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Baxter also bought three Lenovo laptops in case they needed to do either work or browsing from anonymous machines that later would be disposable. Letty tipped the bellhop a hundred dollars and when everybody was back inside the linked suites, they began unboxing the printers and tearing open the clamshell packages of other gear.
When they had the printers operating, with USB cords striping the carpet between laptops and printers, Sovern gathered the group and held up an orange flash drive and said, “This is a record and a kind of manual on our hack of the Russian trains. A lot willhave changed, but it’ll be something of a map. I’m going to start printing these things out and you’ll all have your own copy to look at and thumb through and mark up. I’m thinking we’ll do that the rest of the day, and tomorrow we’ll start looking at the Russians, seeing what’s been changed, and what still works.”
Emilija, the social engineer, said, “I need help locating targets. Can I subcontract this to my friends in Vilnius? Or is that out-of-bounds?”
Letty: “I don’t know about computers. If Sovern and Paul say it’s okay, then do it.”
Baxter and Sovern agreed that it was okay, but she’d use one of Baxter’s virgin laptops for all her contacts, and they’d buy a VPN, charging it to the company Visa card, to anonymize the source.
“We’re rolling,” Sovern reported to Letty. “You think you guys could rip up all the boxes and packing and get it out of here? Looking at the trash is driving me crazy.”
Much of the timethat afternoon and evening was taken up by the printing and binding of Sovern’s road map for the hack. The bound volumes were distributed as they came out of the printers, each more than seven hundred pages of heavily commented programming text.
At eight o’clock that night, Cartwright said to Letty, “Why don’t you take the first shift? From now until three o’clock. I’ll come on at three. We need to wander the halls. We need to find a Coke machine, a candy machine, anything that will give us an excuse to be walking around out there, and riding the elevators.”
“What are you going to do?” Letty asked.
“I’m gonna make sure that Craig is relaxed and ready to focus tomorrow,” she said.
“I can’t even get a fuckin’ date and you’re relaxing the best-looking guy in Los Angeles,” Letty said.
“And youneeda date, sister,” Cartwright said. “I’ll see you at three.”
Letty walked the hallways, carrying an untapped bottle of Diet Coke, trying to look like she was on her way somewhere else. She heard faint laughter from a couple of rooms, neither of them housing Ordinary People. Somebody dropped what sounded like a metal bowl in another room, the clatter followed by what was probably muffled curses. Then Colles called.
“I thought you were stepping away,” Letty said. “I got the feeling that Delores was cutting us loose.”
“Everybody’s stepping back to reduce governmental visibility,” Colles said. “Nobody knows I’m talking to you, by the way, not even Welp. I bought a prepaid burner from a valet here in Miami, but it’s only got twelve minutes of talk time left. Call if you need to; I’ll keep the phone in my pocket. If some kind of shit hits the fan, I’ll back you guys up. Try not to let too much shit hit the fan. This isn’t the Pershing Bridge and you won’t be going on television.”
“All right. Well, we’re working here, and we’re lying to everybody,” Letty said. “I don’t know if we can pull it off, but... we’re working on it.”
“Good. I’ve sent you a gift I extorted from DHS. You should get it in the morning. I can tell you this much, Letty: the national security advisor says ‘hello.’ He talks to the President on an hourly basis. I hope you appreciate that.”
“Areyougoing to run for president?”
Colles laughed. “Now I’ve got ten minutes left. Call me if you need me. And... who knows? Maybe. I’ve got the hair and teeth for it.”
Twenty-Three
Cartwright showed up at three in the morning, right on time. Letty hadn’t seen anything even vaguely suspicious. “You awake?” she asked Cartwright.
“Yup. I’m fine. I got five hours,” Cartwright said. “Don’t mess around, get in bed. You probably ought to set your alarm for nine. Tomorrow’s gonna be busy.”
Tired from the day, and from the stress of the night before, Letty was asleep within a couple of minutes of dropping in bed. She slept through until nine o’clock, hurriedly showered and dressed, and walked down the hall to the work suite.
Most of the coders were there, jeans and tee-shirts, both men and women, either reading the red-bound road map volumes, marking them up as they went, adding Post-its, or poking at computers. The television, muted, was on MSNBC, which was wall-to-wallUkraine. Baxter was there and working, and when he saw Letty, he said, “FedEx for you over on the windowsill.”
The return address on the box said “Colles,” and when she opened it, she found four handset two-way radios, smaller than iPhones, boxed, with instructions for use, and a handwritten note that said “Much better and faster than cell phones. Try them out.”
When she showed them to Cartwright, the other woman said, “You guys get thebeststuff. I got to try them in training and they’re great, but we never got any in the field. I was told they were good for a mile. Fully scrambled.”
Baxter had ordered up food. Letty got a strawberry yogurt and then she and Cartwright worked out a patrol plan that covered both the hallways around the work suites and the exterior around the hotel. They tried the radios from Colles, which worked well, and were fast.
“One thing you oughta know,” Cartwright said. “If these Russians are a bunch of gangsters, okay, that’s not a problem. The guys we took on the dock probably bought their weapons here, across the counter. Or somebody bought the guns for them. If we run into guys from the GRU or the FSB... they tend to like Israeli Mini Uzis. Import them in their diplomatic pouches. They will send twenty rounds downrange in one second. Literally: one second. I mean, they will light you up.”
“How do you deal with that?”
“You gotta see them coming,” Cartwright said. “Don’t see them coming, you’re toast.”
