American Law (Law #2) (3 page)

“Well, I’m changing the deal,” the American declared, oblivious to the repercussions. Or he simply didn’t care.

Which made him worry all the more.

“Even I’m smart enough to know it’s stupid to fuck with the American government,” Dmitry replied. “It’s a good way to end up dead or have yourself and your family under surveillance for the next century. You Americans are not so forgiving as you let on to be.”

The American produced a Desert Eagle from the waistband of his pants and had it pointed at Ivan before Dmitry could blink. His hand remained steady as he held the heavy gun, obviously familiar with the weapon. Dmitry realized too late he’d been right. The man was not a businessman, at least not the type he’d been expecting. He knew the rough side of living, and it showed clearly now that he wasn’t trying to repress it.

“If you don’t do as I ask, your friend here dies,” he said, his voice cold and hard.

Dmitry held up his hands, not wanting the hot-headed American to get wound up and accidentally shoot Ivan. “Calm down. This won’t get you anywhere.”

The man’s cool gaze flicked over him. “I seriously doubt that. In my experience, I rarely get any objections after I bring out my big gun.”

Ivan rolled his eyes in a gesture Dmitry recognized. His friend had become unimpressed and bored. Not good. Ivan could barely keep his mouth shut at the best of times, though he understood how he felt; it was hard to take the theatrics seriously.

“Where we come from, there are some
actual
scary mother-fuckers, not some two-bit wannabes like you,” Ivan said, his tone contemptuous.

Dmitry closed his eyes and counted to ten, letting his breath out slowly, trying to remain calm. It wasn’t working. His blood pressure shot through the roof and he could feel the tension in his muscles.

Way to open your mouth, Ivan. Talk about hot headed.

The American would surely shoot them just to prove the length of his manhood.

“Ivan,” Dmitry whispered, shaking his head slightly when his friend turned to look at him. Ivan, a man who could sell snow cones in the middle of a Russian winter, didn’t have much diplomacy when it came to these types of situations. Dmitry didn’t want him to say anything that could be regretted later.

“I have no time to mess around. One of you are going to get me what I want. I don’t care who or how, just fucking do it.”

“I’d tell you to get fucked but I don’t think it will do any good,” Ivan retorted. He took a stance of nonchalance, just a normal day for him.

The American poised his index finger on the trigger, tightening his grip, and a second later, a loud bang resounded. Blindsided, not expecting the man to follow through, he watched in horror, powerless to intercede, as Ivan crumpled to the floor. Blood stained his shirt, the crimson liquid bubbling and running out of the neat round bullet hole in his chest.

Chapter 5

“Ivan,” Dmitry shouted, dropping to his knees beside his best friend. Lifting Ivan’s head away from the hard floor, he pressed his palm to the wound in hopes of slowing the blood loss.

Ivan struggled to breathe, each attempt quick and uneasy. Tears gathered in Dmitry’s eyes, watching helplessly as his friend of over twenty years bled out onto the dusty concrete floor of the warehouse, the fluid seeping between his fingers.

He willed Ivan to live, praying, offering everything from his health to his first born child. He and Ivan had been through a lot together, were brothers in every way except blood, and here he was about to lose him.

This cannot be happening
.

They were here for a job, just an easy reprogram. They had been so happy with their new business venture, ecstatic when they’d been offered the job in the States. Ivan had called it their adventure, and here he was about to die without really living it.

Dmitry thought back to that morning, when he had asked Ivan if he’d wanted to stay at the hotel. If he had, none of this would be happening. He shook his head to clear his errant thoughts. He couldn’t change what had happened, or go back in time to alter it. Tears rained down his cheeks, yet he barely noticed. His entire consciousness remained on the man before him, his friend and confidant. The man who had gotten him into trouble time and time again. This time, it was he who had gotten Ivan into trouble. It was his fault Ivan was here, his fault he’d taken the bullet.

His life dimmed. A range of emotions he generally kept bottled up ran hotly through his body. Anger. Fear. Rage. Hopelessness. He begged and prayed, threatened and promised, but Ivan’s blood continued to spill from his body. His skin felt cool to the touch while perspiration beaded on his forehead. His friend shook uncontrollably and Dmitry knew it wouldn’t be long now.

“Promise me you’ll get the
sraka,
Dmitry,” Ivan gasped, fighting for breath. A lone crimson trail escaped the side of his mouth and ran down his jaw.

He didn’t bother lying to Ivan, telling him it would be all right. It couldn’t be. He could only do his best to fulfill his friend’s last wish, and Dmitry planned to make the asshole responsible pay for his crime. Provided he himself was alive to do so.

He nodded. “I promise.”

With one last shuddering breath, Ivan’s eyes became glassy, staring sightlessly up at him. He slumped over, barely holding back a howl of anguish. He knew there was nothing he could’ve done. Even had he been free to go—which was impossible now—he would never have made it to a hospital in time. The American had been accurate with his shot, fully intending to kill.

The evil man didn’t even bat an eyelash. He turned the gun on Dmitry as he slowly rose to his feet. Dmitry kept his hands where they were, visible to the man wielding the weapon. He didn’t want to annoy the American any more than he already had and wanted the chance to walk away from this, even though he would do so without his best friend. He didn’t think his odds were great. He knew he was a dead man walking, and as soon as he gave the man what he wanted, he would end up just like Ivan.

“All that could have been avoided,” the suit told him. “Now do as I ask or you’ll be joining your friend.”

Dmitry silently prayed he would get out of this alive. Nothing would work out now that his best friend was dead at the hands of a deranged sociopath, but maybe Dmitry could live. He sent the American a glare, wanting so much to destroy the man who’d shot and killed Ivan.

Now is not the time
. He was unarmed and outnumbered. Somewhere deep inside him, an almost animalistic urge roared, a burning rage to fight. He tampered down his emotions, vowing to live to fight another day, pushing all irrelevant feelings aside, blinking away the tears gathering in his eyes. Now was not the time to fall apart. There would be plenty of time for that later. Now was the time to use his brain.

He sat down at the chair by the desk and poised his fingers over the keyboard, waiting for instructions from the American. He tried not to think of Ivan lying dead only a few feet away. He tried to block out the awareness of the weapon trained on him, the same gun used to kill his friend. He could feel the damp sheen of nervous sweat coating his back and forehead and a chill ran down the length of his spine.

The American returned the piece of paper to him. He stared at the damning numbers and began to type. His fingers barely touched the keys as he blindly typed in a series of commands. He copied the IP address into the command box and soon found himself at the Department of Defense’s mainframe. He sucked in a deep breath.

Oh shit. The Pentagon. Great, just fucking fantastic
. Of all the government agencies to hack, they had to choose DoD.

He bypassed the firewall in mere seconds. For the Pentagon, their security was not at all what it should have been. The firewall had been designed to keep hackers out. While it was strong and barred most, he found himself well past the firewall and now battling the antivirus software as he uploaded his own brand of DoS—a Denial of Service—which effectively bombarded the mainframe with external communications, rendering the system slow and non-responsive, allowing him unlimited access.

He found the government’s network-based intrusion-detection system laughable. He could write a better program in his sleep. Infiltrating the network was almost not worth his time, because any fool could do the job. He sure could show them a thing or two about security, and wondered once again why the American felt the need to hire an overseas team when a local one could have served just as well.

The answers that came to him made him sweat all the more. He certainly wasn’t liking any of the reasons that floated about his head. He needed a plan—a smart plan—and he needed it now. He didn’t have the luxury of believing he would get out of this warehouse alive, even though he hoped. He knew too much.

He added another set of commands. On a normal day, had his friend not just been murdered, and had he been doing this of his own free will, he would have enjoyed himself. Instead, he felt edgy and afraid, sensing the crosshairs of the gun. No matter what happened in the next hour, his life would be over. Even if he happened to get away, he would be forced to hide for the rest of his life. Every keystroke was another nail in his coffin.

“How long is this going to take?” the American demanded.

Had Rome been taken in a day?
Have some fucking patience.

“Even baking a cake takes forty minutes,” he replied, glancing at the hand holding the gun. “Also, I’m not used to working while I have a gun pointed at me.”

The American lowered his weapon, but didn’t holster it. “Hurry up about it,” he snapped, then paced back and forth behind him.

Dmitry turned his attention back to the black command box hovering in the top left hand corner of his screen, above the Department of Defense’s logo, and ignored his surroundings.

He opened the file marked System Administrator and created a new persona. He named it GreyHat01, the general ID he had for adding users. It kept things simple. He always knew what to look for when he needed to go back to wipe out his tracks. While this was his trademark, he wasn’t stupid enough to leave it where it could be found and traced back to him. If he ever got caught, he’d rather not be linked to all of his jobs.

Using his new status as an administrator, he uploaded a ghost—which if the DoD’s antivirus or system watcher detected the intrusion, would install a new ghost in milliseconds after the previous one had been deleted or flagged. The ghost’s job was to collect the information required in the quickest time possible. While he would normally upload his own brand of spyware, he didn’t have the timeframe needed. Spyware collected bits of information over a period of time, and due to the fact that the American stood agitated behind him, Dmitry didn’t think he had minutes let alone hours or even days, so he didn’t bother.

He sat back in his chair and looked over his shoulder at the man. “I’m in. What is it you need?”

The American smirked. “There’s a file imbedded somewhere deep in the system, marked by the name Sundown
.
I want you to retrieve the data. That’s it.”

Dmitry nodded and began to locate the ominous file. After three minutes of searching through the congestion of files on the server, he came across the file hidden amongst the yearly budget and staff directory. He had no idea what it could be, and had no time to flick through it, but he knew if the man behind him would kill for it, it had to be something pretty damn important.

He was sure he wouldn’t like the reason they wanted Sundown. An innocuous name, but the DoD liked giving their missions and contacts ridiculous code words. As if it would somehow make them feel better when Operation Wild Rider killed hundreds of innocent civilians so one bad guy would be taken out. He didn’t understand that type of logic, even as an extremely logical man.

He was also far from stupid. The moment the file finished downloading, he would be dead, lying next to Ivan while the American absconded with the mysterious file. He would most likely be blamed for the theft of Sundown, his name forever associated with terrorism. He thought about Elena and how it would affect her. She would be heartbroken to lose him, and he wondered if she would survive such a blow. He knew she would never accept that he would do such a thing and she would risk death trying to prove his innocence, just as she had when she’d searched for the truth about Nikolai.

He couldn’t allow that. His sister had been through enough. He couldn’t let her deal with his death on top of everything else. With renewed resolve not to die today, he worked on his plan to escape unscathed. It wasn’t a very good plan, certainly not his best, but he was under extreme pressure and time restraints. He knew once he did what he was about to do, he would have a giant red target painted on his ass. But he would not let the scum bags get away with it.

He sent his ghost to the file, adding extra commands as he did so. He could feel the countdown begin as he pressed the enter button. He knew he had ten minutes to get the hell out of there, and he watched the dialog box appear in the center of the screen as the contents of the Sundown file began transferring to the hard drive of the computer he was using. He added more commands, praying the man wielding the gun didn’t notice as he continued to work. He worked faster, watching the transfer box closely as the time passed. The file was copying at amazing speed, currently at sixty-five percent. It would not be much longer now. He finished entering his commands and sat back, waiting, watching for his moment to act.

The blue horizontal line filled up the box, indicating that it had reached one hundred percent. The computer beeped, informing them the transfer had completed. Dmitry stepped away from the computer, almost overwhelmed by a sense of joy at being finished with the task. He blinked and the feeling was gone, things slipping into motion. He watched the American carefully, determining the moves he would make when he discovered what Dmitry had done.

He backed up, standing beside Ivan’s body, then glanced down at his friend once more, sending up a silent prayer for his soul. He added an apology for not being able to save him. It certainly wasn’t the way a man like Ivan would have chosen to go out. Dmitry imagined something more along the lines of an epic battle over a woman not worth anybody’s time. He’d been wrong. Now he had to leave his friend here with his killer. Who knew what would happen to his body. He would make things right, even if it was the last thing he did. Hopefully, that would not be the case.

While he’d been working, he’d ignored the muscle who stood nearby. Now, he watched him out the corner of his eye as he edged nearer to the door. He didn’t want to fight the man who easily outweighed him by thirty pounds.

“Perfect,” Ivan’s murderer intoned, viewing the information available on the screen. He looked positively gleeful.

It made Dmitry feel sick. This bastard was up to no good with that information. If only he’d had a chance to review the material inside the file. He might know what he was dealing with, and who he might be up against. Unfortunately, he had to work with what he had. Which wasn’t much. Heat from the hired muscle’s body burned his skin as the man flanked him. Once again, he began to get the sensation that he was done for and rapidly considered his options.

“Congratulations, Mr. Ivanov.” The American brought the sight of the gun in line with Dmitry’s chest.

He took a step back, bumping into the bulky arm of the body builder. His heart pounded guiltily in his chest, his blood cool as he looked down the barrel of the weapon. A drop of perspiration slid down his spine, and he shivered in response. There was nothing like the feeling of looking at the face of death with both eyes open. It somehow made him feel alive.

The American’s finger moved to the trigger.

Come on, come on. Any time now.

He glanced at the computer just as it started beeping loudly, like a heart monitor during a cardiac arrest. The American turned on his heel, seeking out the noise, and looked at the computer as the Department of Defense’s intruder alert symbol and alarm appeared on the screen, flashing its warning: