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“For what? Aren’t those attention-deficit things? I don’t...”
“We had seventy-two hours to nail Ordinary People. Seventeen of them are gone. We may need to stay awake for a long time and Adderall and Ritalin are basically speed,” Letty said. “We may also need a few pills for demonstration purposes. You know, to show them how far-out we are. Not only hacker-criminals, we’re drug abusers.”
“You’ll have it in an hour,” Nowak said.
When they rang off, Baxter said, “The NSA: America’s crime family.”
A long, encrypted textcame into Baxter’s laptop twenty-five minutes later, accompanied by a short text with the address of a Walgreens pharmacy in Pasadena. While Letty got cleaned up and dressed, Baxter sat in a chair, in his underpants and tee-shirt, paging through the NSA file.
When she emerged from the bathroom, he turned his head and said, “Got it. I’m not sure it’s quite right, but I’m sure we can get into Encino Power for a look-around. Got a good map of their transmission system... They sent me a map of the actual physical locations of the SlapBack server farm and the attached substation. I need to work through the controls, see what can be done, set up an attack.”
Letty was brushing out her hair: “When can we call Able?”
“I’ll need a couple hours to make the information mine... I have to actually go online and work it, step by step. If I don’t, Able will see through it. He’s not stupid.”
“How about if you do that and I go get us something to eat?”
“Go,” Baxter said, his eyes still fixed on the laptop screen.
Letty drove the truck out to the Pasadena Whole Foods and bought premade sandwiches, a ciabatta loaf, oranges, bananas, and four lemon–poppy seed muffins. When she got back to the motel, Baxter was sitting in the same place, still in underpants and tee-shirt, fixated on the computer screen.
He took a muffin without looking away from the screen and said, “Go walk around. Or gas up the truck or something.”
“How long will you be?”
“Another hour, maybe.”
Letty got gas,cruised the Caltech neighborhood, took a quick look at Harp’s house—nothing moving there—drove a lap aroundthe Rose Bowl, then stopped at a Walgreens, where an amber tube of Adderall was waiting.
When she got back to the motel, Baxter was in the shower. Half of the ciabatta loaf had been eaten, and three of the four muffins. She knocked on the bathroom door and shouted at him, to make sure he knew she’d returned.
When Baxter emerged from the bathroom, he was fully clothed but still with a distracted look in his eyes; his hair was standing up in wet spikes. He glanced at her and mumbled something under his breath, and then, “Why don’t you call Able? Tell him I got it.”
He told her what to say and she made the call as he was combing gel through his hair, plastering it to his skull. Able said, “Already? That was fast.”
“Paul says it was simple enough once you got through the outer security shell,” Letty said. “He wants to show you.”
“Give me an hour to get a couple more guys here... and bring your drums. One of the guys plays bass and if your boy’s stuff is right, we’ll need to bring in some more guys to look at it. We could jam while we wait.”
“I could do that,” Letty said.
“They’re testing us,” Baxter said when she’d hung up. “Hope you got your groove on.”
On the way backto West Hollywood, Baxter seemed to come out of his fugue. He ate a banana on the way and said into the silence, “Unless the guys back at the Fort are fuckin’ with me, we could shut down SlapBack like we’re slamming a door. The question is, should we do it? Or try to fake it? Or maybe suggest that somebody check our work and try to delay an attack until we accumulate more names?”
“We’ll figure that out later,” Letty said. “For now, we’ve got to focus on collecting names.”
“Probably aren’t going to show us their drivers’ licenses,” Baxter said.
“Gotta try to get some photos of them,” Letty said. “If we’re close enough, my phone camera should work, except the light in Able’s place isn’t good enough. Gotta see if we can figure something out.”
“Get them outside,” Baxter said.
There were two menwith Able. He introduced one as Jan, the other as Carl, no last names. Jan was of middle height, maybe an inch short of six feet, and thin like a runner. Carl was shorter, fleshier, pink, blond, lazy-eyed.
Able asked, “Bring your drums?”
“In the back of the truck,” Letty said.
