by Tom Clancy
Dumb. He didn’t say that, having learned at least a couple of things since he’d gotten to know her, but he’d thought it. Even a schoolkid knew better than to touch the net without virus protection. Even kindergarten kids knew that…
But it wasn’t Saji he was mad at. She didn’t live in a world where every electronic move was automatically covered. She didn’t think about such things like he did.
It was the hacker Jay wanted to stomp, the author of the virus, the jerk who had taken advantage of Saji’s good nature. He was the one to blame.
Jay was going to nail this hacker. This guy was going to learn that you did not mess around with Jay Gridley, and you sure didn’t make him look bad by using his wife.
He stared at his computer a moment longer, still fuming, then reached for the keyboard and set his system to accept no intrusions less than a Priority One. It was time to get to work. Under normal circumstances he loved his job and couldn’t wait to begin the hunt. This time, though, it would be even sweeter. This time it was personal.
Jay had written and released his own share of viruses back in his college days — just the usual “Gotcha” type programs to show that he could. He’d never coded anything really damaging, of course. He’d also hunted a good many of them as Net Force’s chief safari leader, so by now the opening steps were pretty routine for him. The key was to track the time trail, see when computers got infected to centralize a point of origin. Once you had that, you’d start tracing from there, working your way back toward the source.
Naturally, these days people could pipe things all over the globe, but they had to start somewhere.
Unfortunately, by the time he’d realized the first two bugs were related, a lot of information had gone by the wayside. The first two viruses were pretty mild; they hadn’t done any real damage, so they hadn’t been followed very closely. This would make it harder for him to gather data on them.
It would take a lot of testing, which would take a lot of time.
If he did it the normal way.
Jay put on his VR gear and called up a scenario he hadn’t played with since his college days.
The Wizard’s Workshop
Jay stood in a large, circular room, dimly illuminated by a scattering of candlelight. All around him were various arcane devices, jars of rare herbs, odd-looking mechanical contraptions, and musty old books, bound in various animal skins, from lizard to ostrich to what looked like human…
A crystal ball and a small but stout wooden cage sat on a clear area of the bench. Next to that was a long, thin wand, intricately carved with golden runes that glimmered slightly from within.
A faint musty smell hung over the room, and the air tasted stale. It felt as though it hadn’t been aired out for hundreds of years. Jay was impressed. He hadn’t been in the workshop for years, and the details were excellent.
I am good.
Nothing he didn’t already know, of course, but it was nice to be reminded, particularly by his own work.
He picked up the wand. It felt slightly warm, exactly as he remembered. It vibrated in his hand, a tool of creation waiting to be unleashed.
There was a reason Jay hadn’t played with the workshop for a number of years. This was where he had made his own viruses. Those days were gone, of course. He’d chosen the high road, gone with the good guys, and ever since making that decision he’d refrained from playing with such things — except when he needed them to figure out better ways of defeating the bad guys.
Sometimes it did take a thief to catch one.
This wasn’t precisely one of those times, but he was going to take the latitude he had as Net Force’s chief hacker and use it. The hacker who had destroyed his wife’s hard drive, and through her had gotten Jay’s own system at home, was going to be very sorry.
This was not an easy decision for him. He remembered all too well Alex’s warning about playing this one by the book, but he wasn’t too worried. For one thing, this had nothing to do with CyberNation. For another, what he was about to do wasn’t really wrong. Oh, it violated the spirit of the “non-self-perpetuating-code” laws that were on the books — he had served as a consultant on some of those laws — but the code he was about to write would be completely harmless… except to a certain hacker out there.
Mostly, though, it came down to the fact that this was the only way Jay could see to stop this guy quickly, and at the moment that was all that mattered.
He took a deep breath and began.
He waved the wand in the air, forming a star-shaped pattern with it, and a fiery glowing pentagram appeared on the solid floor of the small wooden cage. He tap-tap-tapped the wand in the air, and alternate points of dark and light appeared around the vertices of the star.
He paused for a moment, trying to remember the incantation. He’d been seriously into fantasy gaming for a few years in college, had gotten into a wizard’s role, and done all kinds of research into ritual magic.
Oh, yeah — he remembered.
Jay spoke, and as he did so, the sounds of his words burst into the room as colored balls of fire, illuminating the chamber in flickers of rich red and gold. Details in the room stood out, more supplies and old tomes became visible, all casting hard shadows as the globes moved toward the cage.
Within the cage the glowing balls of light that represented his words of power combined over the pentagram. He heard a popping sound as a formless something appeared within the wards he’d set up. It slowly took on shape and color, coalescing into a minor demon.
“WHO DARES CALL ME TO SERVICE?” The little thing’s voice was deep.
Jay smiled a bit at his younger self. Pretty melodramatic stuff.
“It is I, Jay Gridley.” When he said his name, the little demon cringed as he’d programmed anything he summoned to do. Even though he knew it was infantile, he couldn’t help but think it was kind of cool.
Well, some things hadn’t changed.
He spoke to the demon, laying out what it was to do. As he gave it instructions, it gradually assumed a somewhat different shape to match its goals.
It ceased glowing and became smaller, more transparent, like the viruses he’d analyzed. It resembled a tiny devil, with horns and a tail, but more squat, dwarflike. Its eyes grew huge, so it could see better, its nose longer to sniff out traces of the target viruses, and it grew wings, tiny batlike things that spun quickly, like a hummingbird’s.
Jay reached into the pocket of the wizard’s robe and removed the bug-forms of the three target viruses. He tossed them through a gap in the top of the cage. The creature grabbed them, sniffing and probing each one before ripping it open to devour the buglike guts of each.
“I AM READY, MASTER,” it said.
“About time,” Jay said. “Go.” He waved the wand. The cage dissolved in a shimmer of gold sparkles, the wards fell dark, and the creature flew up and out through a tall window by the bookcase.
He let out a breath he’d been holding. Well. He’d done it now. All the old adages came to him—it takes a thief to catch a thief, absolute power corrupts absolutely, it’s a slippery slope.
Although he had certain powers and rights as Net Force’s chief VR man, releasing a virus on the public wasn’t one of them. On the other hand, if he called it a tracker program, he might be able to get away with it.
Not that he was going to call it anything unless someone came asking. Since he was the chief cop on the block when it came to viruses, it was unlikely anyone would.
Besides, he’d made it good. Although he hadn’t used it in years, he’d kept the workshop program updated on the latest techniques for virus construction. That was part of the overhead of keeping on top of things: updating software you might never use.
It was hard work, being king of the mountain.
The virus wasn’t going to damage anything, or even make itself noticeable. It would piggyback on incoming and outgoing traffic only, and only report to him information about when the three viruses had hit — and where
. It would erase all tracks it had ever been there, and no one would be the wiser.
He hoped.
He waved the wand again and the crystal ball on the table grew to the size of a beach ball. He uttered a word, and a tiny simulacrum of the United States appeared within it. As he watched, tiny dots of red, blue, and yellow began to appear on the map, each one corresponding to a computer which had been infested with one of the three viruses.
The dots expanded at a geometric rate, getting faster and faster as his imp-virus multiplied and expanded in its own wave of infestation.
Pretty soon now he’d have an idea of what to check next. The hacker who’d messed with him had better enjoy his last few free computing hours.
Mess with the best, go to jail like the rest.
17
Kim’s Business and Industrial Center
Dover, Delaware
The security guard turned out to be much better than the cop had been.
The guy came in dark. He had turned his car lights off far enough away that Junior never even caught them. He didn’t hear the motor, either, which meant that the guard must have coasted the last couple hundred yards in neutral, maybe even with the engine turned off. The first Junior saw of him, the guard was on foot and working his way toward the office with the kicked-in door.
He wore a dark gray and black uniform and some kind of dark-colored baseball cap. He was using cover and shadows and had his piece already drawn. He held the weapon in a crosshands grip, gun in the right, with a flashlight in the left hand above, pointing along the sight line but not turned on.
From the position of his hands, Junior could tell that the flashlight must have a button in the butt. It was probably one of those fat, stubby, tactical cop lights, most likely a Sure-Fire M6. If so, it was going to flare like a movie spotlight when the guard turned it on. Those things put out five hundred lumens, and cost two-fifty, three hundred bucks.
Junior had gotten one like it in a trade with a drug dealer once. He lost it somewhere later, but it was a fine piece of machinery. Anyone carrying one of those flashlights that he probably paid for himself was serious about his work, that was for sure.
Whether he was the real thing or a wannabe, that was something else. That was what they were going to find out.
This guy wanted to catch somebody, no question. If all he’d been looking to do was scare a burglar off, he’d have come in code three, those silly rent-a-cop orange rack lights flashing, siren howling, giving plenty of warning he was on the way.
But no, not this guy. He sneaked in quiet, gun in hand, GuardMan to the rescue! He was hoping somebody would still be there, hoping the door-breaker would be armed, hoping he’d resist. Then he’d blind him with that light cannon, and if the guy didn’t get his hands up fast enough, he was going to drop him.
Junior could tell that by watching the guy. He’d bet the farm on it.
It put a different spin on things. GuardMan there already had his gun out, so it wasn’t going to be a fast-draw contest. Junior didn’t get a great look at the hardware, but he saw enough of it silhouetted to see it was a semiauto, and his impression was that it was a SIG, could have been a 9mm, a.40, even a.45, they all looked pretty much the same at a distance, and all of which were fine combat weapons not likely to jam when the guy started cooking. Probably a.45, if he had to guess. The serious shooters still liked those best.
How good was he? No way to tell for sure, but he moved well, he kept his hands low and ready, to shine-and-shoot, and you had to figure the guy had some ability, given the company’s ads and all.
So Junior’s idea of stepping out of the shadows and yelling at the guy straight out went away real quick. If he did that, and if the guy was any good, the guard would spin and, flame on, light Junior up like a Christmas tree, and as soon as he saw him go for his heat, GuardMan would cook faster than a hot dog in a microwave, ka-blam!
No, Junior decided, he couldn’t do it that way.
But he also couldn’t mess around out here. He was pretty sure that the company dispatcher had called the cops at the same time that he sent the guard. If so, the official heat would be along, and probably sooner than later.
Junior would bet that Dover, Delaware, was not exactly a hotbed of serious felonies on a weeknight. A bored cop, county mountie, or smokey would be looking for something interesting to passe le temp. So letting the guard root around in the office for a few minutes and waiting for him to come out all relaxed thinking nobody was around was also not such a good idea. He wasn’t ready to rock with a hotshot guard and a state policeman, with maybe even a local shurf or two coming along just for grins at the same time.
As GuardMan worked his way toward the door, getting ready to make his move, Junior decided how he was going to play it. He squatted and picked up a handful of gravel from around the base of the building next to him, using his left hand. With his other hand he pulled his right-side Ruger.
Edging out of the dark, he stayed low and duckwalked toward the guard. He angled to his left a little, so the guard would stay backlit by the office lights. He was still thirty feet or so away when the guard reached the door and, after checking it out, got ready to shove it open.
Junior softly tossed the gravel at the wall to the man’s left, underhanded, and came up from his squat and into his isosceles stance.
The little rocks, all pea-sized or smaller, pattered against the metal siding like a sudden gust of hard rain, making a lot of noise in the quiet night.
GuardMan was wired tight. He twisted fast, lit the wall up with the flash — and it was bright, even not pointing at Junior, who had slitted his eyes tight to protect his night vision. Had to be bad on the guard’s eyes. The guy held the light and his weapon right at chest-level, textbook perfect.
The guy started to sweep the light his way—
Junior had already brought his left hand over to cup his right; now he shoved the revolver out like he was punching somebody in the throat, and yelled, “How’s your sister?!”
The guard was good. He never paused to think about that, but came on around, that big ole floodlight beam of his leading, but Junior started pulling the trigger as soon as he yelled, indexing his hold just above the flashlight and walking his aim up. Three double-taps, pow-pow! to the high chest, pow-pow! to the neck, pow-pow! to where he figured the guy’s head had to be—
— the guard’s pistol roared, adding its yellow-orange blast to the bright light. A.45, like Junior figured.
Between the flashlight and the muzzle blast, Junior’s night vision was pretty well shot, but he wasn’t hit — he wasn’t hit! A moment later the light fell, and then the guy did, too. Junior heard him thump hard on the concrete, and the guard’s shot, wherever it went, hadn’t hit him!
Junior came up from his crouch, holstered the empty gun with his right hand as he drew the full one with his left, fast and smooth like he had practiced a thousand times. He hurried forward, ready to cook again if the guy moved, but when he got there, he could see in the reflected gleam of the still-lit tactical light on the ground that the guy was done. Had a vest on, GuardMan did, and if it was as good as the rest of his gear, it stopped the first two rounds, but the higher ones got him. Junior saw three entry holes, one in the neck just under the chin, one in the right cheekbone, the last one into the hairline on the same side. An inch or two higher and that last one would have missed. One of his six had missed, but so what? In the dark like that, five were enough, especially with three of them hitting paydirt. He’d take it.
Junior’s breath came and went like an express train flying down a steep grade. He forced himself to slow it some, but his heart kept pounding hard. It was true what he had heard. There was nothing in the world that felt as good as being shot at and not hit, nothing like it!
Especially when you took out the guy shooting at you.
He saluted the dead man. “Bon soir, ma frien. See you in Hell.”
Junior turned and hurried to his car.
Washing
ton, D.C.
Mitchell Ames decided that, as long as he was in town, he might as well make a different set of rounds. He always had business he could do here in the nation’s capital. You didn’t get big things done without making connections here. He had a few lawyers, a couple of doctors, and several senators and congressmen he wanted to touch base with, and he spent the rest of the day and evening doing just that.
He had sent his assistant back to New York, so he was at loose ends for dinner. On a whim, he called Cory Skye’s number. She answered on the second ring.
“Mitchell. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said. “Actually, I’m in D.C. on business.”
“Really? Are you free for dinner?”
“As it happens, yes.”
“Let me take you to Mel’s. It’s a new Northwest Cuisine place, fresh crab, planked salmon, that kind of thing. I think you’d really like it.”
“Great. What time?”
“Ten okay? It doesn’t start to clear out before then. You have a car?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ve got some business over drinks. Why don’t I just meet you there?”
“Sounds fine. Ten it is.”
After she discommed, he grinned at the phone and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. She was bringing her own transportation, so she was still keeping her options open. He liked that. No reason to hurry this. He had gotten a preliminary report from his investigators on her, and so far he liked what he’d heard.
Corinna Louise Skye, parents Holland George Skye and Gwendolyn Marie Sherman Skye, who lived full-time in Aspen, Colorado. Her father was a retired corporation president, her mother a college professor, also retired. No siblings for Cory. She’d gone to school at Columbia and graduated first in her class with a major in political science. She had gotten into lobbying after working on Marty Spencer’s winning senatorial campaign two terms back and had been immediately successful at it. She was beautiful, personable, bright, educated, and had, as far as he could tell, gotten to the top on her own — she’d never slept with a current client, nor with anybody she’d been lobbying. A member of Mensa, decent chess player, scratch golfer, and a qualified aerobics instructor. She had done a little sky-diving, some hang-gliding, and she liked to ski.