by Leslie Wolfe
“The announcement gained Krassner six percentage points within hours, putting him back in the lead at 42 percent and leaving democratic presidential candidate Bobby Johnson behind yet again by several percentage points. Johnson, now at 34 percent, has some catching up to do and only two-and-a-half months left until Election Day. We will continue keeping you informed with details and numbers as the presidential race heats up. From Flash Elections, this is Phil Fournier, wishing you a good evening.”
...74
...Thursday, August 18, 9:17AM EDT (UTC-4:00 hours)
...Sam Russell’s Residence
...Timberlake, Virginia
Sam sat on his deck, ignoring the early morning sunshine bringing up the colors in the landscape spread behind his home. He was reading an encrypted email for the fifth time since he had received it less than ten minutes before. He checked the time. It was still very early in California, but it didn’t matter. He pressed a few buttons to make a call.
“Hello,” the man answered immediately.
“Tom, it’s me, Sam. Sorry to wake you.”
“You didn’t. What’s up?”
“If you recall, Alex had us follow a limo in New Delhi last Friday to see who was visiting the vendor’s CEO.”
“Yes, I remember.” Tom confirmed.
“The intel came back just now, and it’s trouble. Big trouble. The man we followed that day is Mastaan Eshwar Singh, sixty-four years old, very rich, self-made businessman with interests in steel and manufacturing. But that’s not where the trouble is.”
“I’m listening,” Tom whispered.
“He’s a terrorist, Tom, a terrorist who hasn’t made it yet on the FBI’s most wanted list, but definitely belongs there. He is on Mossad’s list though. He’s got known ties with Kashmir terrorist networks and is thought to be responsible for the New Delhi bombings in 2005 that killed or injured more than 250 people. He’s also believed to be the force behind the attack on the Parliament of India in 2001, but he wasn’t charged. He’s a self-declared anti-American, and it was his people who instigated the burning of American flags in New Delhi in 2012.”
“Oh, my God,” Tom whispered. “What are they stepping into?”
“Whatever it is, they’re already in the middle of it.”
...75
...Thursday, August 18, 10:09PM PDT (UTC-7:00 hours)
...Hilton San Diego Bayfront
...San Diego, California
Warren Helms looked out the window of his seventh-story hotel room, which overlooked the bay. The blue water reminded him of Panama; although the bay waters were a dark blue, not the Caribbean bluish-green he still recalled after so many years.
Only in his mid-twenties back then, he had deployed as a well-trained and enthusiastic Green Beret in Operation Just Cause, along with some twenty thousand other US troops on a mission to overthrow Panama dictator Manuel Noriega and install the democratically elected Guillermo Endara. Should have been easy, and it had been, for the vast majority of the troops, heavily supported by hundreds of aircrafts. It was the conflagration the United States had won with the least casualties, losing only 23 men and taking home 324 wounded.
Him, they had left behind, wounded within an inch of his life, in the aftermath of one of the very few altercations with the Panamanian Defense Forces, where Americans had actually been wounded. His lieutenant made the call to leave him behind, not even bothering to check to see if he was still alive. He’d taken a bullet in the abdomen and another one in the leg, causing him to drop face down in the sand, suffocating with pain. He wasn’t able to call out. He saw them leaving him there, and he couldn’t call out. He heard his lieutenant give the order and say, “Let’s move out; he’s probably gone.” Every time he closed his eyes, he could still hear him give that fateful order.
He had somehow survived. A family, so poor he felt guilty every time he ate, nursed him to health. They had no medical supplies, no money, and no means of any kind. They knew a retired doctor who gave them some advice, and he found some support in a hospital so decrepit and fetid he had considered dying rather than going inside. The hospital was able to stop his infection and patch him up, then returned him to the family who had no food to spare, but somehow managed to feed him every day.
As soon as he was strong enough, he made his way to the American Embassy. It was a long and exhausting walk through dirty, endless city streets, hours of agony spent enduring the pain of putting one foot in front of the other. Three days later he was home, coming back a hero, and getting the medical attention he needed. Six days after that, he was dishonorably discharged for punching his former lieutenant several times and putting him in a coma. Then he was charged with assault.
Then Helms fell off the grid, turning toward the mercenaries in search for a place where he could belong and make a living. With his record permanently damaged by the dishonorable discharge and the suspended sentence for assault and battery, he had little choice to find a way to earn a lawful living. He didn’t regret it though. In Panama, fighting for his life in the poorest of environments, he had learned the value of money. When his lieutenant had turned his back on him, leaving him for dead, he had learned the value of loyalty.
Since then, everything he did he did for money, and there was no line drawn anywhere. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for the right amount of cash. He was smart and merciless, and his conscience never bothered him. He had left it in Panama. He was an efficient and competent killer, trained by the best Fort Bragg had to offer, and had real combat experience. He was a sought-after commodity in today’s shady market for contractors and mercenaries, and he was never out of work.
Helms moved away from the window and grabbed his phone. He had interesting news to break to his current employer, a Russian he had only recently met face to face. Helms didn’t care whom he worked for, as long as they paid on time and generously and could keep their mouth shut.
“Da?” His employer answered in a raspy, sleepy voice.
“This is Helms,” he identified himself.
“Da?” The man repeated.
“Your Indian friend might have a problem. Two of the people DCBI sent to New Delhi are originally from San Diego.”
“So? Why does that matter?”
“The hacker who looked into the transplant clinic’s database was traced back there, to San Diego. In my line of work there are no coincidences.”
“Fuck!” the Russian exclaimed, all sleepiness gone. “If your suspicions are confirmed, figure out control measures on your end. I will deal with my end.”
“Understood,” Helms confirmed.
...76
...Thursday, August 25, 11:14PM Local Time (UTC+5:30 hours)
...The Lalit Hotel
...New Delhi, India
Alex still screened the temporary hotel rooms for bugs, almost religiously; although it made little sense. No matter how intense the surveillance, the UNSUB wouldn’t have time to bug a room that fast. Alex and Lou picked their hotels spontaneously, and from the reception desk, where they would get the key card in a matter of minutes, they would go straight to their room to work. No one was that fast. No one was powerful enough to bug all the hotels in Delhi, just in case the two of them decided to show up. Nevertheless, she still swept them, carefully, methodically, just to be sure.
Satisfied, she put the bug sweeper back into her laptop bag and sat next to Lou at the small desk.
“Shoot,” she said, looking at his screen.
“I downloaded a few more modules. I still don’t have everything; I’m missing a few more. I don’t know where they are, haven’t found them yet. They’re supposed to all be together on this staging server, but at least one module is definitely missing.”
“Did you find anything interesting in these?”
“Somewhat,” he answered, scratching his forehead. “Not sure if it’s intentional or just a leftover, but I found a randomizer sub-module in the code. It just generates random numbers if called, that’s all it
does.”
“So, nothing to worry about?”
“Not by itself, no. But we keep finding these sequences of code that are not in the spec and shouldn’t exist.”
“Sometimes these software companies reuse code they wrote for some other client without cleaning it up. They mix and match blocks of code from previous projects to maximize their profits. I struggle with this idea though, because I don’t think they’d normally get a lot of projects involving voting. These are fairly rare. If our project were a dashboard, for example, this scenario would make more sense.”
“You know what else doesn’t make sense? If doing sloppy coding work is what they’re trying to hide, do you think that’s worth killing for? I don’t think so,” Lou said firmly. “I just don’t. Here’s what I want to do. I want us to go see Bal tomorrow and show him what we found, call him on it and watch what he has to say.”
“Bad idea,” Alex replied, shaking her head. “Bad, really bad.”
“Why?”
“Do you think this is a situation where you can play fair, in the open? First, you said you don’t have all the code yet. Second, you’re dealing with a man who threatened me, personally and unequivocally. Something tells me he’ll take the news that you hacked their systems and downloaded their code badly, as in pull out a gun and shoot us both. And finally, Sam said the man who visited a few days ago in that huge limo is a known terrorist. Need I say more? You can’t confront them, not now, not later.”
He blushed a little and stood and turned toward the window to hide it.
“Embarrassing,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if I have what it takes to do this job.”
“Sure you do, you just need a little more experience, and sometimes you just have to forget you’re an ex-SEAL. Not all fights are open and fair, clean hand-to-hand combat, or your Krav Maga. Most of them aren’t. You still have a misconception that corporate environments are open, honest, and encourage direct communication. Maybe some do, but we’re not usually investigating those. I am sure your SEAL trainers taught you to be covert and think like the enemy. How would this enemy think? What would they do?”
“Well, considering how they keep on stonewalling us, I’d say they’re delaying the moment when we see the code, if we’re ever gonna see it. I’d say they might even present us with a couple of devices with the software already loaded on it, for us to test and sign off on, when it’s already too late to object or ask for anything else. They’re already behind schedule on delivering the software, and that’s what I think they’re planning. That’s why I thought we could approach Bal and make him face the music.”
“Remember why we’re here,” Alex said, sounding almost maternal, which made her smile. “We wanna catch all the bastards, not just Bal and his boss. They didn’t start this on their own; they didn’t think this plan up. Until we know everything there is to know about that code we cannot draw attention to ourselves. They have to believe they had us fooled and that we’re too busy romancing in Delhi to even care. They think Americans are idiots, so let’s just play right to their ideas. Steve could have given you a great speech on using someone’s preconceived notions against themselves. That’s exactly what we’re doing here. And most likely, keeping Robert and Melanie’s safety in mind, we will sign off on that software, no matter what’s in it, and pretend everything’s fine, then control the situation as best as we can stateside. They’ll still have to hand over that software at some point, right? That’s the plan, my man,” she ended her speech, punching him in his arm.
“So what do you need me to do next?”
She thought for a little while before answering.
“It feels like we’re playing a chess game with the devil. It’s the devil’s move next, and we can’t figure out what it’s going to be. But until we do, we can’t win.”
“The devil’s move? I didn’t take you for religious,” Lou remarked.
“I’m not, not really. Nevertheless, there’s someone brilliant and evil behind all of this, and I couldn’t think of any better moniker to give the man who’s leading this game. Bal and his CEO, Ramachandran, are just his pawns, and so is that other guy, Helms.” She stood and walked to the window, where the yellow lights of the Delhi cityscape were spreading into the horizon. “We need to be able to anticipate his next move, that’s for sure. Can you grab the rest of the code and be sure you grabbed it all?”
“Sure can,” he answered confidently.
“How can you be so sure? What kept you from grabbing it already?”
“I have to spend more time within the ERamSys network, from inside the domain and behind the firewalls, and you know how complicated that can get. Even if I run my sniffer code, I still have to be physically inside the building, logged onto the network, without any cameras facing my laptop’s screen. There are cameras everywhere, and my quiet work time is very limited. They keep badgering us with those damn presentations and all kinds of useless activities. As soon as I figure out where the rest of the modules are housed, I can download them from the hotels, remotely, without any issues.”
“They’re not useless activities, you know.”
“Huh?” He looked confused.
“They’re not useless to them. They keep us busy, stuck in this muck we can’t get out of. They control us, or they think they do. If they stop believing they’re in control, our lives won’t be worth much. They’ll eliminate us without any hesitation.”
...77
...Friday, August 26, 9:54AM Local Time (UTC+5:30 hours)
...ERamSys Headquarters—Jeevan Ramachandran’s Office
...New Delhi, India
Abid Bal let ten minutes pass after Ramachandran’s car had pulled in front of the building, then started his way to his office on the top floor of the central tower. He hated how weak this man was. Ramachandran’s vast fortune irritated Bal, because it had been achieved by a weak man, a nonbeliever with no sacred goals. This man didn’t believe in anything else but his own money and a life of luxury and sin, nothing else. He had not embraced Islam, and that made him a lesser person in Bal’s eyes.
Bal’s commitment to the values of Islam was absolute, and living his life surrounded by blasphemers was a trying experience for him. His frustration suffocated him. He knew what he had to do to make things right, but he was never allowed to. Especially with that American woman. Bal hated all Americans. He saw them as sinful, menial creatures that should be put in their places, especially their women.
His younger brother, Raazi, had lost his way and had become one of them, abandoning his Islam beliefs and marrying an American woman. His own brother had betrayed them and allowed himself to become intoxicated by the vile sin those people lived in, enough to forget his heritage.
The two brothers, Abid and Raazi Bal had been raised together in strict Islamic creed by devout parents and had shared every aspect of their lives until their mid-twenties. Then, one day, his younger brother plainly announced to everyone that he had obtained his visa and was leaving for America to work for a large technology company in the damned Silicon Valley. Bal held his own during his brother’s announcement, even through his mother’s endless tears and sobs. His father had left the room the moment Raazi finished speaking; he had nothing left to say to such a betrayer of their way of life. Later that night, long after everyone had finally fallen asleep, Bal allowed himself to shed bitter tears for his soon-to-be-lost brother.
A few years later Raazi had called and announced with excitement that he had received his green card, allowing him to stay permanently in America. All hope was lost for the Bal family to see their youngest member come back to their hearth. Two years after that, Raazi sent them an invitation to his wedding. He was marrying an American, and an infidel on top of that, a shlokeh who wouldn’t embrace Islam. His brother had become lost forever, deciding to live the rest of his life in mortal sin, surrounded by blasphemers. No one from the Bal family traveled to Raazi’s wedding; they had spent that day in prayer for his soul.
Then another year or so later, Raazi had come home to visit, bringing his new wife, Christine. Raazi wanted to reconcile the two parts of his family, and he had hoped that his brother and parents would be able to accept Christine and his new chosen life. But that would have been blasphemy. Bal remembered the woman. Nothing but a whore, showing the skin of her arms and her flowing hair shamelessly, laughing, joking, considering herself the equal of everyone. Displaying no respect. Arrogant, loud, obnoxious, not knowing her place. She had the audacity to ask Raazi to get her things, do things for her, as if she were the man of the house. Bal would have given anything to teach that whore a lesson. When he thought of what he’d do to her, he felt an erection taking over his body’s senses and mind’s focus. It was the strongest erection he’d had in years. That was sinful. That day he saved himself by praying, locked in his small room. The next morning his sinful brother and infidel sister in law were gone. Forever gone, never to be heard from again.
Bal knew his personal history was at risk to cloud his judgment where these Americans were involved. Yet the facts were the facts, and he needed to take action, even if his weak leader was too limp to acknowledge them.
He entered the office after a polite knock and an invitation from his boss. He bowed his head in a respectful greeting that Ramachandran barely bothered to acknowledge. Then the CEO looked straight at him.
“What is it?”
“It is the DCBI woman,” Bal answered, “I am sure there is something wrong with her. Her eyes are lying.”
“We have surveillance on every move they make. What does surveillance say? Have they said anything, seen anything?”
“Nothing yet. She is doing what she is supposed to do, actually not even that. She is busy whoring with that man, Blake. But almost every night we lose them in the city. That cannot be by accident.”