Proportionate Response by Dave Buschi

Three guys used to work for the clandestine unit of the NSA: Marks (muscle), Johnny Two-Cakes (cyber crime) and Lip (languages, hacking). When they leave the NSA, Two-cakes heads for Costa Rica and ends up consulting for the off shore gaming business. Marks and Lip start their own contract security business and despite being a modern day version of Mutt/Jeff, Laurel/Hardy, or even Abbott/Costello, these guys can handle anything from NVGs and 50 caliber sniper rifles to virus laden thumb drives and server farms.

Johnny has disappeared. Someone is now after Two-cakes' wife and Johnny has left bread crumbs for  Marks and Lip. There's a shootout at a Starbucks, Johnny's house blows up, and some clues lead to a human trafficking ring of Russians. The boys find a liar and despite 15-2 odds, they manage to get their plan to work out and rescue a bunch of kids. A clue or two leads to who is pulling their strings - the man in the white mask whose email addresses all have the number '487' in it.

Now Lip is a serious hacker and traces emails back to China and China is where they head. And what they find out is damn frightening because it sounds so possible. The China Politburo, using China Telecom, has been promoting intellectual theft from everywhere as domestic policy. Ever wonder how they have so much money? One way is that they manipulate the various stock markets to a sell off so they can buy low, then sell high when the stock returns. The profits are used to 'invest' in other countries. One of these days, "we are going to wake up and find ourselves flat broke, buck naked, jobs gone, livelihoods stolen, and wonder what the hell happened." Dang, that's going on right now!

China does have one serious problem. They've expanded and built up so much, and they've educated millions without much possibility of a real future. What's the point of new intellectual property when it's already out there, ready to be stolen? Millions of IT grads are out there unable to get a job in IT and they are pissed. So when the 'revolution' finally does start (with a little help from Marks and Lip), it won't be led by rebels with weapons, it'll be by nerds with their laptops.

This is the 2nd Buschi novel I've read. Back Door Man was about dissing the wrong man in an attempt to crash the global financial markets. This has a broad international sweep, too and Buschi tells of numerous instances how and when the Chinese managed to route something like 80% of the internet traffic (and all that DATA) for an hour into China. His details descriptions of internet traffic, hacking protocols, servers, super computers, and more, while hardly the stuff of riveting suspense, are spot on within the development of the plot. Proportionate Response speeds right along just like Back Door Man. A really quick weekend read. Bushi really can tie suspense and action with networks, back doors, StuxNet, et al. Computing and action is a deadly combination in the skilled hands of Buschi. Let's hope this is the start of a continuing series of books following Marks and Lip.

East Coast Don

p.s. an interesting side note: one of the characters in the trafficking subplot is named Jiri Dvorak. Same name as FIFA's Chief Medical Officer whom I've worked for and with for a number of years. First time I've seen the name of someone I know applied in a book. The character met a particularly gruesome demise at the hands of Marks and Lip.