Chapter eight
They decided it was still too dangerous to go back to their original safe-house or Ethan's flat, in case there was still someone watching the street, so Brandt pulled another IMF apartment from his memory and they headed there. The manifest was set in underneath the doorbell and opened readily, but when Brandt offered it his palm print, it refused to open the door. He tried a second time with the same result. "We're locked out of the system," he stated with a frown.
Ethan wordlessly took the knife Benji had carried along, broke open the side cover and shorted the wires. The door-lock clicked and he stepped inside.
Brandt headed straight for the kitchenette to check out the coffee machine while Luther searched the cupboards for medical supplies. Ethan went to help him but was quickly convinced that the other agent was fine on his own. In fact, the split lip had stopped bleeding and now in proper light, the bruising and swelling didn't look as bad as it had earlier.
"I'm sorry I dragged you all into this mess," Ethan said when they were all gathered around the table and Brandt distributed cups of fresh coffee.
"Well, we made it out alive," Benji replied and tried a smile but the previous hours were still hanging over all of them like a dark shadow.
"We're still locked out of the system," Brandt pointed out, turning his mug over in his hands.
"So what?" Luther asked. He was cleaning up the cut on Benji's right hand that turned out not as deep as it had looked and wouldn't even need stitches. "I'm sure you got Hunley on speed dial."
"Right," Brandt muttered and fished his phone out of his pocket, but Ethan caught his hand in mid-air.
"Wait," he said with a look of sudden revelation. "I'm officially disavowed, but you aren't. You shouldn't be locked out of the system."
"Probably de la Vega called it in," Luther suggested. He had finished the bandage on Benji's right hand and was taking a closer look at the left one. The middle, ring and pinky finger were broken in several places.
"Yeah, and the sooner I call Hunley the sooner all of this is cleared up and we can go home," Brandt decided.
"Wait," Ethan said again, louder this time. "De la Vega said she wanted to make us pay. Me and the IMF. What if she had a contingency plan? What if there is another agent involved in this?"
Benji's eyes suddenly went wide and he inhaled sharply. "They got the virus!"
"I thought we had preemptive measures installed into the IMF mainframe specifically against Black Rabbit after the disaster in February?" Brandt asked, not comprehending.
"We have," Luther replied. "And they're working."
"Yeah, but if they have someone who knows how to manipulate access rights without throwing up any red flags that person would also know that if you upload it onto one of the servers just before an update it would get right past the firewall," Benji explained rapidly. "Anything the virus does would just look like standard operations and it works too fast to catch it by hand. It would corrupt the whole IMF network."
"Shit," Luther muttered, playing the scenario through in his head, while he set Benji's broken fingers in a cast. "He's right. We'd have to stop them before the server resets after the update, even if the update is interrupted, the virus would probably only need a millisecond to spread."
"Then let me call Hunley and he'll stop the next server update," Brandt suggested halfheartedly.
"But we don't know who de la Vega's inside man is," Ethan reminded him. "If Hunley stops the server update, he'll at least suspect someone's onto him and then he can figure out another way."
"And we can't just put off all server updates forever," Benji agreed glumly.
Brandt sighed. He suspected Ethan already had a plan, and he also suspected he wouldn't like it. "So what are we going to do?"
Hunt was staring ahead of himself thoughtfully, looking through the table rather than at it. "How are those updates scheduled?"
"They are rotated through the major updates every two weeks," Luther explained. "So there's only one server down at any time."
"Actually I think there's one server scheduled to go back online tomorrow," Benji put in. "Faro, Portugal. If I'm not mistaken."
Ethan looked up. "Are you sure?"
Benji nodded, but before he could say anything he was interrupted.
"Wait, is your plan to break into an IMF server facility?" Brandt asked. "Because that's insane."
"I hate to tell you, but he's right," Luther agreed.
"No, we can do it," Ethan insisted. "We've got everything we need." He got up and walked over to a wall that turned into a hidden closet once he pressed a concealed button. Piece by piece he retrieved gear from the closet and stacked it onto the table, including several laptop computers and a portable mask machine. "We're going to impersonate someone with access to the facility."
"Like who?" Luther asked.
"De la Vega," Ethan stated, sorting through more hidden closets.
Brandt waited a moment for more details, but when Hunt wasn't more forthcoming he asked: "And who would be impersonating her?"
"We'll figure it out," Ethan replied.
"We don't have any women here," Benji pointed out.
"We'll figure it out," Ethan repeated.
"And have you thought about how you want to do that?" Luther asked. "This is an IMF facility with top-notch security. Even if we go back to that garage and drag out her body to scan her for a mask, we don't know her code and you can't beat a retina scan."
Ethan ignored him. "Benji, if we take someone's retina scan and hers and overlay them onto a set of contacts...?"
"Well, we're gonna have to be really careful with the alignment, but I think I can make it work," Dunn said and walked around the table to the computers. "And for the voice phrase, we can just use the original recording."
"Wait, for that you'd need access to her file. On the server," Brandt pointed out and watched while Ethan and Benji exchanged a conspiratorial glance. He looked at them sternly. "We don't have access to the server."
Dunn bit his lip. "Actually..." he started but then broke off.
"What did you do?" Luther asked.
"It was my idea," Ethan put in soothingly, but the other agent didn't care.
"That doesn't make it any better."
Benji took a deep breath, then started to explain: "After Ghost Protocol I built a back door to the IMF server net, so if we got another shut-down we wouldn't be left hanging completely, and then the CIA took over and they didn't shut the network down, and I had a bit too much free time, so I kept working on it. It's how Ethan and I stayed in contact back then and how he got his intel," he said in a rapid verbal waterfall. "Anyway, the idea is to have a mirror of the complete server network, like a backup. We're not quite there yet, but I should be able to get into de la Vegas file unnoticed and get us everything we need."
Luther still looked at him crossly. "You know what kind of security risk it is to have an open back door into the IMF server mainframe?"
"It's not open," Benji defended him. "It's pretty secure actually. You tested it."
"Wait, you said that was just an experiment," Luther stated. "A closed network."
Before Benji could answer, Brandt interrupted him: "Who knows about this?"
"Me, Ethan," Benji said. "And you now."
Brandt sighed, clearly not happy with the situation, but willing to accept it. "Alright," he said. "And you're sure you can do this?"
"Well, I'm gonna need someone to help me type," Benji pointed out and looked at Luther. The older techie sighed and joined him at the computer.
Ethan smiled and looked at Brandt. "We're going to need a plane."
Without a word the analyst raised his phone and pressed dial.