by A. J Tata
Dupree looked at the spinning skim display of the Blackstone software system and saw that in the bottom, the black-and-green image showed millions of customers attempting to access their accounts with wrong passwords. Either everyone had forgotten their password today or someone had hacked their system and was changing every individual’s password as it was entered so that customers would make repeated attempts, ultimately locking their account after the third try.
The number three customer complaint on the operations dashboard was customer wait time on hold. Normally in the one- to three-minute range, wait times were showing over thirty minutes and climbing.
Dupree called his chief operating officer into the office.
Chris Salisbury was a lean, serious man with a thick crop of brown hair and wire-rim glasses. He always wore his sleeves rolled up, as if he was constantly pressing his nose to the grindstone, which was usually the case.
“Yes, sir, Mister Dupree,” Salisbury said. He stood in front of Dupree’s desk with the three monitors.
“You see this shit?” Dupree motioned Salisbury around the desk to get a better look at the displays.
When Salisbury saw the operations dashboard, his mouth opened, he stuttered, and then he looked at Dupree.
“This is real?”
“I’m assuming so,” Dupree said. “Everything is imploding. This could be the second phase of the Internet thing they’ve been talking about on the television all day.”
“Internet of Things,” Salisbury corrected, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
“Seriously? You’re going to check my shit when you’re in charge of operations and right now nobody can access their account and nobody can get cash?”
“My apologies, sir. I’m still shocked.”
“Let’s meet in an hour. Go find out what you can and round up all the right people. Oh, and we’re being skimmed by a Trojan to the tune of about twenty-five million dollars.”
“You’re kidding,” Salisbury said.
“Actually, I’m not. We have an attack on our system unlike anything we’ve seen before. This will be public in about five minutes, so I need the team assembled and working this ASAP,” Dupree said.
“Yes, sir.” Salisbury turned on his heel and ran out of the large office, dodging the glass coffee table, sofas, leather chairs, and free-standing modern art.
Dupree pressed a button on his phone, and a female voice answered quickly. “Yes, sir?”
“Here. Now,” Dupree said.
Within a minute, Gail Weaver walked in. She was average height and slender. Dupree considered her beautiful, which was one of the main reasons he hired her for the public relations position. She was a University of North Carolina at Charlotte graduate with a major in communications. United Bank of America had paid for her master’s degree from the same institution. Two years ago she was an anchor for a local television station, where she had interviewed Dupree. He had just arrived from France, where he led HSBC operations. Somewhat of an international rock star in the banking world, Dupree took full advantage of his celebrity as the turnaround man and general counsel for UBA. After the interview outside of the building, Dupree had flashed his trademark smirk and asked her to drinks. Gail didn’t hesitate to agree, and they spent the night across the street in Dupree’s newly purchased swank condo.
Since then he had offered her a job, upped her salary twofold, and placed her in the top five of his companion rotation—his A Squad, as he called it. Rarely was an A squad woman not available, but on the off chance that occurred, he kept a few in the B squad, as well. Though over time and without a phone call or text message the B squad became somewhat stale. It was not uncommon for Dupree to meet a new woman, add her to the A Squad, and then bump an existing top list woman to the B Squad.
Gail was still on the A Squad, but barely, Dupree thought. She sat down across from him and crossed her toned legs.
“Yes, sir,” Gail said.
“You tracking this?”
“Tracking what?”
Dupree shook his head and thought that she was most likely going to be B Squad before the week was over. Looks had to be coupled with precision and intelligence. That was why he liked Alex Russell. She was a beautiful and smart woman, definite A Squad material.
“Our customers can’t seem to access their accounts today,” Dupree said with patience.
“You mean some customers or all customers?”
“All, Gail. Every single one of them,” Dupree said. “Come here.”
“It’s midnight. Are the IT guys doing an update?”
“Don’t think so,” Dupree said.
She walked around the large oak desk and stood next to him as she stared at the monitor that showed even longer wait times and more complaints than just a few minutes ago.
Dupree ran his hand up the back of her thigh, feeling the smoothness of her skin and her firm butt. He slid a finger inside her thong and gently rubbed her in the most sensitive places. She didn’t flinch. This was not unusual behavior for him, and often, he surmised, she enjoyed it. He always enjoyed it, and if it took his mind off the events at hand, then so much the better.
Her eyes fluttered at his touch, but she held it together and said, “What would you like for me to do . . . about the customer complaints?”
“I think we need a statement, because the press is about thirty seconds from calling us. The statement needs to be proactive, indicating that we are working on the issue and that the government warned of a possible large hack, that we were prepared, and that we are fighting it.”
He continued rubbing his finger inside her as she responded.
“I can do that,” she mumbled.
He quickly removed his hand and stood up.
“So, let’s get to it.” He smiled. “In fact, let’s call the press and make a proactive announcement that we have been hacked, that we are fighting it, and that we are requesting that the president declare a state of emergency.”
All of that was true. And he knew who was behind the hack. Gavril and Zakir, the two Bulgarian hackers he had yet to kill but most assuredly planned to. Like boxers in a ring, they were slugging it out over the Dark Web. What Gavril didn’t realize was that Dupree didn’t care if United Bank of America was hacked and lost all of its money.
But first he picked up the phone and called Alex Russell.
CHAPTER 24
ALEX RUSSELL STOOD AT THE SAME PERCH SHE HAD THAT MORNING, unsure of her ability to maintain her persona as Alex Russell. She had injected the last of her meager supply of PKCzeta drug into her arm when she went upstairs briefly while Mahegan and Cassie waited downstairs. She needed more. Wanted more. Had to have more.
But the more she used the drug, the more she needed it. Already, the trauma was creeping back in. Nightmares. Daymares, as she called them, hallucinations, visions.
With the cops at her townhome, she had asked the sheriff, “Am I under arrest?”
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Am I being charged with anything?”
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Have you found me helpful in this investigation?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have any further questions for me?”
“Not at the moment, ma’am.”
“Good. Then I’m going out for a while. You’ve got five police officers here. You’ve got a SWAT team in the valley, and you’ve got a helicopter up above burning gas.”
Actually she had heard the helicopter pull off station to refuel, she presumed, but she had made her point.
She had left the sheriff standing there slack-jawed as she backed her Land Rover out of the garage and punched the button to lower the door. She wove past the police motorcycles that were parked in her driveway, waved at the cops who stared at her with confusion, and then sped back to her concealed perch just as the sun was setting.
She shivered again, her mind unraveling.
“Valid target,” she whispered to no one.
She needed her boost, was jonesing for a PKCzeta protein inhibition and blocking shot. She craved the needle again, even hours after giving herself that shot.
Licking her lips, she watched as the men in black cargo pants and shirts massed at the entrance to the mine shaft. She knew Mahegan must be inside the tunnel. Why else would they be shooting a rocket-propelled grenade in there?
After the police had raided her townhome in search of Mahegan, she had watched with interest as the SWAT team first surrounded her vacation home and then entered after she came out with her hands up. She allowed them to search the entire house before telling the police that Mahegan had kidnapped Cassie Bagwell at knifepoint. She wasn’t sure why she had purposefully misdirected the police. She knew she was struggling with the bad memories from Operation Groomsman and no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t shake the demons that kept her awake at night.
Looking through the binoculars she watched men scurry into the tunnel, as if in pursuit. Had Mahegan found Savage and the others? She thought about General Savage and her love/hate relationship with him and his ex-wife, Vicki Savage—the now remarried and murdered Vicki Sledge. Alex would not claim credit for destroying the Savage’s marriage, though she certainly could if she wanted to. Savage was a righteous, no-bullshit killing machine 99 percent of the time. Alex, though, had met him too many times at his Wood Lake farmhouse for late-night discussions about the job, combat, continuous rotations into theater, and battle losses. She had become his “work wife,” which unexpectedly led to her fulfilling most of the role of any wife, including sex. Neither of them were proud of their transgressions, but neither were they embarrassed or ashamed. It had happened and that was that, as far as they were both concerned.
But Alex’s divergence from herself had been the catalyst for Savage to sever the romantic relationship. After Operation Groomsman four years ago, their liaisons had lessened until they finally ceased altogether last year. She still saw him at work, and oddly their interactions were not awkward. Two professionals doing their jobs, dedicated to their country and missions. Or so he must have thought.
The wind licked Alex’s face and she thought of the scrape of Savage’s rough beard as he would kiss her. She missed that. Did she want it back? She wasn’t sure. As she smelled the gunpowder wafting up the mountain, she was reminded of the shooting range behind the farmhouse and the storm doors that led to the COOP where all of this action had started a day ago.
Who was she, she wondered. Savage’s JAG? His lover? A murderer? A traitor? Alex couldn’t keep it all straight. She knew one thing for certain: She was going insane. Only the drugs helped her maintain any semblance of professional acumen in the office.
She felt her phone buzz in the pocket of her black dungarees and retrieved it. Yves Dupree. What could he want?
Sure, she had slept with him, also. He was a playboy and had a stable of women, but she also needed information from him. She knew things about Yves Dupree that no one else knew. She knew that he had lived in Paris prior to the November 2015 attacks. She also had been able to trace his rather complicated list of limited liability companies, one of which had cash withdrawals over $20,000 in the weeks leading up to the Paris attacks that had killed at least 130 people. And her dossier on him showed he was pivotal in Operation Groomsman.
She shook her head and said to herself, “So, Yves, what do you want now?” Lifting the phone to her ear, she swiped the answer bar on the screen and said to him, “Yes?”
“Alex, how are you?”
“Peachy,” she replied. Keeping cool and aloof, although difficult to do, seemed to be her best option at the moment.
“I thought I would tell you that we are being hacked in a big way,” Yves said.
“Define ‘we,’” Alex replied.
“The United Bank of America. UBA. Our customers. Our businesses. First there are kidnappings and murders of military leaders and their families. Then there is a remote access Trojan delivered by automobile service centers to millions of cars across the country, causing them to stop at precisely nine this morning. And now there is a full-scale cyberattack on one of the biggest banks in the nation.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Alex said.
“Right. I’m wondering where General Savage and his homeland security team might be.”
“I have negative knowledge at the moment, Yves.”
Alex continued watching the mayhem in the valley. She needed Savage back alive. She wanted Mahegan alive as well. She wasn’t sure what she wanted out of Dupree, except maybe money and another good bout of sex. It all depended on who she felt like being on any particular day. Her throat clenched a bit as she remembered a day and time where she was the focused combat JAG fighting the good fight for America. Now all that had changed, and she was talking to a thieving Frenchman, of all people, on the phone as she watched a giant clusterfuck happen in the valley.
How could things go so wrong? Had she forgotten something? Was her memory really that bad?
“Yves, baby. Stay calm. I’ll find Savage. Everything will be okay,” she said.
And she was crazy enough to believe that it would be.
CHAPTER 25
MAHEGAN ROCKETED ALONG THE SMOOTH FLOWSTONE AS IF HE were a space capsule plunging into the ocean after a moonshot. He had been underwater for twenty-four seconds by his count, unable to take a breath. He was vaguely aware that he was still clenching Owens’s feet beneath his armpits.
While he was an advanced swimmer and waterman, most people couldn’t hold their breath for more than thirty seconds without freaking out. His mind shifted to his teammates behind him. Could Savage survive? Owens? O’Malley? Had Cassie even made it into the river?
He was in a sudden free-fall. Mahegan welcomed the feel of air and water rushing past him. He gobbled a breath somehow, even though water continued to rain down upon him, forcing him downward. Opening his eyes was difficult. He was inside the heavy flow of a waterfall. The further he fell, the more he could see. Eventually, the faint relief of ridges and valleys, some lighter shades of black, some darker, came into view. The moon cast its nighttime glow through the falling shards of water, making Mahegan sense he was inside a twirling kaleidoscope. The farther he traveled from the lip of the cavern, the more the water spread and dissipated. He broke the first rule of the paratrooper and looked at the ground beneath him as it rushed toward him.
The moon was reflecting off a large body of water, which gave him hope that their fall would be absorbed by the forgiving buoyancy of the reservoir below. He crossed his feet and held his arms to his chest, clutching Owens’s ankles against his ribs. He hoped the daisy chain of people above him remained intact.
Mahegan’s feet hit the water, and he continued plowing deep, as if propelled by his team above. He felt Owens’s feet jar loose, and Mahegan opened his arms so that his friend would be free to kick to the surface. Though he was still torqueing into the water, Mahegan began flapping his arms to slow his descent. He needed to surface, find his team, and get them to land where he could oxygenate them if necessary.
Mahegan hit bottom, flexed his knees, and then pushed off, boring his way to the surface, splashing upward and sucking in a giant gulp of air. He felt the shockwaves of more bodies plunging near him. He paddled back two strokes as he watched Cassie fall into the water. He assumed Savage and O’Malley had already made entry. Quickly Owens and O’Malley surfaced with a limp Savage between them. Mahegan recognized their faces in the pale moonlight, the only glimmer of light in the utter darkness this deep into the mountains. Owens and O’Malley floated Savage onto his back. Mahegan could see they had him moving in the right direction toward a small slice of shoreline.
“I’ll get Cassie,” Mahegan said.
“Think she got hurt,” O’Malley said.
O’Malley would know. He was the last to leave the cavern before Cassie.
Mahegan dove into the clear water and saw Cassie’s pale face amidst the black water. Her sh
ort blond hair was lifting slightly from her scalp. Her arms were above her head, but she was sinking, not rising. She had the rucksack on her back, and her left arm seemed to have a chunk of skin scalloped out, a dark trail of blood caught in the moonlight beneath the water like a smoky vapor. Her wound could have been from enemy fire or from a rock cut as they were barreling down the tube. He swam to her and lifted her immediately. Grabbing her by her torso, he kicked upward. A bubble of air escaped her mouth. She had not done well in the twenty-five-second underwater portion of the escape. If she had been shot, most likely she would have lacked the wherewithal to suck in a deep breath prior to submersion into the funnel of water. He kept kicking with his boots as he reached for his knife and cut the straps on her rucksack. Holding the rucksack in one hand and Cassie in the other, he continued thrusting his way to the surface.
Finally cresting, he pulled hard toward the shore, where he could see Owens administering mouth-to-mouth to Savage as O’Malley held an AR-15 up at eye level, searching for threats. Even though his friends had been out of the service for a couple of years, their combat skills returned easily.
Reaching the shore on all fours, he said, “She’s not okay. There’s a first aid kit in this. Grab it.” He handed the rucksack to O’Malley, who rested the rifle against his shoulder and pawed through the contents. Mahegan stood and dragged Cassie to the sandy outcropping, then immediately began pumping her chest, followed by forcing oxygen into her lungs.
“She was shot in the arm,” O’Malley said. “Five-five-six round. Lucky thing. I saw it happen. Bastards came around the corner right when we were going under. Instead of jumping into the river, she turned to fire, grabbed the grenade, and threw it back at them. Ballsy move.”
“Stop her bleeding and I’ll get her breathing,” Mahegan said between heavy chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth.
In his periphery a few feet away Owens was working on Savage, saying, “Come on, old man, you ain’t dead yet.”