On his drive into the office, he considered his angle. Glitch knew he couldn’t play too dumb and act like he couldn’t solve their problems, but he also couldn’t go in there with blazing saddles and fix it either. He would have to find a way to appease Eagle, and give Scratch the time he needed as well.
Walking into the office during work hours was always a big event. For him, anyways. Everyone who missed him on his last visit wanted to catch up, and those who were just nosey wanted to get the inside track on whatever he was working on. Then you had the single women who flirted with him shamelessly, didn’t matter if he reciprocated or not. Glitch hated the attention but had gotten used to it over the years. He walked briskly through the building, making his hellos along the way, never taking off his reflective sunglasses until he was seated behind his desk. Waiting for him was a report outlining the full scope of the technical difficulties that required his attention.
Pretending to analyze the report full of issues, he continued to work on his strategy. He sent Scratch an email letting him know that he was in the office. As head of his department of one, now two if you counted his new trainee, it would make sense that Scratch would meet with the head of IT to discuss how the system failure was affecting his productivity. Glitch mused that he could have been a star in Hollywood as adept an actor he had become. Pulling the wool over Eagle’s head would be his biggest performance to date.
Two pings alerted him of incoming emails. One was from Scratch, notifying him that they would meet for lunch, and the other from an IT analyst requesting his presence in the server room. Shrugging his shoulders, he exchanged his shades for a pair of Buddy Holly frames that he reserved for his geeky IT identity. He also tried to downplay his looks ever since his body started to bulk up with the workouts, and a female coworker said he looked more like a male model than a techie.
Bracing for the chill of the small room that housed the servers, he hid his surprise to find two people fiddling with the equipment. He made eye contact with Stan, the analyst who summoned him, and nodded his greeting as he waited for the conversation he was having with the stranger to end. Glitch pretended to look over the reports as he listened to the unknown man advise Stan on what he thought the problems were.
“This doesn’t appear to be virus related. It’s too clean, and there is some sort of order amidst the dysfunction. If it were a virus or a deep-rooted Trojan, we would have been able to wipe them out by now. Looks more like faulty programming to me,” the stranger stated.
“That makes sense,” Stan concurred. “We did a complete virus scan, and wiped the system but the problem came back. We spent a shitload of time trying to locate the offending computer, and found nothing. But thank God John is here now. He’ll know what to do,” Stan clapped Glitch on the back to go along with his compliment.
“You know I’ll do my best. You should have called me sooner,” Glitch replied. “Nice to meet you?” Glitch held his hand out to the man that stood by watching his interaction with Stan, intently.
“Donald. I just started the lead analyst position two weeks ago.” With a firm handshake, the two men exchanged friendly but borderline suspicious glances. Glitch had known that the position was open for some time, but with his own ‘job’ on the chopping block, he had to wonder if Donald was his replacement. Sizing the man up, Glitch didn’t get the typical laid back IT/Techie vibe from him, but he’d know soon enough.
“So it’s not a virus issue?” Glitch directed the question at Donald since he was the one to form that conclusion.
“No. It looks like one, initially, but when you look further you see that each individual department server is scrambled. A virus can be cleaned, but once a software program is scrambled it needs to be replaced or re-coded,” Donald explained.
“Huh. I never heard of that before.” Glitch faked ignorance to see how much of his knowledge base the newcomer would reveal.
“Scrambled programming?” It wasn’t exactly what Glitch had done, but Donald was closer to figuring it out than the rest of the ‘normal’ IT staff. Only someone with serious knowledge of code would be able to really decipher Glitch’s handy work.
“Well, it goes like this,” Donald began. Glitch listened patiently as the other man spun a web that exposed his level of skill, but he seemed to be holding back. Didn’t matter. He had slipped up enough to show that he wasn’t even close to being ‘just an analyst’. All he spoke of was code, programming, data signatures, and things that were above and beyond the scope of his new job duties. He’d written Glitch off as just another IT guy and showed his own hand in the process.
This gave Glitch pause. If their replacements had no idea who they were, then what exactly did Eagle have up his sleeve? Upon further thinking, and knowing that being sneaky was Eagle’s modus operandi, these men would all be promoted suddenly to keep things in line with the trio’s unplanned departures. Glitch knew that the smart way of handling it would be to space things out. It would be pretty obvious something was up if the heads of IT, Accounting, and Security all failed at their jobs at the same time. That bought them some time, but there was no guarantee. They had to act fast.
Donald continued to drone on and on about his assumed solutions to the IT problem while Glitch feigned taking notes. What he was really doing was working out a plan for them to expose this guy for real, and once they did he would have to be flipped to their side. There was no other way, and it would maximize their manpower and minimize the threat against them. Goal number one was to weaken and dismantle Eagle’s attack. Glitch would spend his lunch hour relaying his latest scheme to Scratch and Jack. They would find out exactly how much Donald, knew that night.
*
At exactly six o’clock pm, Glitch walked out of the elevator that placed him at the lower garage level where his car was parked. He took his time, leisurely tossing his briefcase onto the passenger seat before slipping his shades back on and driving out of Hawk Global’s parking lot. After driving about five minutes, he pulled into the drive-through of a fast food donut joint and ordered two coffees, black, and a dozen glazed donuts. After confirming his order, he slowly maneuvered his car forward stopping just before the sharp curve that led to the drive-up window so that Scratch could jump in the car.
It wasn’t the sexiest of missions, but Glitch reasoned that they should stick to routine as much as possible. That meant Scratch heading to the gym after work, and Glitch stopping for the rare treat he allowed himself on days he worked in the office. It also worked for them that the gym was located in the shopping center adjacent to the donut shop. Glitch handed Scratch a coffee and headed toward their destination.
“Dragon is already in place,” Glitch muttered around a warm donut.
“I bet. Probably drooling with excitement,” Scratch deadpanned.
“Yeah well, he better rein it in because we need this guy. Alive.”
Jack was already waiting for them at Donald’s address, listed in the employee records. Not the records that everyone had access to, but the one that existed for Eagle’s purpose. For a man with as much money, resources and influence as Eagle, Glitch couldn’t believe how easy it was to access his private files. Did he really underestimate his revered hacker that much? Or was he just that cocky that he thought no one was on to him? Either way, it was quite easy for Glitch to locate the exact building where Donald laid his head.
The renovated warehouse was similar to the building that Glitch shared with his buddies, but where they lived was close to Hawk Global in the financial district of downtown Manhattan. Donald lived further north in the Meatpacking district. Both places looked anything but residential from the outside, but would prevent them from having a case of the ‘nosey neighbor’.
“Where’s our mark?” Scratch was cracking knuckles and stretching muscle in the seat next to him. Glitch checked the GPS locator that was locked into Donald’s vehicle. He was right where they needed him to be.
“He’s just leaving Hawk now. Go ahead and get into pl
ace. Remember, don’t show your face until the door is open unless he puts up a fight before that,” Glitch commanded.
“Sure thing boss man,” Scratch snarked before jumping out of the car and slipping into the shadows of the small parking shelter.
Chapter 21
Ten minutes and two donuts later, the car was illuminated with headlights as their target pulled into the lot. Glitch waited until Donald parked, exited his car, and was heading to his entrance before exiting his own vehicle. There were two other unattended cars in the lot, but Donald hadn’t even spared them a glance. Man was this dude wet behind the ears.
“Hey Donald. I need a word,” Glitch called out as he strolled towards the man who just stared back at him in shock. Obviously not expecting Glitch to be there, much less know where he lived.
“What the hell?” That tone seemed to be more honest than the one he’d faked for Glitch earlier.
“Just need a few words with you. No harm,” Glitch said as he raised his hands in the air to appease the other man, and show his lack of threat.
“How’d you find this place?” Donald shot back. Then as if answering his own question he backed away from Glitch. “I don’t think this is a good idea. You can talk to me at work tomorrow.”
“But we both know that we can’t talk at work tomorrow. So let’s not play games,” Glitch warned.
“Look man. I don’t want any trouble so why don’t you just get out of here,” Donald stammered as he pulled a stun gun from his leather satchel. Glitch’s lips twitched as he held in the howl of laughter in his throat.
“And what do you plan to do with that,” Glitch pointed to the Taser. “When I have that,” He pointed to Scratch who had snaked his way along the side of the building without the other man’s notice.
“Shit,” Donald hissed when he turned just as Scratch was pushing the barrel of glock into his side.
“Now, go ahead and punch your code in so we can get this over with,” Glitch ordered.
Showing his guts for the first time, Donald faked compliance, entering half the code to his alarm before he lunged back in an attempt to knock the gun from Scratch’s grip, but failing miserably. Scratch tossed the gun to Glitch, and grappled with their mark until he had him hemmed up with his arms twisted behind his back, and he grunted in pain. Then the door eased open and Jack’s expressionless face appeared. He glowered but didn’t say a word as he let the men in.
“As you can see, this isn’t going to go well for you if you don’t cooperate. I bet you're thinking someone’s coming to save you? I bet Eagle told you that you’d be protected and you’ve been walking around thinking you got outta jail free and clear and life is a fucking cake walk. Right? Well, we’re here to tell that it’s not. And before we leave, we are going to work out a plan where we all get what we were promised, and Eagle gets what he deserves. Do you understand, Donald?”
With a defeated sigh, Donald sagged his shoulders, giving up his fight with Scratch. He held back a grimace when he looked to Jack who was also brandishing a gun of his own, equipped with a silencer, and saw the chair along with rope and twining waiting next to him. Glitch could see the options clicking in his head until he settled on agreeing.
“You might as well kill me now unless you have a damn good plan. We’re all as good as dead if you don’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. As long as you play your part, we’ll all live to see another day,” Glitch replied.
“And what exactly is my part? Donald asked, swallowing as he sat down across from Glitch. The man was scared shitless, there was no doubt of that, but he handled it well. He looked them all in the eyes and held his head high. He may just be a hacker, but he wasn’t weak, just too new at all this to really understand what he’d gotten into.
“Simple. When Eagle gives you a job to counteract what I’m doing, I need to know. We need to know about the men who will be replacing us, and have your help turning them too. You’ll know them better than we will,” Glitch explained.
“Douglas may be the easier of the three. Duke, not so much,” Donald replied.
“Wait, you let your cover names all start with ‘D’? Come on, man, have more pride in yourself,” Scratch tossed.
“Not a choice. Office names are just that. Outside of that I’m Annihilator, Douglas has been known as Touch, and Duke...well he’s Hollywood.”
“Duke worked with me,” Jack acknowledged. “On my last job. He’s cold. He’ll be the harder to break.”
“Look we don’t really deal much. Eagle likes to keep it that way. Most of the time we really don’t know what the other’s doing. But if he’s going down, I don’t want to be caught in the crossfire. You’ve proven that you can get me where I live.”
“You don’t have to be here to die. I can kill you anywhere,” Jack promised. Donald swallowed tightly before nodding his head.
“We need to know what Eagle is doing. He doesn’t give us all the pieces, but if we start sharing what we know among each other we can fight him,” Scratch said.
“And how do you know I just won’t turn on you?”
“Because you were in prison. You know as well as I do, even with backstabbing, fights, and bad shit going down, it was always the convicts against the uniform. That hackers don’t do well with authority, by fucking definition,” Glitch answered.
“Can’t argue with that. Look, right now I just know that we are supposed to be replacing you. That you got greedy, wanted more than you were given, and need to be taken out. As far as we are concerned you are a job. Period.” It was the first that Glitch had heard of it. He wondered why Eagle even bothered with coming up with some bullshit cover story with these guys.
“Now you know differently. You in or out?” Jack asked, fingering the trigger on his gun, but never taking his gaze away from Donald’s face.
“I’ll get you what you need,” he answered, and then turned to Glitch. “Pick a chat room, Glitch, and we can re-route it however we need to. We can use that as a meeting place.”
“Only if you have your own equipment. Eagle logs issued gear.”
“I’m good on that,” Donald said, rolling his eyes. Glitch smiled slightly at that, understanding the hacker’s mannerism. No hacker completely ditched his gear. At least this newbie knew that much.
“Then we’re golden. I’ll find you when necessary. Slip up and I promise you that you’ll die much sooner than we will,” Glitch promised.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Donald said looking to Jack.
“Have a good night then,” Glitch said with a nod. As one Scratch, Jack, and he moved to leave the apartment. They were careful retracing their steps outside. Waiting to make sure the coast was clear and no one was looking around.
“Well, that was fun,” Scratch said sarcastically as they moved towards their cars. “He’ll either ride the gravy train or alert Eagle tomorrow.”
“Don’t think he’ll do that,” Jack said quietly. “Right now he’s thinking that we are more deadly than Eagle simply because we came for him. He didn’t think he was on our radar and we found him.”
“True. It’s human nature to hedge your bet with the strongest party. We all have learned that,” Glitch said.
“Ain’t that the fucking truth. So we get Eagle’s information, turn his new team against him, and bury him. That’s the plan?” Scratch asked.
“Yeah, in a nutshell. The way to get Eagle is information. Up until now he’s always been one step ahead of us, if not three. Now we can shorten that and be proactive. Take him at his own game, pure and simple,” Glitch said.
“I like it,” Jack agreed. “Simple enough, which makes it deadly and very likely to work.”
“Then it’s on. Look, fellas, a much as I’d love going home and waiting around to see what that man is going to do, I’d rather spend my last possible night enjoying myself. At least, if tomorrow I meet with the FBI and Eagle is ready to serve my head on a platter I will have had tonight. The bar is calling my name.”
Scratch didn’t wait as he walked away and got quickly into his car. Glitch had no idea what was in store for them after this. So many things could go wrong, and yet so many could go right. Either way he knew two of the best men in the world, he didn’t give a damn what they’d done. They deserved to be free. Eagle wanted to get rid of them because they were too close because he couldn’t control them. Whatever had spooked him enough to start so soon remained to be seen. But, what Glitch did know, was Eagle wasn’t a god to them for springing them from jail anymore. That he, more than any of them, deserved to be locked in a cage. Whatever came they were going to face it together. So he didn’t say goodbye to Scratch. Jack waited and watched Scratch before turning to Glitch.
“You took a gamble tonight, with all our lives,” he said.
“I know it’s the right one.”
“I don’t doubt you. But things are bound to get uglier from here on out. Do you understand what I’m saying? I won’t let him take any of us down.”
Glitch Page 13