Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2)

by Christopher Kerns

  The device looked like a small circuit board that you might see inside a clock radio or anything else electronic after peeling off the cover, but this was no random piece of household tech. It was an Arduino microcontroller, a tiny, cheap, self-contained computer that punched above its weight. After Haylie, sitting in an alley outside the electronics store, had configured it correctly and installed some open-source code, the device could now take advantage of a years-old exploit found in the most popular model of electronic hotel door lock.

  Hotel guests have enjoyed the convenience of electronic locks—opened with keycards instead of actual metal keys—for decades now. What guests don’t realize is that each lock includes a power socket to reboot or fix any issues, conveniently tucked underneath the handle on the hallway-side of the door. By plugging in a device that can talk to the electronic guts inside, the lock’s digital key code can be read out of memory and used to gain access.

  In other words, Haylie could open any door in this hotel within a few milliseconds.

  “What happens if he’s in there?” Vector whispered, checking over his shoulder and down the hall. “What do we do then?”

  “We want him to be in there, dummy,” Haylie said with a scowl, crouching down to check for the DC power input. “We’re trying to find him—that would be a good thing.” She brushed aside the plastic DO NOT DISTRUB / NICHT STÖREN sign hanging from the doorknob and peeked underneath.

  Vector thought for a moment. “Right, but I was thinking…”

  “Stop thinking, just stop,” she said, readying the end of the red cord near the lock. “Okay, are you ready? Remember, when we see him, let me do the talking. We don’t want him to run.”

  “Or worse.”

  Shaking her head, she exhaled and held her breath, plugging the device into the slot. The lock pinged out a few beeps, sounding a bit like R2-D2 having a fit, and she heard a pop. She slowly pushed the door open, pulling the device free and stuffing it in her jacket pocket. She rose from her squatting position, looked up at Vector and took a step inside.

  >>>>>

  Central Train Station, Frankfurt

  “C’mon, this is a short cut,” Sean yelled back at Caesar.

  Caesar followed, feeling the hunger turn somersaults in his stomach. The half-dome above his head—steel and glass arcing hundreds of feet into the air—looked like the space station from Kubrick’s 2001. Shadows painted the floor, hiding Caesar’s steps in patterns of light and dark. The gray of the train station was punctuated by the bright-red train cars sitting at each platform, ready to be boarded. He cinched his bag up higher on his shoulder and checked the time.

  “Oh, man, we’re getting a boatload of appetizers,” Sean said, checking their location on his phone. “So many apps. Like, I want them on the table as soon as we sit down.”

  Watching the crowds shuffle past—some commuters, some tourists—Caesar lost himself in the moment. It had been a long time since he felt peace, but today with everything clicking, they were finally in a good place.

  This is actually going to work.

  His train of thought was broken by the sound of hurried shoes pounding behind him, growing louder. Gasps and screams erupted from the crowd. He turned, watching the masses part to each side of the platform—men clutching their briefcases with hurried steps, mothers yanking on the arms of their children with panic in their eyes.

  Caesar’s faint smile dropped as his eyes went wide.

  A team of armed men emerged from the crowd dressed in black, holding small machine guns in their hands. The men’s faces were hidden behind blast shields on their helmets, their shapes padded with SWAT gear. They were sprinting right at him, pushing aside bystanders.

  “Run!” Caesar yelled to Sean.

  >>>>>

  Grandhotel, Frankfurt

  “There’s nobody here,” Vector said as he scurried past her and around the closet, checking the corners of the room for the second time.

  Haylie’s expression hardened as she stood at the center of the room, her eyes darting across the floor.

  We don’t have time to sit here and wait for him to come back—if that ever happens.

  “We need to start combing nearby public places,” she said as Vector flipped through drawers, finding nothing. “He has to be getting ready for the election. He must have a hundred things to do—that means he has to be online, wherever he is.”

  “Coffee shops, restaurants,” Vector nodded. “We can start near the hotel and work our way out.”

  “Let’s get a list together and get moving,” Haylie said, pulling her laptop from her backpack. “We can just search for public access locations and—”

  Haylie’s voice was cut off by a chorus of sirens from outside the window, growing louder as the cars approached. She heard another volley coming from behind her, from the south end of the street, now closing in from both sides.

  “Police,” Vector said, pulling back the curtain, his face illuminated through the window pane as looked down to the street below. “A whole lot of them.”

  She stuffed her laptop back into her bag, along with the Arduino door-hacking device, and zipped the top. “Let’s get out of here. Back away from the window, we need to get moving—”

  “Wait,” he said, pointing through the glass. “I don’t think they’re here for us. Looks like they’re headed into the train station.” He looked up, turning to face Haylie. “They’re running.”

  Haylie walked over to check the view. Vector was right—eight or nine police vehicles of all shapes and sizes were now parked at odd angles on the street below them, blocking the entrance to the Frankfurt central train terminal. Police, heavily armed, moved in packs of two and three towards the main entrance. Others stood with their arms out, stopping civilians from entering the station.

  Please, God, don’t let it be him.

  She pulled her laptop back out of her bag, setting it down on the windowsill with a clunk. She quickly accessed the hotel’s Wi-Fi, brought up her Tor browser, and started searching.

  “What are you looking for?” Vector asked.

  “Police scanners,” she said. “All the channels used by the German police are encrypted, but I can get through that. Do you speak German?”

  “A little bit,” Vector said.

  A few more keystrokes and Haylie turned the laptop towards Vector, clicking the play button on the dated, clunky web audio interface at the middle of the web page. German voices spoke in sharp bursts and matter-of-fact tones. Vector leaned in, closing his eyes to try and concentrate despite the sirens that continued to blare just out the window.

  “They’ve found whoever it is they’re looking for,” he said. He listened for a few more seconds, rubbing his chin as his eyes looked off in the distance, slightly to the left. “They keep talking about ‘the Americans’—I’m not sure if that’s a task force or the suspects.”

  Oh no. Please, no.

  “Was it Caesar?” Haylie shouted, grabbing at Vector’s jacket. “Tell me.”

  “They haven’t said any names,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  Haylie’s eyes welled with tears as she looked down on the station, seventeen distant floors below. She smashed her fists against the windowsill, feeling the bite of metal into flesh, knowing there was nothing she could do.

  >>>>>

  Cradling his arm around his duffel bag, Caesar bolted down the train platform at a full sprint.

  Sean darted in front of him, carving his way through an open train door with Caesar huffing closely behind. The two twisted through the packed car and out the other side, stopping briefly to get their bearings. Caesar shot across the open food court towards the escalators, noting a sign hanging above them that pointed down to the basement shopping mall. They pushed through a group of tourists queuing up at the mouth of the escalator and flew down the steps, their hands slipping and squeaking on the rubber handrails. Halfway down, Caesar grabbed the rail tight to regain his balance and turned to look over his should
er.

  The police were nowhere to be seen.

  We’ve got this.

  As they jumped off the bottom of the escalator, Caesar pushed ahead and took the lead, skimming his hand off the polished glass wall to their left and turning sharply around the corner. They snaked their way down a few corners, turning left, then right, then left again, until they had reached a deserted maze of back hallways. A brief grin crawled across his face as he breathed heavy, finally finding a good, comfortable pace.

  “C’mon,” he yelled back to Sean. “This way!”

  “Stop right there!” Caesar heard from behind his back.

  He looked over his shoulder, still running, and saw Sean stopped in his tracks twenty feet behind him at the last corner. Sean clutched his bag. Two men emerged from behind the wall, pointing their machine guns at Sean’s chest, but they didn’t see Caesar down the hall.

  “Sean Collins! We have you! Do not move!”

  They’re American.

  “I’m not going to jail,” Sean stammered. “I haven’t hurt anyone, you can’t shoot me.”

  Caesar stopped, torn between freedom and his friend. His heart pounded as he searched his mind for a next step, for any way out. He opened his mouth, but no words came out, only dry gasps of air. He had been running for so long, but had always felt in control, always felt one step ahead. For the first time since he could remember, Caesar was afraid.

  Don’t do it, Sean. Don’t run.

  Sean dropped his bag and turned, pushing his arms in front of him like an Olympic sprinter coming hot out of the blocks. He ran back towards the other side of the hall at full speed, mouth gaped open for air, trying to get as far away as his arms and legs would reach.

  The sounds of machine-gun fire echoed off the marble floor as the glass behind Sean shattered and was painted red. Again and again.

  Caesar stumbled backwards down a side corridor, watching the chaos unfold, shaking his head with every step. His heart beat out of his chest. He clutched his bag, needing to hold on to something—anything. He could see Sean’s hand sticking out beyond the corner, his palm turned up towards the sky, lifeless. His fingers smeared with blood as the police swept in, guns still pointed down at his body.

  Caesar turned and ran. He never looked back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  San Antonio, TX

  November 2nd, 3:45PM

  Mary cracked her knuckles one at a time, fighting the urge to wince with each release of pressure. She took a long sip of coffee, letting the smell fill her nostrils. It didn’t smell great, but it was about a million times better than mud she had had to drink at mealtimes over the past few years.

  “How we looking, Mary?” Agent Wilcox asked. “Any luck?”

  “Nothing so far,” Mary said. “Seeing some chatter about the train station. Reports of gunfire—I’m guessing that’s your doing—but not finding anything beyond that. If you could give me a name, this would be a lot easier.”

  “If I had a name,” Agent Wilcox said, “I wouldn’t need you here now, would I?”

  Mary forced a smile in her direction as she felt the weight of Wilcox’s eyes on her. She tried her best to hide her frustration as her laptop flashed alerts, showing police activity—video feeds and text updates. But it was all just chatter, just noise. Nothing that was going to help.

  Wilcox settled into a seat next to her and motioned up at the clock on the wall. “You know, when I was a little girl, my parents would always ring a bell for dinner time. And I don’t know how your family worked, but mine, we didn’t even think about being late to sit down at that dinner table. In fact, it was probably better to not show up for dinner than to be late, you know? Didn’t matter if I was in the far field or shoeing a horse or knee-deep in lake mud: if I heard that bell and didn’t stop, drop and roll to make it back on time, well, it wasn’t a pleasant rest of the night. Just make it back on time, Mother would say. Just do what you say you’re going to do. And ever since, any time I miss a deadline, I can’t sleep. Can’t sleep for days.” Swiveling the keyboard in her direction, Wilcox typed in a file location and spun it back for Mary to see. It was an application, now being installed on Mary’s machine, called “TorBuster.”

  “TorBuster?” Mary whispered, looking over to Agent Wilcox in disbelief. “You … You’ve broken Tor? Tor is the most secure environment on the planet. How did you—”

  “It just hit my desk this morning,” Agent Wilcox said. “It’s the first release from some work we’ve been doing with the big brains at some fancy university, and we’ve got a few people within the Tor group on our payroll, just in case. Now, let’s be very clear—nobody knows we have this, Mary. As I’m sure you noted in your paperwork, you signed a non-disclosure that would have you wishing you’d never been born if you share any of this information outside of this room.”

  “The people using Tor just want privacy,” Mary said. “That’s all. This is casting a net, listening in on people who haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “They’re breaking the law,” Agent Wilcox said with fire in her throat. “You tell me you have people breaking into your house, you’re not going to put up a camera? Even if it means you get a shot of the mailman from time to time? Hackers have been using the Tor network for bad things—terrible things. Tor is a risk. And my job is to eliminate as much risk as I can.” Wilcox stood, hovering over Mary. “Anyway, if you have a problem with it, don’t use it. I thought it might help, assuming the damn thing even works.”

  Mary gazed into the application window, watching the Tor network traffic run through the visualizer, shooting all over the world in wide, sweeping arcs. Pings from one node to another. Clusters of contact points—concentrated in territories with strict regimes and dictators—lit up the map like fireworks.

  Cracking her knuckles again, this time only getting a few quiet pops, Mary dove into the TorBuster interface. She set a filter on the left-hand side labeled “Geolocation” and scanned the results coming out of Germany.

  >>>>>

  Grandhotel, Frankfurt

  “I’m not finding anything,” Haylie said, huddled over her laptop in Caesar’s hotel room. “No names, no mentions of arrests. I feel like we’d be better off just roaming the streets, peeking in windows.”

  “Well, we’re obviously not going to risk being seen,” Vector said. “If those police or military or whatever down there are American—or even if they aren’t—there’s a good chance they’d recognize us.”

  Haylie smacked him on the shoulder. “I wasn’t serious. I was trying to make a point.” She turned back to her screen. “I’m searching social and news sites for any breaking updates, just hitting refresh every few seconds, but that’s all I can do right now. Have any other ideas?”

  >>>>>

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  Mary watched as the Tor nodes refreshed, bringing up a listing of active nodes within a two-mile radius of the Frankfurt Central train station.

  If this guy’s alive, he’s hiding. Trying to stay out of sight, laying low for a bit. But he knows that everyone is out looking for him.

  He’d need to find someplace safe, but close. Set up shop.

  The TorBuster application completed its refresh, now showing around two-hundred active nodes on the map. Mary scanned the locations, noticing a few red spots on the heat map—high concentrations of connections in one area.

  Probably Wi-Fi access spots and coffee shops. But I wouldn’t go to one of those—it would be too public for him. I need more data. Let’s see who’s interested in today’s events.

  Mary switched over to the web activity log on the right-hand side of the application interface. A rolling list of URLs and search engine terms scrolled top to bottom down the right rail, a real-time view of anything typed within that two-mile radius on the Tor network. She saw a mishmash of terms, mostly in German. Not helpful.

  Every target this guy had gone after—from Patriarch to Xasis
to the government databases—had been based in the U.S.

  Hackers attack what they know.

  He’s American.

  Mary clicked over to the controls at the top of the screen, filtering the results for only English terms. She then typed a few keywords into the filter to speed things along.

  Users searching for:

  “train station”

  “gun shots”

  “police”

  Mary took a sip of her coffee and watched the terms roll in, waiting.

  >>>>>

  Grandhotel Frankfurt

  “Still nothing,” Haylie said. “Maybe we should just head out and hope no one recognizes us. The clock’s ticking.”

  Vector looked up from the bed, one earpiece dangling out of his ear. “Nothing on the police scanners, either, but I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t used my German in a while.” He tore the earphones out and tossed his phone on the bed.

  >>>>>

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  As Mary watched the list of terms flow down from top to bottom, she noticed an “Advanced Features” button nestled up in the top right corner of the application window. Her eyes narrowed as she clicked the feature, opening a window showing a full list of settings and parameters to adjust the language search. At the bottom was a label that read “aggregate co-occurring terms” with a small checkbox next to it.