“Done,” she said in his ear.
He listened to the building, for the jackboots coming for him, but the only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. With nowhere to hide anyway, Gibson made his way down the hallway like he belonged there. As long as he didn’t act suspicious, there was always the chance that someone might buy that he was just looking for a restroom. Ideally, though, the mechanic would be asleep, and Bill Michaels’s partner would be up front.
Deja’s map of the interior, like everything she had provided, was top-notch, and Gibson found the office without incident. He let himself in, sat at the desk, and tapped the space bar to wake the sleeping desktop computer. It was an old machine and warmed up slowly, but eventually the screen flickered to life and a Virginia State Police log-in prompt greeted him.
Gibson didn’t understand the point of having a log-in if you weren’t going to encrypt the hard drive. Funny thing about computers, people were so concerned about hacks from the Internet that they didn’t stop to consider how vulnerable their machines were to a hacker with physical access. Gibson checked the back of its tower. No USB port, but there was a CD drive. Fortunately, he’d brought one of each. He inserted his CD and powered the computer back up.
The CD contained a modified copy of the Linux operating system designed to break Microsoft encryption. So standard that Gibson had downloaded it from the Internet. So simple that if you could follow a series of simple prompts, you could break into an unencrypted Microsoft hard drive in about a minute. Back when he’d been sixteen, he’d looked down on such tactics as pathetic script kiddie hacks. Now all he cared about was efficiency, and if Microsoft couldn’t be bothered to try a little harder, then neither could he.
It appeared the Virginia State Police were still operating on a hopelessly unpatched version of Windows XP. Not that it would have mattered. Windows stored passwords in a database called a “hive.” Cute name. Gibson didn’t know the reference, didn’t care. He just knew what it did and how to defeat it. When active, the hive had layers of security, and its passwords were encrypted. But only when it was on. When it was dormant, as it was now, so was its security, rendering it defenseless.
Using the Linux boot disk, Gibson dug down to the passwords, which were still encrypted; however, for reasons that escaped him, usernames were not. The machine had three usernames: Ramsey.T, Administrator, and Guest. He chose Administrator because his tampering wouldn’t be noticed until an administrator attempted to log in, and judging by how out-of-date this machine was, that could be years from now. He deleted its encrypted password and left it blank. When Gibson let the computer restart normally, the computer would trust that the new password was correct, because its operating system trusted the hive natively. The computer didn’t have the ability to question why one password wasn’t encrypted. What the hive said went.
Gibson removed the CD and rebooted the computer. The prompt reappeared. Beneath it, a banner read “Local Mode/Cached Copy.”
Perfect. The entire operation took fifty-seven seconds.
As planned, the constant disruption of Internet access to and from the depot had forced the central servers to adjust. Normally, changes to files on this computer would be made automatically to the state DMV servers. However, the state servers required a second set of log-in credentials. Credentials that Gibson didn’t have and didn’t have time to acquire. But in local mode, he could make changes to files on the depot’s local database, and because the network was in “local mode,” they would be automatically uploaded to the DMV, overwriting whatever data was stored there. It would do his job for him.
Gibson typed in the case number Deja had given him.
The Mustang belonged to one Borya Dvoskin, a twenty-year-old Russian national who had been pulled over in Virginia Beach. A search of the vehicle had yielded drugs, guns, and $57,000 in cash. His trial was scheduled for the end of the month. Reading Dvoskin’s sheet didn’t make Gibson jump for joy, but it could have been a lot worse. Thinking about Judge Birk and Charles Merrick while entering Deja’s changes to the arrest report made it a little easier. The changes were nothing major, just enough that nothing matched, creating a pattern of inconsistency that a good defense attorney would spin into gold.
Thanks to him, Borya Dvoskin would be back running drugs in a few weeks. That felt good to know. What would Nicole have to say about that? Gibson logged off and radioed Lea to kill the network again. He gave the room a once-over to be sure he’d left nothing behind, and exited the building a little bit less of a man than when he’d entered.
Back outside, Swonger leapt angrily off the hood of the Mustang. He’d had time to work himself up and wanted to know what they were going to do about Bill Michaels. Gibson told him to drop it.
“I’m not going back to prison because some old bastard took my picture.”
“Keep your voice down,” Gibson said, thinking back to their near-disastrous argument outside Slaski’s house. They would go down in the annals of dumb criminals if they got arrested because of a yelling match.
“Deja ain’t going to like it. She’ll want something done.”
Deja hadn’t impressed Gibson with her delicate touch so far, and he didn’t care to think about her solution to the Bill Michaels situation. Gibson couldn’t have that on his conscience, although he doubted Swonger would have any such qualms. Instead, he appealed to what he knew Swonger feared most.
“What do you think Deja will do? Kill the guard and risk being caught? No, she kills the guy and frames you for it. You ready to go down for murder one?”
Swonger hesitated, and Gibson took the opportunity to argue that if they left now, no one would know a crime had been committed. When it was eventually discovered, Michaels wouldn’t even connect them to it. They just had to leave the way they’d planned.
Swonger was shaking his head. “Can’t do it.” He drew his .45 from the back of his pants.
“I said no guns.”
“You also said the cameras would be out.”
“They are out.”
“We take it from him now.”
“Swonger, think.”
But Swonger had about thought himself out. The .45 came up level with Gibson’s heart, safety off, finger on the trigger.
“We take it from him now.”