Villains and Vixens

by Charles Dougherty

  "Drop the pistol," I said, moving the knife so he could feel it cutting his flesh.

  There was a clunk as his weapon hit the floor. Keeping the pressure on my knife, I released his wrist just long enough to shove the pistol away. I grabbed his wrist again and pulled the knife back from his throat so I could land a blow on the point of his chin with the knuckle guard. His eyes rolled back in his head and I felt his body relax.

  Scrambling to my knees, I rolled off him and recovered his pistol, pointing it at him, just in case. A flicker of movement caught my attention, and I looked up to see Mary, leaning against the wall, watching me, a grin on her face.

  "Good moves, old man. Took you long enough, though."

  "You could have helped. How long were you watching?"

  "Long enough. You were doing just fine; you didn't need help. I enjoyed the show; I even picked up a few tricks. Just kidding about the old man part. Don't worry; you've still got it."

  "Where's the other one, smart-ass?"

  "Oh, he's tied up right now. And I found his computer. Shall we call in the clean-up detail?"

  "Sure." I took the satellite phone from my belt pack and handed it to her.

  "You make the call," I said. "I want to cuff this one before he comes to."

  32

  Mary and I sat in the living room of the crumbling mansion with Aaron. The helicopter was taking our prisoners back to the research vessel.

  "Nice work, you two," Aaron said. "We weren't expecting all six of them to survive."

  "You should have said something before you put them all on the chopper," Mary said. "We could have taken care of the rejects for you."

  He gave her a long look, his face devoid of emotion. I could tell he was wondering about her mental state, given her recent breakdown. I didn't have any doubts about her, though. Not after tonight. Mary was back, better than ever.

  "She's pulling your chain, Aaron," I said. "Don't let her mess with you. It was the luck of the draw. Given that they were sleeping in separate rooms, it was easy enough to capture them. Who knows what your team might get from Grissom's peers?"

  "Yeah, you're right. It's a good thing we got Cruz, especially."

  "Why Cruz? You've never mentioned him before until right before this mission."

  "He never popped up on our radar before. He was just another top-tier distributor, maybe more into human trafficking than the others."

  "So that's why you're eager to question him?" Mary asked.

  "Well, yes, but also because we just found that second data center, the one that mirrors the one in Jacksonville. It's in Cruz's compound, in Miami. If we move fast enough, we can isolate it from network access. That means they won't be able to wipe it clean. The IT bunch is hard at work on that, right now."

  Aaron held the prisoners' passports in his hand. Flipping through them, he pulled out two and set the others aside on the coffee table.

  "Nikolai Sergei Popovich," he said, opening one. "Born in Russia, naturalized U.S. citizen. He's the one with the broken arm and the slash on his throat. He put up a fight?"

  "Yes," I said. "He and the computer geek were sleeping in two of the upstairs rooms. The stairs aren't in good shape. He woke up, met us with a pistol in his hand."

  "You should have seen Finn's moves, Aaron. I'm in awe."

  Aaron frowned. "You watched Finn take him down?"

  "She's picking on me about being old and slow. She subdued the computer geek while I was mixing it up with Sergei. She still had time to watch the fight."

  "Sergei must know what he's doing," Aaron said.

  "No kidding," Mary said. "He was vicious; it's a good thing Finn jumped him, all joking aside. I'm not sure I would have survived that one."

  "I'll be interested to see what you can learn about him," I said. "I'd bet he's one of Lavrov's buddies from his Spetsnaz days. He's no slouch at hand-to-hand combat."

  "Well, we've picked up rumors about him, you know," Aaron said. "Now we may be able to confirm them. With any luck we can find out a little more about Lavrov from Sergei, too."

  He put Popovich's passport on the table with the others and opened the one still in his hand. "Gregory David Lewis. Born in New Mexico, U.S.A. But look at all the stamps in this character's passport. Well-traveled. My bet is he's another one who isn't the person he claims to be. You took him, Mary?"

  "Yes."

  "He give you any trouble?"

  "No." She chuckled. "He was sitting up in bed, playing a video game on an iPad when I walked in on him. He took one look at my pistol and wet the bed."

  "You serious?"

  "I swear. Dropped the iPad and raised his hands. Started crying while I cuffed him. He was as docile as a kitten. I felt sorry for him until I remembered who he was hanging out with. He should crack like an egg once your people start on him."

  "You never know," Aaron said. "You just never know. He may be the toughest nut out of the whole bunch."

  "What's next on the agenda?" I asked, after several seconds passed in silence.

  "The chopper's bringing our forensics team in. We'll go over this place from top to bottom. Once we get enough data to identify the guards you took out, we'll make them disappear. But we want to know how they ended up working here, where they came from. You two might as well go back to the ship with the chopper. No point in your sticking around here. We'll be a good while, I imagine."

  "But wait," Mary said. "What about Mike's boat?"

  "I was coming to that," Aaron said. "We have people who will take it back to Nassau — the couple who moved into that villa you were in, the ones who were pretending to be you. It will continue the false trail, in case anybody's been keeping tabs on Isabella. That way, maybe nobody will connect her trip down here with your mission. Where did you leave the dinghy?"

  "I beached it on Whelk Cay," Mary said.

  "Okay. They can pick it up there. You two can crash on the ship for a while. Bob's planning a run to Puerto Rico. Can you find your way to Island Girl from there?"

  "Sure," I said. "Why?"

  "Mike and Bob figure you've earned a little time off, since we've interrupted your last few cruises. Where is she, anyway?"

  "Island Girl?" Mary asked.

  Aaron nodded.

  "Tortola," I said. "Do I hear the chopper?"

  "Yeah. Go on out to meet it. The crew knows they're taking you back to the Lizzie Lawson. I need to get to work scouting this place."

  "Wait," Mary said. "The Lizzie Lawson?"

  "Technically, she's the Research Vessel Lizzie Lawson," Aaron said.

  "That's my mother's name!" Mary said.

  Aaron nodded. "Yes. Bob's sister. Lizzie's his boat. See you two back aboard."

  I stood up and took Mary's hand. "Come on, Vixen. Let's go for a helicopter ride."

  Epilogue

  Four days later in the British Virgin Islands …

  "You ready to clear out?" I asked.

  Mary and I were sitting in Island Girl's cockpit, watching the seagulls scavenging in the anchorage at Soper's Hole. After spending the last two days provisioning and getting the boat ready for sea, we were ready to leave. Our plan was to take advantage of the northeast trade winds to sail to the Grenadines. After the four-day voyage, we would be tourists, checking out the lesser-known islands down there.

  "Should we touch base with Aaron first?" Mary asked. "I'm dying of curiosity."

  "Sure, why not?"

  I refilled our mugs with the last of the coffee while she retrieved the Phorcys-provided satellite phone. She put the phone on the cockpit table between us and made the call.

  "Finn?" Aaron's voice came from the speaker.

  "And Mary," she said. "Good morning."

  "Morning," Aaron said. "What's new with you two?"

  "We're getting ready to leave the BVI for a while," I said. "Wondering how things were going aboard Lizzie Lawson."

  "Any chance of a quick update?" Mary asked.

  "Sure," Aaron said. "The big news is that S
ergei's dead."

  "Already?" I asked. "I figured you would keep him around for a while."

  "Yeah. I did, too. He recovered consciousness by the time we got him back to the ship. My instructions to the team were to process him first. They cut the cuffs off, searched him, and put him in a cell. He sacked out right away — had a concussion, according to Jill. She examined him first thing, since he was wounded. Patched him up before they locked him away."

  "Jill?" Mary asked. "But she's a psychiatrist."

  "Yeah, but she's also a board-certified internist. A 'Jill of all trades,' so to speak. She's handy to have around."

  "I guess so," Mary said. "So what happened to him?"

  "The person on watch looked in on him after about an hour and found him dead. Jill's analysis is that he took a suicide pill — probably Saxitoxin — shellfish toxin."

  "You said he was searched," Mary said.

  "Yeah, but a lethal dose of that stuff is tiny, like the size of one-eighth of a medium sized grain of sand. And that's for an oral dose. For an injection, you're talking about a tenth of that much. So he could have had it concealed in his clothing, or in a fake mole on his skin — damn near anywhere."

  "That's disappointing," I said. "There goes our information on Lavrov."

  "Yeah, most likely. We're still chasing options on Sergei — fingerprints, DNA, but it won't be quick. And at best, all we'll end up with is a little more background on him. Still, it's better than nothing, and losing him will be a blow to Lavrov. We're already setting trip wires to let us spot Sergei's replacement. Plus, his loss may force Lavrov to show himself, or make some other mistake, until he can field a replacement. We'll see."

  "What about the computer guy?" Mary asked.

  "Greg Lewis. We can't shut him up. And he's a goldmine of information about the data centers. I'll get to that in a second, but the disappointment is that he has no clue who he was working for. He was recruited in typical computer-geek fashion — online, dark web, never met the person. Somebody called Gulliver.

  "They were paying the guy a fortune, but he was oblivious to the money. They attached him to Sergei for field support, but Lewis was getting his orders from this Gulliver. He doesn't even know if Gulliver's a person or a group of people. The guy was completely wrapped up in the intellectual challenge of what he was doing. He's unconcerned about the consequences. To him, it was no different from playing a complicated online game."

  "So what about the data centers?" I asked. "What were they doing with them?"

  "That's the good part. Or I should say, the bad part. The short version is they were setting up for large-scale manipulation of our election results."

  "Through social media, you mean?" Mary asked.

  "Well, yes, but that's the least exciting part. They actually used our last election as a pilot program, and their tampering went way beyond the social media games everybody's been wringing their hands about. They altered the counts, changed the tallies of votes, but only in a few places."

  "Which places?" I asked. "In the right places, that could have thrown the election, couldn't it? It was close, as it was."

  "Yeah, it could have. We don't know. Lewis doesn't know which places they hit last time around. But that was the main reason they set up the data centers. They were getting ready for the next election, and they were going for maximum impact this time."

  "But wait," Mary said. "How can that be? I've read in the news that even the computerized voting machines aren't vulnerable to hacking, because they aren't online."

  "Yeah, that's what they want everybody to believe. And it's true that the systems aren't vulnerable to hacking as long as they aren't online. The problem is that a lot of them are online, and the election officials don't always know it. That's only begun to come out in the press, and there are a lot of people working to suppress the information, for various reasons. Obviously, Lewis's employers don't want that information out, but there are people in our government trying to cover their asses, too. Some are corrupt, some are careless, and some are plain old dumb, I guess."

  "I don't understand," I said. "You're saying the systems are online?"

  "Yes, some of them are. Some of them have been, for a long time. They weren't supposed to be, but it happened. The way it's supposed to work is that each machine collects votes in its memory. A person is supposed to remove the memory card and take it to wherever the back-end system is located — for a precinct or several precincts, or a district, whatever. That varies, depending on the state. Anyway, they're supposed to hand-carry the memory card to the back-end system, where the data is read and consolidated."

  "So how did the machines get online?"

  "Technology offers serious temptations, and there are techies around who aren't thinking of the risks, according to Lewis. A lot of the machines have built-in wireless modems for admin control — supposed to be for basic stuff, like turning them on and off. But the techies figured out they could use the modems to collect the vote tallies. Then they figured out they could put the back-end systems online behind a secure server and automate the whole data collection process.

  "There are all kinds of arguments pro and con — but mostly, it's way more efficient than having people carrying the memory cards around. Some techies argue that it's more secure. And they say they only have the systems online long enough for the transfer of data, and the data's encrypted, so it's safe. You following me?"

  "Yes," Mary and I both said.

  "So where's the problem?" I asked.

  "The problem is that some back-end systems get left online. Either by accident, or by design, if somebody's corrupt. Once somebody hacks into one, they have a toehold. The hackers can modify the code that controls the back-end system. Then once they're inside, they can spread the modifications across other parts of the system.

  "Those data centers Lewis was managing were doing all kinds of support work. But Gulliver's big plan was that by the next election, their server farms would fool the back-end systems. Instead of collecting data from voting machines, the back-end systems would be fed vote counts from the Russian-controlled servers."

  "Whoa," I said. "And they wouldn't need to alter the counts everywhere — only in certain critical places, right?"

  "Right. And Gulliver is running analysis programs all the time. He tells Lewis which election precincts are the most critical."

  "Did Lewis help your team get access to the data center in Miami?" Mary asked.

  "Yes. That one's under our control, now."

  "So you've put the brakes on Gulliver," I said.

  "Maybe, but Lewis thinks Gulliver may have other people like him, running other server farms."

  "What's your next step, then?"

  "We're still putting the pieces together. There are several options, including fielding hackers of our own. We have a little time before the next national election. We're pretty sure we can shut down the tampering. The problem will be the aftershocks when all the corrupt players realize the game's up. All hell will break loose. Stay tuned; I have a feeling there will be more work for you two."

  "It almost seems anticlimactic," Mary said. "But what about the other prisoners?"

  "Well, all of them except Grissom outlived their usefulness. They were just vermin; they've been dealt with."

  "Except Grissom?" I asked.

  "Yeah. Turns out Grissom is an undercover FBI agent."

  "Damn!" I said.

  "And what was he doing?" Mary asked.

  "He was supposed to be infiltrating what was left of O'Hanlon's operation, trying to get a handle on who was taking it over. At least that's his story."

  "You sound doubtful," I said.

  "Well, yeah."

  "Can't you find out if he's really an FBI agent?" Mary asked.

  "Oh, he's really an FBI agent," Aaron said. "That still leaves two questions. The first one is whether he's crooked."

  "And the second one?" Mary asked.

  "Is whether his chain of command can be trust
ed. We're working on it, but it will take a little time. Meanwhile, Grissom's cooling his heels on Lizzie."

  After a few seconds of silence, I asked, "Anything else for us?"

  "Not right now. Keep that satellite phone close, though. It will probably be a couple of weeks before we've sorted through everything. Mike and Bob were serious about you guys taking a break, so I won't bug you until they ask me to. But one of them might want to talk with you. Have a good time sailing, and stay safe."

  "Thanks, Aaron," I said.

  "Yes, thanks," Mary said. "You take care."

  And with that, we disconnected the call.

  "You know what?" Mary asked.

  "What?"

  "I'm glad we're getting some time to go sailing like regular people, you old villain."

  "I am, too, Vixen. Let's go chase a few sunsets."

  The End

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