by Marc Cameron
Chavez had thought his father-in-law might snap out of his funk at some point during the twenty-six-hour trip to Manado. But if anything, Clark had turned more introspective with each passing minute.
Chavez tapped the plastic lid on his cup with a forefinger to get the man’s attention. “What’s bothering you?”
Clark glanced up, moving only his eyes, startled from a deep thought.
“You mean besides e-sports?”
“Come on, John,” Chavez said. “You want to talk about it?”
Clark gave a contemplative nod. “I’ve thought it over, and . . . no, I do not want to talk about it. But I will anyway, since it’s you doing the asking.” He exhaled sharply through his mouth. “A SEAL buddy of mine passed away. That’s all.”
Chavez grimaced. “Man, I’m sorry to hear that. KIA?”
“No,” Clark said, gazing into the distance, still stunned by the news. “I should have said former SEAL. He was a year younger than I am. He just . . . died. Natural causes, they’re calling it.”
“Damn,” Chavez said, not knowing what else to say. Sometimes, keeping your piehole shut was the better part of valor. His phone began to vibrate on the table, rescuing him from the conversation he’d started. It was Jack Junior.
“What’s up?”
“We checked out Suparman Games,” Ryan said. “This location downtown is just a storefront. There are some publicity offices in back along with a small storage room for the games they stock, but no corporate offices. Sounds like Suparman, his VPs, and software development folks are located south of the city. I’m betting he’d keep the software locked up out there. Adara and Midas are going to drive that way and scope it out. But get this, the door to the back offices at this location has a scramble pad. Adara was able to get close enough to get the brand and type. She struck up a conversation with the armed guard, too. He’s here during the day, but he mostly looks for shoplifters. She commented about how safe it was and the guy told her that was nothing. According to him, Suparman really likes his security tech. The other place supposedly has retina-scan locks.”
“And an armed guard?” Chavez said, rubbing his face, thinking about getting a warm-up for his coffee.
“Two armed guards,” Jack said. “The guy here says they’re Malukans. Supposed to be an island known around here for knee-breaker types. The guards are on duty at that location twenty-four/seven, at least according to this guy with the instacrush on Adara.”
“Okay,” Chavez mused. “Tighter security makes me think you’re right. We’ll try the main office first, then the storefront. Tell Midas and Adara to make the recon quick. You and Dom go to your rooms and recheck your gear. This one is time-sensitive and we wasted a day getting here. Your keys are waiting for you at the front desk under the name on your passport. Stop by my room to grab your gear.”
Ryan’s full beard helped conceal his identity, but his name was far too recognizable, especially since his father was all over the news in Indonesia at the moment. Fortunately, The Campus had friends at State who could help them out with different passports. It was standard practice in the intelligence and clandestine world to use actual given names on any alias. Jack, however, was too obvious. When he traveled, Jack Ryan, Jr., became Joseph “Joe” Peterson of Alexandria, Virginia.
“Copy that,” Ryan said. “I’ll pass the word to Adara and Midas to hurry.”
Chavez ended the call, and then, struck with a sudden idea, turned to Clark. “Let’s head over to the hotel. I want to give Gavin a shout, and I need you on the line.”
“Lead on, McDuff,” Clark said, heaving a glum sigh.
“We’re all gonna die, John,” Chavez said. “When is the mystery.”
“Don’t I know it,” Clark said. “I just expected the how would be more interesting.”
32
Chavez punched in Gavin Biery’s number as soon as they got to his room. He put the phone on speaker and set it on the lacquer coffee table between him and Clark.
“Hey, bud,” Chavez said when the IT director picked up. “What can you tell me about retina-scan locks?”
“Are you sure the tech is retina and not iris scan?” Biery asked.
“No.” Chavez raised his eyebrows at Clark. “They’re not the same?” He caught himself. “I mean, I know the anatomical differences in parts of an eyeball. I’m asking about the security mechanisms.”
“I get it,” Biery said. “They’re kind of the same, in that both compare unique images from the user’s eye. An iris scan is just a program that matches similarities from digital photographs of the colored portion of your eye. We all have unique patterns, so the iris is a good spot for identifying characteristics. It’s simple and relatively cheap. Lots of things like passport control and even cell phones are using the tech now because it doesn’t require much besides a camera. A retina scan is a little more complicated. In a nutshell, it’s a deep scan of the pattern of blood vessels on the back wall of your eye. The scanners they use have got to be a little more sophisticated because they’re looking through your pupil inside your eye. And you have to get really close to the device to unlock it.”
“How difficult are they to defeat?”
“Hmmm,” Biery said, mulling it over. “I’m not sure. The iris scan uses a series of digital photos so, in theory, if you had enough quality images of someone’s eye, you could duplicate the key—especially with three-D cameras we have now. The retina scan might be a little tougher. Unless you were able to just get the guy’s eyeball.”
“He might object to the procedure,” Chavez said.
“Yeah.” Biery chuckled. “Have you seen the scanner and lock? I could tell you more if you got me a photo of the tech.”
Chavez looked at Clark and shrugged. “We have not. We’re not a hundred percent sure which it is, but we think our target is running a retina scan.”
“Hmmm,” Biery said again. “Hang on a minute.” Biery’s keyboard clicked rapidly on the other end of the line. “We’re talking about Suparman Games, right?”
“We are,” Chavez said.
“Good.” More keyboard clicks followed, then silence as Gavin read whatever file he’d hacked into. “So I’m assuming you need to get past this unknown lock to break into Suparman’s safe.”
“That would be a correct assumption,” Chavez said. Gavin liked it when you talked to him like he was a character on Star Trek.
“Awesome. Remember how in his social media photos Suparman always wears those thick Elton John glasses?”
Ding leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, and nodded at the phone on the table.
“I do.”
“Well, I think I just found your key. Suparman’s financials say his optometrist works at Lucky Optical, to the northeast, about twenty minutes out of the city center.”
“Out near the airport,” Clark noted.
“Right,” Biery said. “That’s the one. And here’s the good news. Lucky Optical advertises a machine called an optomap. It’s pretty cool tech; my optometrist has one. It’s a scanning confocal laser that takes a two-hundred-degree-wide field view of the retina. That means high-resolution images of the optic nerve and all the blood vessels at the back of the eye—the same stuff a retina-scan lock is going to be looking for. With vision as bad as Suparman’s, he’s sure to have a substantial patient record on file, including digital images from the optomap.”
Clark scooted his chair closer, interested now. “And we can use the digital files of the images as a key?”
“You could,” Biery said. “In theory.”
Chavez gave a thumbs-up. “That’s terrific news.”
“It’s sort-of-terrific news,” Biery said. “I’m through the optometrist’s office firewall, but all I can find is billing information.”
“No files from the machine?” Clark asked.
“Sorry,” B
iery said. “No luck on that count. Most places store the files in a server that uploads to the Cloud, but Suparman’s doc must store them on a stand-alone drive. Wherever it is, it’s not on his networked computers. If you want to break into Suparman’s safe, first you will have to break into his eye doc’s office. I’ll pull up some specs on the optomap machine and walk you through what you’ll need to do to get the images. They’re pretty cool,” he said as an aside. “I have it done every year. Anyway, you should be able to put the files on a thumb drive—or e-mail them to me, then I can put them on a drive for you.”
Chavez leaned back abruptly. For a minute there, it had all seemed so easy. Too easy. “Won’t that opto machine be password-protected?”
“Maybe,” Biery said. “Maybe not. I mean, who goes around stealing photos of people’s eyeballs?”
Ding groaned. “Apparently, we do.”
* * *
—
The two F-15 Eagles out of Kadena are sitting on the tarmac in the Philippines,” Chavez told the team. They’d all linked up in his room at the Whiz Prime Hotel for specific assignments after the recon of the Suparman main offices. “I’ll make the call as soon as it looks like we have Calliope in hand. The birds can be here in less than an hour and then jet back to the good old US of A a hell of a lot faster than we could.”
The F-15 Eagle had listed top speed of more than 1,800 miles per hour, so, “a hell of a lot faster” was a bit of an understatement.
“I wouldn’t mind doing a little diving after that,” Adara said, covering a yawn with her closed fist. “I mean, have you looked at the water around here?”
“Once they’re wheels up and we check in,” Chavez said. “A little R-and-R is well deserved.”
He opened his tablet to display a set of blueprints Gavin had found for Suparman Games’ head offices. The date stamp on the scanned document was smudged, and though they’d been uploaded two years prior, it was impossible to say whether the plans were original or contained any modifications made after construction began. Online plans were notorious for leaving out walls and showing closets where there was actually a bathroom. Still, they used what they had for a tabletop review of the facility. They munched on energy bars rather than eating a big meal that would slow them down, and took a few moments to rehydrate. All of them had sweated through two sets of clothes from the heat alone. The tension of the mission only made it worse.
Midas sat at the desk in the corner, hunched over one of the Raspberry Pi computer boards, soldering wires, referencing some crib notes he’d taken down from Gavin’s over-the-phone instructions.
Chavez opened the tablet to Google Earth, then used two fingers to zoom out and display the neighborhood around Suparman Games HQ. Most of the houses and businesses were new, white stucco over cinder block with orange tile roofs. Real estate sites advertised the area as having “American construction.” The Blessing Jesus statue loomed in the hills above, just a few blocks away from their target.
“Here’s the deal,” Chavez said. “The folks at State tell us that this country has a very basic but effective system for keeping tabs on strangers. Every neighborhood is run by a head man. Kind of like the old ward bosses in New York or Chicago. Any new faces hanging around get reported to the head man. Family visiting from overseas, homestay guests, burglars, it doesn’t matter. The ward boss knows you’re there, especially the farther you get from the center of the city. If you really don’t belong, then you get reported to the police.”
Midas glanced up from his soldering. “And then we bribe the police and go about our merry way stealing this puppy.”
“If only,” Chavez said. “No. These ward bosses are a little more serious about their turf than that. And with President Ryan coming to town, we have to be extra-careful. One misstep and this all explodes in his face.”
“Manado depends on tourism,” Clark added. “People are used to seeing outsiders loitering around shops, homestays, and the like—up to a point. That gives us some leeway with time, but not much, especially out in the neighborhoods. I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but our man Ding looks like he shares a little DNA with some of the locals on this island. If he wears a traditional batik shirt and keeps his mouth shut, maybe people cut him some slack long enough for him to get in and grab the software.”
“At least long enough to get close to the guards,” Chavez said. He pitched a box of black hair dye to Adara. “There’s a reason another word for coffee is java. In the 1800s most of the world’s coffee beans came from Dutch plantations all over Indonesia. A lot of Dutch DNA got spread around these islands. Dark—and, I might add, genetically superior—hair usually wins out, but there’s still a lot of European influence in the gene pool. With the right hair color, people might at least take a minute before they report us to the neighborhood pooh-bah.”
Adara studied the cardboard box. “This is written in Indonesian.” She traced the instructions with her index finger. “Hey, I’m all for trying something new, but there’s an exclamation point at the end of this line. For all I know, it says, Danger, will cause people with blond hair to go bald!”
Chavez shrugged. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have known what to buy even if it had been written in English. I bought the most expensive box, though. So you should be good. I think it was something like forty-two thousand rupiah. That’s like three whole bucks.”
Adara gave a sullen nod and glumly studied the box. “Copy that.”
“Ding and Adara will be the pointy end of the spear,” Clark said. “The rest of us will provide backup from the shadows. Midas and Dom will handle any roving guards to the east of the building. Jack and I will take care of anyone to the west.” He nodded at the Raspberry Pi on the desk in front of Midas. “Go over that thing with Ding in case he needs it.”
“Roger that,” Midas said. “The digital scans of Suparman’s retinas are high-definition enough that we should be able to hold up the images on a smartphone. Gavin put together a brilliant little app that imitates the three-dimensional look and flutter of a live eyeball.” He tapped the small green circuit board with the cool end of the soldering iron. “This is just in case we need to upload the files and spoof the system into thinking it’s looking at an eye instead of the code for an eye. It’ll take a bit longer, and it’s a little trickier, but you should be able to do it fine.” He brightened. “Might not come to that, though. We’re talking about a gaming company, not a government installation. They may feel like the retina scans and rent-a-cops are plenty of security.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Clark said. “Suparman just spent twenty-five million dollars on this little piece of gaming tech. And let’s not forget that it also got Ackerman’s throat slit.
“Talk Ding and Adara through the particulars,” Clark said. “We’ll stay nimble.” He checked his watch. “The main thing is to retrieve that software. The President will be on the ground sometime tomorrow. He needs to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Speaking of slit throats,” Ryan said. “Do we have any inkling that the Chinese know about this copy of the software? I’d hate to run into some MSS operatives in the shadows with only one extra mag.”
“We’ll carry an MP5 in each vehicle,” Clark said. “In case the fan gets shitty. But again, remember the objective. Grab the tech and get out. Adara and Ding, you two go straight to the airport. The rest of us will be behind you, scraping off any tails.” He looked sideways at Chavez.
“Okay,” Chavez said. “Now, for the guards.” He took two small derringers out of a plastic case. “We’re using a ketamine cocktail. Should keep them out for a good fifteen minutes, with the added benefit of a befuddled memory. I know I don’t have to tell you, but drugging someone carries with it a good deal of risk. They’ve weighed the risks at higher, and we’ve been ordered to proceed.”
Everyone in the room knew “higher” was the Office of the Director of Nationa
l Security, and, by extension, the President. They also knew that drugging someone was better than bashing them on the head, or worse—unless that person had a respiratory issue, or some other hidden medical condition that would cause them to stroke out. Lots of things happened in the field; the heat of battle guaranteed it.
Clark said out loud what everyone else was thinking.
“The brass wouldn’t take doping a couple of rent-a-cops lightly. That should put a big fat exclamation point on how vital it is that we grab this software.”
“Right,” Chavez said, gathering up his notebook and tablet. “Adara and I are going to hang back and surveil the downtown store while the rest of you grab your shit and go to the eye doc. We’ll make a plan after you get the optical files, but I’m ninety percent sure what we’re looking for is at the main office.”
33
It was called Manado Town Square, but the modern shopping area across four-lane Piere Tendean Boulevard was, in actuality, a narrow strip of land jammed between the Celebes Sea to the west and a seemingly endless flow of concrete and corrugated tin homes pushing in from the east.
Chavez and Adara had swung by Suparman Games so he could take a stroll through the store and get a feel for it, then he’d taken the first shift across the boulevard, inside the lobby of the Ibis hotel, drinking strong coffee and keeping an eye on the storefront while Adara went back to the Whiz Prime Hotel to dye her hair.
A man in a green jumpsuit pushed a broom ten feet away, causing Chavez to look up. The man avoided eye contact, sweeping as he walked by without saying a word. In most parts of the world the situation would have called for a head nod at the very least. Conspicuous ignoring most generally meant the person didn’t want you to know they were looking at you. The Indonesians he’d met so far were a gregarious people. There were a dozen different reasons the guy avoided looking at Chavez, but the most obvious reason was that he was watching him. A healthy dose of paranoia had kept him alive this long.