Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

“They don’t have more than one contractor on Schriever with a clearance? That’s bullshit. The place is probably overrun with guys like that. It’s full of rocket scientists, and they aren’t in the military. Snowden was a contractor with a clearance, for God’s sake. Did you check them all? Sir, all we need is a thread. We can find him. Shut this thing down. But we need a thread, and it’s there. You guys are missing it.”

Kurt said, “We’re out of time to fish. The last check took thirty hours to complete. Get the computer up here. We’ll take a swing at it with our guys.”

Resigned, feeling failure all the way around, I said, “Roger all. We’re ready to fly right now. All I need is some help with customs. We’ll come right into Dulles.”

From the back of the room, Jennifer interrupted. “You guys are sure this traitor is on the inside?” She was holding the computer, with the clock ticking on the screen.

Kurt said, “Yeah. No way would he be able to access the GPS constellation otherwise. He’s on the inside. Why?”

She moved forward, bumping the team out of the way. “If he’s on the inside, he has a security clearance, right? He couldn’t do the work without one.”

Kurt leaned forward. “Yes? Why’s that matter?”

“Well, when I got my clearance they did a background check. I had to give them fingerprints.”

I said, “So what? We don’t have his.”

She held the computer forward and pointed at the biometric reader next to the keyboard. “Yes we do. We have his thumbprint right here.”

The team stood in silence for a moment; then Knuckles turned to the screen and said, “You still want to fire her?”

69

Arthur Booth banged on the aluminum screen door, causing a racket that startled him. He swiveled his head left and right in a panic, looking for a phantom government team to spring from the ground and handcuff him. He heard, “Calm down. I’m coming.”

When the inner door opened, a balding man with pale skin said, “Jesus Christ, Booth. You look like shit. What the hell is going on? Why on earth were you in Mexico? You said you were going to Canada to visit relatives.”

Booth pushed through the door, saying, “Pete, it’s too complicated to get into. You’re a lifesaver, though. I’ll pay you back the money as soon as I can get into my bank account. I lost my entire wallet.”

Booth walked past him, dragging a suitcase and a laptop. Pete said, “Why aren’t you staying at your place? I don’t get it. Why do you need to stay here?”

Booth sat at the kitchen table and booted up his laptop, the sweat on his neck mixing with his greasy hair. He said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I think there are people from Mexico who are hunting for me. I got mixed up in some bullshit down there. I was sweating bullets just getting clothes and my spare computer from my house.”

He saw Pete’s expression and hastily added, “Wait, wait. It’s not what you think. I didn’t do anything. I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I said I was going to Canada because Boeing has a flag on travel to Mexico for anyone with a security clearance. Believe me, now I understand why. It’ll blow over, but I need some space. I can’t let Boeing know about this. I can’t lose my job.”

Pete said, “Well, you left at the absolute worst time. The AEP upgrade of the constellation is a mess. It keeps throwing out false timing signals, and everyone is going ballistic. We’ve been digging for days and can’t find out why. Of course, the damn Air Force is blaming Boeing. And Boeing is blaming us.”

Booth thought about his lost computer. About the clock ticking. He couldn’t remember exactly how long he’d delayed the disruption, but he knew full well he’d set it for a catastrophic failure. In the next few hours, America was going to go through a seizure. He no longer cared about punishing Wall Street or stopping drone attacks. All he was focused on now was saving his own pathetic skin.

When his aircraft had broken ten thousand feet, his first order of business was to slam a margarita, amazed that he was flying back to the United States alive. After that, he’d begun to think about what had occurred. Besides the weird kidnapper who’d taken him—a man who still gave him chills even inside the aircraft—he’d been tracked by a team of Americans. He’d wondered if they weren’t following the killer but knew that was too much to hope for, especially given that the kidnapper had almost tortured him to death trying figure out who they were. The man had been right, though. It had something to do with the POLARIS protocol, which meant they might know his identity.

He needed to redirect them. Get them worried about something else. Maybe the GPS failure would be enough, but he didn’t think so. The initial reports from his Anonymous contact had been that something was fishy with Grolier Recovery Services, and he wanted to know what had been found. He needed any ammunition he could get.

He said, “What’s your Wi-Fi password?”

“Chrystalbean pound pound. Capital C.” He leaned over and saw the website Booth pulled up. “Whoa. Stop right there. Don’t you start mucking around with those message boards. I’ve told you before that messing with those people will get your security clearance pulled, and I want no part of it.”

Exasperated, Booth said, “Boeing isn’t looking at your router data. Come on. I’m just trying to get some information that could help me.”

Pete folded his arms across his chest. “You can sleep here, but you will not pull me into whatever you have going on. The MAC address of your computer is tied to the MAC address of my router. Someone can see every ISP you hit, and those message boards are tracked by just about every government agency in existence. Not here.”

Booth slammed the laptop shut, the pressure he was under breaking the surface. “I’m just trying to chat with a buddy who’s doing some research for me. What sort of friend are you?”

Pete refused to back down. “The sort who’s willing to send you four thousand dollars on a fucking phone call. Go get some free Wi-Fi downtown.”

Booth was about to tell him to stick it up his ass and storm out, but the one rational part of his brain that still worked in his cesspool of panic realized it would only leave him exposed. And he could use a beer. Or twelve. Most of the bars in downtown Colorado Springs had free Wi-Fi.

He said, “Okay, okay. I’ll head to Tejon Street. You want to go? I’m buying.”

Pete laughed and said, “You mean with my money? Thanks, but I’ve still got some work to do. I’m trying to puzzle out how that timing signal is being twisted. You’ve still got a day of leave left. Better use it, because when you get back, it’s balls to the wall. If we can’t figure this GPS problem out, we’ll be looking for another job.”

70

The thermal showed the apartment was still empty. Which, given that we’d had eyes on the front gate leading into the parking lot for the past fifteen minutes, stood to reason. We were waiting on the sun to drop below the horizon, and I needed to ensure nobody entered the apartment in the meantime. There was one heat source in the target, and after analysis by someone smarter than me, it looked like it was a hamster. I think the wheel-spinning gave it away.

I looked at my watch, now synchronized to the ticking clock on the doomsday computer, and saw we had less than two hours before the GPS constellation went crazy. Less time than that to call off Operation Gimlet, because they wouldn’t want the aircraft to penetrate Syrian airspace if they weren’t going to drop the bombs. Which, from what I was reading about our chances, was what was about to happen.

We’d flown straight to Colorado Springs and met a cell of Taskforce computer experts, who’d set up an operations center in the Hampton Inn by the airport. With the thumbprint it had taken less time than our flight from Mexico City to find our target: a contractor working for Boeing named Arthur Booth.