The Back Door Man

by Dave Buschi

  Mihajlovic gestured dismissively with his gun. “Out!”

  The men scrambled out like cockroaches, as if someone had just turned on a light.

  Mihajlovic stood there. His enormous chest heaved. His eyes, getting blurry now, looked at the computer screens.

  Numbers.

  His shares in AngelGuard, of which he was the primary stakeholder, were now gone. Shares that on paper had grown to a billion American overnight.

  The other screens, which tracked his other investments, told an even more inconceivable story. His personal wealth, which had stood in the billions of euros just yesterday, was now liquidated. Transfers and trades he never authorized were shown on the screens.

  How?!

  No answer. His men had no explanations. They had cowered like worthless curs.

  Today should have been a day of great victory. A day of wealth heaped upon wealth. Sixty billion dollars was to be his!

  But instead, he was looking at this…

  This?!

  Mihajlovic’s face contorted into an inscrutable snarl. He bent his head back and screamed.

  78

  LO San was not amused. He looked out on the city of Beijing. His palatial office had a seventieth floor view. A thick haze of pollution, draped like a mourning veil, hid the sun.

  Skyscrapers, gleaming dully, broke the horizon. Cranes, moving ponderously, were in the distance. Lo San looked beyond, past where his sight could see. He was deep in thought, still digesting what his CIO had not wanted to tell him.

  One hundred programmers, culled from top engineering universities, were busy at work just ten floors below. They were doing their best to combat the DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack that had paralyzed the network. Lo San’s CIO had given the details. He called it a ping of death.

  It was a tactic that hackers sometimes used to bring down networks. A ping was normally 84 bytes in size. Computer systems could not handle ping packets larger than a certain IP packet size, which was north of 65,000. Sending a ping packet that exceeded that number could crash a system.

  Apparently this attack had slipped through the firewalls because it was fragmented to appear smaller than its actual ping packet size. A buffer overflow had occurred, which resulted in a temporary network system collapse.

  As soon as they got the network back up and running, a second ping of death had taken it down again. Then a third, then a fourth… They were facing a ping flooding situation, where pings were causing normal traffic to not reach the system. It was a coordinated DDoS attack.

  His CIO had said it was preventing his men from following through on their operation. It had caused an untenable situation. They couldn’t initiate any wire transfers. They were shut down. Unable to function. Unable to carry out the necessary steps required for the operation to succeed.

  “I have failed you,” said his CIO.

  Lo San glanced at his desk. His screen saver showed a Russian flag waving in the breeze. Across his screen scrolled a continuous text message.

  Nyet. I’ve taken everything… Ha…ha…ha…

  Lo San’s face was as rigid as steel. The only perceivable chink in his armor was the slight twitch happening right below his eye.

  Nyet. I’ve taken everything… Ha…ha…ha…

  79

  IT was a Bangkok cluster fuck. Paulson’s head was wound like a noodle. Portino’s comment irritated him to no end.

  “Where were you?”

  He was gone for ten minutes, tops, and that’s the grief he got.

  Across the room Portino was issuing orders to his head of security. Outside the estate’s gates an explosion had gone off. Vandals were looting the neighborhood.

  Vandals?! Jesus fuckin’ Christ what else could go fuckin’ wrong?

  “Why are you still here?” Portino demanded from across the room.

  “I’m almost done,” Paulson said. He resisted the urge to tell him to fuck off.

  He couldn’t believe what he was looking at—the system had gone haywire. Every time he tried to log on, he was getting a different error message. He needed time, time he didn’t have, to sort this out. There was still no word from Enrique. Portino was griping that his partners were trying to contact him.

  His partners.

  The man still was keeping everything close to his chest. He wasn’t letting him in. Guys like Enrique and himself had done all the heavy lifting, and this was the thanks they got.

  “Where were you?”

  He’d wanted to snap back at the sonofabitch, I was fucking your assistant in the ass, but damn that bitch, he never got the pleasure. Asking for seven thousand. For what? For him to dribble down her leg?

  Don’t flatter yourself bitch. Once this was done he’d buy twenty Alannas. There was nothing worse that he hated than a tease. Getting him rock hard, then pulling that shit on him. He should have thrown her against the wall and raped her on the spot. Wouldn’t be the first time. Fucking had blue balls now.

  Paulson grabbed his keys.

  “Take my men,” Portino said.

  The SOB was still giving orders. But what was he doing to fix things? Paulson walked out the door. Portino’s head of security followed behind.

  “Boss wants me with you.”

  “No, we’re taking two cars.”

  “That’s fine. But I’m coming with you.”

  That SOB didn’t trust him. Sending his muscle to keep him in line. Paulson bit back the bilious taste in his throat. If this ship even gives the hint of going down…

  Paulson tossed his keys. “If you’re coming—you drive.”

  He took a seat in the back and looked at his iPhone. He skimmed the emails again. Who the fuck was sending these?

  80

  THE office was closed and dark. The shades were drawn and the furniture was sparse.

  “Can we validate it?”

  “No.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “We’re working on that—I don’t have an answer, yet.”

  “Go check it out.”

  “It may be another rabbit hole.”

  “Understood. I want you on it.”

  “Got it. I’ll take Martinez and Chambers.”

  “I want a status update when you get there.”

  The man nodded. He went out the door.

  81

  RANDOM thoughts. Memories. Some recent.

  James recalled his first and only camping out experience with his girls. Hannah and his wife Sue had taken to it like ducks on water, while Katie and he had been miserable. They’d spent half the time worrying about the dark and fretting about the noises. Out in the country at night there weren’t the city lights to illume the sky. The darkness became complete and almost swallowed you.

  It wasn’t James’s finest hour. He wasn’t the stalwart dad, the white knight, protecting his girls. He was as scared as Katie, who was four at the time. Sue, more than a year later, still hazed him about what, no doubt, would be their one and only camping trip.

  It was an odd thought to pop in his head. Random. Or maybe not.

  One thing that tied the thought to his situation right now was that James was used to being uncomfortable in new settings. Change tended to frazzle him. Anything new or different could put him on edge. He was good at hiding it, and feigning composure, but the reality inside was a different story.

  He’d been known to have the periodic panic attack when work just became insane. It’d usually hit him at night, right before he was trying to sleep. He’d be processing all the work he had to do and challenges he faced the next morning. The running monologue in his head could keep him up for hours.

  James was all about routine. When things got a little out of whack, or were different, he didn’t function well. It shook him up. Put him off balance.

  Right now, considering what was going on and all he’d been through, James should be a basket case. But he wasn’t. He had no explanation for it. Men were searching for him right now, with intentions to kill hi
m, and James was okay with that. He hadn’t shut down. He wasn’t a victim of self-imposed paralysis. He was thinking, moving on his feet.

  In fact this entire day, James had operated that way. Since this morning at ComTek when he covered his tracks by breaking into the system and altering the memory matrix. To how he stepped up to rescue that poor girl Taneesha from getting raped. To pulling that woman out of that burning car.

  Every bizarre string of events that had happened to him today should have completely thrown him off his game. He should be a mess. Ready to be locked up in the funny farm in one of those padded rooms.

  But he wasn’t. He’d been so pushed out of his comfort zone it was as if his body had reset, somehow compensated, found a new equilibrium. Instead of being off-balance, he was measured and dare he say it…

  Calm.

  That was not a word he would have ever used to describe himself, even in a peaceful setting. He was Type A, high anxiety, a chew his nails sort of guy. He used to get the worst butterflies before he used to wrestle. Even with all his wins, every time before a match he’d throw up because of nerves.

  None of that was happening right now. His mind was strangely lucid. Seeing things from different vantage points. Omniscient like.

  At this exact moment, seven men were triangulating on him. They had him boxed in. James had already backtracked. It was as if they knew he was in this area. They were closing in on him. There wasn’t anywhere for him to go. They would find him in the next few minutes. Find him and kill him. He had one gun; they had seven, and they were killers. He wasn’t. But for some reason James wasn’t afraid. He was ready.

  Calm.

  It belied explanation.

  82

  THE news on the TV was merciless. The newscaster was going on about the disruption in phone service. How server networks around the US were affected by the virus, which they’d dubbed the ‘GreedKills’ worm.

  Tell me something I don’t know. Enrique was past the point of screaming. His throat hurt from earlier outbursts.

  He’d been trying for over an hour to get in touch with Paulson and Portino, but none of their communication channels were working. His Bluetooth Signal Scrambler and cell phone were worthless. Emails weren’t an option. He was shut out from the system.

  When they began this operation, Enrique had been given clear directives, and one of those was that James was to be removed from The Vault. That was critical. He was not to be left or disposed of at The Vault. The set up with family… the places and times… all the necessary coordination pieces that had to fall in place to convincingly sell what they were trying to do was dependent on making sure James was served up at the right place, at the right time.

  That little directive, thoroughly imbedded into his head, was now holding everything up. Things had gone south since then. Way south. The milk had soured and the rank smell was getting worse.

  A little over an hour ago, they’d found Yuri. The man had been knocked out. He’d finally come around. James had pulled some time type of move and taken him down. It didn’t make any sense. James was a middle-aged engineer with a dough belly. He sat at a desk for a living. How in the world had he taken Yuri out? Yuri was enormous and built like a tank.

  Enrique looked out on the humming servers. They’d been activated and were doing their thing. What was James doing? Enrique had tried to get back on the system, but was unable to do even the simplest operation. James had outmaneuvered him. Enrique was locked out. Every time he tried to log on, he got an error message.

  Littered on the floor behind him was a broken monitor. Enrique had thrown it in a fit of pique. He couldn’t figure out what James had done. James had revoked his security clearance. He couldn’t access the NAS Gateway. He couldn’t even access the Internet. He kept getting the same message:

  Please type in your pass code.

  It was enough to make him want to pull all his hair out.

  His Bluetooth crackled. “Enrique?”

  Enrique tapped his ear.

  “Paulson!”

  “Where are you?” Paulson’s voice sounded far away.

  “I’m at The Vault.”

  “What?! It’s still there?”

  “There’s been a complication. We can’t find James.”

  Static crackled. Paulson said something that Enrique couldn’t hear.

  Savic walked into the room. “A car is at the gate. Three men. We may need to take them out.”

  Enrique tapped his Bluetooth. Still only static. He looked at Savic. “Wait, hold on. What did you say?”

  “A car is at the gate. Looks like authorities. Cops… maybe feds? If they try and enter I’m giving my men the order.”

  “No, that’s the last thing we need to do. Let me handle it. If they come through, I’ll go out and talk to them.”

  Savic raised an eyebrow. “And say what to them?”

  “I’m going to explain everything is cool. Get them to go away. Last thing we need is for them to call for backup. You said one car right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they’re just fishing.”

  Savic looked annoyed.

  Paulson’s voice interrupted. “Enrique!”

  “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah. Why the fuck is The Vault still there?”

  “Listen. I need you here.”

  Enrique started talking quickly. Paulson took charge of the conversation, as he was prone to do.

  Enrique nodded, grimly agreeing to the new plan. “Got it. When you get here.” He looked up at Savic, but Savic was gone.

  Oh fuck, he better not be…

  83

  THEY had him. It was certain this time. This insect that had been biting them under the collar was about to be squashed like the insignificant gnat it was.

  Savic’s men converged. They’d worked together for years. The Solntsevskaya brotherhood in many respects had more discipline than special branches of the Russian military, such as Spetznaz.

  They’d been hardened with death and cold steel. All of them had seen hand to hand combat. Using knives or shivs was something they’d done at an early age. The streets of Moscow were an unsympathetic mother. They’d suckled its teat. Learned the ways of cruelty and iron will.

  They knew how to hunt and kill. Whatever the directive. They would carry it out with cold efficiency. The Solntsevskaya brotherhood had many rules, which kept its members in line. To a man, they would not hesitate to take someone out. Whatever was asked of them they’d do.

  Rape. Maim. Dismember. Whatever. It was all the same to them.

  These men were not married. Marriage was forbidden. Children were forbidden.

  They could have mistress, but their family was the brotherhood. Women were only to meet their basic carnal needs. Love was not something they knew. Love was considered soft. These men were not soft in any way. They saw the world through a much different eye.

  A man was only as good as his reputation. Any erosion of his strength, any perception of weakness was anathema to each of these men.

  Such was Yuri’s world.

  He was near the front. His head still throbbed with tightness and pain from being knocked out earlier. He was not in a pleasant mood. He’d been humiliated by a súka. A blován. He was not about to let this one go. This man was nothing, and had invited scorn and ridicule on Yuri.

  Yuri seethed.

  His comrades and he entered a large room. There were banks of seats, arranged almost like an auditorium, fanning out from a small raised platform. On the raised dais was their quarry.

  This nothing of a man. Yuri’s jaw tightened.

  The man had a gun. The same gun he’d taken from him. The man’s soft face had a look of surprise. Not fear, which was unusual.

  The man put down the gun. He raised his hands slowly. “I give up. You have me. Take me…”

  Yuri sneered. Fuck instructions. He unloaded his gun, firing multiple shots at the puny súka in front of him.

  Blam!
Blam! Blam!

  More gunshots. His comrades opened fire, as well.

  Hot steel. The wings of death flew. They hit their mark.

  The noise was deafening.

  84

  SAVIC’S right hand man, a man named Motka, screamed, trying to be heard above the din. The gunshots in the enclosed space were amplified and created an unbearable noise.

  “OstýD! Hold it! Hold it!”

  The men stopped firing, but it was too late. A barrage of bullets that would have taken down a rhino had already been unleashed.

  Motka knew what this meant. This was not good. Savic had been very stern. The man was to be taken alive. Alive! He was not to be killed.

  Motka looked at his men. He cursed. But it was too late to take back what had happened.

  He looked at the man who had been shot. Da nu! The man was still standing.

  He blinked, and the man had a gun in his hand. Motka fumbled for his weapon, but the man was already setting his pistol down.

  The man raised his hands slowly. “I give up. You have me. Take me to Enrique.”

  What?

  Motka walked up to the platform. He put out his hand and it went through the man. The man wasn’t real. He was…

  A ghost?

  No.

  Something else.

  “What is this?”

  Motka looked up at the ceiling towards a series of bright colored lights. They were all focused towards the same spot; exactly where the man was standing. The lights were creating a three-dimensional holographic image.

  Lípa. What type of technology was this?

  Motka frowned. “Fan out… find him. This time keep him alive, or you answer to me.”

  85

  THE noise could only be one thing. The Vault had thick walls and thicker insulation. Though faint, those were definitely gunshots.