I honestly don't know if the Clash recordings are property of Epic or Sony right now. Initially published by Nineden Limited Press, back in the day.



Vladimir Plekhanov wasn't above reverse-engineering old Trojan Horses. He'd gone online with a previously pawned laptop in the Caucasus, rode with it on a train ride into Europe, and barrowed a copy of the "Backdoor Orifice" Trojan for removal on RW compact disk.

Before burning the information to disk, he'd grabbed a CMOS destroyer and various other useful kits, and added some harmless HTML source.

The procedure took very few minutes to complete online, before he shut down the connection, and let the laser etch 4,000 bits every second. He'd barely had time to close the monitor and rest a Kalashnikov vodka atop the pc before the machine ejected his disk.

Hmm, they make great guns and drinks. This is a sure benefit to the world. A cup holder beside the Russian then housed the glass. Plekhanov clapped the window hinges, elevated the glass. The train turns a mountain corner, along a ridge hundreds of feet above solid ground.

Pines and Douglas furs mark the tree line against a cluttering of drab pool of exposed serrated stones.

A below, a polecat dashes clear from a tumbling laptop. It skips like a moonwalker, hopping a few short jumps before a great leap. The railcar now coils around the mountain, no longer granting the Russian a view. It's gone.

He pads his pocket one last time, confirming the RW disk is safe.


Radio talk host: "Hello everyone, here is the list of coalition countries, in alphabetical order, as of March 21, 2003. Let's see if I can avoid denigrating them, while recalling something about them from the top of my head:

Afghanistan (a new national army)
Albania (at least they aren't a people's army any longer)
Angola (Executive Outcomes kicked their rebels for them)
Australia (these guys served as shock troops for the British. Hoorah!)
Azerbaijan (locked in a perpetual civil war with Armenia)
Bulgaria (served as a talent pool for KGB wet works)
Colombia (Los Pepes and a lot of other hard groups)
Costa Rica (whoremongers and anarchists)
Czech Republic (they make good arms, and they're the homeland of hockey's greatest goaltender)
Denmark (dorks like Hamlet)
Dominican Republic (the better half of Hispania)
El Salvador (home base of the Contra Enterprise)
Eritrea (better than Djibouti)
Estonia (Baltic state, right?)
Ethiopia (I can only remember the MRE joke)
Georgia (did anyone else see that RPG ambush on their president?)
Honduras (isn't all of Latin America the same, anyway?)
Hungary (Vlad's mortal enemy)
Iceland (Bjork)
Italy (gladiators)
Japan (Gundams!)
Kuwait (seeking revenge)
Latvia (a lot of mail-order brides come from here)
Lithuania (my favorite Portland Trailblazer was born here)
Macedonia (Alexander the Great)
Marshall Islands (island chain)
Micronesia (island chain)
Mongolia (the army of the Khans)
Netherlands (crack-heads and whoremongers, and also Paul Revere)
Nicaragua (Contras)
Palau (where on Earth is that?)
Panama (Operation Blue Spoon. Finished them in a couple days)
Philippines (Moro Moslems. Took three years to pacify them)
Poland (Is God on their side? Is the Pope Polish?)
Portugal (good exit out of Nazi Europe, I recall)
Romania (a bloody place in 1989)
Rwanda (tribal conflicts, remember? The UN said "never again," then Kofi and co. forgot)
Singapore (did the Japanese really conquer them on bicycles? They tend to give Admiral a lot of trouble of his fanfictions)
Slovakia (split from the Czech Republic)
Solomon Islands (another island chain. No, King Solomon did not have gold mines here)
South Korea (Daewoo, Chan Ho Park)
Spain (Franco was a pig, and don't forget the Inquisition)
Turkey (the Armenian Genocide)
Uganda (1976, scene of a great hostage rescue)
Ukraine (Isn't that just Russia Junior?)
United Kingdom (exported a culture and a language around the world. Staunch allies, and Phillip Sidney, my favorite poet.
United States (My nation, and Superman's, and host of my alma mater)
Uzbekistan (would been a great staging point for bounty hunters. The Aral Sea, drained by evil Soviets)

Well well well, that was my word association list. Now it's time for a word from our sponsors!"

Another radio personality: "Feel that itch? There's war in Djibouti. Better dig it out---- but don't forget to apply rich creamy Anu-Ease. Anu-Ease is a topical cream applied to the area of greatest tension. Better dab a whole tube over the Sunni Triangle!"

The Forty- the applied nickname for Sword's new APC- ran a speed test unbuttoned over salt-encrusted dunes in the low-level area once overrun by swamps and runoff water from Shat Al Arab. Several other Fortiori T-72 based infantry vehicles rubbernecked in a cowboy patrol in a dead area. A state-sponsored radio sounded some rock between Letterman style attempts at humor by excitable disc jockeys.

Nigel had turned the dial higher at hearing word of EO, his old firm, then lost interest in the broadcast. The air was cool. Moving as fast as it was, it felt great. Fraser Singe had the wheel, or rather, the yoke. Paul Evens looked out up top, manually at the helm of the Browning. Fraser and Nigel acted as the veterans on this trip, just giving a scenic tour of the open desert. The atmosphere was mellow, serene. This ride was the desert pasture scene viewed by anxious parents on FOX News or CNN, or just maybe on another service with embedded journalists, during the armored march toward Baghdad in the Spring of '03. This ride is uneventful, and planned to be so. It is a dry run, a rehearsal for later rides embedded with the Ma'dan, the people they have the best dialogue with so far.

The radio plays a familiar anthem, with the familiar piano riff. Molina tried singing along. "Now the King told the boogie men, (unintelligible . The oil down the desert way Has shaken to the top. The Sheik he drove his Cadillac He went cruisin' down the Ville The, um, something, was a standing, On the radiator grill..." He tried to drag the other into the chorus, waving. "Um, words, Rocking the casbah" Nigel begged a question. "Hey, Robin, would you kindly tell what a casbah is?" "An old section of town in a Middle East or Northern Africa."

"Oh. Carry on."

"The Shariff don't like it
Rockin' the casbah
Rockin' the casbah."

Molina jabbed at whatever came within hitting range, aping the electric camel drums.

He whistled with the fighter planes. Down the casbah way.

Fundamentally, the crew loved it. You know they could dig it.

You know they loved taking five,

Listening to that crazy casbah jive.


Over the frigid moonlight of an Arabian desert, moist air condensed into thick droplets of water on a massive plastic sheet lain out by a band of battlefield contractors.

The dew converged to the center of the wide sheet, where a large bucket rests to collect the harvest. The reservoir quenching occurred before the attentive eyes of a tribe of displaced and disserved Marsh Arabs.

Peter Nimec and Thomas Ricci of Roger Gordian's Sword arm of UpLink overlooked the perimeter while Robin Molina and Paul Evens listened to their new Arab friends beside the water. The Arab elders freely expressed their applause over the westerners' clever techniques. Molina accepted their kindness, but amended that the idea came from African Bushmen, except they used eggshells.

"Follow me, and I'll show you something else," he invited. They grumbled over having to walk across desert, but obediently followed, expecting another pleasant surprise.

They got a tied plastic bag.

The Special Forces radioman snapped open his folding Kbar, sliced the bag clean. Careful not to reach in, he emptied the contents; a wire bird trap with a live occupant.

"I put a small sliver of lamb meat in here earlier, and waited for a carrion to fly after it," he explained, regarding the fowl.

"Would you accept this bird as a gift?" He addressed the Sheik.

"Of course, many thanks, American."

Molina cautiously grasped the handle, trudging the bird over. The avian panic didn't falter throughout this time.

"Here you go. It should go well cooked extra crispy."

Sunrise broke their first camping trip. The other Sword operatives came out and exchanged simple parting pleasantries with the indigenous Arabs.

Evens handed a Glock Type 26 to Singe, and whipped out his kukri, just to nonverbally remind him of their trade. He made a few stylish slashing moves at eyelevel, then re-sheathed the bladed weapon.

All-in-all, they rated this a great cultural exchange.


Several of the men carried homemade zip guns fashioned after the classical car antenna design, with .22 long pistol bullets nestled smugly inside the soft metal tubes.

A spring plunger struck a nail to the bullet's primer to fire.

Plenkanov willed it that the unskilled "punks" of the operation, displaced Palestinians from Jordan, carry these dangerous and inaccurate amateur guns in the operation.

These thin weapons most fortunately vanished from sight when hidden on the inside of the belts worn by the Palestinians. Rubber bands fastened them in place.

These young men had walked their operation routes regularly to school and prayer regularly in the passing days and weeks, in distant eyesight of the target, a cinder-block police station, with matching walls and a guard shack. In light of the recent violence, a stack of sandbags affix the side facing traffic, and razor wire sprouts to the sky.

Two young officers, dressed in white headdresses and smoking from a hookah (water pipe), sat under an FN MAG heavy machinegun.

These officers become alerted by the street gang, even though they've seen them several times in the passing weeks. It is a fact of life that Saudi police officers now fear their own population.

To the officers, several older boys are playing a cruel game of keep-away with a smaller child's pen, or so it seems. An important westerner ventures out from a buddy's Lexus, and talks on a cell on his short walk to the station. The kids are converging on him. This could potentially flare into an international incident if the peacemakers don't pacify things.

One cop moves in, making a show of handling his baton. One big kid is making a face and gesturing to the shiny pen upraised in his left hand.

He holds it at eyelevel. All the kids have pens now.

"Help! Please help, I'm bleeding!"

The officers inside hear gunshots, and the shocked ravings of a westerner crying in English. Blood searing from multiple entry wounds stains his cotton shirt, and onto the downed officer he drags in from the shoulders. A second officer, also hit, rocks his MAG into operation. He gives descriptions of the perps over the radio, and advises that they're retreating.

The westerner lets trained professionals look over the downed man, and declines immediate attention for himself. He seems confused at how to dial his cell phone. Perhaps he's using an emailing function.

NO!

The four round Yugoslavian cell phone gun and the familiar key chain weapon sufficiently served Ruzhyo one last time. He didn't muse over how grizzly or barbaric or even how professional the hit will look around the world.

The ballistics of the .32 Bulgarian gun will match the bullet retrieved from the compound hit before. Profilers will naturally run circles over this being some sort of professional's 'calling card,' and they'll indeed be right that both hits involved the same professional. He gave a transient thought to weather or not they'll link the .22 soft-jacketed cell gun rounds to the same killer, or decided two shooters entered the station together.

No matter. In the end, six Saudi cops lay dead with small-caliber holes in their heads.

Ruzhyo vacated the station with a folded four-inch long chrome Stinger pen gun fixed in one hand. This firearm he'd hidden deeper on his person, as part of his exit strategy.

A rimfire cap embedded itself in the MAG operator's skull.

Mission complete.

Wgswa(config)#interface e0/4

Wgswa(config-if)#port secure max – mac- count 112

Before leaving, Ruzhyo completed the task Plenkanov had instructed him to do, adding a bot to the police network. This he accomplished by jabbing a USB memory device onto a terminal.

"#port secure max – mac- count" means how many ports are secure on the police network. The number previously allowed on was 112, as shown above, but the bot managed to increase the number to 113. Because the same amount of digits are coded, and because security administrators don't usually look through this stuff, the change probably won't show up in any intelligence dossiers any time soon. This is a vital part of yet another surgical hack.

Ethernet 0/113Enabled

Wgswa(config)no-address-violation ignore

Confirm?

OK