He made a mental note to tell his crew the car needed more testing before it could be delivered to the waiting client. He could do without one of his customizations killing its occupant, something that had never happened up to that point, even though he specialized in extreme cars that were usually far too powerful for the limited talents and experience of those who ordered them.
He’d also have to bawl out the guys for letting him drive the car before it had been properly checked. Although his habit of taking out the finished vehicles had started as a way for him to personally check that everything was in order, it had become more than that-an opportunity to drive as many different cars as possible, to feel that while his clients might own that particular supercar, in a way he owned them all.
Once he was through Deerfield Beach he’d throttle the car back up to over a hundred, shoot past Lake Boca Raton, take Linton Boulevard west over the water, then turn south and take US1 all the way back to the city, using the three-lane section through Boca to revel in some high-speed passing and lane changes.
Siddle eased off the gas and shifted down into second gear as he approached East Hillsboro Boulevard. The lights were red and he had no reason to jump them. As a matter of fact, he enjoyed taking the engine right down through the gears, enjoying the gurgles of each downshift all the way to a growling idle. Then, as the lights turned green, he’d be flooring the gas and feeling the gees and the kick of each gear shift.
Before the lights turned, the car lurched forward, hitting sixty in well under three seconds and continuing to accelerate.
As he struggled with the controls, Siddle’s whole body iced over as he realized what was happening.
He was no longer driving the vehicle.
The vehicle hijack system he’d spent over a year developing was controlling the car.
There was no point him trying to do anything. His design was flawless. He knew all the car’s safety features would already be disabled-no airbags, no emergency brakes, no pre-tensioned seatbelt.
And he knew that the inevitable outcome would be.
He’d watched it enough times before, never imagining that he’d ever experience it from the driving seat.
Sandman had waited until the Lamborghini he was trailing powered away down the Hillsboro Mile, checked the 3G signal for the final time and keyed in the passcode to make the system go live.
These days, most functions in most cars, from a mid-sized Toyota to a Bentley and beyond, were controlled by an onboard computer. Hack that computer using either a physical device connected to the on-board diagnostics port-the one car technicians use to investigate a fault in a car by plugging in a laptop computer under the dashboard-or wirelessly via a phone signal dialed into the car’s telematics system, and you could control anything that the computer controlled, from the windscreen wipers to the cruise control, from headlights to steering and braking. Not only that, but such an attack code could also be programmed to erase any evidence of its existence on the device, complicating, or even preventing, a forensic examination of a crash scene.
And with each year, as the embedded systems in cars became more and more sophisticated, the opportunities for automotive cyberattacks grew.
The hack Sandman was using required nothing more in the field than a Netbook with a 3G SIM card. Siddle had designed it to bypass the car’s firewall along with any proprietary security features specific to the target make and model. Although the list was certainly not exhaustive, Siddle had focused on expensive cars all the way through development, his argument being that not only would they have better security and therefore represent a sterner test of his expertise, but that it made sound operational sense seeing as many of their future targets would drive high-end vehicles.
Due to his personal taste, Lamborghini Aventadors were on that list.
Siddle was almost half a mile ahead of him when Sandman heard the collision.
He couldn't see the crash site clearly, but he didn't need to.
At that speed, there was simply no way that Siddle could have possibly survived the impact.
Helpless and only able to watch as the Lamborghini’s speed increased, Siddle thoughts darted across scattered memories of some of the people he’d already killed using the system: the Saudi diplomat and his gay lover; the congressman who kept refusing to do what he was being asked to do; the female college grad who was already one of China’s top corporate spies. They would all have thought their cars had simply malfunctioned.
Siddle knew there was no malfunction in the Aventador.
It was simply that, right now, someone else was driving the car.
He saw the speedometer streak past one-twenty and keep climbing, and as the purple streak veered slightly to the right, Siddle swallowed hard as a large, sand-colored building in the distance grew very big, very quickly.
Hitting it at that speed would be like falling thirty stories onto the sidewalk. And although its creator had just been killed by unstoppable force meeting immovable object, he would have been proud that yet again, his system had worked perfectly. And, because of the way the system was designed, there would be no evidence of anything other than driver error, with every rogue command being logged as coming from the driver’s own actions.
For the press, it would be yet another story about an entitled star or a reckless speed freak with no respect for the law-unless it was somebody everyone loved, in which case it would be a genuine tragedy that that person was taken from us all so young.
The only people who would miss Marcus Siddle, though, were the people who had ordered his death.
TUESDAY
42
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
After a troubled night tossing around Gigi’s sofa bed I decided to make a very early start and it wasn’t even eight o’clock by the time I found myself standing outside the Criminal Justice Center on Filbert Street, waiting for Faye Devane, hoping she’d be willing to talk about someone who died more than thirty years ago, someone she may not want to think about, let alone discuss.
Courtesy of Kurt and Gigi, I had a recent photo of her and a solid idea of where she’d be at this time of morning. I didn’t feel great about Kurt having hacked her email account and credit card statements, but I couldn’t risk either the delay or the point-blank rejection that would, in all likelihood, accompany a polite request.
Faye Devane was a Philly native. She’d grown up in Glenwood and won a scholarship to George Washington where she’d spent nine years that culminated in a doctorate in Juridical Science. After that, she’d moved back home and joined the Philadelphia Bar. She lived alone in a Brewerytown apartment, having never married nor had children. Her persona appeared to be reflected totally in her professional life as an assistant defender working exclusively for the Philadelphia Defenders Association, a non-profit organization whose members are barred from both private practice and partisan politics. From the snapshot of her that my indefatigable, if quirky, support staff had put together, I suspected she’d be a formidable opponent, both in court and as an interview subject.
Kurt had been tracking her cell phone since she’d left her apartment at six forty-five and had messaged me that she’d be arriving at some point within the next five minutes, her routine being to get in at least an hour before she was due in court.
After several minutes scanning the pedestrian traffic in both directions, I saw her approaching, briefcase in hand. She looked much younger than her fifty-six years. She wore a navy blue pants suit, which I assumed would highlight the blue eyes I’d already seen in her photos, and polished black loafers. Her raven-dark hair was short-almost boyish-and it didn’t look like her slim figure had changed much over the past thirty years: easier to maintain given she’d never been at the mercy of pregnancy and childbirth and the hormones and physical changes that accompany them. It was still easy to guess how she would have looked when she knew my dad and just as easy to see why any man would have fallen for her. She had an agile grace and moved with total confidence-both regarding her professional status and her appearance.