Read Online Night Heron by Adam Brookes - Free Book Online Page A

penetrated them. For the hell of it, he said. For the LOLZ. But beneath the excruciating online patois, Mangan sensed seriousness. Treefrog had charted China’s online attacks on the Followers for months. Denial of service attacks on Follower websites, poisoned emails, network incursions, Treefrog searched out their origins, published the addresses of the perpetrators, and maintained scrupulous records of what he had found. Mangan had quoted him in stories.
The notorious hacker, who is known in the cyber-underworld as Treefrog…
ME: Here now.
    TREEFROG: where you bin
    ME: Asleep. It’s 4am.
    TREEFROG: THE FROG NEVER SLEEEPS. HIS ORANGE EYES SEE EEEEEVRYTHIGN
    ME: Good for the frog. What do you want?
    TREEFROG: Man you are AWWWWWWESOME . Your TV piece bro Police pigs beatin on old follower dudes in that place Sreious bro you nailed it
    ME: Thanks.
    TREEFROG: got sumpin for ya meet me at the place
    Mangan clicked away to a secure chat room that Treefrog favored and logged in.
TREEFROG: WO DERE . we got ourselves biiiiig ddos stinkin up Followers main site last few hours so wot’s new, know wimsayin but there’ other shit dalai lama offices got big attack too. They network down, you should talk to em.
    ME: Any sign who’s doing the Dalai Lama attack?
    TREEFROG: IP in west china, chengdu city. Guess on tech surv units military but whoknows? Others too other places FROG IS WORKIN THE ISSUE
    ME: Good frog. tks
    TREEFROG: nuttin of it dood. Also unclE sam is sniffin it out.
    Mangan had been struck by Treefrog’s awareness of the U.S. government’s cyber operations. He’d wondered if the hacker had some sort of link to the U.S. security establishment.
ME: the feds? What are they chasing?
    TREEFROG: stuff comin cross US servers that points to dalai attack. Bots maybe. Counter intel busy busy Tell your US doods to talk to em at DHS FBI . Could try corporate security too see wat they knowin
    ME: how do you know the feds are on it?
    TREEFROG: froggy see froggy know
    ME: OK OK. Let me know more, yes?
    TREEFROG: you heard it from froggy
    ME: I’ll use your name.
    TREEFROG: FROG OUT
    The next morning he had woken late. Ting was already in the bureau, cross-legged on the couch with a pot of yoghurt, reading the
People’s Daily
.
    “Where did you go?” she said.
    “Oh. You know.”
    He turned on his computer. An email to the desk, first, on Treefrog’s tip, then a call to the Dalai Lama’s offices in India. But cyber-attacks, once a startling story, were becoming routine.
    “The French one was cute,” said Ting.
    “She was young. And earnest.”
    She feigned reading the paper. “Philip Mangan, you are the loneliest man alive.”
    They all turned at once. An ample, middle-aged man, his face covered in soap, wearing only underpants and running shoes, was emerging slowly from behind a curtain of orange and blue beads. In his extended hand he proffered a wad of banknotes.
    “You can take this.”
    The man in sunglasses stared at him. Then looked back to the barrel-shaped woman.
    “Who the fuck is he?”
    The barrel-shaped woman opened her mouth and closed it again, and shook her head.
    Peanut advanced tentatively towards Sunglasses.
    “Go on, there’s hundreds there. Take it.”
    He inched forward. Chef, unmoving, the meat cleaver pressing on his throat, tried to watch what was happening from the corner of his eye.
    Sunglasses reached out and snatched the wad.
    On a small metal trolley to Peanut’s right lay a hairdryer of the large, metal, professional kind. As Sunglasses looked down to inspect the notes, Peanut reached for the hairdryer. Sunglasses’ head snapped up and he took half a step back. The kid with the meat cleaver shouted something incoherent. Peanut felt the weight of the hairdryer in his hand and in one flowing movement swept forward and brought it down on Sunglasses’ temple. It was a glancing blow, but enough to stun. The sunglasses clattered to the floor and their owner grunted and raised both hands in