He examined the system’s log files to see who had access to the server and to the various directories.
Well, well, well, Trace thought, isn’t that interesting. He couldn’t help smiling at his discovery.
I’ll become General Anthony Vista today. He wrote down Anthony Vista’s UserId (Wunderkind) and Vista’s password @MyDogWaynes*Master). Then he entered the network as General Anthony Vista and looked for Isabella’s file.
Trace spent twelve minutes, longer than he wanted to be in the network, and found nothing. Then he came across a password protected database called quarantine zone. Using Vista’s logon information, he pulled up the list of files it contained.
There, among several thousand names, were two that interested him — Austin, Isabella MARY and Austin, Trace MICHAEL.
He downloaded both files to Pete’s laptop so he could examine them later when he was safely offline. He logged off.
He was pleased with himself. Not only had he gotten in and out of ODMC’s network without being discovered, at least as far as he knew, but he had found the files he was after.
A few minutes after having logged off ODMC’s network, Trace turned back to Pete’s laptop and opened Isabella’s file.
It was a waste of time.
The file contained a typed note that Isabella was not known to have committed any crime, but was being held indefinitely as a reluctant informer with respect to crimes committed by her husband, fugitive sniper, Trace Austin.
Nothing else.
Trace closed her file and double-clicked his file to open it.
His file held even less information than Isabella’s file, but it was much more illuminating. His file contained a single note stating that his case had been removed from the custody of the ODMC and transferred to the Pentagon Forces’ watch list.
Other than that notation, Trace’s digital file folder was empty.
Trace’s curiosity spiked. Why’d they transfer my file to the Pentagon?
He decided to explore this.
He composed an encrypted e-mail message to Max Tyler, sent it off and waited. Ten minutes later he had his reply.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Protocol: OPERATION JUST CAUSE
Unable to learn anything to satisfy your request. Subject is classified in the Pentagon’s database.
Sorry, Ol’ Buddy.
Watch your back.
One of your offspring
“Damn,” Trace said softly to himself. “The answers are out there. If it does nothing else right, the military keeps detailed records of absolutely everything it touches.”
Trace realized he had no choice now. He could not operate in the dark. If he was to have any chance of rescuing Isabella, he first had to know how they intended to deal with him. That knowledge might eliminate some options, and he needed to know that in advance. He had to get hold of his file.
To do that, he would have to break into the Pentagon’s secure, trusted network.
CHAPTER 113
Quarantine
Day 34
The first thing Trace did to embark on his hack of the Pentagon’s trusted network was to log on to several known public message boards operated by hackers. He hoped to find sources describing the Pentagon’s network, its IP address, and its host name.
He was able to grab this information on the second message board he tried. The posting also provided maps of the Pentagon’s Sleeping Giant network showing how it was physically and logically organized.
Trace then replicated the steps he had followed when he’d penetrated ODMC’s security and network.
Trace expected the Pentagon’s trusted system to be harder to crack than ODMC’s network, but it was not since he already had a UserId and password he’d recovered.
Trace logged on to the Pentagon’s system using General Vista’s identity. Now he would see if Vista had sufficient privileges at this network level to enable him to find Trace’s own file.
Trace opened the file search text box on the main screen and typed Trace Austin into the keyword space. He pressed the Enter button to search the network for everything containing his name.
One file popped up.
Trace walked through the steps necessary to download the file to the laptop’s hard drive, but the file would not download. Instead, a pop-up message appeared on the screen informing him, as General Vista, that the file could not be downloaded because he did not have the required clearance privileges, that the file was read only.
“Okay,” Trace said to himself, “I’ll read it. I don’t need a copy. I just need information.”
Trace double-clicked the file to open it. The system now returned the message that Vista did not have adequate privileges to open this file to read it, and that he should not again attempt to open this file or he would risk losing all his network privileges.
Trace read the message. He could not help smiling. This is almost too tempting to resist, he thought. Wouldn’t it be a kick if Vista was to wake up tomorrow and find that I have locked him out of the entire network, stripped him of his privileges.
Trace logged off. He had to think of another way to get into the protected file.
Twenty minutes later Trace started again. He retraced his earlier steps in his digital disguise as Vista, and penetrated the Pentagon’s network.
Trace then turned to Ethereal to sniff packets, to find a UserId and a password having TOP SECRET/SECRET COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION level clearance — the highest level of clearance — so he could download his file. The tool took less than one minute to return a usable identity and password at the TS/SCI level of secrecy.
Trace located his file again and, using his new, purloined online identity, downloaded this file to his hard drive.
He would look at his file later. For now, he would poke around in the network to see what else he could find that might be useful to him in dealing with Vista. Then he would quit the network and not return.
Trace used the same TS/SCI UserID and password he had just used successfully to perform a keyword search of the Pentagon’s entire network. He entered into the search field the keyword phrases, Trace Austin, Isabella Austin, Peter Austin, bioterror, bioterrorists, bioweapon, bioagent, biological warfare, MELIOIDOSIS, pentagon, fort lauderdale, BROWARD COUNTY, quarantine, ANTHONY VISTA, GENERAL VISTA, DISTRICT MILITARY COMMANDER, and martial law. Then he directed the program, first, to search through all the Pentagon’s files and databases, at every level of clearance, using these phrases, and then to automatically download to Pete’s laptop any files it found meeting these criteria.
Trace sat back and waited while the search engine did its work. He was now as vulnerable to detection and arrest as he ever would be.
CHAPTER 114
Quarantine
Day 34
Trace’s multiple search criteria returned and downloaded too many files for him to look through immediately. To deal with this, he created five descriptive folders on Pete’s hard drive to dump the files into for later review: Family; City; TerroristS’ Attack; TERRORISTS’ Disease; SECRETARY OF DEFENSE; and MISCELLANEOUS.
He moved each file into its appropriate folder. Then he logged off and shut down the computer.
Later that evening, in a corner in the back of a meeting room in the hotel he’d selected to squat in that night, Trace set up the laptop on the floor in front of himself and began the tedious task of looking through the downloaded files.
He started with the directories called City and TerroristS’ Attack. Nothing in either folder interested him. Next, he looked at the files in the TerroristS’ Disease directory. He was surprised to learn the extent to which the population was infected by Melioidosis. It was much more devastating than either CNN or the authorities had admitted to the public, he thought.
The next directory he opened, designated SECRETARY OF DEFENCE, contained only one file. It was marked Secret Compartmented Information. This, in and of itself, did no
t arouse Trace’s interest since he expected to find files spanning the whole range of security classifications. What caught his eye, however, was the notice in the file’s name that the file was “Eyes Only, Copy 2 of 2, Report to the President of the United States Concerning OPERATION TESTING GROUND: Proposed U.S. DOMESTIC BIOWEAPON Attack on A designated united states city.”
Trace moved the cursor over the file’s name and allowed it to hover there.
Maybe I should leave this alone, he thought. Breaking into the secretary of defense’s file would be fundamentally wrong, unpatriotic, at best. Maybe even worse. After all, he said out loud, this is a cabinet officer, not some passed-over-for-promotion pissant colonel who’s been exiled to the Pentagon.
But what about that reference to a proposed U.S. domestic bioweapon terrorist attack? he thought.
He took a deep breath and stared across the room, looking through the warehouse’s hazy, ambient night light.
I’m already in for one or more felonies, he thought. How much more can they do to me if I’m caught? If the file contains nothing relevant, I’ll forget I ever saw it. No one will ever know.
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Then he double-clicked the file, entered the stolen TS/SCI level UserID and password he’d appropriated, and looked on as the file opened.
He skimmed the entire file, all eighteen pages of the Report to the President.
Then he read it again, slowly.
“Holy sweet Jesus,” he said out loud.
He leaned over and looked again at the first page, the Report’s Executive Summary.
“I don’t believe this. How could they?”
Trace thought about what he knew from television specials and other sources he’d read over the years. The government is capable of doing this, he thought. It’s done it before on a smaller scale on innocent populations. Several times, in fact. It’s well documented.
He recalled the government’s Tuskegee experiment where the Public Health Department allowed syphilis, affecting hundreds of African-Americans, to go untreated for forty years, even after a cure for syphilis had been discovered.
He also thought back to the government’s public apology in 1993 in which it admitted that during the Cold War it had conducted the Tennessee experiment in which designated slums of that state, because they physically resembled Russian cities that the United States might attack, were sprayed with radioactive zinc cadmium sulfide, a fine fluorescent powder, to see the effects of the attack on the population. He also recalled a similar admission and apology in 1994 when the government admitted doing the same thing in various slums outside St. Louis.
Trace slammed his fist down on the floor. “What will I tell Isabella — that the president, the man she voted for, killed Pete and Nanna?”
The next thing Trace did was take a thumb drive from the laptop’s case and make a backup copy of the file. He would take the backup copy to the hotel safe deposit box where he’d kept the laptop and leave the thumb drive there so he would not have it with him if he was picked up by the authorities.
CHAPTER 115
Quarantine
Day 34
The Pentagon
Arlington, Virginia
“We have an intruder, Sir,” the sergeant said.
“Lock him out. Grab his identity, locate him, then arrest the bastard.”
“I’ve already closed the vulnerable port and broken-off the connection, Sir. I’m starting the probe back to him now, pinging him as we speak.”
The sergeant used the same packet sniffer Ethereal software that Trace had used to now ping Trace’s computer and to identify his IP address. Then, armed with the address, the sergeant let VisualRoute software work its magic backwards.
VisualRoute utilized the whois and traceit tools to identify the path followed by the packet of data from Pete’s laptop to the Pentagon. VisualRoute identified every network device exploited by the fugitive packet on its journey to the Pentagon, then created a reverse map of the intruder’s route from the Pentagon’s network back to the originating laptop.
“We’ll have his name, physical location, and a map of his trail in just a few minutes, Sir.”
“We have him, Sir. And I’ve taken control of his computer,” the sergeant said.
“Examine his hard drive. I want to know if he’s taken anything or was just snooping. If he’s taken anything, I want to know what it was.”
“His name’s Peter Austin, Sir. He’s in Fort Lauderdale. We’re running a profile and a GPS location on him. Just a few more minutes and we’ll have it all.”
We have his profile and the description of his activity in the network,” the sergeant said, holding up a printout.
He paused to read the printout, then turned to the colonel.
“Here are the files Austin downloaded,” he said, handing over the printout.
The colonel looked at the list and handed it back to the sergeant.
“Notify the District Military Commander in Fort Lauderdale to pick up Peter Austin and hold him. Instruct him to get the hard drive from his computer.”
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 116
Quarantine
Day 34
General Vista paced in front of his desk.
Wayne, the general’s boxer, sat by the desk, his sloping golden back rigid, his head up. His affect was that of a sitting mountain lion with a black snout. His eyes kept pace with Vista’s steps as if the dog was watching a child on a carnival merry-go-round ride.
“Austin hacked into the Pentagon’s trusted network using my ID and password,” Vista said to his dog. “That bastard. And they’ve cut off my privileges, my access to the network because of him. He’s messing with my career.”
He leaned over and scratched Wayne’s head.
“So the IT nerds at the Pentagon think they’re going to take Peter Austin as their prisoner. Ha! Not likely unless I find him in the mass grave and pack his ashes in a bottle for the top brass.” He laughed.
Wayne quit his regal pose, lowered himself to the floor, and curled up at the foot of the desk’s chair, his jaw resting on his crossed paws.
“I’ll give them an Austin all right, but it won’t be Peter. I can’t wait to see Austin’s face when I arrest him.”
CHAPTER 117
Quarantine
Day 34
Early that same evening Trace composed an encrypted e-mail using the Panama mission’s OPERATION JUST CAUSE encryption protocol, and sent it to his former SEAL friend who now was at the Pentagon, Admiral Max Tyler.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Protocol: OPERATION JUST CAUSE
Desperately need your friendship, help, and unquestioning trust.
Upon your reply e-mail confirming your agreement to the terms below, I will send you a follow-up e-mail with a file attachment I have encrypted with the OPERATION JUST CAUSE algorithm.
Bury the file in deep cover. Do not resurrect it unless something happens to me or Isabella — not even if I, in person or otherwise, request that you return the file to me. In that event, you must assume coercion.
If anything happens to me or Isabella other than death by unequivocal natural causes, contact my law partner, Harlan Crockett, at the law firm of Clayton, Patton, Morris & Rome, in Washington. He will deliver the KEY to you upon your statement to him of the phrase, “JUST CAUSE”.
In that event, deliver the file and the KEY to the Managing Editors of Huffington Post, Politico, the New York Times, Fox News, and the Washington Post for publication. First make a backup copy for yourself.
Under no circumstances are you to attempt to open and examine the file. Knowing its contents would pose grave danger to you and your loved ones.
Confirm by return e-mail that these terms are acceptable to you. Or, confirm that you will not accept them. In either case you should destroy this e-mail to protect yourself.
Offspring, your Pappy desperately needs your help. Don’
t let me down.
Trace sent the e-mail.
Next, he composed and sent an e-mail to Harlan Crockett. Since his law partner had no knowledge of the OPERATION JUST CAUSE encryption key, Trace encrypted his e-mail to Crockett using only the law firm’s Blowfish code.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Firm Billings
Protocol: Blowfish
Harlan,
I need your help. If you are agreeable to the terms I state below I will send you a follow-up e-mail with an encryption KEY attachment. Place the digital copy of the KEY in the same place we maintain clients’ deep-cover files.
Do nothing with the KEY unless you are contacted by a person who uses the phrase “JUST CAUSE” as a password. In that event, deliver the KEY to him.
NO SAFE PLACE Page 26