Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

Story of my life.

Thirty minutes later he was done. In addition to the desktop, he’d gone through two tablets and an iPod. He’d collated a list of potential leads from various threads in each system. Known contacts, repeated bills from restaurants, multiple ISP hits, and anything else that stood out. I contacted the Taskforce and had them start their analysis. Given the time crunch, I needed some focus on where to begin. They’d be making an educated guess, but it was better than starting at the first name on the list and moving down.

Working the screen, Creed said, “This guy has been a very bad boy. He’s accessed just about every hacking message board in the world.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I used to do the same thing. Before I saw the light with the Taskforce.”

“Can you work it back? Find out specifically who he talked to?”

“Yeah. Given some time, I could figure it out. Maybe not a name, but I could get the ISP location.” He leaned into the screen and said, “I’ve also got one MAC address unaccounted for.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I have all of his router information, and included in that are MAC addresses that accessed his Wi-Fi. I can account for the target laptop you captured, these tablets, and the iPod, but there’s one more MAC address that’s not tied to anything we know of. Could just have been someone visiting, but maybe it’s a lead.”

“What are you talking about? How’s that a lead?”

He started stroking the keys to the desktop, saying, “The MAC is the identification the computer uses to talk to Wi-Fi. It’s specific to that computer, and we might be able to locate it.”

“How?”

“There’s a company called Skyhook. They’ve mapped close to a billion Wi-Fi hotspots, basically by driving down roads and sucking in signals. If that MAC is talking to a Wi-Fi hotspot in their database, it’ll give us a location.”

“So those guys can identify any MAC? Anywhere? Isn’t that a little like an illegal wiretap?”

He smiled, still pounding keys. “No. You have to have their software program installed in your device. In effect, you have to agree to the location service.”

“And you think this guy did that?”

He said, “No, he probably didn’t do that, but Skyhook doesn’t employ people like me. They won’t locate you without the software, but it doesn’t mean they can’t. Well, it doesn’t mean I can’t. All I have to do is get in their system.”

He continued typing and Jennifer came back into the room. She said, “Didn’t find anything else of value. What’s he doing?”

“Beats the hell out of me. Some type of black magic with a computer.”

He typed a little more, then said, “Yes! It’s here, in Colorado Springs.”

On the screen was a Google map, with a glowing icon. Creed went to street view on the computer, and I was looking at the front of a bar called Blondie’s.

Amazing. Scary, but amazing.

I called the Taskforce, seeing what they’d done with the data I’d given them. To my surprise, Kurt took the call instead of an analyst.

He said, “Pike, we’ve got him. The list you sent included a guy named Peter Scarborough. He works with Boeing as well. Both Peter and Booth are directly responsible for the monitoring of the GPS constellation. This morning Scarborough sent four thousand dollars via Western Union to Mexico City. I don’t know if they’re working together on this, but he’s a definite link. Address will be in your phone. Get moving. You have less than an hour.”

I said, “Sir, we have another location.” I told him about the MAC address, saying, “Getting Peter won’t be enough. We can always pick him up later, but we need Booth.”

“But you don’t know that’s Booth’s MAC address. It could be from someone who simply used his Wi-Fi, right?”

“Yeah, but this guy doesn’t appear to have a lot of friends over. If I go to Peter’s address and Booth’s not there, I won’t have time to redirect.”

“You have the same problem in reverse. You get to the MAC address and Booth isn’t on the keyboard, we’re screwed. Pike, we get one shot. The strike package will be starting their attack run soon.”

“You want to call it off? I don’t have the manpower for split operations. It’s either one target or the other.”

“You tell me. The president’s inclined to do so, but they’re all waiting on word from your operation. That includes the guys entering Syrian airspace.”

72

At forty-seven thousand feet, Captain Eddie “Bricktop” Brickmeyer checked the SATCOM radio, making sure the link was still established. Flying straight up the Mediterranean, he and his wingman were closing into range of Syrian air defenses, and he couldn’t afford to miss an abort, should it come. The last thing he wanted to do was attempt penetration of a hostile country flying into the teeth of an arsenal designed to destroy any combat aircraft that dared approach, only to find out his mission had been scrubbed after the fact.

He knew the importance of the operation, though, and took pride in the fact that his squadron had been selected. There had been a lot of discussion over the last few years about how the B-2 was a luxury the United States no longer needed. With the end of the Cold War and the beginnings of the War on Terror, everyone had started kissing all the special operations forces’ asses while looking askance at his missions, questioning his worth.

Why did we need such an expensive airframe? What terrorist group requires a Stealth bomber to eliminate it? When would we ever require such technology fighting a substate threat? That’s what the almighty SEALs and Special Forces were for. Better just to throw money at them.

Then this mission had appeared. No SEAL on earth could do what he was about to do. And no other aircraft could accomplish this mission. Could fly unseen through a barrage of radar and air defenses, penetrate and destroy a hardened, deeply buried target inside a hostile country.

When the president had asked for options to eliminate the threat of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, plenty of ideas had been thrown around, but there was only one left standing in the end: a B-2 carrying MOPs, or massive ordnance penetrators, one in each weapons bay.

The MOP was a GPS-guided bomb that contained more than five thousand pounds of explosives. The largest conventional munition in the world, it was designed to burrow deep into a hardened bunker before exploding, rendering that protection moot.

The pilots called it the MOAB: the Mother of All Bombs. It had never been used in active hostility before, and Bricktop was honored to be chosen as the flight lead for the historic mission.

He checked his instruments, talked to his wingman, and began his attack run. In twenty minutes, they’d be inside Syrian airspace. Thirty minutes after that, they’d be a ghost heading back to the Med, but the world would know they had been there by the smoking holes they left in the ground. Whether those craters would reflect the destruction of Syria’s WMD or the slaughter of innocents was not something that ever entered Bricktop’s mind.

Other than the release point, he had no responsibility for targeting. There really was no need. He knew how precise GPS was. Knew that the encrypted military signal would put the MOAB within three yards of where it was intended. As long as he released it correctly, it couldn’t miss, short of a catastrophic failure of the US GPS constellation.

And no way would that ever happen.

*

Abdul Hakim rolled over on his pallet and stared at the stars above his head. With the brutal heat of the Syrian desert, he, like most in his village, slept on the roof in the summertime. Dawn was still over an hour away, but he’d found it safer to make the water run before then. Before the soldiers awakened, skittish and willing to shoot at the slightest provocation.