Net Force - Tom Clancy [43]
Yes. Michaels felt a little uncomfortable saying that, but the truth was, while he could have written his own program-he was, after all, a computer-literate operative-he had never been that absorbed in VR per se. True, it was more interesting sitting on the deck of a big houseboat, drifting past cypress trees hung thick with Spanish moss, than tapping commands into a keyboard. But it was not his thing, despite his position in Net Force. Probably people would have thought it odd, his take-it-or-leave-it attitude about VR, but Michaels liked to think it was kind of like a carpenters attitude toward his tools-you didnt love your hammer or saw, you used them to do your job. When he wasnt working, Michaels didnt spend much time on the net.
He waved at a deck chair. Have a seat.
Thanks.
After Jay sat, the younger man said, Weve come up against a bunch of dead ends so far. The sabotage links bounce off in all directions, and thats real interesting.
Go on.
Well, what that means is that the rascals came from more than one locus, like we figured, so the actual piece is played by an orchestra and not a solo artist. Thing is, while we have multiple loci for the initiators, all of the firewalls are the same.
Michaels knew enough about systems to know what that meant. So were talking about one programmer or team, and a wide distribution of software.
Yep. Jay looked up as they passed by a huge live oak whose branches hung low over the shore of the bayou. A fat reddish-brown king snake sunned itself on a big limb. Or, given the setting you have here, maybe shonuf, yall is more appropriate?
Michaels smiled. You recognize the programmers style?
No. The firewalls are off-the-shelf Netsoft bullet-proof; anybody could install em. But the trails leading to the walls? Theyre all different, but theyre different in similar ways. They have a rhythm. Were talking about a single conductor directing the orchestra, Id bet my paycheck on it.
Not a major surprise, Michaels said.
A small town appeared on both sides of the bayou. A drawbridge linking the halves of the split town loomed ahead of the drifting boat. Downriver, a pair of weathered shrimp boats churned against the slow current toward the bridge. A warning horn blasted from the drawbridge as the center span clamshelled up. Traffic stopped on both sides of the interrupted road, parked behind red-and-white-striped barriers.
Michaels stood and walked to the pilots chair inside, on the port side of the houseboat. He cranked the engines, waved at the bridge tender, throttled up and hurried the boat toward the opposite side of the bayou from the boats coming upriver.
Behind him, Jay said, Build the bridges kinda low in this scenario, dont they?
Hes not raising it for us. Its for the shrimp boats, Michaels said.
In reality, the passage was a rerouting of a multigigabyte information flow from one node to another server, a switching operation necessary when large amounts of data needed to move in bulk without interruption. The drawbridge was as good an image as any.
Once they were clear of the bridge and fishing craft, Michaels steered the houseboat toward the center of the bayou, then cut the engines and let it drift. He moved back to the stern. Normally, hed be paying more attention to the channel around him, but hed chosen this scenario in part because it didnt require his full attention on the straight and wide sections of the waterway.
Gridley said, Were running the signature and looking for matches, but there are hundreds of thousands of professional programmers out there.
Assuming he even is a professional and not some gifted amateur, Michaels said.
Gridley shook his head. Guys gotta be a player. Rascals are too clean to be some kid or duffer.
Michaels nodded. All right. Keep looking. Anything else I should know?
Not really. Weve got rovers everywhere, looking for more trouble. You know Tyrone Howard?
The colonels son?
Yeah. I talked to him netmail. Hes checking with his friends. They spend a lot of time on the air, they might notice something. He and his buddies