Any Means Necessary

by R. J. Patterson

  Hawk started pacing behind Black and Alex.

  “Would you stop that?” Blunt asked. “You’re making me nervous, Hawk.”

  “That makes two of us. I’m always nervous when someone I captured escaped.”

  He glared at Black, who turned around and returned the stare with one of his own.

  “I hope you’re not still blaming me,” Black said.

  “You were the one who insisted on tying up Adelman, not to mention the only one of us who was certain that he was telling the truth about his involvement with Obsidian. I think it’s pretty clear now that you were mistaken.”

  “Just because he escaped doesn’t mean he’s guilty,” Black said. “I’ve read your file. You’ve escaped, too, from various captures—and I wouldn’t suggest you were guilty in any of those situations.”

  “I hope you would assume as much since I was never captured simply for interrogation purposes,” Hawk said as he narrowed his eyes. “We only wanted to talk with Adelman.”

  “I doubt he felt that way,” Blunt said.

  “Well, if he didn’t, he was probably wondering why we didn’t use more painful techniques to get him to talk,” Hawk said.

  “You tied him to a chair,” Blunt said. “What else was he supposed to think?”

  “Apparently, that didn’t seem to matter in the end,” Black said.

  “Lesson learned,” Blunt said. “Now, let’s move on from this and formulate a plan for what to do next. With Adelman in the wind and our access to Obsidian being tenuous at best right now, we need a multipronged approach for dealing with all of the crisis facing us at the moment.”

  “You know my strengths,” Black said.

  Blunt nodded. “It only took me a few minutes to consider where best to use you, which is in the tracking of Admiral Adelman. We still don’t know anything definitively about where he stands, but we need to catch him again and ask him—or at least track his movements and see if we can discern what he’s really up to.”

  “What about us?” Hawk asked.

  “For now, I’m going to keep you two together,” Blunt said. “That’s probably in the best interest of this operation, especially given Alex’s ability to trace hackers. I need you to return your focus on identifying who’s behind the Undertaker757 handle. Where is he working out of and what his motives are for unleashing such a vicious attack on members of the senate?”

  “So, we’re just going to ignore Obsidian for the time being?” Hawk asked.

  “We don’t have much choice in the matter,” Blunt said. “I need to move my agents into the positions that give us the best opportunity to succeed. But I have a hunch that these two incidents are all related somehow.”

  Black nodded. “In my last report, I told you there were rumblings about Obsidian ramping up its operations in an attempt to strike. Who, what, or how are all questions I didn’t get answers to yet. But there were rumors that after the all the commodities and services were sold at this latest event, Obsidian leadership was going to invite all of its partners to participate in a big attack and unveil some details about it then. Unfortunately, we never got to that portion of the program thanks to an overly aggressive agent.”

  Hawk resumed pacing but remained quiet. Blunt held up his hands before speaking in an effort to signal that he’d had enough.

  “We’re not going to blame one another here,” Blunt said. “We’re all on the same team, and we need to act like it. I doubt anybody is happy about the way things went down in Hong Kong. We need Adelman to tell us more about his relationship with Andrei Orlovsky as well as get a pulse on what Obsidian is planning. I’m sure everyone thought they were doing what was in the best interest of the overall mission. But we need to be on the same page.”

  “This is why I prefer working alone,” Black said.

  “You’re not absolved from any wrongdoing in this whole situation,” Blunt said. “If you hadn’t been so careless in securing Adelman, perhaps we wouldn’t even be here having this conversation.”

  Alex raised her hand. “What do you want us to do with Undertaker757 once we find him?”

  “Depends on who he is,” Blunt said. “If he’s the mastermind, then we’ll have the FBI arrest him. But if he can lead us higher up the food chain, we need to proceed with caution. Honestly, I have a difficult time believing that a hacker could be the one ultimately responsible for all this.”

  Alex chuckled. “You obviously don’t know hackers like I do. They’re a deviant lot. I wouldn’t underestimate any hacker’s skill or ideology behind what they’re doing. They often misdirect their anger, but they’re fervent in what they believe.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of cult members I once knew,” Black said.

  “And they’re even more dangerous,” Alex said. “Just look at what kind of damage they’ve already been able to do from leaking the private files of all these senators.”

  “Sounds like everyone has their work cut out for them,” Blunt said. “We need to locate Adelman, and we need Undertaker757—and we need them yesterday.”

  A knock at his door put Blunt’s dismissal of his agents on hold. He beckoned the person to enter. Blunt’s secretary, Linda, pushed open the door and remained standing there.

  “Sir, you might want to turn on the news,” she said. “There’s something you should see.”

  Blunt dug into his desk drawer and retrieved his remote control. He turned on the television on the far wall. On the screen, a CNN reporter stood outside the Capitol Building, a ticker across the bottom demarcating that the story was breaking news.

  “Utah Senator Warren Philpot, who was the chairman of the senate’s foreign relationships committee, has announced his resignation this morning, citing health issues and a desire to spend more time with his family,” the dour brunette said.

  Blunt slammed his fist onto his desk. “I don’t believe that for one minute,” he said. “Go get me this hacker so we can put an end to this nonsense.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Washington, D.C.

  HAWK AND ALEX ENTERED their office and immediately started to develop a plan to identify and locate the hacker using the Undertaker757 handle. With everything at stake, Hawk reiterated that the plan needed to be foolproof. Any misstep on an operation like this could spell disaster. Alex underscored that point by telling a story about a hacker who the FBI almost caught before he went underground for ten years without even a trace of him online anywhere.

  “But they did catch him, right?” Hawk asked.

  “Eventually, but not until he made a mistake,” Alex said. “The FBI later learned that he had reinvented himself and was the same guy they wanted in a recent spree of cyber-related crimes.”

  “Have you ever heard of someone operating by the handle of Undertaker757 during your time on the dark web?” Hawk asked.

  She shook her head. “That’s a popular iteration of a name plenty of hackers have taken, but the numbers at the end are unique.”

  “Think that could tell us something about who we’re looking for?”

  “Any hacker who doesn’t want to get caught will generate random numbers and tack them on the end of a word he thinks best represents his ideology or mission. But ‘undertaker’ is a relatively useless moniker for determining anything psychologically about who we’re searching for. It might as well be something like Zeus or Bootylicious or DarkAngel. They’re all common names used by everybody, but Undertaker is utilized even more so in the hacker world. Everyone there likes to think they can disrupt normal society through their skills in an effort to bring about some sort of justice.”

  Hawk sighed. “So, digging into those names sounds like a dead end at best.”

  “I wouldn’t completely ignore it,” Alex said. “But it’s not going to yield any results. Hackers all seem to be cut from the same rebellious cloth.”

  He gestured toward her with both his hands. “You would be case in point, number one.”

  Alex snickered. “You know that as well as any
one, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. Now, what do you think is the best approach for luring Undertaker757 out into the open for a discussion?”

  “We’re not sure what’s driving him, but I’m starting to doubt that it’s a financial motivation,” Alex said.

  “How are you drawing that conclusion?”

  “If all these senators are resigning or announcing they won’t run in future elections, that seems to be the hacker’s end game.”

  “So, if we’re not looking for someone wanting a huge payday, what’s the carrot we need to dangle in front of him?” Hawk asked.

  “Power, control—or a combination of those two. From what I can tell, the hacker wants to shape the leadership of the U.S. Senate. For what ultimate purpose, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly not in the best interest of our country to have one person dictating how those committees are constructed.”

  “Do you think he might be interested in getting his hands on some of the president’s information?” Hawk asked.

  Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s a great idea I hadn’t considered. Do you think President Young would go along with such a scheme?”

  “I think he could be convinced,” Hawk said. “I’m thinking we get a benign email that he sent to someone, and we forward it to Undertaker757. Then we wait to see if we get a bite.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be asking questions about how we got his information,” Alex said. “That in and of itself would cause me to be suspicious enough.”

  “Do you think you can pose as if you’re part of the North Korean outfit? Maybe you could tell him your facility was temporarily shut down to make upgrade improvements and you needed to develop a new contact name. And then you could say that this is part of your first harvest of new information and have much more where that came from.”

  “That could work,” Alex said. “But I’d rather pose as a hacker who worked at the facility and mention how it was attacked by a covert American operation. I’ll first need to seed that idea on some other portion of the dark web so that can be verified, and then I’ll have an opportunity to reel him in.”

  “Sounds like a great plan,” Hawk said. “Let’s just take a flyer on it. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll come up with something else.”

  Alex grimaced. “I don’t know. This might be our only shot at snagging him. I’d hate to lose our one connection over a poorly executed operation. Every detail needs to be assessed and reassessed before we launch.”

  “We don’t have time for that. Do you recognize what’s happening on Capitol Hill?” Hawk asked. “Some of our greatest statesmen are being railroaded out of office because of this guy—and he’s got a bigger end game in mind. So, let’s not worry about getting everything perfect and just throw a line out and hope he takes the bait. My hunch is that he’s already feeling confident about what he’s been able to do and that he hasn’t been caught yet. If he’s been able to set this plan in motion without getting arrested, the idea that he could also coopt the president is only going to fuel his desire to seize more control over the government.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “This makes sense. I can set a trap for him while also working on another way to lure him out in case this one fails. Ultimately, all I need to do is get him talking online in a private manner and keep him there long enough to pinpoint his exact location. Then you can take it from there.”

  Hawk grinned. “That sounds right up my alley.”

  “Brains and brawn,” Alex said, tapping her temple with her right forefinger and grabbing Hawk’s bicep with her left hand.

  “Now all that’s left to do is convince President Young to give us one of his emails so we can get started,” Hawk said.

  “Go make that call,” she said. “We need to put an end to this as soon as possible.”

  * * *

  HAWK REACHED PRESIDENT YOUNG’S chief of staff through connections with Blunt and put in a request for a meeting. Due to the upcoming G8 summit, Young didn’t have time to indulge Hawk with a half-hour conversation, but a five-minute phone call resolved all of Hawk’s pressing needs. A few minutes after their talk concluded, an email popped up in Hawk’s inbox, forwarded from the president. It was a short note about a tee time Young had scheduled with a senator from an opposing party a couple months prior.

  This ought to do the trick. And it’s bipartisan, at that.

  Later that afternoon, Alex went to work on finding out all of Undertaker757’s haunts on the dark web. After two hours of thorough research, she identified what sites he spent most of his time on and devised a way to connect with him. Her next task was to create a profile of someone who had been on the site for a long time. Any suspicious looking correspondence from a newbie to the discussion forum was going to scare him away. If he muted her, it would all be over with. She constructed a plausible profile and volleyed her first question his way.

  “Don’t you hate politicians these days?” she wrote. The message appeared next to a profile of a busty woman that she found on a royalty-free site. She hated women who flaunted themselves in that manner, but it was almost always guaranteed to attract the attention of most warm-blooded males. Seconds later, a reply popped up, nested neatly beneath her initial inquiry.

  “Washington needs to be cleaned out,” he wrote. “If only we could vote for other congressional candidates in other states. Ugh.”

  That statement was followed by a gif of one of the three stooges walking in circles while hitting himself over the head with a frying pan.

  Alex smiled and announced to Hawk that she’d made contact.

  “Really?” Hawk asked, hustling over to her computer.

  “Yeah, and the best part is I didn’t even have to use my golden bullet to get him to respond.”

  Hawk laughed as he looked at the screen. “That’s because your avatar makes you look like Pamela Anderson.”

  “That’s not her, is it?” Alex asked, concerned lines spreading across her forehead.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Hawk said. “You’ve never watched an episode of Baywatch, have you?”

  “I heard it was terrible. Just a bunch of women clad in bikinis bouncing up and down the beach.”

  “Just a point of clarification—the women wore one-piece bathing suits, not bikinis.”

  “But everything else?”

  Hawk nodded. “Mostly right. Slow motion pictures of women frolicking on the beach.”

  “So, I used a picture of Pamela Anderson as my avatar?”

  “No, that’s not her, but it looks strikingly similar since your girl also has more plastic stuffed in her than a California recycling plant.”

  Alex snickered. “How long have you been waiting to use that line?”

  Hawk shrugged. “I just came up with it. Sounded appropriate given our topic of conversation.”

  “Wait a minute,” Alex said. “It looks like he’s writing something else.”

  The blinking cursor was replaced with a thought bubble. Several seconds later, three sentences appeared.

  Are you involved in the rebellion?

  Do you have any special set of skills? Interested?

  “Now that’s certainly interesting,” Alex said, pointing at the screen. “What do you make of this? Is he recruiting or fishing for information?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Hawk said.

  Alex looked up at Hawk and grinned. “Bomb’s away.”

  She typed in the address to the secure website where she pasted the email file link that Hawk received from President Young. Then she added an access code along with a little note.

  Are these the kind of skills you’re looking for?

  Alex and Hawk waited for a few moments before a thought bubble appeared, indicating that their target was typing something again. Hawk wondered if he would inspect the document or not.

  Nice try, honey, but I’m not about to look at any file like that. You’ll need to send me a screenshot of your work if you want to continue our conversation.
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  Alex sighed. “What now?”

  “Send it to him,” Hawk said. “And then send him an invitation to talk via another route. Maybe an online game? Can the NSA get access to those?”

  She nodded. “Mallory Kauffman. Call her now and get her to help us.”

  Hawk dialed Mallory’s number and gave her the rundown. After she agreed to help, Hawk relayed all the details to her about what they were trying to do.

  “Technically, I’m supposed to have a warrant for this,” Mallory said.

  “I’m sure we can get one retroactively if we need to use this information to pursue someone in court,” Hawk said. “However, I think we may handle this in a different manner.”

  “As long as J.D. Blunt is a part of this, I’ll help,” Mallory said.

  “Excellent. Stay on the line, and I’ll give you all the details.”

  Hawk pointed at Alex. “You’re up.”

  Alex hammered out a short message and posted a screenshot of the email from President Young. A few seconds later, a terse response came back.

  Really? I know an 8 yo who can fake something like this.

  Alex thought for a moment and then responded.

  I have the code here you can look at to prove its authenticity. Nothing fake about it.

  “I’ve got another idea,” Alex said. “Let me post this to Wikileaks under a private link, and maybe he’ll trust me and go there to visit.”

  “Do you think he’ll still believe you’re the one who hacked the White House email server?” Hawk asked.

  She shrugged. “Got a better idea right now?”

  “All right. Do it,” Hawk said.

  Alex texted a friend who worked as a volunteer moderator at Wikileaks.

  “You know someone who works with Wikileaks?” Hawk asked with mild disbelief.

  “I did some dark stuff while working with the CIA,” Alex said. “I’ve got friends everywhere, high places and low ones, too.”

  “Which category does Wikileaks fall into?”