Target Deck - 02 (29 page)

He shed no tears when the dog Ortega met his end at the hands of the gringos but instead of going back from where they came, they instead turned on Jimenez, attempting to eat his organization alive. They had killed many of his gunmen in the city, raided their training camp across the border, and now his pet intelligence agent, Arturo had gone dark when he was supposed to be helping him defeat the gringos. The mercenaries were closing the net around him. It could only be a Yankee plot. They were defeating his rivals to the north and they sent hired guns to take care of the smaller cartels in the south.

The ten-year old boy had been purchased from a local village. The locals were also followers of her, of Santa Muerte. Not the false idols, but the one true Saint of Death. She asked and you did not dare to disagree. The boy had screamed despite his instructions. They slashed open his veins and bled him dry around the alter. Soon, his eyes had grown distant and Jimenez knew that Santa Muerte had traveled inside the boy and taken him. Her empty eyes had met his. The small body now lay sprawled in front of the altar, the offering left for her to do with what she would.

Once again, the rulers of Mexico worshiped at the blood drenched altars of murder and human sacrifice.

She would now be satisfied.

Now she would grant him control over The Beast.

Nikita eased the safety switch on his sniper rifle to the fire position.

It was Jimenez.

The scope's reticle bounced across the drug lord's face. He had just stepped out of the church, his face an expressionless mask. His eyes were somewhere else, certainly not on this planet. This was the top of their target deck. Nikita had High Value Target number one in his sights and every reason to put a bullet in him, except one. Aghassi.

The soccer game ceased immediately and the body guards picked up their weapons before flanking Jimenez as they began walking across the field. From the tower, he was an invisible watcher of the entire scene below him. A voyeur that now felt helpless despite the precision killing instrument in his hands.

“Spooky-One, we have problem.”

“What is it,” Aghassi hissed.

“HVT number one is on the move with his guards.”

“Shit!”

The sniper watched as the entourage passed through the gateway between the two courtyards.

“He is moving towards the villa.”

“I'm almost in the server room,” the spy said, clearly exasperated.

“I can distract them long enough for you to try to escape,” Nikita offered. They both knew it was a death sentence.

“No, sit tight. Let the situation develop some more. I have an idea.”

A completely stupid idea
, Aghassi thought as he squeezed inside and swung the hidden door closed behind him. Now he was pinned between the display case the actual security door that would lead into the hidden room.

Through the cracks in the display case his coffin was suddenly lit up as someone flicked the lights on out in the living room. He heard muffled voices and doors slamming as they were opened and closed. One of the television sets was turned on.

Aghassi swallowed. He had been in some tight spots in the past but this was really bad. The Koala pouch was squeezed into his stomach making it difficult to breath. Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes.

The only good news was that the alarms were disengaged so he didn't have to worry about any contact strips on the door tripping anything when they were disconnected. Now he just needed to pick the lock. It took a minute just to reach his picks in the confined space. The sounds coming from the television at least helped conceal any sounds he made while moving around.

Inserting a tension wrench into the lock, he applied light pressure while using a rake tool to knock the lock's pins into place by flicking the rake back and forth. A small commotion went up outside before he heard a beer bottle pop open. It was beer-thirty at the Jimenez villa.

Setting the distraction aside, Aghassi worked the rake around until the last pin fell into place and the lock cylinder rotated. Turning the knob, the pushed the door open as a whoosh of cold air blew across his face. It was literally a wave of relief after sucking it up in an upright coffin for nearly ten minutes.

Flipping down his night vision goggles on the swing arm they were attached to, he looked down the tunnel for several moments before stepping forward and silently easing the door shut behind him. As he had suspected, there were two sets of magnetic alarm strips that would have gone off if he had not intervened at the monitoring station upstairs. Reaching into his kit, he thumbed the switch on a white lens flash light to help guide the way.

“Shooter?” he clicked his radio on.

Static blasted into his ear.

“
KSHHHH
y-one.”

“I'm going down into a tunnel system underground,” he responded not sure how much Nikita would hear. “You won't be able to get comms with me.”

“
KSHHH
er, Spooky. W
KSHHH
ere when you
KSHH
ack.”

“Spooky out.”

A stone stair case spiraled its way down to a lower level. The stones were smooth from decades of use, mineral deposits gathered on the walls from ground water seeping in. When he got to the bottom he noticed that the tunnel had an arched ceiling and appeared very old. It had to be a part of the original construction of the villa, built into the foundation and dug into the mountain. No way was it dug during the refurbishing when Jimenez chose the site for his headquarters.

Running along the side of the wall were a variety of cables. Taking a knee, Aghassi noted that some of them carried electricity, others were fiber optic communication lines. He was definitely on the right track. Shining the light down the stone corridor caused him recoil in fear as the beam was reflected back by a set of unblinking eyes. The rat scurried off without further comment.

He was aware of his nerves becoming slightly frayed at this point.

Walking through the tunnel he soon came to another door. He had no prior intelligence on how the sever room was secured or what it looked like inside. Without sniper overwatch, from here on out he really was on his own.

26

It took a good twenty minutes to pick the locks on the door. It would have taken longer if he had to bridge the wires on the alarm system but thankfully that was already taken care of. Aghassi was startled by the automatic lights as they suddenly kicked in. The bright fluorescent bulbs lit up racks and racks of computer hardware. Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him.

Banks of Cisco routers and switches blinked as they hummed along next to Juniper mobile and telephone devices, hardware for packet transport and time synchronization, firewalls and other network security devices. Up above, metal trays snaked across the ceiling where various network cables ran from one device to another.

Aghassi's attention shot to a server cabinet in the back of the room. Walking past the racks towards the servers, he also noticed several electromagnets stationed around the room. In an emergency, they could be used to sanitize hard drive platters, instantly wiping out sensitive data.

Reaching into the Koala pouch, the mercenary reached for his picks and raked open the lock on the cabinet. Inside he found several high-end IBM servers. He knew from previous experience that they would be running AIX and Oracle as a backbone for data management. Sun Sparcs were running Solaris to provide the file server services for Linux, Apace, and MySQL providing internet web services.

He had actually expected somewhat stronger security on the sever room, but the security plan designer must have felt that it was pretty secure as it was inside a hidden underground tunnel that could only be accessed from inside a very secure fortress. More than likely, the security measures had been put in place to ward off nosy employees and unauthorized cartel personnel. They didn't seriously think that a covert entry team could get this far.

Opening his notebook computer, Aghassi connected to the server with an ethernet cable. Once he was connected he duplicated a portion of the server's software that allowed him to surf the network as a digital drone and continue his stealth reconnaissance in the digital world. Installing a backdoor into the system took some time. There were several software safeguards in place that he had to bypass as quickly as possible. The clock was ticking, and every minute that passed increased the odds that he or Nikita would be discovered. If they weren't over the wall by dawn, they'd be stuck there all day.

With the code inserted into the servers, Cody would be able to access the entire network from the OPCEN back at Samruk's compound. From there, Jimenez' telecommunications infrastructure would belong to them.

It was a good thing too because the alternative would be to leave a wireless device connected to the router. The security manager or IT technician was due back to do his sweeps in a few days and once he discovered an intrusive signal being beamed out, they would be toast.

Finally, he copied a worm virus onto the network that would infect any laptop that connected to it. The nasty little bug would secretly be recording audio and video through the webcam and microphone on the connected laptop computers and then transmit the data back to Cody once the computer was connected to the internet. This was why breaking into the server room was so important, why it was more important than placing a bomb in the compound, or even assassinating the drug lord himself. Modern covert and counter-terrorism operations were about data. They were about networks and how to dismantle them. Whoever had access to the right type of data, whoever could aggregate it and analyze it, would be the one who took the enemy's network a part piece by piece.

With his work completed, Aghassi unplugged his notebook and put it away before locking up the server cabinet. He was extra cautious about making sure he left everything exactly the way that he found it. On the way out he closed the door and made sure it was locked before he walked back the way he came, his flashlight beam bouncing across the tunnel in front of him.

Aghassi wiped the sweat from his forehead for what seemed like the hundredth time that night.

Now came the hard part. Escaping with his life intact.