Chapter 32 Catfish
CATFISH
Night soaks the street in that suburban way that makes everything feel quieter than it is. There’s the occasional flicker of a television. Christmas lights decorate the exterior of homes and Christmas trees inside windows.
We park the truck down the street from Mika’s front door, around the corner, so if anyone looks out of their window, they won’t see an unusual vehicle.
It’s freezing outside, but five of us are tucked painfully into the truck, making it too cozy.
Atom drives. His truck is the largest, and we stopped a few minutes ago to remove the plate. Grudge is sitting next to him. I’m squashed in the back with Wraith and Smoke.
“We should have brought two trucks,” Smoke says from his place in the middle. “This truck wasn’t designed for three sets of shoulders like ours.”
“The man isn’t lying,” Wraith says, sitting at an angle to make it work.
Smoke huffs as he tries to shift in his seat again. “Gonna be painful if Mika has a lot of equipment when we ride home.”
“Quit bitching,” Atom says. “We’re here.”
“Yeah, but four hours squashed between these two made it feel like a twelve-hour ride instead of four,” Smoke grumbles.
“Mika’s place is a rental,” I say, looking at the additional intelligence Wren has sent through. “Been here for seven months.”
Once we’re parked up, we pull black balaclavas over our heads. Mainly to hide our faces, but it certainly helps with the frigid windchill. We agreed to leave our cuts and other identifying items at home.
Grudge leads us forward. “I’ll go around the front with Catfish and Smoke. Atom, Wraith, the two of you take the rear. Message when you’re in position.”
We approach the property along the street. It gives us time to take in the black SUV on the driveway with so much snow around the wheelbase, it’s clear it hasn’t been used in a while.
As we approach the door, I can see into the living room. There’s a couch that looks like too many people have spent the night on it, and two monitors throwing blue light.
Smoke slowly but surely picks the lock, and Grudge confirms Atom and Wraith are in position by the back door. It’s taking a minute, so I look at the windows to the living room. They’re panes that have a latch but lift to open. The one on the right isn’t properly locked.
I play around with the old windowpane, jiggling it, nudging it, until I manage to get the lock to open fully.
“Cover me,” I say to Atom, as I climb through the opening.
It’s uncomfortable. My shoulders barely fit.
And the drop down to the floor is a little farther than I thought it was going to be.
But I’m in.
Quickly, and as silently as I can, I get to the door and take all the deadbolts off.
Mika is so paranoid that they needed multiple bar and chain locks but didn’t think to check the windows.
Music thuds from the direction of the basement. It’s tinny, heavy on the synth. The house smells a little like old ramen. Then, we hear a shout, a whoop, from downstairs.
Atom and Wraith have made their own way into the property and come at us from the opposite angle.
“We could see Mika,” Wraith whispers. “Basement window. Just one person. Sitting back corner, right-hand side.”
Grudge leads as we move down the stairs into the basement.
It’s unfinished, but warm. There’s a folding table stacked with laptop guts, routers, braided cables, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Stickers cover a tower case: cartoon skulls, a little frog, some of that Manga shit.
And finally, I see Mika. He’s smaller than I was imagining. Thin arms, even in a fleecy sweatshirt. Weak wrists.
Grudge coughs. Loudly.
And Mika flinches when he turns around and sees four of us watching him. Smoke has stayed at the top of the stairs to keep a look out. We have no clue if other people live in this house besides the hacker, if there was anyone upstairs.
“Evening,” Atom says.
The calm in his voice makes Mika swallow visibly. “The…the door…it was locked.”
“Not anymore it isn’t,” Wraith says. “Let’s keep the neighbors mellow, yeah? You don’t make any loud noises to alert them, and we won’t have to kill you or them.”
Mika’s eyes jump between our faces, as if he’s trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. I know what kind of sight we make; all dressed in black, no identifying club colors, balaclavas pulled over our faces.
“You Mika?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He coughs because the word comes out on a croak. “Who are you?”
“We’re people who’ve heard you’ve been bragging online,” Grudge says.
Mika’s mouth tries for a smirk and fails miserably. “Everybody brags online.”
I nod. “A lot of people do. But not about the FBI sliding into their DMs to set up another hacker.”
“House is empty,” Smoke says as he joins us in the basement.
“I didn’t... Look, it’s not what…”
“Spit it out,” Atom says. “You didn’t do it. It’s not what we think. Blah blah blah. And please, so we don’t die of boredom, at least make it original.”
Mika finally stands to face us. He’s likely five foot seven. Short, compared to the five of us. “Okay. So, it’s probably exactly what you think if you went to the trouble of finding me. And I’m guessing you know NullTrace or their friends, because only one of them would be able to track me down.”
“Tell us,” Smoke says. “‘Cos I hate guessing.”
“The FBI reached out to me. Told me they knew who I was and what I was capable of doing. But they told me it wasn’t me they were after. They wanted to set up bigger fish. They said the person was a ‘threat actor.’ They said for the sake of national security, they needed a node they can trust.”
“Who was it?” I ask.
“There’s an agent. A guy. Name is Dorian Chase.
” Mika says the name with a shiver. “He’s got this thing.
He makes you feel like you’re on the same side.
He calls people assets, like it’s a compliment.
He told me he wanted to keep a former node safe, and to do that, they needed to lure the person out of hiding so they could give them refuge.
He told me he wanted a hacker, someone using the names NullTrace and Wren. ”
The sound of Wren’s name flips my stomach.
I step forward but am pulled back by Atom. “Easy.”
“You know this person?” Grudge asks while I grind my teeth.
“I know of NullTrace. They’re brilliant at what they do.”
“So, then, why did you brag about setting this up?” Wraith asks. “Makes no fucking sense. And what did you actually set up?”
Mika has the nerve to look offended. “Turns out, I was premature anyway. I found a trace of them, in an employee file at Valentine Security. Figured they’d settled down. Gone straight normal life and shit. I gave Chase the address from their personnel file.”
“Do you know what fucking happened next?” I say, piecing the bits of information I know together.
Mika looks down at his shoes. “Why do you think I invested in new locks for my doors?”
“You know?” Grudge asks me, turning to face me.
“The safe house Wren was staying in was torched.”
Mika looks up. “It must have been the people the FBI wanted to protect them from. Some cartel or something. What if they were watching Chase’s communications? What if my message was what alerted them to where the house was? The FBI doesn’t do shit like that.”
But something in my gut is telling me a different story. I get that people in the FBI lie to get what they need. Maybe it was easier to get someone with Mika’s skills on board to help him find Wren by saying he just wanted to protect them. And yet, everywhere there is trouble, there’s Dorian Chase.
“If they’ve gotten to NullTrace, what if they now know who I am? What if they come for me as a loose end?”
“I find myself not giving a fuck about what happens to you, to be fair,” Grudge says.
“What else do you know about Chase?” I ask.
Mika wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve.
“You can’t trust him. When I heard about the fire at the address I’d given him, I messaged him, asking if the person he was chasing had died.
Or if he knew who set the fire. He told me my work was done, my usefulness expired, and that I shouldn’t contact him again. Am I at risk?”
Wraith chuckles. “Five men break into your house, and you’re asking us if you’re safe?”
“Are you the cartel after them?”
“Show us the messages,” I say. Not only do I want to see them, but I also want to know what equipment out of this computer spare parts store I need to take with us.
“Please, just leave me alone and—”
The click of Atom’s weapon replaces the need for words as Mika quickly sits back in his chair and spins to face his monitors.
With a few clicks, I see the messages, everything exactly how Mika said it happened. I can hear the panic in Mika’s messages after the fire, when he thinks the person he was helping stay safe is now possibly dead because of his actions.
I feel sick for Wren when I see Chase is also using their deadname half the time.
“We’re taking all this,” I say.
Mika recoils. “You can’t. This is my livelihood.”
“We can,” Grudge says. “We’re taking the laptop, and the tower, and your fucking phone. You can either help us make it fast and clean, or you can make it messy for everyone.”
I see a pile of antistatic sleeves and throw some stacked drives into them. Atom unplugs the tower.
“Stop. Please,” Mika yells. “You take all that, I’m dead.”
“Look at it this way,” Wraith says. “Without all this shit, you’re harder to find. If we could find you, they could too.”
Smoke grins. “Technically, we just did you a favor. Making it easier for you to ghost. You’re now nothing but a rumor in a hoodie.”
A red-blue bloom appears on the wall through the basement window.
“Cops,” Grudge says. “We need to get out of here.”
“There’s no siren, though,” I say. “Might just be a community drive by.”
I hold my breath. Wraith scours the basement for an out. “Those windows are too small to get through.”
Smoke jogs to the top of the stairs, then comes back down. “Quick. We can get out the back.”
I look around. “But the rest of the equipment…”
Grudge pulls his gun out and puts it to Mika’s skull. “Give us everything worth taking. You fuck it up, you don’t give us everything, I’ll come back and put a bullet through your fucking skull.”
Mika panics and throws a couple more drives our way. Then, Grudge shoves his hand into the guy’s pocket and takes his phone.
“Hey, I still owe money on that phone.”
“Tough shit,” Grudge says.
We make our way up the steps to the hallway. Atom carries the big tower beneath his arm. I carry the bag of drives. Wraith has two laptops. Grudge has the phone, two memory sticks, and a Faraday bag with unknown contents.
The back door is still pushed open a little, and we step outside before hurrying to the rear of the property, where we hop the fence into the neighbor’s yard. There’s much passing of equipment as we each make the leap.
But something makes me look back.
“Federal agents, Mr. Mikhail Levin,” a voice shouts. “We just need a moment of your time.”
“Catfish, move,” Smoke whispers harshly.
A man in a blue jacket with the letters FBI on it appears on the edge of the driveway, as if looking to see where the pathway leads. In the weak light from the living room window, I see a solidly built man, with brown hair swept from a side part.
A corporate man.
Predictable.
One who matches the image on the passports.
I’m grateful that the combination of darkness and the fence keep him from seeing us.
I reach for my gun as three more vans arrive.
“They can see our fucking footsteps,” Grudge says, grabbing my elbow. “And it’s a death sentence if we kill one of those fuckers.”
It’s enough to force my feet to move, one in front of the other. We sprint through the neighbor’s backyard, through an open gate, into the narrow alley behind the property. Racing along dark garages, I wonder if the FBI have already spotted Atom’s truck.
Pressing into the shadows between the garages, I wonder if the cold and damp air could be harming the electronics we’re carrying.
Smoke holds up his hand and steps out a little to glance onto the street. The road captain relies on our usual hand signals to tell us it’s clear to move forward. At the end of the block, we hit the street where the truck waits.
And just as we reach it, I hear the distant ricochet of a single shot.