“Rumor is they tried,” Adkins said. “But most of the guardsmen stayed home. My hunch is they’re standing guard over their refrigerators and gas tanks. But the governor has instituted a curfew, and temporarily outlawed guns.”
Sabot shook his head. “How do you temporarily outlaw guns?”
“They have teams going to registered gun owners’ homes, confiscating weapons.”
“How many of them have been shot?”
Adkins smiled. “You aren’t that far removed from the street, are you?”
Sabot shook his head. “Hacking probably kept me from dealing and pimping.”
“You couldn’t have just done your homework and gone to college? Anyway, yeah, there was quite a scene over in Beacon Hill. Four ATF guys were shot, before they burned the house down.”
“Land of the free, esé.”
“At least that’s what the brochure says.” Adkins pulled up next to Sabot’s apartment.
“I bet the cops stop showing up for work.”
“Look at you and your big brain. If you weren’t a convicted felon, you’d have a future at the Bureau.” Adkins smiled pointedly before continuing. “Only about a quarter of the cops are left on the job. The rest are at home defending their families, or running around with the gangs.”
“Welcome to the new Third World, homes,” Sabot said, getting out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.” He slapped the roof and went inside.
None of the lights worked, and the apartment was eerily silent.
It had been over eighteen hours since he’d had anything to eat, and Sabot was starving. He figured he’d grab a bite, then snuggle in bed next to Angie and fill her in on their twenty-five-thousand-dollar windfall. Probably closer to thirty large, by now.
She’d probably still be pissed that he blew her off for lunch and stayed gone until the wee hours of the morning, but at least he had something positive to show for the time. It wasn’t like he was at a strip club threading dollar bills into G-strings.
He walked into the kitchen. His shoes crunched on the linoleum floor. Broken glass lay everywhere.
He glanced over at the sliding glass door. Rather, at what used to be the sliding glass door. It was now just a frame. Bastards.
Then he panicked. Angie!
Sabot charged down the hall to their bedroom, stumbling over the low tea service table they used to store their keys and sundries. He found the room completely empty. The bed was still made.
Angie was gone.
His heart raced. He wished he hadn’t let Adkins drive off. Adkins would know what to do. Sabot wanted to call him, but his cell phone was still missing, a lingering aftereffect of his kidnapping earlier in the day.
Sabot fumbled around in the dark, looking futilely for clues, then remembered the flashlight Angie insisted they keep in their underwear drawer. He fished among her fishnets and pulled out the big Maglite, switched it on, and cut swaths out of the darkness, not sure what he was looking for, but hoping something obvious would stand out.
The beam swept over his pillow on the bed, illuminating a familiar pink heart. It was a page from the heart-shaped notepad Angie kept by the bed. He charged over to retrieve it, relieved to see Angie’s handwriting in darker pink ink.
Got your message, the note said, and decided to head out to the burbs to take care of mom. She called several times, scared and confused. Hope you’re safe! I’ll be back in the morning, xoxox, Angie.
Sabot breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure what life would be like without Angie, but he was sure he never wanted to find out. She’d apparently left before the looters broke in.
He searched the remainder of the apartment, looking for anything out of place. They left the flat screen TV. Last year’s model. Guess everybody already has one of those, he mused.
But the kitchen was cleaned out. The fridge was empty of everything except for a few aging condiment containers, left in the back of the fridge to allow their evolutionary experiments to continue unmolested.
The pantry was similarly bare. They’d taken anything and everything remotely consumable. They’d also taken candles, matches, and that stupid expensive German knife set, he noticed.
These people aren’t looting, he realized. They’re surviving.
He heard a noise, which found its way to his ears unimpeded through the hole where the door used to be. Sounded like it was coming from the back alley. Voices, harsh laughter, and breaking glass. Was only a matter of time, Sabot thought. The bastards always seemed to find each other in times like this.
He made up his mind quickly. One skinny beaner wasn’t going to stop a band of roving jackasses. In fact, depending on the flavor of jackass, one skinny beaner might wind up being the entertainment. Roman style.
He made for the front door and slipped into the night.
There was never a question in Sabot’s mind about where he would go. Back to the empty warehouse and its converted office, of course, with the glorious computer and its magical internet connection and its unfettered access to the world’s information.
And the carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, as long as it produced Bitcoins for his new masters. New partners, he corrected himself. Sounded better, even if it was slightly delusional.
He opened the door to hacker’s nirvana and sat back down at the desk. He’d found a styrofoam bowl of those nasty noodles he used to eat all the time when he was eyeballs deep in a hack, and he slurped a spoonful into his mouth. Just like old times.
Sabot got to work. Time was of the essence. If someone big and powerful enough to pull him free of the FBI had figured out that stealing Bitcoins was the way to become the top dog in the new world order, then about a billion other quasi-savvy mouth-breathers would have undoubtedly reached the same conclusion. It was likely to be the Wild West. While Americans were throwing rocks through each others’ windows, the rest of the world was probably working its ass off to redistribute the cyberwealth. Competition would be fierce.
But Sabot liked a challenge.
The half-hour walk had given his mind time to churn on the koan-like problem: how do you steal a thing that doesn’t exist? Bitcoins weren’t really things. You couldn’t put them in your pocket, and you couldn’t even store them on a hard drive. They only existed as ledger entries out there in the great big Bitcoin universe. The whole world kept the ledger up to date; the ledger, in turn, kept track of the little messages that told everyone who was paying whom, and how much.
It was all about the accounts. Wallets, people were calling them, but that really wasn’t an accurate description. They didn’t store anything at all. If you held the cryptographic key that would unlock a particular account, then you could initiate transactions using the Bitcoins that had previously been “sent” to that account. If you didn’t have the crypto key corresponding to a particular account, then you had nothing at all. It wouldn’t help you to know how much was in the account, because you couldn’t do anything with it.
If you had the account number and the key, then you could empty the wallet entirely, from anywhere in the world.
So keys are the key, he’d concluded, smiling at his own pith.
And how did you get your hands on the keys?
Easy. You got them from wherever in the universe they happened to be right now.
Bitcoin crypto keys were valuable things, which meant that somewhere, someone was aggregating them. Sabot was certain he knew at least a few places. There were Bitcoin exchanges all around the world, set up to allow people to buy and sell Bitcoins using the local currency of choice as the exchange medium. The exchanges would undoubtedly store people’s account information.
It would be pretty easy to run a trace on a few thousand recent transactions. By the immutable law of the internet, a striking percentage of those users would undoubtedly have logged in using a computer that had been infected with key-logging spyware hidden on the hard drive. Sabot would just have to identify the computers (easy), then retrieve the key logger’s rec
ords to steal the passwords (even easier).
So easy, in fact, that he could probably write a script to do it for him in a matter of minutes.
There was another problem to solve, however: what to do with the Bitcoins when he stole them. Because every transaction was recorded for all time, it wasn’t really possible to disguise a theft. Stories were rampant on the internet of everyday Joes sleuthing out the wallet addresses of thieves who’d made off with millions worth of Bitcoins. It was still extremely difficult to recover stolen Bitcoins, but with enough motivation – which certainly existed, given the meteoric rise in Bitcoin value since the financial system came to a screeching halt – it was only a matter of time before an angry mob showed up at a thief’s doorstep.
Thieves were caught because they moved large sums around all at once. Even “tumblers,” or wallet-obscuring services that laundered Bitcoin transactions by dispersing them over a number of smaller wallets, couldn’t disguise large influxes of currency. Investigators could simply watch the input and output transactions from known tumbler sites, and look for spikes in activity corresponding to inordinately large transactions.
Most of the world did business in sums much smaller than a single Bitcoin, so when someone suddenly started throwing around hundred-coin transactions, the entire world took notice.
Sabot’s solution wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty damn close, he figured. Instead of scooping all of the Bitcoins he stole into a few large wallets, he would create tens of thousands of individual accounts. Rather, another automated script would do that for him, and record the corresponding passwords.
He was planning to steal millions of Bitcoins, one tiny fraction at a time. That way, each of his transactions would look exactly like everyday, normal user interactions. His outrageous theft would be hidden below the clamor of daily market activity.
Not bad for a washed-up old Anonymous vet.
It felt good to be back in the game.
19
Fort Worth, Texas
The Gulfstream’s nose wheel settled onto the runway at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, and the brakes and thrust reversers threw Sam and Brock’s bodies into their seat belts.
They had the cabin to themselves, which facilitated a few intimate moments. She squeezed Brock’s arm and smiled. “Thanks for the in-flight entertainment.”
“We were already members of the Mile High club,” Brock said with a wink.
“Yes, but never while riding in a government airplane. Makes me smile, for some perverse reason.”
“Me too. I’m glad Landers threw me into the briar patch with you.”
“Just another shitty boss looking for a scapegoat. I’m happy it worked in our favor, though.”
When Brock told her of his orders to start the theft investigation in Fort Worth, Sam suggested they travel together. General Hajek had ultimately agreed, and the four-star had sent a helicopter from Langley to DC to fetch Brock for the airplane trip out West.
The door opened, and Brock whiffed the familiar Texas air. “Reminds me of flight school,” he said.
“You trained here?”
“Wichita Falls. Couple hours north. Smells even more like cow shit.”
A giant smile attached to a suit and tie walked aboard. On the man’s lapel was a familiar stylized L that signified the bearer as a member of the Langston Marlin executive team. “Colonel James, great to see you!” the man boomed.
“Hiya Kit,” Brock said, extending his hand. He started to introduce the LM exec to Sam, but he was several beats too late.
“Kit Farrel, Langston Marlin business development,” the suit said garrulously, clasping Sam’s hand in both of his own, his smile broadening improbably from its already overblown proportions.
“Sam Jameson. Spoken for.”
Farrel blushed slightly, and Brock chuckled before rescuing Farrel. “Kit and I work together a bit on the anti-satellite weapon program,” he told Sam. “LM does the assembly and final checkout here in Fort Worth.”
Farrel nodded, motioning toward a door leading into a cavernous manufacturing facility. “We’ve been building aircraft at this plant almost continuously since World War Two, and it’s a bit of a shift to be building a ground-based weapon here now.” He shrugged. “But whatever the customer wants…”
Sam smiled. Farrel had an intelligent but personable air about him, with a tinge of a salesman’s solicitousness. “We’re the Eskimos,” Brock said, “and Kit’s the ice salesman.”
“So I gathered,” she said.
“It’s been a rough week for us here in Fort Worth,” Farrel said. “Our CEO was killed a few days ago, and then last night’s theft.”
Sam made sympathetic noises. From what she’d been told, the CEO’s demise seemed much more like an assassination than just a vanilla murder. No theft had been reported, but Sam had her doubts. The LM entourage hadn’t been visiting the Aberdeen Proving Grounds for tea and crumpets, and there was likely some classified information in play.
“I’m interested to hear what you’ve learned so far,” Sam said as they stepped into the executive lobby of the colossal building.
Farrel filled her in. He seemed eager to relay that the security breach involved the access badge and passcode belonging to a senior DoD official named Mike Charles.
Holy shit, Sam thought. It was a name she’d heard very recently.
“The program co-lead?” Brock asked. Together with Major General Landers, Brock’s direct boss, Mike Charles was in charge of the entire ASAT weapon development program. Langston Marlin was the prime contractor for the multi-billion dollar project. “He stole his own beam controller?”
Farrel shook his head. “No. The video feed showed conclusively that Mr. Charles didn’t participate in the theft. But the team of thieves used his access badge and PIN.”
Sam looked pensive. “Anyone hear from Charles lately?”
“He was actually here yesterday afternoon and evening,” Farrel said. “Second time in four days. The Vice President had some concerns about one of the subsystems on the ASAT program, and Mr. Charles flew out here to take a closer look.”
“What was he looking at?”
Farrel gave Sam a meaningful look. “The beam director.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. Strange. “The same thing they stole?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m filing that in the ‘more than a little bit interesting’ category,” Sam said.
Farrel winked. “You’re not the first to make a similar remark. In fact, the engineers put together a demonstration especially for him, to prove we had made the progress we claimed.”
“To be clear, I’m not accusing the government guy of stealing the government’s property,” Sam said. “It’s entirely possible that someone extorted the access badge and code from him.”
Brock nodded. “Buster’s a pretty straight arrow, from everything I’ve seen.”
“Buster?”
“Mr. Charles,” Brock explained. “He used to fly F-16s with me, back when we were both much younger.”
“That explains the sophomoric nickname,” Sam teased.
Brock laughed. “I’d rather be a fighter pilot than a grown-up. Anyway, I wonder if anyone’s heard from him since yesterday.”
“To my knowledge, I was the last LM employee to speak with Mr. Charles,” Farrel said. “He left here yesterday evening, and we haven’t heard from him since then.”
“Mr. Farrel, thanks for your time,” Sam said.
Farrel looked surprised. “Don’t you want to watch the surveillance footage?”
Sam shook her head. “I’m sure the locals will be plenty thorough. We’ve learned enough to guide our next steps.”
“If you say so.”
Sam extended her hand. “Thanks again, Kit. You’ve been extremely helpful.”
“That’s it?” he asked, shaking her hand. “Not even a cup of coffee?”
“Afraid not. Duty calls, as they say. But if you co
uld arrange a ride to the rental car facility at the airport, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“Sure thing.” Farrel disappeared down what Sam was certain had to be the world’s longest hallway.
She caught Brock’s incredulous stare. “We flew all the way out here for a two-minute conversation?” he asked.
Sam leaned in. “I learned something interesting earlier today,” she said in a low tone. “An airplane with no cargo manifest took off from DFW and landed at Langley Air Force Base last night, a few hours before the satellites were zapped. Any guess as to which senior DoD official authorized the landing?”
Brock shook his head.
“Mike Charles.”
“Get out!” Brock exclaimed. Then, in a lower voice, “I never would have suspected him of trying anything that crazy. He always seemed so perfectly buttoned-down.”
“That’s how it usually works,” Sam said. “The good ones don’t pack ninja stars or drive Aston Martins. You can almost never tell a spy by looking at him.”
Sam dialed back to the DHS operations desk, hoping to get a trace on Mike Charles’ cell phone location. It rang a dozen times. Your tax dollars at work.
Finally, an exasperated operator answered, and informed Sam that none of the on-call investigative teams remained at work. “What are they doing?” she asked.
“Ma’am, I presume they’re at home, fighting off the looters,” the operator said in a barely civil tone.
“I see,” Sam said. “In that case, what are you doing at work?”
“Not all of us have a life, ma’am.”
“Sorry,” Sam said, meaning it. “So there’s nobody in the entire Department of Homeland Security who can run a phone trace for me?”
“Not tonight, ma’am. And honestly, I don’t know when anybody’s going to be in, either. The city’s a mess right now. It’s like a Third World country.”
Sam cursed, thanked the operator, and hung up.
Aside from the personal inconvenience, she really didn’t give a shit about someone ruining the day for a bunch of bankers. Sure, the world was in for a rough adjustment, and things would undoubtedly get a lot worse before they got any better, but Sam was confident humanity would work through it.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 150