FICTION
Sins Of The Past Part 2
A Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James Series By PG & Sharon Barnett
My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson. And I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.
The interesting thing about the Lover’s Cross story, besides the fact one of us almost ended up nailed to an actual cross, was it allowed us to get to know each other better. We’d been on enough stories together to understand how each other would respond in a particular situation, but Lover’s Cross kind of ripped the bandage off of our emotional wounds. In a way, it helped both of us grow the bond between us and forge it even more durable.
Regardless, neither of us had intended to ever deal with sins of the past again. And now, in less time than it took Rick McDonnell to bench one of us, and give us our assignment, here we were forced to deal with a ton of unpleasant memories.
Rick saw to it, that although half of our two-person team would be chasing this story from the sidelines, he’d at least have a really cool office to work from. But when you think about who he’d recently benched, you should know by now; the fancy office wasn’t helping.
“Nice duds, don’t you think, Henry?”
“What the hell ever. This is bullshit, Sunny.”
“Come on, James. You haven’t even healed properly, and you want to go out in the field?”
“Better than sitting here on my ass and missing out.”
“Missing out? You mean missing out on the action? Dammit, James, this action you’re talking about has almost gotten us killed. Not just once, but several times. I don’t blame them.”
“You know this isn’t my style, princess.”
“Well, for now, it’s going to have to be. Deal with it, old man.”
“You call me old man one more time and…”
“And you’ll do what? Beat me with your cane?”
“Come on, Sunny. This isn’t fair.”
“What do you always say? A fair is where you take your pigs to sell them. This is life.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. But I won’t like it.”
“Oh, my God James, you sound just like Alicia when Robert and I tell her to get cleaned up for supper. Now I think I know where she gets it.”
“Bite me, Johnson. So what’s the plan? How are we going to take a run at this?”
“You mean, how am I going to take a run at this?”
“What the hell ever.”
“Well, I think a call to the cyber twins might be in order.”
Donnie Martin and Rebecca Wu were probably the two best computer geeks we knew. They also were pivotal tools in the ongoing efforts of Manny Hermanos and Robert Johnson’s surveillance and monitoring of cyber threats and potential homeland security compromise.
Although they always reminded us they were “computer-aided technical analysts,” it was a lot easier and quicker just to call them what they were — computer geeks. If there was any information we needed floating out there in cyberspace those two could and often did, find it. And if they couldn’t find it more traditionally, they possessed the skills to hijack the data if push came to shove.
Sometimes it did.
After closing the door to the office, we put the call on speakerphone and dialed the number.
“NSA cybersecurity Austin branch, this is Manny Hermanos speaking. How may I direct your call?”
“Good morning Manny. This is Henry and Sunny.”
“Hey, you two. How’re you doing, Henry?”
“Still moving pretty slow, but I’ll make it. How’s Victoria and Gorge?”
“Awesome as usual. I suppose you need to talk to Donnie and Becca, right?”
“If you don’t mind, Manny.”
“Damn, James, is this really you being all polite and everything?”
“Ya know what Hermanos? I…”
A quick tap of the mute button gave us a quick five-second interchange.
“Henry.”
“What?”
“Be nice.”
“Whatever. Hit the mute button again.”
“Manny? You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Could we please speak with Donnie and Becca. Please?”
“Certainly. Hang on.”
When the lilting strands of Barbara Streisand singing, The Way We Were streamed from the speaker, we stared at each other.
“I swear to God, one of these days, I’m going to bust that little shithead in the mouth.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Henry. The only reason he acts like that is because you always treat him like he’s a shithead.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you…”
“This is Donnie. Hey Sunny and Henry. Becca and I have you on speaker.”
“Morning, you two. Look, we’ll make this quick. When you get a chance, we need you to do a deep dive on a Pamela Lambert for us.”
“Crazy lady Pamela Lambert? The one that tried to kill Henry and was sent to jail?”
“Yeah Wu, that crazy lady.”
“ Becca, it’s not immediately pressing, but we’re going to need something as quick as you two can find it.”
“Sure, Sunny. Uh, what about that other thing?”
“What other thing?”
“The thing Henry asked us about before, well before…”
“Before the accidental on-purpose attempt to take me out? Yeah, whatcha got Becca?”
“Not much we’re afraid. Every search we did, ever data repository we came across was locked down so tight we couldn’t even get in. In fact, we detected a ton of sniffers on most of them.”
“Sniffers?”
“Yes, Henry. Do you know what an IP traceroute is?”
“Donnie, I don’t even know what an IP is.”
“Okay, well, think of it as caller ID in reverse. These sniffers sit on the site in monitor mode. The minute they recognize a call for info from an IP that’s not in their approved table, they start doing a backward trace to see where the RFC is coming from.
“What the hell is an RF?”
“It stands for Remote Function Call Henry.”
“So you’re saying these sniffers would be able to locate you guys?”
“Yeah, but we knew better. Becca hacked some local bank servers and bounced our queries off of them.”
“Wait, you two hacked a bank?”
“Uh, Becca, you hacked a bank?”
“Yes, I believe that’s what Donnie said. Is there a problem?”
We stared in amazement at each other then back at the phone.
“Anything else?”
“Well, we’re not sure what he’s been up to, but he’s got some powerful connections. We traced him to a least a dozen military super secret projects, all locked down tighter than a drum skin and all classified top secret. They’re locked down so tight they require code authentication just to get into the repository alone. Oh, and get this, Henry. He’s got some pretty hefty political connections as well at not only the local level but in DC. He’s a big-time player Henry.”
“Damn. Okay, thanks you two. let us know when you dig us something on Lambert.”
“Will do.”
We disconnected and for the longest time stared at one another in disbelief. It seems as if our boss Rick McDonnell had a few tricks up his sleeves. There was an entire life the man had lived we never knew about. At this point, we weren’t even sure Rick McDonnell was his real name. We’d never asked, never felt the need to question whether the editor-in-chief of Dark Sides had a dark side of his own. Neither of us had to say what we were thinking.
Which story were we going to dig up?
Read On — Sins Of The Past Part 3
Let’s s keep in touch: P.G. & Sharon Barnett ([email protected]) © P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.