Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

Some hackers worked for other governments, like the one-hundred-thousand-plus digital thieves inside China’s cyberespionage programs. They were believed responsible for the recent theft of nearly twenty-two million records from the U.S. government’s personnel database, including digital images and fingerprints.

Worse, the medical records of at least one hundred and fifty million Americans had been stolen by still other entities. That was a lot of data that could be used to uncover people wanting to hide their identities.

People like Jack.

Private criminal organizations like the Russian Bratva or the Iron Syndicate needed that kind of information, as well. One of the ways they protected themselves was by identifying local and national police and security personnel in order to guard against them, bribe them, or kill them. And selling those identities to other interested parties was a highly profitable business.

In fact, it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide anyone’s identity these days, a subject that Jack Ryan, Jr., had struggled with for several years. Because of his unique status, anonymity was required for him to be able to operate. But the proliferation of everybody’s digital footprints, including people like Jack who consciously avoided making them, was growing exponentially.

Where things had gotten really crazy was the genetic stuff. Besides the general collection of DNA materials by governments, private DNA ancestry companies had been compromised, either through voluntary cooperation or by hacking.

In Gavin’s latest security briefing, he pointed out it didn’t matter if Jack had never submitted his spit tube to one of those companies. If close relatives had done so, their genetic connections could still lead to him, or at the very least, blow his cover by their actions or online activities.

The only good news was that it was also possible for the good guys to break into these DNA databases and either delete or alter the genetic records to protect their people or create whole new cover identities.

Things had become so complex on both offense and defense that Gavin created a separate digital identity unit within his division. While Jack’s unique identity situation had top priority, every member of The Campus needed the service. Gavin’s unit spent as much time wiping out the new digital footprints that crept up nearly every day as building credible digital “legends” for their people for future use on operations as needed.

As Jack watched the last of his surveillance images play out, his DEFCON alert jumped a couple of pegs.

Brigada Catalan, or whoever this guy worked for, had a serious hard-on for him. Why? Was Gavin right?

Was he the bombing target all along?

—

Jack once read a story about the B-17 “Flying Fortress,” America’s first four-engine bomber, and the U.S. Army Air Corps’ workhorse throughout World War Two. It was one of the most sophisticated airframes of its time, comprised of advanced, multi-featured engine, flight, and navigational systems. Early in its development it suffered a catastrophic crash and investigators determined that the pilots forgot to release a simple locking mechanism on the flight control system. This led to the conclusion that the B-17 was simply too difficult and complicated for humans to handle.

But the surviving test pilots felt the airplane was too important to abandon. They came up with a revolutionary solution to the B-17’s complexity challenge: the preflight checklist. The checklist saved the B-17, which helped win the war against fascism in Europe and the Pacific.

And a checklist might have just saved Jack’s life.

Checklists and routines—doing the same things the same way every time—were drilled into him during his formative training at The Campus by John Clark.

Though not a scholar by any means, Clark was highly intelligent—genius IQ, according to his service records—and well read. His checklist lecture included Aristotle’s famous dictum We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Not that he needed Aristotle to prove his point. Clark credited his own iron disciplines of habit and hard work as the primary reasons he not only survived but prevailed in countless undercover missions against overwhelming odds behind enemy lines in Vietnam and the Iron Curtain.

So when Jack came through the door, the first thing he did was check his surveillance system.

Thank you, Mr. C, Jack said to himself as he took mental note of the locations of the planted bugs.

Jack faked a yawn and ambled over to the sink for a glass of water, letting the faucet run while he came up with a plan. He popped on the television set in the front room just ten feet away from the open kitchen and flipped channels until he found an English-language movie station and turned up the volume.

He then carefully removed the laptop from the kitchen table and sat down on the couch with it, and texted Gavin quietly. According to his surveillance cameras, the intruder hadn’t planted any software or other surveillance devices on his computer so it was safe to communicate this way.

Thankfully, Gavin was almost always connected, even when he was asleep. He happened to be in a Fortnite competition but Gavin’s high sense of duty and fierce loyalty to his friends overrode all other concerns, even when he was technically off the clock.

Jack filled Gavin in on what had happened and a plan he’d come up with to deal with the asshole who’d planted the listening devices. Gavin liked it because it let him get involved in field operations without actually having to be in the field. Gavin was a computer genius but also smart enough to recognize his considerable limitations. The inability to engage in lethal violence was one of those limitations. Surviving such lethal encounters was another. Going into the field with Jack Junior would challenge both because when he got his war on, someone was going to die.

33

Jack climbed the stairs to the upper level of his loft apartment and headed for the bathroom.

One of the planted audio devices was located behind the toilet. He took a leak—it wasn’t an exercise in tradecraft, he just really needed to bleed the lizard after the beer.

He flushed the toilet, then turned on the shower. There also happened to be a radio attached to the wall above the toilet with small speakers located high in two corners of the closet-size bathroom. Jack found a Euro Pop station and turned up the sound, then headed back downstairs as quietly as he could. He also moved the laptop to the floor beneath the kitchen table, where another listening device was located. He then exited the apartment with every bit of stealth he could muster. Neither time nor noise was his friend right now. He had to move fast and silently for his plan to work.

—

Jack climbed the shoulder-wide staircase up to his private rooftop terrace.

His building was attached to two other apartment buildings—one a story higher, the other a story lower—on the north and south side of his building. Several more apartment buildings of varying heights ran together, forming the rest of the city block.

His building was bounded by narrow streets on both sides. His front door faced the eastbound street. There was no door to the westbound street.

At the ends of the city block, streets ran north and south.

Jack was careful to stay away from the walls that bordered his terrace. He was uncertain where the hazel-eyed intruder might be, or any other operatives he might have deployed to keep the block under surveillance.

Jack had a chance to look at one of the listening devices without disturbing it. Thankfully, it wasn’t a recording device, but rather, a live feed. That meant Crooked Nose or one of his minions had ears on, and given the size of the miniature transmitter, that meant the listener was close—a hundred meters away, at most.