A Hacker Named "The Virus"

By Neal Chadwick

A Hacker Named 'The Virus'

Thriller by Neal Chadwick

The volume of this book corresponds to 113 paperback pages.

He calls himself "The Virus" - and he is one of the most notorious hackers of all time. And he tries to make the coup of his life by cracking the access codes of the Pentagon computers and trying to sell them to the Chinese secret service.

Soon he will be a hunted man fighting for his life. And the FBI investigators are the least of his problems...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alfred Bekker
• Release date: Nov 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386134732

Book preview

1

COLE'S FINGERS TICKED nervously on the steering wheel of the black Mitsubishi. He looked at the Rolex on his wrist.

5:00 p.m. Rush hour. In front of the traffic lights at the corner of Bedford Street/Seventh Avenue there was a traffic jam like almost everywhere in Manhattan.

In front of Coles Mitsubishi was a van, on the right a limousine, behind it a convertible with a sun-drenched blonde at the wheel. On the left he noticed a sports car with two young men.

The red phase had to end right away.

Then the traffic light changed. But the van in front of him wasn't moving an inch.

Instead, the doors opened. Masked ones jumped out. They wore MPis and bulletproof vests, plus balaclavas that only released the eye area.

Cole ducked just in time before the first volley broke the windshield of the Mitsubishi.

He lowered his upper body to the side and covered the narrow diplomatic suitcase lying in the front passenger seat.

Shards rained down on him. He reached for the glove box, ripped it open.

Two things were in there.

An automatic pistol with attached silencer and an ordinary hand grenade, as it was in use until today in the Army.

Cole snatched the hand grenade, pulled the trigger with her teeth and threw it through the smashed windshield.

Before the grenade detonated, one of the killers from the van had reached the side window of the Mitsubishi, the MPi lifted.

Cole ripped out the automatic and fired.

The bullet hit the masked killer underneath his nose.

The balaclava turned red. He was torn back, staggered. Then the detonation of the hand grenade sounded.

Cole lay across the driver and passenger seats of the Mitsubishi, curving like an embryo. He protected his face with his hands. The heat was murderous.

He waited a moment.

Then there was the next explosion. The fire caused by the hand grenade had apparently eaten its way to the tank.

Screams mixed with the detonation sound.

Cole opened the passenger door, pushed the suitcase out, crawled behind and then rolled off onto the asphalt.

A horn concert could be heard, in between the distant sirens of police, fire brigade and emergency service.

Cole ducked, grabbed the suitcase with her left hand.

One of the masked killers ran like a living torch across Bedford Street to Seventh Avenue. The squeaking of brakes mixed with his screams. A traffic chaos arose. Most of the cars at the intersection were wedged in. There were some minor rear-end collisions here and there. Panic voices were heard.

Cole glanced briefly over the scenery.

The blonde in the sports car stared at him. For a moment Cole considered taking her hostage, but her sports car was jammed. She couldn't leave.

An engine howled.

Cole was twirling.

A motorcyclist wiggled between the vehicles.

That's what Cole thought. A motorcycle was the ideal escape vehicle.

He raised the gun, pointed it.

But even before he could pull the trigger, one jolt went through his body, fractions of a second later another.

He collapsed. Still the left wriggled around the handle of the suitcase.

The blonde in the sports car held a silencer gun in her hand, then hid it in her windbreaker and closed the zipper. The motorcyclist came near, stopped just before Cole died.

The driver bent down, picked up the suitcase. The blonde got out of the sports car and then sat behind the motorcyclist.

Come on!, she hissed.

The driver let the engine howl, steered the machine past the dead man and then roared away on a zigzag course through the cars standing around.

2

WHEN WE ARRIVED AT the scene on Bedford Street/Seventh Avenue, there was still chaos. There were cars everywhere. Traffic was jammed all the way to Seventh Avenue. Colleagues from the city police were busy diverting traffic. The officials of the Scientific Research Division, the central identification service of all New York police authorities, needed time to carry out their job with the necessary thoroughness.

Lieutenant Jesper O. Thomson of Homicide Squad II of the 23rd precinct greeted Milo Tucker and me. We approached the place of the event on hidden paths, left the sports car in a side street and walked the last ten minutes behind us.

I didn't think you'd make it this fast, Thomson said. I knew him from a refresher course in small-bore shooting. They'll even get here before the coroner.

He will have the same problems as us, I replied.

Thomson shrugged his shoulders. The reason we have informed the FBI is that what has happened here is probably a clash in the area of organized crime.

A gang war? Milo raised his eyebrows sceptically.

Through our informants, we had no information that would lead us to expect anything like this. But that didn't have to mean anything.

There has been a greater detonation. The few testimonies my colleagues have received so far are quite confused, reported Lieutenant Thomson.

But it is certain that a crew of four or five heavily armed gorillas sat in the burnt-out van. They jumped out and went after the black Mitsubishi's driver...

And he fought back, Milo said.

Thomson nodded. He was well prepared for an attack. But apparently not good enough... Thomson led us to a dead man who had been struck by two hits. The man is carrying two passports. One is in the name of Lester Greenhouse, the other is a British passport in the name of Peter J. Duncan Jr.

Did the man have a cell phone with him? I asked.

Thomson nodded. We made sure...

If nothing has been done about this man's position, he hasn't been shot from the van, I noted.

The ballistics experts still have a few puzzles to solve. But as for the van... This was reported stolen by its owner yesterday."

Milo looked at the dead lying around the van. Some were charred beyond recognition.

One of the guys ran on fire on Seventh Avenue, Thomson reported. The pain must have nearly taken his mind away. A truck hit him deadly.

I pointed to a convertible that was only a few meters away from the black Mitsubishi.

In the middle of the road.

What kind of vehicle is that, Lieutenant?

We don't know, but we'll take care of it.

3

WHERE THE HELL ARE you going, Bruce? called the young woman. The airstream whirled her blond hair pretty messed up. She clung to Bruce's back with her right hand while the left clasped around the handle of the narrow suitcase. The case was trapped between her and Bruce. It contained everything that mattered.

Hopefully...

Bruce didn't answer her.

He probably didn't even understand them. The airstream and traffic noise swallowed everything. They had just come to light again on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. The highway made a kind of loop before it ran across Union City.

Bruce took the next exit to Weehawken and then headed towards the port facilities and piers. He turned off in a parking lot and then brought the machine to a standstill with an emergency stop. The rear wheel of the Kawasaki broke out easily, but Bruce had the machine under control.

He proved that on the hell slalom behind them. On the corner of Bedford Street and Seventh Avenue it had been really hot. Bruce had driven between the wedged vehicles at an almost breakneck speed.

The young woman still shuddered alone at the thought.

She got off the plane. She kept the suitcase in her hand. The light windbreaker she was wearing was rather bulged out by the silencer gun. She stroked

Reviews for A Hacker Named "The Virus"

[David Willson · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

If I could I would give it 0 stars I would. Too much killing and not enough tech. I will be honest I only made it a 1/4 of the way through the book before I told myself it was not worth finishing.