“How about the NSA?”
“Maybe a massively parallel computer, or even quantum computers, but from experience, they wouldn't even talk to us. I mean that the NSA knew about public key crypto 15 years ahead of civilian researchers, so who knows what they are up to now.”
“So we couldn't obtain anything from it?”
“Not only no, but hell no. There appear to be at least two hidden partitions, and the base operating, we think, is some highly secured Linux variation. We'd like to meet the person that put it together; it's not off the shelf and very sophisticated.”
He shook his head, “I need everything back, as it was, now. I've been ordered to release our suspect.”
“Can we keep the data image?”
“Yes. But, everything else, pack it up, I'm on a deadline.”
They stared at him like he had grown a third eye.
He slapped his hands together. “Now.”
Snapped into action, they scurried around packing up the evidence. Very soon, he left them holding a box containing all the material that they had examined. A similar visit to the ballistics room got back Leo's rifle, ammunition and his pistol, though not before they had been fired and a case from the .22 and bullets from both weapons had been taken. Maybe he could tie them into something big and have a chance to reopen this case from this end.
A phone call got Leo's truck out of the impound—luckily, they hadn't had time to even inventory it, much less start tearing it apart.
Burdened by his packages, his final stop was the Operational Technology Division (OTD) office. If it could be bugged or tracked, these guys could do it. While technically in the same area as computer forensics, the Denver field office was large enough to have its own OTD unit. They worked with other law enforcement agencies, including other federal services.
In sharp contrast to the forensics room, everything was neatly organized, stored in numbered bins on shelves. He knew that some of the really cool things were locked away from prying eyes.
The guy who ran it was named Troy Castillo. He had more degrees than an office full of medical doctors in esoteric things such as applied mathematics, computer security, and, strangely, French literature. He was an odd duck in a business that thrived on standardization to the extreme all the way down to acceptable tie widths in the employee dress code. He was wearing a polka dot bow tie and an Egyptian cotton shirt. A Brooks Brothers suit coat hung on a wooden coat hanger fastened to the wall.
Castillo held a soldering iron with a needle sized tip, and was leaning over a very tiny device.
He looked up in surprise as Jeff came into the room and the door closed with a loud clank.
“What can I do for you Special Agent Silver?”
“I need to track someone.”
He set the soldiering iron down in a holder and said, “Case number?”
Now he was taking a chance of setting his career on fire. Director Gerald herself had ordered him off the case. If he was caught doing anything outside her explicit instructions, he would not only be transferred to Alaska, but could lose his job and pension.
“It's off the books. I'll get you a case number.”
Castillo stared at him for a moment.
“If someone finds anything I give you, tracks down the serial number and sees that it came from this office, I could lose my job. Why should I help you?”
“This is a big case. I'm trying to do it right. But I need to be able to track a very bad guy without anyone else knowing what's really going on.”
Castillo seemed to consider it for a moment and then said, “Okay. But I'm not going to give you anything that's FBI issue.”
“What's that mean?”
“Nothing for you. We get samples from companies all of the time, hoping to become vendors. I evaluate them and write up a report if we should consider it. Some of it is better than what we can get issued—there are a lot of people afraid of technology in this business when they should be embracing it.”
“So, what can I get? I need to be able to track someone. GPS kind of thing.”
“How big? And what will you be tracking, a vehicle, person or something similar?”
“A person.”
Castillo strolled over to a box in the corner and rummaged around for a few minutes before coming up with a small white box about the size of half-a-pack of cigarettes.
“This should do nicely. Five days of tracking on fresh batteries, and you can track it on the company web site. Used for tracking boxes during shipping, it will fit your purpose nicely.”
In five days, he would either be a hero or looking for a job—probably in the food service industry. Smiling, he dug out the laptop carrying case. “Can you install it in here? Like now?”
###
Jackie found herself another coffee shop and over a triple espresso considered what to do next. She was starting to run short of cash and, with that, wondered how Leo was doing. She hoped that he would be all right. But the best thing that she could do for him was to figure out how to shut down or change the software that controlled the Children of the Constitution. She hoped that she had the coding skills to hack into the system. If Nathan had used any of the encryption programs that she helped develop for the banking industry, there wasn't enough computer in the free world to crack them open.
How about coming at it from a different direction? The software developed by Jared used a form of decision tree learning. Knowing Nathan, he wouldn't spring for a commercial version of software when he could find something for free that worked just as well if not better than something offered for many thousands of dollars. A lot of the free software often had the source code, which meant that he could modify it or have it modified to his particular ends.
With the complexity of the software involved, there probably weren't very many programs that fit the bill—with luck, only one or two.
The more complex the software, the more tracks it left on the internet. Given that, she might be able to pin down the location from where it was being run.
She found another net cafe and rented a computer where she could have some privacy. She didn't know who had been on this computer before and if they had installed anything that would compromise her search. Without her security tools, there wasn't much she could do to protect herself.
Wikipedia provided the first clues. There were two primary languages that would appeal to Nathan; both were free. The first, called 'Orange,' was developed at a university in Slovenia. She looked through their web site and saw that it was more oriented towards GUI interfaces—not something that would be required for the Children of the Constitution application. It also ran on C++, a language that she liked but Nathan loathed as being 'a very bad solution in search of a problem.'
From her computer science class, she recalled a quote from the developer of the language, Bjarne Stroustrup, who said, “C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.”
The next piece of software she saw fit the bill perfectly. It was a called Weka, and it was developed by a university in New Zealand, which caused her to chuckle. Some very good software was developed in some places that you didn't much expect, Slovenia and New Zealand.
She wished that she had her laptop so she could download the software and tear into it. There wasn't enough storage on the computer in front of her to even start on the close look she would require to pick out a pattern.
No matter, she was going to have to find a computer some place to do what she needed. Damn, she wished she had her laptop.
###
Jeff unlocked the door to the interrogation room. Leo looked up at him, his expression stony despite the sight of all the things he was carrying. What a cold fucking character.
He dropped a brown paper bag with evidence stickers on it in front of Leo and said, “Get dressed. You’re being released. This is your stuff. Your truck will be in front in a few minutes.”
“My rifle?”
&
nbsp; The first two words the bastard had to say were about his gun.
“And your illegal pistol. You must have friends in very high places—that suppressor is usually worth five years in a federal pen.”
Dumping the laptop case on the table, he added. “Here's the rest of your crap, including your laptop.”
Leo tore open the bags and climbed into his clothes without a word or even a sense of modesty. Then he folded up the orange jump suit he had been wearing squaring up the seams.
Neat freak fucker.
He thrust a clipboard containing the inventory of items taken from Leo and said, “Sign this.”
Leo sat down and read through each item, checking to make sure that everything was present.
“You didn't fuck with my rifle, did you?”
“Nope. Sign the damn thing so you can get the fuck out of my sight.”
“Can I borrow a pen?”
Jeff slammed one on the metal desk in front of Leo.
Leo signed the form and handed it and the pen back to him.
Then Jeff did one of the hardest things that he done in a while. He pulled out a business card. Handing it to Leo he said, “You want to talk, let me know. My cell number is on there.”
Leo nodded and slipped the card into his pocket.
Picking up his belongings, Leo motioned for Jeff to lead the way.
Stepping outside the doors, Leo's head never stop moving as he constantly scanned the surrounding area.
What was he looking for?
His truck had been pulled up in front of the building, about twenty yards away and left with the motor running.
Leo stopped, looking all around and fixed on one spot, probably five hundred yards away.
Turning, he knocked Jeff down.
A freight train roar tore past Jeff's ears. Concrete dust showered him.
The HRT snipers started shooting, the rounds passing over their heads with snapping cracks.
Keeping low behind the silhouette of the truck, Leo brushed himself off and said, “You really think your fancy HRT snipers could even carry this guy's lunch? He had you in his cross hairs from the instant you stepped outside the building. And he ain't in that tree your guys are shredding.”
Another roar and spray of concrete dust. Jeff tried to make himself part of the pavement. Looking up, he saw that Leo and his truck were gone.
Chapter 26
As a man who played with fire for a living, even Matthew Tudor was impressed with the acetylene explosion at the Denver Police Department vehicle garage. It lit up the sky and almost rocked him off his feet despite being at least a mile away.
Car alarms blared and he figured that window repair companies would be making good money tomorrow fixing shattered panes of glass.
Smiling, he put his rented van into gear and pulled onto the street. He needed a break and was going to drive for a couple of hours, find a hotel and pass out—blowing up buildings was very hard work.
###
Jackie found a cheap laptop at a pawn shop. A two-year-old IBM Thinkpad. It had a CD burner and a decent amount of memory along with a built-in wireless card. Not bad for fifty bucks. She saw the amount of cash she was carrying was rapidly diminishing. It was sort of like the old days when she had been a college student, Ramen noodles or more computer equipment. Rather than be worried, she felt liberated. It seemed as though the last couple of years with Nathan she had been just marking time. Now, there was a different taste to the air, and everything looked brighter.
The next stop was a book store where she found a cheap magazine that had a Linux disk in it. It wasn't the variation that she wanted, but it would do in a pinch. She hated all Microsoft products with a passion—slow, inefficient, expensive, buggy and vulnerable. She felt, like a lot of hackers, that the NSA had hooks of various sorts into Microsoft products—and while unable to find the code for herself, it was another reason to dump their products and replace them with something else.
Since it was dark, she figured the library would be closed, and she was sick of triple espressos, so she hopped on a bus heading towards the University of Denver along with a trio of drunken college students. She got off the bus with them and followed them back to their dorm.
One of them was nice enough to hold the door open for her, so she smiled and said, “Thanks.”
The girls staggered off towards an elevator. She watched them go and then went and found the lounge. It was empty. Soda and snack machines glowed softly.
Settling down in a corner, she booted up the Linux disk and started setting up the computer so she could do some serious work.
###
Jill had just finished offing her latest target and was looking forward to getting out of Dodge. But her Blackberry buzzed again.
“Shit!”
She pulled the rented BMW to the side of the road and checked the message.
It was a very high priority target, and it paid quite a bonus if she pulled it off. There was a strange request added onto the file—not something that she normally did, but the bonus if she pulled it off would make the few minutes it would take to do worth it.
She could just make it, but she needed to stop by a pharmacy to stock up on a few things before doing the job.
Turning the car around, she headed back into Denver.
###
Leo had no idea as to why he had been released, and whatever strings had been pulled in the background were of some interest, but probably not anything that would make a difference in his short-term future.
He calculated that he had been in custody for four hours, enough time to wire everything in his possession for sound and video. What he was most worried about was that his rifle had been fucked with. No telling what the ham-handed FBI agents had been doing with what he considered an essential tool for his survival.
With nothing else to do, he drove back to the hotel room that he had rented with Jackie. It was like it was a lifetime ago that they had been together and he missed her, but that couldn't get in the way of the mission.
He also missed the coin store. The heart pounding sensation of having bullets zip past your head was, again, old and he wouldn't have any problem in not experiencing that again.
Even before approaching the hotel, he pulled off and examined the surrounding area with his binoculars. There were a dozen places a sniper could be placed to hit him. He wouldn't even hear the sound of the bullet before it smashed into him from some unseen distance.
For almost an hour, he sat and watched. Nothing moved at any of the sites he had picked out.
He parked the truck in the lot across the street from the hotel. If there was someone hiding in wait, he could minimize his exposure.
Picking up Jackie's laptop case, he tossed it over his shoulder. At the back of the truck, he unloaded his rife and all of his gunsmithing equipment. He had a long night ahead of him and was going to tear the rifle down to the smallest screw and spring to see if it had been messed with.
He pulled his hat down to conceal his features and made sure that he walked with a pronounced limp. It was cheap, easy and might save his life. No matter, the area between his shoulder blades itched as though there was someone sighting in on him.
Holding the key in his hand, he walked one door past where his room was. He made like he was fumbling with the key, then quickly moved back to the correct room, unlocked the door and pushed the door open.
There was a beautiful woman sitting on the bed and it wasn't Jackie.
###
Allan Wells wasn't finding his rhythm. He'd missed both his targets. He didn't want to even check his Blackberry as he knew the news wouldn't be good. Years ago when he'd been recruited, he had heard stories about company employees that had outlived their usefulness and were either sent on a very well disguised suicide mission or used as training targets for the next generation of assassins. In this business, there were always youngsters wanting to move into the major leagues by taking out a dinosaur. The pay was awesome, you generall
y only had to do one or two jobs a year to stay quite well off, but the retirement package left a great deal to be desired.
What was going to be his next step?
The only way that he could see a positive outcome for him was to complete his assignment—take out the FBI agent and Leo Marston. But how to do that?
He mentally paged through the file. The FBI had picked up Leo at a hotel and he had seen with his own eyes that Leo for some reason had been released.
Leo wasn't from this area, so he had been staying at a local hotel. That might be a great place to get a shot at him—if he hurried.
###
Jim Fox, the Second Finger of the Black Hand, was ready to get out of town. Lots of jobs in the same geographic area made him nervous. He was used to only doing a couple of car bombings a year and they were outside the country. Not that Denver wasn't pleasant enough, and he'd made one hell of a lot of money in the last week, but paranoia was an important trait in a professional killer—it had saved his life on more than one occasion.
He'd complete this final job and then turn off his Blackberry until he was ready to work again.
There was something familiar about the picture, even with the two-inch screen of the Blackberry. Not that it mattered. He checked the vehicle information and probable locations for where it could be located and made a plan. His supplies had been reduced down to one Explosively Formed Penetrator and the type of vehicle would be perfect for using it.
As always, he looked at the name last. Still no recognition, not that it mattered. The target's name was Leo Marston.
Putting the Blackberry away, he started assembling the parts of the EFP.
Chapter 27
Leo's hand moved without conscious thought. His hand was empty and then it held his gun.
Good thing he had checked to see if it was loaded.
The woman he pointed it at was sitting in the one chair in the room.
She was dressed in a short skirt which showed off her shapely crossed legs. A blouse with the first three buttons undone revealed that the top was probably at least as good as the bottom half. Startlingly green eyes and smooth features made her pretty, but not stunning. Leo figured that walking past her on the street would warrant a second look, but she wasn't pretty enough to justify following her to make an excuse to talk to her. Not that she was Leo's type anyway.
Kill Code Page 21