Off The Grid (26 page)

Chapter 56

Seattle, Washington

For a highly sophisticated and technological company that had pioneered wireless electricity, Rachel thought
StuTech was remarkably lax about internal cyber security. It allowed company-authorized computers to roam from building to building and share one large back-end network. An employee working in downtown Seattle could share files with one working in Los Angeles over a broadband Wi-Fi connection, as long as they were in a StuTech facility. File security within the buildings wasn’t a paramount concern because StuTech piggybacked its own network on towers to relay its communications traffic. Passwords were key, but they were also user-generated and thus incredibly vulnerable.

Before taking the train back to Seattle, she visited a Portland pawnshop and purchased a second-hand laptop with cash. She then stopped at a small computer repair store and with a little convincing, got the college kid behind the counter to re-set the configuration image on her used laptop to mirror that of her
StuTech-assigned machine.

All she had to do was punch in the network ID and an official username and password to get the new machine connected to the system. She got the idea from one of her co-workers whose
son’s school was closed last year for a holiday. Rather than paying for childcare for the whole day, the woman brought in a personal laptop and connected it to the internal network. The son watched videos streamed from the web all day in her office with a set of headphones glued to his ears. Great parenting? No. Nice budget savings? Yes. 

Her office hadn’t been touched in over a month. A jumble of envelopes and junk mail was piled into a mail bin in front of her door. She placed the bin on the table across from her desk, when she noticed what was on the top of the pile. It was an invoice from the wedding photographer that she and Luke had hired, given a deposit and never used. It hadn’t dawned on her that last weekend was supposed to be her wedding day. She hadn’t canceled the photographer. He billed her for the day anyway. She’d have to send that bill to Luke. Maybe she could get a frequent-bride discount for her real wedding, assuming it was still going to happen.

She hadn’t confronted Luke about the photos Lunsford showed her of him kissing Kathryn. Since he hadn’t voluntarily brought it up, she felt even more convinced that something had been going between them. Why else would he hide it? She’d have a chance to see them together herself soon enough. She could decide on her own what was going on.

Thoughts of her big day momentarily distracted her from the reason she came into
StuTech today. She hoped coming into the office before 5 a.m. would have given her the chance to get her tasks completed before most employees came in. She wanted to get in and get out with as little interaction as possible. So far so good. The janitorial staff barely noticed her as she passed through the breezeway toward her office.

She fired up her computer and docked it at her desk after unplugging the thick network cable that looked like an over-sized telephone cord. It was getting a strong wireless signal. That was good. She needed her computer to be connected to mix the signals.

The sheer size of the StuTech campus meant that running to the cafeteria for coffee was at least a 10-minute walk. Each section of the building was built with a small kitchenette that included several microwaves and refrigerators, plus a commercial-size coffee maker and two large insulated coffee stands with pumps at the top. Each morning the first to arrive was required – by unwritten rule – to get the first pot going, then return exactly eight minutes later to start the second pot. It was an efficient and well-respected system.

Rachel dusted off her New York University alumni coffee mug from her desk drawer and walked to the kitchenette through the empty rows of dark cubicles that belonged to the accounting and operations groups. She got the first coffee pot started and found a large bottle of powdered non-dairy creamer. She emptied the chalky substance into a trashcan, but held onto the bottle. Once the coffee was done she started a second pot and filled her NYU cup from first pot.

Brenda Mitchell was the executive assistant to the director of Mining Operations – not the hardest job in the world, but she made it more difficult by being an all-around terrible secretary. If her husband wasn’t a VP, she’d have been canned a long time ago. She was missing a key trait for any successful executive assistant – knowing when to keep your mouth shut. She was a gossip goddess, who knew a little about everyone and wasn’t afraid to share it.

So it was no surprise after Brenda’s boss, Albert Jackson had berated her for one infraction or
another, that she just had to dish the dirt on him to anyone within earshot. He wore a toupee. He still lived with his mother. And he kept all of his program and network passwords on a piece of paper taped underneath his keyboard.

She hoped Brenda was a truthful gossip.

Rachel strode into Jackson’s office, flipped the keyboard over. Sure enough, it was there. The critical flaw of any security system is that real people use it and don’t protect their passwords. She snapped a quick picture of the list of all of his passwords and usernames. Just as she was stepping around the desk to leave, she heard the floor squeak from outside the office. Before she had a chance to exit, a security guard blocked her way, shining a bright flashlight in her eyes.

“Come on now, get that light out of my face,” she insisted, immediately being the aggressor since she couldn’t be caught snooping around another person’s office.

“What business do you have in this area at this hour?” the guard asked.

“Coffee,” she said, handing him her ID card. He looked at the card, then back at her.

“This isn’t the kitchen Ms. Evans,” he said, realizing who she was.

“No, but it’s the only place on our floor with a hidden stash of creamer packets to go with my coffee from the kitchen.”

She held up the empty bottle of creamer in one hand and her cup of coffee in the other. A rectangular packet of creamer was visible between her fingers.

“I think Albert steals packets when no one is looking,” she said, as if it were a criminal offense to hoard condiments. “It’s like he’s saving them for the apocalypse or something.”

She stepped around the guard, not wanting to prolong the conversation anymore and then made a beeline for her office.

“I’ll look into that theft of the creamers for you, Ms. Evans,” the guard called out, but she was already gone.

Chapter 57

Portland, Oregon

The shipment from Moldova was shrink wrapped on four wooden
pallets. Each palette held four layers of foil bags separated by fiberglass sheets. The bags looked like packages of coffee beans, except for the armed guards encircling a convoy of forklifts headed toward the Dev Floor. There were no identifying markings on the foil bags or stamped on the pallets. For all Luke knew it really could have been coffee beans in the bags, he’d never seen how the ARC material was assembled.

Every employee on the
Dev Floor lined the rim of the sunken center laboratory and watched as the line of pallets stopped at the stairs leading down to the lab.

Luke was starting to get a rash from the wristwatch. He gladly undid the strap and set it down by a stack of books. He was standing at Amir’s desk, which had a perfect vantage point of the scene.

“It’s like that stuff is royalty,” Luke said.

“Worth its weight in gold,” Amir said.

“Probably more than that. You said this stuff came from Malaysia?” Luke asked.

“Moldova. They found some supplier over there that claims this stuff
will help ionize the copper rods in the tower and receivers. Beckman said we paid a fortune for it.”

“So, is this it, or is there more?”

“That’s it for the first shipment. I guess this is a taste test. If it works out we’ll be getting a lot more of it.”

“Can we trust this supplier? Why wouldn’t they sell it to
StuTech?

“Said they weren’t interested. They’ve got their process set in stone.”

“So what is it called?”

“A.F.K.A. or
Afka, but don’t ask me what it stands for, Beckman keeps calling it double-A. That’s sort of stuck with everybody.”

“As long as it works, I guess it doesn’t really matter what it’s called,” Luke said.

“After the show Beckman put on today with the reporters, it better work, or he’s going to look like an idiot.”

Luke picked up his watch and with a grimace, placed it back on his wrist as he walked down to the rim of the lab to get a closer look at the bags of
double-A.

Chapter 58

Seattle, Washington

Running into the security guard wasn’t good. She’d have to move up her plan a bit. Thankfully he hadn’t seen her do anything wrong and she wasn’t accessing a secure area of campus. Even the files she needed to get into weren’t in a secure database, but easily accessible if you had the right passwords, which now, she did.

Employees started to trickle in around 7:15 a.m. and by eight o’clock the building was full. After bearing through the obligatory, “Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” and “How was your vacation?” comments, she finally made her way to the atrium in the center of the complex and fired up her second-hand laptop and connected to the shared corporate Wi-Fi.

She entered Albert Jackson’s login information and a list of his shared folders appeared in a tiered file structure. The same folders were accessible to everyone in the Mining Operations group, as they were required to utilize the information contained there for their job functions. She was surprised at the level of detail included in the schematics and documents, considering their contents and obvious security weaknesses regarding access.

Rachel easily found what she was looking for. She saved the documents she wanted as PDF files and e-mailed them to an online account she set up for this exact purpose. Before logging off of the file structure she opened a web browser to the corporate intranet. The intranet was used for everything from timesheets to news alerts, but the most frequent use was to find other employees. Simply type in a name and the employee’s picture, contact information and office location appeared on screen. You could also search by office location.

She typed in Moldova and no records came up. Being more specific, she entered Arionesti. Again the search came back empty. Offices in the Ukraine, Germany and England all came up, so it wasn’t that European countries were excluded. On a whim, she entered in the name of her chain-smoking driver Reynolds – she didn’t know if that was a first name or a last name so she tried both. A grainy security badge image of Sebastian Reynolds appeared on the screen. The intranet page listed him as based out of Germany. His official title was Critical Infrastructure Procurement Engineer and he was categorized as working for a division of the company that she had never heard of - Seismic Integrity Operations.

She associated the word seismic with earthquakes, maybe that was why the ground shook so violently in Moldova. Then she got another idea and clicked on Seismic Integrity Operations to display a list of active employees.  The third name down on the list was Alan Grant, the American she met in South America who said he was studying earthquakes and fault lines for the Bolivian government. She clicked on his name. Sure enough, another security badge picture appeared on the screen, the smiling face of Alan Grant, wearing his blue Chicago Cubs hat, staring back at her.

A cold shiver ran up her spine. What was StuTech really up to?

Chapter 59

Portland, Oregon

With Beckman in the administration building giving media interviews, it was left to Kathryn to supervise the unloading of the
double-A, which was perfectly fine by her. Each bag weighed just 16 ounces, but the techs were carrying it down into the lab like they were bricks of lead - very slowly and one at a time. When they came off the pallet, an RF-ID tag and a bar code were affixed to the sides of the bag then entered into a computer system. The bags were then placed into several air-tight storage containers and locked inside the secure laboratory.

After 30 minutes, only half of the first palette had been emptied. Most of the employees had lost interested due to lack of action. Kathryn gave Luke a nod and he moved closer.

“Come on, we don’t have all year,” she said to the tech entering in the bar codes to the database. “I’ll take over.”

She wasn’t any faster. She entered the codes and then handed the bags to a tech
who carried it down the steps, then handed it off to another man. She cleared off the second to last row of the palette. They were getting into a rhythm and now working at a more fluid pace. As the tech walked down the steps with the second to last bag, she left the bar code scanner and picked up the last bag. Using the prongs of ring she wore on her right hand, she punctured the bag along the side seam, leaving only the bottom three inches of the bag intact. A slight dusting of the gray material wafted out of the bag. She brushed it off with the sleeve of her jacket.

When the tech returned, he did as he had for the previous trips. He picked up the bag and walked toward the stairs. Only this time the open seam of the bag gave way under the pressure from his hand, spilling its contents all over the tile floor and stairs. A huge cloud of dust exploded from where the bag hit the ground. Luke watched as the stunned tech tried to save the bag, but only managed to fall to his knees covered in the ash-like substance.

“You moron!” Kathryn screamed. ”Do you know how much money you just cost this company? You know how valuable this substance is! Don’t you? Obviously not.”

“I’m sorry, I-. I don’t know what happened,” the man said. “I’ll clean it up.”

“No you won’t. You’re covered in that stuff. You can’t breathe that in. Move out of the way.”

Kathryn pushed past him and looked up at the employees who had rushed to see what she was yelling about. Luke was enjoying the show.

“You, Luke,” she pointed at him. “Get on a Haz-Mat suit and clean this mess up. I don’t want these idiots to touch it.”

She continued to glare at the tech
who was forced to sit in the mess and not move, under the watchful eye of every employee in the building. His red face only got brighter and brighter.

Luke had some trouble getting the suit on over his arm cast, but managed to squeeze it in. He used a vacuum with a micro fiber filter to suck up the material. After going over every inch of the stairs and floor, making a smooth circle around the man on the floor, he had nearly filled up the entire tank of the vacuum. When left to settle, the line on the side of the tank read 10 ounces.

He brought the sealed vacuum tank to a secluded area of the laboratory, out of view from all but a handful of employees. He used a measuring cup to empty the contents of the tank into a Haz-Mat burn bag, which he placed in a second sealed bag and handed it over to a waiting tech, who locked it in a storage container. If the tech had emptied the contents, he’d have noticed that it weighed just over six ounces.

***

Luke removed the bulky Haz-Mat suit in the sterilization and contamination room. He cautiously removed the helmet with one hand and unzipped the jumpsuit, then stuffed them into a large bin for disposal. He took off his left glove and tossed it into the bin. He pulled his right glove halfway off, then rubbed his fingers together until he was confident that they were as clean as they were going to get. His hand was gray with the dusty substance. He got his first look at it under the light. It sparkled with silver flecks.

He folded over the top of the glove, sealing in roughly four ounces of
double-A, shipped directly from Moldova. He stuffed the glove in his pants pocket and washed off his hands before going back to help unload the rest of the shipment.