East Coast.”
Jay closed the flatscreen, and they started for the door. He still had a worried look.
Michaels said, “Something else?”
“Yeah, a major problem. In-house Security says somebody got past the Net Force firewalls and into the mainframe last night.”
“I thought that wasn’t possible.”
“It’s not, for most people. I could do it. And if I could, some others could. A handful.”
“Was anything damaged or stolen?”
“Fortunately not. The file protection programs make that real hard without the encryption keys. Even I might have trouble wrecking any big part of the system from outside. Security says the probe rode in on a GAO line and managed to get into the personnel files. It didn’t damage them, they are read-only for the GAO auditor, who, by law, we have to let in. Somebody had to know about that to use it.”
“Who would know?”
“Ex-programmer, maybe ex-ops, FBI, GAO. Maybe even Net Force.”
“Really?”
“We’ve had people quit. Fired a few, too. Programmers always leave themselves a back door when they are building secure systems. We vetted ours, and I had our people checking, but the guy who builds it can hide a few things when you are talking millions of lines of code.”
“So what now?”
“We’ll run down all ex-employees with enough skill to pull it off. My hope is that it’ll turn out to be some kid hacker counting coup. But that wouldn’t be the way smart money bets.”
“Mm. Stay on it, Jay. In the meantime, let’s don’t keep General Howard waiting.”
On the way to the elevator, something about what Jay said bothered him. He couldn’t quite nail it down as they stepped into the lift. Jay pushed the button for the lobby; they were on the sixteenth floor.
As the elevator descended, pinging as it passed each floor, Michaels said, “That intrusion last night. Do we know where it came from?”
“Not really,” Jay said. “It bounced off a couple of satellites. We were able to track it as far as the West Coast, that’s it.”
Michaels thought about that for a second. “Why would anybody capable of breaking into a secure system like Net Force’s mainframe want to look at our personnel records?”
“If that’s what they planned to do, boss, rather than just stumbling into those records by accident.”
“Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume they meant to go there.”
Jay shrugged. “Who, where, what, when, why,” he said. “Find out if somebody works there, what they do exactly, how long. Maybe how much somebody gets paid.”
“You skipped one,” Michaels said. “Find out where somebody lives.”
“Yeah, that could be.”
Michaels felt a sudden chill frost him.
Jay said, “I see where you’re going here, but it’s probably just a coincidence.”
“What if it isn’t? What if it’s Bershaw? What if he is looking to even the score for the death of his friend?”
“That’s a reach, boss. Guy who pulled the trigger on Drayne is dead.”
“Bershaw wouldn’t know that. He went over the side of the hill as soon as the shooting started.”
The elevator reached the ground floor and opened. The two men stepped out and walked toward the hotel’s coffee shop.
“He could have heard or watched news reports about it,” Jay offered.
“You were on CNN’s coverage. The FBI and DEA weren’t saying much. Nobody said who shot Drayne, only that he was killed. And who was getting most of the credit for finding the drug dealers?”
“Uh, that’d be us,” Jay said.
“Yes. And there were only three of us there: you, me, and General Howard.”
“Still a reach,” Jay said. “It doesn’t necessarily follow.”
“Bershaw escapes. Somebody on the West Coast gets into Net Force’s personnel files within a few hours. Bershaw disappears, then shows up on a flight to Washington. I don’t like it. If you were him and you were pissed off because somebody had murdered your friend, blasted him while he stood there with his hands up, and you wanted to do something about it, who would you go after?”
Jay didn’t say anything.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. The man in charge, who was right there on the scene. You could be waiting for him when he got home. Only thing is, Toni is already there.”
He pulled his virgil, hit the voxax, and said, “Call home.”
The virgil made the call.
After five rings, the message recorder came on. “Hello. You’ve reached area code two-oh-two, three-five- seven…”
“Toni, if you are there, pick up or call me back ASAP.”
Michaels felt a sense of panic threaten to take him as he ended the call. He tapped the resend button and selected five-minute intervals, to repeat until a connection was made or he shut it off.
“She’s not answering.”
“She could be asleep. Outside watering the plants. A dozen things,” Jay said.
John Howard stood in the short line of people waiting to get into the coffee shop. He saw Jay and Michaels approaching, smiled at them. Michaels didn’t feel like smiling back.
Howard caught it. “What’s the matter, Commander?”
Michaels ran through it, feeling more and more nervous as he laid it out.
Howard said, “Jay’s probably right, it’s probably nothing. But just to be on the safe side, how about I have a couple of my people drop by and check.”
“I would appreciate that.” Being all the way across the country made him feel helpless. Once he knew Toni was okay, he’d feel a lot better.
Howard looked at Michaels a moment longer. “One more thing, Commander,” he said. “Jay’s the one who got all the attention on TV. It might not be a bad idea for him to get hold of Saji and tell her to get somewhere safe.”
Michaels nodded, but Jay was already pulling out his virgil. A few seconds later, Saji answered, and everyone relaxed a little.
Howard pulled his own virgil and spoke quietly into it, muted the sound so he had to hold it to his ear like a mobile phone to hear the reply. When he was done, he turned to Michaels and said, “Somebody will be there in twenty minutes. They’ll call you back or have Toni call you.”
Michaels nodded. “Thank you. Call home yourself, John, just to be sure, then we might as well go have breakfast.” But until he heard from Toni, he wasn’t the least bit interested in eating.
It was almost noon, and Toni was in the kitchen and about to fix herself some lunch when there came a terrific crash, as if a truck had slammed into the house.
She knew who the intruder was as soon as he came through the side door — a door he opened by kicking it, smashing the lock, and almost tearing it from its hinges. Splinters of shattered wood flew everywhere, and the door slammed against the wall hard enough for the knob to break the spring stop and punch a hole in the Sheetrock.
She didn’t recognize him, but it had to be the drug guy who had escaped. His hair and eyebrows were bleached and his skin color was dark, but it was him.
As she stood there in her nightgown and ratty bathrobe, she knew she had only one advantage: What he saw was a small, pregnant woman who couldn’t possibly be a threat to him.
And in truth, she wasn’t much of a threat. Any strenuous activity could cause her to lose the baby. A full-out hand-to-hand fight would certainly do it. Even if her skill at
