Returning to my seat, I discovered that the meeting between Stella and Ivan had become a full-fledged ULTRA conversation as Javiera had now joined the mix. Ivan stood up and motioned for me to retake my seat. Clearly, the conversation had been a heated one, as they all seemed quite serious.
“Tunde,” Stella said, “we’ve made a decision.”
I had not known there was a question.
“Okay,” I said.
“When we get to Buenos Aires,” Ivan said, “we will be staying in the city.”
Javiera drove the point home. “We’re not going to face Kiran with you.”
21.2
I was a bit flabbergasted.
ULTRA had come this far, traveling the globe alongside us, and to think that they would not pursue the mission to the end was confusing to me. I looked back to Rex and Cai and ushered them forward. We would need to talk about this as a group. I certainly could not be the one to decide.
“I will certainly respect your decision,” I told ULTRA, “but let us discuss.”
I will tell you, my friends, I felt a bit bad for the people sitting in the seats alongside mine. Here they were, minding their own business on this long flight, perhaps reading their books, watching movies on tablet computers, or attempting to sleep, and suddenly a group of six young people crowd around them discussing, in whispers, all sorts of odd-sounding things.
Frankly, I am surprised no one alerted the flight crew.
Regardless, we were able to have a huddle in the center aisle.
Javiera told Rex and Cai about their decision to split off from us when we arrived in Argentina. With everyone assembled, Ivan provided more details about the decision. “To be honest with you, we’ve come to the conclusion that this next step is a bigger deal than we had anticipated. We’re not like the LODGE; you all are more experienced in this arena. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be abandoning you. While you hunt Kiran down, we will continue to go through all the information we pulled out of the mansion and focus on shutting down Shiva.”
I turned to Rex to gauge his opinion of the situation.
“I can appreciate that,” Rex said. “You guys have done so much for us.”
Cai said, “I think it’s a wise choice. Strategically, it gives us a few advantages as well. Kiran will be looking for both our groups. By splitting up, we can keep him on his toes. Also, we’ll need someone on the ground watching our backs and setting up the roadblocks for Shiva if we can’t.”
“Okay,” Ivan said. “Then it is agreed. Been fun, guys.”
“It has been a wonderful experience,” I said.
Stella added, “Don’t anyone get teary eyed. We’ll see each other soon.”
We shook hands and then returned to our respective seats to continue what work we could before the plane was due to land. Looking through the odd items of technology we had removed from the mansion, Stella and I worked to modify what we could. As we were on a plane, we couldn’t utilize the usual tools of our trade. No soldering irons or electric drills. We had to tweak what we could with our hands and our ingenuity. A tablet computer was easily reprogrammed to become a remote computer terminal, and a cell phone was quickly turned into a mobile microscope. I was not certain which of these items we might use in our hunt for Kiran, but it was good to have the devices readily available.
We landed at the Buenos Aires airport just before dawn.
It was really rather beautiful to see the sun cresting the horizon and illuminating the city. For a few moments, I allowed myself to be excited at the thought of visiting a new country and a new culture. Though I realized we would have absolutely no time for sightseeing, I also allowed myself the small pleasure of enjoying the landscape outside the plane window before we were thrust into the chaos of the city and the chase for Kiran.
After a tumultuous time disembarking the plane and gathering up all of our belongings, we gave a hearty farewell to ULTRA. Rex, however, pulled Javiera and Ivan aside as I spoke with Stella. I could not help but overhear the conversation they had. Rex asked them to look into trying to clear Teo. He framed it as something to do during “downtime,” as though there would be any of that.
“I know he broke the law,” Rex said. “I know he made some poor decisions. But I think he proved himself after Beijing. At the end of the day, he made the right choice and he did the right thing.”
Ivan and Javiera agreed. They would certainly try.
Cai got an alert on her cell phone via the tracking app. It showed the bunker that Kiran had traveled to was four hours south for us—by plane to Bariloche, then by taxi and foot. Clearly, this location was not going to be easy to access. In fact, it looked quite rugged.
“Any thoughts?” Cai asked, holding up her cell.
“We’re going to need some hiking boots,” Rex said.
That was when all of our cell phones buzzed in our pockets.
21.3
Kiran, ever the guy dat maja us, had launched the Shiva program!
As expected, it immediately started to rampage through various and sundry Internet root systems across the globe. Many were instantly overwhelmed and their accounts deleted. I could only imagine the panic in the minds of the system engineers, my friends! Surely they stared at their computer screens with dread.
“Can we block it?” I asked, panic rising to a boil.
“We’ll see,” Rex said.
He and Javiera huddled over their cell phones and the tablet computers they had taken from the mansion on a bench near the luggage. They typed furiously as Cai and Ivan stood watch, giving advice where they could.
Stella and I did not want to stand by with our hands in our pockets.
“What can we do?” I asked Rex.
“We need to boost our signal in here,” he said. “Any thoughts?”
Stella and I simultaneously looked around the baggage claim area for anything we might be able to use quickly and efficiently. Both of us focused our attention on a trash can near the exit doors. There were many metal scraps inside, including what looked like some discarded aluminum foil.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Stella asked me.
“Parabolic antenna,” I said.
We ran as fast as we could over to the trash can and dove in with both hands, removing every scrap we thought we could use. I tell you, my friends, Stella and I must have been quite a sight! I was too absorbed in what I was doing to notice the tourists and businesspeople staring at us in bewilderment, but Stella assured me later that they most definitely were.
We returned to our friends with the aluminum foil—which had apparently lined the bottom of a food tray or two, paper, several magazines, and a couple broken curtain rods. Though Cai and Ivan looked over at us a bit confused, hoping for an explanation, we did not have time to get into the details.
We had to build!
As Stella and I worked, Javiera updated everyone on her progress. “Here’s the thing,” Javiera said. “The way the virus is moving through the system, it’s splitting up frequently. We need to block it at every turn. Sometimes that’s easy—we throw a firewall up or reroute it into a dead end. But as this attack is developing, we’re finding it more and more difficult.”
“The goal for Kiran,” I said with my eyes locked firmly on the project at my feet, “is to delete the Internet, correct? Then perhaps there is a way to take it off-line? The Shiva program cannot delete what it cannot find.”
Rex stopped typing and looked up at me.
“That’s actually a good idea,” he said.
“You act surprised!” I responded. “I have a good idea every day!”
As Stella and I finished creating a parabolic antenna from the trash we had acquired, Rex and Javiera discussed putting my plan into motion. Rather than trying to block the Shiva program at every turn, they would contain it by shutting down the portion of the Internet it was rampaging through. This, of course, was certain to result in significant stress for those companies and governments using that section o
f the World Wide Web, but at least it would stop the damage Shiva was doing.
“We’re going to do a huge distributed denial of service—a DDoS—attack on some major Domain Name System hosts,” Javiera said, getting quite technical. “It’s going to make people’s lives miserable for a few hours, but I think it’ll work in stopping Shiva. And, even better, it’ll give us time to come up with a better solution.”
“How’s that signal boost coming along?” Rex asked.
“Done!” Stella said.
She held up our creation for everyone to see. As we had intended, it was a parabolic antenna to boost the signal of their cell phones. It looked like a funky satellite dish. Though it was square instead of circular, it wrapped around the cell phone in a half circle. The design, as well as the materials, would bounce and strengthen the signal. The parabolic antenna was not impressive to look at, but when Rex set his cell phone inside it, turned his phone onto “airplane mode,” and then brought it back online, the signal was significantly boosted.
“Damn,” Rex said. “That actually worked great.”
“Do not act so surprised,” I said. “You are dealing with prodigies here.”
It took Rex and Javiera another few minutes to put their plan in motion. I was thankful that our layover between flights was a good hour; otherwise we might have missed our final push to confront Kiran. As expected, the DDoS attack went through and a good portion of the Internet was crippled. Along with it, Shiva was halted in its tracks. We all breathed a sigh of relief but knew it was to be quite short-lived as Kiran would surely find a work-around.
Kiran na coded guy.
ULTRA walked us over to the gate from which our flight would be departing. There, they confirmed again their plans to continue the attack on Shiva unabated and work with the authorities as best they could to stop it.
“You should also let the coding community know,” Rex said. “All those antivirus and security guys are going to be all over this, if they haven’t already noticed.”
“Done,” Javiera said.
We bade farewell to ULTRA again and told them we would be in touch with them as soon as we landed in Bariloche. Boarding the plane, I was confident that we could not have left the attack on Shiva in better hands. Javiera, Ivan, and Stella were true friends and gifted revolutionaries. I knew I would be very happy when I saw them again. But there was no time for such idle musing.
We had to catch Kiran!
22. CAI
2.5 HOURS AFTER SHIVA
The flight was beautiful, grasslands and oceans of trees beneath us, but we were lost in our own thoughts.
Rex sat quietly beside me, his eyes on the passing clouds, and Tunde tinkered with a calculator he’d carefully taken apart.
“I’ve been having this nightmare thought,” Rex said, turning to me. “What if Kiran discovered the tracking device you put on him, and … this whole thing is wrong—he’s actually somewhere in Australia, about as far away as can be.”
“That is a nightmare. Not going to happen, though,” I said.
“I shouldn’t doubt you. I’m just anxious.”
“He’s here, Rex,” I said. “Even if he found the tracker.”
“So this is a trap?”
I shook my head. “No, not for us. Kiran’s ready to face us. Now that he’s launched Shiva, he must know he’s reached the end. This is his last stand.”
Rex pondered that for a moment.
“He’d be a good guy if he wasn’t so deluded,” Rex said.
“He wouldn’t be Kiran then.”
Minutes after our second flight touched down in the small city, all of our cell phones buzzed with urgent messages from ULTRA. While Shiva was still successfully stalled and some of the leading antivirus people had been alerted to Kiran’s destructive program, ULTRA wasn’t going to rest. With the bits of the Internet we’d shut down coming back online, it would only be a matter of time before Shiva was out in the open again. We had to get to Kiran before that happened.
Using the tracker’s signal, we took a taxi from the small airport up winding mountain roads. There were towering pine trees and massive boulders lining the roadway, and I was a bit light-headed from the altitude. After about thirty minutes of driving we were as far removed from any signs of civilization as I’d ever been. This was a wild, raw place that gave the impression of having remained untouched since the dawn of time: the perfect spot for Kiran’s bunker.
Finally, the cab came to a stop on a narrow road that cut into a mountainside. It was a beautiful but empty place. Outside of a trickling waterfall that emptied into a lake a few thousand feet below us, there was no movement and certainly no bunker visible.
“This is the place,” Rex said, translating the taxi driver’s Spanish.
“This cannot be the place,” Tunde said. “There is nothing here.”
I showed him the tracking app. According to the data on my cell screen, we were the blinking red dot about a half mile from a green triangle that signified Kiran’s bunker. It was to our left, across the road, and straight up the mountain.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Rex said, looking up through the boulders, tall grass, and towering trees toward the summit.
“How long do you think it’ll take to walk, Tunde?” I asked.
Tunde looked at the map and then out at the mountainside.
“Well,” he said, “hard to say. Could be an hour or more.”
“Then we better get moving,” I said.
We climbed out of the taxicab with our stuff. Rex paid the driver with the few dollars he had left and then the cab pulled out. As the sound of its grinding engine faded away, we found ourselves in the tranquil mountain silence.
22.1
I’d never been hiking before, at least not in any mountainous region like Patagonia.
Every step was tricky. The trail was heavily overgrown, and any markers that had been there were long since lost beneath the foliage. Much of the time, we had to figure out our path as we went. Sometimes we had to stop because the route was too steep; other times there was too much undergrowth or debris in the way. I assumed that Kiran traveled back and forth to his bunker via helicopter. There was simply no way he hiked up and down this mountain.
We reached a stopping point before a wall of trees. According to the tracking app, the bunker was just on the other side of the forest in a clearing.
Rex and I sat on a boulder while Tunde lay in the grass. We’d picked up some bottled water at the airport and a few bags of snacks—nuts, chips, and a chocolate bar. We shared the food, took long swigs of water, and tried to catch our breath. My calves were aching fiercely. I wasn’t wearing the right shoes for a hike, and I was desperate to take them off and dip my feet into a cold mountain stream.
“Any bets on what we’re going to find up here?” Rex asked.
“I just hope Kiran has the decency to offer us something warm to drink,” Tunde said. “I hate to sound like a complainer, but I am exhausted.”
“I would be prepared for some surprises,” I said.
“Here’s the thing.” Rex stood and stretched. “There’s no way we’re going to just walk into this bunker like we did in the Arizona house. If you’re right, Cai, and this is his last stand, then we’re going to be facing off against some security.”
“After all this climbing,” Tunde said, “I am not sure I could do that.”
“Worse comes to worst,” I said, “we wait until dark.”
“Um, aren’t there, like, bears and stuff out here?” Rex asked.
“I am not afraid of any wildlife,” Tunde said.
Rex scoffed. “Well, that’s good for you, but…”
“Come on, guys,” I said, standing. “Let’s get moving.”
We pushed into the trees. These were ancient hardwoods that had likely never seen the blade of an ax. They grew very close together, and the brush around them was so dense that we fell as often as we stepped. A thick fog moved in halfway through the forest, and soon
we couldn’t see more than fifteen feet ahead.
“This is unbelievable,” Rex said. “Could it get any worse?”
“Of course it could,” Tunde said. “I am sure there are bears in here.”
I told them both to just keep their heads down and keep moving.
A half hour later, we stepped out of the woods and into a wide clearing. Tall grass, the height of my shoulders, stretched off toward a glass and stone building sitting in the middle of the open space. It looked like something that had dropped down from space. The contrast between the wild nature surrounding the bunker and its postmodernist, geometric design was striking.
Kiran’s Argentine bunker
We moved low through the grass, making sure to walk in a line as silently as possible. When we were within a hundred feet of the bunker, I motioned for the boys to come up alongside me. There were no sign of guards or security of any kind. I couldn’t even see cameras on the exterior of the bunker.
“So much for the security,” Rex whispered. “What’s up with this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we’re missing something.”
Tunde scanned the exterior of the building carefully and then pointed to the roof. “There is his transport,” he said. We all moved toward Tunde to see Kiran’s helicopter sitting on the roof. It was the same one he’d used in Nigeria.
Seeing it, knowing that Kiran was certainly here, I sent word to ULTRA to alert the authorities to our location. We needed them en route and fast. I also gave them the passwords to access the live feeds from the button cameras on my clothes and gear. If they could see what we were seeing, they’d be there all the sooner.
“You’re the expert on the whole break-in thing,” Rex said, turning to me.
I thought for a few seconds as wind whistled through the treetops and somewhere in the distance a bird called. Then I looked again at the tracking app. The green arrow was blinking inside the building sitting before our eyes.
Kiran was in there, waiting for us.
“Follow me,” I said.
Genius--The Revolution Page 17