Zombie Road (Book 7): Tragedies In Time, page 29
part #7 of Zombie Road Series
“Not a hundred, either.” she whispered. “or they’ll be waiting to rob you when you come out. Five for now, five later.”
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, maybe a morbidly obese guy in his mom’s basement or a mysterious pasty white twenty something that hadn’t seen the sun in years. A pleasant middle-aged black man named Roger welcomed them into a tastefully decorated apartment. He offered them drinks, showed them a few laptops and Jessie bought the best one he had. Roger and Rosie knew each other and spent some time engaged in idle chitchat. It wasn’t at all how he imagined an encounter with a shady computer hacker would be. The man checked his phone frequently and Jessie got the feeling this wasn’t how these business deals usually went, even Rosie seemed puzzled at his friendliness. Most of the time anyone she brought never made it past the front door. Jessie had already marked the exits, now he started looking for improvised weapons. Roger glanced at his phone once more and his demeanor changed. He had received the notice he’d been waiting for. He’d run the program three times and it came back with the same results every time. He led them to a comfortable living room and dispensed with the small talk.
“Rosie said you need internet access. You’re in the cans?”
Jessie looked puzzled but she nodded for him. Roger slid a card over with a login name and password neatly printed on it.
“That’s fifty dollars. It’s good for two weeks and it’s unthrottled. Watch all the movies you want or play your games at the highest res.”
Jessie replaced the card with a hundred-dollar bill. “Make it good for a month?”
Roger nodded and tapped a few keys on an open laptop on the coffee table. “Done. Now we get to the interesting part. She said you also need a hacker.”
“I need privacy.” Jessie said and looked at the girl pretending to ignore what they were saying.
Roger looked at her, too.
Finally, she huffed and walked out on the balcony to watch the lights of the city.
“Before we begin” Roger said “We need to get one thing straight. I own a legitimate consulting business. I consider myself a white hat. I don’t do this for fun and I don’t need your money. I’m not going hack a bank or ruin someone’s credit for you. The only reason we’re talking is because you made quite an impression at Salvatino’s and I’m curious.”
“Curious?” Jessie asked.
“Yes. About what you want and who you are. Mostly who you are. We’ve been trying to find that out since yesterday. Don’t look surprised. You can’t waltz in out of nowhere, win a bunch of money from those guys and not have people wanting to know who you are. The glass you were drinking from was given to one of the many officers they have on payroll and dusted for prints. Nada. They called me because I can do things they can’t without leaving a paper trail.”
He turned the laptop to face Jessie and he saw his own unblemished fourteen-year-old face looking back at him from the webcam on his computer.
In his room.
At his house.
He looked bored and was probably doing homework. Roger was watching him closely, looking for a reaction. Jessie’s face may have made an involuntary tic but he gave nothing else away.
“Looks a little like me.” he said and shrugged. “Who is he?”
“It is you,” Roger said. “at least according to the finest CIA facial recognition software that taxpayer money can buy. Ninety seven percent probability. Except we know that can’t be since you’re sitting right here in front of me, and you’re a few years older. Not to mention your physical appearance is drastically different. My first thought is older brother. Not the case, the Meadows only had one child and that’s him. He is currently living in Georgia, doing poorly in school and scrolling through anime images.”
“I guess the CIA needs to upgrade their system.” Jessie said.
Roger said nothing, hoping the young man would volunteer something. He didn’t. The kid with the scar was a ghost and that was nearly impossible in this day and age. He had no record of any kind anywhere except the one pointing back to the Meadows boy and that was obviously wrong.
“Okay.” He finally said and closed the laptop. “What is it you want?”
“I want to know about the Salaam corporation. They are buying meat packing plants around the world. Where do they get their money? Who is helping to facilitate the purchases? I need the names of the guys in charge, the ones making the decisions.”
Roger just stared at him. This was public knowledge, easily found out in about five minutes by reading the Wall Street Journal. Was this some kind of insider trading or stock manipulation scam the kid was trying to run? It couldn’t be. It was all too simple. Whatever it was, it was boring work and he didn’t want to be bothered with it. He’d name a ridiculous price, the kid would balk and have to think about it and that would be the end of it. He had some better pictures now taken from the various cameras in his apartment. He’d try running the ID programs again. This time he’d get a match, find out who this guy was and collect from Mr. Simbian. It wouldn’t be a wasted evening after all.
“A thousand.” he said.
Jessie counted out the bills. Roger couldn’t believe it.
“Okay.” he said. “Make yourself another drink. I’ll have it in a few minutes.”
He was annoyed when it didn’t bother the kid that he’d paid that much money for such a simple job. Whatever caused that scar must have done some brain damage. True to his word, Roger brought out a sheet of paper with the requested information almost as soon as the pair settled into the chairs on the balcony.
Jessie scanned it quickly as Roger watched and wondered what he was looking for. Jessie circled a few of the names and handed it back.
“Can I get all of their email’s that have anything to do with acquisitions?” he asked
“For another thousand.”
Jessie laid out the money and Roger went back to his computer. This was a little more work, a little more involved and a little more like the kind of hacks people requested. It was privileged information meant only for the recipient. Still, pretty mundane. He didn’t know what the kid was looking for but he was investigating something. It was almost like he was looking for tax fraud but there was no way he was working for the government. He was too young, too mysterious, and his methods were unorthodox to say the least. It had to be a personal vendetta.
Roger came out onto the balcony about twenty minutes later with a thumb drive.
“There’s thousands of them.” he said. “It’ll take you a while to read through them.”
“Thank you.” Jessie said and rose. “Can I come back tomorrow evening?”
“As long as you bring your wallet.” Roger said.
He’d made two thousand dollars in the time he would have been watching a sitcom rerun. Hell yeah the kid could come back.
Jessie did. And the next and the next and the next. Some of the information he wanted was hard to get and Roger actually had to work at it. He didn’t mind, though. It was an interesting challenge and the tax free money was too good to pass up.
Jessie spent hours hunched over his laptop reading the mail and researching the players involved. Roger was right, a lot of the details were publicly available but with the privileged information he paid for, he was able to put together the big picture because he knew how it ended. He knew what to look for. On the surface it was legitimate big business. The transactions were legal and nothing really changed except ownership. Supply chains, employees and customers always stayed the same. There were blubs in newspapers and trade journals about new management but there was nothing troublesome to raise eyebrows. Jessie dug deeper and spotted a pattern of a single new midlevel manager being added to the payroll in every company they bought. He had Roger run background checks on them. They were foreign nationals; most had no experience in the meat packing business and all of them came from Muslim countries.
He’d found them. They were the inside men, the sleepers who would go about their jobs and make friends with the people they worked with as they waited for the proper time to strike. One day they would be activated, they would take delivery of vats of a fast-acting virus and they would ensure it contaminated every product that left the line that day. There were thousands of them placed all over the world. In the end, they weren’t important, just another piece of the puzzle that helped him see how it happened. They were the men who pulled the trigger but who gave them the gun? He had to find the people who would send the drums, because that would lead him to where it came from. That information would lead him to the laboratory where it all started. He went back to tracking the money and the people making the decisions. He ignored the army of lawyers who made the transactions happen and kept working his way up the chain until he could find the men with the right links. They would lead him to where the virus was manufactured.
Jessie returned the money he’d borrowed from the lawyer, he’d only needed it to win at the tables. The man was surprised when he walked in to his office and dropped a plastic shopping bag full of cash on his desk.
“There’s a little extra for the window.” was all he said as he strode out of the office.
The lawyer, for once, couldn’t think of anything to say.
Back at his container he spent hour after hour sorting, collating, discarding, following false trails, backtracking and trying again. He was getting close, but the flashpoint was two years away. He hadn’t found out who would manufacture the virus or where they got it from. Dr. Stevens had said it was full of replicating nanobots. Jessie doubted the Libyans or the Saudi’s had that kind of tech, so he started digging into Russian and Chinese scientific journals. Most of the first world countries were working on their own version of a super soldier serum that made the men stronger and faster. He had to find out who introduced the nanotechnology that would keep a soldier on his feet even if he was dead.
He was getting bogged down with information, there were too many angles to investigate, too many dead ends he spent hours to find, and too many secret firewalls he had to pay Roger to see behind. His cash was running out quickly.
Night time again. He leaned against the alley wall outside the cans and smoked one of his hand rolled cigarettes. It was warm out, but he kept the hoodie up to hide his face. He’d started doing that since he got back, it was easier than dealing with the double takes and stares. He considered the gang across the street that was running drugs out to customers waiting in their cars. He could take them out, steal their money and find out who they got their packets from. They’d talk and the people that led him to would talk also, it just might take a little persuading. He’d probably have to do some serious hurting before the next steps in the food chain spilled their guts. At that level, snitches didn’t get stitches, they got killed.
He found the whole idea distasteful, he didn’t want to break bones and bust heads. The kids across the street hustling their corner were younger than him. If they got arrested, they didn’t go to jail or even have a record once they turned eighteen. He doubted he could clean up at the poker house again, they knew him. He couldn’t remember horse race winners or major sports upsets that he could bet on and he really didn’t want to leave a trail of bodies trying to find a big drug dealer to rob. Maybe an armored car. If he could figure out some way to crash it into the Hudson, he could swim in when the guards opened the doors to swim out. Some scuba gear and underwater cutting torches and he would be long gone before a wrecker came to winch it out. Or maybe he’d seen one too many heist movies.
He heard the sound of running feet, someone fall then laughter.
“What’s wrong Fatty Four Eyes? Feet too fat to run?” More mean laughs and taunts echoed down the alley. More people being cruel to each other. A group of five or six boys were hurling insults at an overweight boy sprawled out on the asphalt. The few cars on the street drove around them and looked straight ahead, they knew better than to get involved in anything after dark. Jessie watched and felt sadness more than anger. They would all be dead before they were out of high school if he didn’t figure things out. The heavyset boy reached for his glasses and one of the teenagers stomped them. The frames broke and the lenses went flying. More laughter.
Jessie pushed off the wall, bunched his fists and started towards them but stopped when the gang of little drug runners came boiling out of the alley across the street. They threw bricks then attacked the older boys with bats and pipes.
The teenagers were caught off guard at first but they were twice the size of the kids and tore into them with feet and fists. The kids fought hard but when a nearly grown man throws a punch as hard as he can at a ten year old, the man wins every time.
Jessie shot across the street, snatched the nearest one by a handful of greasy hair and slammed him through a car window. That got the attention of the others.
Their leader looked at his buddy as he slid off the door and lay on the road, his head gushing blood.
“You’re dead.” he said “You…”
That was all he had time to say before he was bug eyed and reaching for his throat. He hadn’t even seen the ugly-ass kid move.
Jessie grabbed the other two and smashed their heads together while they still had surprised looks on their faces. They crumpled, one dazed and one unconscious. He crouched down in front of the boy gasping for breath, his windpipe nearly crushed.
“Don’t ever come back here again.” he said quietly. The boy had to strain to hear the words but he listened hard. He knew it was important to hear and understand. He knew his life might depend on it.
“You understand?”
The boy nodded. He understood completely.
When Jessie turned around the kids were helping the big boy to his feet and dusting him off.
“Why you out so late?” One of them asked. “You know those guys are bad news after dark.”
Jessie heard his sniffles, heard something about losing track of time at the library and saw one of them try to fix the broken glasses. He thought he understood and looked at the little drug dealers with new eyes. The boy was one of their own, he lived on their block. He was smart and maybe had a chance to get out, maybe make something out of himself. They knew how their lives would wind up, maybe in jail or maybe dead, but the chubby kid might escape. They nursed their injuries, bloody noses and rapidly blackening eyes and watched the new guy over their shoulders as they went back to their corner.
One day blended into the next, Jessie kept searching, kept trying to find the head of the snake. Maybe it was too soon, maybe none of the nefarious dealings had started yet, because so far nothing he’d found was a smoking gun. He needed to come at it from a different angle.
It was late when he sent an encrypted message to Roger and then closed the laptop, his eyes hurt. He needed a ride to clear his head and he needed Roger to get behind a firewall to check out a possible lead at Fort Detrick. He didn’t suspect the biological research facility of intentionally starting the plague but he’d found nothing nearly advanced enough in China or Russia. Maybe the nanotech was stolen from the Americans. When he got to his bike, he was surprised it had a new switch with keys hanging from the ignition. The license plate was different, too. It was a New York tag. When he pushed it out of the alley, the little drug slingers across the street were watching him. He nodded his thanks and they smiled, waved him over.
“Some men were looking for you.” The oldest, maybe twelve or thirteen said.
“Police?” Jessie asked
“Naw. They were mobbed up. Greasy looking guys.” their leader said. “They probably wanted to rough you up about the other night. We told them you left.”
“Thanks.” Jessie said then went for a long ride out on Long Island to give Roger time to work. He made his way over to the apartment, paid his five-dollar parking insurance fee and was greeted by a cold stare from the man when he was ushered in.
“What are you playing at?” he asked “What exactly are you looking for?”
“Information.” Jessie said
Roger looked at him long and hard and finally said “We need to talk.”
He poured them drinks, sat at the kitchen table and drew in a deep breath.
“I didn’t know what to make of you in the beginning, and I still don’t know who you are or where you come from. For me, that’s a little disturbing. I took on the job because I thought you were trying to be some kind of corporate spy, maybe looking for information to blackmail someone. I started reading through the documents you asked for once you stopped doing the shotgun approach and wanting everything on everyone. You’ve become laser focused lately, you’ve found the right trail to what you’re looking for. It’s something very specific, some kind of enhancement protocol that isn’t available yet.”
He placed a thumb drive on the table.
“You’ve ignored some valuable information I’ve dug up. You could be extorting money from hundreds of different people; I’ve given you case after case of maleficence and corruption but you don’t seem to care. You’re looking for something big and that’s the only reason I went after this for you.”
He tapped the disc drive.
“You said you wanted to save the world at the poker table and God help me, I believe you now. The information you wanted about nanotech from Fort Detrick is in here. This stuff is scary. It’s a self-replicating cell system that can do great good. I can see it being used to fix all manner of ailments. With the proper base level commands it can cure cancer or mend broken bones in days instead of months. Eliminate all toxins from a body and keep it in optimal health no matter what. This is stem cells on steroids, a miracle drug if programed right and they’re hiding it from the world. Which makes me wonder how you, some teenaged bum living in a shipping container, knew anything about it.”
He paused, took a drink and waited for Jessie to shed some light on the situation. He wasn’t surprised when the kid said nothing, he tended not to be chatty.
“I had to burn my one and only backdoor to get it and believe me, I never would have done it if I hadn’t been paying attention to what you’re looking for.” he continued. “I’ll never get another chance to get in and I only had a few minutes while I was there. Even backing out and getting away, I had to keep jumping from proxy to proxy, and use throw away VPN accounts. I’ve never encountered a sniffer so aggressive and smart. For a minute, I thought it would find me, find my real address.”
