Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2)

by Christopher Kerns

  “We’re splitting them up.” The NSA analyst stood, his hand pressed to his ear as he kept track of the audio feed. “Team two, make your way down the other side of the hall. We want you checking the rest of the floor in case he’s already on the run.”

  Mary cringed as she slunk back in her chair. She pulled her sweater across her body, bracing herself to hear the worst.

  >>>>>

  Grandhotel Frankfurt

  “It’s not working,” Haylie said. She pulled the power adapter back and flipped her head upside down, checking the underside of the door’s casing for any foreign objects. She blew air into the opening with a few quick bursts.

  “Well, make it work,” Vector whispered, bobbing back and forth on his tiptoes, checking each end of the hallway. “C’mon, Crash, I can hear them coming.”

  Haylie shook her head and tried the device again, slipping it into the slot underneath the brass door handle. Jiggling the adapter, waiting for a green light and a click. Nothing.

  Goddamnit.

  “They’re getting closer,” Vector said with hurried breath. “We should just run for the stairs, maybe they forgot to send a team in there. At least there we have a chance.”

  “Maybe they forgot?” Haylie spat back. She cursed at the door and spun to face the other side of the hall, scrambling on her hands and knees over to door on the other side. “Screw it, let’s try that one.”

  She bolted across the hallway, sticking the DC adapter up into the door lock and said a silent prayer as she heard movement inside the casing. The light flashed red-red … green. A soft click filled her ears and she pushed the door open, craning her neck to see inside.

  She froze in the doorway as she heard the TV at full volume, blaring German cartoons. Perched at the foot of the bed was a young girl—she couldn’t have been older than five or six—surrounded by a pile of snacks arranged across the comforter. The girl looked back at Haylie with a curious eye, but not a sound, the bright colors from her cartoons reflecting shades of pastels off her cherub face.

  Haylie raised a single finger to her lips and winked. The girl giggled and tilted her head with a smile, shushing back to her. Haylie slowly backtracked through the doorway, bumping right into Vector as he tried to make his way inside. They fell into a heap on the hallway floor as the door shut behind them.

  “What the bloody hell was that all about?” Vector whispered with panic in his eyes. “We need to get in there.”

  “Occupied,” Haylie said, pointing to the next door down the hall. “Third time’s a charm.”

  >>>>>

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  “The team is inside—the room’s empty,” an NSA agent announced. “They’re double checking it for—”

  “Triple check it.” Agent Wilcox stomped across the room to the row of windows, throwing her phone into the corner with a clattering of plastic hitting drywall. “And make sure he’s not hiding in the staircase.”

  “Yeah, that was the first thing the local team told us to remember, actually,” the analyst said. “Germans, you know. Always getting the details—”

  Agent Wilcox shot him a look.

  “Triple check. Yes, ma’am.”

  >>>>>

  Grandhotel Frankfurt

  The door clicked firmly shut behind her. Haylie pressed her back against the wood, clutching her backpack to her chest with all the life left in her body. Vector jogged towards her after inspecting the room and flashed her a silent thumbs-up, sliding down the door to take a place next to her on the floor. They breathed heavy as they waited for any sound of visitors coming from outside.

  Haylie flipped the Arduino device in her hand, end-over-end, and slowly unzipped the top of the bag, slipping it into the main compartment. As she slid the device inside, her hand did a quick inventory of the contents.

  Clothes, good.

  Passport, got it.

  She fished for a few more seconds and felt an empty space where she expected to find a slate of cold aluminum, but found only empty space.

  “Oh, no.”

  >>>>>

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  Mary watched as the NSA analyst at the center of the room took a cautious series of steps to approach Agent Wilcox, who had stayed at the window, not even bothering to collect her phone, which still lay face-down in the corner.

  “They triple checked, just like you asked,” the analyst said. He took a gulp. “They didn’t find anyone, but I do have some good news.”

  She turned to face him, scorn filling her eyes. “What’s your definition of good, there, son?”

  “His laptop,” the analyst said, straightening his posture and tucking in the sides of his shirt. “He left his laptop in the room—right there on the desk.”

  Mary’s heart jumped as she watched a wide smile grow across Agent Wilcox’s face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Grand Palace Hotel

  Rome

  November 3rd, 1:02PM

  The afternoon sun painted shades of orange across the lid of Caesar’s laptop as it sat cold and lifeless on the desk. He lost himself in the reflections, the hours since Frankfurt ran like a blurred slideshow through his brain.

  Did that really happen? Did it all really happen?

  The adrenaline returned as he replayed scenes of the police running full speed behind him. Parents pulling their children away, screaming in terror as they ran. Sean, face-down on the cold floor. Bullet casings chiming off the marble.

  The images looped over and over and over in his mind.

  They wouldn’t stop.

  Sean didn’t deserve this. It got a little bit out of control, but it didn’t have to come to this.

  Just a little out of control.

  He raised a shaking hand to lift the lid of his laptop. Every movement brought searing pain through his head—the headaches had started on the train down to Rome and hadn’t stopped since. He held his hands back from the keyboard, just staring at the black screen that reflected a fuzzy shadow of his silhouette. His eyes welled with tears.

  It’s your fault. This whole thing was your idea. Sean’s dead because of you. You could have stopped this all months ago—you should have been smart enough to know when to stop, to know when you were out of your league. But you weren’t.

  He closed his eyes and backtracked through the past few days. How did they find you? How did they know you were in Frankfurt? He and Sean had been writing scripts, testing servers, searching precincts. Nothing out of the ordinary, and besides, it was all being done through Tor—safe and silent. They weren’t being careless. But that didn’t change the fact that Sean was dead.

  A wave of panic suddenly crept up his spine. He jumped up from his chair, hobbling over to the hotel room door and fumbling to check both locks. Double, triple checking them. His head pounding, his pulse racing. Looking through the peephole and out into the hallway, breathing against the grain of the door, pressing his eye closer and to each side for a better view. A better view of them. Watching for what seemed like hours.

  Are they here, too?

  He fell down to the floor and crawled, his palms and knees burning as he slid across the carpet, pulling himself up on the curtains, rising just enough to let his eye peek above the windowsill. He scanned the buildings across the street. Some windows illuminated, others with drawn shades. Some with black glass. Caesar watched for any movement, making mental notes of shadows and angles and how far open each window was. The traffic below rustled and hushed its way through the night, blowing the smell of exhaust and grime up through the walls of the alley, pinging back and forth across the brick until it finally reached his nostrils. He slid back under the window, pressing his back against the wall, panting for air.

  You couldn’t just leave it alone, could you? Take a deal, do your time? You kept telling yourself that you were better than them. You told the people that followed you that you could keep them safe. You were wrong. And now Sean’s dead.

  I miss
him. I failed him.

  He crept his hand up to the top of the desk, feeling around for his laptop, grasped it by the edge and slid it down into his lap. The power button, nestled in the top right-hand corner of the keyboard, called to him. A swooping semi-circle, pierced by a thin line running north to south. He had always thought it looked like a twisted smiley face; the single eye of a cyclops staring back at him with a big toothless grin. But now it looked different.

  It looked like a bullet piercing flesh, tearing through skin, muscle and bone.

  It looked like an open wound.

  It looked like a gun sight, trained on his target—he imagined the smell of gunpowder still fresh on his hands from the last shot—locked in and ready to fire. Just waiting for the pull of the trigger.

  They’re coming for you. You’re the last one. You’ll end up dead, or in prison for the rest of your life, and you can’t let that happen. You know who did this. And you can make it right.

  He felt anger filling his body, replacing the fear. His jaw locked as his eyes slid shut, his head snapping back to drink in the rage. He didn’t even remember pressing the power button, only hearing the laptop chime to life. The machine rose and fell with his breath as his eyes locked on the screen. As the OS booted, he pieced together the next steps of what he needed to do.

  All that matters is who. Who did this. And I think I already know the answer.

  His login screen showed, with a blinking cursor staring back at him.

  It’s time to take the gloves off.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  San Antonio, TX

  November 3rd, 7:15AM

  Mary sipped a cup of hot tea as her results came up blank. She faked a grimace, scratching at her head and dusting crumbs and who-knows-what off the edges of the laptop. It wasn’t her machine, but she had always found strange comfort in taking good care of any computer under her wing.

  I still don’t know what Caesar’s doing, but I need to buy them time. Both of them.

  “Got anything?” Agent Wilcox asked from the row behind her, weaving her way through a growing collection of sluggish NSA analysts who weren’t used to being up this early in the morning.

  “Not yet,” Mary said. “Not since that first ping in Frankfurt.”

  “We’ve got reports rolling in,” Wilcox said with a smile. “But nothing I can confirm about his whereabouts. Just rumors from local sources, not credible if you ask me. Keep your eyes open.” She made her way back to the center of the room to start the morning briefing as Mary looked on.

  “He’s scared—he’s scurrying,” Mary whispered to herself. “He’s in the shadows, but he’s not hiding. He feels like he has to stay on the offensive.” She brushed a piece of dirt off the edge of the laptop. “He’s still out there, and now he’s mad.”

  She sat back, running her fingers across the edges of the screen, her touch finding the rough, black tape covering the webcam across the top of the screen. She pressed it firmly into place as her mind continued to work, scraping the air out of the bubbles with her fingernail.

  >>>>>

  Grand Palace Hotel, Rome

  Caesar brought up his local version of the Project code repository and clicked through to the section he had labeled “black_hat” just a few days earlier.

  Months back, he had worked with the team to set strict guidelines for what they could and couldn’t use. They knew they had to keep themselves in check, only using the pieces of Project code that would help them do good, and steering clear of the code that would give them the access—and the temptation—to do harm. Access can give people opportunity, but it also corrupts like a son-of-a-bitch.

  Caesar held his index finger over the laptop’s trackpad. He thought of Sean, lying on a stainless steel table somewhere in Germany. His body riddled with bullet holes, his skin gray.

  It’s just a few lines of code, that’s all. Forget the people. Don’t think about the people. Just a few lines of code.

  The television blared in the corner, a montage of Senator Hancock at podiums, shaking hands, sitting down for earnest interviews, on the debate stage. The video cut over to Hancock’s Cyber Task Force—Rancor sitting center stage at a huge, polished wood table, an ugly, terribly tied necktie dangling down below his slimy smirk.

  It was you, Rancor. I know it was. Show me that I’m right.

  Caesar logged back into the NSA’s system, working his way through any files that would give him a clue about what happened in Frankfurt. Nothing in the records, no new files started in his own name. But they may have started a new collection, and finding anything in this web of government red tape and naming structures was pretty close to impossible. He jumped back to his local Project code folder, his eyes drifting down to the subfolder from the day before named ‘SWIFT_Access.’

  The SWIFT transaction? Is that how they found us?

  He pictured Sean, sitting across from him, asking if it was safe to access the system.

  “That system is twenty years old,” Caesar heard himself reply. “No one’s paying attention.”

  My God, I led them right to us. This is all my fault.

  He logged into the SWIFT system as a superuser and began to scour the logs. Most of the activity on SWIFT had been moved over to modern APIs years ago—just machines talking to machines. Caesar knew that anyone in the system these days would fall into one of three categories: people running the system, people trying to break in, or people trying to catch the people breaking in.

  He typed in a few commands to bring up a list of active users, waited for the system to respond, and then leaned in to check the results. What he saw was mostly a list of bots—automated jobs created by the administrator for common tasks. But there was one new entry that was different.

  SWIFT2 bot_cleanUp Wed Jun 12 21:31

  SWIFT2 bot_cron Fri Nov 01 03:45

  SWIFT2 bot_alpha Sat Nov 02 09:32

  SWIFT2 MA_MI-90067 Sat Nov 02 12:32

  I don’t believe it. They’re in here—that’s him.

  Caesar pushed back in his chair, breathing deeply. He closed his eyes, but all he could see was red. All he could think about was Sean, one moment behind him, running through the train station, and the next minute dead. Bleeding out on the floor. Dying, hungry and alone. And all because of me.

  His pulse raced as he searched for every IP address pinging the SWIFT servers from inside the NSA. The results popped out a single node: 192.168.07.06.

  I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.

  He pushed the chair back and stood, feeling a rush of adrenaline course through his veins. He stalked the room, pulsing his fists in and out, hunching over, bouncing left and right like a prize fighter getting ready to step in the ring.

  Rancor thinks he’s untouchable. I’m going to show him how wrong he is.

  Caesar raised his fingers to his temples, trying to mentally walk back through the list of Project scripts that sat untouched in the “black_hat” folder. I’ve got his IP. He started up a program called AngelView and typed in the IP.

  The script returned a note reading “192.168.07.06: Online.” Caesar pushed his cursor with a shaking hand, selecting the “Webcam_view” option. All that greeted him was a grainy black video feed. No movement, no nothing. He cursed.

  He must have put tape over his webcam.

  He turned back to the command line interface and typed “dir(AngelView)” to list other options on the AngelView script.

  [AccessLog, Webcam_View, IPlog, Privs, ScreenView]

  “ScreenView,” Caesar muttered. He ran the command, watching a new window pop to life. It loaded a highly pixelated, bright-white view that slowly brought itself into focus.

  Caesar expanded the window to full screen and studied every inch as the details emerged.

  >>>>>

  NSA Texas Cryptologic Center

  Mary shifted in her seat, trying her best to look busy. She cycled through tabs, combing through network maps of Frank
furt, Berlin, and a few other cities in Germany where hackers tended to congregate. It wasn’t hard to avoid any new chatter about Caesar or Haylie—there wasn’t any. She switched over to a forum scraper, refreshing her scripts for the sixth time this hour.

  I do hope she got away. I hope she’s safe.

  Agent Wilcox took the chair next to Mary, pointing at one of the screens fixed to the wall showing footage from earlier that morning of Senator Hancock and Mason Mince poised outside the Pentagon at a press conference.

  “You ever run into that guy?” Wilcox asked, pointing to the somewhat disheveled Mason Mince speaking with authoritative gestures, waving a stack of papers in his hand for some reason. “He seems like he’s all hat and no cattle.”

  “Mason Mince?” Mary laughed. “I’m afraid he’s well after my time.” She shook her head, opening a new tab to do a search on his name. She scrolled through breaking news reports mentioning him in the election coverage. “I’m afraid I don’t think we’d get along, myself and Mr. Mince—I mean, who calls himself Rancor?”

  Both Wilcox and Mary chuckled as she continued to scroll.

  “Mary, I have something we need to discuss,” Agent Wilcox said, straightening her posture and taking on an official-sounding tone.

  Mary slid back from the keyboard and faced the agent.

  Well, this doesn’t sound good.

  >>>>>