by Dave Buschi
“Wait a second, before you start listing the obvious benefits, go back. You mean we’re not on the gravy train?” Lip said.
Johnny Two-cakes sighed. “No, we’re not. But if it’s money—”
Marks interjected, “Ignore Lip. Who’s the man in the white mask?”
“He’s the individual orchestrating all of this,” Johnny Two-cakes said.
He explained how the man in the white mask ran the division within China Telecom that had the Black Widow. He wore the mask due to some extensive burns he once received on his face. He was very connected within The Party, and was one of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
“At this point,” Johnny Two-cakes said. “With what I’ve uncovered, I’m not invisible to him. He knows I’m on his trail and has been making moves to take me out. His going after Marion is further proof of that. As I see it, to use a certain vernacular, this has become like a game of chicken. Either he takes me out, or I take him.”
“I think you got that wrong,” Marks said.
Johnny Two-cakes frowned. “How so?”
“You forgot to say ‘we’. We take him out,” Marks said.
“Hell yes,” Lip said. “You’re not going cowboy without us.” He broke into a grin. “So you finally found it?”
Johnny Two-cakes looked confused. “Found what?”
Lip looked at Marks. “Never thought I’d say this, but Mr. Happy found the smoky room where they’re pulling all the strings.” With that, Lip laughed diabolically. Waa ha ha ha!
129
THE hit started at 0230.
Fifteen million kids with laptops can do some damage. Lights went out all over Shanghai. Every network, every business that was still open at this hour, every street light, everything that was hooked up to the grid went down.
It was on.
And then it was off.
Like flipping a light switch.
“I’m impressed,” Marks said.
Mei nodded. She had her game face on. Man she looked sexy. Marks and her were away from the group.
Mei looked up at him. “I did miss you.”
“Likewise. You look great. Been thinking that all day.”
She reached up and put her arms around his neck and planted a big sloppy.
“Afterwards can we…?” Mei said.
“I think that’d be a yes.”
“Good. I’d like that. Now let’s get this done.”
130
WOMAN could put pep in a guy’s step that’s for sure.
Marks locked that in the vault. Time to get this done. This wasn’t your typical in and out deal. For starters China Telecom’s perimeter, with its fifteen-foot-tall walls that went around the entire complex, multiple guard houses, and two rolling security gates at the only entry point, made it a challenge. First glance, place seemed more secure than The Farm. The Farm: CIA’s little training camp they had down at Camp Peary. Infiltrating that joint would have been a cake walk compared to this.
Best way, of course, was coming from the top. Particularly when in doubt, go in high. But of course that scenario got scratched during their Pizza Hut discussions by Johnny Two-cakes and Mei. Lip and Marks had to adjust to accommodate the haters. Would of worked, though. Maybe.
Granted, those cats had been planning this for a little longer than they had, so Marks and Lip deferred to Mei’s “one-hundred percent perfect plan”. It was an inside joke. “Not funny,” Lip said. Last time his partner heard that, he’d ended up stuck in a drainage pipe. It was actually pretty funny, till the sluice gates started to open and Marks had to yank him out. It was like something out of Winnie the Pooh, when Pooh got stuck in Rabbit’s House. For three years running, Mei had been sending Lip jars of honey every time the man’s birthday rolled around.
“No zip line from above,” Mei said. “Small ducts up there, we don’t want Pooh getting stuck.”
“Again, not funny,” Lip said.
Since going in high got nixed, they did the exact opposite, they tunneled in. No digging involved. They used one of the underground trunk lines that led right into the facility. Thing was used for utility purposes, grossly over-designed, three times as big as it needed to be. The trunk line looked like a midsized sewer pipe, but fortunately for them was infinitely cleaner. Headroom, however, was beyond lousy. Lip and he had to rig themselves to rolling sleds with wheels that tracked the sides. Good old Chinese ingenuity being put to work. Mei’s team had set them up with some tricked-out sweet rides. Things were mechanized. Like lying on a skateboard and going down an incline. Nothing to it.
Lip wasn’t too happy about it, though. Couldn’t really blame the guy. It was going to be a mile journey of claustrophobic panic for him. No doubt with flashbacks of getting stuck. To top it off was the fact they’d be relying on the power staying down.
Yeah, that little part was reassuring. One small detail: the trunk line they were using was crammed full of 480 volt wiring. Think overhead power lines, but amp that up ten times. They were going down a concrete tunnel that normally had enough juice flowing through it to light up half of New York.
Fun stuff. Never a dull moment with these guys.
“Couldn’t find your own guinea pigs to do this?” Marks said to Mei.
“No one is dumb enough,” Mei said.
“Reassuring,” Marks said.
They accessed the trunk line near the power station that supplied China Telecom. The power station had one customer, and one customer only: China Telecom. When the power went down, it was time for Lip and Marks to do their stuff.
Lip made Marks proud. Man manned up. Not a peep of complaint from him. They went feet first on their backs, arms tucked to their sides, with halogen headgear to illuminate their way. Not much to see except for bundles of wires and braided cables speeding over their heads.
Had the juice been flowing, one errant touch would have fried them to the size of a burnt Oscar Mayer wiener. That thought wasn’t exactly comforting. Mei’s team may have taken power down temporarily, but there was no guarantee it was staying down.
Lip, no doubt, was thinking the same thing. They breathed easier when the sleds started to slow and came to a stop. Mei’s team was right on the money with their calculations. They were at the junction tee, just as Mei had promised. The concrete pipe had emptied into a square vault-like tube.
Headroom was better in this area. They could almost stand up. There was an access hatch on one side of the tube. Lip took care of it with some clips. Hatch was rigged with sensors; a contact alarm system of sorts. Nothing that Lip couldn’t handle, even on a bad day.
Once the green LED gave the thumbs up, Lip used a screwdriver to carefully remove the hatch and set it aside. There was an access corridor on the other side. Space was illuminated and tracked left and right. They said goodbye to their sleds. This was a one-way trip in. Lip did a few adjustments to their sleds, setting them on autopilot, and sent them back on their merry way. Lip and Marks watched the sleds recede into the darkness.
No time to dally. They crawled through the access hatch, and Lip positioned it back in place, securing it as it was before. They could stand now. Corridor was wide enough for them to walk side by side. Fifty feet ahead it opened up even more. They passed equipment, some lockers and what looked like main control panels. Pipes were running along the ceiling.
TIME for trick or treating.
They adjusted their masks, making sure they hadn’t gotten off-kilter during the ride.
“How do I look?” Lip said, making sure his glasses were on straight.
“It’s an improvement.”
“You ready?” Lip said.
“Yep.”
They fist bumped and moved down the corridor.
131
JOHNNY Two-cakes typed rapidly on his keyboard. He could see the lights of China Telecom from his window. Power was down everywhere, but China Telecom was better insulated than most industrial complexes. The telecommunications center was not affected by th
e blackout. While the main power to the complex was shut off, it had several arrays of on-site backup systems, redundancies upon redundancies, and all systems inside the complex were still working perfectly.
It was time to change that situation.
Johnny Two-cakes made some adjustments on his screen. His portable signal booster gave him wireless access to one of the back office administration systems inside China Telecom. It had taken some doing to hack in, but now that he was virtually inside he was in a position to do what he needed to do. On his screen was the interface for one of the peripheral systems that regulated temperature and humidity in one of the zones inside the facility. It was the first link in the chain; the beginning of what would be a chained exploit. You never go through the front door, you always find some forgotten back door and surreptitiously work your way in.
Johnny Two-cakes cracked a rare smile and looked at his watch. He was proud to be working with Marks and Lip again; proud to have such friends. He did the final steps. He was almost there…
Okay. Here goes. He watched the seconds tick down.
Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine. He tapped a key. And with that, he shut off power to the FM-200 fire suppression system inside China Telecom. It was the first link in the chain. Now for the second link, which was in Marks’s and Lip’s court.
Do what you do best, gentlemen.
132
“COVER your ears,” Lip said. He clipped the wire.
“That it?” Marks said.
“Bang,” Lip said.
Partner was a gas. Marks watched as Lip put away his snips and pen-looking device that detected live wires. He took out some electrical tape, quickly fashioned a splice and joined the wires back. He was careful to prevent the copper wires from reconnecting. They weren’t ‘live’ now, obviously, but when Johnny Two-cakes switched the juice back on for this piece of equipment they would be.
First glance, any scrutiny of this cabinet would give the impression all was as it should be. It could take them days before they figured out what had been done. And by then Marks and Lip would be long gone.
Lip closed the red control panel. It was for the FM-200 fire suppression system. Nearby were several large nitrogen tanks. Those tanks helped pressurize the system. Distributed throughout the facility were other tanks, which contained a different agent. That agent, which was in a liquid form, became a gaseous form when released that suffocated any fire within about 10 seconds.
“Next stop,” Lip said, moving to another panel. He opened a gray panel this time and took out a ‘scrambler special’ from his little bag. While this particular one wasn’t Made in the USA, it was identical to ones they’d used before. Johnny Two-cakes had it custom-made by one of Mei’s engineers for their unique purposes. The device was a gray box, about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Once in place it would enable Johnny Two-cakes to override certain commands to environmental systems within the complex. That included the cooling systems and monitoring devices, like thermostats and humidity indicators that measured the thermal environment.
Lip began to hook it up to the innards of the cabinet. Again, scrutiny of the cabinet would reveal nothing out of sorts. Unless, of course, the person opening the cabinet had a spec sheet in front of them and noticed the addition of the box. But that was the beauty of these things; too often even spec sheets were full of discrepancies. A person auditing might not think twice seeing the additional component, and just assume it was meant to be there.
Lip checked another device, and then satisfied the scrambler was working, closed the cabinet. He took out a mini-screwdriver and began to unscrew a cover that was beneath the cabinet.
“Hold this,” Lip said, handing Marks the metal cover.
This was the third panel Lip had messed with. Johnny Two-cakes, working on the outside, had managed to infiltrate past one of the firewalls, but it was this stuff now that was going to exploit the situation.
Marks looked around the joint. This utility area, adjacent to the main complex, was full of mechanical and electrical equipment. There was a noise coming from the generators that sounded like a train rumbling. Mixed with that noise was a humming sound as if somewhere there was a hive of giant bees. Insulated pipes and ductwork tracked everywhere. The ceiling was a good thirty feet above them, but in some cases it barely accommodated the massive boxcar-sized pieces of equipment.
Power may have been taken down all over the city by Mei’s team. But in a joint like this there was independent uninterruptible power, gas operated generators, and banks and banks of huge megawatt batteries. Course Lip knew the names for the things: PDUs, UPSs, and other meaningless acronym diarrhea. Marks had never seen a setup quite like this. The switchgear alone was enough to give him pause. Knowing how many volts were teeming through those things didn’t help. One ill-placed touch on his part and it would fry him to a crispy.
Lip seemed unconcerned. Anything technical and the man just rolled up his sleeves. Wasn’t afraid of a little elbow grease.
“That it?” Marks said, after Lip finished putting the cover back.
“Getting impatient on me, aren’t you?” Lip said, adjusting his glasses.
Marks was still getting used to Lip’s altered appearance. The latex mask Lip was wearing completely changed his physiognomy. It was only a partial mask, but it was damn effective. While the rest of Lip was Lip, the upper part of his face: hair, forehead, brows and nose, looked distinctly Chinese. Even his mom wouldn’t recognize him.
To go with the mask, Lip was wearing a China Telecom uniform. The uniform consisted of matching pants and shirt. The fabric was thick and coarse and colored light tan. There was a red China Telecom logo on the left breast pocket. According to Mei, not all workers wore uniforms, just certain personnel. In Lip’s case, it was a snug fit around his midsection. Marks was wearing the same style uniform and it was equally tight, just in other areas.
“Not easy to find your size,” Mei had teased them.
No kidding. Lip and Marks weren’t exactly your average-sized Chinese worker. The tailor at Wang’s had done a good job altering their uniforms to fit, but there was only so much he could do with the fabric he had to work with. The hem of Marks’s pants had to be added, using extra fabric. It was either that or sport some serious high waters.
Marks had a mask, as well. Lip thought he looked like Yao Ming, the famous NBA baller. Marks had to admit there was a resemblance. At least in the face. Height wise, Marks wasn’t fooling anyone. Yao, as Marks recalled, was 7’-6”.
“Alright, where to next?” Marks said.
Lip wiped away some sweat that had trickled from under his mask and collected on his upper lip. The mask made perspiring problematic. And it didn’t help that the equipment around here exuded some serious heat.
“You tell me. You got the map,” Lip said.
Aside from a weapon strapped under his shirt, Marks wasn’t carrying diddly, except for what he had in his head. There was no sense carrying maps when he could use his recall ability. Mei’s sources had furnished blueprints of most of the complex, along with other good intel. That was now all stored in Marks’s sponge for a brain. So far, he was managing the headaches.
“Guess we’ll follow the Yellow Brick Road then,” Marks said.
Mei had used a yellow highlighter on the blueprints to map their path. Marks was seeing that now, like it was laid on a table in front of him.
This complex was huge and without familiarity a person could get lost and wander for days. Mei had plotted them a course that should take them to the “target”, ideally, of course, without them encountering any insurmountable roadblocks. There were security cameras situated throughout the complex and many of those couldn’t be avoided. But if Johnny Two-cakes was doing his job, the ones along their path would be buttoned up before they got there.
Should. Could. And would. Lots of oulds. Mei’s one-hundred-percent perfect plan was not without its holes. Marks was still amazed they hadn’t seen one techn
ician or guard, yet. Granted, the equipment around them was all monitored in a control room located elsewhere, but still, you’d think they’d have someone roaming this joint.
“They do,” Mei had informed them earlier during their briefing. “But not between 3:00 and 4:00 AM.”
Hence, their timeline. Stick to it and hup hup. No time for sightseeing. At this hour, China Telecom was manned by a smaller crew. Instead of the usual 12,000 employees they had during the day, the night shift was about a tenth that number, and was comprised of guards, technicians, and operations support.
Marks’s and Lip’s uniform matched those of personnel that worked in a certain area of the complex. Mei’s source had furnished the details. For some reason those employees were dudes. Not a female among them. They were part of some elite team, and had top security clearance. For the most part, they were engineers, but part of their required skillset was English proficiency. They had to speak and write English flawlessly. The testing to join the group was comprehensive, and only certain individuals made the cut.
Mei’s sources had limited intel on what their actual duties were. They worked around the clock in a restricted section of the complex. The layout of that section wasn’t fully known, as Mei’s blueprints were not complete. But based on certain electrical and mechanical plans they did have, it was obvious that was where Marks and Lip needed to be.