They drove around for a while and, after examining and rejecting several, they found one that seemed to fit the bill in a strip mall close to a community college. This time at night it was busy, but not overly so. Even more convenient, it was about three blocks from Jackie's old office. She didn't believe that they could find anything else out about what Nathan had been up to, but would go along to appease Leo.
She flipped open her laptop and booted it up. First off, she concealed that she was accessing the store's wireless connection and sniffed out a packet from their wireless and ran that through some software she’d written that found the password. Typing that in, she accessed a Black Hat BBS system.
There were generally considered two types of hackers — white hat and black hack and a bastard mix of the two, gray hats.
Black hat hackers were often the authors of computer viruses, broke into secured networks and destroyed data among other things. Some black hatters were hired guns of criminal enterprises, stealing personal data, engaging in industrial espionage and anything else that paid very well in dirty cash.
The white hat hackers worked with companies to improve their security, without malice or damage, and were often hired by IT firms to find vulnerabilities in their network and computer security. Many of these people were reformed black hatters who had a very close brush with law enforcement, if not actually having served jail time, for illegal computer activities. The bigger your rep in the black hat community, the more you could charge for your services in the white hat world.
Gray hat hackers sometimes act illegally, sometimes in good will, and sometimes not. Jackie tended to place herself in the camp being a hybrid between black hat and white hat hackers. She usually didn't hack for personal gain or with malicious intentions, but didn't have much of a problem occasionally committing crimes during her technological exploits.
All the camps kept close watch on the others and there was often a seemingly friendly rivalry. As an example, one of the largest black hat conferences was sponsored by Microsoft and was attended by people from the FBI and other three letter government agencies. White and gray hatters often showed up to check out new technology. It was security free for all and the hotel sponsoring the conference one time had their lobby ATM hacked and their corporate network knocked out by over caffeinated geniuses with too much free time on their hands and a reputation to build or uphold.
Since Jackie worked with both camps, she maintained a working relationship with notable names from both sides. There were many aspects of computer security and you couldn't begin to be an expert in all of them. Her area of expertise was narrow and involved cryptography specific to the banking industry. Yes, there were some other aspects of security that she had more than a passing familiarity with, like wireless, but she didn't know much about cell phone security or systems, so she kept a list of contacts like Ryan Reese handy to help fill in the gaps. Though, if she was confronted by say RFID — Radio Frequency IDs — she wouldn't know who the hell to call and would do the best she could with the tools she had, including an innate curiosity and belief that locked systems were meant to be broken into to see what made them work.
She found the e-mail address she was looking for and sent off a quick query. This guy would either help or he wouldn't. She didn't even know his real name, but knew of him by reputation as being a superior hacker in a business full of people with MENSA level IQs. Rumor had it that he had hacked into NSA’s and the FBI's computers just to see if it could be done. And then had the balls enough to walk into the offices of the government agencies and score a big contract as a 'consultant.' Hacking places like the NSA would normally earn you a firing squad, but he had pulled it off, adding to his rep. Besides, having such agencies owing you a favor or two was also handy.
While waiting for a reply, she pulled up the latest copy of the online edition of the Denver Sentinel and couldn't believe what she saw. Not a regular subscriber to any formal media outlet, it was nice to pop in once in a while and see what had been happening in the world. Nathan had subscribed to a number of web-based news sources, but she rarely had the time or the inclination to read the tasteless prattle that qualified as news any more.
“Look here,” she said, tilting the computer screen in Leo's direction. He had been sitting as still as a statue and the only way that she knew he was still alive was that his eyes were constantly moving, looking, watching, observing and probably calculating bullet trajectories.
He glanced at the screen. “Shit. We're in the middle of a firestorm.”
Together they both read through the article. Most of the Denver City Council was either dead or dying, as a result of poison someone put in their coffee at a meeting. The doctors were closed lipped about the poison or the prognosis of their patients, but it didn't sound good. Someone had blown up several IRS and BATF agents in their cars. A member of the US House of Representatives had dropped off the face of the earth, and other members of the government, state, local and federal level, were missing, dying or already dead.
Denver, Colorado, seemed to be the center of either a terrorist attack or the victim of a lot of very bad luck.
They both finished the article at the same time.
Jackie leaned back and said, “What do you think this means?”
“I can see the Black Hand at work here. There are five fingers, each specializing in a certain way of killing, from accidents of various sorts, car bombs, poisons, sniping and fire. If we broke all of the recent kills down to the way the victims died, we can find the finger behind it. The only one that I don't see in having a victim is the sniper, and he’s been busy after us.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“He’s probably hiding someplace close.”
Leaning back, he closed his eyes. “We need to look at the overall picture here. Up until now, we've been focused too close on what was happening to us.”
“Big picture?”
“Yes. When I worked, it was only outside the country. From my reading, I think that most of the assassins in the Black Hand did the same. We can verify it by looking at the data you pulled from the Blackberry. Anyway, something big is happening that they’re all working in this country, and specifically this local area. These are high profile targets and they are hitting a lot of them quickly — making all concerned very vulnerable. So, what are they after? Yes, they are stacking up bodies, but is there a common thread between the victims?”
Then it hit her. “I think I might have something.”
She pulled up the news story about Brian Case, the building inspector who was burnt to death in his car. Case had driven Nathan into a white hot rage when he had inspected the construction of the expansion of their office, promising heavy fines if they continued. The delay had cost them tens of thousands of dollars in idle construction workers standing around fiddling their hammers until Nathan had met what she considered venal and arbitrarily interpreted building codes. Nathan had complained to everyone in city government who would listen, but they had all stood behind Case. Now, the city government was headless.
She just wished that she had access to Nathan's computer as he had sent hundreds, if not thousands, of letters to his elected representatives, senators and anyone in power that he could find an address for. He rarely received even a form letter response and was probably labeled as a nut job with his rants being quietly ignored in the hopes that they would go away.
“Well?” Leo asked, pulling her back to the present.
She showed him the story about Brian Case. “They all are people that pissed off Nathan in one form or another.”