Free Shadow Maker by James R. Hannibal Page A

here.” He bent down to pull the servers away from the wall. “You can hack into the servers at the hotel while we search for Grendel.”
    â€œWait!” said Scott, rushing toward him with an outstretched hand.
    Drake abruptly stepped back, surprised by the command carried in the engineer’s voice. “What?”
    â€œThe servers will be booby-trapped.”
    â€œYou mean a bomb?”
    Scott frowned at him. “No, you Neanderthal, I mean a delete program. It’s common practice in the hacker underground. Almost any computer can be hacked if you can get it to the right people, so you have to rig your servers to wipe clean if they’re moved.”
    Nick eyed the laptop. “Can you hack the system here?”
    â€œYes, but it’s likely that Grendel included additional security measures. If I work too quickly, I could miss a digital trip wire that has the same effect.”
    â€œThen get to work. The clock’s ticking.”
    Scott picked up his black bag and tentatively approached the desk. A foot away from the chair, he froze.
    â€œWhat is it?” asked Drake. “Is the desk booby-trapped too?”
    â€œNo. It’s filthy. How can any hacker work in an environment like this?” Scott pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dusted the laptop keys and the chair cushion. When he finished, he considered the handkerchief for a moment and then flung it at the wastebasket next to the desk. It flopped across the top, knocking a crumpled paper onto the floor where several others were already gathered.
    Nick picked up the paper and unraveled it. The fading print listed the address of a nightclub and a hefty bar tab. He set it on the desk and picked up several more. All of them were receipts from the same club, all paid in cash. “We have a hangout,” he said.
    â€œAnd we have a picture,” said Drake. He nodded at the laptop that Scott had brought to life. The screen saver showed a young man in his early twenties, reclining on a leather bench with three women in micro-miniskirts. His hand was raised to the camera in some gesture that Nick did not recognize and his tongue was hanging out. The women looked bored.
    â€œIt looks like our hacker has a taste for the nightlife,” said Nick. “I’ll take Quinn and stake out the bar.” He turned to Drake. “Watch the door. Grendel might come here at any time. If he does, bag him and call me on SATCOM. Whatever happens, be out of here in five hours.”

CHAPTER 13
    A well-executed snatch-and-grab required weeks of planning. A CAT, a covert abduction team, might burn a hundred or more man-hours documenting a subject’s routine—learning his habits and clearing away the chaff of random daily occurrence to isolate predictable behaviors. Nick didn’t have a team. He had Quinn, and he had the time span of a drive across Budapest to plan the abduction, using nothing but a smartphone and a bar receipt.
    In ad hoc situations like this one, common sense dictated that the team at least take the subject at a point with no potential witnesses and with easy access for the abduction vehicle. The satellite imagery on Nick’s smartphone showed that the Black Dog—Grendel’s favorite nightclub—offered neither.
    â€œMaybe we could wait for Grendel to come out and then follow him,” said Quinn, eyeing the steroid-pumped bouncer outside the bar as he and Nick approached on foot. The Black Dog was a basement bar, with its primary entrance in a stairwell on an otherwise dark and narrow cobblestone street. In addition to the bouncer, there were three large men hanging out at the edge of the alley, chatting up a couple of bleach blondes in tight jeans.
    â€œWe can’t afford the time,” replied Nick. “We don’t even know if he’s in there. You want to stand out here all night?”
    â€œWhat if the bouncer pats us down?”
    â€œHe won’t.”
    As