Operation Hell Gate - Marc Cerasini [37]
A long moment of silence followed. Then Chappelle spoke. "As it stands right now, you're on your own, Jack."
The line went dead and Jack lowered the cell phone. As if on cue, Georgi Timko returned with two mugs of sweet, steaming tea. He set one in front of Jack. Then he sat behind his desk and took a sip from his own cup.
"Bad news?"
Jack did not answer the question. Instead he leaned across Timko's battered metal desk. "The Lynch boys and Arete's punks tried to kill you, Georgi. Don't you want revenge?"
The Ukrainian chuckled. "Of course. And I will get my pound of flesh from those Irish punks and the Mexicans, too — but in my time, Mr. Jack Bauer. Not on your timetable, or your government's."
Jack frowned, rubbed his chin. The first signs of stubble were sprouting.
"But... since you saved my life, I feel I owe you something," Timko added. He pulled a Queens phone book out from under his desk, paged through it. He circled something on the Yellow Pages section, then tore a page out.
"Griffin and Shamus Lynch run a Green Dragon store in Forest Hills. It's part of a franchise. Computer sales and repair." He handed the page to Jack. "Here's the address and phone number. But they do most of their real work out of an Irish pub under an elevated subway train on Roosevelt Avenue. The pub is called The Last Celt. It's owned by a retired Westie gangster named Donnie Murphy, who is connected to the right people, even though he took himself out of the game a long time ago. Murphy has protected the Lynch boys ever since they arrived on the scene."
"Protected?"
"In this town, everyone needs protection, Mr. Jack Bauer. Even a remarkably resourceful man such as yourself."
"No. Right now, all I need is my weapon."
Timko folded his hands, held Jack's eyes.
Jack shrugged. "Okay, I guess I could also use directions to this pub, a car, and extra ammunition. Maybe a backup weapon, too, but nothing as flashy as an AK-47 — if that's all right with you and Yuri."
Timko smiled, nodded, picked up the phone, and began to punch in numbers. "It's very late, Mr. Jack Bauer, but let us see what I can do."
* * *
2:27:56 A.M. EDT
CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Doris hit the delete key, then waited for the results. After five or six seconds, the cache registered zero percent memory and she moved on to the next bundle. After noting this data bundle's size, she pressed delete once again. This time the system seemed to stall, and Doris tapped her heel impatiently waiting for the program to obey her command.
After Captain Schneider had collected the memory stick for a physical analysis, Doris made a copy of the data downloaded from the device, then stored the original in CTU's main database. With a specimen safely preserved for the archives, Doris set to work "dissecting" the copy. First she isolated the different data streams, using a variety of self-invented techniques she created to hack programs for her uncle to replicate — and produce cheap knockoffs — in his Oakland, California, toy factory. With the data streams isolated, Doris began to delete them, one at a time. Her goal was to annihilate the program — eradicate it completely — in an effort to discover its architecture, to pick at its bones.
There were amazing things buried in the simplest programs, information of all kinds. Sometimes the creators of a subprogram inadvertently buried information, or hid it on purpose. Watermarks, access, security protocols, and slicing codes — sometimes complete software engineering documentation or embedded schematics were waiting to be discovered and decoded by just the right application of an outside program.
In the past Doris had tested the various reverse-engineering programs floating around in cyberspace or available commercially, but she never much cared for any of them. Instead she dismantled each program she'd come across and used the best pieces to create her personal reverse-engineering monster. She called it Frankie, short for Frankenstein,