IT Expert on "wp-admin locked down through htaccess, but still getting TONS of login attempts"

Please post a few lines of your Apache logs.

No, don't copy this htaccess to wp-admin folder. Those rules from the root htaccess should affect all files and folders.

Try this:

Options -Indexes
ServerSignature Off
Options +FollowSymlinks

# Protect BEGIN

<Files .htaccess,.svn>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

<Files ~ "^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])">
    order allow,deny
    deny from all
    satisfy all
</Files>

# protect wp-config.php START
<files wp-config.php>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</files>
# protect wp-config.php END

# Bad bots
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl.*
RewriteRule .* – [F,L]
# Bad bots

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .(wp-comments-post|wp-login|wp-admin)\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*thelinuxterminal.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

# Protect END

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress