The Code Within: A Thriller (Trent Turner Series) (3 page)

Millar had a lot of experience with botnets and knew how powerful they could be. That was something The Collective had consistently demonstrated with their various operations. He thought it was funny how tech jargon came to life. The word “bot” was simply shorthand for “robot,” and it was a form of malware, a term that combined the words “malicious” and “software.” Simple enough, but most people, he thought, were so intimidated by technology they chose to remain clueless.

As he pondered naming conventions on the train, he thought about how things could have gone so horribly wrong. The Collective, a hacktivist group he and Max had both been involved with, was known for using its technology skills to combat censorship and unjust oppression around the globe—at least that was its mantra. Millar had heard rumors about members of the group being sought out by hard-core criminals. Most members of their ranks brushed the warning off as a scare tactic the Feds put out there to get them to stop. Now he knew the rumors were true.

The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became—brute force and cyberwar would prove to be a potent and profitable combination, a new kind of weapon. The world had become a target-rich environment now that technology had woven its way deep into the fabric of society.

The hum from the train was hypnotic as he traveled farther into the city. Millar thought about how the train was controlled by a central system that was programmed to avoid collisions and keep people safe. He guessed it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to use the trains as weapons, just like botnets.

Etzy Millar had grown up in the midst of the Internet revolution, his interest piqued by those first bots, the ones that would combine computer resources to perform massive scientific calculations. Working together they had the processing power to rival that of supercomputers.

He knew the bots he had deployed were different. They wouldn’t be used for something as simple as a distributed denial-of-service attack, which in his world was called a DDoS. He contemplated the value of directing thousands of infected computers to flood a website and make it inoperable. If the people who hired him planned to carry out a DDoS, it would only be done as a distraction for technology teams, while the real threat slipped in the back door. They wouldn’t use the bots he had deployed. The malware he had been installing was much too sophisticated to expose for something as trivial as that. He knew those systems would be a part of their end game.

His mind drifted, and he smiled to himself when he considered the fact that it was porn that saved him from the violence. Porn was the reason his father always paid their Internet bill on time. The connection to cyberspace was what freed Millar from his hell in West Virginia and gave him a new world to learn and explore. The Internet was a place to escape from an abusive alcoholic.

His mood darkened when he considered how fast things had changed. Botnets were once a tool for nonprofits, operated with the computer owner’s consent, but now their application was being exploited. The power and capability of botnets had evolved into something worth killing for.

He was disgusted with himself. He had been distancing himself from The Collective in recent months. The growing number of random actions being carried out in the group’s name was bullshit, and now this. Millar hadn’t really considered the gravity of what he was doing before. For him, hijacking a computer was like borrowing a car when someone was on vacation. As long as you didn’t crash it, nobody was going to notice the extra miles.

It all seemed harmless until now. What if they used the botnet to do something where someone got killed? He felt a weight come down on him like a ton of bricks. Someone had died. Max was dead. He shook his head and thought about how it would be poetic justice if the people who hired him used the bots to crash this train right now. From what he’d seen, they were clearly good enough.

He questioned whether it was possible for things to get better. There was no way to explain away what had just happened. The police would find his laptop and the rest of his stuff in the car. The information on his laptop was safe. He had made sure of that. What really scared him was the realization that the walls had only just begun to close in.

Soller’s father was an extremely powerful man. He would put resources into play with capabilities well beyond that of the local police. On top of that, Millar had never seen a bot as sophisticated as the one he had been paid to deploy. His fascination with how it worked had become an obsession. Its design had piqued his interest. The way it was coded to proactively cover its tracks was nothing short of genius.

Until now he hadn’t considered what the requirement for surgical installation of the malware had meant. The people who hired him wanted its existence to be kept secret. It was now painfully obvious that he and Max were as good as dead the second they took the job. Killing them was a requirement. Nobody outside their organization could know the bots had been put in place. Whatever he had gotten himself into was big-time. He should have known. Whoever hired them had to have some serious cash. It would have taken a monumental effort to pull off what he had uncovered so far.

The only bright spot in the situation was that his curiosity had gotten the better of him. He had written his own piece of software to deploy alongside the malware and report back details about how it worked.

Millar was fortunate to have a card to play, and with what he was up against he could only see one way of playing it. He realized figuring out what they were doing with those bots was his only chance.

Island Industries, Brooklyn, New York

IT WAS RAINING. The musty smell in the alley was challenged by wafts of cigarette smoke as he stamped his butt out in the pedestal ashtray. Visually, this was the most depressing area of an otherwise modern complex.

Retired admiral John Simpson stood under the awning, his thoughts accompanied by the hypnotic sound of rain splattering rhythmically on the concrete. Cigarettes were a guilty pleasure but also a nasty habit, so he only smoked them sparingly. His eyes narrowed as he turned toward the metal door opening behind him. The looming conversation wasn’t something he was looking forward to.

“With all due respect, Addy, I think we have to step in here.” Reed let the door close behind him and took a step forward. “You’ve got an operative who’s been compromised,” Dr. Charles Reed argued.

The doctor was second-in-command at Island Industries, a clandestine organization set up by Simpson with the help of some powerful friends. It was funded by the spoils of war from his days as the CIA’s Director of Central Intelligence. The company was a security consulting firm on the surface, but the real extent of its power remained hidden below, like the illusion from an iceberg.

Reed, a tall, thin man with a light complexion, pushed his round glasses up from the edge of his nose and persisted. “You have to do something, you know I’m right.” Reed was animated. “You saw him. He had that look in his eyes…he won’t listen to reason here.” The psychologist shook his head back and forth and looked to the ground intently before he continued. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: their connection is too deep, and there’s no way he’ll let it rest.”

“Not here, Charles,” Simpson replied in a measured tone. “I know you’re upset, but this is not the place to discuss the matter.”

He was annoyed with the break in protocol. Speaking in the relative open about company business could have serious consequences. You never knew when someone might be listening.

There was no denying Simpson saw the rage in Trent Turner’s eyes. His top operative’s state was soon confirmed when he disobeyed the admiral’s direct order to stay in New York. He knew this would require action, but the course of that action was something he needed more time to consider. There was too much at stake.

Simpson had been running Island Industries for the past nine years and, although he would never admit it, his relationship with Trent Turner had developed to a point where he represented the son he never had. Emotion couldn’t be allowed to affect decision making in the world of black ops, and he knew he needed to tread carefully.

It wasn’t only the situation with Trent Turner that had thrown Addy Simpson for a loop. Reed had been working with The Island, as the insiders called it, since its inception, and his unexpected resignation a week ago had put a strain on their relationship. As one of America’s foremost psychologists, he had been an integral part of both the company’s selection process and the ongoing evaluation of its covert operatives.

This wasn’t a typical nine-to-five job. There were always concerns when someone wanted out, since the work that was done by The Island involved secrets that needed to be taken to one’s grave.

Inova Fairfax Hospital parking lot, Fairfax, Virginia

HIS ATTENTION WAS elsewhere when the car horn jolted him to attention. Aliaksandr Petrov was a perfectionist, borderline obsessive-compulsive. The trait served an assassin well. It helped ensure every move was calculated and efficient.

Something was off. Petrov didn’t feel the satisfaction he normally would after completing a job. It was something that bothered the typically unflappable Russian.

He wasn’t expecting to pump a 20 cc blast of air into his victim with the syringe, but he was confident the improvisation would serve its purpose and eliminate the man he knew as The American. A long list of powerful individuals would soon be celebrating this outcome.

If he were honest, Petrov was a little disappointed with how easy it was to complete his crowning achievement, and it had nothing to do with botching his first attempt. He had seen The American’s work at a distance and envied the way the man who had lived a double life as Ryan Turner had operated. For the first time in his career, he was apprehensive about taking on a job, but the contract’s five-million-euro price tag had all but sealed the deal. It was a payday that would allow him to retire from the game for good.

Petrov was hired because of his reputation, and the indirect way with which the offer presented itself only served to reinforce his standard operating procedure. The assassin took every precaution to distance himself from his client. With the target’s high value, it was almost expected that he might be next on their list, so he was even suspicious of his middleman. It was an occupational hazard, if you will, but the Russian knew just the man to sniff out the transactions. Knowing the banker his middleman had used gave him a money trail to follow. Knowledge was a form of insurance in his line of business, and he already had a lead nearby to check up on.

Petrov never expected there to be such a letdown. Rather than take a full week to learn the target’s routine, he was remarkably comfortable with cutting his surveillance short. He realized the value of killing The American sooner rather than later. Expediency could help keep his own head out of the cross hairs.

The assassin found a steep, tall hill in the adjacent park that dumped into the woods meters from the man’s home. His client informed him he wouldn’t have a problem getting in close, but for a trained sniper like the Russian, keeping your distance held a significant advantage. He took it as a good sign that nature had provided the perfect perch from which to take his shot.

For two and a half days he watched in awe as The American went about his double life without there being so much as a hint of his darker side. Sure, he carried himself with a certain graceful power, something that was easy for a man in Petrov’s position to recognize, but the operative was unbelievably careless, considering the impressive list of people who would like to see him dead.

His cover was working for a company called the IntelliShield Corporation that built high-end software to secure computer systems, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Security for the company’s building was too advanced to chance doing the job there. The risk of getting in over his head would have been too great, but it didn’t matter: the Russian was content with taking the target out at his home.

From the details provided by his client, he saw this as the perfect opportunity to use his Lobaev SVL. He had the rifle made to his specifications by Tsar-Cannon Ltd, a small company that afforded him the opportunity to keep his dealings in firearms discreet. The barrel was cut shorter than a typical sniper’s weapon, making the rifle easier to conceal and handle. Its shorter length was sufficient for a shot like this one, in the sub two-hundred-meter range. The stock was made of carbon fiber to keep the weight down, and it delivered its deadly payload from a magazine that held five 5.56 x 45 mm NATO rounds.

The low caliber of the rifle would turn away most snipers, but for Petrov it was a way to level the playing field, albeit slightly. Using a rifle with less power left no room for error. He thought of it as giving the target a chance. For him, it was a way to add some thrill to taking down an unsuspecting victim.

With this particular marksman behind the scope, making a mistake was never expected to enter into the equation. Everything would have been perfect if it wasn’t for that damn dog
.

Petrov prided himself on his shooting ability, but when he lined up the sight and squeezed the weapon’s trigger, something unusual happened. The massive Great Dane owned by his target affectionately nudged its head under the man’s arm. The resulting movement caused the shot to hit low.

The barking started immediately. The deep sound of the canine’s voice reverberated through the broken kitchen window and overwhelmed the once-still neighborhood. The Russian had never heard an animal project so loudly. Its cries of desperation punched through the night air as it stood guard over its master’s body.

Petrov was forced to retreat through the wooded park to his rental car and head back to his hotel in Tysons Corner. It was sloppy, but he managed to finish the job in the end.

Inova Fairfax Hospital, Fairfax, Virginia