[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (3 page)

That taken care of, I went back to work on the infrared detector. It was only a few feet away from me; I could practically slap it with my hand. But the closeness worked against me, putting it at an odd angle. I had the damnedest time getting the glass in place over the curved sensor. This took a good five minutes.

Fortunately, the suction cups to hold it in place went on smoothly. I got down and packed my gear.

“How’s it looking, Dick?” asked Mongoose from outside.

“Just about ready to go down the hall,” I told him. I hadn’t bothered to put a video feed in the building.

“You have another ten minutes before the security guys are due,” he warned.

“That’s all?” I checked my watch. He was right.

“Sorry.”

We’d cased the building for nearly a week. Security was provided by an external company that made the rounds of several buildings each night. They were also tied into the security system, which besides the detectors up here included an array of video cameras on the first floor and outside the building. (We’d had to bypass one at the rear of the building to get on the roof.)

The checks generally occurred between five and ten minutes after the hour. The one thing we couldn’t be sure of was what the guards would do when they arrived. Most often, they went into the downstairs floor, took a quick look around, and then left. Occasionally, they simply looked through one of the large plate-glass windows at the front and decided that was enough. But about once a night they conducted a top-to-bottom run-through of the building.

By my calculations, ten minutes would be plenty of time for me to get down to the end of the hall, past the lock, and into the data center. But doing what I needed to get done in the computer center was another story.

Shunt had fashioned a small chip containing a Trojan horse program that would allow us into the system. The chip was attached to a small doohickey that I had to place in a specific board in a forest of similar boards in a room full of machines that all basically looked the same to me. I had practiced doing it for two days. My best time—twelve minutes.

“I better wait,” I told Mongoose. “Give me a heads up when they’re at the building.”

“Roger that,” he answered.

“What’s the status?” asked Shotgun.

“I’m in the restroom. I have the detection devices defeated. If it looks like they’re coming up I’ll have to pull them out.”

“Need help?” Shotgun’s words were garbled by whatever he was eating.

“Negative. Hold your position. What the hell are you eating?”

“Devil Dogs.”

“They sell those in Germany?”

“Ship all over the world,” said Shotgun.

“Don’t get crumbs on any of the equipment.”

“Roger that.”

I decided to do a little reconnoitering while I was waiting. I eased out of the doorway tentatively. When nothing sounded, I slipped all the way into the hall and walked down the short corridor to the door where the data center was.

There was a fingerprint lock, which was about what I expected.

Impossible to defeat, right?

Actually, easier than using a bump key. I dug into my magic bag of tricks at my belt and took out a small bottle of forensic dust, the CSI-friendly material technicians use to lift fingerprints. I dusted the reader, but it had been wiped clean after its last use.

Not a problem. I went back to the restroom and the large plate anyone wishing to enter pushed to get in. I had three different hands to choose from. Choosing the largest, I took a few snaps with my iPhone.

“Here we go,” warned Mongoose. “Security car is coming up.”

He gave me a play-by-play as the car parked in front of the building.

“Guards are getting out of the car,” said Mongoose. “Checking the front door.”

“I can see the car,” said Shotgun from the roof. “They going in?”

“No,” said Mongoose a few seconds later. “They’re coming back.”

Sure the guards were leaving, I went back to the fingerprint reader and held my phone over it.

Nothing happened. The LED light on the side of the reader blinked red.

Fail.

I tried two more times, but without any luck.

The process had never failed before. I thought maybe there was some sort of heat sensor on the touchplate instead of just a simple scanner, so edged the side of my hand over it and tried again.

Nada.

Either the reader wasn’t working, or I had taken the wrong print. Obviously someone other than data center employees used the restroom upstairs.

Like the janitor.

I glanced around for another source of prints. The best candidate was the door to the stairs, but I suspected I would have the same problem there.

There was a closet on the left side of the hall, almost directly opposite the door to the data center. The knob looked like it might be a better bet; the only problem was that the fingerprint, if there was one, would be on the side and difficult to photograph.

What about in the closet?

Eureka. It was filled with shelves of stationery. About three-quarters of a bottle of fingerprint dust later, I had three fresh index prints that the app claimed were all different from the others.

The first one worked. I opened the door gingerly, scanning to make sure there wasn’t another unmapped detector nearby.

I’d just completed my scan without seeing anything when Mongoose came on the radio circuit.

“Something’s up, Dick,” he warned. “Two guys just walked down the street and stopped in front of the bank.”

“What are they doing?”

“Looking in the front window,” said Mongoose a few seconds later. “They’re dressed in black.”

“They looking for the ATM?” asked Shotgun.

“If so, they’re blind.”

I told Mongoose to keep me informed, and went to work. The red light over the door here was dim and the room large, so I turned on the miner’s lamp. The LEDs revealed a forest of large mainframe computers and peripheral equipment.

We’d had to guestimate the room’s arrangement, and my little light now revealed that our guesses were more than a little off. Working with layouts from other data centers, we’d assumed that the machines would be pushed back near the walls, with a large open area at the center. But here the large units formed a corridor immediately inside the room, and to get to the operator area, you had to walk between them. This actually made my job easier, though; there would be a lot more area to work in when I removed the access panel from the machine.

Assuming I could find the right one.

The bank used an IBM System Z, a rather impressive computer system. The machine cases themselves are high couture—for silicon. The large black boxes with the occasional slash of blue were joined together by bundles of wires that ran along the floor and some of the sides of the units, a bit like ivy without the leaves.

It took me several minutes to find the right box. I narrowed it down to three based on the outside covers, then used a small plug-in device to see which one had the right addresses in the system.

I’m parroting what Shunt told me—I have only the vaguest idea of the technical details of what I was doing. From my perspective, I was plugging what looked like a fancy thumb drive into a diagnostic panel on the bottom of the machine. If the LED light lit, I had the right machine. It took all three tries—when I got to the last one, I had to cross my fingers: there was no backup plan if the device didn’t work.

Unit located, I opened the front of the case and looked for the support processor unit, which looked like a stamped card with two little boxes for plugs. I put a jump wire and card into the left opening. Then I counted off cards until I found the bulk power hub. This contained a long row of connectors, which looked very similar to the network connectors you might use on your own home computer. I slipped Shunt’s doohickey into the third hole, connected it to the jumper, then pushed a little switch at the very end of the doohickey.

Then I stood back and waited.

According to Shunt, the device would open a path for him within two computer cycles or some other odd measurement of time that only he knows. He would call Mongoose once he was in. At that point I could dismantle everything and go grab a beer.

But instead of Mongoose, I heard Shotgun blaring in my ear.

“Hey, Dick—those guys are breaking into the bank. Shit!”

The next second, the bank alarm began to sound.

We had reached the most marvelous stage of any operation—the condition known to aficionados as SNAFU. As in
Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

*   *   *

Somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, Shunt and his assistant were hunched over a pair of computers, attempting to connect with the mainframe I was kneeling in front of. According to our plan, he would get into the system—his little doohickeys made the computer think he was a diagnostic routine—and once there, call and tell me I could shut everything down.

Apparently, his coding wasn’t as perfect as he thought.

“Shotgun, pack up,” I said over the radio.

“I’m ready to go.”

“Dick, I don’t like the looks of this,” warned Mongoose. “You better get out of there.”

“In a minute. You hear from Shunt?”

“Negative. I hear police cars.”

“Stand by.”

I pulled out my sat phone and quick-dialed Shunt. It probably only took a second or two to connect, but it certainly felt like forever.

“I’m working on it,” said Shunt, answering.

“I have two idiot bank robbers downstairs, and cops on the way,” I told him. “Make it work
now.
”

He answered with a string of curses, echoing my unvoiced thoughts. Then he was quiet. “Try the backup address switcher,” he said finally. “Then go back and move the dip switch forward.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Shunt?”

He walked me through the changes, which involved putting the doohickey into a new slot on the same card, then moving a small switch on the board. One of those changes—or maybe the swearing—did
something
—lights began flickering madly inside the machine.

“Dick, the police are out front,” warned Mongoose.

“I’m waiting on Shunt,” I told him. “What about the robbers?”

“Still in the building somewhere.”

I have to confess that part of me wanted to go downstairs and teach those knuckleheads a lesson. But sneaking downstairs and gift wrapping them for the police would expose me to the surveillance cameras at the base of the stairwell and on the main floor. I consoled myself with the hope that they might venture upstairs, whereupon I would greet them warmly.

“Shunt, what’s going on?” I demanded.

“I need sixty more seconds.”

“Bad guys are running out the front door,” cut in Shotgun over the radio. “They’re armed.”

Good,
I thought to myself,
that will keep the police busy for a few minutes.

A second later, the floor came up from beneath me, and what sounded like a freight train drove over my head.

The boys downstairs had blown the place up.

(III)

Having witnessed more explosions than I care to recall, the pop and crackle of a mere grenade going off behind a distant wall no longer excites me.

This blast was on a different order entirely. Seven on a ten scale: it blew a hole in the floor a few feet away from me. Flames shot up through the hole in an impressive display of color and heat.

I observed the flash from my back.

“Shunt!” I yelled as I struggled up from the floor. My voice must have been loud enough for him to hear all the way back in New York.

“We got it,” he answered. “Go, go, go!”

I reached into the computer. Flames had spread out from the hole. The ceiling seemed to be on fire. Something flared to the right of me.

Black smoke began pouring from a computing unit behind me. Something yellow poked out of the black grill of the one next to it.

I grabbed the doohickey and turned toward the door—which was not only on the other side of the hole, but blocked off by one of the computer units, which had fallen just beyond the hole.

Without thinking, I grabbed the computer unit I’d just been working on and climbed to the top, then scrambled over the large cases and moved toward the door. The air was thick with smoke and acrid fumes. My eyes felt as if they had been soaked in pepper spray, and my throat could have sanded down an oak tree.

The explosion had blown the door inward, where it rested on one of the fallen computer units. I was able to slide down headfirst, landing in the hall in a tumble.

I’m not sure what the temperature was, but it was certainly hot enough not to have to worry about the infrared motion detectors. I threw myself to the floor, then crawled toward the restroom.

The air near the floor was a bit clearer, and the damage out here wasn’t nearly as bad as in the data center. Still, I seemed to be moving in slow motion. Mongoose yelled in my ear, but it was impossible to make out with the symphony of alarms set off by the explosion. Besides those in the bank and the buildings on either side, it seemed like every car alarm in the city was sounding.

I was about six feet from the men’s room and escape when a dark shadow burst into the hall ahead. It moved so fast that my first thought was that it was a cloud of smoke.

The next thing I thought was that it was a fireman. But firemen, even in Berlin, don’t dress head to toe in black.

I’m guessing we stared at each other for a full second before either of us moved.

I ducked toward the restroom. He did, too—and kicked me in the face. I hadn’t seen it coming, and took practically the full force of his size 20E boot to the front of my skull.

I’m guessing at the size. The impact certainly seemed to warrant it.

I rolled back, then tried to grab him as he rushed past me toward the data center. The hook of my hand was just enough to throw him off-balance and he crashed down against the doorjamb and rolled onto the floor.

Twenty years before, I would have jumped to my feet and stomped his face a few times for good measure. But I’m older now, and either lazier or smarter, depending on your perspective: I took the easy way out, grabbing for my pistol.