by Peter Parken
And…there just never seemed to be a sense of urgency on this island anyway…about anything.
Ron Collens led the way into the building, pushing open an office door which was hanging precariously by one hinge. The poor shape of the building belied the high quality of the aircraft they chartered out.
Ron strode up to the counter, followed closely behind by Nate and Tom. The man he had rented the helicopter from was sitting on a stool behind the counter reading the comics section of the newspaper. Ron waited politely for the man to notice him, but he seemed to be seriously preoccupied with chuckling at the funnies.
Ron finally rapped his knuckles on the counter and the man looked up, clearly annoyed at being disturbed. He wore a baseball cap over shoulder-length blonde hair. Ron figured he was around fifty or so, but trying desperately to look like a Woodstock era twenty-year-old. A moustache, beard, tattered jeans, and a muscle shirt completed the bizarre image. A cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray within easy reach of the man’s skinny arm. Ron figured, like with everything else in Key West, smoking bylaws weren’t enforced.
But he wasn’t here to talk about smoking. He wanted to know why he and his friends were terrorized in the skies over this hippie paradise.
The man took a long drag from his cigarette before deciding it was time to finally say something. “Yeah, can I help you, buddy? Wanna rent a whirlybird?”
Ron leaned over, resting his muscular forearms on the counter. “We just did—less than two hours ago. Don’t you remember us?”
The man squinted. “Uh…yeah, sure. How was the ride?”
“The helicopter was out of control—and it seemed as if it was being flown remotely by someone else. Do you know anything about that?”
“Uh…no. Wanna smoke?” He held out a pack of Winstons.
“No, I want to know why the helicopter behaved the way it did.”
Nate stepped forward and reached for the man’s pack of cigarettes. “I’ll take one of those. I could use a smoke right now.”
The clerk laughed. “Hey, I got something stronger in the back if you want it. On me, my friend.”
Nate flicked the lighter. “No, I don’t do that stuff. Tobacco suits me fine.”
“No problem, bud. Each to his own.”
Ron persisted. “Did you folks let the Navy install telemetry in your helicopters?”
The man frowned. “Tele…what? What the fuck is that?”
“Are you the owner here?”
A belly laugh. “I don’t own nothin’, man. And that’s the way I like it, know what I mean?”
“Can I see the owner?”
“He don’t live here. Hangs out in Miami. Never see him.”
Ron was losing his patience. “Do Navy personnel ever drop by here?”
“Well, of course. The Navy’s our friend, man. We’d be nothin’ on this little island without the Navy. We like them boys.”
“Why would they come here to your place?”
“They do some work here for us. Hard to get qualified people on this island, so we put ‘em under contract for all our maintenance stuff. I mean, they have whirlybirds over there, too, so it’s easy for them to maintain ours. And we pay ‘em pretty good, too. The Navy mechanics are good guys…and they even like a smoke or two once in a while. And our loose women.” He grinned, displaying three empty spaces where teeth used to reside. “Know what I mean?”
Nate rubbed Ron’s shoulder. “Time to leave. I think we just got our answer, and I doubt if we’ll get anything else. This guy’s harmless.”
Ron nodded. They turned and headed for the door.
The clerk called after them, waving a sheet of paper in the air. “Could you fill out one of these customer satisfaction thingies? We like to know if our clients enjoyed their experience with us.”
They kept walking, trying hard not to laugh. Tom muttered, “Brain-dead.”
“Come fly with us again soon, y’all.”
*****
Breakfast the next morning at the Almond Tree Inn consisted of every tropical fruit imaginable, along with the mandatory American breakfast of bacon and eggs. The three friends were sitting at a table beside the pool, enjoying the sunshine, the breakfast and the bikinis. Breakfast of champions.
But they didn’t feel too much like champions. After breakfast, they’d be heading over to the landfill site, hoping to get a close up view of the wreckage. And they were still recovering from yesterday’s horrifying ordeal in the air.
Ron put down his fork with finality. He was clearly finished eating and wanted to talk. “So, we know that Navy mechanics do maintenance work on those choppers. And, let’s face it, after 911, it’s reasonable to expect that a naval base would be concerned about any aircraft rental facility within a few hundred miles, let alone the five miles in this case.”
Nate nodded. “Yeah, too close for comfort. And all that maintenance work would allow them to build in a few failsafe protection devices of their own. Just in case they needed to use them.”
Ron nodded. “Our chopper was being flown remotely from an operator at that naval base; I’m convinced of that.”
Tom jumped in. “So, why didn’t they just crash us, for Christ’s sake?!”
Ron shook his head. “No, that’s the last thing they’d want to do. Think how that would look. The wreckage of our rollercoaster is in that yard and we were flying over that very yard. Too much of a coincidence to have three executives of Flying Machines Inc. die in a helicopter accident right where the wreckage of their rollercoaster is, a site they went to great lengths to keep secret. No—they just wanted to scare us away. Wanted us to realize how easy it would be for them to bring harm to us.”
Nate frowned. “But who are ‘they?’”
Ron took a long sip from his black coffee. “Don’t know. The Navy could have been acting on instructions from someone much higher up the totem pole, not knowing why they were being asked to monitor us and scare us. Remember, military personnel are conditioned to simply obey, perform tasks, and not necessarily know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They could have just been performing a task they were ordered to perform. Someone probably flagged my name when I chartered that helicopter from Virginia—realized I was a partner with Flying Machines and that I was going to be right where the wreckage is. They’re probably puzzled now though as to how we knew to come down here, because the location was supposed to have been classified.”
Nate spoke again. “I’ll repeat—who are ‘they?’”
Tom reached for the coffee pot and poured. “Ron, what’s this telemetry stuff you were asking the hippie about?”
“Hospitals use it, NASA uses it, and the military uses it. And a whole slew of other applications, like car manufacturers. Hell, it’s used with virtually everything these days, including mobile phones. We just don’t really think about it, we’re so used to it.
“It’s simply the installation of devices that can relay crucial data to a remote location. But that basic information gathering can be taken one extra step—remote use of that information.
“Remote controlled devices, such as missile-equipped drones, are used almost routinely now by the U.S. military in fighting terrorism in the Middle East—unmanned drones being “guided” by pilots remotely, sometimes thousands of miles away.
“So, the use of the telemetric data is the big difference. Everyone is accustomed to GPS, and, of course, stupid Facebook annoyingly tracking everywhere you go, everyone you’re with. That’s all telemetry. But when it’s taken a step further to actually control the item in which the telemetry is installed, that’s a different story. And drones are a perfect example of that. Our helicopter, in reality, became a goddamned drone the second they took it over remotely.”
Nate reached up and tilted the umbrella towards the sun. “Didn’t Boeing make use of remote control technology after 911?”
“Yes. Apparently, all of their jumbo jets now have telemetry installed, as well as the ability to remotely fly any
of their aircraft from the ground if need be. If someone was considering hijacking a plane, it would be a waste of time for the hijackers to think they could actually take it over and steer it into high-rise towers. It can now simply be remotely flown from the ground by the authorities and landed anywhere in the world just by remote control. And there’s nothing anyone in the plane can do to override what’s being done remotely. Christ, we discovered that ourselves yesterday, didn’t we? It’s amazing technology and the applications are endless.”
Tom folded his newspaper over to the second page, and held it out so his friends could see. “Coincidental that we’re talking about this. Here’s an article reporting about that Malaysia Airlines jumbo jet. It was a Boeing 777. The article says that it could have easily been remotely hijacked and flown to any destination in the world—that it didn’t crash at all, despite the focus on searching the Indian Ocean ad nauseum. They’re even saying that there are unconfirmed reports that the plane was landed remotely on the island of Diego Garcia down near the Maldives!”
Ron laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. In fact, Diego Garcia is a top-secret air force base—even us Seals had no idea what all went on down there. But one thing I do know—for that part of the world, Diego Garcia functions as ‘drone central.’ That’s a fact.”
Nate folded his napkin and stood. “I don’t know about you guys, but yesterday’s little episode was the most scared I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I design rollercoasters for a living, so scaring me is not an easy thing to do. Someone took over our chopper from a distance and bounced us around remotely, trying their fucking damnedest to terrify us into ignoring this whole thing. And the moves they were able to make with that chopper—how close we came to being killed—it’s mindboggling. That was some pretty fancy flying for someone who wasn’t even sitting in the cockpit!”
Ron stood up as well. “Yes. But what’s really scary is this—what the hell have we gotten ourselves embroiled in? Why is this wreckage so sensitive that they would go to such trouble to scare us away from it? What is it that we and others aren’t being allowed to see? And why?”
Tom slipped into his suit jacket. “Maybe we’ll get some answers today, when we see our creation in person.” He looked at his watch. “Our flight leaves mid-afternoon. We need to get out to that landfill site now if we want to have enough time to look around.”
Chapter 20
Carl Masterson took off his glasses and began cleaning the lenses. These new glasses worked really well for him—his eyes had been getting worse these last few years, but at least now he could read without squinting or falling asleep. But the damn things got smudged so easily, it was frustrating. He slid them back onto his nose and then turned to his computer to check his emails.
Ah…the one he was waiting for. He picked up the phone, punched in a three-digit number and barked an order. “Got your note. Come on down to my office now.”
He hung up the phone and walked over to his coffee stand. Poured himself a cup and sat down on his couch. He started thinking…about things. And there certainly were an abundance of things to think about.
First on his mind, how did those executives find out where the wreckage was? Someone told them and there were only a handful of people who knew. In his mind, he’d already narrowed it down, but he needed certain information to confirm. And he’d have that information in just a few minutes.
Carl felt restless these days—so much to do still, and everything had to be contained. He didn’t need the complication of snoopy executives who just couldn’t accept what was going to happen to their company. The fate of their company was a tiny issue in the big scheme of things. Of course, they had no way of knowing that.
But he had to be so careful—these guys were high profile. If anything happened to them, it might open a Pandora’s Box. He couldn’t afford that. Not with Operation Backwash in the final stages.
He walked over to his window. Carl’s office was on the fourth floor of the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Just a leisurely thirty-minute drive from downtown Washington, D.C.
He looked out over the vast expanse of land that was Fort Meade; he loved the fact that he could look out, but no one could look in. All of the glass in the building was tinted one-way viewing. He had read in an op-ed column the other day that NSA headquarters looked just like a dark glass Rubik’s cube. He chuckled—the guy was right; it did look like a Rubik’s cube. And just like that toy, good luck to anyone trying to figure out what the NSA was all about.
Well, Edward Snowden had certainly done his best to let the world know what the NSA did, and the fallout wasn’t good. That sniveling little nerd had aired their dirty laundry. But…like everything else that came out, the American people would accept it. And even though there was initial outrage, Carl figured there were more people on the NSA’s side now than on Snowden’s. If he ever put even one foot onto U.S. soil again, it would be the last thing he did.
The U.S. government had done such a good job of convincing their citizens that they had good reasons to be afraid—about everything—that they were probably at the point now where they really didn’t mind losing some of their precious privacy and civil liberties if it meant being safe.
And that coward, Edward Snowden, was hiding out in Russia. Probably spilling more secrets to them than the NSA was aware of. He had accessed, and taken, a surprising amount of information and was no doubt keeping some of it in his hip pocket as a bargaining chip with the Russians, or as a trade for his life one day if the NSA finally succeeded in tracking him down. Indeed, ‘knowledge was power,’ and Snowden had found that out in spades.
Carl’s eyes scanned the landscape. Fort Meade was a massive place—and an actual fort, too, although the fort part was completely separate from the NSA. The fort—or the modern term, ‘military installation’—took up 5,000 beautiful Maryland acres. The NSA portion was relatively small, at only 350 acres.
The NSA building itself was impressive—three million square feet in total and it contained a post office, bank, restaurant, concierge office, and gymnasium. The NSA also had its own fire department and police force right on site.
The staff count at the NSA was kind of a secret, but the best estimate by most outsiders was 30,000. Carl knew it was closer to 80,000, scattered around the country and the world, with a lot of those employees being “off the books.” And that same article that referred to their building as resembling a Rubik’s cube, also described the NSA as the world’s biggest employer of introverts and mathematicians. Carl thought that reference was pretty close to the truth. They did employ a lot of nerds—Snowden was a nerd. Maybe Snowden got brave after watching a rerun of that movie, Revenge of the Nerds.
Well, the NSA wouldn’t be that careless again. Employees were monitored much more closely now and if there was even the hint of leaks, that threat would be eliminated.
It was only fitting that the NSA spy on their own people—Carl thought it was silly that they had been so cavalier about it in the past. Hell, the NSA spied on their own citizens and virtually the entire world, so why not their staff?
The NSA’s mandate was to collect, decode, translate, and analyze information and data for foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence purposes. They were also tasked with surveillance on targeted individuals on U.S. soil. If those individuals moved to foreign soil, then the CIA took over.
The NSA was also authorized to accomplish its missions through clandestine means—bugging electronic systems and even sabotaging networks with invasive software. As a sideline, the agency also located targets through electronic means, and passed that information along to the CIA for assassination purposes.
The NSA tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of cellphones every day—to map their movements and relationships in detail. And most people would be horrified to know that the agency had access to all communications made on Google, Microsoft, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Skype and Apple. All in the name of �
��national security.’
And it didn’t stop with that—personal email and instant messaging accounts were monitored, along with contact lists. And landline calls—they weren’t exempt either.
Neither were the few remaining phone booths in the country. In fact, they were considered suspicious vessels of communication by the NSA, and for that reason alone phone booths still existed. The NSA wanted them to remain. Because people felt they were safe if they made a call from a phone booth.
So, phone booths made great bait. People who were planning nefarious activities against the United States would generally choose a phone booth over a landline or cellphone. Several terrorist attacks had already been prevented by the NSA just because the innocent fools thought they could safely talk from a phone booth.
All phone booth calls are not only tracked, but also recorded. And the software they used looked for certain key words or behaviors that would result in a ‘flag’ for a recorded call, triggering the need for an NSA agent or analyst to listen to it. That same type of software was used for all other activities too—on cellphones, email, etc.
The workload, as a result, was huge. Thousands of flagged communications were listened to or read every day, just to discern whether or not there was reason for concern. Carl thought: No wonder the NSA is the world’s largest employer of introverts. Who could do that all day and be happy about it?
There were about a dozen separate divisions in the NSA—known as ‘directorates’—but Carl knew there were a lot more that were not disclosed to the public, and some not even known to him. Each division was identified by a letter. Carl’s division was ‘Q’—Directorate of Security and Intelligence. That covered a big area for sure—in essence, everything eventually funneled up to him if it involved a risk to national security—and if something needed to be done about it.
Consequently, he was in the loop on most issues that threatened the United States of America. But not just terrorist threats—in reality, those threats were fairly well contained and not necessarily their biggest worry anymore. Although, that fact would never be disclosed to the American people, because the government needed them scared and pliable. The constant threat of terrorism was a great tool to accomplish that.