Clancy,Tom - Net Force - Cybernation.txt

by Cybernation(lit)

  l(Hd.

  i he watched his sleeping child, he could understand Vengeance belonged to the Lord, and Jesus had 1 forgiveness for sins, no matter how heinous; but died as a result of some negligent idiot too to be driving, he could easily see appointing elf judge, jury, and executioner, even at the risk of [own soul.

  were some things a man had to do, no matter : the cost.

  i came back into the room, carrying a plastic bag 1 a drink holder with four paper cups of coffee in it.

  wake up?"

 
  :y had tuna on white, turkey on rye, and ham and on whole wheat," she said. "I got two of each, want one?"

  aybe later," he said. "Coffee's fine for now. i nodded, took a cup of coffee for herself, and pulled

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  her chair closer to his, next to the bed. She reached out with her free hand, and he took it in his.

  He knew they would get used to this. You could get used to almost anything if you had the time. One of them would eventually go home, shower, get a nap, bring back clean clothes, while the other stayed. They'd swap off. But with any luck, they'd be going home soon. There were portable traction devices they could hook up to Tyrone's leg, once the doctors were sure he'd be okay. The surgery that would come later was relatively safe. There were some rare, but potentially dangerous complications following this kind of accident they'd told the Howards about: fat emboli, blood clots that might break loose and get into the circulatory system to cause problems. After a few days, the risk of these would be minimal.

  Tyrone was going to be okay. But-what if Howard had been off on assignment somewhere hi some hellhole, doing Net Force's business when this had happened? It was bad enough, but-what if it had been worse? If his son had been injured so badly that he didn't make it? Died while his father was a thousand miles away, unable to get back in time?

  When he thought about it reasonably, he knew this was an irrational argument. Tyrone could have died in the accident and Howard could have been a block away and it wouldn't have made any difference. You couldn't live your life looking over your child's shoulder, worried every minute of every day about what might happen to him. The Almighty had His own plans. And if He wanted to call Tyrone-or Nadine-home? Well, that's what would happen, and there was nothing Howard could do about it.

  Man proposes, God disposes.

  But in his heart of hearts, he felt that if he was there when the call came, Howard might be able to talk God out of it. Offer a trade, himself for his child or wife, and maybe God would go for it There wasn't any basis for believing that, God was not known for horse-trading

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  s, but on some level, he believed it might be different : was there to make the offer. So going away and not around to try that deal was heavy on his mind.

  ybe he had made a mistake in going back to work for

  : Force.

  : was something he was going to have to think about ; more.

  I Force HQ

  .Virginia

  stuck her head into Alex's office, t's up?" he asked. : BCin sting is about to go down." lly? That was fast."

  nodded. 'Turned out the 'Chinese hackers' were in they didn't have far to travel. Jay's run the a case-and a sticky-cam into the conference 's big monitor, if you want to watch."

  glanced at his desk. "Might as well. I'm not get- ich done here."

  i two of them headed for the conference room. Toni n't been here when this sting had been set up, but p'd seen others like it when she'd been working here It was simple enough. Certain kinds of criminal into extortion had been around for years. Gener- they'd break into a company's system, steal files, the system, or set up a worm or virus for later, times all three. Then they'd contact the company and their services as "computer security consultants." If i company wasn't interested, they would trash or steal ble files, put client lists on the net, and other manner vilry until the company came around. A lot of mid1 corporations found it cheaper and easier just to pay hackers to go away, as long as they weren't too and the RBs-that came from "rule benders,"

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  which is what they liked to call themselves instead of "law breakers"-would take their money and move on to another victim.

  No harm, no foul, and the company eats the loss as pan of doing business.

  But a few years ago, the FBI, then Net Force, began using their skills to create fake companies whose profiles were attractive to the RBs. They'd set up shop, drop fake histories and credit ratings into places where they'd be found and believed, and wait. Too confident of their abilities in the electronic world, the extortioners would never stoop to actually going to a library-using shoeware-totreeware, they called it-that would give the lie to the fake histories posted. Only squirrels played in trees.

  You're not an ape-use a tool!

  The RBs were always looking for fat and easy targets, and the Net Force decoys were set out like overweight turkeys too heavy to run.

  The latest version of the sting was BE Internet Industries, Inc. Called BE Three Eyes, or just Three Eyes, the company had just enough passware and fire walls to make a bent hacker have to work a little, and all kinds of apparent goodies there for the taking once they were past security. Like a brown paper bag full of unmarked twenty- dollar bills just sitting there on the sidewalk with nobody around, it was just too good for the RBs to resist. Three Eyes had gulled a dozen thieves over the last year-under different names and slightly different configurations, of course.

  "BE" stood for "Big Con," one of Jay's little jokes.

  Typically, hackers would attack, then demand payment. Sometimes, a company would require more proof. Sometimes, they would even hire the thieves to set up security for them, with the idea that it takes one to catch one.

  Some of the RBs actually considered breaking into a company's system and screwing it up to be the equivalent of a job interview.

  Three Eyes had fine-tuned their process. Once they had

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  coming after them, they first sent a small amount ey, with a promise of more-providing the thief be willing to do a hands-on, face-time demo to own security people of how they could get past the s. The pitch had been developed and honed by liant shrink who had worked for State before he'd red to the FBI. The pitch was designed to be psycho- ly irresistible to a hacker mentality. Hackers Bght they were smarter than normal people. They were Vinced of their superiority. They thought they could : circles around any company security honcho or fed- agent. They wanted to show people just how smart were. They needed the applause, and the Three Eye played right into their beliefs. It did everything but : down to kiss their feet. They ate it up. : RBs, once hooked, were landed almost every time. i big HDTV screen was lit, and several people were ng or sitting at the table, watching. The case-cam a briefcase that belonged to one of the agents. Typlly there were a pair of these, one from the regular FBI, from Net Force, playing the parts of the CEO and rity VP for Three Eyes. They would ask for a sit- i with the thieves, and the RBs could choose the time, whatever. Some of the thieves had been pretty . They had made calls from mobile corns to the , changed destinations at the last instant, and one even had the meeting take place in a house that had made into a kind of giant Farady Cage, complete wide-spectrum jammers to make sure the company cs couldn't transmit their position for help. pThese guys weren't that smart, though they were care-

  I The case-cam on the table had a small scanning unit ; panned slowly back and forth almost one-eighty. The i panned to the left.

  it out. Metal detector built into the doorway," pointed at the screen, "to make sure our guys aren't ; guns or knives."

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  Hie camera panned back. There were two men seated at the table across from th
e two agents, and two more men standing behind them.

  "Who are the goons?"

  "Bodyguards, we figure."

  "Big ones."

  "Six four, six five. Two-seventy, two hundred eighty, easy. Not fun in close quarters."

  PIPed in the left corner of the image was a smaller, wider-angle view that took in most of the room. That would be from the sticky-cam, about the size of a dime and almost clear and invisible, stuck on the wall near the door by one of the agents when they'd arrived. The wide- angle image gave a better view of the play, and Toni picked up a remote and switched the picture-ina-picture around.

  Toni looked at her watch. "Right about... now," she said.

  One of the agents-the regular FBI guy-removed an envelope from his jacket pocket and passed it to the two men across from him. The thief took the envelope and checked it, smiled real big, and showed it to his partner. His partner took it, riffled what was inside with his thumb, and also smiled.

  While the two extortionists were looking at the money, the agent on the left, who was in fact one Julio Femandez of Net Force, removed something from his pocket, which he pointed at the man across from him.

  It looked kind of like a pack of white playing cards with a small handle and a circular hole near the middle through which Fernandez had stuck his finger.

  "Strange-looking weapon," Alex said.

  "Starn pistola," Toni said. "9mm stripper clip, five shots, all plastic and ceramic construction, including the springs, fragmenting bullets made from some kind of zinc epoxy boron ceramic. Light, but very fast, even from a snubby. Eighteen hundred, nineteen hundred feet per sec

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  Bullet comes apart on impact, creates a nasty tern- stretch cavity."

  bodyguard on the left made as if to draw a gun under his jacket in a shoulder holster. Julio waved : gun at him and said something. Too bad there wasn't sound.

  ; bodyguard must have decided that Julio's weapon n't that dangerous. He pulled his own handgun, a big,

  semiauto pistol, t wasn't even halfway from the holster when Julio shot The resolution of the camera, while pretty good, n't enough for Toni to see where the bullet or bullets but the man dropped the gun and staggered back the wall, then slid down into a sitting position, second bodyguard evidently decided that trying to aw a man pointing a gun at your face was maybe such a good idea. He raised his hands, fingers open

  ly, my," Alex said. "What's the world coming to i hackers bring guns to the party." fe live in dangerous times," Toni said.

  15

  On the Bon Chance

  In the conference room next to the computer center, Keller called his team together.

  "Listen," he said. "I know you are all doing outstanding work. Our projects thus far have been on target and very effective. However, due to the actions of Net Force, as well as other minor security agencies, our successes have not been as great as we'd hoped they'd be."

  Nobody was happy to hear that, but it wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know.

  "There are real world contingencies; of course, those have always been in place, and those in charge of such matters will go forward as necessary. Some efforts have already been made in that direction."

  This drew a disappointed murmur.

  He could understand that It had been his hope all along that the programmers and weavers could do the job without resorting to cruder methods. That would be the real victory, to use the very tools of that which they sought to bring about and nothing more. The reality of it was, how

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  that there were still limits on what could be done ideally. The future had arrived, but there were still : out there who not only refused to log into it, they t to be heading back to the past. There were groups i "till used typewriters, for God's sake. Fountain pens tmaking a comeback. Handwritten letters weren't goto replace e-mail, of course, but there were people still corresponded that way. There were even people United States who not only refused to have an- ng machines or services, they didn't have tele- es

  fou couldn't reach people like that, couldn't frighten i with worries of Internet problems. They didn't care, ately, these Luddites were in the minority; but computer revolution was not yet complete. Some still had to be done the old-fashioned way. That's men Like Santos were necessary. If you were doing you needed a laser scalpel, but now and again, pile medicine's advances, you had to have a bone saw. E perhaps more accurately, a leech ...

  ; was wandering. He drew himself back to the meet! at hand. "We are going to have to push up our dead, ; on Attack Omega," he said. iThat drew louder grumbles.

  "I know, I know. You are already running as fast as i can. There is no help for it-the decision comes from I high. We will be coordinating with the other agents of age on this, and we can't slip the deadline even by an Whatever we have when Omega launches is what : have. I'd like for it to be as much as possible. Okay, t's put on our question hats and get them all out in the

  rtftfi "

  Later, after they had filed out, Keller sat at the table, ly tapping his fingertips on the wood, thinking. His team

  Id give him all they had. And he would roll up his eves and help them-Jay Gridley was the linchpin which Net Force's security operations revolved.

  ow enough sand at Jay, and he'd grind to a halt, and

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  if Jay was stymied, much of Net Force's interference would also be slowed, maybe stopped.

  Whatever Santos thought of him, all it would take would be for Keller to point a finger at Jay, and he'd be a dead man. That was the surest way of removing him from the picture. And probably it was safer for CyberNation to do it that way.

  But...

  Where was the honor in that? The skill? The knowing that he could take Jay on and beat him, using the weapons they had developed with their brains. Any thug could crack somebody over the head with a club. Beating Jay Gridley mono a mono, VR against VR, computer to computer, that was something to make a man feel good.

  Kill Jay? No. Not with a gun or knife. Beating him at his own game, that was how he would do it. Defeating him intellectually, shattering his confidence, taking away what he thought he was, that was worse than death for a man like Jay Gridley.

  Nothing less would do.

  He took a deep breath. Well. Might as well get started. He had a couple of things he could give Jay to chew on. He smiled. Yes, indeed.

  Santos finished his exercises. Drenched in sweat, he headed for the shower.

  The workout had been good, but he was getting stale. It had been too long since he had trained against an expert. The solo dances were okay for maintaining muscle tone, to stay flexible and to keep alive the basics, but you did not learn to fight men by practicing alone. Mirror warriors were no threat. To keep a skill sharp, you had to hone it against another player of equal or better skill. Timing, distance, position, those could only be learned against dangerous opposition. The flow had to be there.

  Soon, he would have to find players of enough ability to challenge him. There were none on this ship, none within easy travel range. Maybe in Cuba-he had heard

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  fe were some old-line players still there, hiding in the f fields, practicing by moonlight, since the art was still 1 on, even after the Old Man was gone-but find- t would be the trick. There were some in the U.S., e, even in Florida, but to get a real challenge, he tneed to go home, that's where the best players still and that was not hi the cards in the near future- atil this job was finished.

  : sighed. A man had to learn to put off his wants to ? with his needs.

  turned the cold water on full blast, shucked his , and stepped into the shower. The cold needles made It catch his breath, but it was a good feeling.

  there was the problem of Missy Chance to con- She was sleeping with Jackson Keller, at least, others-who knew? One of the barmaids in the i had told Santos this while
she had been enjoying r in her room, after he had returned from dispatch- ||he vice president of the server company.

  soaped the long-handled and stiff-bristled brush I began to scrub his face and neck.

  saw no irony in finding out that his mistress was ng with another man from a woman he was screw- Men were allowed to be with more than one woman, (had made men that way, but a woman who was un- ul? That was wrong. He could not blame Keller for ng Missy, though he, too, would have to pay. But if . not rape, and he could not imagine that happening then Missy must be made to... atone for her ac-

  moved the rough brush down, scrubbed his shoul-

  his armpits, his back.

  sy was expert in bed, but she was too sure that such made her superior to other women. It did not. In (dark, they were all the same, true?

  .must be made to understand that some things could ; be allowed by a man such as Santos. Not allowed.

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  Washington, D.C.

  "A nightclub?"

  "Not exactly," she said. "More like a... roadhouse," she said.

  Michaels looked at Toni and raised one eyebrow.

  They were in the living room. The baby was asleep, and so was Guru.

  "We haven't been out since Alex was born," she said.