F Wilson - Fatal Error

"But you can cause much tsuris for those who depend on that center. They still haven't restored service. They've had effects overseas as well, on the far end of that transatlantic cable they damaged."

"But they will get it up and running again-the TV says by the end of the day if not earlier. So what have they accomplished?"

"Annoyance, bad press." Abe looked over his reading glasses at Jack. "You've met Hank Thompson. You've dealt with him. He's a shmegegi?"

"Anything but."

Jack knew Thompson's felonious history-a high school dropout into grand theft auto. Might be uneducated, but he was no dummy. He'd sat down and written a bestseller that had induced a horde of people to hail him as their fearless leader.

"I should think there's no method to his madness? The papers say EMP generators were used. That is a little scary."

Jack had read the papers' explanations of the effects of electromagnetic pulse on delicate circuitry. He didn't understand why or how those waves could do their damage, but he believed. Like he believed in gravity and Britney Spears.

"I guess if they build one big enough, they'll simply have to drive by a data center and screw it up from outside."

Abe shook his head. "I don't think that's practical-it would have to be enormous. Better they should use a nuclear explosion."

"Let's not go there. I prefer Kickers limiting themselves to something more conventional-like a Tomahawk missile."

Abe stuffed the rest of the bialy in his mouth and spoke around it. "The question is, why such a problem with the Internet? It's blamed already for fragmenting families and relationships."

Families… Munir Habib's words echoed through Jack's skull…

Save my family!

Abe was saying, "Instead of playing baseball out in the sun with their friends, kids are sitting alone before their monitors. Instead of neighbors shmoozing over a back fence, they're on their computers watching a sit-com episode they missed. Sounds to me already like the Internet is doing Thompson's dissimilating for him."

Jack tried to visualize Abe leaning on a backyard fence gabbing with a neighbor. But first he had to picture Abe with a backyard. He failed.

"Yeah. That's what doesn't make sense."

"Unless he's telling the truth about the attack being perpetrated by non-Kickers trying to make his movement look bad."

Jack shook his head. "Uh-uh. Those were the real deal."

"You're so sure how?"

"They showed a clip from a bystander's cell phone on the morning news."

Abe's turn to shake his head. "A cell phone. Does nothing go unrecorded these days? Privacy is dying."

"It's dead and buried. People just don't know it yet. Anyway, I recognized one of the players."

"From your days in the group?"

Kewan had bummed more than his share of cigarettes off Jack last summer when he'd been posing as a Kicker.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. And that means it was an official Kicker operation. They don't do anything without Thompson's say-so. Which brings us back to the original question: What's he thinking?"

"Maybe it was simply a test run, to see how the EMP gadgets worked."

"You could go out and buy a server or a router or whatever they were after and test it on that without exposing your plans."

Abe drummed his fingers. "Maybe he was testing data center vulnerability."

"Okay. He found that one vulnerable, but that's only going to make other centers beef up their security. Sounds counterproductive to me."

Abe brushed at the onion bits but succeeded only in smearing them. "To have real success against the Internet, he would need to attack almost every data center and Internet exchange point in the world-and even he, despite his large following, does not have the numbers or resources for that."

"But even then it would only be temporary, and he'd be in jail and no one would want to dissimilate after that because his name would be mud." Jack pushed the paper away. "I'll think about it later."

"Something's chewing your guderim. What?"

He told him about Munir and what he was going through, and how he'd turned him down.

"You should feel bad about that? Already you helped him. You pointed him toward his company."

"Yeah, but if he doesn't bring the feds in on it, that's not going to help. He needs lots of eyeballs searching employment records."

"Which you can't give him, so guilt you shouldn't feel."

"You're right. A hundred percent right. So why do I feel like I let him down?"

"Because you've been farblondjet lately."

If so, Jack figured Gia and Vicky's trip was contributing to it. He glanced at his watch. Almost time for the gathering.

"Gotta run."

"Where?"

"Meeting with the old folks."

Abe nodded. "Methuselah and his mother. And your old girlfriend too, I suppose."

"She was never my girlfriend."

He and Weezy held irregular meetings with the Lady and Veilleur, and one was scheduled for this morning. Maybe they could figure out what the Kickers were up to.

Munir snatched up the phone on the third ring. The hated voice grated in his ear.

"You had me a little worried this morning, Mooo-neeer."

"What? What do you mean?"

"When you left. Thought you might have been sneaking off to meet someone."

He must be watching me.

"I did not!"

He'd left the apartment for food and newspapers. But he had no appetite and hadn't been able to concentrate long enough to make sense of a single paragraph in the paper. He'd spent his time wandering from room to room, waiting to hear from the monster, wondering what his next demand would be. And all the while his promise of sending proof that Barbara and Robby were still alive gnawed at him. The way he'd said it… even the voice distorter couldn't obscure the obscene glee slithering through his tone.

"I know that. But it got me to thinking how you might be talking about your situation through email. That's a no-no."

"I swear I have not!"

"So you say, but I don't trust you. So I sent you an email. You will open it on both your home computer and your laptop."

"I don't understand."

"The email contains a rootkit that will allow me to monitor your activity."

A rootkit would allow the monster more than that-it would take over his computers.

Without thinking, Munir blurted, "I can't!"

"You what?"

"Wait-wait-wait. I didn't mean that. It's just that the laptop has proprietary data belonging to my company."

"Are you refusing?"

Panic squeezed his throat. "No, I don't care about the company. I-"

"Have you any idea of the consequences?"

He jumped from his chair and started for his home office.

"I-I-I'm going to the computer right now. I'll open your email immediately."

"You've really crossed the line now, you Arab twinkie. You know that proof you wanted about your whore and brat being alive? It's on the way."

He hung up.

Munir repressed a scream. He wanted to smash the phone into a thousand pieces but repressed that as well.

Jack's idea about it being a Saud employee, past or present, ran through his head. A rootkit would allow the monster to take control of his computer and use his passcodes to hack into the company's system. Why would he want to do that unless he was connected to the company? Jack's theory was looking better and better.

He reached his home computer and checked his mail. There… 911avenger… that had to be him. Munir clicked it open and found a message.

Leave them running. If anything is encrypted, send the decryption key now.

With shaking fingers, he complied immediately. Maybe if he showed no hesitation the monster would show mercy. Munir had a terrible feeling about the "proof" that was on the way.