Mikhail Andreyevitch Loskov, whose code name was Kestrel, had run a joint operation with a Splinter Cell known as Archer; however, Kestrel was betrayed by Tom Reed, Third Echelon’s corrupt leader. Shot in the head and left for dead, Kestrel was destined to live out his days as a prisoner in Russia, placed in a medically induced coma, and would only be awakened when the men controlling him needed something, such as intel on Third Echelon’s operations or other Federation secrets Kestrel might know. It had been up to Fisher and Briggs to rescue the man — and they had.
Consequently, Fisher had made a deal with Kestrel. Once he’d learned what Kestrel had given up to Voron, he released the man. Kestrel said he was returning to Russia. He planned to settle the score with those who’d been using him and who’d forcibly extracted that intel.
Kestrel owed his life to Fisher and Briggs, but he was not a man who could be owned by guilt or gratitude. He’d suffered a lot of hardships in his life, had lost his parents in a terrorist attack, and had watched his army teammates being tortured and killed by Chechens. He was a stubborn Russian bastard, but he’d vowed to keep in touch with Fisher, even offered to sell him information when he acquired it. The last time they’d spoken, Kestrel had said he was “freelancing” in the Federation, ever prepared to exact his vengeance.
“Any luck getting us into the SVR?” Briggs asked Charlie.
“Are you kidding? Kasperov helped design their firewalls. It’ll be the hack of the century. But I’m not giving up. Some files are air gapped, but I may have found a backdoor that actually takes us through a front door, then it lets us sit there through a rootkit application.”
“Tell me more about this backdoor,” Grim said, raising a cautious brow.
“Oh, you don’t want to know.”
Grim cleared her throat. “Excuse me, I need to know.”
Fisher leaned closer to Charlie and said, “Play nice.”
Charlie alternated his gaze between Grim and Fisher, then finally sighed. “All right, so the SVR’s pumping tons of cash into R&D with a focus on social media networks like VK and Facebook. They’ve got a three-tiered program for the future of the Internet. They call these tiers Monitor-3, Dispute, and Storm-13. That last one, Storm, involves an army of spambots that’ll flood social networks with propaganda to influence public opinion.”
“So how does that get you inside?” asked Fisher.
“Well, there’s a double connection here. Kasperov’s boy genius, the guy named Kannonball? He was tagged as the lead programmer on this project.”
“So he was working for the SVR and Kasperov?” asked Briggs.
“Yeah, sure, it’s like the SVR is a client. What’s more interesting, though, is that after he created their spambot army, he was tagged by the SVR as being a member of a hacktivist group known as Redtalk. They’ve been leaking secrets about corruption within the Russian government and military.”
“Like another WikiLeaks,” Fisher concluded.
“Yeah, but smaller and more specific. They probably didn’t touch Kannonball because he was so close to Kasperov.”
“I guess this is the long explanation of how you intend to get into their computers,” said Briggs through a yawn.
Charlie grew more animated, waving his peanut butter fork at Briggs. “Kannonball’s already hacked in, and he’s left his signature on some of the code for the social media spambots. In fact, I have to study it some more, but he may have left more clues there.”
“You mean like passwords to get in?” Fisher asked.
“Exactly. That’s Redtalk’s MO. That’s our front door into the SVR.”
“Or we could just call Kestrel,” Fisher said with a smile. “Old-school wins again. Grim? Find me Kestrel.”
“Will do.”
Charlie snickered. “You’re a real thread killer, Sam. I was on a roll!”
“I know. And still, there’s no guarantee the SVR or Voron are doing any better than we are right now, but we need to keep tabs on them.”
Grim raised her voice. “Charlie, I want to see everything you’re doing to get in there. Don’t make a move until we’re both sure they can’t track us.”
Charlie nodded, then lowered his voice and turned to Fisher. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Fisher nodded and Charlie rose, leading him out of the command center, down a narrow hall, and toward the living quarters. He opened a small hatch and invited Fisher into his tiny room, replete with narrow bed, notebook computers, and a few posters for alternative rock bands that Fisher had never heard of. Charlie shut the hatch and quickly said, “If you want to find this guy, you gotta cut me loose. I can’t work with her breathing down my neck.”
“She’s not breathing down your neck.”
“Are you deaf?”
“Look, you know where she’s coming from.”
He rolled his eyes. “It was hard enough taking the job in the first place, knowing she’d be here.”
“I thought you guys were getting along.”
“It’s nothing that interferes with the job, but—”
“But you have a problem with authority figures. I get that. So do I.”
At twenty-five, young Charlie Cole was still grappling with remaining calm under fire — especially when the incoming came from Grim. During the time he and Fisher worked together at Vic’s old agency, Fisher had learned a lot about the kid, learned why he had the attitude and why he’d become a hacker. Charlie had lost his father when he was just eleven, and his mother remarried a man who ruled with an iron fist and had ridiculous expectations for him. He buried himself in his room and retreated into computers. While his mother supported his interest, by the time he was fourteen, his stepfather had shipped him off to Choate Rosemary Hall, the prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, where he’d terrorized administrators with his hacking exploits. They forced him through the program because it was easier than kicking him out. He was a classic genius underachiever. He went on to the Rochester Institute of Technology because his grades wouldn’t get him into MIT like the rest of his friends, and after that, some of his online exploits had caught the attention of the NSA and he was quickly rolled into Grim’s R&D group at Third Echelon.
He didn’t last long. He was immature, had an uncompromising vision for what the SMI should be, and Grim summarily fired him. That he’d flipped her a double bird on the way out didn’t help. He’d tried a few scrub jobs, even moonlighted for two weeks as an IT temp under false credentials, until some of the people he’d hacked in the past came looking for him, including members of a Mexican drug cartel he’d once helped expose, or “dox,” by revealing all of their personal information online.
Vic’s private security firm had rescued him from all that, literally saving him when the Mexicans had sent two hit men to teach him a final lesson. Vic took him under his wing, and Charlie helped support some deftly executed operations for private clients. Despite his youth, his defiance of authority, and his often brash and animated demeanor, Charlie possessed a rare combination of go-with-your-gut instincts coupled with a cunning and always up-to-date knowledge of complex computer systems and code.
And if you wanted to get deeply psychological about it, you could say that he’d become all of these things because he was searching for his lost father, wanting answers for why the man had left him so long ago.