by Glenn Cooper
Descending toward the military field, the copilot radioed, "JANET 4 requesting clearance to land at Groom Lake, Runway 14 left."
JANET. Radio call sign for Joint Air Network for Employee Transport. A spook name. The commuters called it otherwise: Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.
On wheels down, Mark awoke with a start. The plane braked hard and he instinctively pushed against his heels to take the pressure off his seat belt. He raised the window shade and squinted at the sun-baked scrubby terrain. He felt cramped and uncomfortable, sick to his stomach, and wondered if he looked as strange as he felt.
"Thought I was going to have to nudge you."
Mark turned to the fellow in the middle seat. He was from Russian Archives, a guy with a fat tush named Jacobs. "No need," Mark said as matter-of-factly as he could. "I'm good to go."
"Never saw you sleep on the flight before," the man observed.
Was Jacobs really from Archives? Mark shrugged it off. Don't be paranoid, he thought. Of course he is. None of the watchers had fat asses. They were nimble sorts.
Before they were permitted to go subterranean, deep into the cool earth, the 635 employees of Groom Lake Building 34-commonly called, the Truman Building-had to endure one of their two dreaded rituals of the day, the S amp;S, aka strip 'n' scan. When the buses dropped them off at the hangarlike structure, the sexes split toward separate entrances. Inside each section of the building were long rows of lockers reminiscent of a suburban high school. Mark walked briskly to his locker, which was halfway down the long corridor. Many of his coworkers were perfectly happy to dawdle and make it through scanning at the last possible moment, but today he was in a hurry to get underground.
He spun the combination lock, stripped down to his briefs, and hung his clothes on hooks. A fresh olive jumpsuit with SHACKLETON, M. embroidered on the breast pocket was neatly folded on the locker bench. He threw it on; the days were long gone when employees could wear street clothes into the facility. Every item a Building 34 employee brought on the commute had to be left in the lockers. Up and down the line, books, magazines, pens, cell phones, and wallets were shelved. Mark moved fast and got himself near the front of the scanning line.
The magnetometer was flanked by two watchers, humorless young men with buzz cuts who waved each employee through with a clipped military gesture. Mark waited, next up for the scan. He noticed that Malcolm Frazier, Chief of Operational Security, the head watcher, was nearby, checking on the morning scan. He was a fearsome hunk of a man with the grotesquely muscular body and rectangular head of a cartoon-book villain. Mark had exchanged few words with Frazier over the years, even though the watchers had input into some of his protocols. He would duck behind his group director and let her run interference with Frazier and his lot. Frazier was ex-military, ex-special ops, and his surly testosterone-seeped visage scared him silly. As a habit, Mark avoided eye contact, and today in particular he lowered his head when he felt the man's penetrating gaze upon him.
The scan had a singular purpose: to prevent any photographic or recording devices from entering the facility. In the morning, employees went through the scanners clothed. At the end of the day, they went back through buck naked since scanners couldn't detect paper. Underground was sterile ground. Nothing came in, nothing came out.
Building 34 was the most sterile complex in the United States. It was staffed by employees who had been selected by a cadre of Department of Defense recruiters who didn't have the slightest clue about the nature of the work for which they were recruiting. They only knew the skill set that was required. At the second or third round of interviews they were allowed to reveal that the job involved Area 51, and then only with the permission of their superiors. Inevitably the recruiters were then asked, "You mean the place they keep aliens and UFOs?" to which their authorized reply was, "This is a highly classified government installation doing critical work on national defense. That is all that can be disclosed at this time. However, the successful applicant will be among a very small group of government employees who will have full knowledge of research activities at Area
51."
The rest of the pitch went something like this: you will be a member of an elite team of scientists and researchers, some of the best minds in the country. You will have access to the most advanced hardware and software technology in the world. You will be privy to the highest level of classified data in the country, information that only a handful of high officials in the government even know exists. To partially compensate you for leaving your high-paying corporate jobs or your academic tenure track positions, you will receive free housing in Las Vegas, federal income tax abatement, and subsidized college tuition for your children.
As recruiting pitches went, this one was solid gold. Most recruits were intrigued enough to throw their hat into the ring and enter the screening and profiling phase, a six-to twelve-month process that can-opened every aspect of their lives to the scrutiny of FBI Special Agents and to profilers from the DOD. It was a punishing process. For every five recruits who entered the funnel, only one passed through the other end with an SCI, or Sensitive Compartmented Clearance, in Special Intelligence.
SCI-eligible recruits were invited to a closing interview at the Pentagon with the Associate General Counsel of the Office of the Navy. Since its founding by James Forrestal, NTS 51 had been a navy operation, and within the military these traditions died hard. The navy lawyer, who personally had no knowledge of Area 51 activities, presented a service contract and walked the applicant through the details, including the dire penalties that would result from breach of any provisions, especially confidentiality.
As if twenty years of imprisonment at Leavenworth weren't bad enough, once inside, the rumor mill deliberately would grind down new employees with tales of loose lips becoming dead lips at the hands of shadowy government operatives. "Now, can I be told about the nature of my work?" the navy lawyer was typically asked. "Not on your life," was the rejoinder.
Because once the contract was understood and verbally accepted, a further security clearance was required, a Special Access Program, or SAP-NTS 51, this one even tougher to obtain than an SCI. Only when the final hoops were cleared, the SAP granted, and the contract duly executed, was the newbie flown out to the base at Groom Lake and told the jaw-dropping truth about the operation by the head of Personnel, a dead-pan navy rear admiral, who sat at his desk in the desert like a duck out of water and wished he had a hundred bucks for every time he heard, "Holy shit, I never expected anything like that!"
Mark breathed easier when he passed through the scanner without triggering an alert, the watchers and Malcolm Frazier none the wiser. Elevator one was waiting at ground level. When it was filled with the first dozen men, the doors shut and it dropped six stories through multiple layers of hardened concrete and steel until it slowed and stopped at the Primary Research Laboratory. The Vault was another sixty feet lower, meticulously temperature and humidity-controlled. A multi-billion-dollar upgrade to the Vault in the late 1980s added giant earthquake and nuclear blast-resistant shock absorbers, technology purchased from the Japanese, who were on the cutting edge of earthquake mitigation.
Few employees had reason to visit the Vault. However, there was a tradition at Area 51. On his or her first day, the executive director would take the newbie down a special restricted elevator to the Vault level to see it.
The Library.
Watchers with sidearms would flank the steel doors trying to look as menacing as they could. The codes were entered and the thick doors silently swung open. Then the newbies would be led into the enormous, softly lit chamber, a place as quiet and somber as a cathedral, and stand in absolute awe at the sight before them.
Today, only one other member of Mark's Security Algorithms Group was on the elevator, a middle-aged mathematician with the unlikely name of Elvis Brando, no relation to either. "How ya doing today, Mark?" he asked.
"Pretty good," Mark replied, a wave of nausea hitting him hard.<
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The underground was bathed in harsh fluorescence. The lightest sounds echoed off uncarpeted floors and asylum-blue walls. Mark's office was one of several on the perimeter of a large central room that doubled as a group conference area and bench space for lower-level techs. It was small and cluttered, and compared to his aerie at his last private-sector job in California, with its campus views of manicured lawns and reflecting pools, a closet. But space was tight underground and he was lucky he didn't have to share. The desk and credenza were cheap and veneered but his chair was an expensive ergonomic model, the one creature comfort the lab didn't skimp on. There was lot of rump time in Area 51.
Mark booted his computer and logged onto the network with a password and dual fingerprint and retinal scans. The jaunty insignia of the Department of the Navy adorned the welcome screen. He looked through the common room. Elvis was already hunched over his work station in an office cater-corner to his. No one else in the department had made it through screening yet, and most important, his group director, Rebecca Rosenberg, was on vacation.
As it happened, he didn't have to worry about excessive scrutiny. Aboveground and below, he was a loner. Coworkers generally let him be. He didn't dish gossip or engage in banter. At lunch he would find a spot on his own in the vast commissary and grab a magazine from the rack. Twelve years ago, when he first arrived at the base, he had made some awkward efforts to mingle. Early on someone asked him if he was any relation to Shackleton of Antarctica and he'd said yes to bolster himself, launching into a laughable family history involving a great-uncle from England. It didn't take long for a database geek to run the genealogy and expose his lie.
For twelve years he had come to work, done his job and done it well. At grad school and at a succession of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, he had established a reputation as one of the preeminent database security experts in the country, an authority in protecting servers from unauthorized access. It was the reason he was heavily recruited for Groom Lake. Reluctant at first, he was eventually seduced by the allure of doing something secret and vital, as a counterpoint to the dullness and predictability of his rootless life.
At Area 51, he wrote groundbreaking code to inoculate their systems from worms and other intrusions, algorithms that would have been widely adopted by industry and government as new gold standards-had he been able to publish them. Within his group the buzzwords were public and private key security systems, secure socket layers, Kerberos tokens, and host intrusion detection systems. It was his responsibility to constantly monitor the servers for unauthorized access attempts from within the complex as well as from without-probes by external hackers.
Also, the watchers fed his group quarantine lists, one for each employee-names of family members, friends, neighbors, spouses' coworkers, etc., that were personal nogos. One of Mark's flypaper algorithms would detect an employee who attempted to access information from their quarantine list, and it was a matter of faith that detection would lead to unpleasant consequences. There was institutional memory of an analyst from the late 1970s who tried to look up his fiancee, and the poor fellow was allegedly still in a hole in federal prison.
Mark was seized by a sharp intestinal cramp. He gritted his teeth, rushed from his office and fast-walked down a corridor to the nearest men's room. Soon, back at his desk feeling relieved, he held something tightly in his left hand. When he was sure there were no prying eyes, he unclenched his fingers and dropped a bullet-shaped piece of gray plastic, about two inches in length, into the top drawer of his desk.
Returning to the common room, he moved like an invisible man among people loudly chatting about weekend plans, who now filled the room. In a walk-in supply closet, he found the soldering set and nonchalantly returned with it to his office, where he quietly shut the door behind him.
With Rosenberg out, the chance of someone interrupting him was close to zero, so he pressed on. There were rubber-banded bundles of computer cables in his lower desk drawer. He selected a USB lead and, using a small pair of pliers, gently broke off one of its metal connectors. He was ready for the gray bullet.
A minute later the job was done. He had successfully soldered the metal connector onto the bullet, and by doing so fabricated one fully functional four-gigabit flash memory stick, capable of storing three million pages of data, a device more lethal to the security of Area 51 than if he had smuggled in an automatic weapon.
Mark returned the memory stick to his desk and spent the rest of the morning writing code. Earlier that morning, during the brief drive to the airport in Las Vegas, he'd worked it out in his head, and now his fingers fairly smoked the keyboard. It was a camouflage program, designed to conceal that he was about to take down his own impenetrable host intrusion detection system. By lunchtime he was done.
When the common room and adjoining offices cleared out for lunch, he made his move and activated the new set of code. It worked perfectly, as he knew it would, one hundred percent audit-proof, and when he was satisfied that he couldn't be detected, he logged onto the primary United States database.
Then he entered a name- Camacho, Luis, DOB 1/12/1977 -and held his breath. The screen lit up. No joy.
Of course, he had other ideas up his sleeve. Next best, he figured, would be Luis's boyfriend, John. He assumed correctly that finding him would be trivial. Cloaked by his camouflage program, he opened an NTS 51 portal into a customized database that consolidated billing records of all U.S. telephone service providers.
When he cross-tabbed the first-name John with the address 189 Minnieford Avenue, City Island, New York, out popped a full name-John William Pepperdine-and a social security number. A few keystrokes later he had a date of birth. Piece of cake, he thought. Armed with the data, he reentered the primary U.S. database and clicked on the search icon.
He gasped, scarcely believing his luck. The result was outstanding. No, perfect!
He had his anchor.
Okay, Mark, move it, he thought. You got in, now get the hell out! People in his department would be arriving back from lunch soon, and he wanted to stop walking the tight-rope. He carefully wiggled his newly soldered memory stick into a USB port on his computer.
It took only seconds to download the forward-looking U.S. database to the flash drive. When it was done, he expertly covered his tracks, taking his camo program down and simultaneously restarting the host intrusion detection system. He finished the operation by snapping off the metal connector from the gray bullet and resoldering it to the USB cable. When all the components were restashed in his desk, he opened his door and as casually as possible sauntered to the supply closet to return the soldering iron.
When he turned away from the closet shelf, Elvis Brando, a squarish overbearing man, was blocking his way, close enough that Mark could smell chili on his breath.
"Skipped lunch?" Elvis challenged.
"I think I've got a stomach bug," Mark said.
"Maybe you should go to Medical. You're sweating like a pig."
Mark touched his damp forehead and realized his jumpsuit was soaked through the armpits. "I'm all right."
When there was half an hour until quitting time, Mark paid another visit to the men's room and found an empty stall. He pulled two items from his jumpsuit pocket-the bullet-shaped flash drive and a crumpled condom. He slid the plastic bullet into the condom and shed the jumpsuit. Then he clenched his jaw and shoved the greatest secret on the planet up his rear end.
That night he sat on his sofa and lost track of time while his laptop burned his crotch and stung his eyes. He trolled the pirated database, shuffling it like a deck of cards, doing cross-checks, verifications, writing lists by hand and revising them until he was satisfied.
He worked with impunity. Even if he'd been online, his computer had hack protection the watchers couldn't penetrate. His hands and fingers were the only parts of his body in motion, but when he finished he was almost breathless from the exertion. His own audacity electrified him-he wished he could brag to s
omeone about his brazen cleverness.
When he was a boy he would run and tell his parents whenever he got a good grade or solved a math problem. His mother was dead from cancer. His father had remarried an unpleasant woman and was still bitterly disappointed at him for leaving a good company for a government job. They hardly talked. Besides, this wasn't the kind of thing you could tell a living soul.
Suddenly, he had an idea that made him giggle with delight.
Why not?
Who would know?
He closed the database, locked it with password protection, then opened the file containing his first screenplay, his Thornton Wilderesque ode to fate that had been trashed by the little Hollywood toad. He scrolled through the script and started making changes, and each time he hit Find and Replace he squealed excitedly, like a naughty little boy with a wicked secret.
JUNE 23, 2009
CITY ISLAND, NEW YORK
W hen Will was young, his father would take him fishing because that's what fathers were supposed to do. He'd be awakened before dawn with a poke on his shoulder, throw on clothes and climb into the pick-up truck for the drive from the panhandle town of Quincy down to Panama City. His father would hire a 26-footer by the hour from a working-class marina and chug south about ten miles into the Gulf. The journey, from his dark bedroom to the sparkling fishing grounds would occur with scant exchange of words. He would watch him pilot the boat, his bulky frame tinged orange by the rising sun and wonder why even the natural beauty of a warm morning boat ride on calm shimmering waters did not bring joy to the man's face. Eventually, his father would stub out a cigarette and say something like, "Okay, let's get these lines baited up," then lapse into sullen silence for hours at a time until a snapper or a wahoo hit the tackle and orders had to be barked.