|
|
"What's up?" Answered on the second ring. Somethin's up. "You might want to have your man... Doug, stand down for a bit. Can you do that pretty quick?" "Can do. Soon as we're done here." "That's all for now, if you can get that done we can talk Friday. I've got some things to work on before then." No sense wastin' time. If Harry says Friday soon enough, that's good. "Got it. See you then." "Something's going on," said Alex after he disconnected. "Harry wants me to have Doug stop his probes. I suspect we've been made." "That's not good." "Nope. Let me give him a call." Doug answered the call, so he didn't have to leave a message or send a text. "Can do," he said when Alex told him what Harry had said. "Too bad, it was just getting intresting." "OK," Alex replied. "You might want to sanitize your gear, back up what you have and we'll take if off your hands. Whatever you have to do." "Gotcha. If you can come out tomorrow I'll give you everything." "Cool, see'ya." "Looks like our plans are set for tomorrow," Jessica said. "Yeah. I don't want any collateral damage."
"I've got everything on here," Doug said. "Two copies." He handed Alex a pair of USB sticks. "Once you've got them somewhere safe, let me know and I'll clean all these systems." "Thanks," Alex replied. "I don't want anyone being endangered by this. I shouldn't have asked you." "It'd be hard to track me down," said Doug. "Even if they traced it to the first proxy in my chain, which is near impossible. And they it would just be an IP block used by quite a few people, some of whom are doing stuff more nefarious that I am." "Let's hope they don't even get that far. Most likely they detected it, but no smarter than they are and not having any competent IT people they probably can't trace it." "If they don't try soon," Doug said, "they won't have a chance. Most of the logs roll off at thirty days max, unless it's some kind of government operation, where they keep everything forever." "Why did you say it was getting interesting?" "There's so much in there, I didn't get far, but some of that stuff looks like they're talking about it, money laundering, insurance fraud, like they don't care who knows. But... I guess if very many crooks were smart we'd be in a lot of trouble. Let me know how it's going once in a while." "Will do." "Since I'm now between assignments, how about a beer?" "Stop twisting my arm." "You are getting your memory back," said Doug. "You used to do that a lot. Sometimes you holler like you were in pain, around somebody that didn't know us, it'd scare them." Guess I was a bit of a joker. Can't remember the jokes though." "I hope we haven't put you in danger," Jessica said, "but these are some bad people. Be careful. After we talk to Harry tomorrow we'll let you know what's happening."
Harry had a visitor when they arrived. "Mike, this is Alex and Jessica," said Harry. "Mike has been doing some digging for me, and there's beginning to be some notice among our target. Mike?" "I've been talking to people about the two main guys," said Mike. "Cox and Copeland. We got most of what we needed from regular checking, Cox's resume pretty well tells us what sort he is. Copeland, we got nothing official. He left NEA, arguably the most desirable hospital around here, after just two years. There's nothing official on him, I talked to a couple of people that have been there long enough to remember him, said he didn't seem to be too popular and scuttlebutt was he got in some trouble, but nothing in writing. No complaints to the state medical board. But he just up and left and went to this little hospice, where ACCH is located. Then hired on with them." "Doesn't sound good," Alex said. "Nope. But these people are tight-lipped, like cops. Harry can tell you, any honest cop will." "We all know we can get in jams," said Harry, "sometimes without doing anything wrong. So we stick together. Sometimes bad apples get away with a lot because the good ones know they can be in a bad spot through no fault of their own. They cut each other some slack." "Doctors are the same way," Mike said. "But the rest of the staff, especially nurses, talk a lot. And if they don't keep it from the nurses it gets around. One of the nurses I talked to, been there twelve years, the kind that listens but doesn't talk much. Says Copeland got in a lot of trouble in two years, but whatever it was it was them calling him upstairs for a private talk. Nobody in there but the doctors and upper management. They're either doctors themselves or have a vested interest in bad things not getting out. "And Copeland had several of those, and at least one was closely associated with a death. Talk was he just flat screwed things up, and they gave up. NEA runs a tight ship, from what I hear, not like St. Bernards. Seems he saw the writing on the wall and got out of there before they had to fire him." "Figures," said Alex. "He drinks a good bit from the looks of it," Mike added. "I've watched him pretty close. He doesn't have a lot of visitors but buys enough liquor you'd think he had regular parties. Anyway, outside of working at the hospital he doesn't get around much. He's been out of town on weekends a couple of times, alone - he's married, no kids - but I haven't followed him far enough to know where he was going except west on I-40." "Texas?" asked Jessica. "Could be. That company being headquartered there. Cox has made a couple of trips that way as well." "Why do you think they're onto us?" "Couple of things," replied Harry. "Mike has had a couple of encounters with dodgy types, says they'd been following him while he was working on these guys. They were either pretty clumsy about it, or warning him off. "Come up and call him by a name they'd knew wasn't his, then say 'sorry, thought you wre somebody else', stuff like that. So they may be wanting him to know he's being watched. "But Wednesday a fellow came in, asked if I could investigate websites, who owned and operated them. I've been expecting it. Told him it wasn't in my area of expertise, he wanted to show me anyway. It was your site. "But that may have just been a warning as well. He didn't seem too bothered when I told him I couldn't help him. But I called you and told you to have your man stand down, told Elizabeth too, for her and Kaylee to do the same. Just business as usual, don't do anything to alert them." "Good idea," Alex said. "I picked up copies of everything Doug had, you can start going over it." He took the USB sticks out and handed one to Harry. "I'll take a look at mine and we can see what we have." "Sounds good. I've got some reports from my contact in Texas, you can look over those. I had Mary Ann make a copy for you." "What's you assessment of the situation?" asked Jessica. "Have you talked to Jennifer or Karen?" "Not yet. They haven't done anything to attract attention other than talk to us. I will though, to be on the safe side. The earliest they can meet is Monday, if you'll come back we can have a council of war." "We can do that." |
|