Chapter 7 - The Digital Trapdoor
The amber glow of the laptop screen illuminated the damp, concrete walls of the warehouse as Marcus typed furiously on the mechanical keyboard. Elena stood behind him, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist to ward off the damp chill rising from the stagnant river just outside the rusted iron bulkhead doors.
"If they're burning the apartment, they're destroying any physical evidence," Elena said, her voice trembling slightly. "How are we supposed to prove anything?"
"Physical evidence is for courtrooms, Elena. We aren't going to a courtroom," Marcus said, hitting the enter key with a sharp crack. A green progress bar crawled slowly across the monitor. "We're going public. Every encrypted hard drive Vanguard uses to sync their offshore accounts is currently routing through a satellite relay station located in the financial district."
"And you can hack a satellite relay from an abandoned warehouse?" Elena raised a skeptical eyebrow, adjusting her damp collar.
"I didn't say I was going to hack it," Marcus replied, glancing up with a grim smile. "I said we were going to trigger a dead-man's switch that Arthur set up before they caught him."
Elena stepped closer to the screen. "Arthur set up a dead-man's switch? Arthur can barely reboot his own printer without calling IT support!"
"Arthur was an NSA cyber-warfare analyst before he took a corporate compliance job to hide from his creditors," Marcus said darkly. "He knew what Vanguard was doing from day one. He used you as insurance, Elena. You were the clean, honest auditor who wouldn't suspect a thing, making your signature the ultimate shield for a billion-dollar arms ring."
The progress bar hit one hundred percent. The laptop screen flashed a brilliant, blinding crimson, and a high-pitched alarm began to chirp from the built-in speakers.
"What did you just do?" Elena demanded, stepping back as the screen filled lines of cascading binary code.
May you like
"I just broadcasted every single encrypted shipping manifest, payoff receipt, and offshore bank transfer to every major news outlet in North America," Marcus said calmly. Then, his phone vibrated violently on the desk. He picked it up, glanced at the caller ID, and his face drained of all color. "And they know it."
---
