Dahl was a spontaneous man. Given to sudden heroic deeds and hair-raising stunts in battle, he was also prone to crazy, impulsive acts on his family days. Anything from jumping into swimming pools, fully clothed, and getting Johanna, the kids and himself thrown out of their hotel, to impromptu fifty-mile mad dashes for specialist ice cream. It was his crazy, unplanned side that Johanna had originally fallen in love with, though not when she heard he applied the same methods in the Army too.
He tended to keep that part quiet.
They were a happy, fit family. Dahl had met his wife at the gym. His regimen impressed her; his muscles too. When she heard him speak she backed away, wary, no doubt thinking him some kind of shiny-arse local with a rich daddy and a handful of procured well-paid jobs to peruse.
Actually, Dahl kept it quiet from everyone except her that he’d dropped out of a private school to join the Army. A disappointment to his dad. But he hated the regime, the corruption, the back-slapping, the boys-own mentality it all led to. Several times he’d almost mentioned it to Drake, but secretly enjoyed the one-upmanship it gave him over the Yorkshireman — even if he was the only one that knew it. The Army had made him, molded him, and given him real purpose.
Recently, since the Odin affair, Dahl had been wavering a little. The SPEAR missions were so deadly, so potentially lethal, but also among the most important that any team anywhere in the world were running right now.
But family came first.
Could he manage the best of both worlds? Possibly, but the sheer risk endemic in their missions and the power of their enemies made him wonder time and again what young Isabella and Julia would do if they heard their mad daddy had died.
He couldn’t do it to them. But the missions kept coming. Each more crucial than the last. And now there was talk of Pandora and a new order and, beyond that, the greatest most immeasurable discovery of the ages.
Dahl breathed in. Time to stop relaxing and get his mind back on mission. It was best to confront these things at the right time, a time that was clearly not now. He would store it and move on. Johanna and the kids were already in DC. Maybe a trip to the White House was in order.
Then he thought better of it. With his track record in impulsiveness, walking around one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the world with your wife and kids in tow probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
Disney then, he thought. What could possibly go wrong in a land of mice and ducks, pirates and princesses, cars and planes?
He wondered if the guy that played Goofy had ever experienced a half-nelson.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Karin Blake tapped away at her keyboard like a turbo-charged woodpecker; at first struggling to give the job her full attention, but gradually slipping into that geek power mode she loved. The brainwaves were surging, the ideas flicking and flashing like a firework show. Very quickly the screen and the cyber world became her only focus.
Komodo interrupted only occasionally. “How does this expert of theirs carry around a computer powerful enough to take this one on?”
Karin glanced up. The workstation she’d been presented with consisted of several hard-drives, wraparound screens and split-screening. It practically hummed a hacker’s melody. She shrugged. “You can build a performance PC these days with a relatively small footprint, thanks to new ranges like the Mini-ITX motherboard. The liquid cooling solutions are nothing short of dramatic. An ultimate hacker’s rig can be easily disguised as a suitcase. It’s ugly but perfect.”
“Gotcha. But how do they get so good, these cyber geeks?”
“Could be a hundred ways. Most likely is that he’s ex-government. Did you know that DARPA built a mini-internet of their own a few years ago? A virtual internet as a test bed for cyberwarfare. They simulated different attack scenarios and came up with new defenses.”
“Didn’t DARPA create the Internet in the ‘60s?”
“Yes. So just imagine what they’re up to now.”
“So this guy is one of those?”
Karin shrugged. “I don’t know. They were called ‘cyberwarriors’. I guess I could ask him.”
“You two are just gonna — schmooze.”
“Not really. This is war. This is my fight.” Karin clicked her fingers. “Circuit Girl is back in action. I may not wear a flak jacket or fire a Glock, but I have a hard drive and I’m damn willing to use it.”
“How ya gonna get in there without him noticing?”
“Unlikely that I will. First, we learn the battlefield. Then, we employ methods on infiltration. Then it’s attack or a covert op, exfiltration, and killing the bastard’s foothold.”
Karin pointed at the screen. “The objective is to disable him. Shut his grid down. Then, our soldiers in the field can act. We’ll do a ‘Pearl Harbor’ on him since I don’t have a virus at hand.”
“A Pearl Harbor?”
“Hacker phrase named after… well, you know what it’s named after, T-vor. It’s a massive cyberattack on one or many computers, leading to infiltration then sabotage. We’ll take him right out of the game.”
Komodo squeezed her shoulder. Karin watched his face in the reflection of her screen, enjoying the slight smile that rested there. This was just what she needed.
“Did you know?” she said as she tapped and rolled her chair from screen to screen, stopping occasionally to sip coffee, keeping all the progressing information ticking over in her mind. “Cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism are now considered as much an act of war as the real thing. Every major defense agency is hiring teams of cyberwarriors. MI6 recently infiltrated an Al Qaeda website and replaced the recipe for a pipe bomb with a recipe for making cupcakes.” She laughed. “Strange but true.”
“A growing enterprise,” Komodo noted.
“Everyone is conducting cyberwar games these days,” Karin said. “Banks. Energy companies. Countries. Retailers and gaming firms. Social media organizations.”
“What’s that?” Komodo pointed at one of the screens, toward a newly emerging pulsing yellow ball of energy.
“That’s him,” Karin breathed. “I figured he had to be wireless. No hard-wiring in the field. Just a matter of casting the net and locating the signal with the cleverest arrangement of protocols. There’s only one. And it’s got more firewalls than Vesuvius in its heyday. Here goes.”
She tapped and weaved steadily, finessing the connection as much with her body as her mind. Slinking over to a master hacker’s subnet wasn’t exactly easy, but if he responded like any other good hacker then, at first, he should monitor and watch the penetration, probably hoping he could infiltrate the infiltrator and hide inside her own systems. Karin had already employed a deceive program, which deployed multiple fake systems that the hacker might waste time seeking out. It was all just a ploy to gain enough time to shut the bastard right down.
Karin couldn’t be too careful. Whilst she’d been out of the hacking game for some time now, her old signature — her method of operating — might still be recognized by a select few, and subsequently lead right back to her. If a master hacker knew your identity he’d have a better chance of defeating you in the cyber-theater of warfare. The militarization of cyberspace was not exclusive to governments and powerful organizations; it was still in the steady hands of the geek.
If the hacker detected her, his options were many and varied. Confusion. Surprise. Deception. Stimulation. Blockading. All viable options to effectively handle a penetration. Karin launched her probe, sitting back slightly, pausing to see what would happen.