by S. L. Jones
Maria shook her head no and said, “Mom, I’ll just take a quick peek. I’ll leave the phone on. Don’t worry. I won’t get too close.”
A beam of light burned through the trees and killed their conversation. They both ducked down in a panic.
“Oh my God, it was one of those trucks.” Maria was shaking with fear, and her pulse had quickened. “Do you think they saw us?”
“No. Just stay low.” Matilde pushed her daughter’s shoulder down.
The Mercedes’s engine was practically silent, so they heard the sound of gravel crackling as the heavy SUV made its way down the driveway. The sound evaporated into the rev of an engine that then faded off into the distance.
Maria slowly began to peer over the dashboard, her eyes wide with fear. “Holy shit, that was close.”
“You’re not going near that house,” she decided. “I need to make a call.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Maria insisted. “You need to stay here in case something happens. If we both go, nobody can get help.”
In a single motion she dialed her mother’s number, opened the door and dashed toward the line of trees surrounding the perimeter of the house. Slowly, she crept her way down the property line along the trees. Soller stayed perfectly still for a couple of minutes, straining to see or hear anything inside. She was about to run across the lawn into some bushes when she heard car doors slam shut. She froze in her tracks.
“Mom,” she whispered into her phone. “Get down. I think another car is coming.”
Chapter 37
Adams Morgan, Washington, DC
SWEAT POURED DOWN his face, and his hands continued to shake. The gun he gripped tightly was getting heavier by the second as the irony of the situation weighed on his mind. Etzy Millar now knew the man he saw down the length of the gun’s barrel was there to help him. Every avenue leading away from killing a man in cold blood, especially this one, was blocked by the cruel realization that his sister’s life was on the line. His mind raced as he considered what he believed to be inevitable. He was about to kill his only hope.
His trancelike state was broken by the vibration from his phone. There was only one other person who knew this number. He nervously removed a hand from the gun and took the device from his ear. He looked down at the display, and it confirmed what he had already been told. It was a text message from his girlfriend, Maria. The message was a single digit. He began to breathe again and swung the weapon toward the man with the baseball cap.
“Freeze, police!”
The words jolted Millar. He looked over to his left and saw an officer with his service revolver aimed directly at him, and froze.
“It’s okay, Etzy, just relax. Everything’s going to be fine,” the stranger said. His voice was only loud enough for Millar to hear.
“I said, put the gun down!” the officer yelled again.
This time there was more urgency. Sirens echoed through the city in the background.
“I’m only going to—shit!” the officer yelled.
Millar watched the killer and his sidekick take off and then disappear around the side of the building. He tossed the weapon to the ground, and the police officer cautiously approached. The sirens grew louder, and the officer seemed to have more confidence, until the screeching sound of tires followed by the sound of scraping metal took center stage.
“Motherfucker!” the officer barked.
The cop watched the double-parked gray Chrysler 300 ram into his squad car several times. It was what had raised his suspicions enough to check out the park. With a final surge, the vehicle slammed his black-and-white into a line of parked cars on the other side of the street and sped off.
Before the officer could turn back to the two men, he found himself flex-cuffed to a railing.
“Sorry about this,” the stranger said as he emptied the rounds from the policeman’s gun. “Be safe out there.”
Millar watched curiously as the stranger wiped everything clean and handed the weapon back to the officer. He then pocketed the weapon Millar had tossed to the ground.
“Grab your laptop,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”
He followed the stranger across the street, and within two minutes they had reached the hustle and bustle of Adams Morgan. They quickly ducked into a basement bar called Club Asylum. The place was small and dark, with exposed redbrick walls and a couple of pool tables crammed before its single bar at the far end of the room. He followed the stranger to one of the small tables that provided some privacy from the line of patrons situated along the bar. Millar was glad to be sitting again. He was getting used to the pain in his ribs, but it hurt like hell when he ran.
“Who are you?” Millar asked, noticing the stranger had positioned himself to keep an eye on the club’s entrance.
“Trent.”
He offered his hand, and Millar shook it nervously.
“Nice to meet you.” Millar knew the man sitting across from him had everything under control, and it helped to calm him down. “So, what happens now?”
“That depends on you, Etzy.”
Millar’s voice was uneasy. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on. One minute we’re driving down the road, and the next thing I know, Max is dead and…” His voice trailed off as he tried to regain his composure. “Max, he got shot, and then this guy comes after me, and I’m, like, holy shit, you know, what the hell is going on?” He thought about it some more and made sure nobody in the bar was listening. He wasn’t sure what he should share but shook his head, knowing he had nothing to lose. “The same guy shows up at the hotel after I ask for help on the boards, and he says he’s going to kill my little sister. I don’t know what to do, you know? She’s all I’ve got now.” Millar stopped speaking for a long time. He was startled by the sound of a cue ball assaulting freshly racked balls.
“What happened?” Trent asked, his voice clinical like a doctor’s. “What were you and Max Soller up to when he was killed?”
Millar looked down at the dirty floor and back up at Turner. His eyes were heavy. “That’s the thing. You see it was just supposed to be some easy money. Max found someone on the boards online who wanted us to hack into computers and install this bot they’d developed.” He turned his head to the side and stared at the wood-paneled wall while he got his thoughts together. “We had been doing it for the past couple weeks,” he admitted, and turned back to the operative. “Max let me have the money so I could help support Melody. She’s my little sister. He didn’t need it. His family is set, you know, when it comes to money.” He turned back toward the wall to think some more before he continued. “At first I was just happy that it would help me make ends meet, but, you know, if it seems too good to be true—”
“It usually is. Yeah, I hear you.”
Trent’s eyes moved to the entrance as a group of people came into the bar.
“After the first night of wardriving was done, I got a bit curious—you know, about what we were doing. You know, what the code did. What it was up to.”
“Go on.”
Millar got the sense this Trent guy would understand and said, “Well, luck isn’t exactly something that follows me around, if you know what I mean?” He cleared his throat. “So I began to reverse engineer the code in order to figure out how it worked. It was the most sophisticated bot I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of—”
“I know,” Trent said. “I’m a big fan.”
They both smiled, and Millar kept going. “Well, at first I didn’t know much about it. The easiest way to learn more was to build a new install package that would also deploy some code of my own—you know, in order to keep an eye on things while I tried to work out what they were up to.”
“So you developed something that would spy on their bot?”
“Exactly!” Millar said. “But it was more than that,” he continued enthusiastically. “I’m getting close to where I can extend their bot and inject my own code in order to take control of the computer if I
need to.” He looked over at the exit and back to Turner. “These people, whoever developed it, were hard-core paranoid.”
“How so?”
“Before the malware would install on a system, it would check for software that an advanced user might use. If it saw anything that signaled the person might know a little something about technology, it prevented itself from being installed.”
Turner furrowed his brow. “Interesting.”
“Part of the deal was that we were supposed to make sure that certain stuff wasn’t loaded on a computer before we did our install.” He looked around again to make sure nobody was listening in. “For the past couple of days, I’ve been working with a virtual environment here,” he said as he patted his laptop. “I’m trying to develop a way to propagate my code out to the rest of their botnet. The thing accepts new modules so they can extend its capabilities. Once I figure that out, I’ll be able to see what they’re up to and engineer a way to shut it down.”
Trent creased his brow and asked, “How far along are you with that?”
“It’ll take some work, but I’ve made a lot of progress. In the process I’ve figured out a lot of details about how the bot software works.” Millar paused for a moment. “The bot is programmed to proactively cover its tracks in predefined scenarios.”
“So it’s a new breed of intelligent bot?”
“For sure,” Millar said with a slow nod.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Last night one of the bots we installed scared the shit out of me.”
“I’m going to need more detail than that.”
“Look, I don’t even know who you are. People have been trying to kill me. Before we go any further with this, I need to know that I can trust you.”
The operative smiled expectantly.
“The way I see it,” Millar continued, “I’m pretty sure I’ll end up dead in a ditch at some point. The truth is I don’t care, as long as my sister is okay.”
The desperation came through in the hacker’s voice.
“I’ll see what I can do about that,” Trent said.
Chapter 38
FBI black site, Poolesville, MD
HEADLIGHTS PIERCED THE darkness of the long gravel driveway. Special Agent Cathy Moynihan squinted as she observed the imposing convoy of SUVs approach. She was looking through what was once the kitchen window of a rural residence. The FBI had converted the home into a secure location—a place where they could conduct special business away from prying eyes. What happened at the black site stayed at the black site. At least that’s what the agent she had spoken to said in so many words. He had instructed her to meet him here during their brief call.
She had just hung up her cell phone. It was her third attempt at calling FBI Director Frank Culder since he’d cut their last conversation short. It was annoying to say the least, but she wanted to pass along some new information about their murder suspect and discuss the safe house meeting. It turned out that Senator Soller’s daughter may have been dating Francis Millar. It seemed an insignificant sliver of information at this point in the investigation, but it was her job to keep the director informed, and it was something she took very seriously.
“Okay, go ahead and get out,” she heard one of the agents say.
She opened the side door to let them inside as one of the black SUVs turned around and made its way back down the driveway. Four men filed into the house with a frightened Melody Millar sandwiched in between them. They headed down the narrow staircase that led to the basement without so much as acknowledging her presence.
She noticed the young girl was in a state of shock. Her makeup had streaked down the side of her face, and she was already past the point of crying. Moynihan followed them down to the basement. It was split into three rooms. There was a large space with a table that led to a room that was for interrogation, and another that was for observation. The observation room had a bank of monitors connected to cameras that covered the interrogation room and the grounds outside. Two of the men ushered the teenager into the soundproof room, then stepped out and locked the door behind them.
“We’ll let her sweat it out in there for a while,” the team leader said.
She clenched her teeth at the base of the stairs, unable to take it anymore.
“Special Agent Moynihan,” she said firmly, and held her hand out. “And you gentlemen are?”
All four of them gave her indifferent looks. After an awkward few seconds, the leader forced a smile.
“We could use some coffee. What do you say?” he said.
She recognized the voice. It was the man who had called earlier to give her the address.
“I’d say you’re shit out of luck.” She exaggerated a glance to the man on his right and then the two on his left, and said, “It doesn’t look like your mother works here.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Unless, of course, you keep her locked up in that room too.” Moynihan twisted her lips and shook her head before adding, “Probably not. It looks like you just keep unruly prisoners in there.” She locked eyes with the leader as the other three started to laugh.
He cracked a big smile. “Jake, Jake Sanders,” he said. “You win. I’ll get the coffee. I think you’ll fit in with this bunch of monkeys just fine.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, obviously disgusted.
Sanders shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry. You can’t blame a guy for wanting a good cup of Joe. It always tastes like shit when I make it. Best to experience that on your own, I suppose.” He pounded the front of his shirt with his fists. “It’ll put a little hair on your chest.”
“I might have to pass on that. I hear it can get expensive if you want to get that waxed, but I’ll bet it saves you on your heating bills in the winter.”
Sanders let out a big laugh. “Stay here, boys, while I get Special Agent Moynihan and me a brew.”
The men laughed as Moynihan and Sanders headed up to the kitchen. One of them chimed in and said, “Word has it that Jakester’s chest carpet is legendary.”
They walked into the worn galley kitchen, and he turned to face her.
Moynihan looked Sanders in the eye and said, “So how long are you going to let that poor girl sit in there?”
He frowned and said, “She’ll be ready in an hour or so. That would be my guess.”
Moynihan was weary of this latest move by the FBI’s leadership. She kept telling herself she needed to follow orders and trust Director Culder. She decided the director had to have clearance with other top brass before making moves like this. Telling herself that was a way of getting past this without placing the phone call she had been avoiding. “What if she doesn’t talk?” she asked.
“Oh, she’ll talk. Believe me, she’ll talk.”
Moynihan didn’t like the sound of that. “You can’t be planning to break a seventeen-year-old. She’s just a kid.”
Sanders rummaged through the cupboards and said, “We’re not planning to, but Culder said this case has to do with national security. We have to find out what she knows.” Sanders stopped his search momentarily to look her in the eye. “There’s no choice, I’m afraid.”
She could sense it wasn’t something he was looking forward to. The fact that this case had to do with national security had taken her by surprise. She decided the less she said, the better.
“Understood.”
“God damn it,” Sanders barked suddenly.
Moynihan jumped. She was glad he didn’t see her.
“It’s fuckin’ common courtesy in my book. Why can’t people replace shit when they finish it off? Jesus.” Sanders walked toward the staircase and yelled down, “Gotta pick up some Joe. Be back in twenty.”
A group laugh roared back from the basement.
“Go fuck yourselves,” Sanders blasted back.
“I’ll drive,” Moynihan said. “My car won’t be as conspicuous.”
Sanders smiled as the two made their way out the door to her blue Toyota Camry.
/> “Don’t they give you a company car?”
“Not on the weekends. I’m not that important.”
He laughed. “Hold on a sec.”
He went to the nearest SUV, grabbed a folder from inside and hopped into her car. She turned her car around, drove down the driveway and made a right.
Sanders turned on the reading light and began to flip through the contents of the folder. “You know where the 7-Eleven is, right?” he said without looking up.
“I know how to get there.” She noticed a Mercedes parked twenty meters from the end of the driveway and asked, “Are there many residents out here?”
His eyes remained glued to the papers. “Nah, not too many. It’s a good place for this setup.”
As they rounded a curve in the road, she saw another parked car. It was black with tinted windows. Two of its doors were open, and she noticed the dome light hadn’t come on to illuminate the interior of the car.
“Did you see the two cars we just passed?”
“What?” Sanders looked up, but they’d already made it past the cars. “Ah, don’t sweat it. We only bought one house, not the whole neighborhood.”
She decided to drop the conversation. She didn’t want to sound like an amateur.
Chapter 39
Club Asylum, Adams Morgan, Washington, DC
THEY STAYED AT Club Asylum long enough for their untouched beers to turn lukewarm. Trent Turner offered them up to a couple of scruffy bicycle couriers playing pool on the way out.
The two men headed northwest on Eighteenth Street toward Calvert Street and made their way to Connecticut Avenue, using the neighborhood when possible. The police would be on the lookout for two men, so Turner followed twenty meters behind the hacker. Appearing to walk alone, they would be less likely to raise any suspicions. Once they reached Connecticut Avenue, it was a short cab ride to the parking lot where Turner had parked his rental car.
Turner pulled the keys out and unlocked the door. When he glanced over at Etzy Millar, the hacker wore a look of disbelief.