Page 75 of Havoc

Storm pushed the steel door open, and we slipped inside one by one. Storm was first. Even with his slight limp from a war injury, his movements were smooth and silent. Celt followed his cousin. With one suspicious look around, I made sure no one had taken notice of us. Then I quickly entered, pulling the door closed behind us with a barely audible click.

The temperature inside was cool, and there was no hint of dust in the air. Someone had been taking care of this building, cleaning it regularly. Instead of dust and that musty smell disused places get, the small room smelled like ozone and a slight metallic scent that reminded me of copper. The hum of machines was clearly audible, a clear indication that they were all active. It was just a server room with about twenty servers all encased in glass housing. There were four rows of five black servers lined up in racks. Someone had gone to the trouble of bundling the cables into tight, tidy little bunches. Whoever these fuckers were, they were meticulously organized.

I noticed there was basically one desk and one chair. We already had a pretty good idea about who this place belonged to. Slater’s old man wanted to track massive amounts of data. Knowledge is power, I thought sagely. But we had no idea of who was actually using this space.

“They’ve carved out a nice discreet little hidey-hole for their servers,” Celt muttered.

Storm swept his flashlight around the room, pausing on the blinking LEDs and the climate-control unit overhead. “Hacker was right about this not being a utility building. And you’re right about them carving out a secret place for their servers.”

“So, what’s the plan here?” I asked eagerly.

Storm responded, “Hacker sent us with equipment to download information from their servers. First, we do that and then we trigger a disruption of the data flow by disconnecting each server after we copy the information it contains. Hacker and I believe that might draw the IT guy to this site. He won’t want anyone else messing around in his server room. It’s too important to their operation to risk anyone less than an expert investigating what went wrong.”

“That sounds like a fuckin’ amazing plan. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on him for a while now. How do we access the information on the servers?”

Storm hauled the bag he’d been carrying up onto the desk and opened it. He pulled out the gear Hacker sent to do the job. I recognized some of this stuff, particularly the external hard drives, encrypted thumb drives, and the small portable rig Hacker had built for ops like this. He knew exactly how to get information from these servers quickly and efficiently.

He jerked his chin at his cousin. “Havoc, you’re our lookout. I don’t want anyone to sneak up on us mid-operation. Celt, remove the glass protectors over each server. I’ll hook up the cloud-sync relay right here on the desk and link Hacker in remotely. Once we get it all set up, all we have to do is give Hacker time to do his thing.”

I went to the front door of the windowless building and had a peek out. It was midmorning and there was no one in sight around. My intuition told me most of them were probably at work. I did the same with the back door and didn’t see a living soul.

Meanwhile, Celt began lifting the glass covers off each server and Storm added a thumb drive to upload Hacker’s information-stealing stealth program.

I asked, “How long is this going to take?”

Storm answered as he texted Hacker. “He says the process should go fairly quick. He plans to download intel from all of them at the same time. We’re talking maybe fifteen or twenty minutes if their encryption’s weak.”

Ever the curious fucker that I am, I kept pestering him with questions. “How long are we talking if it’s not weak?”

He shrugged. “It might take a couple of hours if their encryption is robust.”

“Do we have a couple of hours?” I asked.

“Not if you don’t quit askin’ stupid questions,” Storm grumbled.

I took the hint and shut my piehole.

Celt picked up where Storm left off and had the cloud uplink rig booted and blinking green inside of five minutes. He glanced up at us and reported, “Club cloud is hot. Hacker’s signed on remotely. I can tell because shit just started happening on its own.”

“How do we know it’s Hacker and not the fuckers we’re trying to catch?”

Storm, still looking down at his phone, said, “It’s Hacker alright. He says we’ve got a window.”

I nodded and turned to watch the rig, which was now plugged into the primary server hub. The code lit up fast. I didn’t know much about hacking servers, but shit was happening fast on the screen.

Storm grunted, “Hacker says there are static IPs, secure tunnels, some custom garbage. He’s excited about digging through the thousands of files we’re downloading, but I just want to beat some fucking intel out of their IT guy.”

“This is some really sophisticated shit.”

Storm agreed. “It’s the kind of shit the FBI might be interested in seeing, particularly if it involves interstate transportation of drugs or guns.”

“Anyone detected us yet?” Celt asked, gazing nervously at the screen.

Storm, still staring at his phone, shook his head. “Hacker’s doing speech-to-text while he works. He says that he’s hacked the security protocols for this building. He looped the camera on the outside of the building the minute we gave him access, so we shouldn’t catch their notice. If anyone’s monitoring this place it’ll just look like business as usual. Since we parked our bikes a couple of blocks away, the IT guy should be really fuckin’ surprised when he sees what we’ve done.”

“Do we have a plan in case things go bad?”

“You are just fuckin’ full of questions today, Havoc. But yes, if things go sideways, we burn it down. Servers and all.”

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