The Blue Nowhere

hackers never hook a trip wire to that key.
    But of course Phate wasn’t just any hacker.
    The instant Gillette tapped the key the screen went blank then these words appeared:
    BEGIN BATCH ENCRYPTION
ENCRYPTING—DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE STANDARD 12
    “No!” Gillette cried and hit the off switch. But Phate had overridden the power controls and there was no response. He flipped the laptop over to remove the battery but the release button had been removed. Within three minutes the entire contents of the hard drive were encrypted.
    “Damn, damn. . . .” Gillette slapped the tabletop in disgust. “It’s all useless,” he said.
    Department of Defense agent Backle stood and walked slowly to the machine. He looked from Gillette to the screen, which was now a dense block of gibberish. Then the agent glanced again at the victims’ pictures taped to the white-board. He asked Gillette, “You think there’s something on there that’ll save some lives?” Nodding at the laptop.
    “Probably.”
    “I meant what I said before. If you can crack the encryption I’ll forget I saw you do it. All I’ll ask is that you give us any disks you’ve got with the cracking program on it.”
    Gillette hesitated. Finally he asked, “You mean that?”
    Backle gave a grim laugh and touched his head. “That prick gave me one hell of a headache. I want to add assaulting a federal agent to his list of charges.”
    Gillette glanced at Bishop, who nodded—his own acknowledgment that he’d back Gillette. The hacker sat down at a workstation and went online. He returned to his account in Los Alamos, where he’d cached his hacker tools, and downloaded a file named Pac-Man.
    Nolan laughed. “‘Pac-Man’?”
    Gillette shrugged. “I’d been up for twenty-two hours when I finished it. I couldn’t think of a better name.”
    He copied it onto a floppy disk, which he inserted into Phate’s laptop.
    The screen came up:
    Encryption/Decryption
    Enter Username:
    Gillette typed, LukeSkywalker
    Enter Password:
    The letters, numbers and symbols Gillette typed turned into a string of eighteen asterisks. Mott said, “That’s one hell of a passcode.”
    This appeared on the screen:
    Select Encryption Standard:
    1. Privacy On-Line, Inc.
    2. Defense Encryption Standard
    3. Department of Defense Standard 12
    4. NATO
    5. International Computer Systems, Inc.
    Patricia Nolan echoed Mott. “That’s one hell of a hack. You wrote script that can crack all of those encryption standards?”
    “Usually it’ll decrypt about ninety percent of a file,” Gillette said, hitting key 3. Then he began feeding the encrypted files through his program.
    “How’d you do it?” Mott asked, fascinated.
    Gillette couldn’t keep the enthusiasm out of his voice—pride too—as he told them, “Basically I input enough samples of each standard so that the program begins to recognize patterns that the algorithm used in encrypting them. Then it makes logical guesses about—”
    Agent Backle suddenly reached past Bishop, grabbed Gillette by the collar and pulled him roughly to the ground. “Wyatt Edward Gillette, you’re under arrest for violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, theft of classified government information and treason.”
    Bishop: “You can’t do that!”
    Tony Mott started toward him. “You son of a bitch!”
    Backle pulled his jacket aside, revealing the butt of his pistol. “Careful there. I’d think long and hard about what you’re doing, Officer.”
    Mott backed off. And Backle, almost leisurely, handcuffed his prisoner.
    Bishop said heatedly, “Come on, Backle, you heard us: Phate’s targeted somebody at the college. He could be on campus right now!”
    Patricia Nolan said, “You told him it was okay!”
    But the unflappable Backle ignored her, pulled Gillette to his feet and shoved him into a chair. The agent then pulled out a radio, clicked it on and said, “Backle to Unit 23. I have the suspect in custody. You can pick him up.”
    “Roger,” came the clattering response.
    “You set him up!” Nolan shouted, furious. “You assholes’ve been waiting all along for this.”
    “I’m calling my captain,” Bishop snapped, pulling out his cell phone and walking briskly to the front door.
    “Call whoever you want. He’s going back to prison.”
    Shelton said heatedly, “We’ve got a killer who’s after another victim right now! This could be our only chance to stop him.”
    Backle responded, nodding toward Gillette,