22

 

Katie’s dinner with Josh to discuss their relationship had started out well. Unfortunately, things went downhill in a hurry as she presented her concerns, all centering around their disparate worldviews. She had called Josh pigheaded.

He had called her a fool, a gullible fool.

She lost her temper and refused to apologize.

Josh hadn’t apologized either, leaving their personal relationship tense and tenuous.

 

****

 

For the past three weeks, Katie had focused on unraveling the conspiracy. As long as they were buried in their work, she and Josh got along reasonably well. But their progress on the investigation hadn’t fared much better than their relationship.

When Katie arrived at the lab this morning and woke her laptop, the calendar displayed July 1. She needed to make something happen soon or they might have nothing to show to Peterson before the plot was carried out. And, since the FBI had made little progress, the details of the conspiracy remained mostly a mystery.

As she had every morning for the past three weeks, Katie opened her browser on the e-publishing blog. This morning there were new edits. Finally, something was happening.

She logged into the blog’s web server using a compromised account and grep’d through the web server log for the machine used to perform the blog post.

Bingo! It was a machine in Burnaby, British Columbia. She checked the browser fingerprint. It seemed to match the Whistler gunman’s browser.

After obtaining the router’s IP address, she ran a query on it. The query returned the address of a motel in Burnaby. So, the two had eluded the police and the FBI and they were now in Burnaby, only a three-hour drive from Seattle, but….

She looked across the cubicle at Josh’s head, buried in his laptop screen, where he tweaked and tuned a new search algorithm for their use. “Josh, come here and look what I found. The guy from Whistler has moved to Burnaby.”

Josh hurried over and sat down beside her. “So did he give us any new information?”

“A new blog post.”

After fifteen minutes of Katie and Josh poring over the blog post, she determined that they were not using any of the previous techniques for encoding information. “All I see is one strange word about networking with peers. But it’s embedded in a paragraph discussing marketing self-published e-books.”

“Kate, could this mean they’re switching to a peer-to-peer network for communications?”

“If so, they must be ready to start the operation.” She still didn’t know what they had planned beyond starting forest fires, and she had already told the FBI about that danger. “If they’re going to peer-to-peer, we need to find out what software they’re using. If we knew that, we could intercept, or possibly disrupt, their communications.”

Josh gave her a coy smile.

What was he thinking?

“Kate, since we’re running out of time, maybe you and I should…” His thumb pointed over his shoulder…northward.

“After all the things you said to me about being a risk taker, you’re actually suggesting…” She returned his coy smile.

Josh captured both of her hands, folding his around them. “If we do this right, I can keep us safe, Kate. And you hacked this machine once. You can do it again.”

“I knew there was a reason I liked you, Joshua West. Great minds do think alike.”

“But we only do this if you obey my rules. We’re not taking any chances. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Oh, yes. I’m so foolish and gullible that you have to—”

“Kate…” His hurt puppy dog eyes looked into hers, vulnerable, trusting, and betrayed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it when I said—”

“And neither did I, Josh.” Just like that, their argument was resolved? No, only part of it. “So, what are your rules?”

“We go in after dark. We park out of sight. We can use one of those wireless signal enhancers so we can keep our distance and can still get on their WiFi. You hack in, get the information, and we get out. We’ll call Peterson as soon as we see what they’re up to.” Josh rubbed his chin. “Peterson…should we call him now? Can his people do this?”

“In BC? The FBI wouldn’t cross the border and hack somebody. It might cause problems with our Canadian friends. But two college students wouldn’t. You and I need to do this. I can get in quickly if he hasn’t removed the back door I left on his machine while we were in Whistler. A couple of minutes after I get through the motel’s router, I’ll be in control of his machine. About five minutes to grab his messages and look at installed peer-to-peer software, and we’re out of there.”

He looked at the information Katie had scribbled on a piece of paper. “So it’s a motel. Let’s take a look at this motel on a satellite picture. Come up with a safe approach, a safe place to park, and an emergency getaway route, should we need one.”

“It’s 9:00 AM, Josh. Do we go tonight?”

“We don’t have a choice. We need to find out what they’re up to and shut them down.”

Katie slid one of her hands free from her desk where Josh had imprisoned them with his huge hands. She started to put her hand on his shoulder, and then pulled it back to her lap. “It’s sunny today. Let’s walk over to 15th Street, have some coffee, and make plans.”

“Sounds like a good idea. I’ll drive tonight. When should I pick you up?”

“My mind works better when I’m smelling and tasting coffee. C’mon, Josh.” She pulled him along with her as she stood and moved toward the lab door, thankful that, at least for now, they had removed their relationship from the deep freeze where it had been trapped for the past three weeks.

 

****

It was nearly midnight when they exited from Highway 1, turning onto Kingsway in Burnaby. Katie had printed satellite maps and street view pictures for planning purposes. She used them to direct Josh to the motel, approaching it from a back street. He pulled into a parking space at the far corner of the lot behind the motel, about fifty yards from the rear entrance. “I’ll keep an eye out for anyone who is too curious about us.”

By the time the car stopped, Katie had opened her netbook computer and the browser was already pointed at a website she had downloaded for offline use, a site that offered numerous router exploits. She selected a test for the router type. Once she obtained the type, she selected an exploit for that brand and model of router and began hacking into the motel’s WiFi.

In less than two minutes, she was pinging the guy’s laptop. It was awake. Did that mean he was using it? She could find out in a moment, because the port on the back door she had planted was open for business. Katie crept onto the man’s laptop.

She loaded a snooper spy installation program onto the hard drive and launched it. It installed silently, giving her remote screen display, key logging, and screen capture capabilities. In another minute, Katie was in and spying on the activities on the laptop.

“Josh, I’m going to start the process that shows me their screen. Just in case, you need to be ready to drive. At some point, if they are watching closely, it’s possible they could notice something strange and, if they’re savvy enough, scan port usage and see that someone is lurking. If I can, I’ll turn on their webcam so we can get some advance notice if they spot us. They’ll probably be asleep since it’s midnight. But if they’re working, I can get any information they’re transmitting via peer-to-peer software.”

“What if the info is in Arabic?”

“Not all of the groups involved speak Arabic. And they don’t want to arouse suspicion. My guess is they’ll use English.”

A large window opened on her netbook displaying the terrorists’ laptop.

“My, my. These two are night owls. They’re working.”

“That’s pretty slick, Kate. Are you sure this super snooper program is invisible?”

“Unless he knows what to look for, yes it—uh…this isn’t good.”

“It’s an HTML form for a query. What’s he querying?”

“SHODAN. That query will display exposed SCADA systems in specified areas. Here come the results back.”

Josh’s leaned over, his head close to hers.

Even in this tense moment, Katie was well aware of his nearness, but she didn’t have time to dwell on the feelings Josh’s presence sent running through her mind.

“They’re all power plants.” She blew out a blast of air. “If they hack enough of them, they could destabilize the entire U.S. power grid.”

Josh pointed at a list of names on the right side of the window. “Those must be names for parts of the grid, but I’m not familiar with those naming conventions.”

Katie clicked the image icon at the stop of the spy window. “I just captured the screen. We can look them up later or just give them to the FBI.”

“The last one sounds like it might be in the Chicago area.”

“I don’t think so, Josh.” At the top of the window, another tab was highlighted. “This is another browser tab they popped over to. And it’s a different threat. There’s information about a weaponized virus, a delivery system, and three cities, Chicago, Seattle, and Minneapolis. We need to look up variola major.”

“No, Kate. We don’t. It’s the bad version of smallpox with a mortality rate of over 30%.”

“I didn’t know you were into biology. Thought you were more of a physical sciences sort of guy.”

“But I like medical thrillers. I haven’t had much time to read them since I ran into this crazy girl who loves real-life thrillers.”

She tried to ignore his comment. Though she did seem to have a propensity for getting involved in real-life thrillers, she certainly didn’t love them. “They’re on the third tab now. Information about the radio-controlled airplanes. They’re calling them drones.”

“Can you believe that?” Josh shook his head. “A six-foot wingspan, thirty minutes to assemble it, and it has a quiet electric motor.”

“I wonder how big a payload it can carry?”

“Enough for a video camera and explosives to start a forest fire. You can bet on that.”

“If they do this on a large scale, and if they’re successful, it dwarfs 9/11 by orders of magnitude.”

Josh’s voice grew soft. “Millions of American citizens could die. And Seattle’s a target, Kate. Three attack vectors. A triple threat.”

“Here they go. He’s bringing up the peer-to-peer client.” She pointed at the window opened on the man’s laptop. “I recognize the name. It’s an open source peer-to-peer product that uses HTTP on port 8080. Same as a web browser. They can hide in plain sight, looking like web traffic.”

“And go right through firewalls, proxy servers, and—”

“I get the idea, Josh. But we haven’t seen anything like a schedule and only some sketchy geographical—” Katie gasped. “The screen display just when blank.”

“Could they have detected us?”

“I scheduled a process to destroy all the data on his hard drive, but not until we’re done. But if he suspected something, he could display port usage and see that another machine is sending and transmitting on some strange ports. We’re on the same router, so they would know we’re nearby. I think we need to go, Josh. Now!”

Josh hit the ignition.

Two people ran out of the motel as Josh’s car rolled toward the street.

Katie looked back as Josh’s car squealed out of the driveway and onto a side street.

The doors of a big sedan closed and the lights came on.

Josh spun out turning onto Kingsway. They slid across all four lanes and headed toward the curb on the far side. He steered out of the slide, saving them one or more flat tires.

Katie looked back again.

The big sedan was on the side street, approaching Kingsway.

Josh punched the gas pedal.

Katie’s head slapped the headrest as they accelerated down the street at a frightening speed.