Cybernation nf-6

by Tom Clancy

  The Viper burbled and rumbled, as if anxious to get back up to speed, but Jay nosed it into the olive place’s parking lot, a big graveled area that had to run three acres, and parked.

  The desert heat beat down on him in the little convertible, and he felt it much more without the wind, hot as that was.

  He tossed his long blonde hair back over his shoulder, adjusted his boobs with the backs of his hands, and walked toward the building, the red miniskirt barely covering a very shapely female ass.

  Inside, he slipped his shades off and into his purse. There were racks of olives in various jars, ranging from drinking-glass-sized ones to convoluted monsters five feet tall. Mostly they were big, fat green things, pits still in them, but here and there were some stuffed with pimento, and even some black ones that had been pitted.

  There were also bottles and tins of olive oil, ranging from cold-pressed extra virgin or somesuch on down. How could oil be better than virgin?

  An old lady with a big straw hat and a matching handbag cruised the aisle, her shopping cart half full of jars and cans. She smiled at Jay’s young woman persona, and Jay saw the white rose pinned to her yellow sundress that told him this was who he had come to meet.

  “Hot day out,” Jay said.

  “Yes, isn’t it? Nice and cool in here, though.”

  “I wonder, have you seen any Tuscan bread?” This was the code phrase, in actuality, a key to a firewall’s back door.

  “Funny you should mention that, dearie,” the old lady said. “I had picked up two loaves of that very thing, but I realize now I should put one back, one is more than enough for just me, since the mister passed on. Here, why don’t you take it? Save an old lady a trip?”

  “Why, thank you, ma’am. That’s very nice of you.”

  “No trouble at all, dearie.”

  The old lady pushed her cart away. Something was stuck to one of the rear wheels, it bumped slightly every time it hit the floor. How annoying. Jay always got that cart when he went grocery shopping.

  Jay went to pay for the loaf of bread.

  Outside, he opened the packed, removed the bread, and broke it in half. Inside the bread was a mini DVD, the size of a half-dollar coin. Rainbow colors sparkled from its surface in the hot sun. Jay smiled. Easy as falling off a chair.

  He hiked his blonde’s short skirt up to climb back into the low-slung Viper, and accidentally flashed a man in a Cadillac who pulled into the lot as he hopped into the car. Oops.

  But he had half of what he had come for. Another stop a bit farther south, and with any luck, he would have it all. Half the trick to finding information on the web and net was knowing how to look. It was all out there, but if you couldn’t narrow your search properly, you’d never find it. After years of practice, Jay knew how to look: It had become almost instinctive, more an art than a science. Yeah, you could turn searchbots loose hither and yon and gather up tons of data, but sometimes you just knew where to go, without knowing how or why you knew. That was zen, Saji said. Knowing without knowing.

  Whatever. As long as he could do it. And he could. A few more minutes and he would be ready to start kicking ass and taking names, and he would start with his old buddy Jackson Keller. Because if Keller was in some way responsible for the attacks on the net and web, and more important, if he was responsible for the attacks on Jay personally, then he was gonna be extremely sorry. You don’t step on Superman’s cape, and you don’t mess with Smokin’ Jay Gridley. No siree.

  29

  Washington, D.C.

  The baby was asleep, as was Guru, and Michaels was propped up in bed, watching the news when the com chimed. He reached for it, thinking it was Toni.

  “Hey, boss.” The visual blossomed on the receiver, a tiny hologram of a face that definitely wasn’t Toni’s.

  “Jay. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got good news, better news, and not so good news.”

  “Oh. Give me the good news first.”

  “I found Jackson Keller.”

  “I didn’t know he was lost. Who is Jackson Keller?”

  “Long story. Short version: I believe he is the guy running the web/net attacks.”

  “Good. Where can we collect him?”

  “Well, see, that’s the not-so-good stuff. I’m not exactly sure where he is. I know where he was, up until a few days ago, I think, but I’m pretty sure I know who he’s working for.”

  “And that would be…?”

  “The better news — CyberNation.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Yep. Want me to dazzle you with my brilliance?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Jay ignored that and said, “I scanned public tax records in the U.S. and found he had paid federal taxes last year on foreign income grosses of $250,000. I checked incorporation records, and found a Delaware company called Molotov Software Programs, Inc., the president being one Jackson Keller. Apparently the vice president is his mother, the secretary-treasurer his uncle. That’s got tax-dodge or scam written all over it.

  “From what I was able to determine, all of MSP’s income for the last three years came from another corporation, Systems Upgrade, Inc., which turns out to be a shell owned by Future Tense Computer Engineering, which is, when you run it down, another shell, owned lock, stock, and barrel by — ta dah! — CyberNation.

  “Corporate credit cards — Visa, MC, AmEx — have been issued for MSP, Inc., from the International Bank of Zurich, and Three-Cees and TRW both say that the credit is good, which means he pays his bills on time. Without a warrant, I can’t get into real specific details on those transactions, but I’ve checked commercial usage location lists and gotten hits in southeast Florida for the last three months. Before that, he spent some time in Japan, and before that, in Germany. Apparently CyberNation owns some rolling stock and some other ships. The train carries tourists back and forth between Berlin and France, and there is some kind of repair work being done on the boat, or barge, or whatever, in Yokohama.”

  “He does some traveling,” Michaels said.

  “Yeah. But the south Florida thing is the deal — he goes to the same places the other programmers on the gambling boat go. Last hit was less than ten days ago, so my guess is he’s on the boat. I dunno what his connection to the CyberNation stuff in Germany and Japan is, but I’m gonna find out.”

  “You think this is the leader of the assault team?”

  “I’d bet money on it, boss. He’s a programmer out of CIT, second in his class.”

  “Isn’t that where you went to school?”

  “Yeah.”

  Michaels heard something in Jay’s voice. “What?”

  “I know the guy. I used to know him, anyway.”

  “Second in his class, you said? He must be pretty sharp.”

  “Not as sharp as the guy who was first in the class.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m gonna dig some more. When I think I got enough for a warrant, I’ll shoot it past Hang ’Em High Harvey, and then we can pin this moth to the collecting board.”

  “Good work, Jay.”

  “Thanks, boss. Discom.”

  After he broke the connection, the com chimed again.

  This time, it was Toni. She looked tired, but she was smiling.

  “Hey, babe,” he said.

  “Hi. I’m all settled in. I’m at the airport Hilton in Fort Lauderdale. I’ll catch a shuttle copter to the ship in the morning.”

  “You’re calling from the hotel?” It had been a while since she’d been in the field, but surely she hadn’t forgotten something so basic?

  “Not on the house phone, I’m using the coded cell.”

  He nodded. Net Force had field phones that looked ordinary, but sent and received shifting-code encrypted messages; even if somebody managed to trap the signal, they wouldn’t be able to translate it into anything they could understand, unless they had a matching transceiver. Michaels’s house com was so equipped, just as all the virgil
s were. SOP.

  “How’s the boy?”

  “He’s fine. Conked out about eight. Guru has him in bed with her. She’s gonna spoil him.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Cold and pitiful in this big old bed all alone.”

  “Poor baby. I’ll be all alone in this big old hotel bed, too.”

  “You better be.” That got him a smile from her.

  “I just got a call from Jay.” He explained what Jay had just told him.

  “Does he have a picture of this guy? Maybe I’ll spot him on the ship.”

  “I’ll have him upload one to your flatscreen if he has one,” he said. “I’ll have him bury it in a picture of your aunt Molly’s seventieth birthday or something.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was a short pause, then she said, “Thank you for sending me to do this. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. Just don’t do anything other than what is in your mission plan.”

  “By the numbers, Commander Honey, don’t worry.”

  But of course, he did. Despite what he had told her about how low risk it was, the husband and lover in him didn’t like sending her anywhere. He worried about the plane’s safety, the helicopter ride, and street traffic, not to mention being on a vessel that he now knew was enemy territory. He knew Toni would resent it mightily if he tried to keep her home and completely out of harm’s way, but that’s what he felt like doing.

  They talked a few more minutes, said their good-nights, and discommed. It had been a long day and he was tired, but sleep was a long time in coming. This was the first time he and Toni had slept apart since they’d gotten married, and he didn’t like it. Not even a little bit.

  Woodville, Mississippi

  This was not a town where you would expect to find a major Internet locus, Santos thought. Probably why it was here. Not far from the Louisiana border, in the southwest corner of Mississippi, Woodville was a sleepy place that time seemed to have touched only lightly in passing, at least in its last few decades.

  Santos drove the old pickup truck along the Lower Woodville Road carefully. The day was gray, overcast, and cold. This was just a scouting trip to be certain of the information he had been provided. He was a black man in a small Southern town, and while racial profiling was not supposed to be allowed by police departments in this country anymore, he knew they still did it in such places. On the surface, the old tensions had been smoothed over. But a few inches down? Everybody here remembered who had been property and who had been slave masters, just as they did back home. People of color had carried the water and picked the crops. Nobody forgot that. A shiny new rental car would have made him suspect; a beat-up ten-year-old truck with local plates made him less likely to be noted. He wore a baseball cap and an old pea jacket over a workshirt and overalls, windows rolled up against the cold — just another lower-class Negro not worth paying any mind to, Thank you, Officer.

  He would only get two passes by the location, one going out, another one half an hour later coming back. Any more than that might raise suspicion, and he did not want that.

  The road ran next to a sluggish little river that he assumed was Ford’s Creek — he’d been on Ford’s Creek Road before, the place he was looking for was farther north, where Lower Woodville Road branched and another section of creek road picked up again, so that would make sense. He would make a pass, drive for fifteen minutes, then turn around and go back. From there, he’d keep right on going, local highway 24 east to Highway 61, then south on that all the way to New Orleans and a flight back to Florida. By mid-morning, he would be back on the ship.

  But that was later. Now, he had to pay attention to what he had come for.

  A few minutes later, he saw the driveway leading off to the west. There weren’t any signs, but a hundred feet off the road was an eight-foot-high chain-link gate and a wooden kiosk behind it. He couldn’t see the guard in the little building, but surely there must be one.

  That would be the place. What else could they have worth guarding out here?

  To be certain, he would have one of CyberNation’s lease-time spysats do a pass overhead and confirm it. Or maybe they could just pull one of the CIA’s public domain views — they had covered most of the world, and had pictures of anything not considered secret that could be had just by downloading them from the Internet. Whatever. That was not his job. He only needed to get the lay of the place, a feel for the location, for when he came back.

  Some of the targets would be blown up electronically. Some would be taken out with more conventional explosives. And some would be captured and utilized for CyberNation’s own ends, at least for a short while. This location needed to be functional for a critical few hours after the shit hit the fan, and he was going to see that it happened that way. After that, who cared?

  At first, he hadn’t really understood how this was supposed to be good for business. Missy had explained it simply. When a citizen’s water or power shuts off, he doesn’t care why. The reason why is not important, the only question that matters to him is, When will it be back on?

  If somebody’s Internet service dies and they need or want it badly enough and there is somebody standing right there with a shiny wire that will reconnect things just like that, a lot of customers will switch, no questions asked, except maybe how much, and how soon? And the answers will be, less than you were paying before, and immediately. These were the answers they wanted to hear.

  With the surge of added customers clamoring to join up, CyberNation’s political base would instantly grow stronger. Authorities would of course worry and wonder who was responsible, and they would certainly suspect CyberNation, who would benefit from such chaos. But they would have no proof, and the man in his little house in Nowhere, Indiana? That wasn’t his problem — all he wanted to do was collect his e-mail or download his pornographic pictures.

  It was simple human nature. In the right place, at the right time, a bottle of water would be worth a fortune. Timing was critical.

  Santos could see it when she explained it that way. People here must be very stupid, but then again, people everywhere were mostly stupid. That was how it was.

  That was not his problem, either.

  Berlin, Germany

  When the pain got to be too much — and it was actually worse the second day, more hurtful than it had been on the first! — Keller got off the train when it stopped and went to a doc-in-the-box, in Zehlendorf, not far from the Universitat, to get some medicine for it.

  The doc-in-the-box was part of a chain that stretched across Europe, centered in the U.K. They didn’t ask questions, and if you didn’t want to show them an insurance card, they didn’t care as long as your cash or credit was good.

  The doctor, a gray-haired and gray-bearded old man name Konig, who looked to be in his late sixties and who resembled an old picture of Sigmund Freud, examined him, prodded and poked a little, and said, in fairly good English, “So, you fell down a flight of stairs, is that right?”

  “Yah.”

  The old man smiled.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been a doctor forty-six years, my friend. In a land where narrow and steep old stairs are common. If you fell down a riser, it was after somebody beat you.”

  Keller, still bare-chested, blinked at the man, more surprised than annoyed at being called a liar. “You can tell that by looking? How?”

  “Look here.” He made a fist and touched it lightly to a brownish-yellow splotch on Keller’s chest. “See? Stairs are flat and smooth. Even if you hit the edge of a step, it leaves a line — not a shape that matches perfectly a human fist like this does. Somebody punched and kicked you. Over a woman, was it?”

  Keller started to deny it, then shrugged. Who cared if this old man knew? He would never see him again. “Yes.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not your wife. Her husband?”

  “Boyfriend. A big, stupid brute.”

  �
��Ach. That is the problem with the beautiful ones, mein Freund. I see nothing broken, so this brute must have held back a little. Here is a prescription — you can fill it at the Apotheke out front when you leave, if you wish. It is a generic version of Vicodin 5/500—acetaminophen and hydrocodone bitartrate. Take one or two every four hours if you need them for pain. Do not drink alcohol or take sleeping pills with these. Be careful if you drive, it can make you drowsy or slow your reactions. You should be feeling much better in a few days.”

  “Thank you.”

  The doctor waved him off. “The cost of love is dear sometimes, yah?”

  Keller stared at him. Love? Lust, maybe. Never love. Not with a woman like Jasmine Chance…

  He gave the prescription to a woman in the built-in drugstore on the way out, but when he went to pay for it and the office visit, he didn’t have enough cash in deutsche marks. He shrugged and handed her his Visa card. While she was scanning the card, he unscrewed the cap and dry-swallowed two of the pills.

  By the time the cab got back to the train, he was feeling pretty good. Hardly hurt at all, unless he really thought about it, and why should he? The train would be turning around to head back toward the French border in a few hours. Best he get back to work, now that he could sit without it hurting so bad.

  30

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  Toni leaned back in the seat and watched the dust boil up under them as the big transport helicopter lifted from the pad. You’d think there wouldn’t be any dust, what with the choppers taking off and landing all day, not to mention the frequent rain here, but there it was.

  The craft, a Sikorsky S-92, held eighteen passengers, and was full. Most of them actually were, she assumed, what she was supposed to be: tourists going to the gambling ship, which, as the flight attendant had announced, was ninety miles offshore where it was a pleasant seventy-eight degrees and sunny right now. A far cry this time of year from Ice Butt, Minnesota, where you could spit and have it freeze before it hit the ground. As long as there were winters like that, tropical resorts would have customers.