Zero control, p.2
Zero Control, page 2
“Yes, sir. I just uploaded them. You should find the links on your tablet.”
“Thank you, Kela.”
Rick opened the door to his office and dashed over to his desk. His laptop had computing power and installed software far above that of the average user. This was exceedingly helpful because he often worked late at night and on the weekends. There was no such thing as nine to five when you’re responsible for protecting military networks. He opened the software that allowed him to run a trace on the phone number that was listed on his call log.
“No surprise, it’s unregistered.”
He tried to ping the location of the last outgoing call from the line.
“What the fuck?” The screen of his laptop lit up like a Lite-Brite board. “That’s impossible.” Rick jumped at the knock on his door.
“I’m sorry, sir, but your meeting.”
“Shit. Thank you, Kela.”
He would come back to this later. Normally he would have chalked up the call to some kind of crank, but the voice on the other end of the line knew way too much about the internal structure of his division. Not to mention his personal details. Rick kept a zero social media profile for security reasons. His landlord knew he was in the Army, but not his specialty, his neighborhood wasn’t the type to hold block parties, and if someone asked his mother, she said that his job was computer repair. Not because his job was classified or anything, she just didn’t understand how to use a computer much beyond the basics and when she tried to get creative, she usually ended up calling Rick to put out the fires.
Rick grabbed his tablet and dashed out of the office. He had to cross the length of a football field to get to the Defense Information Systems Administration building. “Okay, let’s get some extra PT in.”
He took off at a quick jog across the base. Of course, base was a rather blasé term for the five-thousand-acre city that employed over fifty-six thousand people. Despite the elevated anxiety levels racing through his body, Rick enjoyed the fresh air instead of being cooped up inside. His watch vibrated with the two-minute warning alert for his meeting. Lieutenant Carpenter did not tolerate tardiness. God forbid Rick was troubleshooting a major operational issue when his watch ticked a minute over the scheduled meeting time; his cell would practically catch fire from the barrage of texts asking if he planned on joining his boss anytime soon. His feet nearly didn’t get the signal to keep moving when his brain registered the double bars of a captain walking in the other direction.
“Sir!” he yelled as he saluted the man. Fortunately, the officer recognized his haste and returned his salute with a “Carry on.” Rick could keep running with only the briefest of hesitations.
The building came into focus and Rick gave himself a few precious seconds to compose himself. Luckily the short run hadn’t been enough to get his heart rate up too high. He knocked on the lieutenant’s door at the exact meeting time.
“Enter!”
Pushing the door open, Rick entered his CO’s office. Not that he had personal experience, but he was pretty sure prison cells had more personality.
“Sir,” he said, snapping a salute.
“At ease, Sergeant Major,” Lieutenant Carpenter said. “I’m going to get right to the point; tell me how you’ve solved the problem of Oracle.”
“We’re getting closer, sir.”
“I don’t want bullshit excuses, I want results. This really shouldn’t be that difficult. Why some asshole is getting his rocks off by hacking our requisitions system is beyond me. What does this person think he’s going to prove?”
Should he say anything about the call he received? He had no real intel, just some nut job speaking in a cryptic code about a situation neither of them should have any knowledge of. Then again, if he didn’t speak up, and it came out later that he had advance knowledge, his ass would probably be booted back to private.
“Sir, may I speak freely?”
“Go.”
“First, we haven’t established the identity of our perpetrator so their motives could be anything. Is it possible it’s just some asshole who’s bored and wants to prove they can hack a military system? Yes, but what if it’s not? What if this is a test if you will? What if it’s not really Oracle they’re after?”
Rick felt the heat of Carpenter’s stare from across the room. He’d just planted an extremely dangerous seed.
“Do you have further intel you need to share, Davis?”
“Nothing actionable, sir.”
“What triggered this theory?”
“During the morning briefing with my team I received a call to my personal mobile from an unregistered number. The individual claimed that there was something wrong with a DOD project still in development. They said the problems we are having with Oracle are a test run for this other device.”
“Well, isn’t that just convenient? Here you are trying so hard to figure out what’s wrong and you get a call out of the blue from someone who knows the answer. I don’t suppose it occurred to you that this caller might be the actual hacker, did it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not to mention, how did this individual know who to call and how to track down your personal number? It all feels a little too convenient to me.”
Rick waited two heartbeats before responding but judging by the expression on his CO’s face, it was one too many. “The interaction occurred moments before this meeting. I haven’t had the opportunity to vet anything.”
“I don’t suppose this person said exactly what project is in jeopardy from the same mysterious person who gained access to a self-contained military system, did they?”
Rick had a choice to make. Did he stick his neck out further or retreat to a safer position? “The fire control systems for something designated as W7784.”
What the fuck is that look?
“Do you know what the W7784 is?”
“No, sir. I’m just reporting the information they presented me with.”
Rick glanced at his commanding officer, but as usual the man’s expression was somewhere between constipated and irritated. Rick did his best to get through his weekly meetings with the man using his best Zoom face. Then he’d go back to his office and do his job without the asinine input from a blowhard who did not know what really happened in the trenches.
“That will be all, Davis,” Carpenter said.
He snapped a salute. “Sir.”
Guess they would review nothing on the planned agenda. He was sure that there would be an email later that day asking for all the intel. He was so glad he spent time preparing the seemingly endless reports that Carpenter ordered at the last minute. It only took a few steps to leave the office, but his liberation enveloped his soul with exultation.
“Now, let’s go figure out what the fuck is going on.”
Chapter Two
Rick took a drink and grimaced at the bitter brew that the break room called coffee. He was on his fifth cup of the day and the likelihood of him sleeping tonight diminished with every sip. However, the hundreds of milligrams of caffeine flooding his system made the thousands of lines of code flying up the screen of his laptop seem to come into greater focus. He was a man on a mission and nothing was going to stop him from solving this Oracle fiasco tonight. The tools for a successful nocturnal mission were the caffeine and the music slamming its way through the Bluetooth speaker he kept hidden in his desk for after hours. Rick had no desire to be subjected to another meeting with the brass such as earlier.
Suddenly the lights flashed on and off several times. Rick jumped up from his seat training his gaze on the door to his office while instinctively reaching for his weapon.
“Good thing you keep your Sig locked in your desk otherwise my ass would be grass.”
“What the fuck, Masterson?” he yelled.
“Hey, I had to get your attention somehow! You were about to be sucked into whatever’s on your screen like Flynn! By the way, can we turn down the music?”
“Jarvis, stop music.” Rick commanded.
The instant silence sucked the energy of his office out like a deep space void.
“Jarvis? Seriously? You are such a nerd. How the fuck did you get it to do that? I thought those things only had four wake words, and that wasn’t one of them.”
“I just used an API to code a new skill and made ‘Jarvis’ the awake utterance.”
“Of course you did. Because that’s totally normal for someone to do after shopping on the jungle website.”
Rick let his expression speak for him.
“Got it. Anyway, now we can talk without inducing laryngitis. I felt the bass rattle the doors down the hall, then came in to find you sitting in the dark manically typing away on that machine. You rarely dive that far into the deep unless there’s something really wrong.”
“And you thought that the best thing to do would be to distract me? Makes perfect sense.”
Rick stood with his arms crossed staring at his best friend across the room. He and Masterson had been tight since they were both baby greens at boot camp. Over the years their assignments had occasionally placed them on the same base, but regardless of where in the world they served, they’d kept in touch. When Rick had come out of the closet after his switch to cyber command and walked the same sidewalks as his longtime friend, some had even thought that the two of them were a thing, but Masterson’s magnet only attracted the opposite sex.
“Well, yeah. It’s my sworn duty as your best friend to make sure you don’t get taken out by the programs.”
“Okay, enough with the Tron references. You know I think we’re officially the old guys on base. I made a comment about Goonies the other day and Kela looked at me like I’d lost my mind.”
“Hmm, what was the reference?”
Rick walked around his desk and propped his ass on the top while Masterson plopped his in the chair a couple of feet away.
“I was in here working and might have been talking to myself—”
“Which you often do.”
“Kiss my ass. It helps me think. Anyway, he said something about my head being in the clouds, and I simply said, no it’s stuck in the basement.”
“Vague, but any true connoisseur of epic cinema should get it.”
“I know! Then he asked me what a floppy disk was. You do not know how hard it was not to roll my eyes and tell him to get the fuck out of my office.”
“Shit, it really is official then. I was hoping it was just me.”
Rick inspected Masterson. A closer look than usual. The years had been kind. Sure his blond hair was lighter than it used to be and there were some new creases near his buddy’s blue eyes, but Tony still had the whipcord frame he’d always had.
“So are you going to keep stalling or tell me the real reason for the late-night visit?”
“I’m not re-upping, Rick.”
His mouth was drier than the Registan Desert. His ears buzzed with more than his normal tinnitus, and his hands shook as if his blood sugar dropped sixty points.
“What?” he whispered.
“I… I’m just… tired, man. The bureaucratic bullshit seems to get worse every year, and I don’t have the patience like you do. The Army has been the best decision I ever made, but I want something else now. There’s this company in San Diego that’s been headhunting me for a while now. I’ve been putting them off since I still had time until I reached my twenty. But they’ve been persistent and sweetening the pot ever since. I said nothing, but I was moments away from submitting my DD2648 a couple of years ago. But then I found out that I was being transferred here and I… shit man, I wanted my last post to be where you were.”
“I don’t know whether I should hug you or slap you upside the head. Obviously, I support you, I always would have.”
“I know that, and hey this way you can come visit me in sunny San Diego. I actually found a nice little place close to your folks.”
“So, what you’re really saying is that when I go visit the rents I have a standing reservation on your couch, and won’t be subjected to sleeping on a flower-covered duvet with ruffled pillows?”
“When was the last time you slept on a couch?”
“Last weekend when I passed out while working on personnel reviews.”
Tony chuckled, “And how did your back feel the next morning?”
“My cricks had cricks, and I walked like Quasimodo.”
“Exactly, which is why I, in my infinite wisdom, got a two-bedroom condo.”
Rick pulled Tony up out of the chair and hugged him hard. “I love you.”
“I know you do, now put me down you fucking ginger-headed behemoth. Jesus Christ, thirty-eight years old and you’re still built like a brick shithouse.”
Rick preened for a moment. He was proud of the fact that he’d stayed in as good of shape as he was. “It definitely takes twice as much effort to stay this way than it did ten years ago. You know I can’t remember the last time I had Mamma Roma’s lasagna.”
“Save the date for December eighteenth. That’s when my terminal leave is up and I’m officially retired. We’re going out to celebrate and we’ll both stuff ourselves with ooey-gooey carbs and drink red wine till they have to roll us out the door to our Lyft.”
“You’re on. Now get the fuck out of my office and let me get back to work.”
“Still having issues with Oracle? I can’t believe installing the scrambling chips on the tablets didn’t work. That’s like next-level futuristic cyber defense shit.”
“Right? You know it sounds crazy but…” Rick covered his Bluetooth speaker’s mic with his palm. “It’s like we really are dealing with some kind of AI infiltration and not a traditional hacker.”
Tony leaned in and whispered, “Why are you covering up your speaker?”
“Because he’s always listening.”
“Okay buddy. It’s time for you to lay off on the caffeine before I come in here next time and you’re wearing a tinfoil hat.”
“Hey asshole, I’m Army proud, not some Space Force nut job.”
“Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night.”
Tony may not be that far off but given the phone call Rick had earlier and the evidence he’d thought he’d seen in the coding lines before Masterson had interrupted, he didn’t think he was being as ridiculous as a Hollywood movie. He felt like he’d been moments away from figuring something out. It was right there, but he just didn’t quite see it. Almost like ghosting images on old, rerecorded film.
“You take away my caffeine and my Sig will be the least of your worries. Now shoo!”
Masterson held up his hands and backed out of the room slowly. “Try to actually leave the office at some point tonight, okay?”
Rick waved him away as he turned on his music again and sat down in his chair before snapping open an energy drink. The disgusting flavors slithered over his tongue but he knew it would keep him going for at least another couple of hours. The lights flicked off and Rick smiled. Tony had remembered his preferred method of working late at night.
“Now, come to me, said the spider to the fly.”
“Oh my fucking God, I found it.”
Rick’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he copied the lines of embedded code for the source of the breach in Oracle. It really was terrifyingly brilliant. He almost didn’t find it at all, which clearly was the intent, but the asshole responsible had messed up one tiny line of code. An inconsequential non-command line that was used as a part of the framework for the actual integration between the offsite operations and system server. If Rick hadn’t had every bit of this system burned into the back of his retinas, he wouldn’t have caught it.
“Kela!” he yelled through his closed door.
He heard his office door jerk open, but he refused to look up from the screen in fear that he would lose sight of his target. “Get Lt. Carpenter’s office on the line. I need to see him right away.”
“Yes, sir!”
“I got you, you bastard.”
Rick had barely left the office for three days. His team had been working their asses off trying to write interception code to stop the hemorrhaging of data, but Rick had placed himself in charge of finding the source. And now he’d finally done it. He got a whiff of himself and grimaced.
“On second thought Kela, see if I can get a meeting in a couple hours. I need to shower and change into fresh ACUs before presenting myself to the almighty.”
Rick transferred everything he had to a jump drive and sent his files up to the secure cloud before logging out of the system. He could clean up on base since he always kept a change of clothes in his office for days just like this. It was a good thing he was single because if he’d had a partner waiting for him at home… well, he probably wouldn’t still be there given Rick’s propensity for working late and often. He didn’t have time to go home, but he could make it over to the Gaffney Fitness Center to clean up. It was still early enough that it was only open to active-duty service members.
“The lieutenant’s aide said he could see you at eleven hundred hours, sir.”
“Perfect.” He ejected the jump drive and shut down his computer. Snagging the spare set of clothes from his lateral filing and storage cabinet, he ran from his office. “Wish me luck!” he yelled, running from the office.
As soon as Rick pushed his way through the exterior doors to his building, he came face-to-face with a pair of MPs.
“Sorry, excuse me.”
“Sergeant Major Davis?”
“Yes?”
“Please come with us.”
Rick rocked back on his heels and gripped his jump drive harder. “I’m sorry?”
“We have orders to bring you before Colonel Riggs immediately.”
“What for?”
“I’m sorry, sir. We can’t say anything further. Please come with us.”
Oh fuck, this is not good.
“I need to contact my CO. I have a meeting with Lieutenant Carpenter at eleven hundred.”
