43
“Hey, Clay. How you holding up?”
“Swimmingly, Wil. What do you have?”
Borger was staring at a red circle on his screen, displaying the GPS location of Clay’s satellite phone. From there a thin line plotted the rest of his course to the small hospital.
“Beijing was the last big city, so at your current speed you should reach it in three hours and thirty-nine minutes. Give or take.”
“How much detail can you see?”
“A fair amount. But without a live feed, it’s based on still shots from the last couple days. Very little activity. I only see a few old cars going in and out. It’s located in a pretty dense area of forest with an elevation of 4,500 feet. The south and east sides look like they fall off a couple hundred feet from there, so the road winds in from the southwest. There’s not much around it.”
“How big is the place?”
“Not very. Some of the building is obscured by the trees, but I’m guessing maybe three or four thousand square feet.”
“Then if she’s there, she won’t be hard to find.”
“True,” Borger smiled. “Stay on G111 until you get to 351. From there head northwest.” He repeated the coordinates. “I can’t tell what it looks like from ground level. It may be easy to miss.”
“Thanks. Anything else?”
“Not at the moment. I’m going to work on finding an exit for you. I also need to check in with Caesare. They’re getting close. In the meantime, get some sleep.”
Clay smiled and pushed himself against the back of the passenger seat, trying to stretch his legs. It took over two hours from Beijing for the smog to finally lighten, but the setting sun was still shrouded in a thicker than normal orange hue.
Finding the hospital in the dark might prove difficult. At least it would make things easier getting back out. Neither he nor Tang knew what they would find, but getting the case was the priority. Unless Wei had indeed injected his daughter, which changed things considerably. Sneaking the case out was one thing — having to bring a young woman out with them was quite another. Especially depending on her level of cooperation.
Across the Pacific Ocean, Steve Caesare pressed the phone tighter against his ear. “Say again, Wil!”
Borger raised his voice. “I said you’re ahead of Otero. But not by much. They've passed Silpaliwini and are on their way up the Acarai Mountains now. Still about a day away but you’re going to have to hurry.”
“Hurry?” Caesare called back. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“How long until you’re on the ground?”
He looked at DeeAnn and Juan, who were both watching him. “Probably a little over an hour.”
“Okay, call me back when you’re down. I should have-”
Borger stopped in mid-sentence with his eyes frozen on the screen in front of him. Around the edge of his largest monitor, a thin red border appeared and began flashing. His heart almost stopped. He slowly turned and peered at the other monitors. They were doing the same. Everything was flashing.
“What was that?” Caesare’s voice sounded through the phone’s speaker.
Borger didn’t answer. Instead his hand slid up and over the phone until it found the button on top, where he powered it off without a word.
His screen continued flashing and another window appeared, also in red, displaying a live streaming column of computer code. He recognized it immediately.
It was a program he had written himself. It was an aggregator, not of data, but of threats. Borger was all too aware of the computer hacks occurring on a daily basis. More importantly, he was familiar with the various computer worms released over the last several years. Worms that weren’t written by some kid at home. These attacks were written at the state level. By governments, including the NSA.
Clay and Caesare’s teasing over Borger’s paranoia wasn’t a joke. He was extremely paranoid. He knew what could really be done using hidden computer code, and he wrote a custom program to detect it.
His program was an aggregator that collected digital signatures of the worst known worms and viruses. And applied something called heuristic modeling to look for behaviors of those worms, even if he couldn’t find them directly on his hard drives.
Borger stopped the stream of scrolling data and studied the details. The behavior didn’t look like a worm. Instead, his program detected something “unusual” in his work patterns. He traced the coded message to another file and then found it. The color drained immediately from his face.
His computer microphone had been activated. And it had been on for over twenty minutes before his program flagged it as unusual.
Borger quietly pushed himself away from his desk, sliding back in his chair. Someone was in the system. And someone just listened to everything he had said.
Borger burst out of the lab, heading directly for the stairs where he sprinted to the top. He continued, running up another flight until he reached the next floor and an outside exit. He pushed through the glass door and into an outdoor foyer before pulling his satellite phone back out and redialing.
“Clay!” he shouted between heavy breaths. “We have a breach!”
“What?”
“A breach! Someone is in the system! And they just listened to our last conversation!”
“Are you sure?!”
“Yes, I’m sure. And if they’re in my system, everything could be compromised!”
“What do you mean by everything?”
“I mean, everything. Wei, the case, his daughter, the hospital. Everything!” Borger stopped in his tracks. “Shit. That means they probably know about you too. And where you are!”
“Dammit!” Clay growled. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the Chinese. They might have found out I was poking around their systems. So, whatever they didn’t know before, they probably know now. And if they do, they might also know where you’re headed. Hurry!”
Clay shot a look at Tang. “Step on it!”
Tang grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and mashed the accelerator down. The Honda’s small engine immediately surged and began picking up speed.
“Find out who it is!”
“I will.” As Borger turned back toward the door, he suddenly had an idea. He immediately rushed back down the stairs as fast as he’d come up.
If someone was listening… maybe they were still listening.
44
The expression on M0ngol’s face did not change when he heard Borger rush back into his lab. Nor was he fooled with the man’s attempted misdirection. He listened with a slight smile as Borger pretended to be on the phone again, giving different information. It was quick thinking, but something M0ngol was half expecting once the man realized he was being bugged with his own system.
M0ngol had hoped it would take longer to detect his presence. Previous targets had taken days or even weeks to detect the hack, which indicated just how careful this man Wil Borger was. The dearth of data M0ngol had to piece together in order to tunnel back showed Borger to be extremely savvy. The man was not to be underestimated.
Of course, if he were smart, Wil Borger would immediately power down his entire system, which was exactly what it sounded like when the microphone on the other end promptly went dead.
He had been found out, but it didn’t matter. M0ngol calmly reached for his phone and dialed Qin’s number.
“Go ahead.”
“How close are you to a computer?” M0ngol asked.
“Five minutes.”
“Good. Let me know when you’re online. I have something to show you. And you’d better hurry. We don’t have much time.”