by Dave Buschi
Lip sneezed. A big sloppy one.
“Gesundheit. You coming down with something?”
“Hope not.” Lip sniffled. “Alright. But Starbucks is easy, I’ve done it before.”
“Walk me through it.”
“Alright, fine. Say I hadn’t done it before. You footprint.”
“Footprint?”
“Yeah, that’s what it’s called. You footprint. Do your enumeration.”
Marks was feeling like a caveman again. “Is this English?”
“You scope it out… find out what you can about a company. Starbucks, for instance. All their stores are company owned. With a little searching I can find what they use for their POS systems. They use Panasonic. System-wide. 6000 Series LX. That’s the model. It has a feature that hooks up to the security system. How do I know? I go to Panasonic’s website. Pull up the specs on the 6000 Series LX model. See that it interfaces with ADT and Panasonic CCTVs.”
Marks frowned. Caveman feeling again.
Lip explained. “CCTV. Closed-circuit television. Every time a Starbucks employee opens the register that camera puts a tag on the recording. It’s all digital. Cycles every 168 hours. It’s pretty slick. Every time the cashier drawer opens it’s captured and sequenced on back of house software. You can pull up video capture for each time that cash drawer was pulled. Say you want to monitor an employee.”
“You’re going on a tangent.”
Lip got annoyed. “No I’m not. You wanted to hear. Those cameras aren’t there for the customers. They’re there to monitor the employees, make sure they don’t steal cash from the till. Starbucks has 26,000 restaurants. How do I know? I pull that from their website. They’re a big corporation. Makes sense to use a standardized system. It’s all set up from corporate. Seattle Washington, home office.
“They buy in bulk. National Accounts. They’re not going to buy ADT, if they’re buying Panasonic POS systems. They’re going to buy Panasonic—get a package deal. Do you remember seeing the cameras in the store?”
Marks nodded. “They were domes.”
“Panasonic WV-CW504 Dome Security Cameras to be exact. Cost five hundred dollars a pop.”
“Is this going somewhere?”
Lip smirked. “Back of house. The server that runs the whole system?”
“Don’t tell me the model. I don’t care.”
“You asked.”
“Caveman it.”
“Fine. That server has specs too. I pull them offline. Then I go and look for the most recent patches. You know what patches are?”
“Humor me.”
“Vulnerabilities. Every company puts something out before it’s ready. Beat the market and all. It’s stupid, but reality. Nothing is air tight. There is always some vulnerability. They find out afterwards and put a patch out there. A way to make that piece of equipment more secure.
“I just found my back door, most likely. Most recent patch was two weeks ago. Maybe it was a year. You’ve got corporate running 26,000 stores. No way they’ve implemented a client-side patch in all 26,000 stores. I just need to exploit that vulnerability and I’m in.”
“That all sounds time consuming.”
“Can be. But that was the sophomoric approach. Me, using my Blackberry to pick up the signal of the cameras? I’m in under two minutes. In and out. Done. Cameras off.”
“So that’s how they did it?”
Lip shook his head. “Doubt it. My technology—with my little add ons—you’re not getting those at Radio Shack.”
Marks was quiet. Lip was done.
“Why can’t they purge information from those databases? Erase records?” Marks said.
Lip sighed. “You’re talking databases that share information, constantly being updated, cross-linked. I won’t even go into the security, firewalls, redundant backups, offline information that you’re talking about compromising. What you’re saying, can’t be done. Not all of it. No way. Maybe one or two sites, but all of them? No way. Simultaneous breach on twelve different databases? Didn’t happen.”
“So I fucked up?” Marks said.
Lip shrugged. “Shit happens.”
19
“WHAT now?” Marks said.
“We move to Mexico,” Lip said. “Get plastic surgery, I get a nose, you get butt and calf implants. We hang out at the beach. Could be worse.”
Marks snorted. “I’m serious. He’s seen us. Knows what we look like.”
Lip got serious. He pushed his frames on his nose. “I know. Not good. What do you want to do?”
Marks’s brow knit. “Just doesn’t make sense, him being there… car running… backed in? Who does that, backs in, when stopping to think? In an alley, near a dumpster? And hangs around when there’s weapon fire? We’re talking UMPs. Man had to hear that, I don’t care how deaf he is.”
Lip frowned. “I agree.”
He started tapping some keys.
“What are you doing?” Marks said.
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
Lip ignored him. He pulled up another website that wasn’t in English, which had Cyrillic script.
“That Russian?”
“Yep,” Lip said. “Haven’t been to this one for a while. Give me a second.”
Lip did his stuff, typing away. Marks got up from his chair to stretch. They’d been going at it for forty-five minutes.
“Get me some cookies and milk,” Lip said. “Big glass, two ice cubes.”
Marks didn’t argue. He’d fucked up. He was in the doghouse. He went and checked on Jiri. Jiri the civilian. Man was still there. He hadn’t moved. Marks shut the door and went to get the cookies.
20
MARKS brought Lip his cookie/milk fix. None for himself. He wasn’t hungry.
Lip was scrolling down the screen. “Now this is interesting.”
He kept scrolling, clicked to some other screens. He ate a cookie. “Merry ‘sting,” he said with a full mouth.
Marks got annoyed. “You gonna fill me in?”
Lip slurped some milk, swallowed. “We got a hard case here. The guy worked for Disney World, was voted most popular in high school and married a ballerina from New Jersey.”
Marks glared at him. Not fuckin’ funny.
“You were right,” Lip said. “Databases were altered.”
21
LIP was smiling. “Sorry, no butt implants, those will have to wait.”
Marks leaned forward. It was all gobbledygook on the screen. “What does it say?”
“It’s good stuff. You recognize that?” Lip pointed to a header at the top that had a coat of arms emblem next to it.
“The FSB,” Marks said.
Federal Security of the Russian Federation. Today’s KGB. Same as Cheka, NKVD… They’d had several names over the decades. All were essentially the same outfit, did the same stuff. The headquarters of the FSB was in Moscow, Lubyanka Square. Same exact location as the former headquarters of the KGB.
“I ran the prints,” Lip said. “They have him in their system too, but he’s not named Jiri Dvorak. Name is Vlad Alekseev. Guess what? He’s not a good guy.”
Lip gave him the greatest hits. Marks’s frown turned upside down. Man had a jacket twenty pages long. Wasn’t pretty. This changed things. Big time. Goodbye Miami. Hello Vlad. Nice to meet you.
22
LIP finished with the abbreviated summary. “I knew you’d like that.”
Vlad was in the Brotherhood, Bratva, the Russian mob. He was part of an elite. Group called Gol’yanovskaya, which was a quasi-military outfit. Guys specialized in murder-for-hire, kidnappings, extortions…
Not good guys. Not at all. These guys made other mob guys look soft in comparison; made crocodiles look like bunny rabbits. The Gol’yanovskaya’s signature way of doing business was to cut you up and put you in bags. If you were female—heaven help you—there was a long list of atrocities you underwent before the bag stage. The bag stage was your escape… your sa
lvation. When the horrors stopped.
Marks’s face drew serious. His smile had been temporary. He knew what this meant. “I thought those guys operated in Paris and Prague. Since when did they set up shop in our sandbox?”
“Dunno.” Lip clicked on some more screens. “Man’s a lot older than his ID says. He’s former KGB.”
“Still active?”
“Hard to tell. There are some recent records here.”
The Bratva and the FSB. The line between them was no line at all. Both operated on each other’s turf. The Russian mob might as well have been a division of the FSB. It was chock-full of former KGB operatives. In the 90s, with the fall of the Soviet Union, lots of government-fed folks were out of a job. The skill sets of KGB operatives weren’t exactly in high demand. They migrated full force—almost to a man—and filled the ranks of the Brotherhood.
“What did Johnny Two-cakes get himself mixed up in?” Marks said.
Lip leaned back, almost like he was trying to distance himself from what was on the screen. “This guy…”
“What?”
“Likes kids.”
“Details?”
Lip told him. Two words: ‘white slavery’. Seems Vlad particularly enjoyed his role in those little operations. He liked to sample the goods too. Horrible things.
Lip kept talking. Acid began to well in Marks’s throat.
Children kidnapped, then relegated to a life of degradation. And this man had a big part in it. Did despicable things.
Marks’s face set. “I don’t need to hear anymore.”
Lip closed out the screen, took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. Marks walked out of the office. They had several options in front of them. None of them looked good for Vlad.
IT had been over two hours since the shooting. Plenty of time for it to hit the wire. Marks turned on the TV that was on the kitchen counter. He flipped around. It took a moment to find a news station. Five o’clock news hour had already started.
A reporter was standing on a familiar street. Crime tape was behind her, cordoning off an area. There were policemen, technicians, and a whole crew of people in the background. The round Starbucks’ sign was just visible, down half a block. The camera crew had gotten a good angle. The reporter was a looker. Blonde hair, piercing eyes, trim get-up, top two buttons of her blouse undone. Woman had some curves.
FOX affiliated station, of course. They only hired 10s. Normally watching the news was better than watching SEC Football as the cameramen panned into the stands. This was one time, though, Marks would have preferred not to watch. But he needed to.
The reporter’s face was serious, only her tone indicated she was enjoying this. Big news. Major story.
Marks listened. He was coming in after plenty had already been said. Good thing about news, though, they repeated the same thing every five minutes.
“How many?” Lip said.
“Three.”
“Including the two you shot?”
Marks frowned. “No, three civilians. Not releasing any names, yet.”
“Injured?”
“One being treated at Washington Adventist.”
3:1 Three dead, one wounded. That ratio normally would be the other way around. More injured than dead. But those guys had had UMPs. Not subtle weapons; made for maximum damage. They’d had them set for automatic. Marks could still hear the continuous fire in his head. Tompfff…tompfff…tompfff… Not two-round bursts or semi-automatic. They’d gone in heavy. Casualties were to be expected. Depress the trigger and watch the body count tick up. Those men obviously hadn’t cared. Otherwise they’d have used different weapons. Gone for precision instead of overwhelming force.
With UMPs, three dead was low. If people hadn’t hit the deck when they did, that number would be a lot higher. Marks had saved lives by telling people to get down. That little fact didn’t make him feel better. When he closed his eyes he could see the dead girl behind the counter. She had a family somewhere. Maybe a husband, maybe children.
Snuffed lives. Ripple effects that touched more than just the one going to the morgue. Three civilians dead. Three too many.
Marks and Lip both watched the TV. A witness was being interviewed, a young man. Marks remembered seeing him. Kid was college age; had had a laptop and had been sitting near the windows.
Looked like he’d been treated for cuts. Bandages were on both his arms. Kid was holding it together well. Marks knew that veneer would crumble once the kid got home. Kid was in for some interesting times ahead. Enjoying a cup of Joe would never quite be the same.
The kid described what he’d seen.
Whomever was in charge of this crime scene was doing a shit lousy job. These witnesses should be off limits. No way this should be allowed to air. Marks kept waiting for the mike to be pulled, men in suits to take control.
Didn’t happen. Kid said enough. The shooters had taken out their trash. Kid described the blood, men being dragged.
Incomplete picture, but Marks filled in the gaps. Would have been messy and not easy. The shooters had abided by the cardinal rule every military man lived and breathed. Those guys may have been Bratva, but they had military blood somewhere in their veins. Cardinal rule. Never leave a man down.
Impressive. The two shooters that remained and the driver of the Lexus had somehow managed to cart their two dead compatriots, and the two Marks had knocked out. Piled them into the Lexus, no doubt. Would have been tough to do. Would have had to work fast. Lip and he had heard the sirens. Police hadn’t been far off.
Shooters were still at large. Men would have left in a bloody Lexus. Not difficult to spot, but they’d managed it. Probably had a route all planned out. Those guys struck him as that type.
The reporter was filling air time, milking the moment. She was calling it gang related violence. Gang related? Where had she gotten that? Making up stuff now. Typical media. Spout first, correct themselves later.
No accountability.
Lip washed out his glass and filled it up with some water. All this stuff could make a person dry mouthed.
“We need to take care of Marion,” Marks said.
Lip nodded. “Snooks?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Then what?”
“You know.”
Lip shook his head. “Let’s just bring the guy in. Let the Bureau deal with this.”
Marks snorted. “Do you actually think I’m letting that guy go?”
Lip frowned. “No.”
“You with me?”
Lip sighed. Marks had his answer.
“Good. Call Snooks.”
23
FIFTY-TWO miles away, in an entirely different area just outside the Beltway, another TV was being watched. It, along with a laptop, provided the only illumination in the room.
The room was large. Blackout curtains were on the windows. On the walls were thick frames with matted black-and-white photographs. The light was just enough to see that the photographs were closeups. Each face—lined or smooth—with certain expressions, unique and strangely disturbing.
The light from the TV arced elsewhere, silhouetting hunched shapes of furniture, a low-slung sofa against a wall, a bookcase with various objects displayed. There was a seating arrangement, four comfortable chairs around a circular table. The TV was not large; it was a flat screen that was mounted on the wall near a massive desk. The desk was made of solid oak. On it were figurines. Their shadows, like golliwogs, tracked along the other wall. Limned in the TV’s glow was a man behind the desk.
That man was Pavel Rudnitsky and he was not pleased, this is not what he liked. He did not like when things got messy. Messy in private? That was to be expected. But this… watching on the news? This was not good at all. This brought unwanted attention. Client 487 expected better of them. They expected what they requested—nothing less, nothing more—and this was certainly not it.
Rudnitsky watched. He’d seen enough. When the talking heads came on and sai
d nothing new but just repeated the same as the woman, he clicked the TV off. The darkness encroached, now held at bay only by the laptop’s faint glow. The media had nothing. He knew the rest. There would be no video capture, no cameras, nothing to bring this back to them. He’d been debriefed earlier and knew where things stood. Alik and Helge were both dead. Vlad was missing, and his favorite go-to man was out of action for months.
A complete screw-up. Huge loss. Alik and Helge were two rising stars. Vlad not so much, but he had his uses, particularly when it came to needing his other talents. And those talents were needed. Vlad had even earned himself a nickname. The Jackhammer. It had been given by their camera man. Good nickname. Was true too. Man could pump it like a jackhammer.
Rudnitsky smiled. The glow from his laptop washed over his angular face. It wasn’t a face that was seen often, but it was handsome, very handsome. At least it had been once. Now it was something else. If he turned his head forty-five degrees, his angular features morphed and became rounded; where his right ear should have been was only a mass of scar tissue. In the bluish light that area looked marbled, almost like red meat.
Red meat. Rudnitzky would have thought the description fitting. Except not for the face. He didn’t like comments about the face.
With a tap on his laptop’s mousepad, Rudnitsky clicked away the blue screen and went back to what he’d been watching before. It was the latest video. He tapped his mousepad for it to play.
It started again from the beginning. On the screen was a young girl, not quite sixteen. She was pretty and was sitting on a couch, clothed in jeans and a flimsy cotton shirt with no sleeves. Her arms were bunched. Her legs pressed tightly together. Her eyes were just like a doe’s. Frightened. Lip quivering.
Rudnitsky watched.
“Daddy, please do what they say,” said the girl.
It was a sweet voice. A Daddy’s girl.
His camera man zoomed in for a closeup. The bottom lip quivering. The lens panned out again and the scene faded out. The next scene began. No clothes now. Same girl, same couch.