Tatsu - The Threat

Chapter 26 - The Magnate

The Knoxville, Tennessee incident was erased as it never existed. HEG's circle of influence included powerful people in the media and the Bureau. Laura could not believe her partner died for nothing and Pateno would not dare say anything related to Knoxville. Years of his life invested in exposing HEG were nothing but a cup of melted ice cream.

The .com bubble burst came that year as predicted and by 2001, Brian was already a major partner in over 30 top residential construction companies. His phased approach into legitimate rotten business was making it happen. His darkness was spreading out of the underworld as Brian became more powerful flourishing into a threat to America and the world.

2001 was not a good year for the world. The darkness was lurking and it wasn't just Brian. There are many like him hiding behind power and ambition. On the morning of September 11th, Brian was watching the news just like the rest of the nation, in shock. Brian knew dark secrets behind the attack. Secrets that make the soul sick.

Soon after, The War On Terror was similar to The War on Drugs. In the end the governments of nations work together with criminals when they're supposed to work against each other. The foulest scum in humanity is harvested at the highest levels of power. And the irony of all this pain is that manipulation, extortion, fear mongering and war is all justified by a distorted sense of what is good for the world. There's always a good guy and a bad guy, but the people of the world never really come to know who's who. The insight of the rich and powerful, the truth they hold, enables them to strengthen their empires as they wish. In Brian's case, 9/11 inspired him to crush the world's banking systems and create a global chaos, all because of greed. Why continue to cheat criminals out of their money, when Brian could get tenfold on his profit by doing the same to good citizens?

Brian's was adamant about technological advancement within HEG. He had the idea that applying technology and diversity in every process would allow his teams to work efficiently. HEG's mission statement became one of Brian's favorite lines "Success through efficiency. Efficiency through equality. Equality through diversity".

A young woman from Kenya named Lulu became one his most trusted gurus for black ops shortly after the FBI apprehended her for running the largest botnet in history with over 500,000 infected computers. In 2003, she was exonerated of all charges as authorities could not trace the botnet virus to any IP address that could be linked to her in any way. Brian and his team had something to do with that, of course. Lulu became a key player in his black ops information technology team.

He also hired a short, chubby indigenous woman from Guatemala, Juanita. This tiny woman became HEG's secret weapon for stealing intelligence from federal agencies and HEG's competitors. With an IQ of 230, nerves of steel and a photographic memory, there was no mission she could not handle. Her first assigned task was to assist with breaching the Federal Reserve data network. Brian's team was so capable that they had meddled in the Fed network undetected for years, but the latest security protocols deployed additional security layers, which broke their connection. They had to find a way to re-establish their connection. For months HEGs hackers performed vulnerability scanning on the new Fed network and observed that subnet 105 was overlooked in the new security vulnerability remediation efforts. A costly mistake. Though it would not be easy to connect to that subnet because they didn't have the credentials. Brian's team needed to get creative to regain their access. The solution was Juanita.

Juanita was given a list of contractors who possibly had direct access into the 105 subnet, so she searched the GSA schedule database thoroughly to find more details about each contractor. Per government standards, the Fed had to grant contract opportunities to small and medium businesses. The smaller, the more vulnerable. After days of intensive research, she found the perfect small company, a jump system to tap into the Fed's network again. BAKA Financial Consultants had direct VPN access into an external facing low security server in subnet 105. Tapping into this server would allow HEG's experts to make lateral movements that would position them to penetrate the new security layers and regain their access the The Fed's databases.