Wildfire (36 page)

"I don't know what to tell you about your first question," Reggie Blackburn replied, "but I'm about to answer that second one right now."

"Oh, yeah? And just how are you going to do that?"

"You just watch."

As A1 Grynard stood there glaring at the large color monitor displaying the haphazard course of the
Sea Amber
, and the seemingly locked-on path of the
Lone Granger,
the supervisory electronics specialist settled down to work with his keyboard.

"Okay, Special Agent Takahara," Blackburn muttered as his rapidly moving fingers started calling up file access sets and requesting search patterns, "Abercombie's gas credit card got you Bloom's Mastercard, based on the store code, which you . . . what? You looked it up? How the hell . . . Oh, okay, sure, that gets you there, but it doesn't do you any good unless you've got a security ... oh really? I'll be damned . . . and then you discovered that it was a corporate account, which gave you a name and address of the corporation, but not. . . oh, okay, yeah . . . nice,
real
nice
...
so you went in that direction instead ... I see . . . and then . . ."

"How the hell do
you
know he did all that?" A1 Grynard demanded, having no idea what Blackburn was mumbling about or doing with his computer.

"I can follow his tracks because he uses an undercover eight hundred number to access the 'net,'" Reggie Blackburn explained. "It's a good idea because that way he can stay hooked up for extended time periods, but his connections don't show up on his hotel bills. But see, that also turns out to be his basic weakness because—oh, yeah, of course . . . sure, once you have that . . ." The supervisory electronics specialist nodded, still watching the monitor. "Then . . . sure, right—he still has to pay his bills, even if it's through an undercover business account, and the eight hundred number turns out to be the easiest way to do it without getting into a bunch of hassles with the phone company. But see, when he does that, he creates this beautiful electronic trail, so all I have to do is just tap in behind and follow along—just like one shark following another one, only he doesn't know I'm back here—using his starting location, which I know from the beginning, and all his network accounts and access codes, which I was able to get because—oh, man . . . just look at that!"

"What?"

"So that's how he did it." Reggie Blackburn laughed delightedly, ignoring Grynard completely now. "Look at that! The son of a bitch cheats, and he's pretty damned clever about it too. See, what he did is track back though Bloom's bank account to this guy, who must be his accountant, because he uses electronic mail to pay Bloom's bills, which gives him . . . yeah, right there.
Damn,
that's nice!"

The supervisory electronics specialist remained silent, staring intently at his computer screen as the data elements flashed before his eyes, until Grynard finally cleared his throat.

"Uh, Reggie."

"Huh?" Blackburn blinked. "Oh, yeah, sorry. What was I saying? Oh, right. See, what he did was finally work himself all the way back into the database of the travel agency that Bloom's corporation uses to book their trips. And then he used one of the corporate computers instead of his own network access codes, so the travel agency doesn't show an intrusion."

"You mean he took over one of Bloom's corporate computers remotely?"

"Yeah, essentially, that's exactly what he did." Blackburn grinned. "See, right there, first thing he did was match up a couple of hotels with Abercombie, which just confirmed his suspicions about the two of them being a linked-up pair. Then he started digging around a little bit, and discovered that Bloom has a room reservation for two nights—uh, tonight and tomorrow night—at the Cutlass Bay Club on Cat Island, which," the supervisory electronics specialist said, turning back around to point at the large screen monitor, "is right about there."

"Right down at the southern tip of Cat Island," Grynard nodded. "Which means the
Lone Granger
might not be following the Sea Amber as we thought. It might be they're both just going in the same direction."

"Yeah, maybe." Blackburn nodded skeptically. "But you want to make sure that . . . Oh, shit!" the supervisory electronics specialist screamed as he glanced down at the front lights on the computer's hard drive, and then lunged forward, nearly knocking the huge monitor to the floor, as he reached around and wrenched a cable loose from its connection at the back of the computer.

"Jesus Christ, Blackburn, what the hell's the matter with you?" Grynard demanded, startled by Reggie Blackburn's sudden violent actions.

"That son of a bitch," the supervisory electronics specialist whispered, a furious look appearing on his dark face as he stared at the torn end of the computer network cable.

Grynard looked around the workshop and realized that about half the monitors in the workroom had suddenly gone blank.

"Blackburn, talk to me," Grynard said in a softer voice. "What just happened in here?"

"Remember what I told you about the two sharks, one following the other without the one in front knowing about it?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, figuratively speaking, we just bumped into the guy up front, and in doing so, we may have just got a chunk of our nose chewed off."

"Reggie" — Grynard shook his head—"try to speak English. I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

The supervisory electronics specialist let out a deep, exasperated sigh. "In simple terms, what the man did was set a bear trap, just in case somebody like me started to follow along that electronic trail I told you about."

"Yeah, so now he knows somebody tried to tap into his system. So what?"

"No, that's not it." Blackburn shook his head. "He didn't just set a little trip wire and let us bump into it—he
reversed
the damn thing."

"You mean he got into
your
computers?" Grynard said in a disbelieving voice.

"Maybe." The supervisory electronics specialist nodded unhappily. "Leastwise, it sure
looked
like that was what was happening."

"So what do you do now?" Grynard asked, realizing that the huge color monitor that the computer had used to draw the satellite monitoring map of the Bahamas was one of those that had gone blank.

"Well, right about now I've got two choices, and neither of them is what you would call good. First choice is to sit down and repair this cable, and then hook it back up to the computer, and then turn everything back on, and risk the chance that Special Agent Mike Takahara just might have dropped a virus program in one of our memory disks."

"If he did, what would that do?"

"That's just the problem. I don't know. It would do whatever he programmed it to do. Probably the first thing it would do is make a couple of copies of itself, hide them away somewhere, and then just sit and wait for a while. And then, just at the right moment—for him, not for us—it would jump out and cause holy havoc."

"Can't you find it?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Might be worse if I tried. Kind of like one of those cancers you don't want to start cutting on, because sometimes they start going berserk."

"So what's your other choice?"

"Play it safe and reformat every one of these goddamned hard disks, four of which are in the terabyte range," the supervisory electronics specialist said with an exasperated sigh. "After that, I'll have to start reloading all the programs and databases back in from the original disks and the hopefully protected backups, which is going to take one hell of a long time, even if I back up the data from mirrored drives—which ought to be safe, but might not be because, as you may recall my mentioning, the son of a bitch cheats."

"I take it you don't have much of a choice," Grynard said quietly, having at least a vague idea—based on some stupid mistakes he'd made with his own home computer—of how much work might be involved in what Blackburn had just described.

"Not really." Reggie Blackburn shook his head. "I can't take the chance. I'll have to reformat and start all over again. It's the only way."

"So what does that mean in terms of our surveillance?" Grynard asked, having a horrible feeling that he already knew what the answer was going to be.

"Well, as far as the CART surveillance goes, there's no doubt about it. You're going to be blind for a while."

Grynard muttered a silent curse, and then: "How long?"

"I'm guessing maybe eight, nine hours, at a minimum." Reggie Blackburn looked at his watch. "Might be able to get the system back on line by midnight, if I'm lucky. If not, figure sometime tomorrow morning."

"Can't you just rig up another system?"

"Not without knowing exactly what he did." The supervisory electronics specialist shook his head. "Whatever it was he left there, waiting for us, managed to access that hard drive for sure," he said, pointing at the now silent computer. "But this cable links up about fifteen other hard drives too, including those four terabyte monsters, which means he could have created all kinds of mayhem."

"Such as?"

"Well, if I was doing it, I'd have given these computers instructions to wait until someone queried any suspect or agent name on a list that I provided, which—if we're talking about this case—would damn sure include you and Bloom, and then have them send me a message telling me who, what, when, and where."

"Jesus!"

"And that's just me thinking," Blackburn reminded. "This guy's mind is on a whole different level."

"And in the meantime, I don't know what's going on down there in Exuma Sound."

"Not as far as the
Sea Amber's
concerned, you sure don't. Not unless you guys can get an SSRS transmitter attached to her somehow."

Grynard thought for a moment. And then: "What about the fax?"

Blackburn looked around. "The fax system is physically isolated in here, in terms of the computer links, and it works off of a different satellite, so it shouldn't have been affected by all this. You still want to send Bloom a message?"

"Absolutely."

The supervisory electronics specialist allowed the torn network cable to drop out of his hand as he walked over and sat down in front of another bank of computers.

Three minutes later he got up and gestured for Grynard to take the chair. "Okay, she's all yours."

The assistant special agent in charge from Anchorage, Alaska, sat down and stared at the display for a moment, thinking. Then he began to type:

TO:
      
ALFRED BLOOM

C/O SEA AMBER

FROM: SA AL GRYNARD

WE NEED TO TALK. VERY IMPORTANT. NO MORE GAMES. IT'S TIME TO FISH OR CUT BAIT. I'LL MEET YOU AT THE CUTLASS BAY CLUB BAR, ELEVEN O'CLOCK THIS EVENING. I'LL HAVE A U.S. ATTORNEY WITH ME. YOUR LAST CHANCE. BE THERE.

"That the way you want it to go out?" Reggie Blackburn asked.

Grynard nodded, then hesitated. "How will I know if he got it?"

"Hey, Grynard, we're talking state-of-the-art here, my man. Anybody on the Faxsat system has to be wired up with a FBX transceiver. Basically what happens," Blackburn hurriedly explained when he saw the glazed look in A1 Grynard's eyes, "is we bounce a recognition signal up to the bird and down to the boat. If the fax system on the boat is on, then the boat bounces a confirmation signal back up to the bird and down to us, which tells our computer that it's okay to send the message."

"All that just to send a fax?"

"You can do it a lot simpler if all you want to do is send and hope." Blackburn shrugged. "Getting a confirmation back up the link is a whole lot more complex." Reaching across Grynard's shoulder, he pressed a quick series of key codes.

Immediately, the computer screen flashed a message:

ATTEMPTING UPLINK FBIHQTS5 CNX FAXSAT/S12 DOWNLINK

DESTINATION: SB4454/SEAAMBER UPLINK CONNECTION CONFIRMED

Then, moments later:

DOWNLINK CONNECTION CONFIRMED

And then finally:

TRANSMISSION COMPLETED

"Okay, looks like he's got it. Anything else I can do for you?"

"No," Grynard said as he looked around the workshop, "it looks to me like I've caused enough damage around here for one day."

"Yeah, that's a fact." Blackburn nodded. "But just the same, there is one thing you could do for me."

"Yeah, what's that?"

"You're gonna go down to the islands, right? Try to keep up with Bloom and those wildlife agents the old-fashioned way?"

"Just as soon as I can get hold of a U.S. attorney and get us on a plane." A1 Grynard nodded.

"Well, when you get there, if you run across this Mike Takahara, I want you to do something for me."

"Yeah, what's that?"

"Sign him up."

"You really want a guy like that working here?"

"Not necessarily." Reggie Blackburn shrugged. "It's more like I don't want him working against me anymore."

"And suppose he's not interested in being recruited into the FBI?"

"Then you just feel free to stomp his devious little ass," Reggie Blackburn said as he looked around at the staggered array of dead computer monitors in the workshop, "with my compliments."

Chapter Twenty-two

It was fifteen minutes to three that Saturday afternoon when the flashing light on the center cockpit instrument board warned Alfred Bloom that another fax message was about to be beamed aboard the
Sea Amber.

"Christ, is there no escape?" he muttered.

He started to unhook himself from the safety line, intent on going below and finding out who was sending him all these fax messages and what it was they wanted. But the heat of her hand caused him to pause.

"Ignore it," she whispered in his ear.

"But—"

She silenced him with salty yet amazingly warm and soft lips as her hand moved slowly up his bare thigh.

"Pay attention to me instead," she whispered again.

"You mean like this?"

He slid his free hand inside her open windbreaker, feeling the swelling nipples and the heat of her full, firm breasts through the tightly stretched, ultrathin fabric of her single-piece bathing suit. A sound originating deep in her throat, somewhere between a whimper and a moan, escaped her lips.