Walter Williams - Deep State

He was small boned and pale skinned, and he huddled in a sheepskin overcoat. He had a unibrow over large brown eyes, and he watched them with a little frown on his face.

She was surprised to see that he was propped up on metal forearm crutches. None of the online material she’d seen about him indicated that he had trouble walking.

Dagmar approached him.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Briana. I talked to you on the phone.”

Comprehension dawned on the young man’s face, though he still seemed wary.

“I’m Nimet Uruisamoglu,” he said.

“Otherwise known as Slash Berzerker.”

He flushed slightly. “I started using that name,” he said, “when I was fourteen.”

Dagmar stepped close.

“You used that name a few months ago,” she said. “When you did some work for the Turkish government.”

His unibrow darkened, and he looked suspicious.

“What does that matter?” he said.

“Because the government figured out that you put in a back door when you compiled that program and now they’ve sent people to kill you.” She pointed over the edge of the bluff, toward the village.

“They’re in Chechak now. As soon as they work out where you are, they’re coming up here. Of course maybe they already know that you’re here.”

Slash scowled, deep lines forming in his forehead. The scowl was too old an expression for his young face. His hands clenched on the handgrips of his crutches.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

Dagmar was very aware of the pistol pressing against her spine. She took another step toward Uruisamoglu, hands rubbing her sore forearms.

“They let you compile the program yourself, using your own algorithms. That wasn’t a smart thing to do, but then they’re not very bright about computers, are they?”

His dark eyes studied her. His upper lip gave a twitch.

“They said it was a weapon,” he said. “They said it was something they’d found in a government router, probably planted by a Chinese botnet.”

“It is a weapon,” Briana said. “And the generals are using it now. They shut down New York the other day, and now they’ve shut down all of Turkey and all of Uzbekistan.”

Uruisamoglu’s lips parted in surprise.

“That’s what’s happening here?” he said.

“Oh yes.”

“I thought our stupid subcontractors in Tashkent had accidentally switched us off. I tried to text them about it, but wireless was down, too.”

“They shut down Uzbekistan because they didn’t want you to get a warning that you were about to be killed.”

His unibrow knit again. “And who are you, exactly?”

“I work for Ian Attila Gordon.” She couldn’t help but laugh as she said it.

“The rock star?” Uruisamoglu was deeply surprised. “The man who’s trying to overthrow the government?”

“The man who’s trying to overthrow the government that’s trying to kill you. Yes, that man.”

Dagmar could hear the sounds of a car grinding at the base of the bluff. She gave Uruisamoglu a warning look, then crouched down to creep carefully to the edge of the bluff.

A dark sedan was winding along the road. It looked not so much as if it had driven across the desert as physically attacked it: the car was covered in red dust, and there were several fresh dings on the paintwork.

“What-?” Uruisamoglu’s voice.

She realized that he had followed her and he was now silhouetted on the skyline.

“Get down!”

She grabbed his sheepskin coat and pulled him off his crutches. He gave a cry and fell heavily onto the ground. She was afraid he’d cry out and she put a hand over his mouth. His eyes were very large.

The sedan ground on, kicking up alkaline dust. She could see Ismet and the Niva pulled off the road, behind a large block of stone that had at some point in the past tumbled down the bluffs. Ismet was standing by the car, his right arm by his side.

The sedan came closer. Then Ismet stepped out from cover, his right arm pointing at the car.

The sound of rapid fire echoed up the bluffs. The sedan slammed to a halt, then went into reverse. Ismet kept firing. The sedan slewed off the road, and its doors opened. Four men in suits tumbled out of the car and sought cover.

Ismet jumped into the Niva and gunned the vehicle onto the road.

Now it was the others who fired-three of them, Dagmar saw, had pistols. Dagmar felt her nerves leap with every shot. She heard a few bangs as rounds struck the Niva, but the Russian jeep pulled away in a swirl of dust.

The Turkish gunmen ran back to their car. The engine raced. The fourth man-the gunmen had dark suits; he wore something sand colored-was late in getting to the car, and she heard impatient commands. Then doors slammed, and the sedan was racing away.

“Okay,” Dagmar said. “Now we get in your car and we run like hell.”

Uruisamoglu looked at her.

“We can’t,” he said. “The car’s broken down. They were going to bring me a new one in a day or two.”

Dagmar watched the Niva and its pursuer racing away along the bluffs.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ve got to get down to the village and get a ride.”

He spread his hands, indicating his crumpled body, the metal crutches.

“How?” he said.

Dagmar was having a hard time believing how quickly it had all gone wrong.

“Let me help you up.” She tugged on the sheepskin and helped him rise. He hobbled toward the yurt, and she followed.

She could go down to the village, she thought. Get a car, bring it back up the bluffs. But that would leave Uruisamoglu unguarded. The assassins could return and kill him.

“All right,” she said. “You’ve got a back door into the program. So use it.”

Spear Point Flies to Hooters

The yurt was cozy, build on a wooden stage above the ground, with Oriental rugs on the floor and a pellet wood stove. It had a wooden door, a bed on a platform, a large desktop computer, equipment for making tea and warming food. A wood-lattice framework supported the felt walls. There were maps and photos of the Kyzyl Kum, with marks where Uruisamoglu was weaving together his IT infrastructure. He lowered himself carefully onto a large pillow and pulled out his laptop.

“The program will be in your router here,” Dagmar said. “You need to configure it so that it will obey you-obey my- orders.”

“That’s going to take a while.”

Dagmar was surprised.

“Why?” she said. “All you have to do is use your back door to get into the program, change the government’s password to your own-to my own-and then tell the program to go dormant again.”

Uruisamoglu’s unibrow grew darker as he frowned.

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “The program’s… different now.”

Dagmar felt a sudden, raging certainty that the kid was lying. She could feel a mad itch where the gun dug into her spine.

“Tell me quick!” she snapped.

The unibrow lifted. He seemed impressed by the force of her anger. Not in a frightened way, exactly, but in a way that absorbed his attention. As if he found strong emotions somehow alien but still the subject of intense interest.

“Okay,” he said. “The government was afraid of someone doing… exactly what you want me to do. So when I try to change the program, it queries a central server in Ankara for permission.”

Dagmar felt a snarl tug at her lips. She wasn’t believing this. “It can contact the central server even when the Net’s down?”

“Yes. It will have the correct codes to pass the message through any affected routers.” He looked down at his keyboard. “I can get into the central server, I think, because I compiled that program, too, but I’ll have to work out how to structure my attack. And I’ll have to make certain that Korkut or the other system administrators don’t see me working.”