[Steven Lyle Jordan]

13: DOS Revenge

Finally, a minute to four rolled around. I made a show of floating my finger about in the air, before bringing it down on the “enter” key. Only Pete seemed to appreciate the theatrics. Gail looked at me and said, “I hope this works.” Fritz looked at me and bit his lower lip. I just smiled, and inwardly, hoped nothing would go wrong.

Of course, it was possible that their IT guy was as good as me, and may have figured out everything I was planning. He could be carpet-bombing the real site already, and truth to tell, I was a bit nervous about opening up a command prompt and checking it out. Finally, a minute after four, I opened the command prompt window and did a ping on the bogus site. As I suspected, I was getting no response from it. So I opened up the ISP control panel… or rather, I tried to. The ISP was not responding.

“They’ve started their DOS attack on the bogus site,” I announced. “So far, so good.”

“What about the other one?” Fritz asked.

“Let’s find out,” I said, trying to sound confident. I started by pinging the real site, and got a response right away. Then I went to the site’s ISP, accessed the control panel, and got right in. I started checking the site traffic, and after a moment, I grinned. “Well, for a sci-fi e-book, it seems like it’s selling pretty quickly,” I said. “Take a look.”

Everyone crowded around, and as they watched, the site registered a constantly-growing volume of purchases… in the first two minutes, it had already registered over a hundred purchases and climbing. Gail gave out a whoop of joy and hugged Fritz in congratulations, then hugged me from behind my back, while Pete pumped a fist in the air and shouted, “Look at it go, boy!”

“You did it! It worked!” Fritz looked like he was ready to hug me too, and he finally settled for pounding me on the back in glee. Then he went sober for a moment, and said, “And what about the sharks? What’s keeping them from catching on?”

“Well,” I said, handing Pete’s binoculars to him, “do you think you can find your neighborhood from here?”

Fritz took the binoculars and examined them, then me. “Uh, I think so…”

“Give it a try,” I urged. When he went to the window and scanned the horizon, trying to figure out the approximate direction of his house, I said, “I’ll give you a hint: Look for low-flying helicopters.”

“Low fly—?” he started, just before we all saw him stop, focus on something out there, and begin to work the specs to get a better look. “Hey, I do see helicopters! What’s going on out there?”

“Panic. The result of going to the first website, without visiting the second one,” I explained. “In exchange, I gave them something else to worry about. The script on the bogus site was set to create a zipped file of everything in its files, and e-mail that to the local branch of the FBI, along with any info as to the owner’s identity and contact info that was stored on the computer. Then it would display a pop-up, telling the owner exactly what it had done. Most people store everything on their PCs, with minimal security, or maybe a good password… but those can usually be bypassed. All it would take would be a good child-porn picture or two to send at least a car-ful of feds out there after them. Judging by the helicopters…”

I trailed off, in order to let Fritz, whose eyes were still glued to the binoculars, exclaim, “I count five of them!”

“I’d say they had a bit more than child-porn pics on their computer,” I finished. “So, they’re too busy trying to climb over fences and under cars, evading those guys, than trying to find your real site. You should have no problem selling your book without interference.”

I smiled to myself. I had put all of my eggs into the basket labeled “panic.” Fortunately, when it came to people operating against the law and trying to lay low, panic was usually a very effective tool… outside of television, most people weren’t sharp enough to keep their wits in an emergency that might involve entities like the FBI. When they bark… most people run, without bothering to look behind them.

At that moment, two hands reached out and turned my head around. Gail was at the other end of those hands, and she smiled at me. “You are brilliant,” she said, and kissed me in such a way as to make me believe it. Or at least, to make me believe she believed it.

She stopped kissing me, and immediately afterward, her lips still sweet on my tongue, something cold and hard clunked against the back of my head. I turned the other way, to see Pete hovering over me, a strange light in his eye, and a cold one in his hand. “Have a beer, bro.”

Being grateful that he hadn’t just given me a concussion, I took it.