Page 71 of Wild Fever
"If you need my help, count me in," she said. "Any chance to stick it to Big Pharma. You got a plan?"
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Ifloated a few ideas, but Piper came up with a good plan. It was relatively simple and seemed like it would work.
I drove Piper around the island until we found an open Wi-Fi network. I parked at the curb around the corner from a coffee shop and made sure there were no cameras that could capture our license plate.
The signal was just strong enough for her to log onto the network. From there, she used a VPN, then went to work on the Zonatrex network. The blue glow from the laptop illuminated her face as she hunched over the keys, frantically tapping away.
I kept my head on a swivel and the engine running.
After a few minutes, Piper said, "I'm in."
She continued typing, her eyes darting about the screen, taking in all the information. With a few keystrokes and the swipe of the trackpad, she had full access to their security screens.
Piper turned the laptop’s screen toward me. I surveyed the black and white footage with an impressed face. "Not too shabby."
Piper grinned. "Not too shabby at all."
She pulled up a camera feed of the lobby. The camera was on the wall behind the front desk. The wide-angle lens caught a view of the back of the security guard’s head, the desk, his computer screen, and the large atrium—including the glass entry doors.
Piper zoomed in on the guard's computer screen. On the side of the monitor, there were several Post-it notes with important information—passcodes, the phone number for the IT department, authorization codes. Typical stuff. Stuff you shouldn't put on Post-it notes stuck to a computer. Fortunately for us, it was common practice.
"Here's the deal," Piper said. "I'm going to glitch the system. I'll bring down the camera feeds. The security guard will freak out and call IT. They contract out to a third party. If you can have your intel contact intercept the call, we can handle the situation. We’ll show up and save the day. They'll be happy to have anyone there to fix it.”
"I can handle the outgoing call," I said.
"Good.”
I made a phone call to Isabella and filled her in on the situation.
This kind of thing was child's play for Isabella. She'd be able to route any outgoing calls from Zonatrex directly to my burner phone.
Piper left malware on company servers that would run a script at a set time.
We headed back to theAvventura, filled the others in on the plan, and started preparing for the mission. Piper mocked up fake badges for the tech support company and printed them out.We took them to a 24-hour copy shop to have them laminated while JD commandeered a plain white cargo van from the department. At least, that’s where I think he got it.
"Don't we need some kind of uniform for this?" Dr. Malcolm asked.
Piper scoffed. "When have you ever seen tech support in uniform? Jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies seem to be the appropriate attire. Trust me, these guys will be so panicked when they call, they’re not going to think twice about anything.”
We spent the rest of the evening prepping and going over the plan.
Piper had set the script to crash the Zonatrex system at midnight.
At 12:06 AM, I got a call from a frantic security guard. Isabella had routed it to my burner. I answered the phone and said, "Quantum Technical Solutions, can I help you?”
“This is Officer Haskins over at Zonatrex Pharma. We’ve got a problem.”
"No worries. We'll get you taken care of. Can you give me your security code?”
Haskins hesitated for a moment. He stammered, "Uh, I don’t have a security code. You mean my username and password?”
"I’ll need that as well, but I'm looking for your passcode so I can verify that I'm actually talking to someone at Zonatrex. We get a lot of phishing attempts."
He gave me his username and password, then continued to fumble for the security passcode.
I didn't really need it. I just wanted to make him jump through hoops. The more invested in the process, the less he'd scrutinize us when we showed up. Besides, we had seen the security passcode on a Post-it note taped to his monitor.
