by S L Shelton
The odds of me seeing Barb again are about 3.5 to 1. Acceptable odds for special Ops. Horrible odds if one of those hostages was there because I was responsible for upsetting her and chasing her away to begin with.
No good. How can I improve the situation?
Alternate Flow Chart:
One puzzle master (me), finding the location of the hostages, using skill in observation and problem solving to formulate least-risky method of contact. Formulate a game that the terrorists must play. While game is in play, the underlying, Scott-manipulated game plays out, freeing the hostages with SEALs or Delta as a backup resource for escape.
Odds of freeing all the hostages: even money. With a massive fall-back option of calling in the cavalry anyway if no rescue possible.
Much of the information I required to complete the chart couldn’t be obtained until I reached Amsterdam. So I mapped out my first eight moves and laid down the outline for a few more. I’d have to make myself a controlling variable as well as a player—flowing through the game and making alterations to the rules as I went.
There it is, I thought. Guns or Brains.
All of the information played out before my eyes as a twisting, turning play of process flow lines with abrupt endings where the lines turned an angry red. And this all played out in a matter of five seconds as I was standing in front of my desk, staring at the ceiling.
I knew what I was going to do; I just needed the moment to mentally squeeze the trigger. That took another five seconds.
That’s a damned big decision, I thought to myself. Maybe I should just call the FBI and let them know about the texts. But then again, she wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been for me being such a crappy boyfriend.
“Scott,” Bonbon said gently, having seen me go “vacant” on her before.
I looked in their faces, took a deep breath. “I’m going to get her.”
Fear and excitement flashed across both of their faces. After I spoke the words aloud, my heart started pounding.
“No.” Bonbon said firmly.
“It wasn’t up for a vote,” I replied firmly.
“Scott…”
Bonbon was still trying to grasp what I was saying. Somber, sober Storc looked at me intensely and with a lowered voice asked, “What do you need from us?”
“Give me a minute to think,” I said as Storc got up, and I sat down with a thump in my chair. Suddenly the weight of this was on me—this beautiful, crazy thing I was going to do.
“I’ll have to give you both more details as they come to me, but the first thing I want you both to do is to not talk to anyone about this. It’s critical.” I stared directly at Bonbon and paused to let that sink in. She was the gossip, and she knew it. But I was positive, with Barb’s life in the balance, that she could keep her mouth shut.
“Bonbon,” I continued. “I need a secure website…key and IP access only. And I need it to be bulletproof, and by bulletproof I mean bomb proof, and by bomb proof I mean nuke proof.”
“Scott, I’m not sure about—”
“Nuke proof,” I repeated.
“Nuke proof?” she repeated. “Who am I securing against? The terrorists?”
“Think NSA,” I replied in a whisper.
“Ahhh. Gotcha,” she said, seeming to get with the program. I knew the subversion would tempt her into being more cooperative.
“I’ll need secure FTP access, messaging, and a forensic-level wipe app for my tablet and phone. Before you make any system changes to these devices, make a full restore point copy for both of them, including logs.” I handed them both to her.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to, but if I was going to Europe with illegal software, involving myself in an international incident, and laying a path to terrorists, I needed to be able to cover my tracks. With the push of a button, my smartphone and my tablet could be wiped clean and restored to their present condition—including the removal of any connectivity logs and phone calls.
She nodded and hurried off to her cube down the hall. I looked at Storc and smiled. “Whatever the highest number of bounces you’ve ever done on proxy paths, I want you to set up a path to triple it, with at least three dynamic, encrypted loops. If you or Bonbon send anything to my phone or iPad, or if I send anything to you, I want it to be completely invisible. Remember who we are trying to hide from.”
“That will slow down the connection considerably. It’d be best to stick to Wi-Fi when you can. Otherwise you’ll be receiving at dial-up speeds,” he warned.
“I know. But security will be important... You know they’ll be scanning everyone going into Amsterdam.”
“Will do, boss,” he said with a smile and a wink.
“When Bonbon has my site up, I’d like to have as near to real-time updates on Barb’s phone location as possible,” I said, pointing at the computer screen. “I also need you to modify a couple of my apps. I’ll be able to do some of them myself on the flight, but I won’t be able to do it all in the time we have.”
He nodded, started to turn, and then stopped, looking at me with a very serious expression. “You, my friend, are Batman. I’ve always wanted to do something like this.”
I smiled and put my hand on his shoulder. “I always thought of myself more as Sherlock Holmes.”
“Lame,” he said before he turned and headed down the corridor to his servers in the NOC.
I walked down the hall to the first glass-windowed office outside the developers’ cubicle farm—the office of my boss, Danny Habib. Danny was a tall, round-faced, smiling fellow with a sharp wit and tongue, making him either very likable or very hateable. I liked him, if that says anything about me.
We had an agreement. He kept other managers, departments, and executives off my back and out of my face, and I made him the highest-producing department head.
He liked that arrangement…though sometimes he paid a pound of flesh for it. The higher-ups had little to complain about when it came to Habib’s results, though, so they too had learned to ignore the complaints of the other departments when it came to my interdepartmental boundary crossing.
“Hey, man,” I said, poking my head into his fishbowl of an office.
“Hey. What’s up?” he said, half-distracted by something on his computer monitor.
“I’ve got four weeks of accrued vacation time. I need to take an open-ended vacation starting today,” I stated plainly.
His attention shifted to me fully. “Dude! I can’t let you do that. There are too many projects we haven’t finished for the next release. I need you here.”
“Then I quit. Effective today,” I said, turning to go back to my desk. Before I had gotten four steps from his office, he was at his door, calling after me.
“Hey, man. Take as much time as you need. I’ll cover for you.” His response echoed across the cube farm.
“Thanks, man,” I said over my shoulder, dripping sarcasm.
I got back to my cubicle and started arranging for my flight and hotel. A few minutes later, Bonbon returned with my tablet and smartphone.
“Okay! The program is running right now to compile and compress your current drives. It should only take another hour or so for it to finish. It’s a standard backup with a couple of changes,” she said, handing them to me.
“Okay,” I replied, chuckling at her rapid-fire communication.
“Don’t power down on either of them until they are finished,” she continued. “Once that’s done, I wrote a script, excluded from the backup, which downloads two new apps, installs them, and sets up a secure link to a website—which I haven’t set up yet, but will set up as soon as I’m done here.
“The first app is the restore point app, which will wipe both drives as long as they are in Bluetooth range of each other. Then, it takes the backup that’s running right now and ghost copies it, sector by sector, to its original state. Don’t power down, or you’ll have to sync to your computer to restore. I kept a backup copy for you. I’ll put it up on the website when I’ve
secured it. I haven’t yet, but I will, as soon as I’m done here.”
“What about—”
“Hush! I’m not done yet,” she said, shutting me down. “If you need to wipe, hit the wipe app button and enter your code. It’s the one with the skull and crossbones. You don’t have a code yet. The app will ask you for it after it installs. Don’t forget your code. If you forget your code, you won’t be able to wipe it.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Oh yeah! The second app. It’s your standard FTP app. Except I made a copy of it and wrote a script that forces it to use an encryption path sequence to hide your location, to use whatever magic road Storc is writing for you, and to erase the log.
“You can use the script manually on another system if you need to. But it’s automatic on your phone and iPad...and if you do have to wipe everything, I figured you’d need it back at some point, so I made it so you can restore everything—including all the new apps and security from the secure server. But you’ll have to enter all the proxy stuff by hand. Just tunnel through to the site, and you’ll find an executable file to restore your toys.”
She had been looking down as if she were speaking to the phone in my hand. I reached over and lifted her chin with my finger, forcing her to look me in the eye.
“Thank you, Bonny,” I said, smiling. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
She lurched forward and threw her arms around me. “I’m gonna cry,” she said, squeezing me tightly.
I patted her back and said, “It’s going to be okay,” and then gently detached her.
“I hope I did everything right. I’ve never done this spy crap before. I’d feel like shit if it didn’t work and you or Barb—” Her voice trailed off, and then she threw her arms around me again. “I’m gonna cry,” she said again.
I peeled her away again and looked her in the eye. “You have a job to do here. Barb and I are counting on you. You can’t give yourself away by crying every five minutes. But I’ll tell you this—I wouldn’t trust anyone but you and Storc to run this operation from here.” I hugged her again.
I needed to give her something else to do, or she would chew her fingers off trying to stay quiet after the secure site was up.
“Jovanovich,” I said.
“Jovana who?” she asked.
“Jovanovich. Bosnian Serb war criminal,” I replied. “Find every scrap of information you can on him and upload it to the secure server.”
She nodded.
“And anything you can find on modern tactical hostage rescue. SEAL or Delta—not SWAT. I need specific history on US military hostage interventions.”
She nodded again.
I grabbed my pack, kissed her on the cheek, and then walked down the hall to Storc’s cube where he was furiously typing away on his keyboard. All three of his monitors had streams of code running on them.
“I’ve got an ‘update’ script. It can send coordinates every ten seconds. You can access them from the website, and they’ll update your map on both your iPad and your phone—as soon as Bonbon has the website up and running.”
“Okay. How big a cache will we have to work with?”
“Default will be current, but you can step it backward as far back as you need to, starting from the first set we got on your desktop. The first ones are already saved and will be uploaded with the first live feed,” he said before pausing thoughtfully as if something profound had just occurred to him. “Dude!” he exclaimed with a startled look on his face.
It was clear the weight of what was going on had just washed over him.
I smiled. “I’ll be fine,” I said and put my fist out for a bump. His hand came toward mine palm first and then clumsily closed, his palm to my fist.
“When I get back, we’re going to practice that until you get it right,” I said with a smile. I turned and walked out. I could hear Storc’s fingers clacking away on the keyboard before I was out of his cube.
**
On the drive back to my house, I spent the entire trip working out the path to Barb. If this happens, then this is the response, else, that response. If this data is present, use it for this, otherwise, continue to the next point.
I ran into the condo as soon as I arrived and began packing, quickly trying to anticipate my clothing and equipment needs. As soon as my bags were packed, I hopped back into my car and drove to the bank.
The teller seemed quite disturbed that I wanted to empty my savings account—she shot me disapproving glares the whole time she was counting out the cash and preparing the traveler’s checks. I couldn’t help but grin at her silent reprimand and wondered how she might feel if she knew I was emptying the accounts to rush off and find my girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—in the midst of a terrorist act. Whoa! My heart jumped a bit as the teller tucked my cash and traveler’s checks into an envelope and then pushed them across the counter to me.
It would be better if I focused on the task at hand rather than how stupid this is, I thought to myself, suddenly having to calm my pulse and breathe the panic out of my chest.
On the drive to Washington Dulles Airport, my mind kept drifting to my doubts, despite my best efforts to push them out of my mind…like trying sweep dust out of a doorway when the wind kept blowing it back in. Several times, I had to consciously force myself to take a breath, realizing only after my lungs had begun to burn that I had been holding it in.
Thankfully, before the strain built into a full-blown panic attack, I was distracted by a chime from my phone. I checked the new status message after stopping at a traffic light: Bonbon’s script had finished running, and all the new apps had been installed.
That bit of news made me feel less alone in my efforts, and I was able to push the narcissistic self-doubt out of my head and focus, once again, on the task at hand: getting to Barb’s phone—and hopefully, Barb.
I parked in long-term parking and then ran all the way to the check-in counter, seeing that I was behind schedule. Once I made it through security and to my terminal, I breathed a little easier before checking my messages again. Bonbon and Storc both had texted, letting me know their progress. Two more apps were done, and the website was up and secure.
Good work, guys, I thought as I flipped to the apps. I attempted a login from the airport Wi-Fi to test security and mapping—both worked flawlessly. I tested the connections immediately by downloading Bonbon’s research files. Three hundred and seventy-five megabytes of web-captured files began loading to my iPad—my reading material for the flight over.
Perfect. There are advantages to working with industry-leading talent, I thought as boarding was called for my flight.
I took a deep breath before rising and grabbing my bags, pushing the last of my nagging worry to the deep recesses of the “Stuff I don’t want to think about” drawer.
“Here we go,” I said aloud as I got in line to board. The mission begins now.
It was a red-eye flight, so there were a few neck pillows being carried by the other passengers, but it wasn’t a crowded flight. Probably due to the fact that the destination city had just suffered a horrific terrorist attack. I had the short row next to the window to myself, and I planned on taking full advantage of it by stretching out.
As soon as my bag was stowed, I laid my head back and closed my eyes, letting the flow chart of the timeline of events spread out over the inside of my eyelids. The line extended from the time of the first email from Barb to the moment I boarded the plane.
Little pieces of information branched off from the timeline and were categorized. Major events that had occurred were connected with thick unmovable lines with headlines in bold text next to them—such as the explosion and the timing of the messages from Barb.
Other information was movable, like: Who sent the texts if it wasn’t Barb? Was her phone moving? How much battery life did it have? If she was alive, was she alone or with others? Lines sometimes faded out only to reappear further along. Those lines would hopefully be filled in later as I collected more informati
on and moved the pieces around in my head.
I was rarely lacking in data. My mind stored nearly everything it saw, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. Even random thoughts were categorized and stored as data.
But even so, I would have given anything to be able to forget that it was me who was responsible for Barb being there in the first place. That little tidbit kept popping into the flow chart whenever it got to something potentially dangerous as an outcome.
That’s not helpful, I thought to myself.
When it was clear I wouldn’t escape the guilty taunting of my flowchart, I decided to do more research. I pulled out my iPad and began scanning through the information I had downloaded on Jovanovich and military hostage rescue tactics. I read, memorized, categorized, and extrapolated everything. Eventually my eyes grew too tired to focus any longer, and it felt like little weights were dangling from my eyelids, slowly draining the strength I was using to keep them open.
After several hours of fighting sleep, I finally tucked my iPad into my backpack and laid my head against the seat, letting it lull to the side when even my neck muscles betrayed me. As I drifted off only a couple of hours before landing, I heard Barb’s voice in my dreams.
“This is your fault, Scott Wolfe,” she said accusingly.
“I know,” I replied.
**
Early afternoon — CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Intelligence agencies all over the world were buzzing, and everyone had their eyes on Amsterdam, from the CIA to Mossad to the German BND...even the Japanese DIH was monitoring incoming and outgoing information.
Mathew Burgess, Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and a Deputy Director of the CIA, called in all of his section chiefs—half of whom were on conference calls from overseas locations. There had been an immediate lockdown of all State Department facilities, and all other US interests were put on high alert.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack, and no red flags had been raised from the usual sources to indicate anything was being planned—this incident had caught everyone off guard.