Alexa Book 1 (Starring Alexa Guerra - The Female Jack Reacher): Fatal - (Mystery, Thriller, Romantic Suspense) (Alexa - The Series)

by Arno Joubert

  Shit. Cabinet C? The tape must be—he made a couple of calculations—more than eighteen years old.

  Yehudi finished the toke and carefully killed it in the dustbin. He put the butt in his pocket. He switched the lights back on, walked to the back of the Ops center, and stood in front of a massive library containing thousands of spools of tape. He started moving down the rows, counting down from J until he came to cabinet C. It took him another five minutes to hunt down the specific tape. The labels were old and yellowing. He removed the plastic tape enclosure and mounted it on a spooling device.

  Yehudi shuffled behind the central console and punched in the necessary parameters for the program to run correctly. The console prompted him for a password and he typed in “ZCKalahari979” as instructed. He started the program and switched the lights off again. Lit another joint and continued with his Star Trek parody.

  He felt a bead of sweat run down his neck. He removed his overcoat and looked up at the aircon's LCD. It should have been set to 18 degrees Celsius, but the room temperature was at 26 degrees. A red warning message started flashing on his console.

  “SYSTEM OVERLOAD. 100% PROCESSOR USAGE.”

  Yehudi’s jaw dropped, the joint sticking to his lower lip. A couple of seconds later, sirens started wailing and three phones rang simultaneously. He grabbed the first one and spat the joint to the floor.

  “Captain Yehu—sorry, Yehudi speaking.”

  “Hi, Yehudi, Jasynski here. I noticed my security cam’s video feed has become real jerky. Is something up on your side?”

  Yehudi glanced up at the network monitor screen. All the pathways were red and the blips had turned yellow.

  “Yes, yes, there’s a problem. I'll see what I can do,” Yehudi said and fidgeted with his collar. “I’ll phone you back.”

  “OK, thanks,” Jasynski said and hung up.

  Yehudi picked up the other two phones that were ringing and slammed them straight back down.

  Shit, shit, shit. What the hell was happening here?

  He initiated a processing monitor on his console. Job “Becky22” was hogging one-hundred percent of the mainframe’s processing power. It had managed to hijack all the other programs’ CPU time and was sending gigs of data down the broadband links.

  He feverishly typed in more commands on the console and tried to figure out what the program was busy doing. He opened an editor and looked at the Cobol code, an antiquated programming language not familiar to him at all. As far as he could see, it did a bunch of random searches on all the possible combinations of public IP addresses. Why, he didn’t know.

  He looked up at the network monitor. Some of the orange blips were turning red. The program was manipulating Israeli satellites and pointing their receivers to different locations. The phone on his desk rang again.

  “Yehudi here,” he mumbled.

  “Yehudi, this is Major Frydman. What the hell is going on down there?”

  Yehudi stiffened. “I don't know sir. A rogue program has hogged all the processes. I'm trying to terminate it.”

  He frantically typed on the console, keeping the phone pinned to his ear. Before he could execute the elaborate command, the sirens stopped and the paths on the monitor changed color from red to yellow to green.

  “Green is good,” Yehudi whispered under his breath.

  “Well, did you stop it?” Frydman barked.

  “Yes, sir. It stopped. A super old Cobol program was running some elaborate data query that froze the system.”

  “Good. I want a full report on my desk in the morning.”

  “Um, yes, sir.” The phone clicked down in his ear. Yehudi's finger still hovered over the enter key. He hadn’t initiated the kill command; the program had stopped by itself.

  Weird.

  He scratched around in his breast pocket, took out another joint, and lit it. He inhaled deeply and blew out the smoke through his nose. “Weird.”

  Becky22, Zachary Cohen’s scouting program, had filled one reserve disk pack on the Israeli Defense Force’s mainframe with data. It would store the data on the pack for twenty-four hours and then disseminate it onto various unsecured servers over the following couple of days.

  The servers would run a small piece of code at their next reboot which would install an assembler program into RAM. It would take up a minuscule amount of processing, or footprint, on each server. Each one of the thousands of compromised servers would aid in the processing of enormous amounts of data, sifting through cell phone records, credit card transactions, voice recordings, and closed-circuit television images.

  Furthermore, the servers would help spread the program on to other computers on their local network. A laptop would plug into the network and become the vector, spreading it on to the next network.

  The algorithm was complex, but it had reached its primary goal: to locate Bruce and Natalie Bryden.

  It had gathered some useful information from cell phone records from Angola Telecom as well. The voice-recognition software matched the names four times during a fifty-two second conversation. It had tracked the coordinates of the conversation to Maputo, at a coffee shop on the corner of Via Sora and Victoria Roads. One hundred and eight bot computers created a map and pinpointed the GPS coordinates. One bot initiated an SMS from Angola Telecom to another number it had scouted out.

  Today was the SMS recipient’s birthday: she had turned twenty-two. The program infiltrated Israeli Homeland Security’s photo database. From the information in her passport, the program recognized she was five feet eight inches tall and was the daughter of a man called Bruce Bryden. The facial recognition software calculated a ninety-five percent approximation of how his daughter, Rebecca Cohen, would have looked if she were sixteen years older. Voice recognition software matched the tone and resonance of her voice. A ninety-six percent likelihood. The software calculated Bruce Bryden’s average vicinity and linked it to the probable recipients’ coordinates. They were in the same area for more than eighty percent of the time. The program algorithms concluded a one hundred percent match.

  The SMS read: “Happy Birthday, baby. You're a grownup now and you need to know you're in grave danger. Perreira and Callahan have been located. Phone conversation intercepted, 11:37 AM GMT+3. Map data at https://mos.isly.com. Love you, Becky. ZC.”

  Serenity Game Farm,

  Mpumalanga, South Africa

  Natalie flipped over the tiny, pink bat that was clinging to her finger and checked its tummy. She examined the small, white spot that was visible through its translucent skin. It needed more milk. She released a drop of the mixture from the syringe and it spilled onto her thumb. The pup lapped it up eagerly, its head jerking up and down unsteadily as it drank. She put it back into its cage.

  An elephant on the farm had decided to push over a bat box, and Natalie had involuntarily become the surrogate mom to eighteen baby pups. Exhausting work, as they needed to be fed every two hours, day and night.

  She was looking forward to when they would start lapping on their own, when she would be able to stretch the shifts to four hours and get more sleep. Bruce said it would be excellent training for her if she were to be accepted into the Legion; sleep was a luxury that was hard to come by. To Bruce, every cloud had a silver lining.

  He had been on the phone with the general for more than an hour. She heard him put the phone back on the cradle.

  “Natalie, come here, please,” he called from down the hall.

  She popped her head out of her room. “Am I in?” she asked excitedly.

  Bruce smiled, the one that made the sides of his eyes crinkle into crow’s feet and lit up his suntanned face. “You’re in. Laiveaux had to pull a few strings, but he managed to do it.” He pursed his lips and frowned. “You start in six months.”

  She punched the air and whooped then became quiet. Was that disappointment she had seen in Bruce’s face?

  He turned around and sauntered into the kitchen with his long-strided lope, his hands dug into his
pockets. She knew her adoptive father well. The slant of his shoulders, the way he frowned. Bruce was sad.

  Bruce hollered from somewhere in the kitchen, “I’ll ask Sergeant Ellis to begin your preparatory training tomorrow morning.”

  Natalie sped down the hall and into the kitchen, gripping him in a bear hug. “Thank you, Dad. Thanks, thanks, thanks.” She pulled his face down toward hers and rained kisses on both his cheeks, knowing how it embarrassed him.

  He smiled, pushing her away. “Pleasure kiddo, but stick to the program. If Ellis tells you to jump, ask him how high.” He handed Natalie a mug of black coffee. “Laiveaux has given me the inside info on your training program at the Legion.” He looked at her for a while, his eyes narrowing. “It’s going to be tough, Nats.”

  Natalie nodded, opened the fridge, and took out a carton of milk.

  He walked up to her and took her shoulders, holding her at arms-length. “It’s going to be more difficult than anything you’ve ever done in your life, more difficult than anything you’ll ever do again.”

  She nodded.

  “Remember, you need to stick it out for at least four months before you’re going to be accepted. Afterward, they won’t kick you out, but the training will get harder,” he said.

  She took a sip of milk from the carton. “Are you sure this will work, Dad? I’m so tired of being afraid.”

  Bruce lightly punched her shoulder. “Don’t drink out of the container, learn some manners.”

  He grabbed the carton from her and took a long gulp from it. He looked at her and smiled, a white mustache on his upper lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “I know it will work, Nats. The Legion will teach you to survive anything.”

  Bruce handed the carton back to Natalie. “And I know you’ll be safe for at least the next five years.”

  She put her arm around Bruce’s waist. “The SMS I received was a shock,” she said, taking another sip from the carton.

  He hugged her shoulder. “I know, Natalie. I recently started receiving these messages as well. At first I didn’t believe them either, but my sources in Mozambique confirmed Perreira’s whereabouts. Come, I’d like to show you something,” he said and led Natalie to his study.

  Bruce opened a drawer in his desk. He removed a file. It was stuffed with newspaper clippings, maps, and photos. He arranged the media on his desk. “This is the intel I’ve received during the past two weeks. And it all checks out. Dates, exact locations.” He glanced at his daughter. “I regularly receive SMSs with URLs directing me to telephone conversations between Perreira and Callahan.” Bruce chuckled. “It feels unfair. I’m always one step ahead of them.”

  “So why not take them out and get it over and done with?”

  “Natalie, we need to get the entire organization. You know that.”

  Natalie nodded, deep in thought. “Are you sure he's dead?” she asked, hugging Bruce’s arm.

  “I was there, Nats. I don’t want to get into the gruesome details, but I assure you he was dead.” He gently took her shoulders. “The doctor confirmed it.”

  “But what sicko would want to impersonate my dad, even though he's helping us?”

  Bruce shrugged, placing the bits of paper back in the file. “I don’t know, Nats.”

  Natalie was lost in her thoughts for a moment, rubbing her upper lip with her finger, then glanced up at Bruce and smiled. “Do I get to choose my own name?”

  Bruce grinned. “Laiveaux said your identity has been confirmed.” He started slipping the photos in a pocket in the file then turned around and bowed with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Once you complete your training, you shall be known as Lady Alexa Guerra.”

  “Alexa,” she said. “Alexa Guerra.” She rolled the name around her tongue. “Alexa Guerra.” She hugged Bruce’s arm and smiled. “I like it.”

  Mossad Headquarters

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  Major Sal Frydman studied Yehudi’s report that he had written on an A4 sheet of paper in a barely legible scribble. Frydman wanted to tear it up, order Yehudi to complete the report on the official RP115 form, when a word caught his eye.

  “Becky22”.

  Now where had he heard the name before?

  He racked his brain; the answer was on the tip of his tongue. Becky. He punched a search query into the Israeli Defense Force’s personnel record database. It came up blank. Becky was the shortened form of Rebecca or Rebeccah. He substituted his query string with “Rebeccah” and then “Rebecca.” The computer came up with thirty-eight matches.

  He copied the results to a Word document and printed it out. He would examine the names over lunch.

  He ran a trace on the network activity for the past twenty-four hours and noticed a spike at 2115 last night. By 2120, the network links were saturated, running between ninety-five and one hundred percent utilization. He had only seen something like this once before. He had been a junior system analyst, and a bright spark Shin Bet operative had shown them how to infiltrate a system using a rogue program he had written. The program would flood the wide area network with traffic, stimulating a brute-force attack on the network.

  System overrides would kick in, redirecting all processing power to firewalls and vulnerable segments on the network, allowing his program to modify the core operating system on the mainframe without detection, ultimately rendering the system incapable of processing any jobs. This would cause complete system shutdown, rendering the affected mainframe incapable of mounting any counterattack or defensive maneuvers. Ultimately, the infected system would not be able to control the infantry’s weapons systems, and the opponent being targeted would be a sitting duck, unable to defend itself.

  Frydman had implemented countermeasures to any attacks of this nature by isolating his munitions processing to individual, non-networked computers. He was sure they were still OK as far as functional armory was concerned. But he wondered how someone could have triggered this attack and whether the intention was more sinister than he had thought.

  And “Becky” rang a bell somewhere. Answers didn’t elude him for long. Sooner or later, he would recall where he had heard the name before.

  Natalie faced Bruce in their makeshift sparring ring, her jet-black hair made up in a short ponytail, glistening in the searing afternoon sunshine. Bruce had raked the area clear of stones and rocks and placed four tar-poles to form a rough square. The trampled sand in the square bore testimony to the many practice sessions that had taken place during the past couple of months.

  Sergeant Ellis stood outside the ring, arms folded, watching Natalie intently. He brushed his hand through his short hair and flicked the perspiration to the ground. His white T-shirt was caked with dust and sweat. “Come on, Natalie.”

  “Like this?" Natalie asked Bruce. She held a knife in her right hand and had a piece of cloth wrapped around her left. She lunged at Bruce with a stab toward his neck.

  Bruce leaned back and aimed a straight kick at her midriff. He stopped an inch before impact. He shook his head, squinting in the sun. “You're shorter than me. You need to reduce the distance between us before attacking.”

  He slipped a knife from a sheath on his belt and flipped it over, pointing the blade down. “OK, block this.”

  Natalie took a defensive stance, crouching, wrapping the cloth tighter around her left hand. Bruce swung down toward Natalie’s shoulder. She blocked the attack with her forearm and countered with a knee to his groin. Bruce pivoted his hip and slashed the knife downward toward Natalie’s face. It stopped a millimeter above her nose. “You're dead,” he said.

  Natalie plopped down in the dust, tossing the knife aside. “This is unfair. You're taller than me and stronger than me. I can't hurt you,” she sulked, hitting the ground with the palms of her hands and sending a small puff of dust up in the air.

  Bruce pursed his lips, the muscles on his forearms knotting together. “Your problem is you're limiting your attacking options,” he answered, gesturing with his hands. �
��By wrapping up a hand, psychologically it becomes your blocking hand. You're losing the use of it as a weapon.”

  He wiped his brow with the back of his arm. “And by crouching before I attack you, I know you’re prepared for what’s coming.” Crow’s feet lined his intense blue eyes as he squinted. “Always stand up straight, hands to your sides, as innocent as a lamb.” He shook his fingers. “Relax, be loose, control the adrenaline, control your breathing.”

  “But this is how Ellis trained me to do it.” She cast an accusing glance at Sergeant Ellis. “We always used to knife spar this way.”

  Bruce pointed his forefinger, his face serious. “Yes, you sparred. You knew you wouldn't be hurt or killed or maimed. But this is real life, Nats. You need to use every trick in the book to your advantage.” He held out his hand, and she allowed herself to be pulled up.

  “Fight dirty,” Bruce said and hugged her shoulder. “Never look your opponent in the eye; your peripheral vision will be shit, and you won't be able to predict where the attack will be coming from.” He held her shoulders at arm’s length. “Listen to me.”

  She glanced up at him, biting her lower lip.

  “Keep your eyes on your opponent’s chest and you will be able to see their direction of attack. If someone approaches you with a knife, defensive moves go out the window. You attack first.”

  He stepped back. “You cannot do much to defend yourself against an armed opponent. If you need to block, it must lead directly into an offensive maneuver.” He demonstrated with two short jabs to an imaginary opponent’s solar plexus.

  She nodded. “OK, I understand. But if I'm unarmed, how do I get close enough to you to attack? Again, I’m much smaller than you.”

  Bruce shrugged, the large trapezius muscles on his shoulders bulging beneath the white vest. “Use kicks. Or move in while the knife is still on its way back or being raised.” He clicked his fingers. “Give the other guy no chance to think, just do it.”