nodding. “Okay,” she replied with doubt in her tone before walking away again.

  I went back to my programming. I’d try to patch it up a little more once I had finished hacking the firewalls that contained some of the fake corporate account holders.

  I hope you were just trying to screw me, Penny, and not screw me over.

  **

  6:15 p.m. on Friday, January 14th (the next day)—The Farm, Camp Peary, Virginia

  My phone chimed as I was sitting down to my evening meal. I looked at my phone screen and saw it was a secure call from Storc.

  “Yep,” I answered.

  “I’ve mapped the bridge for fifteen percent of the accounts in the Caymans,” he said.

  “Cool,” I replied as I got up, leaving my tray sitting on the table. “Do you have enough to get a picture of the upstream sources?”

  “It’s a pretty good cross sampling,” he replied. “I’d feel better with twenty-five percent, but I’m comfortable we have enough to build a decent map. That will take a few days as well…maybe a couple of weeks if you want the same stealth measures taken.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Full stealth.”

  “You got it,” he replied.

  “Can I send my scripts now?” I asked.

  “If they change anything because of the intrusion, we’ll lose our opportunity on the rest of the end accounts,” he replied with a warning in his tone. “But it’s your call. Hell, I may be giving them too much credit. They might not put two and two together.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” I muttered.

  “It would be a break.”

  “Well don’t count on it. But keep your eyes open,” I replied.

  “I will—so yeah. Go ahead and send your worm in. If it’s as good as I think it is, we may be cool with the rest of the accounts,” he said reassuringly. “In either case, I can have the beginnings of a map for the upstream funds flow in the next ten to fourteen days.”

  “You rock, my friend,” I said. “Go keep being awesome.”

  “You too,” Storc replied. “And Scott—please be careful.”

  “I always am,” I replied and ended the call.

  I walked back over to the table and sat in front of my food. “I don’t understand,” Paul said with mild disgust.

  “What?” Eric asked.

  “The phone,” Paul said.

  “Cut him some slack, Paul,” Dylan said as he slid in next to Eric and sat. “In a few months when you graduate, he might hire you. You don’t want to alienate your boss before you even get an assignment, do you?”

  Paul scoffed at the suggestion but returned to eating. Dylan looked at me and winked, but I saw the tension in his shoulders and a mild wave of microexpressions that indicated anger.

  What are you hiding, Dylan?

  I sat and ate, quietly ignoring the banter around me as I braced myself for what I was about to do. As soon as I was finished with my meal, I walked away without a word and headed for the building that housed headquarters.

  “Is Nick here?” I asked one of the instructors I passed.

  “Conference room,” he said, nodding his head in that direction.

  “Thanks,” I replied before walking that direction. When I arrived, the door was open. Nick, Ray, Kobe, and the head of internal security were inside.

  “Hey,” I said, drawing their attention to me.

  Nick looked at me expectantly. “What’s up?”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  “Ready for wh—?” he began, but then realization struck him. “Come on in and close the door.”

  I did as instructed and took the seat next to Nick. “Are you good?” I asked.

  Nick looked at Ray.

  “I’d feel better if we had more security,” Ray replied. “I’m nervous about the Baynebridge draw down. We don’t have enough internal security yet to cover the gaps. You know how much firepower they used on—”

  “Is it going to get better or worse in the next week?” Nick asked, cutting Ray off and shooting him a harsh warning glare.

  “Worse,” Ray replied after nodding his understanding.

  “Then we should do this now,” Nick said, sounding as if the choice was obvious.

  “It might not even do anything,” I inserted. “There’s not even a guarantee they’ll do anything but block access.”

  Nick nodded and looked at Ray again. Ray was struggling.

  “The longer we wait, the less effective it’s going to be,” Nick said. “And the harder it’s going to be to cover our assets.”

  By the tone of his voice, I could tell that he and Ray knew they were talking about Mark Gaines, but that not everyone in the room was privileged to hear it.

  Ray nodded. “Do it,” he said firmly.

  I hit send on my app before he could change his mind. My programs immediately began threading themselves through the proxy servers I had hijacked with a minor adjustment made to the stealth algorithms I normally used…this one had a fingerprint string embedded in it that a good security tech would be able to trace back to the origin. I stood and everyone watched me expectantly.

  “What?” I asked. “It could be days before they find it.”

  Nick dropped his shoulders with a look of disappointment on his face. “Then get out of here,” he said. “We were in the middle of a meeting.”

  I chuckled and turned to go watch the progress of my little viral assassin. I sat in my room and watched for a couple of hours with no results. When I went to bed, Nick still hadn’t come back. He walked in sometime after midnight.

  “Patching holes in security?” I asked.

  “Trying to,” he muttered. “The last of the Baynebridge fucks aren’t cooperating. It was all we could do to get them to man the gate.”

  “When is internal security going to fill out the ranks?” I asked.

  “Don’t you worry about security,” Nick scolded. “You focus on baiting our invisible friends and luring them to us.”

  “It won’t do much good getting them here if we let them kill us all when they arrive,” I returned with mild amusement.

  “We’re in the middle of a military base. If nothing else, we’ll get a couple of detachments over here to stand outside the fence.”

  “Ha!” I laughed. “Clerks and cooks?”

  “Shut up,” he muttered.

  I chuckled as I flipped over in bed and looked at my worm progress again—no change. I’d try another IP in the morning if there was no contact by then.

  I don’t know who’s doing your security, I thought, directed at the firewall I was hacking. But it sucks.

  eight

  The Breach

  10:15 p.m. on Saturday, January 15th (two days later)—Residence of Defense Intelligence Agency Special Projects Director, Albert Emrick, Alexandria, Virginia

  ALBERT EMRICK woke to the sound of breaking glass. He rose and looked over at his still-sleeping wife before quietly climbing out of bed and withdrawing a pistol from his nightstand.

  After wrapping a robe around himself, he quietly descended the stairs to the first floor to find his study door was ajar. I locked that…I’m certain I did, he thought.

  Leading with his weapon, he moved slowly toward the door and pushed it open wider with the tip of his gun. A hand quickly reached out from behind the door and snatched the weapon from his grasp as if he were a child being robbed of his candy.

  A sharp shove sent him into the center of his study, and he struggled to stay on his feet as he teetered backward from the force. As the door closed on his home office, the light in the corner came on to reveal a giant standing between him and his only possible escape route.

  Emrick nodded as fear turned to agitation. “You’re Gold Rush,” Emrick said as if it were an accusation rather than just an obs
ervation. He was referring to the in vitro enhancement program from the 70s and 80s that produced subjects of inordinate size and aggression—another project from GGP Labs.

  “What gave it away?” the giant said with a cruel grin.

  “I take it you’re Harbinger,” Emrick replied, rather than indulging the humor.

  The giant ignored his comment and extended his hand toward Emrick. When the massive fist opened, there in the palm was a cell phone that had been completely concealed when his hand was closed.

  Emrick looked at the phone and then back to the giant.

  The phone rang as if on command. “It’s for you,” the giant said.

  Emrick jumped back, startled, looking at the phone suspiciously.

  “Answer it,” the monster in front of him said plainly, without any inflection.

  Emrick reached out and picked up the chirping cell before putting it to his ear.

  “Hello?” Emrick said softly as if anything louder would bring the world down on him.

  “Mr. Emrick,” came a thick German accent…a voice he had not heard in years. “I have need of your services.”

  “Mr. Braun,” Emrick replied, pasting a thin smile on his face. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yes,” Braun replied warmly. “I assume since we haven’t heard from you in such a long time, the additional level of privacy and funding you received from Congress is working well for you.”

  Before answering, Emrick pulled the phone away from his ear and looked to ensure it was, in fact, a secure connection. Satisfied, he continued. “One can never have too much support or too much funding.”

  “I have need of an asset,” Braun said, cutting to the chase.

  “An asset?” Emrick replied as if confused, but he knew full well the head of security for Spryte Enterprises was asking for an enhanced human asset.

  “Yes, Mr. Emrick…one of those individuals that our organization helped provide you access to from the outset.”

  Emrick tensed. “You can’t just call and ask for an asset like you’re ordering a pizza,” Emrick said quietly, turning his back on the giant.

  “Actually, I can,” Braun replied calmly. “Since the Congressional and Senate support you enjoy is entirely our doing, I feel quite comfortable asking for whatever we might need…and we do have a need.”

  Emrick felt the big man behind him take a step closer. There was no clear way out of this, though it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time enhanced assets were provided to nongovernmental organizations… Harbinger being a good example.

  “We noted with some distress the recent suicide of a GGP Labs employee,” Braun continued after getting no response. “We’ve taken the liberty of looking into it further, knowing how important GGP is to your program. Our initial findings were quite startling.”

  Emrick felt the blood drain from his face. “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” he replied.

  “Come now, Mr. Emrick. If our cursory investigation was able to place DIA personnel at the site of Ms. Jones’s unfortunate accident, how hard would it be, for example, the FBI to uncover the connection,” Braun said with an amused tone. “Particularly if someone were to point them in the right direction.”

  “That goes both ways,” Emrick sneered, causing the giant to shift behind him.

  “No,” Braun said plainly. “You’d find that is not the case.”

  Emrick scrambled for a reason not to comply.

  “We are currently testing refinements on our active program,” Emrick said, hoping he could find an excuse to mask his lack of cooperation.

  “Yes,” Braun replied. “The Phase III results on acuity and reflex are quite impressive… I see you’ve successfully field tested on five subjects.”

  “How do you know the Jagger program test results? We just got the endpoint results of those tests on Thursday.”

  “There is very little we can’t access,” Braun replied. “So…the asset. We require him—or her if that is your preference—for immediate mission brief.”

  Emrick hesitated to speak for a long while. When he felt the heavy massive hand come to rest on his shoulder, he finally caved.

  “Which continent?” he asked, resigning himself to his fate.

  “North America.”

  Another cold wave passed through Emrick, and he began to feel faint. Had it not been for Harbinger’s hand on his shoulder, he might have fallen over. “Very well,” he muttered.

  “Mr. Harbinger will provide you with rendezvous details,” Braun replied. “Please ensure asset delivery is timely.”

  The earlier reference to pizza came back to Emrick as the call ended. He closed the phone and then turned to hand it back to the giant.

  My life is over, Emrick thought as the giant reached into his pocket and extracted a piece of paper with coordinates and a time written on it.

  “Make sure your toy soldier is there… I’d hate to have to come back to visit your lovely wife,” Harbinger said as he turned to leave.

  Suddenly, a question rose to Emrick’s mind that he couldn’t suppress. “How have you been able to counteract the emotion-driven, adrenalized neurointrusion on cognitive application?” he asked. He regretted the question immediately as the giant stopped, mid-duck, in his doorway and turned slowly to face him. “I just mean… I was asking because other…because some Gold Rush subjects found it, uh, difficult to overcome.”

  “You mean they were put down like rabid dogs,” Harbinger said. He leaned in so close that Emrick could see the telltale ring of orange pigment that circled Harbinger’s green irises. “In answer to your question: I didn’t. I’ve simply turned it to my benefit.”

  How in God’s name is that a benefit? Emrick thought. His mind immediately went to the reports of other Gold Rush subjects. Some hadn’t even reached their thirteenth birthdays before being so overcome by rage that they’d battered themselves to death when there was no one to fight.

  As Harbinger turned to leave, Emrick felt his level of stress drop a notch—until Harbinger ducked through the door and lashed out with his massive arm, smashing a hole through the doorframe and the wall above his head. He continued to walk out as if nothing had happened.

  Just as the front door closed, signaling Harbinger’s departure, Emrick heard the sound of footsteps upstairs and listened as they continued down the stairs. His wife stopped at the doorway and looked up at the damage. “What on earth happened?” she asked, wide-eyed. “I thought the house was falling in.”

  “I just noticed some water damage,” Emrick lied. “It was more extensive than I thought it was.”

  She nodded cautiously, still transfixed by the gaping hole in the doorframe.

  “Go back to bed,” he said. “I’ll fix it in the morning.”

  “Are you coming up?” she asked, pausing on the stairs to look back at him.

  “In a moment. I have to make a call first,” he said, closing the door as best he could. As soon as he heard her footsteps above him, he sat at his desk and picked up the secure phone provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency before dialing a number.

  After three rings, someone picked up on the other end. “Archives,” the man on the other end said.

  “Alpha, nine, nine, four, Tango, Golf, Echo—Emrick,” he replied.

  “Confirmed. Destination, Time, Target, Packet Instructions,” the man said on the other end.

  “Target and Packet Instructions will be provided by support on site. Destination and Time are—” Emrick proceeded to read the numbers from the piece of paper Harbinger had provided him.

  The man read the coordinates and time back to verify.

  “That’s correct,” Emrick said. “No further contact with authorizing authority until return to cover.”

  “Understood,” came the voice. “Do you have a preference of assets?”

  Emrick paused, considering his options before responding. “Any Jagger that has already been through the Phase III upgrades,” he said finally. “Other than that, I couldn
’t care less.”

  He hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.

  My life is over, he thought again.

  **

  3:45 p.m. on Monday, January 17th (two days later)—The Farm, Camp Peary, Virginia

  As I left my surveillance countermeasures class, I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the status of the worm. I was actually slightly embarrassed that I had to pretend it was so hard getting through firewalls while exposing myself in the process. But making myself a target was more important than my geek ego.

  “Nothing,” I muttered, seeing no signs of detection. “You guys really suck at your job.”

  I immediately switched the target IP address set to another group—the twenty-third time I had done so since Friday. If they didn’t detect it soon, I’d have to make my worm more obvious, creating the risk of exposing the attack as a ploy rather than a real intrusion. I tucked my phone back into my pocket and walked back to my room to change for a workout with Kobe.

  After two hours of Kobe and me taking turns giving each other new bruises, I grabbed a quick meal, avoiding social entanglements by taking some items from the chow line and heading back to my room.

  As I sat there eating, I had a sudden thought and used my tiny screen to log into one of the proxy clusters I had hijacked. I checked the ghost logs—that hidden duplicate set that one uses to thwart log erasing measures—and then compared it to the primary set. What I saw was a bit surprising; there had in fact been a successful trace by those I was pretending to try to hack.

  “Not as stupid as I thought you were,” I muttered as I ate.

  I pulled up the ghost logs in each proxy cluster and examined them closely. According to the data, the network security guys on the false corporate payroll servers had followed my trail all the way to the cell tower at around six o’clock Saturday morning, two days earlier.

  “What stopped you at the tower?” I wondered.

  Then it dawned on me that they might be waiting for something.