Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller)

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

  “What is it?” said Derek.

  “It’s a keylogger,” she muttered. Then, turning angrily to Agent Jiminez, she whipped the cable down across the keyboard. “I thought you guys swept all the computers? You missed something like this?”

  Jiminez’s expression was unreadable, but he shifted slightly in his seat as he stared at the connector.

  “What’s a keylogger?” Derek asked.

  “A device that captures and records any keystroke you make,” replied LaRue, walking up behind them.

  “And this one is wireless,” added Lucy, studying the device closely. She was struggling to keep herself together, muttering something about ghetto hacking.

  LaRue took the small connector from Lucy’s hand. “I’ll be damned. That explains how they figured out account codes and passwords. But keyloggers typically just record keystrokes—not transmit alternate data.”

  Lucy turned to LaRue in exasperation. “Steve, obviously they’ve modified it. You of all people should know not to underestimate someone who wants to break into a system.”

  LaRue’s lips pulled into a tight line. “All right, people,” he said urgently, raising his voice. “I want you to sweep every computer in this building. Unplug all the keyboards and make sure there aren’t any more keyloggers in serial connection. Let’s move!”

  The group scrambled. Derek went to one computer and in a panic yanked on all the cables attached to the box—keyboard, mouse, power, Ethernet. The Ethernet connector broke with a loud snap. “This one is clean—I think.”

  “How long is the keyboard connector?” called Lucy from a different machine.

  “Less than an inch.”

  “Keep going. With the keylogger it’s likely closer to two.”

  Everyone was sweeping the computers. Inspector Doggett was calling out to one of his men: “Make sure you pull all of it out. The cable can come out of the connector and leave it behind!”

  “Did you find one?” asked LaRue.

  “No, these are clean.”

  “Ms. Thompson,” LaRue called urgently, “will you please go to the executive offices and unplug every keyboard wire and connector? Anywhere that technician might have been. You said he serviced a number of machines. Quickly!”

  Derek went over to the next computer. He called over to Lucy, who was one set of desks in front of him. “Lucy, how are these devices being controlled? You said something about wireless?”

  Lucy didn’t take her eyes off of what she was doing as she answered. “Usually it’s either Bluetooth or through the wireless LAN. You can see they’re not very big. Range is short. If you’re just using a keylogger to collect data, that’s fine. You’re dealing with a supervisor who wants to check on his employees’ web surfing habits and stuff like that. The device just records keystrokes and emails it to the boss over the network.”

  “But I thought Agent Forrest said there were no unauthorized entities on the network?”

  “Yes,” answered Lucy. “He did.”

  “So how are they doing it? Is one of the bank employees a mole or something?”

  “Adele said they’ve only hired one person in the past year, and he’s the son of someone on the bank’s Board.”

  Derek stopped fumbling behind computer cases and stood upright. “Then how are they sending these commands in real-time?”

  Lucy put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know, Derek. Bluetooth seems like maybe a plausible answer, but the range is too short—twenty or thirty feet.”

  Agent Forrest was next to Derek, laptop open and headset on, alternating between typing and relaying instructions to a bank in a far-off country to freeze inbound money transfers. He looked young—like he was barely out of high school—but apparently he excelled at eavesdropping in addition to multi-tasking.

  “Hi-powered Bluetooth can have a range of over 300 feet,” Forrest commented. Then he was back into a conversation through his headset.

  “What?” Lucy blinked.

  “I said, you can get 300 feet out of a high-powered Bluetooth device. The receiver can still be low power; you just need the radio on the transmitting device to be high power.”

  Derek and Lucy stared at each other. They looked together over at the original computer that had begun transferring money. Then, after a long couple of seconds, Derek’s vision shifted to just beyond the desk. The shuttered window was propped open, letting in just enough light to expose the green pastel wall of the neighboring building.

  “Next door,” Derek muttered softly to himself.

  Lucy came to the same insight almost as quickly, but her word choice was a bit more pointed.

  They looked at each other again.

  “Come on,” said Lucy, and she hurried down toward the stairs. Derek went after her. LaRue barked some orders at Forrest and Jiminez before hurrying downstairs as well, followed by Roger and Inspector Doggett.

  Lucy was already outside by the time Derek caught up to her. She was peering into the nearby cars parked along the street as she made her way to the building next door, looking for anyone hiding.

  “What’s that building next to us?” asked Derek, panting.

  “It’s unoccupied,” LaRue replied. “Used to be a security company.”

  No irony there.

  “If it’s abandoned, it seems like that would be an easy place to set up a transmitter,” Lucy said. “A high-powered one, like Forrest was saying.”

  Derek studied the pastel green building. It was of a similar architecture as the bank building, only shabbier. Derek wondered if it had been unoccupied for a while.

  The light was really getting quite dim now. There were few people out. The five of them walked briskly up the sidewalk toward the abandoned building. They were almost at the alley when they heard the sounds of a two-cycle engine sputtering.

  A dirt bike poked its way out almost on top of them. The rider was helmeted with a visor that made it difficult to see his face. He looked at them before gunning the throttle and taking off up the hill to the left.

  They all stood for a moment, stunned.

  “Surely that wasn’t...” said Roger.

  “Can you think of why a motorcyclist would be lurking in the alleyway between a bank and an abandoned building at sundown?” Lucy asked.

  Inspector Doggett was already talking into his radio. “... Suspect is driving a motorbike and wearing a white helmet, headed north on King Street. All units move to intercept.” He turned to LaRue. “I wasn’t expecting a chase, but we’ll run him down. My squad car is right here—are you coming with me or staying?”

  “You go,” LaRue urged him. We’ll investigate the building. “Just go, go!”

  Doggett climbed quickly into his squad car and took off in an impressively short amount of time. Derek thought he could still hear the two-cylinder buzz of the motorcycle off in the distance.

  “Now what?”

  “The building,” LaRue repeated. “Let’s see if they left anything behind. They could have some sort of automated system running. See if any of the doors are unlocked.”

  They split up. Derek and Roger went into the alleyway. LaRue and Lucy went the other direction to circle the building. The alley was deserted and there was only a lone window on the second story level. Otherwise there was not much to see.

  “Do you think he came out of there?” Derek asked Roger.

  “The window’s closed. It doesn’t seem like you’d be able to close it behind you if you were jumping down from it.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Derek agreed. “Maybe he was executing the scripts from his motorcycle? Right here in the alley?”

  Roger was visibly struggling to think that through as he continued to walk and scan. “I don’t know, Derek. Something’s not right. Agent Forrest was talking about a high-powered antenna. Don’t you think that’s something you’d want to set up on a table or a tripod to keep steady? And do it so that you had a nice line of sight to your keylogger instead of trying to aim it up through a solid wall?�
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  “Yeah, you would think that,” agreed Derek.

  They moved farther back between the buildings. Derek didn’t see anything of note. It was really getting quite dark in between the pink and green of the buildings on either side.

  The walls felt tight. The heat radiated from the ground. Derek felt like he was being watched from the rooftops.

  He shuddered involuntarily, suddenly feeling very cold.

  Christ, the walls are pastel colored, for God’s sake. You’re not in Iraq.

  “I can’t believe this is all happening right now, man,” Derek said in an effort to calm his nerves. “I mean, I literally just got here before these fuckers executed their little hack. Can you believe that?”

  Roger snorted. “I know. You almost missed the party.”

  The smell of an open sewer hit Derek’s nose, the human waste running down the edge of the street after baking in the sun all day.

  God-damn it, you’re in Bermuda. Derek clenched his teeth. Stop it.

  They kept looking for a plausible clue of how the biker might have issued commands to the computers next door. Still, there was nothing.

  “Let’s go to the back side,” Roger suggested. “Maybe there’s a fire escape or something he used to come down from the second story.”

  “Yeah, okay. That might explain some things—”

  Crack, crack, crack.

  Gunshots rang from the front of the building, followed by the sound of Lucy’s voice releasing a single, brief scream.

  48

  The two buildings closed in on Derek as he ran, the warm, pastel colors of Bermuda fading into the color of dirty brown cement. He heard voices shouting in a language he didn’t understand. There was screaming. Another gunshot made him involuntarily duck for cover.

  “Lucy!” Derek shouted from behind the corner.

  “Help us!”

  He peeked around the edge of the building. Lucy and Agent LaRue were crumpled together on the sidewalk in a little huddle.

  Derek’s heart leapt up into his throat. He scanned the area around them. He caught a quick glimpse of what looked like two figures running over the top of the hill. Then they were out of sight. No one else was in view, but visibility was low due to the failing light. Derek took a chance and dashed over to the figures on the ground.

  LaRue had been shot.

  “Ah, God it hurts,” LaRue was panting. Lucy was sitting down and cradling him, and Derek had to pull her hand from LaRue’s abdomen. The entrance wound was on his left side, underneath his shoulder holster strap and near the bottom edge of his ribcage. It had left a small, red blotch that was steadily growing against his white shirt.

  “Are you hit anywhere else?” demanded Derek.

  “No,” grunted LaRue.

  “Lucy?”

  Lucy looked at Derek, her brilliant blue eyes vacant with shock.

  “Lucy,” tried Derek again, “did you get hit?”

  “N-no,” she managed. “I... d-d-don’t think so.”

  “Christ,” said Roger’s voice from behind. Derek pivoted on his knee to find Roger looking over his shoulder.

  “Roger, get an ambulance. Get Jiminez to help. Or anyone from inside. Hurry.”

  “Got it,” Roger said, and started sprinting back to the Bermuda Bank of Commerce building. Derek heard him swearing to himself as he ran.

  Turning back to the pair on the ground, Derek grabbed one of each of their forearms and held them both firmly. Partly it was an act of reassurance and human contact. But it was also a way to get their attention. He needed them to focus through the shock.

  “Guys... who shot at you?”

  Lucy stared blankly.

  “They ran over the hill,” LaRue gasped, struggling to speak. The pain was obvious every time he took a breath. Two men. Came out of the building. On foot.”

  “W-we told them to stop,” added Lucy. “They looked at us... it’s them, Derek. It had to have been them.”

  “Lay down,” Derek told LaRue. He cradled the back of his neck and helped him lower himself down as gently as he could onto the pavement. Derek started to roll LaRue over toward his right side so he could inspect behind him. LaRue’s shirt was sticky and soaked with blood.

  “There’s an exit wound near your lower back,” he told the FBI agent. Through some miracle, it didn’t appear that the bullet had hit any bone or consequently travelled through any major organs along some devastating, frenetic path. Still, it was a serious wound. “You got lucky there, fella. I think you’ll be all right.”

  LaRue just grunted.

  Derek pulled off his polo shirt, leaving him in just his white t-shirt underneath. He grabbed both of Lucy’s hands. He wrapped the shirt around LaRue’s torso and moved her palms against the location of the entry and exit wounds to keep pressure on them and slow the bleeding. He could see the shock starting to wear off in her expression. It was being replaced with confusion, panic... fear. Her body was trembling now.

  “Lucy. Stay here. Take care of LaRue until Roger gets back. Okay?”

  She nodded, dazed.

  Sitting there crumpled on the sidewalk, clutching the makeshift bandage to Agent Larue’s side, Lucy was at the center of Derek’s world. It amazed Derek how someone could become so important so quickly. Perhaps Roger was right. She did need someone, someone like him. Someone who would continue the fight even when one of them was tired, frightened, or hurt. That’s what friends did.

  Derek impulsively leaned over and kissed her on the lips.

  Lucy, beautiful Lucy, looked up at him with the expression of someone trying to comprehend the suddenly unexpected. They regarded each other for what was surely a brief moment, but it seemed like it lasted forever.

  It was his sacred duty to protect his people.

  Derek reached over to LaRue’s shoulder holster, undid the snap, and pulled out the FBI agent’s Glock 23 pistol. Then he stood up and took off at a full sprint up the hill after their attackers. He was only vaguely aware of Lucy hysterically screaming his name behind him.

  * * *

  Anton and Johan stood doubled-over next to a row of hedges, panting from their dash over the hill.

  “I told you we should have waited,” Johan said.

  “You just need to run faster, you fat piece of shit,” replied Anton in between gasps. “Besides, the timing was as good as it was going to get. Half of the police officers there went off chasing after that motorbike. I bet that whoever that was, he’s going to have an unusual exchange with the cops.”

  “I meant,” Johan said, “we should have waited until the middle of the night to run the scripts. That way no one would have been there.”

  Anton blinked. “Oh.”

  The two men continued to breathe heavily.

  “I still think this was the right call. You saw the technology specialists they brought in yesterday. How long before their checks uncovered the keyloggers you installed?”

  “Yeah, they probably would have found them soon,” Johan agreed. “Why are they here, anyway?”

  Anton considered that. “They were watching us somehow. Listening. Maybe Krystian blew our cover with his hacker friends.”

  “That little bastard should be here with us.”

  “He’s busy with Plan B right now. You know that. Anyway, he was effective enough, even if acting remotely. He went through those keyboard logs and wrote the scripts to transfer funds for us, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Johan agreed grudgingly.

  “Plus,” added Anton, “we have the money now. Don’t we?”

  Johan smiled, exposing the gap in between his front teeth. “Yes, we do.”

  The whine of a two-cylinder engine approaching caught the men’s attention. Anton grabbed Johan by the arm and pulled the big man to the side of the hedge so that they would be relatively out of view. Anton peeked around the corner of the bushes and saw a man riding a red Vespa crest the top of the hill.

  Amazingly, even though they were standing in the shadow
s of the streetlights, the man saw them. He gunned the engine of the little scooter and appeared to turn slightly to head straight for them.

  Anton watched for a moment. Surely they weren’t being chased by this fool?

  As the man closed in at high speed—for a Vespa—Anton made his decision. The scooter was barreling down right on top of him and Johan. Anton drew his Makarov pistol again, stepped clear of the hedge, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Derek had been running for maybe thirty seconds when he saw the Bermudian starting up his scooter on the side of the road. Always of the school that wheels beat heels, Derek veered off and made a mad dash toward the man. There was no way that any sort of explanation would convince the scooter’s owner to let a sprinting, sweaty stranger just take his means of transportation and ride off into the sunset, of course. So Derek didn’t bother. As the man put his key into the Vespa, Derek ran up full speed and stiff-armed him off the seat. The Bermudian, his helmet covering everything but wide, shocked eyes as his body was flying through the air, landed with a thud on the pavement.

  “Sorry!” Derek shouted. “Police business! Go to BBC and tell them Derek took your scooter!”

  The man raised his arm as if to protest, but Derek already had the throttle wide open and was riding his new transportation up the hill. The Vespa scooter struggled somewhat with the incline but kept on reeling it in. Derek desperately scanned the road around him as he drove. The difficult part was, he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He hadn’t seen who had shot LaRue, didn’t know what they looked like, hadn’t seen what direction they had gone. All he knew was that he was running out of time.

  He passed a couple walking down the hill on the left side of the road. Man and woman. They looked like tourists. Derek didn’t think they were the robbers.

  Another man, this one parking a scooter. Very calm. Not him.

  There was another church on his right with a few cars parked in front. Derek slowed and peered into the parking lot. Was anyone hiding out there? He stopped for a moment and stared. It only took a moment before he decided that the sorts of folks who would steal millions of dollars and open fire on an FBI agent weren’t the type that would probably cower near a cathedral. He continued on.