Viper Nine Read online

  ‘What do you think?’ one of them replied.

  ‘Okay then,’ Melissa stood out of her chair and beckoned Driver over. ‘I’ve got to put you through a few tests.’

  Driver felt alarmed at the prospect. She was sure to be exposed.

  ‘I don’t do tests,’ Driver replied, as surly as she could muster.

  Melissa was insistent. ‘We do it for all our new recruits.’

  Driver huffed in reply. ‘I’m no ordinary recruit, and you know it.’

  She felt a crushing grip on each shoulder as the men pulled her up out of her chair. They nodded towards the table as Driver thought fast through an exit plan. She could disarm the men. Fight and shoot her way out of the room. But then what? Her cover would be blown. The entire operation a crashing failure. And who knew what damage Viper Nine would inflict in return?

  Driver trudged to Melissa’s chair and dropped down in front of her sleek black laptop. She was faced with a black screen full of code in white script.

  ‘You know what to do?’ Melissa asked.

  In her ear, Driver heard only the faint, scratchy mutterings of Mo. There was no way to explain what she was seeing on-screen and zero way for him to help her from his desk in Geneva.

  Driver shook her head and laughed. ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘What’s the matter,’ Melissa sneered. ‘You can’t read code?’

  Driver pushed the laptop away. ‘This is baby stuff. It’s demeaning.’

  Melissa took offence. ‘It’s high-level programming. I designed the test myself.’

  ‘Then you wasted your time,’ Driver said. ‘I’d rather die.’

  Melissa snorted with rage. ‘Who do you think you are?’

  ‘Oh no one, just the person who hacked the Reichstag and breached the Pentagon, to name a few.’

  ‘You want in on with us, this is the cover price,’ Melissa said.

  ‘You want me on board? Find something better for me to do.’ Driver folded her arms and muttered. ‘It’s like asking Michelangelo to paint by numbers. Fucking unbelievable.’

  She continued to grumble as Melissa took out her phone and held it to her ear. ‘Yeah, it’s definitely Super-Fly… As egotistical as her reputation.’

  She ended the call and turned to Driver. ‘You want real? I’ll give you real. Follow me.’

  Melissa waved away the men with guns. They turned and walked away as she motioned for Driver to follow, guiding her to the door at the far left of the room.

  She thumped on the large, sheet-metal door. It opened, another armed man on the inside.

  Driver followed Melissa through a network of underground passageways to an open-plan office. It sat behind a glass wall, under a twenty-foot high ceiling supported by a web of riveted girders.

  A warm gust of air greeted them from above as the climate shifted to room temperature.

  The office itself buzzed with activity – fifty or more programmers in casual clothing, glued to their monitors. A persistent murmur broke into individual conversations as Melissa led Driver through the office.

  The hackers talked in riddles – coder terminology completely alien to Driver’s untrained ear.

  Inside her ear, however, she finally heard a clear signal from Mo. He was repeating the same request. Cough twice if she could hear him.

  Driver put a hand to mouth and let out two gentle coughs.

  ‘It’s the dust,’ Melissa remarked as they crossed the office floor. ‘Sticks in your throat.’

  She stopped at an empty desk in the middle of the office, with a computer tower and monitor set up on a desk.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Melissa said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  As her new supervisor strode off across the office floor, Driver took in more of her surroundings. There were two possible exits. The one she’d come through and another at the rear of the office on the far side. Armed men patrolled the far walls of the vast underground expanse. She couldn’t see their weapons, but it was obvious – they were hardened individuals. A level of stone-faced professionalism in the way they watched over the assembled programmers.

  With miles of cable taped to the concrete floor, this was far bigger than she had expected. Yet they looked ready to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice.

  Driver looked over her the top of her monitor. A series of giant projector screens played news reports from a half dozen locations around the world. The cyberterrorists had the resources to employ armed security and a room full of elite-level hackers.

  They must have had some serious funding, which meant a state-sponsored cell couldn’t be ruled out. Yet it was hard to imagine any country of note wanting to throw the world into economic turmoil.

  No, that didn’t make sense. The more likely scenario was private finance – or cash reserves obtained by way of fraud.

  ‘Mo, can you hear me?’ Driver whispered.

  ‘I’m hearing you,’ Mo replied. ‘What are we looking at?’

  ‘They want to put me through a test,’ Driver said, her heart racing at the prospect of her impending initiation.

  ‘We knew this might happen,’ Mo replied. ‘Have you got access to a USB port?’

  Driver checked the slim silver tower whirring quietly to her left. Beneath the green power light were a column of USB slots. ‘I’ve got three.’

  ‘And you remembered the flash drive?’ Mo asked.

  ‘No, I forgot it,’ Driver replied, noticing Melissa pacing towards her from the far side of the office.

  ‘No need to get antsy,’ Mo said.

  ‘Oh yeah? You try sitting here.’

  ‘Well, for me it would be a breeze,’ Mo replied.

  ‘Not if you knew shit about code.’

  ‘Stay calm, my little puppet,’ Mo continued. ‘Let the master work through you.’

  ‘I’ll work through you if I get out of this.’

  As Melissa approached, Driver calmed herself and awaited her first assignment.

  Chapter 8

  The contact known as Necromancer hurried along the street, drawn to the shadows like a filing to a magnet.

  Yet Lim already had the jump on her, pulling in and out at regular intervals. She waited on the opposite side of the street in the Audi, watching the girl approach in the passenger mirror.

  Lim widened the angle using the remote button on the arm of her door. The mirror opened out to reveal more of the street. Necromancer passed under a light, a hand dug in a jeans pocket. Out came a set of keys.

  The girl stopped outside the entrance to a shabby apartment block six floors high. She wrestled with the door and pushed her way in. Lim watched the building for activity. A light went on in a top floor apartment. The young recruiter appeared, pushed the sash window up a few inches and disappeared.

  Pulling on the door handle, Lim slipped out of the car. She let a taxi shush by over the still-wet surface of the road and jogged across the street. To the right of the building lay a dark alleyway. Lim found a rickety fire escape ladder up the side, leading to the roof. She jumped, grabbed hold of the bottom rung and pulled it down to thigh-level. The ladder was rusty, the bolts holding it in place rattling loose with each step. Lim trod light and fast up to the top, hopped onto the roof and crept low to the front of the building.

  The Chinese operative stopped and surveyed the street. There was something thrilling about sneaking around somewhere she shouldn’t.

  It was the same buzz she felt as a young kid, slipping in through the windows and doors of neighbours’ homes. She and her brother, Bao, would dare each other, seeing who could last the longest. As the big sister, Lim would always win – Bao fleeing in panic at the first creak of a floorboard.

  Lim cast an eye left and right. The apartment block sat across from a small city park, deserted. The street itself was quiet. The only sound a dog barking.

  Perfect.

  Crouching on the edge of the roof, Lim didn’t bother to tell the others about her solo mission. She felt relieved to get away from
the apron strings of Gilmore and the team.

  Working alone was like mountain air in her lungs. All those years of operating solo had instilled a fierce independence within her. She was used to executing her own missions, without the need to check in, fall in line or follow anyone else’s plan.

  This new state of affairs made her claustrophobic, so being up on the sixth floor without anyone’s say-so was liberating.

  Lim lowered herself down, grabbing hold of a steel drainpipe. It held firm, her forty-eight kilo weight no problem as she shimmied down to the small, iron-barred balcony outside Necromancer’s apartment.

  Hopping down onto the balcony, Lim’s soft black pumps made no sound. She hid in the shadows by the window and watched as the recruiter moved around the apartment. It was a small place with a messy living area full of cheap, worn furniture and comic book posters on the walls. There was a kitchenette littered with takeaway boxes and squashed beer cans. And what constituted an office to the right of the room.

  The workspace featured a table buried under laptops, gadgets and a monitor with a screensaver of ones and zeroes. In fleeting glimpses, Lim saw the girl move across the hallway between rooms, peeling out of her clothes.

  The sound of a shower head bursting into life saw Necromancer appear stripped to her underwear – skinny, pale and covered in tattoos. She opened a fridge and drank juice from a carton. Ditching the carton in an overflowing bin, the woman padded back into the hallway, removing the clip on her bra.

  Lim put both palms under the sash window and pushed upwards as quiet as she could. It was heavy and stiff, but an extra foot was all she needed to stoop inside.

  Moving through the living area lit dim by a single floor lamp, Lim reached inside her thin black jacket. She drew a Glock 17 from her shoulder holster, took a suppressor from an inside pocket and screwed it in place.

  Lim darted to the nearest wall and peeped into the short, narrow hallway. On the right was a bedroom. At the end, a door left ajar with steam billowing out and dissolving in the cooler air.

  The shower ran fast and loud, offering her plenty of cover. Still, she crept over the ragged brown carpet, wary of noisy floorboards.

  Raising her gun, Lim eased the bathroom door open and moved across the lino, feeling the warm, thick steam on her face. The shower ran hot behind a mint-green plastic curtain pulled across a yellowing bathtub. She put a hand on the curtain and whipped it aside on the rail.

  But the shower was empty.

  Lim felt a cold, hard barrel to the back of her skull. She glanced sideways in the misting bathroom mirror and saw the recruiter with a Beretta 9mm in hand. The Viper Nine recruiter wore her black hoodie over her underwear, half-zipped to protect her modesty.

  ‘Give it up,’ Necromancer said, her tone as nervous as her movements, which was far from reassuring.

  Lim slid her pistol in the basin of the sink.

  ‘Who are you?’ The girl asked.

  ‘Lower your weapon and I’ll tell you,’ Lim replied in German.

  Necromancer pushed the barrel deeper into the Chinese agent’s skull.

  ‘What model of gun is that?’ Lim asked.

  ‘A thirty-eight Colt, why?’

  ‘Because when the inside of the barrel gets wet, they backfire.’

  The girl hesitated, appearing unsure whether to believe the Chinese agent.

  ‘If you pull the trigger you’ll blow your own hand off,’ Lim continued, watching the young hacker’s reaction in the mirror. ‘Go ahead, try it,’ Lim said.

  Necromancer shook her head. ‘You’re lying.’

  Lim was lying. But it distracted the girl long enough. She spun and disarmed the young hacker in a flash, the girl’s wrist twisted to send a shock of pain up her arm.

  Lim pushed Necromancer’s face to the wall, both the girl’s gun and her question reversed. ‘Who are you?’ she asked in the girl’s ear.

  The woman gritted her teeth, unwilling to answer.

  ‘Fine, then who are you recruiting for?’ Lim asked.

  An increase in grip brought a tear to the girl’s eye and the first meaningful words out of her lips. ‘I don’t know much. I’m just a hacker, small-time.’

  Lim applied more pressure to the girl’s wrist. ‘Small-time hacker with a gun? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t know who they are,’ Necromancer cried. ‘They approached me online. We communicate by text. I find the hacker, make the offer and set up a meet. A man pays me in cash.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘A man, that’s all I know.’

  ‘You don’t question any of it?’ Lim asked.

  The recruiter shook her head. ‘The money’s too good to ask.’

  Lim pulled her away from the wall and marched her through the hallway, into the living area. ‘Where’s your phone?’ she asked.

  The young recruiter nodded towards the kitchen worktop. Lim threw the girl on to the sofa and kept the gun on her. She snatched the phone from the worktop and asked for the PIN. Gaining access to Necromancer’s contacts list, she thumbed her way through the list. ‘What’s your contact’s name?’

  ‘It’s down as Marvin,’ the hacker replied, wrapping herself tight in her own arms. ‘I guess it’s fake or something.’

  Lim found the so-called Marvin and memorised the number attached to his name. Pocketing the phone, she stepped forward with the girl’s Beretta. The woman cowered in response.

  ‘Do you have tape?’ Lim asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tape? Duct tape?’

  Necromancer motioned to the kitchen. ‘Behind you. Top drawer.’

  Lim took a step backwards. Keeping the gun on the girl, she reached behind the small of her back and felt a drawer grip in her hand. She rolled it open and fumbled inside. Her hand stopped on a fat roll of tape. Lim set it down on the counter and took her own phone from her jacket pocket. She made a call to headquarters. Anna answered.

  ‘I need a live trace on a number,’ Lim said, reeling off Marvin’s digits.

  Anna was quick to respond. ‘Sending it to you now.’

  ‘Share it with the others,’ Lim replied, as a map of Berlin with a flashing red pin appeared on the screen of her phone.

  She ended the call and tucked her phone away.

  ‘What happens now?’ The recruiter asked, shivering in the chill sneaking in through the open window.

  Lim picked up the roll of tape. She moved towards the girl and pulled out a length with her teeth.

  Chapter 9

  ‘So…’ Melissa said, hovering over Driver.

  ‘So?’ she replied.

  ‘So get started,’ Melissa continued. ‘The job is eighty per cent done. You already have access to their systems. Your task is to instigate denial of service.’

  Driver turned to face a screen full of code. ‘Piece of cake.’ As Melissa lingered, she swung back around in her chair. ‘Do you mind? I can’t work when people are watching. Hacking and peeing the same.’

  Melissa shrugged and sighed. ‘Sure. You’ve got ten minutes to complete the test.’

  Melissa stomped off, muttering to herself about Black Hats and their precious idiosyncrasies. Driver checked her space for prying eyes and slid a rubber link aside on the chunky strap on her watch. She prised out a small USB stick, replaced the link and plugged the stick into one of the USB ports.

  A small grey dialogue box appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the computer screen. Remote user connected, it said, as the cursor arrow moved without the touch of Driver’s hand on the mouse. Mo was in control now. All she could do was pretend.

  Driver watched as he minimised the black screen with the mountain of code and double-clicked on the desktop icon for the USB.

  Mo opened a file, with a second dialogue box expanding. After typing a string of code at the speed of light, a stream of data flowed down the screen. He minimised the window and repeated the trick with a second box. In seconds, there were two progress bars onscreen in front of Driver. One
labelled upload, the other, download.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Driver whispered.

  ‘I’m uploading a virus and running a bot swarm on all the data they’ve got on their servers.’

  ‘Bot swarm?’ she asked.

  ‘The bots will swarm through their systems and automatically detect any data files,’ Mo explained. ‘They’ll download it direct to our servers.’

  ‘Won’t they know?’ Driver asked.

  ‘No, the programme’s a Duck Fuck.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s a term I came up with,’ Mo continued. ‘You don’t see a duck’s feet when it’s swimming – only the duck on the surface.’

  ‘And the second part?’

  ‘After this, they’ll be well and truly—’

  ‘Okay, I get it,’ Driver said, not wanting to stray further into the technicalities.

  Something told her even an IT specialist wouldn’t have known what Mo was talking about, such was his level. The best she could do was let him do his thing, and pretend in the meantime to be doing hers. So Driver began typing. With her fingers flying at random over the keys, her gaze roamed the room.

  No one seemed to be watching her – the hackers absorbed in their own part of the Viper Nine puzzle and Melissa keeping an eye on the news.

  Driver refocused on her screen, but couldn’t tell one wall of code from another.

  Mo assured her he was on top of the hack.

  ‘You’ve only got five minutes,’ Driver said, an eye on the progress bars.

  ‘Give me three,’ Mo replied, filling the screen with a tidal wave of script. ‘Okay, are you sure you want to do this?’

  ‘I still don’t know what it is we’re supposed to be doing,’ Driver said.

  ‘Something illegal,’ Mo replied. ‘And very, very dangerous.’

  ‘Can you stop it once it starts?’ Driver asked, as quiet and discreet as she could.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Hey, I’ve never hacked a power plant before,’ Mo said, putting the pressure back on Driver.

  She held her breath. Time was ticking. And Mo needed an answer. ‘All right, do it,’ she replied.