Denial of Service (Will Roper Book 1), page 1
Denial of Service
Will Roper 1
Jack Slater
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Read the Jason Trapp Series
Prologue
There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot outside the headquarters of Sapient Systems LLC, in the prime real estate of Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road as Major Zhao Wei arrived. Only one was parked outside the Sapient office itself, with the rest scattered farther down the street.
The major’s SUV drove the last hundred yards without headlights, as did an identical vehicle behind it, brought for redundancy. Both vehicles pulled up right in front of the office and killed their engines in sync.
In total, three men exited the cars, all dressed in Menlo Park Police Department uniforms, complete with service caps pulled down low over their eyes. They popped open the trunk of one of the vehicles, and each pulled out their assigned backpack before walking swiftly toward the building’s entrance. Zhao stopped short in a pool of shadow at the head of the paved path that led to the main door, causing the other two to follow suit.
He ran through the plan one last time, finishing with the only speedbump he’d anticipated. “It’s usually only the janitor left at this time of night. A Caucasian man in his early thirties. He arrives at midnight and leaves at five in the morning.”
“Is it safer to wait until he’s gone?” Chen asked.
Zhao shook his head sharply. “This is Silicon Valley. Programmers keep unusual hours. Several employees arrive for work before 4 a.m., so the building is never entirely empty. This is the best shot we will get.”
“Understood, sir.” Chen nodded.
“How long will this take?” Zhao asked, turning his gaze to the shorter of the two operatives who accompanied him that night, a man called Fang.
The insertion specialist waited a beat before supplying his answer, pulling out a black magnifying scope and studying the office building’s exterior through it. “Three minutes. Probably less.”
Zhao grunted his satisfaction and ordered the operative to start work. The man hefted his backpack over his shoulder and walked smartly without needlessly attracting attention toward the office building’s glass doors.
They were reinforced, he knew as a result of the in-depth research he’d conducted before carrying out tonight’s operation. Bulletproof, up to a point. They wouldn’t stop a concerted onslaught of armor-piercing rounds, but they would hold off a casual attacker with low caliber ammunition long enough for the police to arrive.
“Is the jammer working?” he asked Chen as they waited for Fang to complete his task, not because he believed that his hand-picked man would have overlooked something so basic, but because he hadn’t built a reputation for ruthless effectiveness by leaving anything to chance.
“Yes, sir. I’ve knocked out coverage around a radius of around two hundred yards. Cellular only. I can’t do anything about the Wi-Fi without using something more powerful—and that might attract attention.”
“That’s fine,” Zhao said, hooking his thumbs under his gun belt and splaying out the toes of his boots. It was all genuine police gear, purchased from the same suppliers the Menlo Park PD used themselves.
The only giveaway to an unsuspecting passerby—of whom there were none, as far as he could tell—was that all three of the men on this operation were obviously ethnically Han Chinese. Even in California, which first saw Chinese immigration almost two hundred years prior, this might provoke curiosity, though probably not concern.
The major watched Fang extinguish the light bulb over the office entrance and disappear into darkness. He indicated to his underling that they should watch the road. It was better that they were the ones to draw the gaze of anyone passing by, as opposed to the operative currently breaking into a highly secure research facility.
Right on schedule, Zhao heard a low whistle from the main door—the signal that Fang’s work was complete. He’d defeated the building’s exterior security systems. There was another locked doorway after the reception lobby, but he was assured that this would prove as minor a hurdle as the first.
“Let’s go,” he murmured.
A flash of light in the corner of his vision immediately pulled his attention back to the road, and he instantly pulled up short, murmuring, “Wait!”
A car had just rounded the corner, headlights on and driving at the speed limit. Probably just a late worker from one of the many tech offices that lined the street and most of the Bay Area. Still, Zhao froze. He was a punctilious man. To stick to his plan, he needed to be in and out of the building inside twenty minutes. In two hours he would, all being well, be on a plane headed back home to China—and safe from the long reach of American law enforcement. The last thing he needed was an external factor messing with his timetable.
He raised his arm and gave a friendly wave as the car drove by but received no response from inside. The driver probably didn’t even see the two men dressed as cops against the darkness of the night. Zhao waited until the vehicle was out of sight before he gave the go-ahead to move, his heart racing as the implications of failure flashed across his mind.
They joined Fang by the main door, and Zhao nodded his approval. Without pausing for breath, the man tapped an icon on a computer tablet, its screen brightness turned almost to zero, and the door lock clicked open.
The second they were inside, Chen killed the lobby lights with a gloved hand. The receptionist had long since departed for her weekend. She clocked off at 6 p.m. on a Friday, come rain or shine. Although in California it was usually the latter. A firm of private security guards patrolled up and down the road of tech headquarters, but Fang had arranged for several of the alarms at the lower end of the road to chime on and off all night. They were presently distracted.
“How long?” Zhao murmured for a second time as they reached the inner security door. Each of the three men lifted their packs off their shoulders and started unzipping pouches and compartments before laying equipment out on the floor to distribute among themselves.
“Sixty seconds,” Fang murmured, tongue occupying a pocket at the corner of his mouth. “No less.”
Chen handed him a submachine gun and warned, “The safety is off.”
Zhao’s police-issue belt was already stacked with spare magazines, though he didn’t anticipate needing them tonight. He acknowledged the warning and checked the weapon himself.
He waited in silence alongside Chen for Fang to complete his task. The man was an expert at defeating every type of physical and electronic security system known to man, and some that were still in the research pipelines and labs of high-grade defense contractors. In truth, right now he was simply operating a portable computer that did most of the grunt work by rote. But Zhao was too careful to rely simply on tools. Machines could fail. People might screw up, but they were able to adapt to their mistakes.
“We’re in,” Fang reported in a low murmur, holding tight to the door’s metal handle to guard against the possibility it might open and betray their presence.
“On three,” Zhao murmured, grabbing Chen by the arm and pushing him forward. The man was the best shot, so he would take point. Zhao wasn’t exactly a novice when it came to firearms, but he was above all else a leader who understood the differing strengths of his team and knew to play to them.
And there was also the not unimportant fact that Chen was expendable. The man was an excellent operative, one of the best that Zhao had ever commanded, but ultimately, he was only a shooter. Zhao was humble enough to recognize that he alone was indispensable. Too valuable to lose to an unexpected rent-a-cop’s sheer dumb luck.
Zhao pressed the submachine gun’s stock against his shoulder and nestled his cheek against it. His finger shifted from the side of the weapon to the trigger. “Two…”
Breach.
Chen surged through the open doorway into the blazing light of the office. All three men knew that the janitor was still loose inside the building. He was only a civilian, but until the facility was secure, he remained a loose end. Since the exterior win
“Clear left,” Chen reported softly before rotating to his right and repeating the same information.
The office was arranged over two stories. The first floor, it appeared, provided desk space for the coders and computing experts, along with the requisite hardware and test equipment. It was a large space—perhaps ten thousand square feet—and while it was mostly open-plan, glass-walled offices lined the outer walls of the building. Zhao presumed they were for higher ranking staff. The executive offices and conference rooms were on the floor above.
Where is he? Zhao wondered silently, pirouetting like a dancer as he followed the muzzle of his weapon in tight sweeps left and right, always covering Chen’s blind spots. He knew Fang was doing the same for him just behind.
The lights went dead.
“Who was that?” Chen mumbled, noting the deviation from their plan.
“Not me,” Zhao snapped. Fang reported the same.
“Shit,” Chen said, flashing a hand signal that both men behind correctly interpreted as a signal to crouch. They each occupied spots behind desks and banks of server equipment. Nothing that would reliably stop a bullet, but which at least provided cover.
They had night vision equipment in the backpacks, and Zhao now cursed his decision not to use it from the start. It was a mistake he would not make again. His stomach was tight, not from concern about his safety, but rather fear of failure.
“What do you see, Chen?” Zhao whispered, his dark eyes never stopping their arcs left and right across the vast open space. He sensed nothing: no other human presence.
And yet his instincts told him the exact opposite. He didn’t have to taste danger to smell it. Someone was out there. And Zhao now suspected that he was no ordinary janitor.
“Nothing,” Chen said softly before confirming his boss’s suspicions. “But someone is watching us. I can feel it.”
“Push forward,” Zhao ordered. “We have the advantage.”
His underling did so, creeping forward with his weapon raised.
At the far end of the office was a strange glass-walled cubicle that was entirely separate on all sides from the rest of the space. Inside, hundreds if not thousands of LED lights and small screens blinked on and off in a maddening, unruly synchronicity. The light seemed to be refracting through the glass in strange patterns, as if it was glowing through some form of mesh.
The sandbox, Zhao realized with a thrill of excitement.
This was what they were here for. The Faraday cage confirmed his suspicion. Despite the danger he sensed all around, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the glass box. He was so close to pulling off the greatest intelligence coup in his country’s history.
Three single gunshots sounded inside the office. At least one of them splintered through an exterior window, which shattered but held.
“Major,” Chen yelled in Mandarin, “go left. Fang—you take right. Now!”
Zhao jumped into action as though he was following the orders of a drill sergeant at boot camp, not the instructions of a man many years his junior. But intelligence work was different from the military. Operatives had to be all things at all times. Each was required to take the initiative, to think on their feet. And if sometimes that meant subordinating your ego to the demands of a mission, then that is what had to be done.
He fired several rounds for cover as he darted to a desk about five yards up ahead. Fang did the same on a channel through the office to his right. Somehow, as if the enemy knew what they were planning ahead of time, semi-accurate gunfire rattled near both the advancing men’s general locations. Zhao sensed a round pass just a few feet from his torso. He ducked behind cover as adrenaline flooded his veins.
“Suppressing fire on three,” Chen called out from his position in the rear. He counted down. “Now!”
Both men rose from their hiding spots with their weapons pressed against their shoulders. Zhao squeezed the trigger the second the muzzle of the weapon breached the level of the desk above him. The submachine guns rattled through their entire magazines in seconds before clicking dry. The bulk of the noise was contained within suppressors affixed to the barrels. Though still loud to the person firing, from outside the building, the noise would likely not provoke immediate concern.
Zhao dropped back down. The barrel of his weapon smoked. Behind him, he sensed Chen rise, though the man was almost completely silent. The major loudly called out an update to mask any residual sound.
The office fell back into silence. All Zhao could hear was the thudding of his own heart. He ejected his spent magazine and fed a new one into the weapon before racking a round into the chamber.
Everything seemed to pause.
Then a scrape from up ahead, near the sandbox. Under ordinary conditions, it would have been functionally inaudible. But for all three men, every sense was jacked up to a hundred. Zhao’s hearing was no exception.
He saw a shape rise from the darkness up ahead.
But so did Chen, and he was quicker.
The Chinese operative fired once, and the shape dropped heavily back to the ground. It made no sound as it hit the deck. No moan of pain, no grunt as the rib cage ejected air from the lungs. The man had to be dead.
“Forward,” Zhao snapped, needing to end this at once. He glanced at his watch, the dial a dull glow on his left wrist. They had already been inside the building for seven minutes, which meant they were five behind schedule.
All three men crept toward the last known position of the shooter, ready to drop back down to the floor at any moment in case it was a trick. But Zhao knew in his soul that it was not.
Chen pounced on the fallen man’s position and kicked a pistol free from his lifeless hands. The weapon skittered across the floor and disappeared under a desk.
“Good shooting,” Zhao said. “Fang, make sure he was the only one.”
He studied the janitor’s corpse for a few seconds longer as his underling cleared the rest of the building. It was the same individual they’d caught on surveillance shots: tall, red-headed and light-skinned. They’d run his profile through a background check and found nothing of great interest. He was—had been—exactly who he appeared to be.
But evidently not.
Zhao quickly searched the body and came away empty-handed. There were two additional magazines of ammunition and a key card that allowed access to the building’s outer door. That was it. On the ID photo, his red hair looked washed out compared to real life.
“So who are you?” he murmured.
There were really only two options. First, the body belonged to an armed security guard hired by Sapient to protect its investment. This was possible, but not likely, since in California a weapons permit would be required to hold such a position—and his record had shown no such information.
Or second, Zhao thought, another player has entered the game.
It was no surprise that Sapient’s technology had attracted other interested parties, but it was nevertheless a concern.
“The place is empty, boss,” Fang reported a moment later. “He was the only one.”
“Good,” Zhao snapped, looking up from the corpse with a bullet hole in its forehead and properly surveying the glass-walled sandbox for the first time. It was a test cell for whatever inventions the coders and engineers employed by Sapient devised. Except for electricity, it was designed with no wired network connections, and the Faraday cage running through the glass closed off the wireless ones as well.
