Brrr.
A Klaxon began screaming at him, loud and insistent. What the hell was that? Where was the sound coming from? He turned, put his back to the wind, and saw a tower in the distance.
Jay did the mental shift and realized that the Klaxon was his real-time override, back at his workstation. Oops. Something bad–the override’s threshold was dialed up high enough so only some thing really nasty would set it off. A fire in the building, a major system failure, the pizza delivery truck had a flat.
Better check this out quick.
Jay logged himself out of VR.
Friday, January 14th, 8:05 a.m.
Quantico. Virginia Toni was in the middle of a stack of electronic correspondence when her workstation crashed. One second she was dealing with a memo from Supply telling her that Net Force had exceeded its normal monthly quota of phone and virgil batteries, the next second the screen went blank.
Crap. Just what she needed, a computer failure-The screen relit then, only out for a second or two, but the memo from Supply was gone, and in its place was a picture of a man’s hand.
All of the fingers were curled down and held in place by the thumb–except for the middle finger, which stood straight up. The image rotated slowly on its axis, and there was no mistaking the ancient obscene gesture.
She heard her secretary laugh.
“What?” Toni yelled.
“My computer is giving me the finger,” her secretary yelled back.
Toni had a sudden sinking feeling that this image was not confined to just two stations.
It didn’t take long for her to learn she was right.
Good Lord. Somebody had hacked into the Net Force computer system and given the organization the bird.
This was bad.
Toni met Jay Gridley as they both headed for the conference room. Joanna Winthrop beat them there by half a second. Alex was already there. He didn’t even wait for them to sit down before he started in.
“All right, what the hell happened?” ” “Frihedsakse,” Jay and Joanna said simultaneously. They glared at each other, then both tried to talk at once.
“I found the–” “They came in by–” “One at a time,” Toni cut in, before Alex could say it.
“Jay?” “They got in through a subsystem in FBI Personnel. It’s a dedicated Direct Line used for submitting resumes and job applications. In theory, it’s not supposed to be cross linked with secure systems without gate passwords for every upload or download, but in practice a lot of times, somebody opens the link to supervisors looking for new employees, and they leave it open so they don’t have to spend five minutes every time they need to relink to send a file.
Somebody got in on that line and into our mainframe.” Toni could see that Joanna was eager to talk.
“Lieutenant?” “Our circulating antivirals caught the program almost immediately.
There was no damage to hardware or software. The rotating hand image was already on file, and it looks as if the hack was designed to get in, open that visual, and post it to our system as an EWS– Emergency Warning System–override. As far as I–I mean, as far as Jay and I can tell– nobody lost any data, and the virus didn’t do anything else.” “We’re running full diagnostics,” Jay added, “but I can guarantee they won’t find any more infection. This is nothing, a simple encapsulated program, the kind of thing a kid hacker would do just to show he could.
They gave us the finger. Big deal. No harm, no foul.” Alex shook his head.
“You’re wrong. Jay. This is a major hit.” Jay frowned, but Toni saw from her face that Joanna understood.
Toni said, “Net Force is supposed to be the guardian for the nation’s computer systems. If this group can get into our supposedly secure setup, how does that make us look? What kind of confidence is this going to inspire in our clients, when it comes to protecting their systems?” “But it doesn’t matter that they got in,” Jay said.
“They couldn’t do anything! Our automatics nailed the program within a couple of seconds. It opened a picture we already had in our files.
All the picture did was just sit there and shine. It couldn’t have done anything else no matter what. We were back on-line before most people even noticed it. It was a glitch, no damage, zip city.” “We’re not talking programs here,” Alex said.
“We’re talking politics. It doesn’t matter that the terrorists didn’t do any damage, what matters is that they got in. Even if you and I know better, people who don’t understand computers are going to be afraid.
Sure, they’ll say, the Net Force bleebs say no big deal, but so, if it’s no big deal, how come they didn’t keep them out in the first place?” Jay shook his head.
“But–but–” “Toni, see what you can do for damage control,” Alex said to her. To Jay and Joanna, he said, “Try and back walk this, see if you can get us any leads. I have a feeling this is going to get real ugly on us if we don’t short-circuit it pretty quick.
G.” After Jay and Joanna were gone, Toni sat alone with Alex.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yes, of course, I’m fine. It’s just all this.” He waved one hand to encompass Net Force and all its problems But he wasn’t fine, she could see that. He had been tighter than a violin’s E-string since he’d come back after Christmas.
At first she’d thought it was because of his little adventure in the desert that he didn’t want to talk to her about.
But that wasn’t the kind of thing to bother him, at least not as much as he seemed to be bothered. He’d come out a winner, captured a bad guy, no loss of face there. If anything, he came off kind of heroic. Men admired that kind of thing in other men.
She hadn’t asked about his visit with his daughter and ex-wife, he hadn’t volunteered, and Toni suspected that maybe the visit hadn’t gone well.
Even divorced, that woman seemed to run Alex’s life long-distance, and Toni hated her for it. And the woman had to be stupid; otherwise how could she have ever let Alex get away from her?
But it wasn’t Toni’s place to ask, not given their strictly professional relationship. All she could do was offer opportunities for him to talk.
If he didn’t want to do that, she couldn’t make him.
“Okay,” she said.
“You know where to find me. I’ll see if I can bury this where nobody will stumble across it.” She stood, started to leave.
“Toni?” “Mm?” “I’m going to look at a new car tomorrow–assuming the sky doesn’t fall before then. Well, it’s an old car, one I’m considering buying, assuming this whole place hasn’t totally gone to hell by then.
Car’s a little Miata, it’s in a garage in Fredericksburg, that’s on 1-95 a few miles south of here.” “Uh-huh?” “Well, given how much you know about cars and all, I was, uh, wondering, that is, I mean… would you like to go along and help me check it out?” Toni was stunned. Where had that come from?! Out of nowhere, that’s where! Her brain stalled, as if somebody had slapped it silly. For a moment, she couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even breathe.
Then her little warning voice kicked in, and what it said was: Oh, baby! He’s asking you out! Slow, go slow, don’t scare him off!
She managed a breath.
“Yeah, I’d like that. A Miata, huh?
One of my brothers had one of those once.” “Yeah,” he said quickly, “I remember you told me that, so, uh, your advice would really be helpful. You know.” She wanted to grin, but she held her face to polite interest.
He was like a fourteen-year-old kid asking a girl out on his first date–she could see it in his expression, hear it in his voice. He was nervous.
Afraid she would turn him down.
As if that was remotely possible.
It made him all the more adorable, that he was rattled.
“I, uh, want to get an early start,” he said, “so why don’t I pick you up about seven?” “Seven would be good.” “Uh, where do you, uh, live? I’ve never been to your place.” She gave him her address and directions, still full of wonder about this.
Don’t go jumping to conclusions, girl. He just asked you to go look at an old car, not for a weekend in Paris.
Shut up, she told her inner voice.
“Probably you should wear some some old clothes,” he said.
“It might get a little greasy poking around in an old garage. I’m going to take some tools and stuff. I might be able to get the thing running.
If you don’t mind hanging around while I try.” “No problem,” she said.