Jacob’s fingers lingered over his deck. Which stream? How to tell? He looked up. XC7-1RF. The license plate of the rear truck read XC7-1RF. He couldn’t think of anything else, so he scanned the streams of code for the plate number. There it was, at least partially. He went after that stream. “I think I got it,” he said.
Then he was kicked out. Someone was countering his attack.
“The onboard operator is throwing up new firewalls,” he said.
“Is that bad?” Yuri asked.
“I can get through, it’s just going to take some time. Are those reinforcements here yet?”
“Almost,” Yuri said.
“Tell them to block the second truck in when they get here.”
Yuri radioed to the reinforcements.
“Which of you can hold off the AI protocol for longer?” Jacob asked, not looking up from his deck.
“I think I can,” Gomez said.
“Sandy, come in and help me. The protocol won’t matter if we shut down the first truck. Look for the XC7 marker in the code. It’s the first truck.”
“On it.”
“Yuri, get ready to brake,” Jacob said. “Tell the reinforcements, too.”
With both Jacob and Sandy attacking, the coder in the truck didn’t last long, and the system’s defenses fell. Jacob sent a command to kill the ignition. The truck slowed and finally came to a stop. The safety protocols in the second eighteen-wheeler kicked in and it hit its brakes. Yuri did the same.
“There will be at least two in the cab of each truck,” Yuri said. “Maybe more in the trailers.”
“Jacob and I will take the passenger side,” Chen said.
This was something Jacob wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for. He grew up hunting with his father and knew how to handle guns, but he had never been in a firefight. He had been trained, to a degree, in preparation for the Your Better Life peace mission, but training was not the same as the real thing. He looked at Sandy and could see the trepidation in her eyes. She had more training than he did, but as far as he knew, she had no real experience in a firefight either.
“Ready? Let’s go,” Chen said and opened his door.
Before anyone could get out, there was the sound of gunfire.
“The reinforcements,” Yuri said with a smile.
A man in a corporate security uniform came running from the passenger side of the parked eighteen-wheeler. He looked over his shoulder and fired his pistol at someone behind him. He didn’t see Chen raise his weapon. Chen fired twice and the man went down.
“We’re clear here,” a voice announced from the communications panel in the SUV.
Finally, Jacob relaxed. It may have been a bit anticlimactic as far as firefights go, but he was fine with that. There was still more to do.
“We need to open these trailers,” Chen said. “Yuri, tell the other teams to take the lead truck. We’ll take this one.”
“I’ll go with the other team and break the locks,” Gomez said. He grabbed his deck and gun and went up alongside the trailer.
“You want to get this lock?” Sandy asked Jacob.
“Sure.”
Yuri, Chen, and Sandy stood ready. The lock was an easy break, and Jacob pulled the latch, stepping to the side out of the line of fire. But there was none. There was no one in the trailer. It was packed with containers, a white NW CORP painted on the side of each.
“NirvanaWare Corporation,” Jacob said.
“Let’s check the crates,” Chen said, “and make sure we got what we came for.”
Chapter 19
Xia already sat inside Commie Cup when Yuri pulled the SUV up to the curb. She was about to take a drink of coffee but stopped midway when Jacob walked in and they made eye contact. “I’ll explain it on the way. Bring your drink,” he said in response to the confused look on her face.
As they walked out the door, Xia said, “What’s going on?”
“Wait until we get in.”
Xia looked at him briefly before she got in, Gomez getting in the third-row seat to give her room.
“Yuri, Chen, this is Xia,” Jacob said.
“Hello,” Xia said, nodding.
Yuri pulled away from the curb and said, “I will turn the music down so you can explain.”
“Yes, please explain,” Xia said.
“Well, I don’t know where to start,” Jacob said. “I guess just getting right down to it is the best thing to do. We have a shipment of code decks and chips that we need to jailbreak.”
“What? Where did you get a shipment of decks and chips? Why do you need to jailbreak them? Where are we going?”
“I’ll get to that, but we need your help with the jailbreak. We can do it, but you are the best person I know when it comes to cracking a deck or a chip.”
“That’s high praise,” Yuri said, turning around and smiling.
“Just pay attention to where you’re going,” Chen said. “This guy never learns.”
“What type of decks are they?” Xia asked.
“The latest NirvanaWare model.”
“The Vb76?” She couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice. “I’ve been wanting to get my hands on one of those.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“Just do me a favor,” Xia said. “Forget I asked you where you got them.”
Despite her request, Jacob began telling her the story. The others joined occasionally to add details. Chen even agreed that Yuri displayed superior driving skills. Everyone, except Xia, laughed at that. Jacob could see that some parts of the story, Chen blowing up two SUVs and shooting someone, disturbed her, so he tried to stay focused on the hacking part of the story. By the time they reached the warehouse, they finished relaying the story, leaving Xia with a look of disbelief on her face.
The warehouse, a prefab building the size of an aircraft hangar, sat in the middle of a large compound surrounded by a tall fence topped with razorwire. Towers flanked the entrance and sat at the corners of the fence, reminding Jacob of prison. The SUV approached the warehouse and the large bay doors opened slowly. Inside, self-driving forklifts were
