The Axis of Evil- a short story

By Bettworld. Copyright © Bettworld 2002
This story is based on the same characters of my up coming book Sivilian.

Part 1

The phone rang; Rio picked it up.

“Sivillian Security, Rio speaking."

“Son, do you have the power to defeat the Axis of Evil?”

“Well sir, we are in the business of fighting for innocent civilians.”

“Good because One Thousand civilians are being attacked day in and day out. We need one of them Rogue Warrior Types to save them. Have you read those Rogue Warrior books? They are darn near exciting. What am I asking! You live it! I got your number from a person at a club I’m a member of. He said you’d fix me up right. Said you are the best in the business.”

“Why don’t you describe your problem to me and I’ll let you know if its something we can handle. But first let me say that we don’t work inside of the USA because of legal problems. Too much paper work.”

“Yes I can see that. No. No, my problem isn’t inside the US. This problem of mine is costing me millions and it could cost a whole lot more soon. I am a businessman, you see. My name is Mark Eastman. I have a fortune 500 company, which is saying a lot now a days. My employees are harassed everyday by messages about enlarging penises and great mortgage rates. Well I just can’t take it anymore. It must be stopped. The admins in my company assure me they have done everything they can to stop the email but they still keep coming. I had my best people hire the best investigators to find out from where they were coming. They say the assailant is sending them from a small data haven off the coast of Great Britain. I want you guys to go out there and stop what they are doing. Don’t kill them, just scare them and destroy their computer system.”

“Ok. Do you know how many people we are going to have to deal with? Do you know how well armed they are?”

“Umm no”

“Ok we need 100k as a down payment. Then we will do some investigation to see how much the rest will be. After we come up with an estimate we need half of it up front and the rest when the mission is complete.”

“I’d like to meet with you guys when you have finished your initial investigation.”

“That sounds good. I’ll contact you again in a week. Please transfer the 100k down payment to the following Swiss account:”

Rio hung up the phone and called Paul. Together they did research for the rest of the week to see how big of a mission this was. The location was called Sealand. It was an island fortress build during World War II by the British navy about 6 nautical miles off the coast of Great Britain. When the war was over they abandoned it. In ’67 an Englishman took it as his own land and declared himself the Prince of Sealand. It was a completely man made structure and will present a challenge to conquer. It was made up of two cement pilings that support a cement platform which houses a helipad.

They made arrangements to visit Mr. Eastman in his home in Vallejo CA. Lucent, Sillia, and Brice were on another mission. They flew in to the local airport and took a taxi to his home. Rio was quaking with fear when he saw the red and gold sign out side the nationhood. The Village, A Kinkade Community it read. The houses were painted pale yellow or blue with little white picket fences which made Rio feel like puking. The taxi dropped them off in front of a white two-story house with a four-car attached garage on the right. They opened the mini white gate and walked up the little coble stone path to the Hunter Green double doors with oval frosted windows.

A well-preserved woman in her mid 50’s opened the door and ushered them into the living room where Mr. Eastman sat surrounded by plants and Kinkade paintings. The walls were hunter green. He stood up and shook their hands and waved them to a seat. Mrs. Eastman ran off to get some tea.

Paul who wasn’t an artist nor an art critic knew this was wrong. Rio who was an artist felt positively sick.

“Don’t you just love Kinkade?” Eastman asked.

“Um right. Well let’s get down to business. We did some IG (Intelligence Gathering) and found that Sealand has only four or five people at a time. This will make everything a lot easier for us. As for their being armed we aren’t sure. Is there any more info you can share with us?” Paul said.

Mrs. Eastman brought in tea and disappeared into what must be a chair with flower print and flowers cascading over it and from under it.

Mr. Eastman seemed to be holding something back.

Paul continued, “Well this mission could be less expensive if there weren’t so many unknowns. I usually like to find out why a client wants a mission done. Its for our own safety if you are completely up front with us. Spending 10 years in the FBI taught me a lot about human body language and yours is telling me you have more information to give us. The reason you gave us is a bit shaky. Rio here is an expert hacker. He tells me its not so hard to stop the spam or at least take down their servers by hacking them. I am sure your advisors said the same. So why spend so much money to send us physically there?”

Mr. Eastman got up and began to pace back and forth.

“Boys, you are right.” He turned to them dramatically.

“This is personal. Back in business school I was in the entrepreneurs club. We each had to make a business plan. Mine was to resell the water in the pipes from the water company to the homes. I figured out how to lease each segment of pipe and discovered some old legislation I could use to get the water companies to help me or face a legal battle. Well a guy in my class and I used to study together. He wrote up a business plan too. His was to poison the water supply and then send brochures for medication to cure the sickness in with the water bill. Well when I read his plan I turned him in and he was kicked out of the college. Ever since then Evan and I have been fighting. A few years ago when I heard he started a spamming business I wasn’t surprised. That’s just how evil he is. I went to DC to lobby against spammers and finally he could no longer do business here in the US. So he moved to Sealand where he thought he would be safe. I was at least happy I cost him so much money along the way and called it a victory against the axis of evil. But last month I heard that the Red Chinese hacker group had commissioned him with spreading their next virus. You see Evan has the biggest email list on earth and he is getting ready to spam everyone of those addresses with this new virus. I need you and your team to go out there and stop them before they take the business world to its knees. Do it for all of America and the world.”

“Ok well we still don’t know if they are armed or not. But at least we know what we are dealing with. Thank you Mr. Eastman.”

Two days later Paul and Rio arrived in Essex. Lucent, Sillia, and Brice were going to meet them next day. Paul and Rio had some scouting to do. The small marina greeted them with a strong fish smell. Inside the walls were covered with fishing net and life-savers. They walked up to the filthy glass counter.

“Hullo,” said a man with a big red beard and long straggly red hair. “What might I be doing fer yeh?”

“We are interested in renting a fishing boat for a few days.”

“Well then yeh have come to the right place. We have the best prices in town.”

They rented a 16-foot fishing boat with a good engine.

They took the boat out and when they got with in four miles they were able to see the structure with the binoculars.

“We are going to need a lot of rope,” said Rio.

“Yeah,” agree Paul. The structure must have stood 24 feet out of the water. Their hearts sank.

“I sure hope that Brice comes up with a good way of getting up there.”

“I hope so too”

They took some pictures.

Part 2

“Ok guys, tell us what you found out.” Said Brice when he, Lucent and Sillia arrived the next day from their mission.

“Our client is the CEO of a large company in the US. He is paying us well to do this job.

“Our mission as stipulated in the requirements doc is to wipe the database out and destroy the virus. Also there was talk of torture but I’ll leave that part up to you military types.

“Time Frame: Tomorrow at midnight they are going to send out the virus. So we have a little over 26 hours.

“Defense: It is uncertain if they have a radar system. Boats routinely travel with in 1/3 of a mile of it so I think it might be safe to travel that close in without raising suspicion. There are four or five people out there from what I have seen and read. I think we aught to assume they are armed and in the know of how to use the weapons. We know they have a huge gun mounted on a moveable base, but we are not certain if it is operational.

“Tech Specs: The computers are being kept in the hollow cement cylinders. They are using Solaris 8. I am going to guess since they are pretty good hackers they are using a stable database like Oracle as opposed to a free less stable one such as MySQL to store the email addresses. I must assume the Unix box will have a tight security. Now the question is whether or not we want shoot the box or otherwise destroy the hard drive or try to login and destroy it.”

“We must also face the possibility they are keeping the virus and database on a hard drive elsewhere or even on a removable storage device such as a floppy or Iomega ©.” Said Lucent, who is also a hacker.

“That’s true Lucent. After we secure the building we should do a thorough search for any remaining storage devices,” said Brice.

Rio nodded and continued his briefing, “Power: They have a generator somewhere inside the cabin on the upper deck.”

“Danger analysis: There are lots of places a person could hide on that thing. We must proceed with extreme caution. Remember if someone pushes you, you aren’t just going to hit the ground; You are going to fall 24 feet into the water. You probably won’t survive the fall. Also this mission will be extra dangerous because we have been requested to repress the use of deadly force.” Rio sat down and looked at Brice, their special ops man, to draw up the plan.

Brice began, “Because of the unusual request for non-deadly force, we will be armed with projecting stun guns. I see that you guys have the boat. Tomorrow night at dusk we will set out and stop within 1/3 of a mile of it. Someone should stay with the boat, keep an eye out of approaching vessels and when we have secured the premises come and retrieve us. Paul, are you up for that? Ok good. We will keep radio silence till we have secured the premises. I will use the grappling hook to secure the rope when we reach the base. I’ll go up first and secure the drop zone. Rio, you come up next. Lucent, you next followed by Sillia. After we secure the top deck, we will secure the rest of the building. Sillia and Lucent will stay in the generator room. Rio and I will find the server room. After we assess the computer security situation we will decide on how best to destroy the targeted data. Once target has been destroyed we will return to the surface signal Paul to come and pick us up. Cut and dry. Its not the easiest mission but who wants easy anyway?”

They spent the rest of the day readying the ropes. Rio and Lucent went to acquire some tasers, which really isn’t as easy as you might think as they are in Essex England. Then they all took a long nap.

As they headed out, there was a great deal of fog. Judging by the markers, they anchored 1/3-mile away and Paul stayed with the boat while everyone else swam thru the icy cold water to the fortress.

The grappling hook made a slightly louder metal clank than expected. Brice pull himself up quickly thru the dark. Rio followed him just as quick. Water ran off Brice’s wet suit onto Rio’s face. Sillia followed Lucent got the most water. Brice touched a cold flaky surface, reach up and pulled himself up enough to acutely peared over the two-foot ledge. Seeing the deck is clear, he pulled himself over using only his upper body strength then swung his legs up and once his body is level on the ledge he flipped over.

He does a pushup looking straight down into darkness. A piece of metal falls and he hears it hit the water below. There is a large crack in the iron platform. He moves away from the crack and gets a better look around. Crouching, he pulls out his gun and makes his way to the large canon to get a better look at the light pouring out of the cabin. Rio follows him. Brice alternates watching Lucent and Sillia climb over and watching the cabin. As soon as everyone is up they begin to spread out covering the deck being careful to crawl when passing the many windows in the cabin.

When the deck is secure, they line up outside the entrances to the cabin. Lucent and Sillia take the side near the crane used to lift things and people from boats. Rio and Brice take the side near the canon. They clear the radio room and the kitchen.

“Hold it right there” Lucent points her gun at a man sitting on a couch reading a book. Another man sits up from his sleep. Sillia puts the two men, who offer no resistance, in cuffs. There is a TV on in the corner playing Red Dwarf. They leave it on not to give any indication to anyone else that something is wrong. Brice and Rio find a man sleeping in a bedroom and secure him as well. They finish searching the upper floor.

So far so good. Three down two to go. Lucent and Sillia find the generator and stay with it. Brice and Rio head off find the stairs down to the server room. It could be in either cylinder or in both. It’s 11 pm. They pass a sign from World War II which reads.

Action Stations - - - -

Fire °°° - °°° - °°° -

General - ° - ° - °- °

Gas - - °°- -°°

Rio assumes its Morse code for such emergencies as Fire and Gas. Sort of like the slips of red paper you see in offices after a big rif which say, “If you should receive a bomb threat please fill out this form and call the following number.” The alarm bell that used to be there is no-where to be seen.

They find the stairs and go down quietly. They hear voices of two men talking so they wait and listen.

“They told me that the new version of red hat is easier to install than Win2k.”

“Ok I am sorry. But do you ever use linux at least?”

“No, it’s substandard. Unix is the only OS I’d ever run. Why don’t you double-check those bash shell scripts again and quit talking to me about nonsense.”

“Do you ever feel bad about what we do for a living? Like do you ever want to do something good like save the whales or something?”

“No.”

“I just don’t feel fulfilled doing this job. I mean the pay is great and all but really. I have been reading this self-help book. It’s all about being empowered. It says I should help other people. It says the only way I’ll ever be happy is if I make other people happy.”

“You’d be making me really happy if you shut up.”

“Ok the scripts are still correct. Just like the were ten minutes ago last time I checked them.”

“How long did you say it will take the script to run?”

“A few hours, we have hundreds of millions of addresses to go thru.”

“Put your hands on your head and stand up.” Brice had his gun on the back of the man sitting nearest to the door head. Rio had his gun aimed at the man in front of the terminal.

The man near to the door started to lift his hands then grabbed the gun and twisted it trying to yank it from Brice. Rio turned the gun from the second man to point at the first man. The first man let go of the gun and backed up a bit. He was tall and about the same age as Eastman but very well built. He backed up near to the second man who was sitting petrified.

“Hold it right there. Don’t make me shoot you.”

The first man did a sideways glance at the computer. The prompt read

root>sendspam.sh

He put his finger slowly over the enter key.

“Put your guns down or I’ll send the worst virus to 100 million innocent users across the globe.”

Brice looked down at his radio hanging from his belt.

“Don’t even think about it. Take his gun and his radio, Jim.”

“Ohh, ok Henry,” Jim shaking got up from the chair and reached for the gun.

Rio, standing off to the side, took his knife that was hidden in his sleeve and hurled it at Henry who was now sitting comfortably in Jim’s chair. The knife sunk into his leg. He bent forward in pain falling on the floor and Rio grabbed the radio from his belt.

“Kill the power Lu”

The room went dark. The buzz of the servers stopped. Henry was rolling on the follow moaning. Brice turned on his flash light and easily encapsulated Jim’s hands in the cuffs.

Rio went over to Henry who was sitting bent over away from them. He stood up suddenly and lunged at Rio with the knife in hand. Paul who was holding the flash light in one hand grabbed his gun and shot the man. He fell to the floor totally incapacitated as the taser stuck his skin with 600 volts.

When they power came back on Rio had Jim login to the system. Jim was more than happy to help Rio delete the virus and clean out the database. They also deleted all the back up copies lying around.

The man sat up after the weakness and disorientation had eased. “You guys are so self righteous. Don't you think it’s a little selfish of you to destroy us just because we send spam? Do you ever think about the isolated people whose only enjoyment in life is to read e-mails we send? They have no friends, no pen pals. Only us. And you are taking that away from them. And don't forget the millions of ‘ill equipped’ men who've been looking for a solution to their problems?”

“Um Right,” said Paul and they left him tied up on the floor in the cement cylinder of the Sovereign Principality of Sealand. Sivilian had once again made life safe for mankind.