The Gillespie Five (A Political / Conspiracy Novel) - Book 1 (42) (9 page)

Chapter Twelve

Alex pulled up to the security gate at work, waving his badge at the guard.  Once through, he drove down the main road and turned right at the intersection of three small side roads, all of which led to other facilities. 

Stopping in front of a three story, non-descript concrete building, he parked in his designated spot and headed inside.  His mind was racing as he greeted several of his colleagues with a distracted ‘hello’ and continued to his office.  Once inside, he closed the door and began plugging in his laptop, trying to decide what he was going to do to keep sane while he waited for Jason’s response.  When nothing interesting immediately presented itself, he decided to finish working on the mind numbing tasks that had to be done and he had used to fill the past several days with. 

Alex took out one of his encrypted flash drives and plugged it into his laptop before logging in.  He then logged in to the three other machines at his desk.  Each machine got its own encrypted flash drive.  All his data – work and personal information – was kept on encrypted flash drives that only he had the keys too.  These were all backed up regularly on another set of flash drives, stored safely elsewhere.  By doing this, he ensured that nothing important was ever stored on a single device that someone might get access to.  And, if anyone ever got a hold of his flash drives, they’d have a hell of a time decrypting them. 

Alex knew this because he had personally developed the algorithm to secure his information, and then handed it off to several people to try and break.  Five years later, there were people at the NSA and other organizations still trying, and many who had suggested he submit his algorithm to be considered as the next ISO standard for encryption.   Which of course he would never do.  Alex didn’t create the algorithm to be ogled by strangers and judged worthy or not.  He already knew it was worthy.  He had simply created it for the same reason most hackers and coders did anything.  He’d done it for the challenge.

Alex had just signed into one of their office's many anonymizing servers, which masked his originating IP address behind a series of other IPs, when there was a knock on his door.

"Come in."

Bill Morrison, the company's lead computer forensics specialist, popped his balding head in.

"Ya, what's up?"

"Not much.  Just noticed you’re in late when you're usually the first one here, and that you seemed distracted more than usual.  Any news on your nephew? Or something else I could help with?"

Alex shook his head.  "Nothing yet.  And, thanks, but I'm good.  Just trying to concentrate and get next week's schedule together."

Bill gave him a long look before slowly nodding his head.  "Fair enough.  Well, there are donuts in the break room if you're interested."

"Thanks."

Bill began to close the door when Alex thought of something.  "Hey, Bill."

"Ya."

"We planning any stings or investigations with the FBI?"

Bill cocked his head for a minute, then said, "No.  Not that I know of.  There was supposed to be one a few weeks ago, but for some reason they went with another group. Not even sure if they executed it or not."

"You have any data on that?"

"I can see.  Why do you ask?" 

"Just curious.  Seems like I remember something in the pipeline and maybe that was it."

"Sure.  I'll send you what I have and ask around as well."

"Thanks."

Alex waited until the door closed, then began logging on to the many chatrooms he frequented as part of his job.  At this time of day the forums and chatrooms would mostly be populated by teens and people from countries whose time zones put them at night.  Countries where many of their problem people came from. 

Next he started a scanning program that checked for certain key words and phrases, and would alert him when it found any of these in the chats.  While the messages from each chatroo
m
scrolled on one of his three monitors, Alex turned his attention to the schedule. 

There were fourteen people under his management in a group of the NCCIC that served as a sort of unofficial ‘fifth’ branch.  It was a relatively new special response group that Alex had worked two years to create when he realized that there was a gap in the services the NCCIC agency provided.  It had taken another year after its inception to actually establish the group, time taken to work out everything from their official/unofficial mission statement to even arguments about
where
the group should be located.  But settling the last argument was a no-brainer for Alex, who already knew, after he had visited his brother, where he wanted to be.  There had been nothing like the ever changing views of the Rocky Mountains or the drives and hikes he’d had a chance to take during his visit.  All it took was a few trips for the people with the check books and some well-placed facts about the strategy of using Colorado and, five years after the initial idea, the group was thriving in Denver.  The agency had even brought in a few other people to represent the other four
official
branches of NCCIC.

Dubbed 'The Misfits', his group's particular specialty, and primary responsibility, was trouble-shooting any non-military government systems that may have been corrupted or compromised in any way.  It was his team's responsibility to cover the West Coast area and bring up any downed government systems, recover data, trace the root cause and try to prevent future issues.  If the problem was crime related, they would work with the FBI to trace the perpetrator and their method of gaining access to the systems.  At least that was their unofficial,
official
responsibility.  What they really did, he could never talk about. 

Had he not been so concerned over the disappearance of this nephew, Alex would have worn his usual smile at the thought of their covert mission statement.  There were many times in his travels to countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and Israel - among others - that still made Alex feel a bit like a kid playing spy.

Alex's security computer, isolated on its own physical landline, beeped.  Double-clicking to bring up the email, he automatically checked to identify the sender.  He was not surprised to find the sender was marked anonymous.  His group owed a lot to hackers who wrote in about potential security threats, ones they had usually already exploited.  They were called Robin Hoods, or greyhats like Alex.  Thanks to his job, he was allowed to walk the fine line between being a black and whitehat hacker without the risk of being arrested.  Not only did it help him do his job better, it allowed him to form links to key hacker communities and individuals.  This, in turn, opened opportunities for him to receive information that would otherwise be nearly impossible to obtain.  He was good at his job for a reason.

Of course the sharing street ran two ways.  There were many times Alex had helped out hackers when they got in trouble.  Using the handle, gr@yg@nd01f, he had helped run raids, alert some of the minor players to lay low when he knew his team was about to do a sting, and even helped bail out some hackers by pulling strings.  Though they didn’t know who he really was or what he did, gr@yg@nd01f had managed to earn a degree of acceptance and respect in the hacker community. 

Determining that this email involved a security issue within the NASA network, he quickly forwarded it to the appropriate group before turning to complete his schedule. 

Once that was done, he started checking into the various chatrooms.  In each group he had a different handle which allowed him to relate in different capacities in each forum.  He was in the middle of working with a group who was planning an attack on what he knew was a relatively innocuous system when his phone rang.

"Alex speaking."

"Simple alert script sending automated request to ISPs to access IP and location information."

It was Jason.

Used to Jason's penchant for cryptic speech, he asked, "Typical CALEA compliance request?"

"Yep."

CALEA or the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act was a provision put into place that called for internet service providers – ISPs – to install specific protocols and programs that allowed various law enforcement agencies to be able to track down possible suspects in ever increasing complex phone, internet and VOIP systems.

"FBI?"

"Maybe.  Definitely not civilian."

"So could Tommy have stumbled on it by accident?"

Jason snorted.  "The way a drunk stumbles into a bar maybe."

Alex sighed.  He was afraid Tommy might have been doing some rogue hacking on his own.

"Did he not use any anonymizing servers before he hacked the site?"

"Definitely.  But not enough."

"So how hard was it to get to the site?" 

"Slightly amped up child’s play."

In Jason speak – for who most hacks
were
child’s play – this meant that it was at least a moderately difficult hack.

"Anything else he accessed that might have gotten him in trouble?"

"It was the last thing he accessed.  Illegally anyway."

"Anything important on the site then?"

"Nope.  Only node on the network.  Obvious honeypot."

Alex swore.  A honeypot was any type of computer, data or network site that masqueraded as a legitimate part of a given network but was in actuality a trap.  In this particular case, with the honeypot being the
only
thing on the network, it meant that someone had set this up for no other reason than to catch some flies. 

So what had caught Tommy’s attention in the first place?

Alex thought of Tommy’s emails.  Since his email server was available online, all Alex had to do was get access to it, which had not been difficult given the circumstances.  Unfortunately, they hadn’t seen or found anything that suggested where Tommy might be.  But then they hadn’t been looking for something like this.

"Look through Tommy’s emails again.  See if you can find out what led him to trying to hack that website in the first place."

"No prob," came the reply.  And then, in a pissed off tone, "Stupid traps."

Alex suppressed a smile.  Jason had had a run in with the FBI during his teens which had landed him in juvi for a year.  He never talked about it, but it had definitely had an impact.  It had also landed him a job with Alex's team several years later. 

"Anything else?"

Jason barked a laugh.  "Typical teenage boy!"

Alex snorted.  So his nephew had visited a few porn sites.  He smiled, remembering
his
teenage years. 

"Thanks, Jason."  He moved to hang up but couldn’t resist his usual taunt.  "By the way, any luck with the encryption?" 

Jason grunted in response, making Alex chuckle.  He had been trying to break Alex's encryption algorithm for several months now with no luck and Alex knew it was getting to the boy genius.  Of course, if anyone could do it, it would be Jason. 

The phone went dead and he set it down, laughing.  It wasn’t the first time Jason had hung up on him.  Alex’s laughter was short lived, however, as he mulled over the implications of what Jason had just told him.  Turning back to his computer, he watched the line of chats scrolling by as he tried to decide what to do next.  If Tommy’s disappearance was connected with this hack, then maybe the FBI
did
have Tommy.  The fact that they had conducted such a sting without his team’s involvement, however, raised more questions.  But it also meant something else.  It meant that Tommy might be alive and, for the first time in a while, Alex felt the stirrings of real hope.

Quickly, he called his brother, telling him that they had found what they needed and didn’t need to worry about having to rely on Tommy’s friends to remember anything.  When his brother asked if that meant the FBI had Tommy, he simply replied he wasn’t sure, but they were going to look into it.  Alex figured it was better to let Ken wait for a little while longer rather than even hint that there might be a possibility and raising his hopes prematurely.

In the meantime, Alex had plenty of places he could start poking around to figure out exactly what was going on.

Chapter Thirteen

The call woke Barrett out of a drunken stupor.  Monday had been a crap day and he’d needed something to make up for it.  Glancing at the clock he noted it was only six in the morning. 

Snatching up the phone, he growled, "What?"

"Sir, someone's been knocking and poking around our trap."

"What the hell you calling me for?  Log them with the rest."

"Can't.  Their NCCIC."

"What are they doing poking around?  We canceled the engagement with them weeks ago."

"We're not sure, sir."

"Well find out.  Go have a quiet talk with them and tell whoever it is to back the fuck off.  This is
our
sting."

"Yes, sir."

"Anything else?"

"Sending the latest report to your fax."

"Good.  Call me once you’ve taken care of the NCCIC issue."

Barrett hung up, wanting nothing more than to fall back into the oblivion he'd just been ripped out of.  But it wasn't going to happen.  Even now he could hear the fax machine. 

This better be good
, he thought, as he headed over to grab the report.

He scanned it quickly, trying to ignore his throbbing headache.  But what he read made him close his eyes, hoping that his headache was the reason the words weren’t telling him what he wanted.  Opening them didn’t help though.  The words hadn’t changed.  The forensics teams had found nothing new.  Still no smoking gun. 

"Son of a
bitch
!" 

Balling up the paper, he threw it across the room.  A small end table followed, crashing into the wall behind it and causing Barrett to clench his teeth against the pain it caused his head. 

This only served to increase his anger.  Furiously, he began to pace, occasionally picking up something else up to throw. 

What the
hell
was wrong?  They
had
to be missing something.  It had already been suggested multiple times that maybe they needed to go back in and take the family of the detainees and
their
computers - despite the fact that they had not traced any other IPs that had hit the trap at these locations.  Barrett was seriously considering it but pushed the idea away almost as soon as he thought it.  No.  That wasn’t the answer.  Something wasn’t right.  But
what,
he couldn’t imagine. 

Grabbing a bottle of Jack, he opened it and took a few swigs.  Something was definitely not right. They had run all the diagnostics they could.  They had interrogated the group with no results and even the
esteemed
doctor had accomplished nothing so far.  And, no matter how he tried, he could still not get any answers or direction from the people who'd hired him.  And with time running out, and now people from other government divisions poking around, the doubts he had begun to have several days before were growing.

He sighed, taking a few more swallows of Jack.  He knew that it was time that he did the one thing he had avoided and should have done days ago.  He was going to have to call a meeting of all of the players and tell them they needed to start over with a new group.  But the idea made his stomach twist in knots.  The last thing he wanted to do was tell his backers, the Director of the FBI, and Gillespie, that they needed to start over.

Barrett took another drink and then yawned.  The more he thought about it, the more he realized it probably could wait just a
few
more days.  Maybe putting the group of detainees together, as the doctor had suggested, would net them something.  He doubted it, but it was something to hold on to.

He yawned again.  Then began to feel slightly better when he realized how large the list of offenders had gotten and was still growing.  Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to pull in some major hauls from that list.  All it would take was a little more research and maybe a slightly different approach than they’d used with this group. 

When the third yawn caught him, Barrett decided he could start checking into this approach later in the morning.  Maybe they would even have some more people added to the list by then. 

And the more the merrier
, he thought, as he decided to head back to bed.

01101101011100000110111101110011011100110110100101100010

Within minutes of Barrett’s head hitting the pillow, another alert was triggered from a location a thousand miles away.  Billy, a precocious thirteen year old - still running on the thrill of a hacker movie he had watched - was searching for more information about hackers and hacking.  He had been practicing, and remembered that someone had challenged him to try and hack a certain FBI website.  While Barrett had been fuming and drinking, the thirteen year old had been coding.  When the warning message finally popped up on Billy’s monitor, he let out a loud ‘whoot’ and quickly sent a Snapchat of the screen to all of his friends.  Maybe he would finally get some creds for this.  These were his thoughts as he heard his mom hollering for him to hurry up and get ready for school.

Several hundred miles north of Billy’s home, in a small D.C. office, the agent on duty noted the alert and waited for the local ISP to send the requested information to him.  Once received, he would add it to the growing number of people they were monitoring but had not yet moved on.  There would be enough time for that after they had decided how to handle the high profile group they already had in their possession.  Once precedence had been established that would change things forever. 

Then, the mass arrests could begin.