Removing the pipe again, Wethers tapped the monitor. “The first person to publish a paper on hacking the GPS network was…” He smiled. “Hermann Schwarz.”
“Gadgets?”
“Exactly. He claimed it was impossible. The most recent was our old friend, Virgil McPherson, who also claimed it was impossible.”
“Yet it has been done,” Kurtzman noted, a dark scowl furrowing his brow. The big man took a slurp of the scalding coffee. Okay, if a frontal assault failed, then it was time to try the back door. “Any recent work done on protecting the network?” he asked sagely. “There’s no better thief than a locksmith.”
“Way ahead of you, Chief,” Wethers said, tapping a button to scroll the monitor. “It seems that the UN Security Council authorized such a project several years ago. The head of the project was a…just a moment…. Professor Sigerson von Reinhold.”
“Von Reinhold,” Kurtzman repeated thoughtfully. “So he’s a member of the German royalty.”
Wethers shrugged. “Well, a very long time ago, yes. But the professor just goes by his family name these days, sans the honorific.”
“Any chance he’s alive?”
“Sadly, no,” Wethers said with a frown, reading the bottom of the classified report. “Reinhold died in a plane crash last year in the Argentine Alps.”
“Where was that again?” Kurtzman asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Argentina,” Wethers said, then stopped cold. “Yes, I see the connection. Curious.”
“Like hell it is,” the computer expert growled, setting aside the mug. He started pressing buttons to slave their consoles to his own. The bullets were stolen from Argentina, and the professor was killed in the same country.
Quickly, Kurtzman scanned the assorted reports and files. There was scant data about Reinhold, and no death certificate. Only unconfirmed newspaper reports. “Wethers, drop everything else and make sure this man is dead.”
“Already doing that,” Wethers said, hands moving across the keyboard like a concert pianist playing Mozart.
A long minute passed. Another.
“Well?” Kurtzman demanded gruffly.
“The official files in Argentina were deleted,” Wethers announced with obvious satisfaction. “But I tracked down the off-site backup files in Staten Isle.”
“New York?” Tokaido asked in shock, looking up from his typing. “The Argentine government kept their backup files in another country?”
“That’s Staten Island,” Wethers said tolerantly, as if lecturing to one of his classes. “Staten Isle is off the coast of southwest Argentina.”
With a nod, the others returned to their work.
“So you were able to rebuild the deleted files?” Kurtzman asked, checking his monitor.
“Nobody could rebuild those files,” Wethers stated, crossing his arms. “The deletion was thorough, with no remaining fragments or pieces. A triple-layer erase of ones and zeros, you know the drill.”
Yeah, Kurtzman understood. That was the procedure that the White House, the Pentagon and even Stony Man itself used. After each deletion of a file, the medium would be overwritten by random numbers, then deleted again and overwritten again. After the third time, nobody could bring back those files.
“Odd that the main files were deleted, but the backups were in good shape,” Kurtzman said suspiciously. Then he saw the truth of the matter. Most of the files for the Argentine military weren’t on computers so that an enemy couldn’t hack the system and steal them. Okay, that was clever. But while the military records were in poor shape, the Accounting and Receiving Department of the Argentine government kept detailed files on everybody in their employ.
Tapping the scroll button, Kurtzman skimmed the files. Both parents were of German extraction and moved to Argentina after World War II. His father was believed to have been a member of the Third Reich, but cleared of all charges because of fire-damaged papers. Reinhold was born in Argentina, and graduated Buenos Aires University magna cum laude. Then he went to Oxford University for his postgraduate work in cybernetic communications and advanced theoretical electronics. The perfect man to invent a way to hack the GPS network, Kurtzman thought.
“And before his untimely death, Reinhold spent a year at Fort Peron, working on code-breaking software for a General Rolf Calvano,” Kurtzman said, reading out loud. “Anything on this Calvano?”
“Hmm, his army personnel file is in the military archives at the capital, but it’s protected by a very impressive firewall,” Wethers said with a frown. “This may take me a moment…Interesting design, actually….” His voice faded away as the man became engrossed in the task.
“Stay on it,” Kurtzman directed him. “Let me know when—”
“All right, General Rolf Bolivar Calvano is a pure-blood Argentinian,” Wethers interrupted, relaxing his tense stance. “The man appears to be a real hard case, but is fanatically patriotic to his country. Wounded four times in battles with the Communist insurgents, four medals for bravery during their infamous Dirty War of 1983 and has two demotions for excessive brutality in interrogating prisoners. A wife and two kids in Cordoba, but believed to have several mistresses scattered about the country, almost no friends, not in the military. Doesn’t belong to any political parties, bowling leagues or anything else that I can find. The army is his life.”
“Where was he born?”
“In the slums of Buenos Aires, raised in an orphanage, worked in a factory making cars until he ran away and faked ID papers to join the army. He got disciplined a lot in boot camp, but then got his act together and had been a model soldier for the next three decades.”
“Until now,” Kurtzman ruminated, stirring sugar into the thick coffee. This was exactly the sort of man who usually was on the same side as Stony Man. A soldier standing bold against the night. He bent the rules a lot, but never outright broke them. However, it was starting to seem that was a cover. In truth, he had been working on some project since before he joined the military forces. But why would he want to start a world war? What would it accomplish aside from killing most of the world’s population? Something glimmered in the back of his mind at the thought, but the more Kurtzman tried to nail it down, the more the notion slipped away.
“Is Calvano also listed as deceased?” Kurtzman asked expectantly.
“Oh, no, very much alive,” Wethers replied. “At the present, he is the base CO for Fort Peron, nicknamed Firebase Alpha by his troops. No reason cited.” The man worked away in silence for a while.
“Alpha,” Kurtzman muttered, rubbing his jaw. That certainly seemed to indicate there were other bases somewhere, which would make sense. Calvano would need one uplink in each hemisphere to cover the entire world. North Dakota was looking more and more important by the minute.
“Well, well, there are classified reports that Communists claim he took huge sums of money from their war chests and turned in nothing,” Wethers continued. “His civilian apartment was checked but they didn’t find any money, or a fancy sports car. There are a lot of accusations, but no indictments.”
“He might have kept the money to fund this uplink project,” Kurtzman theorized, starting to take a sip of coffee, then putting the mug back in place. “After all, a pound of food stolen from the enemy is worth ten pounds of your own supplies. This is the twenty-first century and every general worth his salt has read The Art of War by Sun Tzu.”
“Absolutely,” Wethers agreed, massaging his wrists. “However, I wonder if—”
“Got her!” Carmen Delahunt yelled in triumph. “Bear, I found our mystery woman! Her name is Henrietta Caramico, no middle name, which is rather odd for a Spanish woman. Caramico is one of the very few female officers in the Argentine army…” A smile slowly grew on the woman’s face. “And her last known billet was at Fort Peron, under the command of General Rolf Calvano.”
“Hot damn, now we’re talking,” Tokaido said with a grim smile, but his hands never paused in the endless typing.
“What’s more,” Delahunt continued, “according to the official records, Lieutenant Caramico died two years ago in a plane crash.”
“Another ghost soldier,” Kurtzman said, rubbing a hand along the wheel of his chair. “All right, this could just be a coincidence, but we have to check it out thoroughly. I want a full dossier on Calvano ASAP. What he eats for breakfast, his favorite comic books as a kid, everything!” He paused. “Including everything you can get on this Firebase Alpha. If this pans out, we’re not sending in Phoenix Force to do a recon without as much information as possible.”
Without a word, the two hackers got busy.
“There seems to be something quite bizarre going on at the firebase,” Wethers said slowly, his frown deepening. “It appears to be on red alert.”
“So what? Considering what is happening in the world, that only makes sense,” Kurtzman stated, rubbing the wheels of his chair and wondering where the hacker was going with the observation. “Most of the military bases in the world have closed their gates and gone hard as a prayer in hell.”
“Quite true,” Wethers answered, removing his pipe to gesture at the screen. “However, Fort Peron went on alert status a full day before the Texas warehouse exploded.”
Silence surged through the Computer Room.
“Are you sure?” Delahunt demanded.
“Absolutely,” Wethers stated, giving a nod. “Almost twenty-four hours exactly. They claim it was for war games. But none were scheduled for a couple of months.”
“It’s them,” Tokaido declared. “It’s gotta be.” Unless this was an incredibly clever red herring to make them waste valuable time while civilization continued to fall apart.
Kurtzman considered the matter from every angle and made his decision. Reaching for a telephone, the man tapped in a few numbers. “Barbara? Me. We may have a hot lead for Phoenix Force….”
CHAPTER TEN
Ezeiza International Airport, Argentina
Slowly, the sun rose on the horizon, banishing the night and heralding a new day. Inside the DC-3 airplane, the muted rumble of the twin engines was barely discernable to the men of Phoenix Force as they ate a hurried breakfast or dutifully checked over their weapons. This mission was just a recon for the Stony Man team, but they were preparing for combat anyway. There were old soldiers, and lazy soldiers, but no old lazy soldiers.
Leaning out the small side window in the cockpit, David McCarter was buffeted by the rushing wind as he clung to the brass sextant with a white-knuckled grip.
Muttering under his breath, McCarter focused the antique navigational aid on the sun, then cut it by half and quickly ran the mathematical calculations. Going back inside, he slid shut the window and sighed in relief.
“Okay, we’re just passing Punta del Este in southern Uruguay,” McCarter declared, placing the sextant into a velvet-lined wooden box. “Right on course.”
“Just a few hours behind schedule,” Hawkins said, sitting in the copilot’s seat, the yoke tight in his hands.
“Close enough,” McCarter said resolutely, taking the pilot’s seat and buckling on the safety belt. “I never realized how much we depend on the bloody GPS network these days. It’s a bleeding nuisance to find out where we are with a sextant and compass. But we should reach Buenos Aires in about an hour.”
“And then the fun starts,” Hawkins said, releasing the yoke as the other man took control of the aircraft.
Although every member of Phoenix Force knew the basics of how to fly most planes, McCarter was a properly trained pilot and Hawkins had no problem letting the Briton have the stick. Only the ace Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi was better at flying. But then, it was said Uncle Jack had been born wearing wings and could pilot anything from a box kite to a space shuttle. And so far, that had proved to be true. Not very surprisingly, his favorite plane was the huge C-130 Hercules, the largest propeller-driven airplane in existence, affectionately called the “Herc” by every airman lucky enough to pilot one of the colossal sky monsters.
Opening a thermos, Hawkins poured himself a plastic cup of hot broth. Unfortunately, their C-130 Hercules had been abandoned at Puerto Rico to help maintain the illusion that they had all been killed by the San Juan mercs. The DC-3 was a replacement found by Kurtzman and his team. Their present DC-3 was almost a toy in comparison to the mighty Herc, only a hair more than half the size, with a third of the range. But the DC-3 was a classic, a workhorse of the clouds.
Invented way back in 1930, the DC-3 had been in production, on and off, ever since. It really said something special about the sturdy skytrain that after seventy years, modern-day avionics couldn’t design a better all-purpose airplane than the old “Gooney Bird.” A DC-3 was able to take off, and land, on rough ground that would crash any other airplane. An important factor in their covert work, exponentially expanding their choice of landing zones. The craft could easily hold the entire team with their equipment and munitions, although not their Hummer. But much more importantly, the DC-3 didn’t make use of the GPS network. It was strictly a directional-radio, dead-reckoning and compass craft, complete with a library of maps stored in the tight causeway between the cockpit and the aft cargo hold.
“Sure hope a Hummer is waiting for us,” Encizo said, spooning some stew from the open Mylar envelope of an MRE pack.
The man was sitting on a wooden bench bolted to the port-side fuselage. There were a lot of steel rings set into the flooring, and nets festooned the curved walls of prestressed aluminum. Clearly, this particular Gooney Bird had been used for hauling freight, with no consideration given for passenger comfort.
“It’s going to be rough country in those foothills,” Manning agreed, adding a touch of silicon lubricate to the bolt-action of his Barrett sniper rifle. He worked the bolt with a subdued click. “Be even worse if we have to go into the mountains. The Argentine Alps make the Shenandoah Mountains look like sand castles.”
“Worse than Pakistan?”
“There isn’t anything worse than the Pakistan mountains on this Earth.” Manning paused in thought. “Well, maybe Mars. Or the big moon—what’s its name?—Ganymede. You know, the one that is constantly exploding?”
“I just hope this gamble pays off,” James added, a cloth cap pulled low over his face. He was lying on a stack of camping supplies lashed to the deck under a canvas sheet. Any good soldier knew to grab some extra sack time whenever possible. It had been part of their basic training, along with defusing high explosives and peeling potatoes. “If Calvano isn’t controlling the GPS network, then we’re shit out of luck.”
“I hear that, brother,” Encizo muttered, shoving the Mylar envelope into a plastic garbage bag hanging from a nearby stanchion.
Pulling out a tiny packet from his shirt pocket, Encizo ripped it open with his teeth and carefully wiped his hands before consigning the moist towelette also to the garbage bag. Clean once more, the man pulled a Walther PPK .38 from the shoulder holster under his white linen jacket to check the draw. Anybody stupid enough to touch an automatic pistol with greasy hands, he thought, deserved the unmarked grave he or she was surely about to be shoveled into.
Satisfied with the draw of the Walther, Encizo holstered it once more and adjusted his jacket to cover the deadly weapon. In an effort to stay low-key, the team was going into Argentina as tourists, civilians on a fishing trip to Mar Chiquita, famous for freshwater trout. Every man was dressed in colorful Hawaiian shirts, denims and sneakers. Their considerable arsenal of weapons was carefully hidden among the plastic boxes full of camping supplies. This was something the team had done before. Kurtzman had couriered them German diplomatic passports, which made inspecting their possessions virtually an act of war, so they expected no trouble slipping the weapons past the customs inspectors, or even the hard-nosed Federal Police.
Slowly, noon arrived and departed, before the DC-3 broached the sprawling coastal city of Montevideo. Staying out of the way of the commercial jetliners, McCarter saw that the dockyards were full of b
ig cargo ships and oil tankers, cargo cranes rising above the vessels like the skeletons of dead giants. Black rock formations dotted the white sandy beaches.
“Looks rather nice,” Hawkins commented, finishing off the broth.
“Why not?” McCarter snorted. “Who the hell goes to Uruguay for their vacation?”
As there was no answer to that, Hawkins went to use the small lavatory, and came back smelling of military soap. “Spell you for a while?” he offered, slipping back into the copilot’s seat.
“Thanks,” McCarter said, gratefully releasing the steering yoke. Then he rose to shuffle into the back for some chow, his stomach softly rumbling in harmony to the engines.
Less than an hour later, the DC-3 was skimming above the crystalline-blue waters of the Rio de la Plata bay. Dipping a wing, Hawkins angled toward Buenos Aires. Twenty minutes later, the sprawling metropolis rose into view over the horizon, gleaming skyscrapers and stone office buildings spreading outward for miles. There were a lot of good reasons that Buenos Aires was called the Paris of South America. Aside from the sheer size of the bustling city, there also were countless art museums, nightclubs, universities, casinos, opera houses, sports arenas, and the usual cadre of grim international corporations safely ensconced in their shining towers of glass and steel. Green parklands dotted the cityscape, and concrete highways wove an impossible maze throughout the buildings and across the wide rivers.
Reclaiming the pilot seat, McCarter lowered their airspeed as Hawkins donned a set of headphones and contacted the control tower at Ezeiza Airport, giving their fake flight number and fake ID. The tower accepted the falsified identification and assigned them a place in line with the other planes waiting to land, along with a private runway set at the absolutely extreme far end of the mammoth airport.
Capital Offensive (Stony Man) Page 15