Page 57 of Justice for the SEAL
“Get up!” yelled Royce. He moved to her, trying to pull her to a stand, but she evaded him. He stood. “You’re making this difficult. Get up and the dog will leave youalone.”
A small sound rang out like the glass falling on Logan’scountertop.
Royce fell to the ground, but she couldn’t see him. “Royce?” she called. The dog was quiet now, licking something. And then she smelledblood.
Forcing her tingling legs to bear weight, she hobbled to the light switch and turned it on. Royce was facedown on the carpet, a pool of blood spreading around him, the dog lickingitup.
She spun around and yelled as loudly as she could. “Royce is dead! I’m opening the door. It’s Gemma!” She unlocked it and the menswarmedin.
“Good work, Doc,” said Logan into his mic. “You got him.” His eyes went to Gemma’s. “She’s fine. Comeondown.”
32
Logan O’Malley was chasinganinvisibleman.
“C’mon, you motherfucker. Come out where I can see you.” He leaned forward, his face only inches from his screen, fingers punching out commands in a staccato rhythm that was second nature to hisbrain.
Hundreds of lines of code scrolled down the screen, his eyes scanning the familiar words and variable strings like an interpreter scanning a document in a foreign language. His stomach growled but he ignored it, his foot tapping incessantly on thefloor.
He’d been sitting here for hours, following the labyrinth back to it’s beginning, stalking the one person who didn’t want to befound.
Austin rolled his chair over next to Logan’s, peering over his shoulder. “I got me one of them Minecraft accounts. You playMinecraft?”
Logan shushed him. “I’ve almost got this son of a bitch.” His mind was unravelling the invisible man’s method of attack, following the clues that led back to the all-important lines of code capable of undermining an entirecompany.
The directory. It must be hidden in the file structureitself.
He delveddeeper.
“My niece wants me to build shit with her,” said Austin. “Bunkers and battlefields and tanks and crap. When did girls stop playing with Barbiedolls?”
Noah piped up from across the room, where he sat cleaning his gun. “They still play with Barbie dolls, but they kick some ass before they put on their little plastic shoes and let Ken take them out fordinner.”
Austin cocked his head. “I’ll bet you Ken never got laid. He looks like the kind of dude chicks string along for years before giving it away to some musician in a closetbackstage.”
“Or a Navy SEAL,”saidNoah.
The menlaughed.
“Shut up,” said Logan, narrowing his eyes. It was here somewhere. Everything pointed to this directory. He typed a series of commands, his whole screen filling upwithcode.
“The limiting strand is pointing to a wildcard value,”hesaid.
Yes!
There it was. The needle in the haystack, the one line of code that didn’t belong. Logan let out a loud whoop. “Gotcha, you stupid son of abitch.”
He opened a new screen and began typing, his fingers flying across the keys. One small program to set his trap. Another line of code to close it on the invisible man, shut it down, lock him outforever.
Or at least until he came back to life as someone else, found another way in. But that was a problem for another day. “Take that, you motherfucker.” He hit enter and flew backwards on his wheeled chair, watching the next sequence unfold inrealtime.
USER DELETED appeared on row after row, the screen scrolling until it was filled with them. He raised both arms and hollered in victory. Austin and Noah clapped lamelybehindhim.
Jax entered the room and leaned on Logan’s desk, crossing his arms over his chest. “All done playing Dungeons andDragons?”
Logan pointed to the screen. “That was not a game. That was me putting the nails in the coffin of the Yakimoto assignment. Not only did I find their hacker, I traced him back to his server and dismantled his entire line ofattack.”
Logan rolled over to a sleek printer and pulled off a sheet of paper. “Gary Fitzsimmons. A computer programmer for AuCen Corp, Yakimoto’s biggestcompetitor.”
