by J. M. Lanham
Chapter 27:
Tower Heist
Fenton had never had the chance to try his hand at digital lock picking before Saturday night. Sure, he had known how since he was a preteen, but the quick escape from Atlanta a year earlier had meant leaving the tools of the trade behind at Teddy Barnes’ apartment (aside from his recently pulverized laptop, courtesy of ASX Engine 202). Now, as he knelt in front of the keypad to the back service entrance at Asteria Pharmaceuticals, he had everything he needed to pop the lock.
“Can you see all right?” Paul asked as Fenton worked under a dim security light.
“Yeah, I can see enough.”
“Good, ’cause I think using a flashlight would be about the dumbest thing we could do right now.”
“Agreed,” Claire said as she knelt by Fenton. She looked out at the parking lot to see Sarah parked on the far end, then clicked on the walkie-talkie, turning the volume down to near-mute. She whispered, “Do you copy, Sarah?”
A click, then a distorted, “Yeah. I copy.” From her vantage point Sarah could see both the service entrance on the west side of the building and the main entrance on the south. Inside, two security guards could be seen standing near the front automatic glass doors. “I make two guards out front, over.”
“And no one outside?”
Sarah scanned the perimeter. “No. I don’t see anyone. What should I do if they walk out here? What do I tell them?”
“Exactly what we talked about,” Claire said. “That you’re having car trouble and you’re waiting for your ride.”
“What if they ask for ID?”
“Pull down your blouse and bat your eyes. It’s worked before.” She looked at Paul and shrugged her shoulders. It was obvious her friend Sarah was nervous, but she was confident she could handle herself if necessary. With any luck, Sarah would keep a low profile long enough for them to get in and out of there.
“10-4,” Sarah said. “If I see anything suspicious I’ll keep you posted.”
The electric screwdriver whirred as Fenton removed the card-reader cover and set it aside. A modest bundle of thin wires was strung between two ports. Fenton separated two of them and pressed them into a device the size of a nickel.
“That little thing’s going to get us in?” Paul said.
“Uh-huh. It’s called a BLE key workaround. It’s basically like duplicating a keycard without having a physical card on hand.” He stuffed the wires back in, screwed the faceplate back on, pulled out his smartphone, and said, “Now we just clone the last-used keycode using my little app here, and presto.”
The door chimed as the red light on the card reader turned green. They were in.
“That seemed way too easy,” Paul said as the three stepped just inside in the door.
“Scary easy,” Fenton said. “Let’s just hope the rest of their security is as outdated as the locks are.”
They stepped into the service entrance foyer and waited as Paul peered around the nearest corner to survey the large maintenance room ahead. No sign of life; just the sights and sounds of industrial-sized breakers and air-conditioning systems working overtime into the August night. He turned back to Fenton, who was already sitting against a wall and clacking away on his laptop. “Got a connection?”
“Almost,” Fenton said as he typed. “Two ways we get busted here: cameras and motion detectors. Freeze-framing the cameras is step one.”
“Is that hard?”
“Not really. The cameras had already collected plenty of nighttime footage way before we got here. All there is to do is pause the live feed, replace it with the previous footage, and run it on a loop. Should be easy, once I get past their WPA2.” He glanced up from his keyboard to catch an unknowing look from Paul, so he explained. “Wi-Fi-protected access, version 2. It’s security that uses AES, or Advanced Encryption Standard. Tricky shit. Government-approved, too.”
Claire said, “That doesn’t sound good.” She looked around and bit her nails. “How much longer?”
Fenton typed feverishly as he spoke. “We’re close, real close. I had to gain access on Asteria’s less-secured PUBLIC network and work from there to secure the right access keys …” A few heavy-handed keystrokes followed by a forceful punch of the ENTER button, and Fenton had done it.
“Boom. We’re golden.”
The group let out a collective sigh of relief, and Paul checked his watch. “Almost 10 p.m. I remember one of the old security guards, Walter, always griped about making the hourly rounds when he worked nights.”
Claire asked, “You don’t think they’ll check in here, do you?”
“The maintenance room? Nah. Not unless the power goes out or something. Walter said he used to walk the main floor, ride a few elevators, shine a light on a few offices. Anything more than that was above his pay grade.”
“Gotcha.” Claire looked to Fenton. “Making progress over there?”
“Sort of. I set the terminal to review mode so all the cameras on twenty are currently looping archived footage.”
“Just the twentieth floor?” Paul asked. “Can’t get ’em all?”
“Well I could, if we were in a Hollywood movie. Shutting down the entire building’s security feed would take all night. You said we needed access to twenty, you got access to twenty. Cool?”
Paul glanced over to Claire, lips pursed and eyebrows raised. She shrugged as if to say yep, the kid’s calling the shots now. Fenton was in the zone, exploiting digital back channels for their benefit, running programs and moving files and typing a mile a minute with zero time to suffer fools.
“Yeah, Fenton,” Paul said. “That’s cool. How about the motion detectors?”
Fenton didn’t answer as he continued to work. A few more keystrokes, and he stopped. “Fuck, that’s what I thought,” he said, shaking his head.
“What’s up?” Claire asked.
“Backup security that detects when the system’s been tampered with. If I shut off the motion detectors it’ll automatically trip the alarm.”
“Can you work around it?”
“Again, it’s all about time. Something we’re running short of. But there is something we can try, if the detectors are as outdated as the locks are.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a laser pointer. “Motion detectors use infrared to detect changes in room temperature. They use your own body heat to nab you. On older systems, the infrared light of a laser pointer can blind the detector long enough to squeeze by.”
“Think it’ll work?”
“Won’t know until we try. But we’d better hurry before the guards kick off their hourly stroll.”
Paul agreed. He scanned the room top to bottom, and that’s where he found the first motion detector of the night, mounted high in a corner adjacent to the entrance to the service elevator.
There was no way to sneak around it without setting it off. But for Fenton Reed, that wasn’t a problem. He steadied the laser pointer and shone the dense red beam directly into the detector. “The laser disrupts the sensor as long as it’s pointed at it, plus three or so seconds, give or take. At least, it’s supposed to.”
Claire said, “Only one way to find out,” and stepped into the room. She moved slowly at first, then faster as she realized the trick had worked. She made it to the elevator bank and motioned for the others. “You guys coming or what?”
Fenton said, “You go ahead, Paul. I’ll do the slow walk over and try to keep the laser on it.” Paul nodded and ran across the forty-foot gap to meet Claire. Then Fenton emerged from around the corner, keeping his eyes and laser pointer on the motion sensor, walking at a snail’s pace. After what seemed like an eternity, all three had made it to the service elevator. They walked in and pressed the button for the twentieth floor.
Paul looked at his two companions. “Going up?”
***
The walkie-talkie clicked and clicked, but Sarah still couldn’t get through to Claire as a curious security guard strolled toward the lone sedan in the parking lot.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered. “Pick up, Claire!” It was no use. The guard was quickly closing the distance, and she couldn’t be seen using a walkie-talkie. No one used those damn things anymore; it would be too suspicious. She quickly donned a demure smile as the guard approached.
She rolled down the window and asked, “Can I help you, officer?”
“Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing.” He looked around the parking lot, then leaned closer to the window, shining his flashlight into the car. “May I ask what you’re doing all alone out here after hours, ma’am?”
“Yes. Of course,” she said with a forced laugh. “It’s just the darndest thing, really. I just got this car a week ago and already it’s giving me problems.”
“That so? What seems to be the problem?”
“It won’t start to save my life.”
“Won’t start, huh.” The guard’s handheld high beam scanned the back seat of the car. “You, uh, mind if I take a look?” He gestured for the door, but Sarah stalled. “Um, you know, that’s okay, really. I just called my husband and he’s already on his way.”
“Come on. I’m good with cars. It’ll just take a second.” He gestured for the door again, and Sarah felt like she had no choice. She climbed out and let the guard take her seat, hoping and praying by some miracle that now, for a moment, the car wouldn’t start. But one turn of the key, and the engine pepped right up.
Feigning surprise, “Well, oh my God, you fixed it! What did you do, exactly?”
The guard didn’t answer—it was clear he wasn’t buying it. He climbed out and stood face-to-face with Sarah. “I’m going to ask you just one more time what you’re doing out here in the middle of the night, ma’am.”
“But I just told—”
“Save it,” he said as he tilted his head toward the walkie on his shoulder and pressed the TALK button. “Yeah, Trussell here. I’m going to need backup in G section. And make sure you call it in.”
“Officer, please, I assure you that’s completely uncalled for.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Sarah continued to plead her case, but it was no use. The guard had made up his mind, and already, his coworker was walking across the parking lot toward them. And from what Sarah gathered from his transmission, more authorities were on the way. She looked up at the towering Asteria building and quietly hoped the others could get out before security discovered them inside.
Because the clock was ticking, and soon, their time would be up.
***
“This is Lancaster.” The director answered her phone as she sat across from Agent Morgan at the FBI’s Atlanta field office, legs crossed, foot bouncing to work off some nervous energy. A few “uh-huhs” and “okays” later and she was off the call.
Morgan leaned forward on his desk and asked, “Something important?”
“I would say so,” Lancaster said as she stood and slipped her phone into her purse. “That was one of the teams we’ve got working the phones from Langley.”
“Oh? They got a lead on our fugitives?”
Lancaster couldn’t get out of the office fast enough, and Morgan hastily followed. She said behind her, “They just picked up intel that there’s been a break-in downtown, just a few miles from here.”
“Oh really?” Morgan was out of breath now as he tried to keep up, Lancaster already down the hall and frantically punching the elevator button. “And—and you think our fugitives are responsible for this, this break-in?”
“Absolutely.”
“So, where’s the break-in?”
Lancaster turned and said, “The Asteria building. Company headquarters.”
Chapter 28:
The Server Room
Fenton swung the unmarked server room door open as a rush of cold air escaped into the hallway, confirming they were in the right place. Keeping the room in the low sixties wasn’t by accident; August temps were brutal in Atlanta, and one outage or lapse in the Freon-chilled air pumping in was all it would take to bring the company’s entire data center grinding to a halt.
They stepped into the dark-blue hue of a dimly lit room and let Fenton lead the way, following him between rows of six-foot towers adorned with blinking green and red and blue LEDs, whirling computer fans, and chirping hard drives. Warmth radiated off the stacks of overworked drives, something Paul noticed when he leaned over to scrutinize the machinations of one of the towers. He asked as Fenton neared the back of the room, “What are we looking for here? These things all look the same to me.”
“The rows of servers make up the main data center. It won’t be connected to those.” The words had barely left his mouth as Fenton rounded a corner, and there it was: the glass door to a separate room no bigger than a walk-in closet.
The isolated server room.
“Here,” he called to the others as he swung off his backpack, donned his tools, and knelt to tackle another keypad.
“Same security as before?” Paul asked.
“Yup. Should be a breeze.” He glanced through the glass door into the room and quickly spotted the main control panel just below the LCD monitor. “Looks like they’ve got high-speed ports. Good. We should be able to transfer everything on the server within the hour. Hopefully sooner.” He worked his magic on the door, and in a flash another set of red lights barring them from entrance switched to green.
“See? What’d I tell ya?” He swung the door open and stepped inside. Just then, a low and steady tone filled the room. Fenton looked up to see a motion detector on the far corner, red lights flashing, tone signaling that motion had been detected. Intruder motion.
“Fuck,” Fenton sighed. He looked back at the others. “Guess we better hurry.”
***
Cline sat in the underground parking garage at Asteria and patted the police scanner on his dash like a good dog that had just brought the ball back. Even with all the technology and teams at the CIA’s disposal, he’d still beaten his colleagues at Langley to the punch. Sometimes, thought Cline, old-school tactics for tracking marks just made more sense than running a lead through a long list of decision-makers and shot-callers worried about the one wrong call that could cost them their jobs.
Fewer channels. Less red tape. That’s how Cline liked to operate.
And in this case, he was right. He let the broadcast van idle as he sat in the vacant garage, looking left, then right, peering out the windshield and double-checking his surroundings before hopping into the back. The coast was clear. Time to play ball.
Cline had never worked out of the back of the Ocula broadcast van. Hell, no one had for that matter. Once he was inside with the double doors secured behind him, it was clear how cramped the space was—especially with a two-hundred-and-ten-pound patient now strapped to the table. He tugged on Strassman’s restraints and the outlier groaned. It was clear he was still under the influence of MDMA, but it was wearing off fast. Right on time, thought Cline.
The stretcher Strassman lay on had been modified with a headboard that was bolted to the front of the cab, housing some of the most sophisticated technology on the planet. A bendable metal arm was fixed to the headboard on Strassman’s right, the headset for the content-delivery system attached to the end of it. The IVs and other lines entered Strassman’s port on the left and led back to fresh saline bags and the patient monitor screen mounted into the high-tech headboard behind him. Everything in the back of the van was a miniaturized version of the test lab at Skyline, custom-fit for the road. Not a square inch was wasted.
Cline hunched over the patient and checked his vitals one last time before sitting on the tiny foldout chair in front of the main control station. He pulled out a keyboard and began typing commands:
Project THEIA
OS V 2.14.50
File C:/desktop/THEIA/THEIAMOBILE.exe
Program start 08/28/21 at 22:13
The operating system booted up and the main screen appeared, presenting Cline with a host of clickable options c
ourtesy of the developers at the now-defunct Costa Rican facility. Everything he needed to transmit an outlier broadcast from anywhere he pleased was at his disposal. He scanned the menu and read aloud, “Outlier identification number, content dataset, distance to target …”
Cline’s eyes rolled up as he read the last command. The distance to target was a no-brainer.
It was right above him.
***
Lancaster stepped out of a blacked-out Suburban and walked hastily toward the taped-off entrance to Asteria where a troop of law enforcement officials had gathered in front of the building, the emergency lights of their vehicles painting uniformed officers and firefighters and SWAT members stationed outside in flashing hues of red and blue. She worked her way through the crowd and into the lobby where Morgan already had one of the security guards pulled to the side. He was jotting something on a notepad when Lancaster approached.
“How in the hell did you beat me here?” she asked.
“I grew up in Atlanta,” Morgan said. “Told you that you should’ve tagged along.”
She dismissed the comment. “So what’s the story?”
Morgan said, “Guy here says he found a woman in the parking lot sitting alone in her car about thirty minutes ago. He thought something was fishy and was in the middle of calling it in when the alarms went off.”
“Do we know where?”
Morgan hadn’t gotten that far yet, so the guard answered, “Yeah. On twenty. Inside the main data center.”
Puzzled, Lancaster asked, “That was the only alarm? Nothing to indicate a break-in?”
“No, ma’am. The building gets locked down every night at seven, and that’s after an hour-long check of the interior. If anyone broke in, we’d know about it.”
Morgan said, “What are you saying? You think it’s an inside job?”
“It’s gotta be. Whoever set off the alarm in that room would’ve had to have hidden out after work or something. No way anyone could’ve gotten past our card readers and cameras and all the motion detectors leading to twenty after hours. No freakin’ way.”