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of beers, which cost $4 a pint at the tavern.)
Most of the FBI agents at the bar dressed the same, wearing oversize dark suits and white buttondown
shirts, and could have easily passed for bankers or lawyers. That was not true of Chris Tarbell,
who looked like a cop from ten city blocks away with his short buzz cut, young face that didn’t seem
to fit his stocky 250-pound body, and swagger that exuded confidence.
As they settled in for a night of revelry, it was Tarbell who was the star of the show. After all, he
was the one responsible for recently taking down an infamous hacker group, called LulzSec, that the
media and security experts had asserted could never be stopped. What made LulzSec so special was
that, unlike hackers of the past who would break into an institution for financial gain, this nefarious
crew had spent the past year ransacking the Internet for the “lulz,” a neologism that essentially meant
“a good laugh.” Part of their comedic hacking had included knocking the CIA Web site off-line,
breaking into Sony Pictures servers, and defacing the Web sites of the British newspapers the Times
and the Sun by posting a fake news story that Rupert Murdoch had died. All just for fun.
But after months of undercover work, Chris Tarbell and his FBI team had systematically arrested
the people behind LulzSec all across the world—in Chicago, Ireland, and New York City. Which is
why the gang was celebrating at the Whiskey Tavern.
In the back of the bar, Meg reappeared with a dirty black tray crowded with twenty shot glasses,
half of them filled with cheap whiskey, the other half with green pickle juice. She dropped the
concoction, known as the Pickle Back, a bar specialty, on the table.
“Whose turn is it to drink the tray?” Tarbell bellowed to the group of men around him, all of
whom responded with another wince.
Years earlier Tarbell had invented this ritual—known as the “drinking of the tray”—wherein
someone was expected to drink the slushy potion of pickle juice, whiskey, and any other liquid that
had been sloshing on the tray before the drinks were served. If no one else had the guts to do it,
Tarbell was always up for the sickening challenge.
At thirty-one years old, Tarbell had already made a big name for himself as one of the top
cybercrime agents in the FBI, if not the world. Sure, he’d landed the LulzSec case by chance when a
tip came in through a hotline and Tarbell was the lucky one to pick up the phone. But it was what he
did with that information that separated him from the other agents—turning the top hacker of LulzSec,
a man who was known as Sabu, and then using him to bring down the entire organization. Because of
Tarbell’s ability to find people online, the media would soon bestow on him the nickname “the Eliot
Ness of cyberspace,” after the renowned American Prohibition agent.
It was no accident that Tarbell had ended up where he was, rising through the ranks of the FBI.
He had planned it this way, just as he planned everything. Tarbell had worked hard to earn his
master’s degree in computer science, then became a cop. After more than a decade of eighteen-hour
days, he had made his way up through the FBI to become a special agent. And he didn’t stop there.
When he wasn’t with his wife and kids, he continued to study computer forensics for any technology
platform imaginable.
He endured this because, more than anything, he desired to be the absolute best at anything he put
his mind to. If his gym buddy was able to bench-press 400 pounds, Tarbell would spend months of his
life lifting weights until he could bench-press 450 pounds (which he could actually do).
Over time he learned that the way to have a leg up on everyone else was to anticipate something
before it happened and then have the answer to it. He prepped for everything. The night before he