It was a typical Monday morning. I was up at 4:30 in the morning to wander sleepily through a shower and into presentable clothes for the weekly commute to whatever Sheraton hotel was in whatever city was the target of this week’s work.

The travel was tough at first. I was a nervous flyer, but had now, after a year of traveling nearly every week, become accustomed to the early start on Monday, the 42-mile car ride to the airport, and the customary window seat where I would nap until touchdown in Atlanta.

If you live in Jacksonville, Florida and fly with any regularity, you quickly learn that all roads (flights) lead to Atlanta and beyond. Delta airlines is the major carrier and, to get to most places, you are bound to this carrier and had to travel through one of the busiest airline hubs in the world, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia.

This Monday started like any other. The black Lincoln Town Car picked me up and I drowsily engaged in conversation about the latest current events with the driver. Then, I arrived at the airport and headed through the TSA pre-check line through security and to my gate in Concourse A.

I had taken this flight enough that the Delta personnel, the heavyset gentleman with the beard and the blonde with the stereotypical southern accent were familiar to me. They nodded to me as I hovered my phone over the electronic scanning device. Miss southern accent tried to pronounce my last name as she thanked me for my loyalty to Delta. Her attempted pronunciation was different each time I passed through to the jet way.  My flight status had me boarding the aircraft just after the first class passengers. The faces of my fellow flyers had begun to look familiar too, as many were on the same Monday through Thursday travel cycle. All of us happy to live in Jacksonville, but having to travel to make a decent salary.

This particular February morning was cold and rainy, which was typical for this time of year in north Florida. I glanced at my iPhone screen to confirm where I was supposed to sit. I settled in to seat 16A, leaned against the window, and started to doze off as the other passengers passed down the aisle to their assigned seats.

“Excuse me, what seat are you supposed to be in,” a voice directed at me rudely woke me from my pre-flight nap. I thumbed the screen of my phone to life. “I’m in 16A,” I said with just an edge of rudeness. “You’re in 17A,” my human alarm clock said. He was tall in a dark suit and sported a man-bun.

I looked at the label beneath the overhead bin across the aisle. They displayed 17 D, E and F. Apparently, in my delirium, I had sat in the wrong row. Mr. Man-Bun must have sensed this. My row-mates in 17 B and C started to shift nervously. “Look, I’ll just sit in 16A,” Man-Bun said. He sounded a bit condescending, but in my semi-conscious state, this sounded like the quickest route back to my nap. “Okay. Thanks,” I said. My row mates settled back into their seats, Man Bun settled into his and I drifted off into that semi-restful airplane sleep.

On cue, when the dual ding of the final approach into Atlanta chimed through the cabin, I woke from my slumber. This, as always, was followed by the sound of the landing gear locking into place, and the gradual descent over the railroad tracks and warehouses that dotted the landscape on the approach to the airport.

I glanced at my watch. We were early this week. This was fortunate. I would have time to grab a quick bite on the way to my connection. My destination was Phoenix this week. I officially had an hour and fifteen minutes to connect, but, with this early arrival, I had an extra fifteen minutes tacked on. Making a connection in Atlanta demanded at least an hour as the movement from concourse to concourse could vary in length. Some mornings, when my flight landed in T and I had to catch a flight in D, it could take 30-40 minutes to make the trip.

As we touched down, I changed the settings on my phone, which I had dutifully set to airplane mode (you never know). I went to the ‘Fly Delta’ app and saw that I just had a short journey from the ‘B’ to the ‘A’ concourse for my connecting flight. The jet way was in place and the airplane door opened.

Much like worshipers in church, the aircraft emptied row-by-row starting from the front. Soon, as the deplaning process approached my row, I grabbed my backpack, and did that crouched stance that one did when waiting to exit. As the row in front of me exited, I noticed that Mr. Man Bun was still asleep in his seat. His row-mate in seat 16B nudged him, to no avail. He was a deep sleeper. One more forceful nudge and he fell forward hitting his forehead quite hard on the back of seat 15A.

Something was wrong. 16B hit the flight attendant call button. The flight attendant purposefully walked back to row 16. “Sir,” He called in a forceful voice. “Sir, are you okay?” The male flight attendant grabbed Man Bun’s wrist and a different look crossed his face as the realization set in. He quickly returned to the front of the plane to confer with the other crew members. Then the announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the calm southern accent-twinged voice of the pilot said. “We have a bit of a medical emergency on the flight today. I’m going to ask the passengers remaining on the plane to take your seats while we wait for emergency medical personnel to come aboard. We will make every attempt to get you off the plane in order to make your connections. Please be patient.”

The calming voice of the captain did the trick. The passengers in 16B and C moved to other empty seats to give another flight attendant and one of the pilots access to the passenger. From the looks they exchanged, it appeared that the emergency medical personnel were going to act as transporters of a dead body.

The EMT’s boarded the plane after a surprisingly short period of time. They checked Man Bun with a stethoscope and assessed his condition. Apparently he had been dead long enough that they didn’t attempt CPR. They simply lifted him from his seat and brought him to the waiting gurney in the jet way.

This was a new experience. I was quite shaken. I drank two cups of expensive, bitter airport coffee and tried to convince myself that these things happen. Mr. Man Bun, whose name I would later discover was Thomas Channing, looked young, healthy and much too pretentious to die quietly in an airplane seat. I had interacted with this man much more than with most passengers on my typical Monday morning flight. He had died in the seat assigned to me. Not that the seat assignment had anything to do with his death. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

2: Road Kill Part 2 - Not Your Typical Airport Layover

Road Kill – Part 2

By Don Massenzio

I sat in the Delta Sky Club in the A concourse of the Atlanta airport. The chairs, though they appear comfortable, are built for durability to defend their fabric from sleepy and drunken passengers passing the time between flights.

I had missed my connecting flight to Phoenix, my destination for this week. I took out my laptop and tried to do some work. This was a futile exercise as I quickly brought up spider solitaire in an effort to waste time during the 2 ½ hour layover.

As I was on the verge of completing the series for one suit in this challenging game, I heard my name brutally slaughtered as I was summoned to the front desk through the overhead speakers. I gathered my things hauling my backpack and roller-board suitcase with me. I was sure my possessions would be perfectly fine if I left them and went to see why I was being summoned, but in a post 9-11 world, I had visions of an airport bomb squad detonating my backpack and blowing my laptop and iPad to smithereens.

As I approached the semi-circular desk near the entrance, I noticed two large men in dark suits, earpieces firmly in place, waiting for me with two TSA agents that were in better physical shape than most of those that work the security checkpoints.

At the desk, the largest of the suited men stepped forward. He glanced at his phone and then addressed me, pronouncing my name perfectly—a cause for concern–, and asked me to follow him and his backup singers to somewhere that we could talk.

I explained that I had a flight to catch. He didn’t seem to be dissuaded by this as he encouraged me, with a bit more firmness in his voice, to follow his entourage.

I re-hoisted my backpack and grabbed for my luggage, which didn’t seem to be an acceptable action. I was told that the nice TSA agents would see to my luggage and would return it to me when we were done with our chat.

Although I had done nothing wrong, I started having that niggling feeling that you get at the back of my neck that you get when guilt creeps in. With no perceptible trace of wrongdoing in my recent actions, the desire of federal authorities to lead me to a secret room in the airport triggered the Rolodex of my recent history to frantically search for anything that might elicit their attention. My mind skipped the obvious most recent event that had disrupted my morning flight. Since my subconscious knew I had nothing to do with Man-Bun’s death, it did not even enter my mind as a possibility for the sudden interest in my company. I thought it was more likely due to the work that I was involved in, but the activities of my current job were required a very high level of security clearance just to be made aware of their existence.

Our final destination was a small room off the beaten path of the airport near the A Concourse security checkpoint. I was directed to a metal chair with a vinyl padded seat that was at a small table. There were two matching chairs on the opposite side facing me. The leader of the gang asked me to sit patiently to wait for yet another team member that would be in to see me shortly. I reminded him of my flight and he assured me that I would be accommodated on another flight if our chat caused me to miss my connection. Before he left me to myself, I was asked to relinquish my cell phone. I asked why, but was not given a clear answer other than it was preferred that I not have outside contact until we were done. I vainly attempted to ask why such precautions were taking place, but was told to just be patient and all would be explained very soon.

My sense of unease continued to grow. I sat idle for about 15 minutes. I again replayed the recent events in my life. I had started this job six months earlier after a 15 year stint in Navy intelligence. It was a high-paying government job that no one outside of my organization was aware of. As I was cycling through recent assignments, none came to mind as a reason for my current pseudo-incarceration.

Just as I was beginning the review cycle again, the door opened and a woman in a government-issue blue suit and white blouse entered. She also pronounced my name correctly. This rarely happened twice in one day. She shook my hand with a grip that indicated her desire to be accepted among her male peers. She introduced herself as Special Agent Kate Winslow of the southeastern division of the Department of Homeland Security. These credentials did not put me at ease. She cut to the chase and I finally knew why I was here.

She asked me about the events on my morning flight. I told her that I had inadvertently sat in the wrong row and that Mr. Man-Bun had graciously swapped seats with me so that I could continue my slumber. She asked if I knew him prior to the flight. I did not. She asked what I did for a living and I was vague not being sure of her level of security clearance. She nodded knowingly as I had apparently given her enough key words that told her of the sensitivity of my employment situation.

She then asked me if I thought anyone might want to harm me due to my work activities. I told her how I had been reviewing that possibility and couldn’t think of anything that would qualify. She seemed about to share a tidbit of information with me when there was a knock at the door.

The leader of the pack from our journey from the Delta club entered the room carrying a folder. He handed it to Agent Winslow and she took a look at the small number of pages inside. The other agent excused himself and Winslow sat down across from me.

“What do you know about Aconite?” she asked.

“I’ve never heard that word,” I responded truthfully. “What is it?”

“It’s a fast acting agent that causes the heart to stop and leads to certain death very quickly.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“It’s what killed Mr. Channing on your flight today and we believe it was meant for you.”

I knew at that moment that this would not be a typical traveling Monday.

3: Road Kill Part 3 - Aconite?

Aconite? Poisoning? Homeland Security? This was starting to sound like a bad novel with me as the main character. After Agent Winslow finished with me, she made no secret of her annoyance at my lack of information sharing. Frankly, I had little to share. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to poison me or even bother with me at all.

The bottom line was that I am just an analyst. It may be in a super-secret, under-the-radar government agency, but I didn’t know enough parts of the big picture to be a threat to anyone. The agency was specifically structured in this way. I might be responsible for tracing bank accounts or real estate transactions.  A colleague might be responsible for listening to phone conversations or reading emails. On their own, the transactions, emails and conversations might indicate a portion of criminal activity taking place, but not enough to identify a specific person or group. Old Eddie Snowden made the agencies like the NSA a bit jumpy. They couldn’t risk any of us knowing too much. They pretended it was for our good, but most of us knew the truth. Government bureaucrats definitely didn’t like to put their jobs at risk by putting too much knowledge in the hands of lowly analysts.

I was fine with that.  I was putting away a good portion of my salary, making careful investments, and racking up the airline and hotel points so that I could be my own boss someday and not be part of the bureaucracy. I could put up with them in order to reach my goals, but I would never become one of them.

As I left my temporary pseudo holding cell in bowels of the Atlanta airport, I headed for the nearest Delta counter to try to somehow get to Phoenix. I had missed two possible connecting flights. There was still one that could get me there by 4PM local time. This was the time of year when Arizona aligned with mountain time. In the Spring, when clocks were moved forward an hour, Arizona remained on their current time and switched to west coast time. I was there once in the Fall when the clocks were turned back nationally, it was very confusing.

I was put on standby for the 3PM flight which, without the use of a flux capacitor, would get me there by 4. I went off to P.F. Chang’s, in the A concourse, to have some lunch while I waited. Before my Kung Pao chicken arrived, my cell phone vibrated to life with the number of my boss displaying on the lock screen under the name, Mr. Smith.

“Hello,” I said. This was the super-secret greeting we were to use when answering our phones; No names, no identifying comments or phrases, just hello. Very clever, high-espionage stuff.

“I heard about your morning,” the voice on the other end said in a government-issue monotone. “Come into the mother ship. Your other trip is cancelled. Head to the federal inspection station from where you are now and someone will be there to meet you.”

“Do I have time to eat lunch?”

The silence on the other end of the phone meant that my comment was not a valid question. The fact that I was being instructed to head somewhere immediately meant that lunch was not important at this moment.

I got up to leave, handed the waiter a couple of twenties and an explanation, and headed downstairs to catch the train to the federal inspection station on the lower level of Concourse F. When I got there, Special Agent Winslow was there along with the two muscle bound agents from our earlier encounter.

“It looks like they want you in Washington. There’s a charter waiting for you.”

A charter. Someone wanted me there quickly. This did not make me feel good at all. Good news had a very slow travel schedule in Washington. Bad news traveled at supersonic speed.

“Why a charter?”

“I have no idea,” Winslow said. “Someone from your agency, whatever it is, reached out to my boss and getting you on this charter safely became my first priority.”

We stepped outside where there was a stereotypical black SUV waiting for us. One of the muscle-heads drove. Winslow sat in the front seat and I sat in back next to muscle-head number two. The SUV was piloted to a remote runway near a hangar in the back of the airport.  A gulfstream jet waited with one engine already running. The two muscle-heads, who I would later find out were agents Harper and Lowe, grabbed duffel bags and my checked luggage from the back of the SUV. Apparently I was going to have company.

We boarded the jet. It had six plush passenger seats and a long sofa. I picked one of the seats and Harper and Lowe sat behind me. Almost immediately, the lone flight attendant closed the door and we taxied to the runway and quickly ascended for our short flight to Washington, D.C.

As the plane descended, I realized that we weren’t landing at one of the commercial airports in the metro area. In fact, we were landing in a rural airport outside of D.C. All attempts I made to ask my companions or the flight attendant where we were going resulted in the information being on a need-to-know basis and, apparently, they didn’t need to know.

The plane landed smoothly and pulled directly into a small hangar. As I exited the plane, there was yet another black SUV waiting to take me to the mother ship. The mother ship was our affectionate name for a large house that served as our headquarters. It was located in a sparsely populated area between Manassas and Stafford Virginia that was southwest of D.C.

I could tell we landed near Manassas as we took familiar roads toward our destination. We entered the gravel driveway from a heavily gated access road and emerged near the well-maintained 120-year-old farmhouse with a rustic exterior that contradicted what was found inside.  I entered the living room and made my way to the basement stairway. The living room was tastefully decorated and did little to betray the function of the dwelling. The basement, however, was surreal and daunting. The floorplan of the basement exceeded that of the house by about 20 times. It spread out beneath the driveway and the surrounding fields and forest to a space of about 200,000 square feet. There were cubicles and offices that were teaming with activity.

My destination was the office of the person that had interrupted my Chinese-American lunch. He had no title or first name. He was simply known as Donovan. Whether or not this was his actual last name was unknown, but he looked like a Donovan.

As I entered his modest office, his sharp blue eyes turned my way. He had a severe flat-top haircut that indicated a military background. The shape of his head and well-muscled neck that strained against his dress shirt and tie looked as if no other type of hairstyle would be allowed. The sleeves of his white shirt were, as always, rolled up on his forearms which bore the scars of past battles and, perhaps, tattoos that had been covered up.

“Have a seat,” Donovan gruffly directed without any hint of a greeting. “We’re going to need you to stay here for a while so we can sort this out.”

“Sort what out?”

“We don’t know yet. Obviously you have been compromised. Some person or group that you have been analyzing wants you to stop. While you’re here, we’re going to have to go through every case you’ve been on and try to figure it out. While we do that, you’re here.”

“Does that mean I can’t leave?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Again, silence answered my question in the affirmative.

“We have to determine what’s going on. You will be debriefed and we will figure out what information triggered the attempt on you this morning. We’ve had some clothes brought in for you. You are to have no contact with anyone outside of the mother ship until we get through this.”

“Now wait a minute,” I started to get as angry as I dared with this man. “Am I in custody? What’s going on here?”

“Your status depends on what we find out. You can help yourself by cooperating fully so that we get through this quickly.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the answer, but it appeared I had no choice. When I became part of this organization, I signed an agreement that basically gave them the right to ‘assign’ me as they saw fit. Right now it appeared I was being assigned to the mother ship without any definitive end to the assignment. I would cooperate and prove to them I had nothing to hide, and also knew nothing, or so I thought.

4: Road Kill Part 4 - Inside the Mothership

Road Kill – Part 4

Don Massenzio

Donovan was a great person to have on your side. I had seen him back my colleagues based only on scraps of evidence and their hunches. I didn’t, however, want to be on the other side of him. I had also seen the results of his ‘discussions’ with former colleagues that had crossed him in some way by being careless with their handling of information or digging where they shouldn’t be. As I mentioned, the key to my agency was compartmentalization. No one person had enough knowledge to put together what was being investigated. This gave me comfort, at least back when I wasn’t being investigated.

It was absurd. I took every assignment given to me. I traveled to whatever corner of the country asked and stayed in whatever mid-level hotel the government had an agreement with. I never complained. I did what I was asked. Now, within a single day, someone apparently tried to kill me and I was under investigation by my own people for something I wasn’t aware of. Happy Monday.

I was escorted to one of the dormitory style rooms that were part of the Mother Ship’s underground city. The rooms seemed generous for those under our protection, but, now that I was going to be residing in one, it seemed like a jail cell with curtains (and no windows). I was relieved of my cell phone and laptop. There was no outside contact to be made from this room. The small flat screen television on the wall only displayed heavily censored movies and television reruns. There was no news or anything live allowed to be broadcast to the dormitory rooms. We didn’t want those under protection to have any idea what was going on outside. What I always thought was a prudent precaution was now adding to my sense of being imprisoned.

Donovan told me that the people that wanted to talk to me were all busy and that I could cool my heels here for a while. I knew the drill. They were going through my work area and all of my computer files with a fine tooth comb. They had taken my laptop and phone and would be putting them through forensics. I had that strange feeling of guilt that was similar to what I had in Catholic elementary school when someone had done something wrong in the class and, even though it wasn’t me, I still felt guilt and had the urge to confess just so that things could get back to normal. I knew this was irrational, but early imprinting runs deep.

I grabbed the remote from the small desk and flipped through the three closed circuit channels that I was allowed to see. The choices included old reruns of the Andy Griffith show, the Disney animated version of Tarzan with Rosy O’Donnell as a gorilla (casting by Donald Trump?), and, ironically, reruns of 24. I settled on the adventures in Mayberry wishing that I was in this quaint little town where the sheriff didn’t need to carry a gun.

After about an episode and a half, there was a knock on the door. Before I had a chance to acknowledge it, the door opened and Donovan’s assistant, Jay Rosnick, poked his head in. Rosnick was ex-special forces in an unspecified branch of the military. He was intimidating without trying to be so, and fiercely loyal to Donovan.

“He wants to see you,” Rosnick said.

I didn’t have to question who the ‘he’ was. I turned off the television and followed Rosnick through the organized maze. Many of the people I passed knew me and, as they glanced up from their work, I could tell that the word had gotten around the Mother Ship that I was someone under scrutiny.

Rosnick delivered me to Donovan’s office. Donovan was seated behind his glass and chrome desk, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head. This had the effect of wrinkling his forehead to make him look like some kind of bulldog with a crew cut.

“Have a seat,” he said, trying to fake friendliness. I’d seen this tactic before and it did nothing to put me at ease.

“We’ve started our preparations for debriefing you, but I wanted to have a chance to talk to you one-on-one before we formalize the process.”

I knew what this meant. They had found something and he wanted me to cop to it and save them a bunch of time. Again, I flipped through the Rolodex in my mind and nothing jumped out.

“Okay, let’s talk. Now, what are we talking about?” came my witty reply.

“You are going to play it that way?” Donovan said, leaning forward with his hands clasped on the desk.

“I’m not playing anything. I don’t know anything.”

“We’ve been through your activity logs and it jumped out right away.”

“What jumped out right away?”

“I must admit, I didn’t think you had this skill set. Who was paying you, or did you do it without a buyer in mind?”

“Honestly Donovan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really. You are going to sit there and tell me that you didn’t hack into the peripheral files? You left a trail that Stevie Wonder could find on your computer. As good as your hacking skills are, your ability to cover your tracks sucks.”

Peripheral files? I certainly knew what these were. They were like the decoder ring that tied together pieces of compartmentalized analysis. The analysis by itself was marginally interesting. It might contain patters of bank transactions or emails, but the peripheral files put context around those lists of things. Someone possessing pieces of the analysis along with the peripheral files could bring down a corporation, or even a country. They could also sell the information to the highest bidder. Basically, it was an offense that ranged from blackmail to treason. I started feeling the Catholic elementary school guilt again as my palms began to sweat. I had to plead my case and try to find out what was found.

“I don’t know what you found, but I can only tell you that I didn’t hack into anything. I wouldn’t know where to start and I wouldn’t know what to do with the information if I found it. I have no reason to jeopardize my job and, frankly, my life by doing something so stupid.”

“That’s where I scratched my head at first. Then, I believe, we found your motivation for doing this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to keep up this ignorance act? It’s getting a bit tiring.”

“It’s not an act. I’m truly in the dark about all of this. What possible motivation did you find?”

“Well, it appears you are a bit overextended. You have bank loans against your house, a loan for a boat, a leased corvette, and a personal line of credit for $50,000 that’s overdrawn.”

I felt bile begin to rise in my throat. If I had eaten anything, it would have emerged on Donovan’s desk at that point. None of these things that he was talking about sounded familiar to me. I started to come to the realization that someone was doing an effective job of setting me up for a fall. I didn’t know who or why, but one thing was clear, the things that were found so far would not be the end of it. Another thing also became clear, if I stayed in the Mother Ship, no one was going to be on my side. If I had compromised this agency, the justice system wouldn’t exist for me.  I would disappear into the bowels of some secret prison to rot away. I had to find out who was setting me up and why, but I couldn’t do it from here. My strategy had just changed from one of cooperation to escape. The problem was, I was in one of the most secure facilities in the world. I wasn’t sure how escape would be possible.

Donovan could see me thinking. He emulated a look that he probably believed passed for disappointment and signaled for Rosnick to rejoin us.

“Take him back to his room,” he said, then to me, “This is just getting started. You might want to think about how you’re going to play this.”

As I was escorted back to my room/cell, I observed my surroundings as calmly as I could while my subconscious screamed that I needed to find a way to escape and clear my name.

5: Road Kill Part 5 - Escape from the Mothership

Things were not looking promising. If I was going to prove my innocence, I had to get out of the Mother Ship and get access to a computer. I had learned long ago to cover my ass by backing up everything that I did securely. With today’s cloud technology, I could back up images of my computer’s hard drive to cyberspace and access them from wherever. I had an automatic job that ran in the background on my computer to do this. If I could find the before and after images, I could prove to Donovan that I was innocent.

Right now, I needed to get out of here. I sat on my single bed and went through the possibilities. I could overpower the food delivery person, but that wasn’t a viable idea. Everyone that performed menial tasks like delivering food and emptying the trash doubled as security. This meant that each of them knew 76 ways to disable me with a toothpick. I was an analyst. I used brains not brawn. I needed to use my brain to get out of here. I wasn’t going to overpower anyone.

The Mother Ship was a bunker with state-of-the-art security, surveillance, and defense systems. They all had redundancies upon redundancies. Everything was designed to protect the work being done here, if not the people. There was a fire retardant system laden with chemicals that would extinguish any type of fire instantaneously without regard to what it might do to the humans that happened to be hit by the chemicals.

I went through all of these systems in my mind, and then an idea came to me. I would have to be fast and things would have to work out just right. If they didn’t, I would just seal my fate by looking guiltier as I racked up an actual attempted escape with all of my other fabricated infractions. I would have to wait until night when there was a slight drop in security. I had a few hours to kill.

I spent the time going through my plan once I escaped. There was no point in planning for failure. If my scheme failed, I was a dead man. Actually, worse than dead. I would cease to exist. If any of the rumors were true, I would be hidden away to die a miserable and lonely life. This was the fate that awaited people like Edward Snowden if he ever returned. I was no Snowden, but at this moment, I envied his escape to and asylum in Russia.

I passed the time watching old episodes of the original Star Trek series. The show was way ahead of its time. I was trying to psych myself up to be more Captain Kirk and less Mr. Spock in my current situation. I needed to steel myself for what lay ahead.

Finally it was 10PM. I knew that they had surveillance in my room, so it was time to use my acting skills. I doubled over in pain and began writhing on the bed. I clutched my chest and did my best to pretend that I was having a heart attack. Between gasps for air, I muttered that I needed help. If they were monitoring me, someone would come any minute.

As predicted, the lock on the door disengaged and two beefy ‘custodians’ entered my room. They asked what was wrong and I kept up my mantra of clutching my chest and saying it hurt while I struggled for breath.

They looked at each other and apparently decided I needed medical attention. One grabbed me by the armpits and the other took my legs. They were taking me in the direction that I hoped. We were headed for the infirmary. If I could get them to leave me in the triage area while they went for help, I would be able to do what I set out to. The triage area had gurneys where patients could be examined before deciding what to do with them. It looked much like an ER trauma room. There were medical personnel on call in the Mother Ship that rotated in 12-hour shifts. They were likely sleeping or close to it now, so there would be a gap in between the time I was left in the triage area and when they arrived. There was only a triage nurse on duty at the front counter to log me into the treatment room. By the time she came back there to take my vitals, my plan would be in progress and moving toward success (or failure).

Sure enough, I was laid on a gurney and the two custodians went out to fill the nurse in. As soon as they left, I jumped down from the gurney and ran toward the big red button in the hallway. You see, the infirmary was prepared for all types of medical emergencies. One of them might involve extremely contagious diseases. If this were to happen, the big red button put isolation protocols into action. Doors to the infirmary would seal as would doors to the outside world. Loud alarms would sound throughout the Mother Ship.

We had conducted drills on this, but it had never actually happened. The drills sounded the alarms, but the sealing of the building had never been fully enacted. Basically, it allowed 30 seconds for all doors in and out of the subterranean complex to seal. No one could get in or out unless the all-clear came from the infirmary. If my instincts were correct, I would have just enough time to slip out of the Mother Ship and leave any pursuers locked inside.

I sprang toward the red button and pushed it. Almost immediately, the alarm sounded and an announcement began playing that the facility was going under medical lockdown. I ran from the infirmary toward one of the auxiliary staircases. It was a gamble, there might be people using the staircase, but at this late hour, and if I moved fast enough, the chaos of the lockdown would serve as my cover. I was in luck. The staircase was abandoned with the exception of one person in medical scrubs hurrying down the stairs. I hid my face as I hurried past him on the last flight of stairs. I could see the fire door and the metal panel that would seal it off was about halfway down the door. In a sudden burst of speed that risked causing an actual heart attack, I threw myself at the door handle and tumbled out into the blackness in the middle of a wooded area. The door was disguised to look like an old shed. The chilly nighttime air could not have been more welcome. I escaped just before the metal panel sealed the Mother Ship from the outside world. I had maybe ten to fifteen minutes to put some distance between myself and the facility.

I had minimal survival training in the military, but I did know how to find north when I was in the dark outdoors by looking at the sky. I knew that if I headed north, I would eventually come to a highway in about a mile. This was my destination. If I could make it before word got out of my escape, I would be able to avoid roadblocks and other methods of pursuit.

As I ran through the woods, I wished I had spent more time in the gym and less time eating in restaurants. I used to be a runner, and my muscles reacted from memory, but my lungs weren’t happy with what was going on. I could feel a stitch developing in my side and I wondered if I was going to make it.

My doubt soon turned into hope. I could see the lights passing on the highway as I approached it. This highway was heavily traveled by big rigs. Drivers of big rigs were apt to pick up riders that didn’t look threatening. Luckily, I was still in my work clothes and looked professional. I could easily be a motorist whose car had broken down.

It took four passing big rigs before one stopped and picked me up. It was an independent trucker hauling furniture that was being moved. The rig was new and comfortable.

“Where are you headed?” he asked as I climbed in.

“I live down by Sinclair Mill Road. My car broke down and I want to get home and call it in to my insurance so that I can get it towed.”

“That’s not too far from here. I can give you a lift.”

I had thought this through. I had no phone, no identification, no money, and nothing to help me get very far. I did, however, have a good friend that lived on Sinclair Mill Road. If I could get to him and convince him to help me, I might be able to get to the one person that was smart enough to get me out of this jam.

I made up stories about the line of work that I was in and my non-existent family as the trucker, named Jeff, took me on the 10 mile ride south. I thanked him and apologized for not having anything to pay him with as I exited. He said not to worry about it and that he was glad to help. There is hope for humanity yet. If he knew he was helping an escaped fugitive who was thought to be guilty of treason, he might not have been so cheerful.

I walked about a quarter mile toward the familiar house of my former shipmate, Ben Simpson. Luckily, the front light of Ben’s house was on. I stepped up to the door and rang the bell. I heard movement inside and then the door opened. Ben looked a bit older, but was still the same guy that I remembered. He recognized me immediately.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“That’s an interesting story. I can tell you quickly if you let me come in.”

“Sure. Come on in. Are you okay? You look like you’re being chased by a ghost.”

“You have no idea. I wish it was a ghost.”

I entered Ben’s house wondering how much to tell him about my situation. I needed his help, but I didn’t want to get him in trouble. It was going to be tricky.

6: Part 6 - Going off the Grid

It’s hard to explain, but my old shipmate, Ben Simpson, seemed both surprised and not surprised to see me. He let me in and then locked the doorknob, three deadbolts, and the tempered metal latch on his steel front door.

We were both in naval intelligence supporting special forces during the Global War on Terrorism that began after the attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. We spent five years disseminating data and chatter. After leaving the Navy, both Ben and I were recruited for jobs working in the Mother Ship. I took the job, he didn’t.

Something about the agency spooked him. I saw it as a healthy salary, government benefits, and a job that used what I was trained to do.  In light of recent event, maybe Ben was the smart one.

“What did you screw up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, tell me if I’m wrong,” Ben started, “You did something wrong. Donovan called you in. You escaped from the Mother Ship somehow, ran through the woods, caught a ride in a semi, and showed up here. Am I close?”

“Um, you are. You just left out the part where I sat in the wrong airplane seat this morning and the guy who sat in my seat was murdered.”

“Ah, so you didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do what?”

“Whatever they are accusing you of. You didn’t do it, and now someone is trying to frame you since they couldn’t kill you.”

I was a bit dumfounded. I had forgotten about Ben’s Sherlock Holmes-like deduction capabilities. I had to step into my Doctor Watson role.

“How do you know all of this?”

“Well, your clothes, although fashionable a few years ago, are wrinkled in a way that tells me you’ve been wearing them for almost 20 hours. Your shoes are scuffed and you have burdocks on the back of your pants which tells me you ran through the woods and must have taken a direct northerly route where there are no maintained trails. The only reason you would do that would be to head toward the highway. They only reason you would do that would be to hitch a ride. You showed up here because, given the situation, I’m the only friendly in the area.”

“But how do you know where I came from and why?”

“I realized long ago that working for a dark agency is a mistake. Now maybe you believe me. You got close to someone who didn’t want you close. They tried to kill you when you were most vulnerable. When that didn’t work, they did the next best thing, which may actually be worse. They made it look like you committed treason. You know that Donovan would make sure he got you to confess to whatever was compromised even if you didn’t do it. Then you would disappear in some dark, dank hole never to see the sunrise again.”

This did not make me feel any better so I said, “That doesn’t make me feel any better, Ben.”

“It’s a serious situation, my friend. If you are being framed, you either have to find out who is doing it, or make yourself disappear before they do. Of course, if you do find out who’s behind it, you have to get someone who matters to believe you.”

I hung my head. Not much encouragement here.

“It looks like my situation is pretty hopeless then.”

“Well, not totally,” Ben said while getting up from his chair.

“What do you mean, not totally?”

“You came here. Now I’m involved.”

“What do you mean, you’re involved?”

“Man, your skills have softened since you took this government job,” Simpson said as he grabbed two large duffel bags from a deep closet off of the sitting room. “You’ve led them to my place. I’m involved. Even if you leave, they’ll take me in to interrogate me. We are now officially partners and, oh, by the way, we have to leave right now,” he finished as he tossed me a pair of hiking shoes.

“What are these?”

“Um, shoes. 11 ½ if I remember correctly.”

“Why do I need these?”

“Let me see your left shoe.”

“What? Why?”

“Your left shoe. Now. We are running out of time.”

I took off both shoes and tossed him the left one. He unsheathed a large hunting knife and went to work on the heel. After he pried it off, he tossed me a one inch square with a blinking red light.

“A tracker. How the hell did this end up in my shoe?”

“Have you ever wondered why they have a complimentary shoeshine at the Mother Ship?”

“I just thought it was a quirky benefit. Donovan likes shiny shoes.”

“When you give up your shoes to be shined, they insert one of those bad boys with a five-year battery. I’ll bet there’s one in every pair of shoes you wear.”

“So that means…,” I started.

“That means they’ll be hear any minute. Follow me.”

My mind was swirling, but Ben’s instincts were always flawless. He was right about the tracker which meant I had put him in danger. That was the last thing I wanted to do. He almost seemed to be prepared for this. I had no choice but to follow him. He led me into the kitchen and to the back door. Before we exited, he opened a hidden panel in the wall and through up a switch.

“Turning off the power?”

“Not exactly. It turns off the lights, but also electrifies just about everything metal on the house. That won’t stop them, but it will slow them down. Unfortunately, it will also piss them off. We better go.”

I assumed we were heading to a vehicle so we could speed away to some alternate location. Instead, Ben led us to an equipment shed in the far back corner of his fenced in yard. It couldn’t have been more than 8 X 10 feet.

“Picking up more equipment?” I asked.

“Not exactly. We’re heading into a little something I had built a few years back.”

“A shed? We’re going to hide in a tool shed? Is it at least armored.”

“Just watch and learn.”

Ben moved a large chest in the middle of the floor. There was a rectangular section of the wooden floor that appeared to be removable. He grabbed a crowbar and lifted it. There was a stairwell underneath that appeared to lead to a subterranean area. Ben motioned for me to head down the stairs. He flipped a switch at the top of the stairs and a series of lights began to turn on. This wasn’t just a subterranean area, Ben had his own version of the Mother Ship under his own land.

“What is this?”

“Just a little getaway,” Ben said with a wry grin. “The contractors that built it for me thought I was nuts. That appears to be not true now.”

There appeared to be living quarters, a cooking area, shelves full of food and other essential supplies, and a row of refrigerators. There was also a large bank of computer monitors that appeared to display surveillance feeds from all over Ben’s property.

“I guess we can hang out here for a while, but then what?”

“Those guys aren’t going to give up. They will eventually find this place. We need to be long gone by then. We can’t just run off blindly, though. We need to come up with a place we can go where we can get some cover and find enough help to crack this thing.”

Just as Ben was finishing up his statement, we could see multiple vehicles approaching his property. Armored paramilitary personnel, with no branch designation, began circling the house. As one of the men unlatched the gate, we could see him jump back.

“Well that zapped him a bit,” Ben said with a laugh. “It’s not lethal, but it feels like he stuck a fork in a 110 outlet. He’ll think twice about touching metal on my property again.”

As the personnel moved closer to the house, Ben moved toward one of the keyboards in front of the computer monitors. When the perimeter of personnel closed to within 30 feet of the property, Ben keyed in a quick command.

Suddenly, the whole property lit up with extremely bright floodlights and, from nowhere, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell began playing at a volume so loud that we could feel the bass vibrating through the earth above. A low rumble followed and the house imploded upon itself. The personnel fell back and, when the smoke cleared, Ben’s house was a pile of rubble.

“I guess that got their attention. The game is now officially on,” Ben said with a cackling laugh.

The explosion seemed to instill an air of increased caution in whoever was tracking me down. They fell back to their vehicles to likely call in to the Mother Ship and bring some fresh form of hell to deal with finding me.

7: Part 7 - The Bunker

Road Kill – Part 7

Now I was really confused. Ben Simpson blew up his own house. He did it to stop the authorities from finding me, but also to protect himself. If he knew he would come under suspicion, why didn’t he kick me out into the night? I planned on asking him this question, but at the moment I was glued to watching the action on the computer screens. The agents had dropped back behind their armored vehicles. They appeared to be standing down for the moment, but I knew they were just calling for the next wave in the assault on the property.

I turned to Ben and pointed at one of the computer workstations.

“I need to get online and see if I can track down the images of my laptop.”

“You’ve been doing automated cloud backups. I’m amazed. You actually broke the rules to protect your own ass?”

“That I did. It’s a little something I may have learned from you.”

“Well, obviously you didn’t do enough to protect yourself. Go ahead. I have an untraceable IP and a dedicated ultra-high-speed connection.”

I sat down at the workstation and entered commands that would get me to the Dark Web. Luckily, and as I expected, Ben had the software needed to access this hidden area of the Internet. There was a surprising amount of integrity among those that hung out on the Dark Web. Yes, most of them were hackers and people running black markets. Reputation was everything. If you messed with someone sophisticated enough to access this last bastion of privacy, you would have the ire of thousands of hackers hunting you down to irreparably hurt you financially, professionally, and personally.

I made it to the IP address of where my laptop images were stored and I immediately panicked at what I saw. Every image prior to today was gone. There were two images from today that had a time stamp after I was registered as a ‘guest’ in the Mother Ship.

“What the hell? Where did they go?”

“I’m not surprised. Do you think Donavan’s geek squad didn’t look for a routine that backed up your drive? I’m sure most of them run them on their own laptops. There is one thing that we know now.”

“What’s that, Ben?”

“Someone is definitely out to get you. If they found the images, why not wipe them out? Why put fresh ones out there that likely implicate you further?”

I hadn’t thought of that obvious conclusion due to my anger.  Now I had even more things stacked against me. But, there was still some hope. Ben realized it the same time that I did.

“All you need to do is access the backup files that are kept of everything on the Dark Web,” he said as if reading my mind.

“That’s all. Except, you have to be a hacker with exceptional skills to access them. Their location changes constantly and only the founding fathers of the Dark Web and their trusted descendants have that kind of access and they rarely use it.”

“Do you know anyone like that?”

“Not really…except, maybe one person, but he’s going to be hard to get to.”

“Why is that?”

“He is about 700 miles away and we are stuck underground.”

“My phone line is secure. Just call him.”

“You don’t understand. What I’m asking him to do puts him in danger. If I call or email him, he won’t be able to verify it’s me. I need to talk to him in person. It’s the only way.”

“Well, that changes our plan a little bit, but either way it was going to involve running, so now we have a destination,” Simpson said as he started to unlock some cabinets.

“What are you doing?”

“If we’re going to travel, we’re going to need documents for assumed identities in case we get stopped by any authorities. We also need to change our appearances somewhat, hair color, eye color, things like that.”

“And you have the ability to create all of that stuff?”

“I always plan for a rainy day, you know that.”

There was planning for a rainy day and then planning for a biblical flood. This was the latter.

“What about our friends on the surface?” I asked.

“The door to this place is similar to the type used on bank vaults. Even if they find it in the shed, it’s going to take them hours to break through it. We have a good 4-6 hours before they get to us. Let’s get our IDs settled and then we need to get some sleep. You must be beat.”

I hadn’t thought about the last time I slept. I was on an early flight, and with the distance to the airport, I was up at 4:40 AM. I had been on an adrenaline high since the discovery of a dead Mr. Man Bun in my assigned seat on the plane. I was now running on fumes. Ben seemed to be on track with what I was thinking.

“It’s been a busy day. Let’s change your hair color and the style and put in some color contacts and take your photo for the ID. Then you and I can get some rest for a few hours.”

I was stunned. The fatigue which had now been identified as something I should be feeling, was setting in with a vengeance. I leaned over a stationary sink and massaged dark brown hair color through my blonde-going-gray hair. I then took an electric razor and, with the number 3 guard covering the blade, buzzed my newly darkened hair the best that I could. As I looked at the man in the mirror, I could still see myself, but I would look different to someone who saw me from a distance. I then put in the brown contact lenses that Ben had given me to cover my pale blue eyes.

Once my new appearance was finalized, Ben had me stand in front of a pale blue backdrop and he took my picture.

“You are now a resident of Oregon. Your name is Zachary Egan and I’ve added five years to your actual age. You look like you’ve aged at least that much.”

“Gee thanks. Is there a real Zachary Egan in Oregon?”

“There is now. I’ve added an entry to their DMV database in case someone looks it up. You’ve had a couple of speeding tickets, but nothing major.”

“Well that’s good, I guess.”

“I’m going to finish up my identity. Why don’t you go and get some rest? I’ll wake you up in a few hours and we will be on our way.”

“Won’t it be daytime? Wouldn’t it be smarter to move out while it’s dark?”

“Not really. We’ll be able to surface far enough away and get a vehicle quickly enough that they won’t be on our trail right away. In the meantime, we’re safe here.”

I was too tired to argue. Ben seemed to have an answer for every scenario. It was almost as if he had prepared for this exact situation. He was always paranoid about working in intelligence, but I had no idea how far that paranoia had progressed. I was, however, welcoming this affliction with open arms given my current predicament.

I laid down on a cot that was set up in a dark corner of Ben’s bat cave. I didn’t think I could possibly sleep, but my next memory was of being nudged awake. As I opened my eyes, I hoped that I would see my own bedroom in my own condo, and that this was all just a nightmare brought on by working too hard. No luck. I was still in Ben’s bunker.

“We need to get going. I’ve loaded some duffels for us with everything we’ll need to get us 700 miles. I put out some clothes that I think will fit you.”

Sure enough, the jeans and shirt he gave me fit well with the exception of being just a bit long. There was also a pair of hiking shoes that were a ½ size too big, but they would work in a pinch, and I was certainly in a pinch.

“How are we going to get out of here?” I asked.

I could see by the monitors, that is was full daylight on the surface.

“Not a problem. We’re going to travel horizontally for a bit before we surface. I packed some MREs so we can eat on the run.”

MREs. That took me back to survival training. On the ship, we ate quite well by military standards. I had only had the so-called ‘meals ready to eat’ in fictional situations. They actually weren’t bad.

Before I could ask how we were going to accomplish this, Ben led me to a door at the far end of the bunker away from the hatch from which we had entered. He opened the door and flipped a switch to activate emergency lighting. Beyond the door I could see a tunnel that stretched on for a very long distance.

“Seriously, Ben. Why did you feel the need to do something like this?”

“Well, you never know when some naïve former shipmate, falsely accused of treason, is going to show up with half the government chasing him. I was a Boy Scout. Always prepared.”

The answer definitely didn’t satisfy me but it would have to do for now.

I followed Ben into the tunnel. As he shut the door, he accessed a hidden keypad.

“What’s that for?”

“Covering our tracks. The entire bunker and the tunnel behind us will collapse once we’ve passed sensors that are laid out along the path. We don’t want anyone following us or even knowing we’ve been here.”

“That’s a lot of equipment and supplies you’re sacrificing in the bunker.”

“Oh well. Most of it is government surplus anyway,” he said with a wry smile.

We traveled along the tunnel for at least a half-mile. Every so often, a low rumble came from behind us as the bunker and tunnel presumably collapsed. Eventually we came to a ladder that went about fifteen feet up to a hatch. I followed Ben up the ladder and he opened the hatch. As we emerged, we appeared to be in a large barn-like structure.

Ben closed the hatch and then walked over to a vehicle that was covered with a large tarp. He pulled back the tarp revealing a large Ford Crown Victoria with Oregon license plates that appeared to be at least ten years old. He then opened the door to the building revealing a long dirt road that cut across a field. We got into the Crown Vic and when Ben turned the key, the huge Ford roared to life.

“Well, which way?” Ben asked.

I pondered one more time how willing my contact would be to help me out. It was a role of the dice, but the odds were much better than putting myself in the hands of Donovan and his minions.

“South. We’re heading south.”

“South it is,” Ben said as he put the Crown Vic into gear and pulled out onto the dirt road.

There appeared to be no living creatures in site, at least not the human kind. I hoped it would stay that way until we got where we were going.

8: Part 8 - Welcome to Florida

As I sat in the spacious front seat of the vintage Crown Victoria, I began to ponder my situation. We were heading down Interstate 95 at a legal, but aggressive speed. We were likely being searched for by Donovan and my agency along with whatever other government and private mercenaries had been enlisted. My escape from The Mother Ship screamed guilt. My fleeing with Ben Simpson implicated him as well. Now I was heading south to try to pull someone else into this web of guilt. If I was going to clear myself and those that I involved, it was going to be a difficult road. The more people I pulled in, the more risk there was of taking them all down with me on a sinking ship.

As we crossed the South Carolina border and made our way past Savannah Georgia, Ben pulled the Crown Vic off the road into one of the many travel stops.

“Gas is cheap here in Georgia. We might as well top her off,” he said

“Good idea. I need to use the bathroom.”

“Let’s get some food. There’s a Subway connected to this place. What do you want?”

“Ham and cheese for me.”

“I’ll get the gas and the sandwiches. Give the cashier this on the way in and tell him fill-up on pump 2.”

I took the crisp twenty and ten that Ben gave me, stopped by the cashier and headed to the men’s room. After I relieved myself, I looked in the mirror as I washed my hands. My artificially brown irises were surrounded by red. My eyes had dark circles under them from lack of sleep. Seeing this image in the mirror resulted in a wave of exhaustion passing through my body to the extent that I had to grab the edge of the sink.

I splashed some cold water in my face and made my way back out to the car. Ben was just finishing up pumping the gas. He tossed me the keys and headed for the travel store.

“I’ve gotta use the facilities. You can drive the rest of the way. I’ll pick up the sandwiches on my way out.”

I sat in the driver’s seat and adjusted the mirrors. As I looked in the rearview, a blue and yellow Dodge Charger with the markings of the Georgia State Patrol pulled in behind me. I saw the driver and passenger doors open. I began to panic. Could Donovan have put out a BOLO for me? The trooper from the passenger side walked up the driver side of the Crown Vic. I sunk down in the seat. As he got close to the driver door, I braced myself for him tapping on the window. I expected his partner to be coming up the other side of the car.

Instead, he was pumping gas into their cruiser. The other trooper passed the Crown Vic on his way into the store. My panic was unfounded, but also reminded me how serious the situation was.

As my breathing returned to normal, Ben returned to the car. I told him what happened.

“Donovan wouldn’t have put a BOLO out on you yet. I know him. He’s personally embarrassed that you escaped on his watch. He will send his thugs after you. He wants to make this go away. You’re making him look bad.”

“So how is he going to find me?”

“He’ll wait for you to slip up. Don’t underestimate him.”

“You make it sound hopeless.”

“Not totally. We just need to stay one step ahead. We do that now by getting back on the road.”

I maneuvered the land yacht back on to 95 south. We cruised silently for the next couple of hours and crossed the Georgia-Florida line.

“So, I haven’t asked until now. Where are we going?” Simpson asked as we passed the northern fringes of Jacksonville.

“We’re going to visit a person that I know only by reputation. He is a hacker with a reputation for being able to maneuver his way around the Dark Web like some kind of cyber Spiderman.”

“That’s saying something. You think this guy will help you?”

“I’m hoping he will. He’s kind of a friend of a friend with a reputation for helping people in trouble.”

The sun had been down for a while and it was approaching 10 P.M. I pulled off into the parking log of a Red Roof Inn.

“What are we doing?” Simpson asked.

“It’s too late to try to make contact tonight. Let’s get some rest and we’ll reach out to him tomorrow.”

“Good idea. This place is out of the way enough. Like I said, I don’t think Donovan has put out a wide net for you yet. He’s going to wait until you pop up somewhere on the grid and them move in fast.”

“So let’s stay off the grid until tomorrow.”

“Agreed.”

Simpson paid cash for a room with two double beds. We went to a retail pharmacy that was nearby and bought some travel size toiletries and toothbrushes. Then we grabbed some fast food and went back to the Motel.

I spent a couple of hours switching through the television news channels half expecting to see my face splashed across the screen as a criminal on the run. Ben fell into a deep sleep in one of the beds.

After I was satisfied that I wasn’t the most wanted man in America, I went into the bathroom, popped out my color contacts into some saline that I had bought. Brushed my teeth and crawled into the other bed. I didn’t think I would sleep, but I soon fell into a deep sleep.

My body must have reacted to the fatigue of being on the run. I woke up with a strip of sunshine filtering through the blackout drapes directly into my face. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and noticed that Ben wasn’t in the other bed.

I swung my legs onto the floor and shook the cobwebs from my mind. The clock radio showed that it was 7:30 A.M. It was time to get going. But where was Ben?

I walked to the window and carefully peered out. I saw Ben pacing in the parking lot. He was speaking on a cell phone. A cell phone. So much for staying off the grid. I opened the door to the room and he turned as saw me. He ended his call and came back toward the door.

“What the hell was that? You’re on the phone? What’s going on here Ben?

“Just relax. It’s a burner. No one can trace it. I’m just making sure that our tracks are covered, that’s all. I’ve got eyes back in Virginia. Apparently they’ve been combing the woods by my property since yesterday and they just gave up this morning. They’re just figuring out that we’re not there or they think we were killed in the cave in of the tunnel.”

I calmed down a bit, but this raised questions.

“Are you sure you can trust these ‘eyes’ of yours?”

“I’m sure. There’s a pretty extensive network of people like me that want to stay off the grid and keep the government out of our lives. We look out for each other.”

It sounded convincing, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Ben was telling me the truth. He must have picked up on my thoughts.

“Listen, I’m looking out for you. Let’s get on the road and go see your contact. We need to get online and look for the backup of your laptop images if we’re going to get out of this mess.”

I snapped back to the matter at hand. I put my contacts back in, straightened my hair, brushed my teeth and we gathered up our things and hit the road.

We traveled over the Buckman Bridge and followed the 295 loop toward the beaches area of Jacksonville. We exited on Atlantic Boulevard and followed it east to the coast and to a strip mall in the Neptune Beach area.

I parked the car a few doors down from the office that we were visiting. We walked in to the lobby and we were greeted by a friendly looking black dog.

“Who is it Lucy?” came a voice from one of the offices and then, “May I help you?”

The man was medium height with dark hair and intimidating blue eyes that indicated intelligence.

“Are you Clifford Jones?”

“No, I’m his partner, Frank. Jonesy, er, Mr. Jones should be back in a little bit. He is out getting us coffee. If you have a seat he’ll be here soon.”

We sat in the small lobby area of the office and less than three minutes later, the door opened and a figure that looked like he just finished surfing entered.

“Jonesy, these gentlemen are here to see you.”

I stood up and shook hands with Clifford Jones.

“How can I help you guys?” he asked with just a bit of trepidation.

“Mr. Athenos sent me,” I said in reply.

Jones recognized the code word at once and his face changed.

“Come into my office,” he said.

We entered and he motioned to his guest chairs and quickly closed the door behind us.

9: Part 9 - Mr. Athenos

“First, saying the name ‘Mr. Athenos’ in public can get you killed or worse. Second, who the hell are you guys and why are you here?”

That was the warm greeting that Ben Simpson and I received from Clifford Jones, III. He was a contradiction in his board shorts, flip flops and Deadpool t-shirt. His clothes said beach bum, but his face and demeanor said that he was serious and not happy with us.

Ben and I told him our names which meant nothing to him.

“We served on the same ship as Brad Rafferty. Does that name ring a bell?”

A bit of recognition and a slight diminishment in tension crossed Jones’s face.

“I know Brad and his sister Nancy, but I’m not sure how that connects to me or to you using the code word in the lobby of my office.”

I explained to Jones how desperate we were and I relayed to him the details of the past few days without leaving anything out. He tented his fingers and I watched as his eyebrows rose up in conjunction with the portions of the story that intrigued him.

“So, you escaped from The Mother Ship and lived to tell about it. You are either very skilled or very lucky,” Jones said when I was finished.

“Well, he had some help,” Ben interjected.

“Yeah. About that, what drove you to build a bunker on steroids under your property, Mr. Simpson? It’s almost like you were expecting something like this.”

Jones seemed to think that there was more to Ben’s story than he was telling. I would later find out this was true.

“Mr. Jones, when you’ve seen what our government is capable of, and you have the information that I collected as part of military intelligence, you have to be prepared for something like this. I’m not crazy, just practical,” Ben said. This last sentence seemed to be more to convince himself than Jones.

Jones didn’t seem convinced, but he moved on anyway.

“So you’re thinking that someone set you up. You got to close to someone and they wanted to shut you down.”

“That’s the thing, Mr. Jones. I didn’t get close to anyone. The information in the peripheral files that showed up on my laptop were planted there. I’m sure of it. I have no idea which case it was or what the information was, but Donovan seemed convinced that I had crossed the line and that’s all that matters.”

“So what you’re telling me is that, by coming here, you’ve put me, my partner, and anyone associated with us in jeopardy. Excuse me if I don’t send you a fruit basket to thank you.”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t argue with him. Ben decided to plead our case.

“Look, Mr. Jones. Were desperate. My friend here is literally running for his life. The organization we are running from doesn’t mess around. You have to take my word on this. Unless we can clear his name, he is going to disappear and I might disappear along with him just for helping him.”

“So Edward Snowden was right? It’s hard to separate the fact from the fiction when it comes to how deep the government is in our stuff,” Jones said as if he had given this topic a great deal of thought.

“More than you know,” Ben responded.

“Suppose I do decide to help? You’re thinking that the images of your laptop that you backed up might help prove that you didn’t tap into these peripheral files?”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” I responded.

“Hoping. That’s very definitive,” Jones said with a sarcastic tone. You’re saying you backed them up to the Dark Web? A lot of people that are worried about information being compromised are doing that these days.”

“I don’t understand that myself,” Simpson interjected. “Isn’t that where hackers hang out?”

“It is, Mr. Simpson. But there is a collective cooperation or an ‘honor among thieves’ if you will. If you’re sophisticated enough to access the Dark Web, the hackers leave you alone.”

Then Jones turned to me

“You’re not going to find your laptop images on the Dark Web. They’re on the Deep Web. There is a difference.”

I had heard the distinction and the technology purists that were adamant about reinforcing that distinction. The Dark Web uses the infrastructure and connectivity of the public Internet, but can only be accessed by special software. There is a huge black market trade, especially in the area of drugs. It’s estimated that between four and five percent of Dark Web users are hackers.

The Deep Web is more of a repository or Internet graveyard. It is filled with private sites, archived storage, and Internet time capsules that are not accessible or indexed by search engines like Google or Bing.

“In order to find your files on the Deep Web, we’re going to have to find out who administered the site where your stored them on the Dark Web. Most Dark Web and public Internet sites are backed up to the archives on the Deep web daily, or more frequently depending on the nature of the data. Hopefully your laptop images were updated at least twice a day.”

“Does that mean you’re going to help us?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

“Do I have a choice. You’ve put me in danger just by coming here. If this Donovan and your agency is as powerful as you say, I’m involved. Just because I talked to you, they’ll be so far up my butt that I won’t be able to sit down. Hopefully you’re at least a step ahead of them, but I’m not going to take any chances.”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked.

“I’m going to put you two up somewhere while I dig into this. My partner has a trailer that he used to live in that you can crash in for a few days. Once you give me the information I need, I’m going to have to pull some strings and call in some favors in order to find those laptop backup images.”

“That means you’re going to have tell your partner about us. Is that a good idea?” Simpson asked.

Jones gave him a piercing look.

“Listen, I trust my partner implicitly. He’s already seen you. I’ll just tell him you’re one of my legal clients and that you need a place to crash. He will be fine with it and I won’t be lying. If I sort this out, you guys are going to be paying me some big money.”

“What kind of money, I asked?”

“Let’s just say you’re going to help me get closer to buying that private island I’ve had my eye on.”

Jones was obviously anxious to end the meeting and get us sequestered. He gave us directions to the trailer and got the key from his partner.

“You’re going to have to ditch that Crown Victoria,” Jones said as we came out into the lobby. “Leave it here I’ll drive you guys to the trailer. I’ll get someone to take care of the car and swing by with some food.”

 

We left the building and climbed into Jones’s Subaru crossover. He gave me a tablet device and asked me to type in the relevant information, for the area of the Dark Web where I had backed up my laptop. I typed in the website, login and password and reluctantly put it in between the front seats.

“Don’t worry. It’s encrypted and not connected to the Internet. If anyone tries to get into it, all of the data gets wiped.”

The drive to the trailer was short. It was in a secluded area close to the beach which made it a good place to lay low. Jones pulled up to the trailer and went to the trunk of his car to grab a small duffel bag.

“Take this. It has a burner phone and some cash in it. If you need to take off in a hurry, there’s enough cash to help you make a quick exit.”

“You just keep this in your car?” Simpson asked.

“This is coming from the guy who built the Mall of America under his house? I like to be prepared. I’ve been shot and threatened enough in my line of work to learn to be careful.”

“I thought you were an attorney and owned a surf shop,” Simpson quipped.

“That’s only part of the story. The bad guys we deal with aren’t always happy with us.”

Jones got back into his car and pulled away. The trailer’s door had a dog entrance. I unlocked and we went inside. Thankfully, the AC was running and it was clean and well maintained and looked like no one had lived in it for a while. There was some bottled water in the refrigerator. I grabbed one and handed one to Ben.

“Now I guess we just sit tight,” Ben said.

I grabbed one of the Stephen King paperbacks from the book shelf. Ben grabbed a running magazine that was least a year old and we sat on the couch waiting.

“Do you think Jones is trustworthy?” Ben asked.

“He’s our best bet.”

“How did you hear about him?”

This was a long story and related back to my time in the Navy. Since we had nothing but time, I thought it would be okay to tell Ben about the connection.

“Do you remember that time when I was on a special assignment toward the end of our last tour?”

“I do.”

“Brad Rafferty and I got to spend a lot of time together and that’s when I learned about the Dark Web and people like Clifford Jones.”

“Interesting. I had no idea Rafferty was into that. Tell me about it.”

Ben seemed a little bit too interested. If I was going to tell him this story, I might want to leave out some details.

10: Part 10 - Brad Rafferty

As I sat back on the couch in the borrowed trailer, I immersed myself in the experience that I had with Brad Rafferty on our off-the-books mission in Iran five years earlier.

I began to tell Ben Simpson the story and the words came to me in a flood as I could still feel every detail.

I remembered that the heat was stifling in August in Iran. Even early in the morning, the heat hit me like a blast from a giant oven whose door had just been open. The average daily temperature was around 95 Fahrenheit this time of year, but the days we spent there were warmer than average with temperatures over 100.

The International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA had set up a task force to deal with inspections and other issues related to Iran’s nuclear program. The mission of the task force was to focus and streamline the handling of Iran’s nuclear program by concentrating experts and other resources into one dedicated team. Rafferty was in charge of one of the factions of the team and he enlisted my help as an analyst. We would be overseeing the inspection at the underground site at Fordow while we covertly tried to gather information the Iranian government wasn’t sharing with us.

The concern at this site was the significant growth of Iranian uranium enrichment capabilities. The number of centrifuges had reportedly more than doubled from 1,000 in May to over 2,000 currently. Iran had produced nearly 420 pounds of 20%-enriched uranium. This amount had increased about 320 pounds in May. The previous team discovered that only a small portion of this 20%-enriched uranium had been converted to an oxide form and transformed to fuel research reactors. Once the uranium is converted in this way, it cannot be easily enriched to weapons-grade quality. That still left a large portion of production that had not been converted. We were there to discover the status and plan for this unconverted portion.

Ben leaned forward as I told this story. For some reason I had piqued his interest.

Our team mostly consisted of nationals that came from third-world countries. Up until now, inspectors from the United States were not allowed in Iran. We were the first. Rafferty was the US lead and was allowed to bring one analyst with him. The involvement of American experts was a pilot program for this round of inspections and Rafferty immediately saw how hollow the exercise had been up until now.

Typically, the inspection teams excluded personnel from the United States, the UK, Germany, France and Canada. The inspectors were recruited from around the world and were typically individuals with no specialized knowledge of nuclear weapons. They were pulled from bureaucratic jobs that involved filling out paperwork inventory. Iran balked at the inclusion of Americans, especially from the military, but it was made clear that failure to concede on this issue would result in further trade and monetary sanctions.

“So why did they choose Fordow? That’s not one of the leading suspected sites for weaponization of nuclear material, is it?” Ben asked.

The Fordow site was chosen by the Iranians and it was soon clear to us why. The site had all appearances of being industrial in nature and not related to weaponization of nuclear materials in any way. Their official escort from the Iranian government led us around the facility and made sure that all questions were answered in a satisfactory way by the plant personnel.

“So what was your role on Raffery’s team?” Ben asked when I took a breath.

I told Ben that I was brought on board to provide Rafferty with intelligence on all of the Iranian personnel that we interacted with. Beyond this, I was also able to uncover background information on the other team members. I didn’t tell Ben this, because it was off the books. I quickly discovered that many of them were receiving suspicious supplemental funding from some source, likely the Iranian government, so that inspection findings would be favorable.

“How did the Iranians treat you?” Ben asked.

This was an interesting question. We were told at the outset of the trip that our position on the inspection team would be contentious and they might face obstacles in obtaining information. We were treated coolly by their hosts and the other team members. We knew this wasn’t going to work as we tried to gather intelligence.

That was until we met Dr. Zaafir Alam. Dr. Alam was a U.S. educated scientist that had actually spent many years working and living in the United States. His mother had taken ill and he had traveled to Iran to see her in the late 1980’s. She passed away, and, as he traveled to the airport for his return to the United States, he was detained by security and prevented from leaving the country. His background in nuclear engineering and research afforded him the ‘privilege’ of being presented with a job opportunity working for the Iranian government. He had since married, had children, and made a decent life in Iran, but we could tell he missed the United States. That’s how we bonded with him.

“Bonded how? Did this guy pass you information?” Ben pressed.

I decided at that moment to hold back on some details. My instincts told me that Ben was much more interested in what happened in Iran than I had anticipated. My penchant for holding classified information close was causing alarms to go off. I decided to go forward with a redacted version of the story so I didn’t arouse his suspicions.

I told Ben how Rafferty and Alam became frequent dinner companions. At first, their conversations were about what was happening in the U.S. and generic shop talk about the nuclear industry. Both men were afraid, justifiably so, that their dinners were under surveillance by the Iranian government. Rafferty could tell, however, that something was troubling Alam. Whenever conversation approached any topic remotely related to the inspections, Alam became uncomfortable in a way that indicated he had something heavy on his mind.

This was when I decided that it was time to leave out some detail. Rafferty was able to leverage his relationship with Alam. It happened organically and was not malicious in any way. As Rafferty relayed it to me, after about four weeks of frequent dinners, Alam rose from the table at the end of a Friday evening meal when it was time to leave. Rafferty rose as well, and they shook hands. It was an American custom, but was not unusual in Iran, especially within a business setting. This time, when they shook hands, Alam placed a slip of paper in Rafferty’s hand. It was obvious that it was not meant to be read until he was alone.

I told Simpson that Rafferty and Alam met in secret and a plan was put in place to obtain information about the Iranian nuclear program that was off the books. All he wanted in return was to gain asylum for himself and his family in the United States. Rafferty felt like we could make this happen.

“But it didn’t happen, did it?” Simpson asked.

I told Simpson that they got to Alam before we could help him reach his goal. This was essentially the truth. What I didn’t tell him was how the U.S. government had dragged their feet under the pretense of validating the data that we received from Alam and concern over his motivation. Instead of being granted asylum, he and his family were executed.  They made plans to touch base the following day and both men went their separate ways. The data we gathered couldn’t be validated and Alam lost his life needlessly. Rafferty took it hard and I was baptized by fire into the world of covert operations.

Simpson pondered my story for a minute.

“You must have been upset when Alam didn’t get rewarded for the information,” he said, obviously fishing for more.

He was right, but I didn’t allow him to see my internal reaction. He seemed about to press me for more information when the burner phone that Jones had given us chirped to life. I answered it.

“I just had visitors,” Jones said in a voice that was calm and even.

He let us know that some local federal agents had been to his office asking about recent visitors. He also let us know that he didn’t give them any information and that we were likely safe for now. His next bit of news rocked me to my core, however.

“By the way, my poking around the Deep Web has earned me an exclusive privilege. I’m going to be meeting with Mr. Athenos.”

I was confused. I hadn’t realized that the code word I had given Jones was the name of an actual person. He didn’t realize this either.

“I received an encrypted email with someone claiming to be him. He wants to meet with you, Simpson and me. I was given a time and place.”

Jones gave me the information. It would be in two days. We would drive south on Interstate 95 and would receive further instructions. Athenos indicated that he would give us what we needed. I wasn’t so sure.

11: Part 11 - Project OSCAR

Ben seemed to act a little differently after I told him about what happened when I was in Iran with Rafferty. He was a bit more businesslike and distant. I asked him what was wrong.

“I didn’t know you had that kind of experience. Some of that information you picked up in Iran might be part of the reason you’re in danger.”

I could see where he would think that. The funny thing was, I didn’t tell him everything I knew. In fact, Rafferty and I were ‘aggressively asked’ by our commander to forget what we knew and let it go. I told Simpson I didn’t think they were related. I really didn’t think they were, but until I could get a look at what was on the modified image of my computer, I wouldn’t know for sure.

As I was thinking this, there was a knock on the door. Before we could panic, Clifford Jones’ voice called out to us.

“Hey guys, it’s me. We need to strategize a bit.”

Ben looked out the window next to the door to make sure nobody was with Jones and that there wasn’t anyone coercing him into visiting us. He nodded to me and I opened the door. Jones came in carrying a laptop.

“You need to take a look at what they added to your laptop image. I didn’t look at it, and I recommend that you are the only one who does,” he said glancing at Ben.

Simpson seemed unfazed.

“That’s fine with me. I probably wouldn’t understand it without the context of what was there originally. Besides, I need some sleep. I’m still not caught up.”

The juices of my curiosity were flowing. Even though I was in trouble up to my eyeballs, I didn’t know why. I’m an analyst at heart and I needed to find out what evidence was being used to frame me.

“I’ve loaded the last four images from your laptop on this machine along with the latest decryption utilities. Why don’t you take a look at it while I’m here and make sure you’ve got what you need?”

As I looked at the laptop, I knew immediately that Jones was no amateur. He had provided me with a high-end laptop that had the four most recent manipulated images of my agency laptop. They were dated and time stamped 24 hours apart starting four days before my plane trip where I escaped death by sitting in the wrong seat. The images were encrypted, but Jones had provided me with the utilities I needed to decrypt them and analyze what evidence was being used to justify framing me.

I thanked Jones.

“Don’t thank me. Just find out what the issue is. Once you find out, do me a favor and don’t tell me. I don’t want to disappear at Guantanamo or whatever deluxe accommodation the government reserves for those that commit treason or share secrets.”

Jones seemed anxious to leave and Ben had escaped to the bedroom without any trace of curiosity. It was as if I had some type of disease that was highly contagious. I understood the concern. The more Jones and Simpson knew, the deeper they were entrenched in this situation.

Jones left the trailer and I was on my own with the laptop. As I looked at the oldest image, I noted that there were three times the files. I didn’t recognize many of them. I began the tedious task of opening and examining each file.

Most of the files appeared to be memos and emails. Most of them seemed to be routine State Department communications. Some appeared to be moderately classified with notes from sensitive meetings, but, initially, there was nothing earth shattering.

About halfway through the second image, however, I began to see communications that were flagged as top secret. Someone at my level should not have access to these items. I could see why Donovan would be concerned. They were above his pay grade as well.

I began to see a series of communications around something called Project OSCAR. The communications were cryptic, but it seemed to point to some type of action in the Middle East. Top secret projects often received random names that did not hint at what was being carried out. When the project name was in all capital letters like this one, however, it usually was some kind of descriptive acronym.

I started thinking through what Project OSCAR might be. Again, there were many references to the Middle East. It appeared that the sponsorship for this project went to the Secretary of State and maybe higher. It could be some routine diplomatic relations type effort. If that were the case, however, it wouldn’t usually be top secret and, more importantly, it wouldn’t be enough to get me locked away for knowing about it. This led me to believe that this was some kind of military or covert operations type project.

I finished looking at the oldest image and then set about comparing the newer images to see what files had been added. After I did this for all four images, I had about 50 files that were not in the first image. My analyst nature told me that I needed to look through all of these before beginning the second stage of the process during which I would try to piece together the information to discover what Project OSCAR was and why is was such a big deal.

The additional 50 files were further developments in the conversation and planning for Project OSCAR. It referred to a playbook that, upon several reviews of the backup images, was not present. This playbook seemed to be the key. It apparently held the detail behind the schedule and plan for this top secret effort.

Once I had reviewed all of the information, I decided that I would follow my usual process for putting the pieces together. In the past, I found that it was good to get away from the information for a period of time before trying to assemble the details into an overall analysis.

I was tired and pouring through this detail made me realize that I needed some rest. I decided to stretch out on the couch and try to take a nap. I drifted off.

My sleep was surprisingly deep and dreamless. I awoke feeling disoriented. It was dark in the trailer and I had to stop and think of where I was. My mind hoped that I had woken up in my apartment and that the events of the past few days were just a bad dream. Unfortunately, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the reality of my situation came crashing down on me.

After I recovered from this realization, my thoughts turned to the images of my laptop. Project OSCAR came back to me. I wondered what the acronym stood for. I began to cycle through key words in my mind; Middle East, Diplomacy, Oil, Terrorism…Oil…Oil…OIL. Could the ‘O’ in OSCAR stand for oil?

I turned on the lamp on the end table next to the sofa and grabbed the laptop. I ran a search through the laptop backup images for the word oil. As the utility searched the encrypted files, four documents popped up that had the word ‘oil’ in them.

The first three documents didn’t have anything consequential. They just listed projections of the oil output from various Middle Eastern countries. Then I looked into the fourth document and that’s when the definition of the acronym OSCAR hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s when I saw ‘Oil Seizure, Collection and Recovery (OSCAR)’. Apparently Project OSCAR was some type of effort to seize oil from Middle Eastern countries.

This had always been taboo. After two wars in the Persian Gulf, the United States had made a point of avoiding the seizure of oil from Iraq or any other country. Could Project OSCAR be some type of effort that deviated from this long-held prime directive?

I knew now what I had to do. I checked the time on the burner phone that Jones had given us. It was 5 A.M. Too early to call Jones, perhaps, but this couldn’t wait.

“Hello,” Jones’ voice answered sounding less groggy than I expected.

I told him I was sorry to bother him.

“It’s no problem. I’m just heading out to catch some early morning waves.”

I asked him if he could defer his surfing for today and come to the trailer.

“You found something? Are you sure I need to be involved in whatever it is?” Jones asked with obvious concern for his own well-being.

I told him I needed his hacking skills.

“What exactly for? I mean, isn’t that why you’re in trouble in the first place?”

I told him I would explain when he got to the trailer. I needed to ask for his help face-to-face. It was the only chance I had of succeeding. I needed more information. I was starting to believe that there were two factions at play; one that wanted me dead or worse and one that wanted to pass me information to expose some terrible plot. At this point, I thought that the latter might resolve the former. To do this, I was going to need Jones to hack into top secret State Department files. Things just escalated to the point of no return.

12: Part 12 - The State Department

“You want me to hack into the State Department? Are you nuts?”

I was afraid that Clifford Jones would have this reaction. He was a renowned hacker and was known to find his way into law enforcement and financial organizations. This was a big step beyond that. I explained to him what was going on with Project OSCAR.

“So you think that someone high up in the administration is advocating the seizure of oil from a country in the Middle East, but you don’t know who, why, or if it’s anything more than just a plan?”

I explained to him that, based on the amount of traffic and communications, it was likely more than a plan. Other than that, he was correct.

“So why do you want to dig deeper into this? When you weren’t even digging, someone was trying to kill you. Now you want to dig more. That makes no sense.”

I explained to Jones why it did make sense. Someone high up in the government was about to do something that made Watergate and the Iran arms-for-hostage deal pale in comparison. We had sent our military to the Middle East many times over the past couple of decades and had never made the seizure of oil part of our operations. To start doing this now showed a fundamental change in the moral compass of the United States. We had always gone to war with the idea of liberating an area and then helping to rebuild it. Never in our recent history had we seized wealth from an area in which our military was active. This would push us more toward the methods of a place like Russia or North Korea. It pissed me off. This was not how my country was supposed to operate.

“Okay, okay. I get it,” Jones said when I stepped down from my soap box.

Apparently my loud voice and emotion had roused Ben Simpson from his nap.

“What’s this I hear about the Middle East and seizing wealth?”

I had no choice but to fill Ben in. Maybe he would talk some sense into me and prevent me from heading for the point of no return. I told him what I found and his reaction was quite the opposite.

“If this is true, we’ve got to try to stop it somehow. If we don’t, then this country takes a big step to the dark side.”

“You too,” Jones said. “I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but hacking into the State Department is a complex and risky proposition.”

“Are you saying you can’t do it,” Simpson asked.

Jones shot him a look that was enough to scare the retired naval officer.

“Of course I can do it. I’m just trying to justify it. I don’t look good in Orange and I’ve got too many plans for the future that don’t involve living in a cage at Guantanamo.”

“Point taken,” Simpson said.

Jones was convinced. Looking back, I think it was a combination of his patriotism and his need to prove that he could do it. Whatever the motivation, he was on board.

“I’m going to need to buy some pristine hardware and set up a special Internet connection that won’t give away my location. If they trace me, they need to see a different location somewhere far away in the world each time.”

All of this preparation sounded like it would take a while. I knew that we had two days before we had to go meet Mr. Athenos. I made Jones aware of my concerns with the time.

“Oh, I’ll have it set up in the morning. I’ll be into their servers before we go and I’ll destroy the hardware before we leave,” Jones said without a trace of arrogance, only sincere confidence. “You’re going to have to sit with me,” he said looking at me. “Once I get in, I won’t know what the hell I’m looking for and you’re going to have to guide me.”

“What about me?” Simpson asked.

“Since you were like Angus McGyver rigging up your little bunker, I’m going to need you to do some things to prepare for our trip to see Athenos,” Jones said. “I want to trick out the vehicle we’re going to take so that we can take some extra precautions.”

I had the feeling Jones was combining being safe with trying to get rid of Ben while we did our digging. I was fine with that.

“Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll take care of it,” Simpson said.

If he suspected he was being blocked from the investigation, he either didn’t show it or understood why. We agreed that Jones would meet us at the trailer in the morning. Now that I had his agreement to help, I suddenly felt exhaustion trying to creep in. Ben wasn’t fully awake yet and agreed some sleep would be a good idea.

********

I slept on the couch which was either surprisingly comfortable, or I was much more tired than I thought. I was awakened by a knock on the trailer door. Ben was already up brewing coffee in the kitchenette. He cautiously approached the door. It was Jones.

He was carrying two large cases. He set them on the small kitchen table.

“This is going to be our office today,” Jones said as he opened the first case.

I asked him if he needed help bringing in more equipment.

“This is all I need, a laptop and a satellite modem. The days of large boxes and dishes are over. The key is small equipment that is easily wiped or disposed of.”

Before setting up, Jones gave Ben a set of keys and a printout with some instructions.

“You’ll find everything you need in the trunk,” Jones said.

Ben looked over the list and nodded a few times and then walked out to the non-descript Ford Fusion that was parked near the trailer. Once he was outside and busy with Jones’s list, Jones confirmed what I suspected he was thinking.

“What’s with that guy? Do you think he can be trusted?”

I was honest with Jones. I honestly wasn’t sure. I served with Ben and we had the kind of friendship that endures when people are thrown together. Beyond that, I really didn’t know him that well other than being familiar with his proclivity to not trust authority, a strange trait in an ex-military man.

The equipment he had was generations ahead of anything I saw at The Mother Ship. Jones took almost no time in setting it up. The machine was Unix based and he entered raw commands to move around. Eventually, after about 90 minutes of poking around, he put his elbows on the table and tented his fingers. I thought he had hit a roadblock.

“No. Not a roadblock, a gate. I’ve found the State Department servers. I’m pondering what I’m about to do. I’m going to use some aggressive intrusion algorithms to get in. I think they’ll get in fairly quickly. The key is going to be to get what we need and get out quickly. By the time they know were in, I want to be gone. Once I start the algorithms, there’s no turning back.”

I was amazed at the speed in which he found the supposed classified servers. He showed me the algorithms and they were so complex, I could hardly believe my eyes. I asked him where he got them. The hacker community has a lot of geniuses, but something like this would take a team and would not likely be widely shared.

“I wrote them myself. I had a free weekend when we didn’t have a case and my girlfriend was at a conference and I got bored and wrote these just in case.”

If I were to compare what Jones was telling me, it would be the equivalent of a surgeon saying that he performed two heart transplants during his lunch hour. It was unbelievable. This man truly had some skills that would earn him admiration from the intelligence community, but would also scare the crap out of them.

Jones looked at me and typed in a series of commands. A series of 26 digits started to cycle through on the screen. After about five minutes, the first digit locked stopped cycling. About ten minutes later, the second one clicked into place.

“I’m not sure how long this will take, but I’m suspecting that it will be a while. Let’s heat up some breakfast and wait for the rest of the digits to click in. Then we’re going to have to act fast.”

Jones had brought a brown paper bag with three Styrofoam containers.

“I stopped by the Sun Dog and got three Cajun breakfast specials to go. I hope you’re hungry. You can call Simpson in. I doubt the key search will finish before we eat up.”

I called Ben in and we ate the food. It was a delicious concoction with andouille sausage, mushrooms, hot peppers and tater tots cooked into eggs. I washed it down with some coffee and felt very full and satisfied.

As we were finishing up, I noticed that there were only two digits left in the key search. Jones noticed it too.

“You better get back to tricking out our chariot,” he said to Ben in a friendly, yet clear way.

“I’m on it. It’s actually kind of fun. You’ve spared no detail. I wish you were around when I built the bunker.”

About 20 minutes after Ben left us, the last number clicked into place and the shield of the State Department appeared on the screen.

“Okay, it’s your turn. What are we looking for?”

We had administrator access to the server. This meant I had free reign to look at emails and memos that were stored. I did the obvious. I searched for files with the word OSCAR in them. I made sure the search was case sensitive. I immediately was given a list containing hundreds of files.

You might be thinking that this was way too easy. Remember, the security experts make sure that outsiders can’t get into the classified servers (so much for that plan). Once you are in, all you have to do is think like a technology illiterate user. They are going to store things so that they’re easy to find without any thought given to security.

I sorted the list of OSCAR files by date and copied those that were dated after the image on my computer to a special thumb drive that Jones had brought with him. Once that was done, Jones logged off the computer.

What he did next was both brutal and necessary. He took a small hammer from his case and destroyed both the laptop and the satellite modem. If the government tried to trace the activity back, the machines needed to be not only turned off, but nonexistent.

“Now that we’ve got those files, you’re going to have to go through them. I want to be able to explain to Athenos what we’ve got and why we need to be in the Dark Web poking around. From what I hear, he is a tough customer,” Jones said as he put the remains of the equipment back into the cases.

I told Jones it would take a while. There were at least 1,500 files.

“Well, luckily it didn’t take us long to get them. You have until tomorrow morning around this time to go through them before we hit the road. You might have an hour or two once we’re on the road, but I hope you find something before them. I’d help you, but I don’t want to get any deeper into this than I already am. I try to keep the felonies I commit to a low number if possible.”

Ben Simpson was finished with the work on the Fusion. Jones put the cases in the trunk and drove off. This left me to begin looking through the files. I sat at the small desk with the laptop and began to go back into analyst mode.

Ben had some electronics that Jones had left behind that we would be using as we traveled south tomorrow.

“Jones asked me to get familiar with these. I’m going to grab a quick shower and then get to it. It looks like you have a lot to do,” Simpson said doing his best to not fish for information.

I told him he was right, there was a lot to do and I set to work doing it.

Once I’m in analyst mode, time passes by quickly and I am oblivious to things around me. I remembered Jones stopping by with some dinner and then I noticed it had gotten dark. I was ¾ of the way through. Most if the information was memos and emails. As I plodded through the last hundred files, I finally found something that was key. It was dated just two days earlier and appeared to be a timeline. It was named ‘OSCAR Final Deployment Schedule’.

When I looked at it, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a systematic list of chronological tasks showing an invasion of two countries in the Middle East coupled with a schedule for tankers to sail to their ports. The first steps of this were to begin in only three months. This was what I was looking for. Now I had to figure out what to do with it. Who could be trusted? The list was pretty short at this point.

13: Part 13 - Baited Breath

I was trying to grasp what I had found. I also wondered how high the information that I found went in the U.S. government. Now that I had the information, I didn’t know what to do with it. Should I go to Donovan at The Mother Ship? Should I go to the press? I just wasn’t sure.

Ben Simpson had been hovering around me as I thought this through. Finally, his curiosity got the best of him.

“What did you find? The look on your face says it’s bad.”

I wasn’t sure if I should tell Simpson. At worst, he could be working with the people who wanted me dead to see how much I knew before finishing the job. At best, I would be putting him in even more danger than he was already in. I decided to tell him the nature of what I found without being specific.

I told him that I found something regarding foreign policy that could hurt people very high up in our government. Further, it could hurt the reputation of the U.S. around the world and change the view that other countries currently had of our country.

Simpson raised his eyebrows.

“That sounds pretty serious. The key here is knowing where to go with the information. You have to know who to trust and who not to trust. In order to do that, we have to figure out who planted the information on your computer. That will help us eliminate those that we shouldn’t trust. Maybe this trip Jones is taking us on in the morning to meet Mr. Athenos will help us find out.”

Simpson made sense. Even without knowing the information, his approach would help me identify who the enemy was. Whoever put the information on my computer wanted me to be caught or even worse, killed.

Maybe Athenos would get us there. Right now, the exhaustion that I usually experienced after intense analysis was sinking in. I needed sleep. Tomorrow was a big day. I was venturing into the unknown with a man I once thought I knew well and one that I hardly knew at all. I had no choice. Once I stretched out on the sofa, sleep came quickly.

At 5:15 A.M., the phone that Jones had given us came to life. Simpson was already up and answered it. I could only hear his end of the short conversation.

“Six. Okay. We’ll be ready.” Then to me, “Jones will be here at six. I already showered. Why don’t you jump in and take one and I’ll rustle up some food?”

After Simpson’s suggestion, it dawned on me that it had been a while since I showered. One whiff and I agreed with him that I needed one.

The hot water felt good as it brought me to life. It also gave me a few minutes to reflect. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with this scavenger hunt to meet Athenos. I tried to come up with a Plan B and quickly realized I didn’t have one. I had no money, no passport, and no one else that I could go to without putting them in danger. I even thought of Brad Rafferty who, although stationed here in Jacksonville, was currently in Pakistan doing some inspection of that country’s nuclear program.

I toweled off and put on some fresh clothes. I felt much more human. I wolfed down the scrambled eggs and bacon Simpson had cooked in the trailer’s small kitchen and washed it down with better than average coffee. Even if I couldn’t trust Ben fully, he could cook.

At six sharp we heard a car pull up to the trailer. Simpson grabbed a bag that Jones had given him and we headed out to the car. Jones was behind the wheel. His usual calm demeanor showed signs of nervousness.

“Where are we headed?” Ben asked him as he slid into the front passenger seat. I sat in the back.

“I don’t know for sure”, Jones said. “I was told to head toward Green Cove Springs. It’s a small town southwest of Jacksonville. From there, I guess we’ll get further instructions.”

“You seem nervous about that,” Ben said.

“I don’t like going into the field without my partner, Frank. I couldn’t even tell him where I was going. I told him I needed to take the day off to go check out some new products for my surf shop. He knew I was lying, but knows me well enough that there was a reason.”

“What’s in this Green Cove Springs?”

“That’s just it,” Jones said. “It’s just a small town. I don’t think it’s our final destination.”

As we headed down back roads to get to I-95 and then more back roads for the next hour, the car was ominously quiet. The silence was broken by the sound of a phone that was next to Jones.

“Jones,” he said into the flip phone. “Okay. Yes, I know where that address is. Okay, yes, then we’ll head to I-75.”

Jones closed the phone.

“We have to pick up a package in Green Cove Springs. We should be there in about five minutes.”

As we entered the small town, Jones pulled into a parking lot behind a seafood restaurant and knocked on the back door. A man wearing an apron opened the door and Jonesy exchanged some words with him. After a minute or so, the man handed him a large bundle wrapped in butcher paper and tied with string. He put it into the trunk and got back in the driver’s seat.

“What was that all about,” Simpson asked.

“Athenos asked me to stop and pick up a package on the way. Now we have to get on I-75 south which is about an hour-and-a-half away and then we have about another hour-and-a-half after that. We’re supposed to meet Athenos at 10:30.”

“Any idea where he is?” Simpson asked.

“My guess would put us somewhere north of Tampa unless he has us get off the interstate before that.”

“What’s in the package?” Ben asked.

Jones let out a sigh.

“I have no idea, but it’s probably better that we don’t know. If it’s something illegal, we can just rack that up to another thing about this adventure that will get me in trouble.”

Jones had made it clear to Ben that he wasn’t in the mood to answer additional questions, especially since he knew about the same amount about this trip as we did. We silently passed through the interior of Florida headed for Interstate 75 which would take us south along the state’s west coast.

The area surrounding the city of Ocala caused me to be somewhat puzzled. It had hills. It actually looked more like Kentucky than Florida with sprawling ranches and horses grazing behind white split rail fences. After passing through this area, we finally made it to Interstate 75 which stretched southward to Miami where it connected with Interstate 95. It was three lanes of tractor-trailers and construction that seemed to stretch on endlessly. It gave me more time to reflect.

What if this was a trap? Jones seemed convinced that this was the right thing to do, but I thought he was probably excited to meet Athenos, a legend among hackers. That may have clouded his judgement. Ben was hard to read. I alternated between completely trusting him and not trusting him at all. What if finally boiled down to, as I played endless scenarios over in my head, was that I had no other options. As long as I moved, I wasn’t standing still where I could be caught.

As we neared Tampa, the disposable flip phone came to life once again. Jones picked it up and listened.

“Okay, we’re headed there,” he said as he put down the phone. “We’re headed to Tarpon Springs, just north of Tampa. The directions I just got put us near the water. It’s outside of town in along the water near a park.”

“Is it safe?” Simpson asked.

Jones laughed.

“Is anything safe right now? There are a lot of fishing boats docked in this area, so at least there will be people around.”

As Jones maneuvered through town, we crossed a small causeway and pulled into a parking lot. Jones looked confused.

“This is the address he gave me. Let’s go in, I guess.”

I concurred with Jones’ confusion. The building we had pulled up to was a run-down bait and tackle shop. It hardly looked like the lair of a computer hacking genius.

Jones retrieved the package from the trunk and we followed him into the shop. It had a strong seafood smell and was cluttered with various fishing gear and coolers filled with bait. Live small bait fish swam in tanks near the counter in the back. A portly man with a substantial beard and a shaved head stood behind the counter.

“Are you Jones?” he said.

“I am,” Jones answered.

“Did you bring the package?”

“I did.”

Jones handed him the bundle and the man immediately opened it. Inside was tightly wrapped plastic around what appeared to be shelled oysters.

“So much for anything illegal unless stinky seafood is against the law in these parts,” Ben observed.

“They’re oysters. They make great bait in this area. We get top dollar for him and a friend in Green Cove Springs gives us the ones that are past the date for human consumption.”

“We stopped for bait?” Jones asked.

“The boss will be very appreciative. These things are like gold for sport fisherman.”

“Speaking of the boss, is he here? We are right on time,” Jones pointed out.

“He is waiting for you. Just go down to the marina to slip 23 and you’ll find him on his boat.”

We left the shop and walked toward the water. There were fishing boats and pleasure craft of all sizes docked on the water with easy access to the Gulf of Mexico. When we reached slip 23, a large cabin cruiser was parked in the spot. We could see a man bent over the access hatch in the back apparently doing some engine work. Jones cleared his throat as we approached the aft of the boat.

“Mr. Jones,” the man said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. It’s too bad that it took a matter of national security to bring us together.”

“Athenos?” Jones asked.

“That’s one of the names I go by,” the man said as he stood and extended a hand.

Jones took the hand of the unassuming, but wiry man who appeared to be in his early 30’s. He certainly didn’t fit the Cheeto-eating, Mountain Dew-swilling stereotype of the hacker, but neither did Jones.

“Let’s go into the cabin and sort this out.”

We followed him down a short set of steps into the cabin below. The cabin was filled with state-of-the-art technology.

Athenos sat at a small table and invited us to sit as well. Once we were settled in and facing him he said, “Now, let’s figure out how to get everyone out of this pickle.”

I had no inclination of the road he would be taking us down, but if I did at the time, I might have left the boat immediately.

14: Part 14 - I'm Screwed

I looked around at the equipment in the boat’s cabin and it dawned on me. Athenos had this stuff in the boat so that he could take it to international waters and not be subject to US laws. I noticed the powerful array of antennae and the dish on the roof of the bridge. This was no fishing boat. This was a floating data center.

Ben and Jones must have noticed it to.

“That’s some pretty hefty satellite communication you have. What kind of speed to you get?” Jones asked.

Athenos looked at him and smiled.

“It’s the fastest available and I have full redundancy.”

“Seems like a lot or hardware to put on your boat, how often do you take her out?” Simpson asked.

“As often as I need to,” Athenos answered in an increasingly clipped tone. “I didn’t ask you here to discuss my computing preferences. Our friend here has a problem, which he has made your problem, and I’m going to try to help unravel it.”

Athenos silenced the group with his comment. He was right of course and somehow, despite his unimposing stature, he exuded a demand for respect.

“Now let’s get down to business. The first thing we need to do is cast off the lines and take the boat out to international waters. Then we’ll get online and see who’s been messing with your backup images.”

The three of us exchanged looks. Athenos was alone on the boat, so if he meant to do us harm, we probably could handle him. Jones and Simpson went up to the deck and cast off the lines while Athenos went up to the bridge and started up the twin inboard/outboard engines.

Once we traveled the requisite 14 miles off shore, Athenos dropped anchor and we reconvened in the cabin of the boat. He began switching on monitors and three large screens came to life. Athenos turned his attention to me.

“So, what are you hoping to find?”

I explained my routine for backing up images of my laptop to the Dark Web and that this was a common practice in the intelligence community. A very strong encryption was used so that hackers were deterred from trying to compromise the files. A special key generated by a CIA supercomputer was used to encrypt the file and it could only be unencrypted by using a complementary key.

He entered some commands on one of the screens and a single prompt came up and I recognized the legendary entrance to the dark web.

“Okay, let’s see what we can find” Athenos said more to himself than to one of us.

After about ten minutes of typing and examining, he turned to me.

“Come and take a look at this. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

I looked at the screen. I saw the familiar naming convention that I used for my laptop image backups. I usually used the Julian date (YYYYMMDD format) followed by the time in military format and my initials. I always did backups at the end of each day. There were six weeks’ worth of backups following this convention. When I got to the most recent, I noticed that the backups had time stamps that were not at the end of the day. They were at various times during the night. This didn’t seem right, but I think we had found the mysterious backups that had been altered.

I found the five backups that appeared to have come from another source and told Athenos that these were the ones that we needed to trace. I had the encryption key with me on a secure thumb drive and I brought up the first faux backup with it.

ENCRPYPTION KEY NOT VALID

That was the message I received.

I tried it again.

ENCRPYPTION KEY NOT VALID

Frustrated, I tried the key on one of the backups I had run. It worked.

“It appears that these other backups were encrypted with a different key,” Athenos said.

I didn’t know how that was possible. In order for that to happen, someone would have had to obtain a legitimate backup of my laptop, decrypt it, augment it with the additional information, and then encrypt it with the new key. That just didn’t add up.

“Somebody really wanted to screw you over,” Athenos said stating the obvious.

I asked him if he could find out the IP address of the person who put them there, a numerical sequence that identifies computers. As he was about to answer, we could hear the sound of an approaching ship. Athenos hit a kill switch and shut down all of the equipment immediately.

“We’ve got company,” Ben said. “Stay down here. I’ll check it out.”

He took a pistol from the bag that Jones had given him to carry and climbed the stairs to the deck.

“I’m not sure where he got that,” Jones said. “I didn’t put that in the bag.”

I started to panic a bit, but Athenos seemed generally calm. He sensed my confusion over his lack of alarm.

“I don’t have anything to hide on this boat. So many people run businesses like gambling and porn sites in international waters and outside of the U.S. The authorities can’t touch anything out here, and if they do, I can do a dump of anything stored on my system from a single switch. I don’t store anything on these computers. Everything is on servers all over the world,” Athenos explained.

Jones seemed nervous. Despite his line of work with a detective, the bad guys he dealt with weren’t nearly as scary as the federal government or whoever had sailed out to greet us.

I stood up and peered out the porthole and saw the distinctive colors of a Coast Guard cutter that had pulled alongside us. We could feel the movement of someone boarding the ship. Then we could here Ben Simpson angrily exchanging words with whoever had boarded. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the tone, it was clear that Ben was not happy and that the other person was responding very calmly.

“What do we do?” Jones asked

I honestly didn’t know the answer, but I didn’t want to take these innocent civilians down with me. We quickly worked out our story. I coerced Jones into helping me and he took me to Athenos who was also forced to get involved. They only helped because they feared for their lives.

After a few more minutes of the one-sided angry exchange from the deck, the cabin door popped open and I could see Ben Simpsons legs descending the stairs back into the cabin.

“I just want to say that I am totally against this. Whatever happens from here is not my fault,” he said as he rejoined us in the cabin.

I then saw a familiar brand of black loafers descending the stairs beneath the pant legs of a typical dark blue suit. Then the last person that I wanted to see emerged.

“Well, well. I’m sorry to crash the party. Would you girls like to fill me in?”

It was Donovan. He had found me somehow. I was screwed.

15: Part 15 - Him Again?

Donovan? What was he doing here? How did he find us?

“So, I see that Athenos has helped you find those pesky backups,” Donovan said as he looked past me at the master of the Dark Web.

“It’s as we suspected,” Athenos answered.

“Wait, so you’re in on this?” Jones said. “How is that possible?”

“Ah, Mr. Jones, I presume?” Donovan said turning to the astonished Jones. “I’ve learned a lot about you. You are a talented man.”

“You know about me? I don’t even know who the hell you are and how you’re connected to Athenos.”

I watched Jones becoming angrier. Donovan was not a man that you directed anger at without serious consequences. I made Jones aware of who we were dealing with by asking Donovan what he wanted.

“I want to have a chat with all of you about what you’ve found, but not here. Athenos is one of us. Our agency needs assets with his skills and he is paid quite handsomely to do the work we need.”

This surprised Jones, but it made sense to me. The government had long been recruiting hackers that were in trouble with the law promising them immunity and freedom in return for them working for the good guys. Athenos, however, was truly a big fish.

“They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Athenos said in an effort to justify his subterfuge.

This was big. Athenos had broken the code of the hackers and caretakers of the Deep and Dark Webs. If that information became known, he would be the scourge of the community.

“Mr. Athenos is being modest. His skills are so important to us that we agreed to set him up with this floating supercomputer and keep his front business operating along with a substantial annuity. Of course, if he had refused, we would have tied him to his anchor and dropped him in the ocean,” Donovan explained.

My head was spinning. Athenos worked for The Mother Ship. Jones didn’t know. What about Ben? I turned and looked at him and he had trouble meeting my gaze.

“They made me do it,” Ben said, reading my thoughts. “They had leverage on me and they made me do it.”

“That’s right. Mr. Simpson has been keeping me up-to-date on your progress ever since your exit from our facility. By the way, did you really think that you escaped using your own talents? We let you escape so that you could lead us to more evidence.”

Now my mind was reeling. They let me escape? Simpson was just monitoring me as I led them to more evidence? I was totally screwed. How could I be so naïve?

“Enough discussion here. We need to go somewhere else to debrief. Mr. Athenos, thank you. You are free to go. The rest of you, let’s get onto our boat, get you to your quarters, and we’ll debrief properly.”

Donovan and the two men he brought with him herded us from Athenos boat to a unmarked grey cutter. Whatever Donovan was up to, he had some funding. The cutter looked to be similar in size to what the Coast Guard used as patrol boats. It appeared to be fully crewed and well-armed.

We were escorted to small cabins on the ship and locked inside. They were not uncomfortable, but did nothing to alleviate the feeling that things had just turned bad. I understood my own fate was sealed, but I was worried about Jones and I was angry at Simpson for pretending to be on my side. I suspected him all along, but Donovan had confirmed my friend’s allegiance with those that were after me.

I sat in the cabin for what felt like several hours. There were bottles of water and various packaged food provided. It appeared they had been preparing for us for a while.

Just as I settled onto the cot and put my head back on the pillow, I heard the lock on the door being opened. The door opened and Donovan walked in.

“You know, I always considered you my best analyst and you have proven me correct. I really didn’t think you’d get as far as you did. Of course, enlisting the help of Mr. Jones was brilliant. His talents are formidable.”

I didn’t know what to say. Donovan was not exactly asking questions. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“I do question, however, your willingness to trust Mr. Simpson so easily. Did you really think that he created that underground bunker on his own pension from the Navy? We provided that for him in return for his anticipated service. It was a shame to let him destroy it.”

I just looked down at my shoes. The game was over. I then looked up at Donovan and asked him to release Jones. I explained that I kept him removed from the content of what I had found.

“Mr. Jones committed a serious felony when he hacked into the State Department. He is not being charged, however, although I would like to use it as leverage over him to get him to join us, but he is doing good work as a civilian and should continue to do so. He is being released as we speak and will be flown back to Jacksonville.”

I was perplexed at this revelation. Donovan was letting Jones go? This seemed out of character and also seemed to convey a mixed message.

Just as I was mulling this over, there was a knock on the cabin door. Donovan opened it and Ben Simpson entered.

“Ah Ben. Thanks for joining us. I was just about to go over what happens next. Your timing is perfect.”

I looked at Ben and he gave me an apologetic expression in return.

“I really wanted to tell you I was monitoring you all along,” he said. “Donovan made it clear that I had to keep it up until we got into international waters. Being outside of U.S. jurisdiction was vital to the plan. I didn’t know what the plan was, but I didn’t want to disobey orders and face the consequences. I was also afraid that if I told you Donovan was going to meet up with us in international waters, you might be a bit reluctant to move forward.”

A bit reluctant? He was delivering me right into the hands of the people that believed I was guilty of treason. Reluctant might be an understatement. Donovan picked up on this and began to give some information.

“As I mentioned before, we let you escape from The Mother Ship. Do you know why we did that?”

I answered that I did not.

“I knew that you would do whatever you could to clear yourself of the treasonous charges that I threw at you. The fact of the matter is, I am the one who framed you. I did it for a very good reason.”

Now I was angry. I charged at Donovan, but was stopped by Simpson. I turned on him to let me go.

“Hear him out. You’ve got a choice here.”

A choice. What kind of choice? Work with Donovan or disappear in the basement of some government facility.

“Actually, you do have a choice. You can help stop a historic blunder or you can go back to your boring life as an analyst. I hope I haven’t underestimated your patriotism and your drive to do the right thing. Our efforts may fail with you, but they will definitely fail without your help.”

Now Donovan had my attention. He was hardly one to exaggerate or make false claims. I decided to sit back and let him plead his case. What he shared was unbelievable and would change my life forever.

16: Part 16 - The Choice

I let Donovan’s words sink in for a minute. He was recognizing my patriotism? He was offering me a chance to stop a historic mistake? I could go back to my boring life? The last option was looking very attractive, but his next revelation sealed my decision.

“I don’t think Rafferty was wrong about you. He’s seldom wrong about anything,” Donovan said.

This statement definitely got my attention and Ben Simpson’s as well proving that he wasn’t totally in on the plan.

The ‘Rafferty’ Donovan was referring to was U.S. Navy Commander Brad Rafferty. He was a bit of a superstar in the military intelligence community that I briefly worked with. His latest accomplishment was the takedown of a terrorist that orchestrated a devastating dirty bomb attack on the men’s college basketball championship. Despite this accomplishment, his name was unknown to most outside of the intelligence community.

“What does Rafferty have to do with this,” Simpson asked echoing my thoughts.

“I asked him who could help us with this. He’s too well known by leadership to get involved. I needed someone with a strong analytical mind that could help me definitively prove what was going on and remain discreet; someone with a proven track record. He mentioned you and Simpson.”

“Wait a minute. You didn’t tell me about this,” Simpson said.

“Everything was need to know. You didn’t need to know that Rafferty mentioned you since you’d get a swelled head,” Donovan answered. Then he turned to me, “I couldn’t tell you because you were truly in danger. The information we added to your backups was extracted about three hours before your flight. Someone inside The Mothership is a mole and whoever it is got word to the powers that be. If you hadn’t sat in the wrong seat, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

I had to let the words that Donovan said sink in. I was almost killed. There was a mole in The Mothership. That impregnable fortress had been compromised. Simpson was in on the plan. Rafferty was more impressed with my work than I realized. Finally, I was one drowsy mistake away from being killed.

“It would have sucked if you had been killed,” Simpson said uttering the understatement of the year.

“It would have set the operation back significantly,” Donovan added not making me feel much better. “As for the operation, are you in or out?”

Saying no was not an option. Going back to my mundane life had two significant problems. There were people that wanted me dead because of what I’d allegedly done and I would never be able to live with myself. Turning my back on this might mean that the Middle Eastern countries would be attacked and pillaged like the intelligence indicated. That would be unforgivable.

“I’m in if you are,” Simpson said as looked at me in search of a decision.

Donovan knew my decision by the look on my face. I was not good at hiding emotion or playing poker.

“Okay. You’re both in. Now we need to debrief and figure out what to do next. It’s going to be a delicate operation. You should have everything you need on this ship to get ready for the next phase. Once we debrief, I have to get back to The Mothership keep up appearances. We’ll start with a debrief and plan our next move. Then we’ll take a tour of the ship. I need to show you how it’s equipped so you can tell me if we’re lacking anything.”

We convened in a well-appointed operations room. There were large screen monitors, secure network connections and the very latest audio and video equipment.

“Now, let’s talk about where we are,” Donovan started by addressing me. “You and Jones hacked into the State Department and you downloaded top secret documents that point to an imminent attack and recovery effort in select Middle Eastern countries. Let’s start by having a look at them.”

The encrypted thumb drive that contained all of the information was still in my pocket. I plugged it into the USB port of the high-end laptop and brought up select memos on the large screen along with my notes on the chain of events and the players involved.

The memos started nearly two years ago. They began with the scheduling of exploratory meetings and the minutes from those meetings. The military efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas of the world had spiraled out of control. The public was in an uproar about the lack of suitable equipment for the troops and the apparent endless engagement in those countries without resolution.

What started as exploratory began to gain traction. The motivation, however, was not due to support of the military or any moral obligation from leaders with integrity. The impetus behind Project OSCAR was money. It was apparent, once the potential financial gains were compiled and revealed, enthusiasm for the project grew exponentially. The potential revenue from the oil alone was in the trillions. There were presentations showing how much could be gained by seizing the oil and processing it in US refineries coupled with reducing oil imports. The military, social programs, infrastructure improvements, and the federal deficit could all be addressed. The financial position of the United States would improve overnight.

The only problem with the plan was that our country, which strove to be the caretaker of the world, would suddenly turn to outright piracy and thievery to solve financial problems like an out-of-work man that justifies robbing a bank to clear up debts.

We had established the what and the how. Now we needed to zero in on the who.

“A lot of the communication that you’ve uncovered is low-level analysis that has been stitched together to form Project OSCAR,” Donovan said. “It’s really brilliant and also very familiar. No one person had enough information to piece it together. It was only combined and shared at the highest levels.”

“So who are we talking about?” Simpson asked. “Is it the Secretary of State or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs?”

I told Ben and Donovan that I didn’t think the military command had helped cook up the plot. It appeared, however, that the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense were in it up to their necks.

“That makes sense,” Donovan said. “They’re both very ambitious politically. Their party has been floating their names around as a possible duo for the presidential race. We need to be sure, however. I was afraid it would be some highly-placed individuals like an ambitious senator or congressman, but I didn’t think it would reach the cabinet level.”

I reiterated with Donovan that I was reasonably sure of this, but not 100% positive.

“Well, we need to be 100% positive. Once you are, we can plan our next move,” Donovan said as he looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to The Mothership before I raise any suspicion. Let’s take a quick walk around the ship and then I’ll leave you to it.”

The ship was an amazing vessel. The outside depicted a retired Coast Guard Cutter with a sloppy grey paint job. Below deck, it was a miniature version of The Mothership with technology that officially hadn’t been invented yet. The clear walls doubled as monitors. Donovan demonstrated how 3D maps could hover as holographic images in midair. It was like special effects from the latest Star Trek movie.

“Where did this ship come from?” Simpson asked. “It must have cost a fortune. How did you hide that in the budget?”

Donovan stopped walking and gave us a look that somehow made him look amused and scary at the same time.

“The Mothership is a black operation. This means that there is no official budget. When we need something, I ask for it and I get it with no questions asked. It is likely the most powerful agency in the government. I take that responsibility seriously. That is why we are on this mission. No one will corrupt the image of my country, not even our elected or appointed leadership and not even if we find out the scumbags behind this are at the highest level.”

I was convinced. My opinion of Donovan had come full-circle. The larger-than-life figure was living up to his hype.

When we finished the tour, Donovan went to the top deck where a waiting black helicopter whisked him away. Ben Simpson and I returned to the operations room where a very appetizing lunch was waiting for us. As we ate voraciously, Simpson paused his chewing.

“So what’s next? Where do we start?”

The answer was quite clear to me. We would start at the top with the Secretary of State, Susan Martin-Conway.

17: Part 17 - Follow the Money

Susan Martin-Conway was the ultimate Washington insider. Both she and her husband were political icons. Back in the 1990’s Steven Conway was the leading presidential contender. He was a powerful senator with charisma, looks, and political positioning who was a shoe-in to win the White House. In the summer before the election, he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. It was a very aggressive form of the terrible disease and the public watched him waste away in the spotlight.

He announced that he was dropping out of the campaign in July and succumbed to the disease mere weeks before the election less than four months later. The nation grieved as they watched his young family mourn the passing of a man who was viewed in many circles as the second coming of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

As the nation mourned the loss of a potential president, there was the very real vacancy that existed in Conway’s senate seat. He was from Philadelphia and had a stronghold on the seat for the Democratic party even though the district that he represented included the heavily Republican Harrisburg area. Conway’s charisma and centrist views were enough to unite both political parties behind him. His seat was one that Republicans hoped to grab so they could increase their majority position against the strong Democratic executive branch of the government.

As the scramble to fill the seat ensued, Conway’s senior staff came up with a stroke of genius. Conway’s wife Susan was an Ivy-League-Educated attorney who had given up her law practice to become a mother and political wife. She had stood by her husband and campaigned for him. She had helped him craft many of the key bills that he successfully brought to Congress, often against the odds. She had helped him reach across the aisle to the Republicans assuring passage of these bills by catering to their pet projects. She and her husband forged quite a team and the late Senator Conway’s staff didn’t see any reason that should continue. They had a discreet meeting his widow to float the idea of her taking his seat.

To say that Susan Martin-Conway had political ambitions would be an understatement. She and her husband had agreed that they could partner, but that he needed to be the face of the office. In terms of intellect, she was head and shoulders above him. She crafted many of his policies and speeches. She reviewed drafts of his proposed bills and even supervised his staff. They knew her as well as they knew her husband, maybe better.

But even his senior staffer, Mary Beth Matthews, was taken aback when the widow agreed so quickly. It was almost as if she had been waiting for this to happen. She justified it by saying it would help her to get past her grief and honor Steven’s memory by continuing his good work. As much as Mary Beth wanted to believe that, she felt some kind of undercurrent. Of course, that well-hidden undercurrent was actually the speeding whitewater of ambition that had been suppressed in Susan Martin-Conway since her husband had taken center stage.

It was a whirlwind from that point forward. Martin-Conway made an impassioned speech to the Senate that was picked up on C-Span and broadcast over and over on news networks of all political leanings. She said all the right things, paused and teared up in all the right places and paused for thunderous applause in the right spots. She had written the speech with very little input from the staff, but they all agreed that it didn’t need a lot of work.

She was allowed to take her husband’s place and was able to get passage of three bills that he sponsored in the final 18 months of his term. When it came time for the election for his seat, she took to the process quite naturally. She had stood by Steven for years and had orchestrated much of his fundraising and his public appearances. The machine they had created together had continued to run without him and she won the election by a large margin and continued winning.

When the Democrats retook the White House in 2008, she was tapped by the incoming president to be Secretary of State. She had been disappointed that he had not considered her for Vice President, but during their meeting he explained that, with the volatility around the world, the Secretary of State would be a pivotal role that needed a strong leader and could lead to consideration for the presidency down the road.

When the word ‘presidency’ registered with Susan, she was all in. She accepted the position, sailed through the confirmation hearings and increased the visibility and impact of the cabinet spot to heights not realized since the days of Henry Kissinger.

As I thought about it, Project Oscar started to fit her ambitions. The President’s second term was coming to an end. The Secretary of State had been positioning herself by being more visible than ever. Republican candidates had already announced their candidacies. The Democrats were ominously quiet. There had been unprecedented growth during this president’s two terms coupled with a settling down of trouble spots around the world. New diplomatic and trade agreements had been forged with previously unfriendly nations. Many felt that it was just a matter of the president naming his successor and the obvious choice was Susan Martin-Conway.

That made what we were trying to accomplish even more important, but equally more dangerous.

I asked Ben, in a flippant tone, if he had any ideas about taking down Project Oscar and, potentially, the powerful Secretary of State that everyone loved.

“Well, first we have to make people love her less. Then we have to get her to admit what’s going on.”

It was an answer that I took as being over simplistic at first, but then the brilliance of it hit me. Would people love her less if they knew she was planning the invasion of Middle Eastern countries to basically steal and profit from their oil? In the current political environment, there would be those that would applaud the plan, but the overwhelming majority would likely see it as nation or world-building. That was a common practice in the days of the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany and, to some extent, Russia and China, but not something associated with the United States. A leader seeking to unilaterally do something like this would be frowned upon around the globe.

“There’s something I don’t understand about this,” Ben said as I pondered the enormity of the situation. “How can we justify invading these countries? Back with 9-11, it was the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and the harboring of terrorists that justified our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There has to be some type of event to trigger what she has planned.”

Ben was absolutely right. Even with the invasions following the 9-11 attack, the crackpot conspiracy theorists invaded the Internet with ‘evidence’ that George W. Bush had faked the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and had intentionally imploded the buildings with explosives. What if, in this case, something like this was actually being planned? What if Martin-Conway was going to stage some type of attack to justify the invasion of the Middle Eastern countries targeted by Project Oscar? It was a longshot, but it was as good a place to start as any other.

Ben and I spent the next several hours going through every memo and every file that I had downloaded from the State Department’s server. There were plenty of documents tied to Project Oscar, but nothing related to possible staged or real events to justify its start.

“There is a lot of money being funneled to military spending,” Ben said after a long period of silence. “It’s almost like money laundering. I’ve been able to track large amounts of money all over the world that have ended up in The Pentagon’s coffers under an account called Anti-Terror. The money from that account has been used to buy a lot of military gear, but I also see very large expenditures going to a company called PG Shipbuilders. When I looked them up, I found that they are primarily in the business of building oil rigs. Looks like we’re preparing to transport the spoils of war.”

The fact that money was being spent on preparations meant that things had moved out of the planning stages. This kind of money wasn’t spent on operations that weren’t intended to move forward.

Ben kept rattling off expenditures, but then he became very quiet. He appeared to be accessing the same set of files over and over.

“This doesn’t add up. I need you to come and take a look at this.”

I rolled my chair over to Ben’s workstation and looked at what was concerning him. I didn’t like what I saw.

“Could this be what we’re looking for? Man, I hope not.”

As I looked at the collection of files, I concurred with Ben’s thoughts. If this was the trigger event, things just became much more serious and deadly, but we needed to be sure.

18: Part 18 - The Plot Emerges

Ben and I stared at the screen in disbelief. There were blueprints, schematics, and a date. It all pointed to the date at an event in a major stadium. This couldn’t be good.

“It looks like the target is in Miami. That’s the stadium where the Dolphins play,” Ben said. “It’s not football season, so that must be a concert or something.”

I did some searching of events on or around the date that was mentioned and found it was much worse. I turned my screen toward Ben.

“Holy crap. Well I guess that makes sense. An attack on an event like that would unify United States allies against a common enemy.”

What Ben was referring to was a two-day festival involving the fast-growing sport of soccer. On this day in Miami, there would be two days of matches between the U.S. and Israeli soccer teams. Both countries were putting together all-star teams to play each other in a show of unity and cultural exchange. The matches were set for September 10th and 11th and would include a match each day with star-studded concerts each night.

“If an attack happened during this event, Israel would do anything to retaliate and the U.S. would have no choice but to assist. Do you really think our own government would perpetrate an attack like this?” Ben asked.

Unfortunately, in my intelligence career, I had seen a number of corrupt leaders. Saddam Hussein was known to throw his enemies into wood chippers. Dictators have long used their citizens as human shields against attack. This behavior had never been proven in the United States. Sure, the conspiracy theories ran rampant, but this was the first time that there appeared to be irrefutable proof. We were missing two things, however, the mode of attack and the exact timing.

An attack of this nature would be highly emotional. Israel might not exist if not for the help of the United States. The fact that it does exist is also the main sticking point in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and both friendly and unfriendly Arab countries.

We needed to figure out how to stop this attack without and we needed to tie the Secretary of State to the plan. Among the plans to the stadium and the schedule of events for the two days of the soccer matches, we found a number of spec sheets for men and women of Middle Eastern descent.

“Why the hell are these spec sheets in here?” Ben asked. “The pictures look like mug shots.”

That’s precisely what they were. Ben was right. They were very specific mugshots. I pointed to a field at the bottom of each sheet which had the designation GTMO.

“These are Guantanamo prisoners? Why the hell would they be included in here?” Ben asked.

There was one way to find out. It took a simple hack into the DOJ prisoner database. It was common practice for intelligence analysts in The Mothership to hack into DOJ to get dirt on people under investigation.

I cross-referenced a few of the numbers against the database and wasn’t very shocked by what I found. Each of the prisoners had been identified as members of ISIS or ISIL, whatever the acronym of the day was for this highly organized and flexible terrorist group. These prisoners had another unifying quality. They were being held off the books. It’s true that I was able to find them on the DOJ database, but they each had a designation of UNDOC or undocumented. They simply didn’t exist as documented prisoners.

The general public and many politicians would have a field day if they knew about these prisoners. They were held to provide information and leverage. Ever since 9-11 these types of prisoners had a way of finding themselves to GTMO and other facilities for ‘special interrogation’ procedures. Not even the president knew the extent of it. Part of keeping it from him was to provide plausible deniability and the other part was that he didn’t want to see how the sausage was made. He would take his intelligence in a neat little summarized briefing, not in a blow-by-blow account.

Ben jumped to the same conclusion I did.

“These prisoners are going to be used to carry out the attack, aren’t they?” Ben asked. “If they use legitimate terrorists, it gives the attack even more believability. I don’t like this; Not at all.”

The next thing that I came across was a set of color charts. They showed an outline of the stadium with a small red dot under one of the end-zone bleacher sections. There were concentric circles of different colors radiating out from the red dot. The circles went from orange, immediately surrounding the dot, to blue, yellow, and white as they got further from the dot.

“Those look like damage zones,” Ben said. “I’ve seen them used with explosions to measure the level of damage or killing power.”

That was my thought as well. By the look of the circles, whatever the explosive was, it looked pretty substantial. The smallest circle covered nearly a third of the stadium with the other three stretching beyond the barrier of the structure to the surrounding area. If the stadium was even half-full, the death and destruction would be devastating.

One thing was clear, this was a big event. It was also clear that Ben and I could do little good from a boat 50 miles off the coast of Florida. We needed to get to Donovan and figure out what to do next. Any solution to this situation would need manpower and coordination beyond what the two of us were capable of.  I picked up the phone and dialed the three-digit extension Donovan had given us in case we needed anything. I explained to the woman that we needed to speak to Donovan and was met with silence at first.

“Mr. Donovan said that if you asked for him, he would have difficulty connecting with you so as to not arouse suspicion. He has arranged for an alternate contact. He should be arriving soon.”

An alternate contact. I didn’t like the sound of this. What was Donovan pulling on us?

“Donovan is passing us off to someone else?” Ben said as I filled him in. “He is facing one of the biggest secret dirty deals in U.S. history and he’s passing us off to a handler? That’s unbelievable.”

We soon heard the sound of a chopper as it approached the boat. We could see the Sikorsky MH-60T Jayhawk, the helicopter typically used by the Coast Guard preparing to land on the deck. It’s a versatile multi-mission, twin-engine, medium-range helicopter used for search and rescue, law enforcement, military readiness and marine environmental protection missions. It was out of view as it landed on the deck and soon took off again after presumably letting off its passenger.

“That must be our handler coming in to pat us on the head and give us a cookie,” Ben said.

He was probably right. I was beginning to question my commitment to this mission. Donovan had built us up. He had played on my patriotism and asked me to risk my life for something important. Then he couldn’t bother to stay involved as we did our job.

The door to the room started to open. I was ready to unload on whoever entered. That is, until I saw who it was.

19: Part 19 - The Return of Brad Rafferty

When I saw the familiar figure of my mentor, Commander Brad Rafferty, enter the room, I was surprised at the mixed feelings that bubbled up.

Brad was a Naval Intelligence Officer who started his career as an analyst. His skills and his expertise in nuclear weaponry helped him move up the ladder quickly as the threat of these weapons emerged from Iran and North Korea and continued in the former Soviet Union.

Brad flew under the radar until he led the team that investigated a devastating domestic terrorism attack that utilized radioactive material. He ended up finding the perpetrator and was nearly killed in the process of attempting to capture him. The story was too good to allow him to keep his face out of the press. He had become the poster child for America’s ongoing campaign to limit nuclear capabilities in unfriendly countries.

Unfortunately, the notoriety did not help him do his job effectively. When it was known that he was coming to assist with an inspection, the countries being scrutinized rolled out the red carpet and cleaned up their act. The fact that he was here spoke volumes in the importance of what we had uncovered.

“Well look what washed up on this ship,” Rafferty said as he saw Ben and I. “I told you two you should have stayed in the Navy. Look where civilian life has landed you.”

“If I had known that I’d end up going up against the U.S. Government, I might have stayed in,” Ben said.

“It’s worse, trust me. Going up against the government cost me the ability to do my job,” Rafferty said.

I sat in stunned silence. I had initially thought that Rafferty would be the ideal person to help with this. Donovan said that he was otherwise engaged. Apparently that engagement was over.

“This one was too big for me not to stick my nose in it,” Rafferty said as if reading my thoughts. “This administration wanted to cover up the attack on the Carrier Dome. When I heard this, it was too much for me to take. There are some corrupt people in D.C. and we need to clean house.”

“How are we supposed to do this in a black operation that is a subset of another black operation?” Ben asked. “How do we get traction against the State Department?”

“That’s a great question, Ben. I believe the answer may surprise you,” Rafferty said as he sat down at the table. “First, Donovan has spent his long career building trust and making friends with some highly placed people. Second, people like the Secretary of State and the President are just placeholders in the government. They are in office for four or eight years and try to build their own little empire during their time. They leave those of us with lifelong commitments to public service to clean up their messes. Well, I’m done. These are bad people and they need to pay. I told Donovan I’m all in on this one.”

I was relieved to hear Rafferty say this. He was known to respect authority when it deserved respect. He was also known to do what was right over what was expected. I looked up to him as both a superior and a human being during my time in the Navy.

“Let’s get started,” Rafferty said. “I want every detail of what you found. We need to set up a plan that will prevent the attack, tie it to those behind it and, finally, take them down in a very public way.”

“Why in a public way?” Ben asked.

“If we do this behind the scenes, it will send a message to others with these kinds of aspirations that no matter what evil they do, it will be swept under the rug. Susan Martin-Conway needs to pay. Her ambitions are self-serving and not in the long-term interest of the country. She wants to be elected president. What’s worse is I believe the President is looking the other way because he sees her as a way to continue his legacy. Don’t forget, he wanted to blame the Carrier Dome attack on the Middle East as well. They see the oil there and they get blinded by the dollar signs. I’ll be damned if we’ll allow them to invade a country to justify taking their natural resources.”

We went through all of the details from the information on my infamous phony laptop backup to what I downloaded from the State Department. Rafferty was incredibly gifted at quickly assessing detailed information and forming a big picture view.

“How the hell did you hack into the State Department?” Rafferty asked as we reviewed the memos and email.

I explained to him that we had used an outside source that had developed an incredible algorithm for gaining access.

“Ah, the infamous Mr. Jones,” Rafferty said. “My sister dates his partner. His name and talents keep popping up on my radar. It’s a good thing he’s a good guy. I thought about trying to hire him on in government service, but I want him to keep being a good guy and, from what I hear, he couldn’t afford the pay cut.”

We continued to go through the data. When we were done, Rafferty sat back in his chair pondering what we had.

“A lot of this is credible in terms of the where and what of this plan. What we don’t know is exactly when they are planning the attack on the stadium. We do know who will be carrying it out, however. Normally that would make the job easy. Every prisoner processed through GTMO was implanted with an RFID chip. That chip would make them easy to track in any mass transportation hub like an airport or bus station. My guess would be that they would have these chips removed before they enlisted them for anything like this. Either that, or they would have to sabotage security along the entire chain of events until their plan is carried out. Removing the chips is a lot easier.”

What Rafferty was saying was new information to me. I knew the technology existed, but it’s practical use was above my paygrade.

“So how are we going to find these guys and if we do, what do we do?” Ben asked. “If we track them before the attack and bring them in, it will tip off Conway and it will look like the government did a great job in thwarting a terrorist attack from the very country that they are targeting. They can’ lose.”

“That’s true,” Rafferty responded. “That means we are going to have to track them and stop them in the very minutes leading up to the attack. In the meantime, we are going to need to have ironclad evidence that the Secretary of State ordered their release and this operation. To do that, we are going to have to dig into the situation at GTMO that will lead to their release and we also need to see what they were promised in return for cooperating. This is essentially a suicide mission for them in which they are not only giving up their lives, but they are throwing their country under the bus. There must be a big payoff.”

To find the information that Rafferty was talking about, we would have to be able to hack into the records at GTMO. Video surveillance was kept of every interrogation with the prisoners. Also, any meetings or movement were painstakingly recorded.

“How are we going to hack into GTMO? I heard the CIA has some world-class security wrapped around those prisoner records,” Ben asked.

“That same could be said of the State Department security which was hacked effortlessly with Jones’ algorithm. I think it’s time we get off this boat and head back to Jacksonville for a little meeting. It shouldn’t take long by chopper.”

Things had turned around. With Brad Rafferty helping our cause, we had a much better chance at succeeding. I just couldn’t see at the time how such a small effort could bring down leadership at such a high level with numerous resources at their fingertips. I would soon start to see the possibilities.

20: Part 20 - Fingerprints

The chopper whisked us from the ship to Naval Station Mayport near Atlantic Beach, Florida in less than two hours. Rafferty had contacted Clifford Jones prior to our departure and he reluctantly agreed to help us once more. Rafferty was able to leverage Jones’s sense of patriotism and then resorted to leveraging the relationship between his sister and Jones’s partner, Frank Rozzani. Jones finally relented and agreed to meet.

We arrived in Mayport and Rafferty had a car ready to take us the short distance to Jones’s office. Unlike the last time we were in this area, we didn’t have to look over our shoulder. Donovan had fabricated the charges against me and said there was no way to tie the investigative activities we were carrying out to Ben and I. That was comforting at the time, even though it wasn’t totally true.

Jones was sitting behind his desk, but stood up to shake hands with Rafferty. He was wearing neon green board shorts, flip flops, and a Scooby Doo t-shirt. He looked like he had just come from the beach, which, in fact, he had.

“Nice of you to dress up for us,” Rafferty said in a tone that was only partially joking.

His military life was full of uniforms and protocols. Jones was definitely not from that same mold. But he was brilliant. Rafferty would soon come to realize that the reality was much more impressive than the hype.

“This is my normal dress and it shouldn’t affect the skills that you say you need,” Jones replied only partially joking as well.

“If you boys are finished discussing fashion, can we get down to business,” Ben quipped in an effort to break the tension.

I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘business’ was, but Rafferty, based on the information we provided, seemed to have a plan.

“Alright, let’s get started. There are two aspects of GTMO’s data storage that we want to gain access to. First is the surveillance video and second is the drug inventory,” Rafferty said.

I understood why the surveillance video was important. We wanted to look for any movement involving the prisoners that were identified in what we found in the State Department files. I wasn’t sure why we needed the prescription records. Rafferty explained.

“In order to move these prisoners without detection, the RFID chips in their arms would have to be removed. The prescription records will give us the serial number and other identifying information of the chips. They will also tell us if any local anesthetic and pain relief medication were prescribed to these prisoners.”

“Can’t they just fake those records like everything else they’re doing?” Ben asked.

“You would think so, but the GTMO prescription records, along with all other prescription records related to the military, have a very high degree of security protocol.”

“Why is that and what kind of security protocol are we talking about?” Jones asked.

“The government lost millions of dollars each year due to loose security around prescription medicine. Too many people had access making drugs vulnerable to abuse and illegal resale. The amount spent to beef up security to avoid illegal activities and the potential scandal was pretty significant,” Rafferty said. “As for the type of security, it’s a complex login and password combination along with a biometric component.”

“That complicates things,” Jones said. “What kind of biometric component?”

“The most inexpensive. Fingerprints are used to access the files after the login and password have been entered.”

“Lucky for us. Retinal scans and voiceprints are a lot harder to deal with,” Jones said.

“You think you can crack the fingerprint scan?” Simpson asked.

“I might have a way. Let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s start with the video surveillance. We’ll worry about that when we get to it,” Jones answered.

We set to work on the initial steps of hacking into the GTMO security system. Since GTMO is a military base, accessing the files would require DOD credentials. Luckily, Rafferty had ultra-high clearance and could get us knocking on the door. He had access to GTMO prisoners since many of them had ties to nations that were under his umbrella of investigating nuclear materials.

“The surveillance system seems to be on its own server,” Jones said after studying the configuration. “I can temporarily update your existing clearance to give us temporary access. I just have to figure out which server it is,” he said to Rafferty.

Jones worked away for the next 45 minutes or so while we sat at a table in his office building’s conference room and ate some lunch that was brought in from a local restaurant called the Sun Dog. I spent some time in New Orleans and the food from this place was a true taste of that great city.

Finally, after we had eaten our fill, Jones came in and announced that he was into the video surveillance server.

“I’ve already downloaded video from the past three months from the common areas and the sections where the prisoners in question are located.”

“That was quick,” Rafferty said. “What kind of Internet connection are you running on? That has to be several gigabytes of data that you transferred in a short period of time.”

“Um, I’d rather not say. It’s something experimental I’ve been working on with some associates. Maybe when we get it perfected, we’ll sell it to the military for a couple billion dollars.”

“They’d pay for it, that’s for sure,” Simpson said. Remember the $600 hammers and $400 toilet seats. That still goes on today to some extent.”

“So what’s next, Rafferty asked. How are the four of us going to go through thousands of hours of video feeds?”

“We’re not,” Jones answered.

He was met by perplexed faces around the table.

“I have some advanced facial recognition and matching software. I can take the mug shots of the prisoners that you downloaded. My software will map their facial features. Since they are full mug shots, the software can also map any tattoos, identifying marks, and even approximate their height and weight. Then we’ll turn it loose and let it analyze the video and spit out the matches.”

“That’s amazing,” Simpson said. “Where did this software come from?”

“Oh, it’s just something I’ve been working on. I’ve tested it out and I think it’s ready for a job like this.”

Rafferty raised his eyebrows and looked at me. I could see that the doubts he may have had about Jones’s ability were quickly melting away. If this software worked, it would save us a great deal of time and manpower.

“I’m going to go kick off the utility and then we’ll sit down and figure out how we’re going to tackle the prescription database.”

Jones left us for about five minutes and then rejoined us in the conference room. In his hands, he held what looked like a pair of latex gloves that might be used in an operating room.

“This is something else I’ve been working on,” he said as he passed the gloves around.

I looked at them and saw nothing remarkable at first, but then I looked at the finger tips. They had very subtle prints on them almost like fingers with actual fingerprints.

“What are these for,” Ben Simpson asked.

“Let me demonstrate,” Jones said as he plugged his laptop into the display screen port in the conference room.

The screen was locked, but when he ran his thumb over the fingerprint reader near the keyboard, a picture of the beach with surfboards stuck in the sand appeared. Then then hit a key combination to lock computer again. He asked me to put on the right glove, with I did. The material didn’t feel like latex, it felt more skin-like.

“Now you rub your gloved thumb over the fingerprint reader,” Jones instructed.

I did and the beach and surfboards reappeared.

“How did you do this,” Rafferty asked.

“With some high resolution imaging of my fingerprints and a high-end 3D printer.”

“Are you hoping to replicate fingerprints from the GTMO personnel,” Rafferty said with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, fingerprints are stored digitally as ones and zeroes at the most basic level. All I need are those scans, which I assume are stored on the personnel files, and I can replicate the fingerprints we need. Chances are they’re stored with their individual records.”

Rafferty seemed impressed. Jones had single-handedly replaced a number of personnel that we would normally need to carry out this type of analysis. We could get the information on the GTMO prisoners and quickly move forward in deconstructing the plan to use them to attack the soccer stadium.

Rafferty shook his head and smiled.

“I’m glad you’re on our side, Mr. Jones.”

“I’m actually on my own side. At the moment, I agree with your side more,” he said returning the smile.