Balance of Power Shifted (36 page)

We proceeded to make plans for tomorrow and Ty detailed how we could move back into our office building shortly and use a different entrance while construction restores the building.  He continued by saying we were lucky that no structural components were involved and most
of the blast was absorbed by the internal walls.  Ty then rolled out a blueprint that showed the security improvements including installation of bulletproof glass, metal pylons to limit a vehicle from getting within 50 feet of the building and the installation of a security gate at the entrance to the drive with cement barriers extending to the trees.  The property owner had given us permission since we now leased the entire building for the next 10 years with an option to buy it.  Clavis was supplying four additional guards to cover all the entrances to the building.  I thought the plans were a great improvement and money well spent, which reminded me I need to book some income real quick.  Wrapping up the meeting, I found Fiona intently peering at her laptop screen in the back of the office.

Fiona was analyzing some very interesting information.  For the past couple of hours she had been getting notifications from her command and control server of connections coming in from suspicious IP addresses.  A quick
trace determined the addresses where coming from mainland China.  Feeling her heart race a little, she logged into her server and looked to see if any data found the way from China onto their server.  Sure enough, there were a number of encrypted files sitting on our server.

Fiona
was sorting through them when two more files cropped up.  Using her encryption key to decrypt and decompress one of the files, she giggled nervously as she looked at the files in the payload.  Surprisingly most of the files were in English and only a few in Chinese.  Some of the files just contained profile information regarding the computer the file originated from.  Other files were very familiar to her and were from the California servers with some of them still encrypted. The most interesting files, where the ones that contained internal Chinese government memos and other Chinese government documents.  The Files originated from many different Chinese workstations and servers.

Apparently
, the Chinese were too arrogant about their own skills to think that it could happen to them.  “Pay back is a bitch,” Fiona thought.  She decided to get Mike and just as she turned her head Mike sat down next to her and asked her what had gotten her panties in wad.

Looking at the files
, Mike was impressed with the success of the malware.  Not only could they export data from these machines, they most likely could control them for other purposes.  Mike spent a half hour crawling through the files and figured out a lot of how the Chinese were exploiting their stolen data as well as companies and organizations.  There were files deposited from the who’s who of corporate America as well as a few files that may have come from US Department of Defense sources.  Looking at Fiona Mike said, “I think it’s time to call our buddy Agent Morgan and I would not be surprised if he got more three letter government agencies involved.  This is dynamite stuff.”  I high fived Fiona as I called Agent Morgan.

Mat
t Morgan was very encouraged about what Mike Carter had just told him.  Trying to nail someone for the theft of equipment at the Efficio California site was looking more and more like government sponsored industrial espionage with China.  The chance at any retribution against China for Efficio attacks was nil, however at least we knew who was involved.  Since it was unlikely that the encrypted data at Efficio could be unencrypted and that by Mike’s own admission, there was no real sensitive data on the drives, he was going to put the Efficio issue to rest.  That was not to say that they would be slowing down their investigation of the headquarter attack or the initial California intrusion.  In fact in both cases they had some leads developing albeit slowly.  What had him encouraged and even excited was that for the first time, the US was getting a front row seat into how China operates and was going to ride that wave as far as it would go.  Already the CIA and NSA were scrambling teams together to review the data that Efficio was providing.  They were so impressed with the malware code that they were knocking down the Clavis door to get Jeremy to part with the code.  Matt already knew that trying to pry the malware code from Clavis would be extremely tough, since Clavis had already recognized the potential of being able to achieve this type of intelligence gathering as a huge differentiator and moneymaker for them over competitors.

Jeremy was like a kid in the candy shop.  He had logged into Efficio’s server and was scrolling through what was hundreds of files now.  Unknown to most,
the FBI and Efficio had asked Clavis to find a way to figure out how to prove China was behind numerous hacking attacks of military systems over the last few years.  The Efficio break in and theft had provided and unintended gift in the fact that China had orchestrated it and not some local corporate thief.  What he was trying to do now is to pinpoint all the machine IP addresses involved to see if there are any correlations.  He also had two of his most senior staff in California cataloging the data by corporation, government or military entity.  About a quarter of the data uncovered so far was for non-US entities.  He was trying to hurry since he already ignored two calls that he knew had come in from the CIA.  He had a feeling they would try to take over access to this data very quickly.  From the looks of things, his specially engineered software had even wormed its way on to one or more servers containing 10’s of thousands of files.

F
iona and Mike had to pull themselves away from the mesmerizing flow of information from China and get ready for their staff meeting.  Fiona could sense the heightened anticipation oozing off Mike.  We were finally really taking charge of our destiny and it sure felt right.  No longer was she second-guessing their path and worrying because she realized this was the only true path for them to take. 

As we were walking to our newly con
structed conference room just behind the administrative offices, Rico’s phone buzzed from a text message.  He stopped walking for a second to read the message and seemed to take a double take.  Then he lit up with a shit-eating grin and looked at Fiona.  “Look at this,” he said as he held out his phone.  What I read briefly perplexed me, and confused me further, since Father Zults was the sender.  I read the words carefully one more time which read ‘my eyes are fully open and I comprehend your meaning and as they say, when in Rome do…’  Mike seeing my confusion whispered in my ear “It means Bill has come out of his coma and does not appear to have any brain damage.”  Squealing with delight I jumped up with my legs around Mike and my arms around his neck and gave him a nice big kiss out of sheer happiness much to the chagrin of Mike since now everyone was staring.

The meeting ended up lasting three hours.  Mike was exhausted at the end of meeting sin
ce he fielded about 75 percent of the questions as well as gave detailed updates on the attacks, law enforcement progress and finally their new business targets.  Julius, Kristen and Taylor were all given herculean tasks to hire almost 50 new employees, create and review hundreds of potential contracts, budget and help coordinate all the logistics of a company growing too quick for comfort, but under these circumstances a necessary evil.  There were many questions on the creation of the three US production sites as well as an international one.  After describing how simple the designs were, everyone got behind the effort to get it done.  The design was simple, we needed access to seawater, large storage tanks, open warehouse space , high speed pumps, loading docks and security as good as Fort Knox.  Yeah simple!

After the meeting
, Fiona and I met briefly with the Clavis team who would escort us.  They would be driving one of two brand new armored SUVs down to LBI.  Fiona and I would take a rented Boston Whaler Outrage with twin 150 horsepower outboards and drive along the mainland side of the bay looking for property meeting our criteria.  They wanted at least one guard to accompany us, but we thought we would be safe on the water especially since I knew the bay like the back of my hand.  We ended up agreeing to use long-range radios to keep in contact.  Clavis would pick us up a 6 AM to be at the boat at 8 AM so we could take advantage of the rising tide.

With a portable GPS, binoculars and detailed maps we pulled away from the dock at 8:05 in the morning.  The air was crisp since it was a mid
-October morning, but the weatherman was predicting reaching 70 degrees during the afternoon.  The bay waters were calm to the point of being flat, which is a common phenomenon in the morning before the winds pick up and as the day goes by.  The sun was low but bright in the early morning sky, coming up over the ocean just over the barrier island called LBI.  The powerful motors maintained a dull throb as I navigated out to the channel and away from the ‘No Wake’ buoy markers.  As soon as we edged past the last marker, I pushed the throttles forward with some authority.  The boat’s bow briefly lifted up and then settled down as the boat quickly planed out on the calm surface.  We followed the channel that headed southwest to get to the mainland side quickly.  Since there was not another boat in eyesight, we let the boat reach about 35 knots and just cruised.  After a couple of minutes, Fiona came up alongside of me.  I assumed that she wanted to snuggle up against me since it was even chillier with the wind and occasional spray blowing our hair backwards so I put my left arm around her.  She laughed and threw my arm off and grabbed the wheel as she hipped checked out from behind the cockpit area in a deft move.  Giving up any idea that I was in control of driving, I got my GPS and started to plot our touring path.

After about 15
minutes, I directed Fiona to a point of land sticking out near an area labeled as West Creek.  We briefly went down West Creek itself until we realized the properties we too small for what we had in mind.  Heading back out to bay we briefly stopped in front a of large reddish colored home that looked as if it was never finished, however when looking closer the architect had just opted to use plywood sheathing on the outside and seal it from the elements.  I could not make up my mind if it I liked it or not, but it was obviously a bold statement.  Even though there was plenty of property just past the public pier area, it was most likely wetlands, and I was trying to avoid any major construction.  We continued to head south and poked ourselves into a number of coves and saw some potential areas, however the road systems behind the property would have a hard time supporting a steady trail of tanker trucks when in full production.

H
eaded back out into the bay, and on a whim, turned towards an island that had what looked like an old factory on it.  I knew this to be the ‘Fish Factory.’  The actual original name of the Crab Island Fish Factory was lesser known.  The site of the old place always raised the short hairs on my neck since it looked haunted.  Many a day I drift fished in the channel in front of it for Fluke and other fish.  It had been a few years since seeing it last and I could not believe how much more dilapidated it was since then.  The harsh climate had hastened the breakdown of the buildings and piers as well as what appeared to be fire damage.  The old timers around the bay used to talk about how busy this place used to be with fishing boats offloading thousands and thousands of pounds of Moss Bunker to be ground up into fishmeal, fertilizer and fish oil products.

We were just drifting about 50 feet off the shore taking in the site
, sort of like watching a car wreck on the side of the road, wondering how things got to the situation we were seeing.  A faint sound worked its way in to my consciousness mainly because it was so quiet and tranquil out on the water.  Just over the sound of some gulls, I heard a buzzing noise that kept getting louder and louder.  Looking to the north, I could see a black helicopter moving our way.  This in itself was not a reason of concern since helicopters were a regular presence out here with the EPA copters taking water samples, coast guard choppers and military ones from the nearby bases like McGuire Air Force base and Fort Dix liked to take the scenic route along the water.

I brought the helicopter to Fiona’s attention who
redirected her binoculars from the decay of the fish plant on to the oncoming chopper.  Fiona said to Rico, “I don’t like the look of the chopper.  They’re headed right towards us and if I’m not imaging it there is someone hanging in the right side open door with what appears to be a rifle.”  Rico said, “I’m not sure how anyone could know we are out here, but I’m not going to take a chance.  Let’s swing outside of the island and see if they change their path.”  Opening up the twin engines, we got the boat on plane in seconds and quickly were cruising at about 40 miles per hour.  Fiona was giving Rico a play-by-play of what the copper was doing since he now had his back to it.  “Rico, it definitely turned to match our path.”  “Shit” Rico exclaimed and  said “hold on tight” as he turned the wheel hard left and gunned the engines a little harder in an effort to try and use the island for some cover.

By
now, the copter was pulling alongside and matching the speed of the Whaler.  Just then, Rico saw little plumes of water spout up and stich a path towards the boat.  Turning away from what he knew to be a bullet trail, he began to hear the staccato sound of an automatic weapon.  He had enough time on the shooting range to recognize the sound.  Meanwhile, Fiona had a tight grip around the left side stanchion that held the fixed canopy over their heads.  She was also fumbling around with her daypack and produced, to Mike’s surprise, a large handgun.  Seeing Mike’s surprise, she simply said, “What, can’t a girl accessorize?”  Just then, they heard the sounds tffff tffff tffff as three holes opened in the overhead canopy and daylight shown through.  Mike immediately cut right and passed under the helicopter and as the copter changed direction to follow them they were immediately behind the boat, with the pilot clearly visible.  Fiona snapped of two quick shots and it was obvious that at least one had found its mark, since the windshield now showed a hole and a spider web of cracks.  If that was not a clear enough sign, the pilot banked hard left and moved out of range.  “Nice shot Fiona!”