Breaking Backbones: From Chaos to Order

By Deb Radcliff

In this exciting conclusion to the Breaking Backbones Hacker Trilogy, Cy and Ying are locked in a lover’s triangle while their respective governments try to exploit them for their access to a powerful new Artificial Intelligence (AI) named Telos.

From their hideout at the Russian River, Cy and her freedom hackers are using Telos to systematically dismantle Damian Strandeski’s criminal empire and redistribute the criminal gains to victims, the needy, and important social causes, reigning in a new era of innovation and sustainable technology. Ying, meanwhile, is using a copy of Telos at an estate in France to get revenge against those who interned her family in the work camps. She is also using Telos to find her missing husband, reported dead four years earlier, but who Ying discovers is very much alive—and with another woman.

With larger forces coming after Telos, a cyberwar erupts, taking out power in America, France and China, and pushing Ying and Cy closer together, ultimately forcing them to make the most difficult decisions of their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665747264

Deb Radcliff

Deb Radcliff was the first journalist to make cybercrime a reporting beat starting in 1995. Throughout her career, she’s met smart and talented hackers, cybercops, intelligence officers, and vigilantes who are the basis of the colorful fictional characters described in her stories. She has won several awards for her coverage, including the most prestigious Neal Award (twice) for business investigative reporting. She is a speaker, writer, and thought leader who is still embedded in the communities she portrays in these stories.

Book preview

BREAKING

BACKBONES:

FROM CHAOS TO ORDER

BOOK III OF THE HACKER TRILOGY

DEB RADCLIFF

51906.png

Copyright © 2023 Deb Radcliff.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4725-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4727-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4726-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023913426

Archway Publishing rev. date: 7/26/2023

CONTENTS

Cast of Characters

PART I: THE TRIANGLE

Prologue

Chapter 1 Exposed

Chapter 2 Games Week

Chapter 3 Omen

Chapter 4 Faint of Heart

Chapter 5 Self-Learning

Chapter 6 In State

Chapter 7 Turned On

Chapter 8 Operation Back Door

Chapter 9 Takedown

Chapter 10 In the Dark

Chapter 11 Safe Room

Chapter 12 Call to Action

Chapter 13 Fry or Die

Chapter 14 Big Guns

Chapter 15 Connecting the Dots

PART II: CY’S OPS VERSUS PSY-OPS

Chapter 16 Déjà Vu

Chapter 17 Command and Control

Chapter 18 Homecoming

Chapter 19 The Plant

Chapter 20 Broken Heart

Chapter 21 Full Circle

Chapter 22 Lights, Camera, Action

Chapter 23 Homecoming

PART III: EQUALIZING

Chapter 24 Operation Heartbeat

Chapter 25 Down the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 26 Snatched

Chapter 27 Battle Ready

Chapter 28 DEFCON 4

Chapter 29 Waterfront

Chapter 30 Outgunned

Chapter 31 French Connection

Chapter 32 Peacemaker

Chapter 33 New Order

Chapter 34 Final Goodbye

Chapter 35 Old Ghosts

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Cy (short for CyAnthia), in her midforties, is den mom to UFJ hacker clan that relocated from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Russian River. Formerly Cindy Frank, cyber forensics investigator with the DoD and then the NSA.

d_ArkAngl, a.k.a. Leonard Smith, fifty-one, formerly an involuntary spy for the DoD embedded in China Telecom, and father to Cy’s firstborn, Adam.

Ying Liu, in her late forties, Leonard Smith’s widow (who does not know he is still alive), daughter of Nǚ Jiāzhǎng, former GlobeCom Chinese board director.

Honored Mother, Nǚ Jiāzhǎng, Ying’s mother and powerful figure in China, former board member at GlobeCom.

Adam, twenty-one, son of d_ArkAngl and Cy, the first of their clan born off-grid at their former hideout in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Michael, nineteen, son of Cy and Des (now deceased), born fifteen months after Adam when they lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Allure, fifty, is Cy’s friend and protector from their days in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Saoirse, twenty, daughter of Skew (now deceased), from the Cl0ver Clan, recently relocated with her three siblings to be with the UFJ clan on the Russian River.

Elven, twenty-three, Saoirse’s half brother with a Black mother and Irish father (Skew, who’s now deceased).

Liam and Shay, sixteen, Saoirse’s twin brothers who look like the spitting image of their deceased father, Skew.

Stonces, twenty-three, based in France, is son to Adrianna Dupres (now deceased) who was one of GlobeCom’s twenty-four board members.

Bilbo, in his midfifties, is a former UFJ clan member who escaped from Work Camp 74 in a daring prison break that was led by Stonces in book 2 of this series.

Geoffrey, in his midfifties, is Stonces’s most trusted business partner and security chief.

Malina Bennet, in her late fifties, is former pilot with the French Air Force, lifetime friend to Stonces and Geoffrey, who leads special ops when needed.

General Greene, seventy-two, former boss to Cindy Frank (a.k.a. Cy) when she was digital supervisor over Leonard Smith at NSA twenty years ago.

Colonel Charles Chuck Wilshire, in his forties, assistant to Jacob Michaels at the National Security Agency (NSA).

Jacob Michaels, in his fifties, in charge of Signals Intelligence at the NSA.

Damian Strandeski (now deceased), formerly the evil GlobeCom board director responsible for a host of crimes, who had organized the criminals operating on the dark web into a master syndicate called the Circle.

PART I

THE TRIANGLE

51116.png

PROLOGUE

FROM THE DEAD

Ying can’t believe what she just saw. Her husband, who’s supposed to be dead, is very much alive—and with another woman. She just passed them as she was leaving the private plane terminal at the Orly Airport, causing Ying to stop in her tracks. He kept his head down and wore a baseball hat, but she’s almost certain it was him. Although why he’s with that woman, she cannot fathom. The woman, who appears to be in her mid to late forties (about the same age as Ying), has no remarkable features except that she has a fit, athletic body. The lady walks with a limp and uses a cane, and her shoulder-length hair is prematurely white.

What the hell does he see in her? Ying’s female side can’t help comparing herself to the lady she just passed—a lady who was holding Leonard’s arm possessively as he helped her along. Ying, on the other hand, knows that she herself is far above average in looks (she’s been told that often enough anyway), not to mention her brains and her family’s powerful connections. In fact, considering those deep connections, how did she not learn that her husband is still alive?

Her mind is racing as she steps through the automatic doors to the sidewalk followed by a squat, rolling, truck-shaped robotic luggage valet with a fold-up mechanical arm for loading bags. Based on the number of suitcases stacked on the valet, it’s clear that Ying intends to stay in France for a while.

Outside, the weather is sunny but crisp as fall wanes into winter. She walks to the appointed position at the curb to wait for her private ride, all the while vexed by the thought that her husband has been secretly alive and never tried to find her. If he was alive, he should have rescued her from the Siberian work camp she’d been locked up in for nearly three years. She had convinced herself that the only reason he didn’t find and free her was because he died in a shootout at the Watergate, as the news and her personal intelligence agents had reported.

Even though they never found his body.

Not a day goes by when she doesn’t wish her husband was alive. And nearly every night, she’s dreamt of seeing him, touching him, and hearing him give some lame excuse as to why he had to fake his own death. The dreams feel so real—until she inevitably wakes up drenched in sweat and tears, experiencing the intense, stomach-churning loss all over again.

This is no dream though, and she struggles to find a rational explanation for what she just saw. Was it really Leonard or just someone who looks remarkably like him? Certainly, his hair is different, and his eyes are brown instead of the steel blue they used to be. But those things can be changed easily enough. His aging Brad Pitt look, his posture, and his demeanor (a little too sure of himself) leads her to conclude that it can only be him.

A cylindrical, driverless limo pulls up to Ying’s position and interrupts her thoughts. A curved glass door raises to let her in, and the car’s voice program identifies itself, while the computer confirms her ticket number by lighting it up on her wrist device for cross-authentication. As the robot valet unloads her gear into the cab’s ample storage boot, she takes her seat in a plush lounger near the refreshments bar. Out of old habit, she tells the limo where to take her, even though it’s already programmed into the electronic ticket.

Bella Vue winery and estate off the Rue de Joseph in Bruyères-le-Châtel, she says in a voice that sounds more British than Chinese. Main entrance.

Ying, forty-seven, is still stunning despite all that she’s been through in the last three years. Her skin looks youthful for the most part, except the dark circles and fine lines around her eyes. Her signature look is jet-black hair with a midnight blue gloss coating, bluntly cut at a cross angle where the right side is several inches shorter than the left. Slight of figure, she’s dressed for business in gray slacks and a white blouse with elbow-length sleeves. A finely knit red cardigan completes the ensemble.

As the limo pulls into traffic, Ying uses her wrist device to bring up the electronic folder that she keeps on her late husband. She flips through his case files and then listens, as she has so many times, to the last communication her husband made before he died. It’s an audio message that he sent to GlobeCom’s twenty-four board members after freedom hackers broke GlobeCom’s network backbones more than three years ago. If you receive this, I’m likely dead or will be soon, the message had started. At the time, her husband, Leonard Smith, was the CSO (chief security officer) of GlobeCom’s China hub.

For nearly three years, while incarcerated at Work Camp 74, Ying knew nothing about the shootout that apparently killed him at the Watergate Hotel. It wasn’t until after Stonces rescued her and Bilbo from the work camp that she learned Leonard was supposedly gunned down by Damian’s goons. And that was only eight months ago, so the wound is still raw.

Ying shivers and turns up the heat in the vehicle, then revisits her favorite images of Leonard while remembering his sweet but awkward interactions with her large family at their rambling compound in a wealthy suburb of Beijing. She remembers how her young nieces and nephews used to climb all over him, giggling and squealing as if he was their human jungle gym. And of her mother, nearly impossible to impress, who was charmed by this brash American, enough to suggest to Ying that she ought to marry him. Three years later, Ying did marry Leonard, and they spent fourteen wonderful years together before she was kidnapped and sent to the work camps and her husband was called to Washington, DC, where he was supposedly killed at the Watergate.

She clicks out of the images and sighs loudly.

Heartbreak can switch to anger in an instant. And Ying, as quick as she is, feels rage boil up when she thinks about the implications of what she just saw. The main one being if her husband was alive and free while she was locked up in a notorious Russian work camp, why didn’t he rescue her? Did he even try to find me? she thinks.

It’s also not lost on her that Leonard shows up now, a day after Damian Strandeski, disgraced director of the GlobeCom board, was finally caught and killed right here in France, very near to Stonces’s chateau at the Bella Vue.

She looks up the timing on her social media captures. Two days ago, Strandeski’s cover was blown after his location in Kent, along with his accounts and passcodes, were posted on social media and across the cyberverse. This type of sensitive data dump to public forums and social boards fits Leonard’s MO. After all, he was the notorious GlobeCom insider whistleblower who helped authorities find and convict the crooked GlobeCom board members just after GlobeCom fell.

The worst of them was Damian Strandeski, chairman of GlobeCom’s board of directors. For nearly two decades, he ran a criminal syndicate called the Circle, which essentially gave him control of all the criminal enterprises operating on the dark web. Many people who got in his way (and their families) have been erased without a trace from the physical and digital realms. Not to mention Damian was behind Ying’s kidnapping, and both of Stonces’s parents died at that man’s hand.

This can’t be a coincidence. I mean, what are the odds? she asks out loud.

She opens another app and issues a directive. Identify private flights leaving the Orly Airport today from noon local time onward. Report their takeoff times, passenger manifests, flight plans, connections, and final destinations.

As she waits for the search results, she contacts Stonces Dupres, the twenty-three-year-old heir of the Bella Vue, left to him after his mother was killed.

Stonces picks up immediately and flashes a broad, white-toothed smile. Despite his stubbly unshaven beard, the young man still looks like a cover model, with piercing black eyes, dark skin, and black hair. He is normally perfectly coiffed and dressed to the nines, but today he is still in his robe with a five o’clock shadow even though it’s well past noon.

Aunty! Nice to see you, Stonces says in English with a sophisticated French accent.

You need a shower. I can almost smell you from here, she says.

We’ve been celebrating the death of the demon Damian, and now we’re lingering over a most delicious brunch, he responds. I assume you’ve heard the news.

We? Who is with you? she asks suspiciously.

Stonces pauses for a moment to peer at someone or something out of her view.

"Oh, by we, I mean Bilbo and moi. He’s on the other side of the table, but he’s too hungover to show himself right now."

Hello over there, Bilbo, Ying says loudly so that Bilbo can hear her.

Hello, Miss Ying, he responds enthusiastically.

Then to Stonces, she continues. We received the report that Damian was killed. But my mother sent me to confirm proof of death. I should be there in an hour.

What? Now? I thought you were in Beijing, Stonces says, looking a little panicked. I’m afraid, um, now is not the best time.

Ying glares at him as if she doesn’t care, which is the way she always looks at him.

Yes, well, Honored Mother ordered me back here to keep an eye on you, and you should be grateful that I am all she’s sending. For now anyway, Ying retorts impatiently. "You can thank me for that. I pled your case to her, although it was more for Bilbo, who seems to think the world of you. The least you can do is to let me stay without a reservation."

51116.png

1

EXPOSED

I’m telling you it was Ying! Cy exclaims. We just passed her in the terminal. Same exotic beauty, same dark blue iridescence to the hair, same eyes, maybe a little older and a little tired, but who wouldn’t be after what she’s been through?

d_ArkAngl reaches for Cy’s cane, and she hands it to him gratefully. He helps her into a captain’s chair at the galley table, then sets the cane against an opal-colored upholstered sofa across the aisle. They’re on a private supersonic, an S250 model, light and efficient with a long, beaky nose and narrow body, bound for the San Francisco Airport.

For a moment, he is silent as he unravels his fake persona. He travels under assumed identities because his real self, Leonard Smith, is supposed to be dead, and he wants it to stay that way because if he were alive, he’d be wanted by all the organized criminals left over from Damian’s Circle who haven’t been rounded up yet. He removes his baseball cap and then takes out his brown-colored contacts with fake irises, revealing his natural steel blue eyes. Once he puts on his wire-rimmed glasses, he looks like himself again, a geeky and aging Brad Pitt.

Cy takes his hand in hers and feels him trembling.

But when he speaks, his voice is strong and intelligent, lightly accented with a mixture of Bronx and German. Are you certain it was Ying you saw and not someone who looks incredibly like her? he asks.

Cy wonders if that is hope she sees in his expression—hope for maybe seeing Ying again? She tries to push the thought away. Yes. I’m sure of it. I just said that. How much assurance do you need? she responds testily.

The plane taxis to the runway, and d_ArkAngl asks again, And you’re sure she recognized me?

Yes. She looked directly at you, her mouth gaping open. She seemed shocked, and then she looked pissed, Cy says with a shiver. It was only for an instant, but it sent chills down my spine.

OK, OK. So it seems my former life of Leonard Smith is catching up to us sooner than I thought it would. But it’s better that we know she’s seen us. I can work with that, he responds. Then, as if running through a checklist, he adds, First, I’ll doctor our flight plans in case she’s trying to find out where we’re headed.

He immediately pulls up an old shell code he had embedded in the airport’s flight systems long ago. From there, he launches a scanning program to confirm his old back doors in the airport applications are still intact. A few seconds later, he taps another command and makes a change to the flight records. Cy, looking over his shoulder at the screen, feels squeamish about putting any unauthorized code into the flight systems at such a busy international airport as Orly.

Are you sure this isn’t a safety risk for other flights and travelers? she asks.

Don’t worry. My back doors have been there for years. This is a small shell, nothing malicious. I’ve used the program hundreds of times when I didn’t want my old employer, GlobeCom, tracking my movements, he responds.

What about the reservation and passenger manifests? Should we change genders, number of passengers? Ying would be looking for a female and male together, she says.

Already on that, he responds. That’ll free you up to check on Michael.

Oh yes! We’ve got to warn them! she exclaims. Ying’s never heard of Michael or Elven. And she’s bound to ask questions if she meets them at the estate, especially after she sees her dead husband, Leonard, alive at the airport.

d_ArkAngl pauses his work to face her directly. I shared my concerns when you told me that Michael and Elven were staying behind with Stonces instead of coming back to the camp with us. I asked specifically, what will they tell Ying when she inevitably returns from Beijing? And would their story be believable?

"Yes, I said the same thing to them before I left them this morning. But they’re