“Mr. Potter. FBI. Please come out.”
Tank looked around the cabin. There was nowhere to run. He hid the key in the only place he knew.
“Open up, Mr. Potter.”
Tank opened the door. He recognized the agent at once. He’d seen him just the night before. Only then he hadn’t been holding a pistol. “You?” he said.
Special Agent Fergus Keefe shot him in the right knee. Tank toppled to the floor, grasping his leg.
Keefe stepped over him into the cabin. “I believe that the automobile parked out front belongs to us.”
90
Rudeboy 17, Ninjaneers 16.
With ten minutes remaining, it was down to two teams. First to capture twenty flags won. It had been back-and-forth the entire game. Every time Jess and her teammates captured a flag, Rudeboy would steal it back.
“Tell Defense to sharpen his game,” said Jess. “There aren’t enough vulns left to win if we keep losing our flags.”
She cracked her knuckles and took a swig of Mountain Dew. She was beating Rudeboy on the attack, capturing two flags to his one. But her team was having little luck preventing him from stealing them back. She saw her dad in front of the TV watching a Celtics game. “It’s defense that wins games,” he always said.
A cheer went up from the crowd. Another flag for Rudeboy.
She caught Max looking expectantly at her. We’re counting on you. A cameraman shined a light in her face. “Get lost,” she shouted.
The last problem flashed onto her screen. Immediately she knew she was in trouble. It was like nothing she’d seen before. She needed a full minute just to read the entire code. Nothing clicked. She scanned it again, feeling more lost than before. None of it made sense.
She glanced up to find Garrett staring right at her, fists clenched, urging her on. She returned her attention to the screen and then she saw it…something familiar…She didn’t know what it meant, but she felt as if she’d taken a step closer. And then she had it.
Jessie picked up her phone and pulled up the snippet of code left behind by the person who’d deleted her father’s message. She compared it to the problem and saw that she was correct. The two codes matched exactly except for a sequence on the final line. There it was-the vuln.
“Got one,” she called out, highlighting the error and sending it to Research.
“It’s a variant on Linux,” he said. “Did one like it at Caltech last year. Telecommunications protocol. We were hacking into the phone company.”
Jessie jumped from her chair and took a seat with Defense. “Move it,” she said, squeezing closer so she had a clear view of his screen. “Look,” she said. “He’s breaking in through the black matrix.”
It was Rudeboy, infiltrating their system. She blocked him with a cross-dominant strix. Easy enough. While he was figuring out what had happened, she accessed his board and found a chink. A minute later she’d stolen one of his flags. “Got one back.”
Ninjaneers 18, Rudeboy 18.
“Solved it,” said Research.
For the first time their team took the lead.
Ninjaneers 19, Rudeboy 18.
But a second later another cheer erupted as Rudeboy picked up another flag.
“Hit me with some Skittles,” said Jess.
Max dumped a mound in her palm and she threw them all into her mouth. Chewing ferociously, she went back to her original seat. “Steal one of his flags,” she called over her shoulder.
“Working on it!”
There was one flag remaining to be won. It all came down to who would spot the last vuln first and solve it.
Jessie ran her fingernails across the desk as she studied the next batch of code. Telecommunications protocol wasn’t her area of expertise. She didn’t care about hacking into phones. She liked hacking into networks, mainframes.
“One minute,” announced the referee over the loudspeaker.
If the game ended now, it would be a tie. A tie wasn’t good enough. Not when she was so close to giving the Ninjaneers their first victory. Not when she was so close to beating Rudeboy.
“Did you get it?”
“He’s blocking me. Did you?”
Jessie couldn’t answer. She needed time to work it out. Stay calm. Concentrate. It’ll come.
A cheer from the audience. She glanced up. Rudeboy had captured his twentieth flag. She ran back to Defense and shoved him out of his chair. Their only hope was to steal one of Rudeboy’s flags back.
The crowd began to count down the last twenty seconds. “Twenty…nineteen…”
Jessie was aware of Max and the others huddled behind her. Time and again she attempted to penetrate Rudeboy’s board, only to be blocked.
Ten…nine…
And there it was-wide open, a hole she could drive a truck through. She typed in the solution. Just a few more seconds…
Six…five…
She finished the last word and hit Return. She’d done it. She’d nailed Rudeboy. She’d stolen his flag. It would be a tie.
Two…one…
The air horn sounded, signifying the end of competition. Jessie stood from her chair. The scoreboard remained unchanged. Rudeboy 20, Ninjaneers 19.
“But I got it,” she said. “I broke through his defense. I captured his flag.”
“No,” said Max. “Typo in the last word.”
“What?” Jessie sat down and looked at her work. Max was right. She’d typed a c in place of an x. It was her fault all over again. “Crap!”
The Ninjaneers collapsed in their chairs, despondent. No one said a word to her. She’d made them believe they could win, and she’d let them down.
The crowd poured out of the stands. She glimpsed Rudeboy moving past the judges, disregarding the referee’s outstretched hand, ignoring all attempts to congratulate him as he skirted the podium toward the exit.
Now or never.
Jess slid over the table and made her way through the crowd. She had to speak with him. She’d come so close. One flag. It was all because of a typo.
In the hall she saw the black hoodie again. She hurried toward him, breaking into a jog, carving a path through the spectators leaving the ballroom. She turned a corner and saw him by the elevator, hands in his pockets, back to her.
She stopped and steeled herself, squaring her shoulders. She had practiced what she was going to say a hundred times and now she couldn’t remember a word. “Whatever, Jess, just talk to him,” she muttered.
A hand landed on her shoulder.
“Jessie!”
She spun. Her stomach dropped. Not now. Not here. “Mom? You came?”
“I’ve been at the police station for hours. I keep calling Garrett, but he isn’t answering. Didn’t you get my messages? Are you okay?”
Jessie nodded. She wanted to say that she was fine and that she’d almost won Capture the Flag-one stupid typo!-but there wasn’t time.
“We need to leave,” said Mary. “I’m just so glad you’re here and I found you.” She put out her arms, and Jessie saw that she had tears in her eyes. Backpedaling, Jessie avoided the hug. She glanced over her shoulder to see the elevator opening and Rudeboy stepping inside.
“Not now. Sorry, but I have to-”
“Jess, stay-no!”
Jessie pushed her mother away and ran.
She made it into the packed elevator as the doors closed.
91
“Where is it?” demanded Keefe.
Lying on his side, Tank stared at the swirls in the wood floor. Shot twice in one day, he was thinking. My luck has got to get better.
“Was it in the car?” Keefe went on. “Mr. Mason can’t see any other reason for you and Grant’s wife to do something so patently stupid as steal a piece of government property in the middle of the night. He thinks the files Stark stole were hidden in the car key. He said it had to be on a flash drive or something similar. Where is she, by the way?”