by A. J Tata
“I will tell you that this place is burned and we’ll be lucky to survive another fifteen minutes here,” Mahegan said. He had no specific threat information. But he reasoned that if the hayseed sheriff could find Cassie here and if someone could hack JSOC’s Zebra application, then it was an easy conclusion that the helicopter would be next on the scene.
“Let’s go. We’ll find someplace to stay,” Mahegan said to Cassie.
“We could stay here,” Cassie said.
“Don’t be naïve. You heard the man. They know I’m here. He’s at the bottom of the hill calling in the helicopter. You want to find your parents? Come with me.”
“Like hell,” Cassie said. “Maybe I want to be found if something happens. My father hasn’t done me any favors lately, anyway. So maybe I’m really just out here showing the flag.”
Mahegan cocked his head, looking at the two women.
“Okay. This place is not safe, Cassie,” Mahegan emphasized. “I spent ten years in combat. I’m telling you we will not be okay here.”
Mahegan looked at Cassie, who was genuinely undecided. He could see the confusion on her face. These were Army buddies, she must have been thinking. Why should she have to choose? Isn’t everyone on the same side?
“Get used to it, Cassie. Not everyone has the same objectives,” Mahegan said. He looked at Alex as he spoke.
“You guys go,” Alex said. “This is my home. You’re always welcome, but Jake’s right. The sheriff knows he’s here.”
“Leave your phone. They’re tracking that, too,” Mahegan said.
“I’m not leaving my phone,” Cassie replied.
“Then shut it down and take out the SIM card out. Do it now.”
Cassie fumbled with her iPhone and a paper clip she had plucked from Alex’s coffee table, powered the phone down, got the SIM card out, and placed it in Mahegan’s open palm.
He stood and then began to walk toward the garage when he heard the motorcycles at the bottom of the hill, maybe a mile away. Less than a minute. They whined at full throttle, sounding like dueling chainsaws. In the distance Mahegan heard the distinctive whup-whup of helicopter rotors. Had Alex had been stalling for time while Cassie perhaps had been her unwitting accomplice?
“Go now,” Alex said. She stood and raced to the front door. “Jake, we need you to stay alive. Take Cassie. There are caves near the river.”
Cassie followed as Mahegan led. They bolted through the mudroom and out the garage door, made a left into the backyard, and began barreling toward the fence.
“The fence,” Mahegan said, taking Cassie’s AR-15.
He looped the two-point sling on the AR-15 across his chest. Holstering his Tribal pistol, Mahegan took on the plank fence at full stride as he heard the motorcycles squeal into the driveway. The helicopter flared overhead as it lowered and dropped ropes into the street in front of Alex’s house. As Mahegan scaled the fence ahead of Cassie, four men dressed in black SWAT gear and helmets slid down the ropes from the wobbling helicopter. Cassie and Mahegan both landed on a forty-five-degree slope covered with mostly eastern white pine trees that angled upward with the slope of the ground. The trees were mature, some reaching sixty to seventy feet high. Mahegan clasped Cassie by the wrist, and they powered through the forest. She pulled her pistol from her cargo pocket to have it at the ready.
“Follow me,” Mahegan said.
When he had studied the terrain from the sliding glass door, he had noticed a sharp drop-off to the north. He remembered from reviewing the map beforehand that a large creek or river ran just east of this location. Around the river would be rock formations, possibly caves that they could use as a hide position. The problem was that they had four men chasing them and a helicopter overhead, most likely vectoring the capture team to their location.
He was pleasantly surprised that no shots had been fired, yet.
They jumped about ten feet from a rock ledge onto a trail just beneath, then took two more similar ledges as they were straight-line navigating a series of switchbacks. The farther down the hill they ran, the denser the forest became, filling in with hardwoods such as maple and birch. On the last ledge before a long straightaway to the north, Mahegan held Cassie back with one arm and listened for the pursuers. The sound of men crashing through the woods could be heard in the distance, but it was not necessarily drawing closer. It seemed more lateral, to the south. The helicopter was angling to the south as well. The canopy on the trees was thicker the closer they got to the river. Birches, oaks, and maples with dense, bright foliage masked their movement.
“Let’s go,” Mahegan said. They moved noiselessly to the north, found the river’s edge, and kept walking. After two miles of walking upriver, Mahegan pointed out rock formations that gave way to deep carve-outs within the face of the granite. They had moved northeast and uphill, whereas for some reason the pursuers had moved southeast and downhill.
“Feel bad about leaving Alex up there,” Cassie said.
“Feel bad about the world. For all we know, Alex is the one who orchestrated that rendezvous.”
“Why don’t you trust her, Jake?”
“I don’t even trust you, Cassie. How would you feel if I pulled a pistol on you?”
“Probably not great,” she admitted.
Mahegan led them deep into a cave that was twice his height and wide in some places, narrow in others. They rounded a corner, and Mahegan stopped.
“Good place to take a break here. Wait for night and then move,” he said.
“Sounds good,” Cassie replied.
It was quiet in the cave. Mahegan had exceptional hearing, and he listened, acclimating to the environment, something he was particularly good at.
“Rotors,” he said. He heard the distinct sound of Blackhawk rotors chopping in the sky not far from their location. “They’ll have thermal and infrared. They shouldn’t be able to see us in here without putting boots on the ground. I’m thinking they picked up the SWAT team and have them on board again. Pine trees get up to one hundred feet. They can rappel with the one hundred twenty foot ropes, if they’ve got them. Otherwise they can drop into the river and come up from that direction.”
“You’re thinking out loud. Tactics,” Cassie said.
“It’s what I do. Think tactics. They’re after me, not you. But I have to protect you from the assholes who captured your parents, and we have to try to get back into the terrorist base camp.”
“We’re just two people, Jake.”
Mahegan said nothing. He looked at the roof of the cave, listened for the helicopter, certain they were scouting for him, and decided that he was in the best spot he could be for now.
CHAPTER 18
GAVRIL THOUGHT OF HIS DEAD NEPHEW’S BEST FRIEND, ZAKIR, AS HE stared at his bank of computers and monitors inside the small warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina. He knew that Zakir was somewhere in the mountains with a group of armed men whom Zakir planned to use to attack America.
And this bothered him. The mouse that roared, Gavril thought, shaking his head.
He had stringy black hair that he combed over his balding head. Fat and stout, Gavril was short, just over five feet. In his trench coat, though, he became anonymous walking down the street in Charlotte. Somebody’s unlucky uncle living on the outskirts. Indeed, Gavril lived just outside Uptown Charlotte near the dilapidated rail station. He could get most places he needed to go using the Blue Line metro. He would hunch over and wear a baseball cap, keeping the cameras off his face, which was important. In the black screen of the computer monitor was the faint outline of his tired, round face. He was hungry but lacked the energy to get out of his chair in his command post. Tired, Gavril was glad that they were near the end of the operation.
One of the most notorious Bulgarian hackers of all time, Gavril was happy to leave his Black Sea rattrap where he had taken in the three orphans, Zakir, Malavdi, and Fatima, and taught them computer intrusion skills. He knew bad things would happen when his nephew, Malavdi,
and Fatima were already in love when they arrived in Burgas as young teenagers. In 2011 as the Arab Spring Awakening was occurring throughout the Middle East, Gavril had warned against the stirring winds of revolution in Syria and advised them to never return despite Fatima’s unbreakable will to do so. Love was an enigma, he had told Zakir, Malavdi, and Fatima over dinner of kebapche and cold beer that day. And love or sentiment were certainly not worth going to the Middle East where madmen were leading bands of rebels fighting one another like some three-dimensional civil war. Go to the courthouse if you wanted to get married, he had told Malavdi and Fatima, not Syria. During that dinner a television news report had shown the U.S. commander in Iraq speaking about his strategy to stabilize Iraq in the wake of the Arab Spring.
“See that man?” Gavril had said, pointing at the television. “He’s an American general in Iraq talking about something he has no idea about. Peace in the Middle East? Who is he kidding? Stay away.” They watched CNN scroll the name of Lieutenant General Bartholomew “Bart” Bagwell as the savior of the Middle East with an “All-In” strategy. But the two lovebirds had forged ahead anyway with plans to marry in Syria that led them into oblivion.
Gavril preferred to manipulate the many 1s and 0s of the code world, away from the shock and horror of combat. Safe, secure, and air-conditioned, or at least cooled by a breeze off the Black Sea. On the ground floor of the Internet revolution in the late 1990s, Gavril saw his opportunity flourish with the stock markets at the turn of the century and then as companies with graybeard CEOs ignored the threat of cyberinvasion.
He had amassed a fortune in bank accounts around the world, most of which came from his participation in the great Carbanak bank heist from 2011 to 2012. Like an army of hackers, Gavril, Malavdi, and Zakir had been assigned the domains in southern Europe, which included the Balkans, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Spain.
One evening several months later in 2011 he was scanning the remote-access Trojan work and he looked at the names of the accounts from which he had stolen the money. One Swiss account worth $16.5 million was registered under “Bartholomew Bagwell and Yves Dupree.”
Gavril had removed his reading glasses, stood up, and turned on the small television on his kitchen counter. He always worked at the little dining room table, usually with piles of computer printouts and books next to his homemade keyboards and monitors.
He found CNN on the television and kept it on all day. Later that evening his curiosity was rewarded with a press conference given by General Bart Bagwell, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. He had just been nominated for his fourth star and was under active consideration to be named the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in America.
Ever the artist of remote thievery, Gavril was struck with a brilliant idea, but first he needed to do some spade work through the Dark Web.
He quickly called in Malavdi and Zakir and discussed his idea. They both agreed it was a good one. After all three explored separately on their computers, hacking through the Deep and Dark Webs, they learned that General Bagwell and Yves Dupree maintained a secret joint bank account that received weekly deposits between $100,000 and $300,000.
Of course the lay person, or even most expert hackers, could not see this information, but there it was. He was stealing from a French intelligence official and the commander of coalition forces in Iraq.
Secret bank accounts usually meant secrets worth keeping . . . and killing for.
“What do you think?” Gavril had asked Zakir.
“This is too good to be true, but all of our checks have confirmed it is General Bagwell and Agent Dupree.”
“Malavdi, are you in agreement?”
Malavdi nodded.
With that, Gavril sent an e-mail to Yves Dupree, whom he was certain was just beginning to notice he had no money in his bank account.
And Gavril was equally certain he would find a way to get a message to General Bagwell.
Now here he was in Charlotte, staring at a bank of monitors and live video feeds feeling at times as if he were just a security guard. However, he had been excited this morning. The television news had reported the thousands of vehicle accidents around the country. All from his remote access Trojan bug he had placed in the service software of many of the major car manufacturers and DMVs. And today, as the automobile companies tried to do their over-the-air reboots of the disabled vehicles, he was having some fun swatting away many of their attempts like tennis balls lobbed softly over the net by an amateur.
It was Gavril’s idea to not impact the emergency response vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks, even though Zakir had wanted that. After an argument, Gavril had reluctantly agreed. A year ago when he had planted these latent viruses in the software, it was a big idea. Today they had so many other big ideas, this one seemed minor.
He stared at the video feeds on the monitors in front of him.
Gavril saw the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his wife huddled in their cages. In a way, he felt sorry for them and didn’t condone capturing them, but this was Zakir’s plan. Zakir was a monster, Gavril had come to find out, and he was thankful for that. Zakir was brutal, lethal, and brilliant. Perhaps a psychopath, he didn’t know. But he did know that Zakir scared him enough to convince him to go along with the grand plan. Like most computer geeks, Gavril found comfort in the distance and separation between himself and his actions, which created a gap in conscience. He could separate himself from the silent crime he was committing when stealing money or planting child pornography on someone’s computer.
He watched the chairman and his wife try to speak to each other. They appeared to be weeping, reaching their hands through the bars in a vain attempt to clasp fingers. The cages were fifteen feet apart. No amount of reaching would close that distance. And while blackmailing the chairman had been his idea, Gavril was now suffering the unintended consequences of his actions. His extortion scheme had been a small brush fire that had turned into a raging forest fire. With each step, Gavril found himself and Zakir deeper and deeper in the byzantine forest of cyberwarfare, throwing punches and counterpunches, sometimes with precision and sometimes blindly.
He looked to the right at another monitor. This one showed a different location. Two men were chained to a wall in shackles, arms outstretched. The recruits had nailed the chains to heavy beams that supported the mine shaft in which they were confined. Both of them were white men, shirtless, gaunt. Gavril knew that the men had not eaten in at least two days, since their capture.
He looked at the next monitor. It showed just one man, naked, staked to the wall like an animal. This man had bristly gray hair that looked like wire. His muscles were honed, his ropey skin devoid of fat. This captive was near the other two but deeper in the mine shaft.
A dark place.
“A tumno myasto,” Gavril muttered in his native tongue.
Shaking his head, he turned to the computers that mattered most to him. He watched the root drives of several auto manufacturers as their amateurish cyberdefenders attempted to find him while also trying to reboot thousands of stalled automobiles. He played with this a few minutes more before turning his attention to the real prize, the banks.
He had already delivered to the five biggest banks in country the RATs, which he called “Plukhs.”
Five monitors on the top row showed the code from five banks’ information assurance firewalls. He had navigated each maze in less than thirty minutes, found his way to the root drive, and planted an exploding RAT that would send “baby RATs” in every direction throughout the system. From there, the Trojans’ add on code coupled with a web injection to lock down millions of personal and business bank accounts. As individuals attempted to enter their passwords, the code automatically changed one of the figures in the password. People would continue to try their password until they reached the maximum number of tries, and then the bank’s own software would detect a hacking attempt and block the account.
G
avril also employed a sweeping RAT that collected small amounts of money from millions of accounts, usually the remainder from a bank account amount. If the total was $7,302.59, the RAT would sweep the .59 and collect it with millions of other amounts from .01 to .99. Less intrusive and harder to detect, this sweeping RAT would then accumulate the funds into an external account in one of five new Grand Cayman accounts Gavril had established. The money would bounce five times until it landed in Switzerland.
In time, he and Zakir would have a fortune waiting for them after concluding the mission here to achieve retribution for the American Operation Groomsman. Gavril estimated their take would be somewhere around $10 million. Not fully restoring them to their previous level, but good enough for him.
Gavril pressed the EXECUTE command and watched the RATs scamper through the bank systems worth $5 trillion.
Counterpunch.
* * *
Zakir stood in the middle of his base camp wondering what had happened. In this action alone, he’d had seven men killed: his guard in the fire tower, two on the road, the rocket-propelled grenade gunner, and three others who had been advancing on the tower.
Who had done this? Mahegan, of course.
With the loss of the seven today, the two who were supposed to capture Mahegan, and the two military policemen who had slaughtered the general’s family on Fort Bragg, he had lost eleven of his original thirty-eight In addition, Zakir calculated, he had two men wounded. They would survive but were incapacitated. Nineteen remained.
His medics were performing triage. They were more than medics, though. They were doctors from Syria, educated at the University of Damascus. He had the very best Syria could offer. He even had some Iraqis and Chechens in his group. These were hardened fighting men.
While he had full confidence in Gavril’s computer hacking plan and Gavril’s ability to wreak economic harm on the United States, Zakir believed in his heart that to properly avenge the American government’s murder of Malavdi and Fatima, Zakir needed to kill General Savage, Jake Mahegan, and ultimately, if he could bring himself to do so, Alex Russell.