Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

Jennifer had watched him leave and said, “Well, what do you want to do now?”

I curled up in a La-Z-Boy and said, “Get some sleep. I’m bushed.”

She got in the chair next to me. “Looks like we get the same room together for once.”

I laughed and said, “I don’t think our secret is much of a secret. I think everyone on the team knows. Kurt is probably the only one still in the dark. Well, him and Creed.”

She absently picked at the bandage on her arm. “You think that’s a bad thing? Are you still wondering about me being in the Taskforce? On your team?”

I put my arms behind my head and said, “No. It’s not a bad thing. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m good with you on the team. More than good. Mission-wise, we click, regardless of how we feel about each other. Or maybe because of how we feel about each other. I don’t know. I have to get over some protective caveman stuff, but we work well together. We’ll see what the team thinks of our relationship, but I’m more concerned about the command. If Kurt finds out about us, he might hammer me just because of the implications. This sort of thing is illegal in the military.”

She smiled, liking the answer. “Then I guess we’d better not let him find out.”

“Does that mean we’re not doing anything in our first Taskforce single room?”

The smile melted into a frown. No sense of humor. I pushed her buttons some more.

I said, “Kurt won’t be back for hours, and these chairs are comfy.”

She threw her water bottle at me, barely missing my head. I batted it away and said, “Okay, okay. I get it. No single rooms on the Taskforce paycheck. Let’s get some sleep.”

She gave me her disapproving-teacher look and said, “You’re working on no single rooms period.”

I closed my eyes and thought maybe a minute had passed when I felt someone prodding my shoulder. I said, “Jennifer, you had your chance.”

I heard, “Chance for what?”

I looked up and saw Kurt Hale. Way to go, bumble brain.

My watch told me I’d been out for five hours, which amazed me. I said, “Chance to get some sleep. What’s up?”

“We’ve found the guy, but it’s not pretty. The Oversight Council is working through options to mitigate the impact of the YouTube video given the information we now have. I need you and Jennifer to get back to Charleston and start doing normal things. Act like normal citizens in case someone comes around with questions. We think we can stop the bleeding fairly quickly, but not with you in Washington. Too many questions to answer.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s the son of an influential lobbyist here in DC. Unfortunately, a lobbyist working for the other party, against the administration. He made a career as a political aide, then took his skills to K Street. His son is the one doing the hack. A twenty-five-year-old loser. Apparently a genius who went to MIT and dropped out. Now he spends his time aggravating his dad by being a social leper, running around with Occupy Whatever Street and protesting economic summits. Lives in the basement of his father’s house in McLean.”

“He’s here? Right here in DC? Shit, sir, let me go after him. We still have time.”

“How? You think you’re going to kidnap the son of one of the most powerful lobbyists in DC? Then what? Throw him in the Cloud? If it was some lone-wolf loser living in a trailer somewhere, maybe I’d let you kick his ass for a lesson, but not here. We’ll leverage the folks inside the Oversight Council to mitigate the damage. Get the father to play ball using what he knows well—political capital.”

“Sir, that’s crazy. He’ll smell blood in the water and get the very investigation we don’t want. He’ll use the video as a weapon. We need to do it preemptively. Like the congressman from Egypt. Remember him?”

“Yeah. Of course. He had a hand in my father’s death.”

“We do the same thing here. He went to prison for child porn instead of taking the heat for treason. Took the jail time instead of the death penalty.”

“That’s just it. The kid hasn’t done anything, other than help Booth dig into our digital signature. He’s posted a video saying he’s going to expose an illegal government spy operation. Which is exactly what we are. We’re the ones breaking the law. We’ve got nothing to pin on him. The council isn’t too keen on a domestic operation like that. I tried earlier. They said I was acting like Los Zetas.”

Now they get skittish.

My mind working at ninety miles an hour, I said, “He’s a hacker, right? He’s hacked more than just our systems. Surely he’s done something illegal.”

“Yeah, Creed’s found a ton of stuff, but we can’t very well charge him without exposing how we got the information. We might as well put up our own YouTube video.”

“The father’s political?”

“Political as they come.”

“Okay. Get me into his house. The senator agreed to the child-porn thing so we wouldn’t give him the death penalty. Let me do the same thing here. I’ll put child porn on his computer. Then we send a tip to the police through Anonymous.”

“What?”

I began to pace, saying, “This will work. One of the things Anonymous does is expose child pornographers by hacking their systems and sending it to the police. About the only good thing they do. I’ll get porn on his computer, and our hacking cell will alert the police, posing as Anonymous. They take him down.”

“Did you hear what I said earlier? The Oversight Council isn’t going to approve a frame like that. The congressman was a traitor and responsible for American deaths. This guy isn’t. They want to work it from the inside, using politics. Anyway, that’s only half the battle. That video is still going up.”

“Wait, I’m not finished. You—or someone on the Oversight Council—engage the father. Somehow, get it in the father’s head or his lawyer’s head that his son was working with Anonymous to expose a child porn ring, and that’s why the evidence is there. He’ll jump on that like a hobo on a ham sandwich. He’ll go for the lesser charge of hacking over the child porn, and he’ll owe us big-time. We can get him to manage the video. Keep it from being a weapon. The kid gets a slap on the wrist and we get political control of the fight.”

Jennifer was looking at me in awe. She said, “You mean you’re going to plant child porn on his computer, then alert the police posing as Anonymous, then have him get out of the child-porn charges by admitting he was attempting to expose other child pornographers by breaking the law working for Anonymous?”

I said, “Yeah. That’s about the size of it. He gets charged with what he actually did—illegal hacking. We provide help to the lobbyist through the administration, and that video goes nowhere. No follow-on evidence. Surely the Oversight Council will agree to that.”

She said, “Where has that been hiding? Have you always been that devious?”

“Oh yeah. I got you to agree to Grolier Recovery Services, didn’t I?”

It was a joke, but she scrunched her eyes, now wondering. I said, “Sir, let’s do it. All I need is Creedwater. Jennifer and I can handle the B & E. He can handle the computers.”

Kurt looked at me much like Jennifer, probably reviewing every past decision he’d made involving my team and wondering if I had manipulated him. He said, “I have to get sanction for that. Obviously. But I like it.”

I said, “Hell, it’s only ten in the morning. We can’t get in until nightfall anyway. You do your work, and I’ll do the reconnaissance. Just tell me if it’s a go.”

81

Apparently, the Oversight Council liked my deviousness, because twelve hours later I was sitting in a library parking lot about to pass the intel from our reconnaissance to the inbound team. Well, the council liked the plan but had really hated the idea of me doing the B & E. Too close to the flame for them. I guess it made sense. No matter how good I thought I was, every operation has a chance to go sideways. We were trying to defuse the YouTube video, and having the owner of Grolier Recovery Services arrested breaking into the house of someone who was about to post an exposé on Grolier Recovery Services wouldn’t do much to shorten the news cycle.