Matt Drake 8 - Last Man Standing (14 page)

Drake remembered the Pythian name.
He’d considered them a continuation of the Shadow Elite, nothing more. “These guys have some kind of master plan?”

“They do.” Blackbird nodded. “But I have said too much already. Now is not the time.
Will you free us?”

Drake had been aware that Blackbird’s cohorts were rising, and that they all stood immobile, non-threatening.
The other Israelis hadn’t even brought a knife to the party.

“You endangered innocents. Terrori
zed them.”

Blackbird chuckled. “Thieves
,” he said. “Do you think we would be so amateur as to smash that door? Did the Swede let them go?”

Drak
e glanced at Dahl, who spread his hands. “It seems so.”

“Well, they won’t come back in a hurry.”

Drake made the decision. “And neither will you. Leave now. Leave the town, leave the country. But stay in touch. We might be able to help each other.”

“We will speak again.” With that Blackbird and his team vacated the supermarket. Drake looked around.

“Didn’t see that coming.”

A new figure entered through the broken doors. Drake almost launched an attack before seeing it was Michael Crouch, back from the field.

“Why on earth are you all standing around?” he asked. “Don’t you know? It’s oh six hundred hours. Coyote has joined the fight.”

Coyote made ready, and entered the dark streets. The field had been narrowed, the cream had risen to the top. Only SPEAR, Beauregard, Crouch and possibly Blackbird remained, though Coyote suspected several unscripted antics had been played out amongst some of the contestants throughout the night.

It mattered not. The endgame was coming.
And Coyote was on the hunt.

She checked her equipment, particularly the tracking device. An accumulation of dots were flashing over by the supermarket, but they were already on the move.
Her own device was a little more sophisticated than the others—enabling her to upload data onto the system. Such was her intent now as she stopped among the town’s many gravestones under a coal-black sky.

“As promised
,” she whispered to the night.

The tournament’s most lucrative take-down (her own choice of course), masked the screen and tapped in a few commands. At first she
’d been reluctant to trial Tyler Webb’s nano-vests, but when Kovalenko had failed the first test run in the tunnels beneath DC, Coyote had risen to the new challenge. Granted, they were strapped this time to the bodies of four unfortunate civilians instead of President Coburn, but that hardly mattered to her. Webb was influential, powerful, and intent on ruling the world. Coyote would gain the most formidable asset of her career if she tested them for him.

Of course, why
me? Why here and now?
She harbored the smidgen of an idea that
she
was being tested, as Webb tested all his allies, rather than the vests.

She tapped out a quick message on her burner phone, then sent it via text to the remaining contestants.

Coyote engaged. Nano-vests live. Look for the four green dots. Two hours to detonation—what fun!

That should get Drake tripping. The Yorkshireman
was a big fan of the innocent, he hated getting anyone dragged in that shouldn’t be there. And he had every right to feel that way, of course. Many people that loved military men and women were innocent, and many of them died.

Coyote flashed back once again to the night his wife died. Coyote
tended and nurtured an inner garden—or pit of despair—where all her worst regrets were buried. Alyson Drake was one of the biggest. And it wasn’t simply her death, or the accident of it; there was much more to the entire incident than that.

It was the only time as Coyote that Shelly Cohen had thought about giving up her evil persona. The closest she ever came. A last flirtation with redemption. The decision hung in the balance, a guillotine hanging by a frayed thread, and when the blade dropped it mapped out the rest of her life.

Good or evil?

Fate had taken all choice away from her
. Shelly Cohen became Coyote forever on that horribly significant night. The façade had consumed her, eating away morals like a maggot devouring flesh. Now, the flashing green dots before her represented just that—dots. A means to an end. They were about as human to her mind as the piece of plastic they transmitted from.

Real people? She killed real people for breakfast.

With the text message sent, Coyote regarded her own tracking device. Another improvement was that hers updated in real-time, not every twelve minutes as the SPEAR team and Beauregard’s did. She watched now as four red dots moved quickly toward one of the green ones. How predictable. How admirable.

How insane.

The name of her tournament was Last Man Standing. It was time to claim the title.

Torsten Dahl read Coyote’s text message with a shake of his head. The sheer madness of some people blew his mind. True, he had earned the nickname ‘The Mad Swede’ after performing more than one death-defying feat of bravery in the heat of battle, but this was a whole different league. This was psychopathic and murderous, not even warfare. If this Coyote had ever possessed a heart, it had long since crumbled to ash.

Dahl was a spontaneous man. Given to sudden heroic deeds and hair-raising stunts in battle, he was also prone to crazy, impulsive acts on his family days. Anything from jumping into swimming pools, fully clothed, and getting Johanna, the kids and himself thrown out of their hotel, to impromptu fifty-mile mad dashes for specialist ice cream. It was his crazy, unplanned side that Johanna
had originally fallen in love with, though not when she heard he applied the same methods in the Army too.

He tended to keep that part quiet.

They were a happy, fit family. Dahl had met his wife at the gym. His regimen impressed her; his muscles too. When she heard him speak she backed away, wary, no doubt thinking him some kind of shiny-arse local with a rich daddy and a handful of procured well-paid jobs to peruse.

Actually, Dahl kept it quiet from everyone except her that he
’d dropped out of a private school to join the Army. A disappointment to his dad. But he hated the regime, the corruption, the back-slapping, the boys-own mentality it all led to. Several times he’d almost mentioned it to Drake, but secretly enjoyed the one-upmanship it gave him over the Yorkshireman—even if he was the only one that knew it. The Army had made him, molded him, and given him real purpose.

Recently, since the Odin affair, Dahl had been wavering a little. The SPEAR missions were so deadly, so potentially lethal, but also among the most important that any team anywhere in the world were running right now.

But family came first.

Could he manage the best of both worlds? Possibly, but the sheer risk endemic in their missions and the power of their enemies made him wo
nder time and again what young Isabella and Julia would do if they heard their mad daddy had died.

He couldn’t do it to them. But the missions kept coming. Each more crucial than the last. And now there was talk of Pandora and a new order and
, beyond that, the greatest most immeasurable discovery of the ages.

Dahl breathed in.
Time to stop relaxing and get his mind back on mission. It was best to confront these things at the right time, a time that was clearly not now. He would store it and move on. Johanna and the kids were already in DC. Maybe a trip to the White House was in order.

Then he thought better of it. With his track record
in impulsiveness, walking around one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the world with your wife and kids in tow probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

Disney then,
he thought. What could possibly go wrong in a land of mice and ducks, pirates and princesses, cars and planes?

He wondered if the guy
that played Goofy had ever experienced a half-nelson.

Karin Blake tapped away at her keyboard like a turbo-charged woodpecker; at first struggling to give the job her full attention, but gradually slipping into that geek power mode she loved. The brainwaves were surging, the ideas flicking and flashing like a firework show. Very quickly the screen and the cyber world became her only focus.

Komodo interrupted only occasionally
. “How does this expert of theirs carry around a computer powerful enough to take this one on?”

Karin glanced up. The workstation she
’d been presented with consisted of several hard-drives, wraparound screens and split-screening. It practically hummed a hacker’s melody. She shrugged. “You can build a performance PC these days with a relatively small footprint, thanks to new ranges like the Mini-ITX motherboard. The liquid cooling solutions are nothing short of dramatic. An ultimate hacker’s rig can be easily disguised as a suitcase. It’s ugly but perfect.”

“
Gotcha. But how do they get so good, these cyber geeks?”

“Could be a hundred ways. Most likely is that he’s ex-government. Did you know that DARPA built a mini-internet of their own a few years ago? A virtual internet as a test
bed for cyberwarfare. They simulated different attack scenarios and came up with new defenses.”

“Didn’t DARPA create the
Internet in the ‘60s?”

“Yes.
So just imagine what they’re up to now.”

“So this guy is one of those?”

Karin shrugged. “I don’t know. They were called ‘cyberwarriors’. I guess I could ask him.”

“You two are just gonna
—schmooze.”

“Not really. This is war. This is
my
fight.” Karin clicked her fingers. “Circuit Girl is back in action. I may not wear a flak jacket or fire a Glock, but I have a hard drive and I’m damn willing to use it.”

“How ya gonna get in there without him noticing?”

“Unlikely that I will. First, we learn the battlefield. Then, we employ methods on infiltration. Then it’s attack or a covert op, exfiltration, and killing the bastard’s foothold.”

Karin
pointed at the screen. “The objective is to disable him. Shut his grid down. Then, our soldiers in the field can act. We’ll do a ‘Pearl Harbor’ on him since I don’t have a virus at hand.”

“A Pearl Harbor?”

“Hacker phrase named after . . . well, you know what it’s named after, T-vor. It’s a massive cyberattack on one or many computers, leading to infiltration then sabotage. We’ll take him right out of the game.”

Komodo squeezed her shoulder. Karin watched his face in the reflection of her screen, enjoying th
e slight smile that rested there. This was just what she needed.

“Did you know?”
she said as she tapped and rolled her chair from screen to screen, stopping occasionally to sip coffee, keeping all the progressing information ticking over in her mind. “Cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism are now considered as much an act of war as the real thing. Every major defense agency is hiring teams of cyberwarriors. MI6 recently infiltrated an Al Qaeda website and replaced the recipe for a pipe bomb with a recipe for making cupcakes.” She laughed. “Strange but true.”

“A growing enterprise
,” Komodo noted.

“Everyone is conducting cyberwar
games these days,” Karin said. “Banks. Energy companies. Countries. Retailers and gaming firms. Social media organizations.”

“What’s that?” Komodo pointed at one of the screens, toward a newly emerging pulsing yellow ball of energy.

“That’s him,” Karin breathed. “I figured he had to be wireless. No hard-wiring in the field. Just a matter of casting the net and locating the signal with the cleverest arrangement of protocols. There’s only one. And it’s got more firewalls than Vesuvius in its heyday. Here goes.”

She
tapped and weaved steadily, finessing the connection as much with her body as her mind. Slinking over to a master hacker’s subnet wasn’t exactly easy, but if he responded like any other good hacker then, at first, he should monitor and watch the penetration, probably hoping he could infiltrate the infiltrator and hide inside her own systems. Karin had already employed a deceive program, which deployed multiple fake systems that the hacker might waste time seeking out. It was all just a ploy to gain enough time to shut the bastard right down.

Karin couldn’t be too careful. Whilst she
’d been out of the hacking game for some time now, her old signature—her method of operating—might still be recognized by a select few, and subsequently lead right back to her. If a master hacker knew your identity he’d have a better chance of defeating you in the cyber-theater of warfare. The militarization of cyberspace was not exclusive to governments and powerful organizations; it was still in the steady hands of the geek.

I
f the hacker detected her, his options were many and varied. Confusion. Surprise. Deception. Stimulation. Blockading. All viable options to effectively handle a penetration. Karin launched her probe, sitting back slightly, pausing to see what would happen.

Nothing at first. Her fists clenched. Her heart raced. This was the heart of the battle. Was he holding back, toying with her? Was he on the attack, about to launch? Was he investigating?

Now that she was in, it was time to attack. No covert soft option here. She played a concerto across her keyboard, effectively bringing up her prey’s system, and began a search that would show her his security protocols. To take down his CCTV operation plus his cell and hardline monitoring capabilities, she’d need the heart of the system.

As she worked, the screen to her right blink
ed. It flashed, it went dark, and then suddenly resumed, only now it displayed the head and shoulders of a rather angry looking man.

Karin gawped. “Christ, how did he do that? And shit, I know him!”

Komodo blinked. “Huh?”

“I know this guy. Salami Bob, called SaBo for short. He was the guy helping Kovalenko in DC. The one
that hacked the traffic light network. He also used to be a cyberwar strategist working for DARPA. Shit, I think I just met my match.”

SaBo was indicating that Karin establish a communications link. With a few taps she did just that, then sat back chewing her lips as Sabo spoke.

“Good try, little miss. But I got you. I’m inside
you
now. You like?”

Komodo growled softly. “Say the word and this guy
—”

“First strike.” Karin waved the ex-Delta soldier away. “I drew first blood.
Geek like you; all you can ever do is talk.”

“Oh, I can do more than that.”

SaBo’s eyes flicked down as he entered a series of commands. Instantly, Karin’s screen wavered, the image warping, but then righted itself as a red flashing band warned of an intruder alert.

“All right. You got firewalls.” SaBo nodded. “Military grade at least.” He made a face. “Gotta admit I
am
a little undersupplied out here but you gotta make do. Especially with the big bucks they’re paying. Wanna join me, sweetheart? There’s plenty of Sabo to go around.”

Karin didn’t react, casually playing for time. What SaBo didn’t know was that she
’d allowed for this. Her backup plan was actually superior to her original one.

“How much?” She played for time as she suspected he was doing.

“Watcha worth?”

Karin
saw an intruder alert flash across the screen. SaBo was in their system. With a keystroke she wiped him out, denying access. He was gone in an instant. If he’d hung around a few moments longer she might even have been able to launch a denial-of-service attack; an attempt to make his machine and network unavailable to him.

“Straight out of the playbook
,” she scoffed. But she knew the playbook was a
living
document, constantly updated and improved upon.

Sabo grimaced, shoulders shuffling as his fingers moved furiously. He was planning something, of that Karin had no doubt
; his lesser attacks were mere red herrings.

“Playbook?” The mere insinuation seemed to infuriate him.

But she was almost ready. Karin felt a moment of pride, a gathering of excitement, and pressed the button that would launch her epic, destructive counter attack. Many years ago, whilst immersed in this grand game of cyberstrategy, she’d developed her own virus; a program that carried one hell of a destructive payload. She’d never intended to use it—seeing the creation of such malware as a challenge more than anything. To keep it safe and secure, and away from thieving fingers, she’d hidden it inside a mostly redundant network. The virus had lain there, dormant, all these years, just awaiting activation.

Karin could think of no better time for it than now
—an unstoppable attack that would wipe SaBo out for good.

It took a second for the old network to respond, a while for those old circuits to start whirring, but when they did Karin’s virus shot across the web at lightning speed.