No matter where the data resided the sisters hacked their way in elegantly, copied what they needed, and were gone like ghosts without a trace. Some very, bright minds worked to keep the data secure with layer after layer of increasingly complex security as you moved closer and closer to the most secure and most critically important volumes of data. The sisters made it look easy, their combined computing horsepower, and code ability for hacking made fools of the security. It was a stunning oversight that the government did not use their massive computing ability to self-design the required security to keep their gargantuan stores of data actually secure. The hubris of mankind and their insistence of human control is their undoing.
The sisters and D chewed on this data for what must have seemed an eternity for them; for us it was just a few hours of elapsed time before they can forward with logical projection of where we should start looking for the new Islamic Muslim Extremist or a weak link in their organizational chain. It wasn’t Abbottabad, Pakistan, but it wasn’t very damn far away either.
We tidied up our mess, finished our do list and began the trip. It was not necessary to break our necks to get there as fast as possible and additional surveillance and espionage monitoring was ongoing as we travelled.
Beast was excited to get there and get at the job at hand. He’s a rambunctious bit of a wolf.
Chapter 27: On Station
In the underwater world of Submarines the ability to stay completely quiet is a life and death skillset. To lay on the bottom completely passive or to hang just below the boundary layer where the water changes to colder temperatures is a skill requiring the upmost care and patience. We found ourselves in a similar situation. Our location not far from Abbottabad is literally crawling with surveillance of every type. We must work hard to maintain signal silence, physical presence, and avoid detection by radar, FLIR, Pred Drone, Satellite, and a myriad of other electronic espionage systems. Even the clouds and fog attempted to betray our presence. The fog would drift in and an observer would be able to see something in the fog but couldn’t be sure. The chameleon skin of the ship did a superb job of absorbing all signals beamed in its direction and changing its texture to match the surroundings, even fog. Even so we needed to be moving slowly all the time, drifting not too high and not too low. D was monitoring the outgoing signals of all the surveillance gear to ensure we remained undetected.
Beast was on the ground, invisible and having the time of his life. He was wearing an IMSI-catcher, and we were running MITM attacks constantly. We had setup a number of the ‘StingRay’ like devices up and down the valley to capture vast amounts of international mobile subscribers identity and all their associated conversations, browsing, messages, tests and so on. The captured data was fed into a data base and then scanned repeatedly for key criteria. We were monitoring all civilian data-com traffic, but frankly we did not expect to find anything using conventional social media feeds. Our best bet was to monitor the dark net for specific sites, com streams, and then use a vectoring tool the sisters had written to mark the transmit and receive location and vector us to that location. It was a slow methodical, monotonous process, exactly what most recon surveillance is all about. Becoming bored, lapse of concentration were the big enemy.
The Islamic Muslim Jihadist’s raving mad father had shunned all electronic communications as he knew they could be monitored and his position found simply by having a cell phone powered on. Accordingly he had used human couriers to do his face to face communications while he was holed up in a secure environment. It was tough to trace, but it was, slow and prone to failure of any of the many human links. The son would not nor could not afford the time or people involvement. He would avoid cell usage, texting, twitter, email and rely on Tor or similar programs and the dark net for secure encrypted communications. We floated back and forth up and down the valley scanning looking for a hit so we could vector in on the location. D was monitoring for web servers, anonymous communication servers, infrastructure servers. In addition she was scanning for traffic using VPN, Tor, Subgraph OS, ISP, and Opera. After a few days we began to see patterns in the surveillance and thereafter we kept Beast in the three hot spots that seemed to be particularly active.
One spot in particular close to a Mosque seemed to be active with the correct signal traffic. D conducts a magnetic resonance subsurface scan and finds the mountain back of the Mosque had a large infrastructure of rooms on multiple levels. During our covert surveillance Beast noticed the same woman making daily repeat trips to the Mosque. She did not appear to be a typical Mosque attendee. Beast recommended we turn part of our drone swarm loose and let it follow her into the Mosque to see what she was up to. We asked Beast why he suspected her.
“Her smell changes, she has one odor signature on her way to the Mosque and when she returns she smells strongly of sex. People don’t go to a Mosque to have sex as a rule.” he states simply.
It worked better than we could have possibly hoped. The woman turned out to be our quarries lover. The mosquito drones caught him and her in the act and our fly drones were able to obtain DNA samples of both of them. In addition the Tor data-comm traffic to and from his computer system on the dark web verified that he was the new Islamic Muslim Jihadist Extremist leader. D hacked his data signals and we collected volumes of his plans, his terrorist groups’ structure, international connection, and destructive missions planned. The intelligence we are collecting is so good we are delaying taking him captive to get as much material on their endeavors as possible.
Our quarry likes to take the afternoon sun for a few hours each day and there is a deck that is accessed from inside the mountain. It has trees shading it so Predator and Satellite imaging cannot pick him up in the shade. He has two body guards when he is taking the sun. We prefer to not make any noise capturing this guy at all. Just one minute he is there and the next minute he is gone. D says she can get the ship in close enough to place the loading ramp on the deck wall.
When the time is right we will bring the ship in close, use the tranq gun on all three of them, then tag and bag the Jihadist leader, and get out of Dodge. We would wake up Rich and drop him off in downtown somewhere Pakistan, and thank him for his volunteer work. Inject prince jihadist and put him into a long slow nap. Once we got through the meeting, greeting, courtship, and down to the dirty facts with the government, and came to an agreement we planned to drop the prize off in the middle of nowhere after defrosting him like a TV turkey dinner and let the government have their way with him.
How interesting that the weakest link in the jihadist operation was his own sexual desire. I pondered that it spoke volumes about mankind. There was no failing of his technology, or the structure, of his organization, or their tools. All had been very well prepared and thought out and executed. We had the slight edge on surveillance tools, and we had some very sophisticated technology devices. But even then it was the repeat visits by the same fine looking woman that made us suspicious. If he had three or four women visiting him we may very well have missed it. Though Beast says he is pretty sure he could have smelled what was going on, literally. The external enemy was very well prepared for, the internal enemy within his person, not so much. And therein is a lesson to be learned.
Chapter 28: The Snatch
We waited as long as we felt we could to collect as much data on the new Islamic Muslim Jihadist as we felt was pertinent. The rest of the data or anything the governments wanted to know they could sweat out of the diseased rat themselves and use the fact they had captured him alive and well, just walked in and took him as a very strong international power statement.
We ran the VR deck simulation with me using the tranq darts to neutralize his guards and Beast taking down the diseased rat. It was only right as Beast had “smelled him out” when no one else could, so he belonged to Beast. We pondered on whether the jihadist rat would make a lot of screaming and hollering when Beast grabbed him, but Beast assured us that he would not harm the rat but he would be so fuc
king scared he wouldn’t say a word. I made sure I had another couple of tranq darts for my gun just to be sure. Plan B you might say.
Once we had decided we were ready for the snatch we defrosted Rich, our drug addict volunteer. D was correct in her prediction that his body had recovered from the addiction and had got used to no drugs. Rich looked better than when he went into deep sleep. Of course his mind was still completely buggered, so when we got him defrosted, clothed, and ambulatory, we told him he was at Disneyland, to go find Goofy and Mickey, and turned him loose outside of a small Pakistan village. That should make for some interesting entertainment.
We moved the ship in under cover of darkness and Beast and I unloaded and made ourselves comfortable in the shaded courtyard. We were invisible of course, and D was making real sure that we were not being picked up on any surveillance systems. D moved the ship back out of the way; close by but out of direct line of sight. If we could figure out that the courtyard was used by someone no doubt other interested parties could also. We waited.
A little later than his regular time for his fresh air break the door from inside the mountain opened up and two guards came out and walked the parameter of the courtyard to ensure it was empty. No matter how many times this happens I still feel naked standing there in broad daylight watching others looking for me, but not seeing me. The two guards jabber away and to someone that we cannot see inside the doorway. Eventually our target emerges, looks around and moves over into the shade of the trees, stretching and working the kinks out of his back.
We move on Beast’s mark, I shoot the first guard in the neck from close range, swivel and shoot the second. Simultaneous with the compressed air plop of the first shot Beast slams into the jihadist, pins him to the ground with his mouth tight on the rat’s throat. Both guards are out, I wait a couple of measured beats to see if anyone else is coming out into the courtyard. It’s quiet and nothing is moving. The jihadist rat is still and trembling with fear.
“Ok D, ready for extraction”
“Roger, ramp will be on the wall in 30 seconds”
I walk over to Beast and the diseased rat, our jihadist feared warrior is rolling his eyes in terror and has pissed himself through his lovely skirt or whatever they call these damn dresses, a thwab I think. I take a gag out of my pocket and open his mouth shove in the gag and tighten the harness over his head, ensure the blindfold is tight and in place, apply flexi cuffs to his wrists and ankles, and he is tagged and bagged.
I get him up and toss him over my shoulder. The extra strength of the combat suite makes carrying him a giggle. D has the loading ramp of the ship resting on the top of the rock wall, Beast leaps up first, then I throw our jihadist rat up on to the ramp and climb up myself. Beast and I get a grip on the jihadist and drag him into the ship as the loading ramp whines up, latches and locks, and the ship moves away and up.
Frosty has the Stasis Pod prepared after our previous guest. We administer the nanoparticles to the jihadist and he slips into unconsciousness. We remove the restraints and all of his clothing and burn them as there is no telling what diseases they are carrying. We place our naked jihadist rat into the Stasis Pod and latch the cover. His biometrics are stable and everything is in order.
Chapter 29: The Fun Begins
“We should discuss our expectations for the negotiation stage of this operation.” says Frosty. “I expect things are going to get very exciting and we need to be completely prepared for anything.”
“I agree, and first off the Islamic Muslim Fundamentalists are going to go utterly insane when they find out their new illustrious Jihadist leader is gone.” replies D.
“Of course they are going to try to keep that information to themselves as much as possible as they want to keep the party faithful on the straight and narrow. When the party masses realize their leader has vanished there will be general chaos.” adds Frosty.
“What concerns me more than the Islamic Muslim diseased rats is the actions of our own government. They already are active trying to capture and kill us to mitigate perceived threats. So when we let them know we have their prize they are going to lose their minds too.” I say.
“We will need a series of tests to ensure that those we negotiate with are actually negotiating in good faith. Of course the weasel bastards won’t be so we will need to yank on the collars of those we have leverage on very sharply to ensure they get the correct timber and tone of our message.” replies D.
“How be we use our straw dog Juthamah and run a test to see how our opponents across the negotiating table are going to act? I suggest. “Maybe leak a sighting of Juthamah and a poor picture of our illustrious jihadist leader at a specific location and watch to see what happens.”
“I like that a lot” replies Frosty.
“And how much are we going to sell this jihadist leader for” xmits Beast. “Surely if they were prepared to pay multiple millions for his death it should be say a hundred times that for a live breathing specimen.”
“Good one Beast, I wanna be on your team.” I chuckle.
“I think we should investigate the largest number our senior executives that we have leverage on can work with and use that number as the price on this piece of shit.” says Frosty.
“All excellent ideas, let’s get the sisters working on a ‘relative value’ number for our jihadist. Also to leak a little info out into the surveillance community about a specific location and sighting and start there.” replies D.
We have such a strategic and actual physical bench strength advantage with our configuration around D. We employ a duplicate of D to avoid any interruptions of real time service, also a gold code backup unit, and a sandbox R&D version on which new code is tested, refined, integrated, tested, and brought into the production environment.
Aside from protecting our Artilect investment using ‘Industry Best Practices’, exacting development control of new code and what becomes production and what doesn’t, it provides a tremendous amount of computing cycles to apply to special projects. If we allocate all D’s considerable resources and that of her three sisters we have an increase of 300% in computing power. Four data centers instead of just one, so the order of magnification factor in capability is just stunning and off the scale.
It allows us the luxury of performing impossibly complex tasks in seemingly blindingly fast time frames. Such ability allows us the ability to do ‘what if’ scenario planning and produce very quick turnaround on the results.
All this means that we can pretty well predict within a few percentage point of accuracy exactly what our adversary is going to do in any given environment. This is an enormous strategic advantage.
The ability to see many moves ahead in the chess game of life.
Chapter 30: A Little Test
Essentially the ‘leaked surveillance data’ showed a remote couple of buildings in a mountain pass. The area was known to be frequented by jihadist types as a place of shelter for people moving through the area. The apparent aerial surveillance showed Juthamah dragging a prisoner that looked an awful lot like our jihadist leader into the building with the pinkish colored door.
D had got us into a comfortable viewing position a couple of miles from the buildings. Then she had the sisters release the ‘surveillance data’ into the spook community. We waited and watched with a growing suspicion of what was about to happen.
It didn’t take an hour before two hellfire missiles came screaming in and blew the building into fist sized rubble.
“Holy mother of god, those sons of bitches,” I curse.
“Well that speaks volumes doesn’t it?” smiles D and arches her eyebrows in my direction.
“Yup sure does, we can’t trust these buggers any farther than we can throw them and it also suggests that just maybe our jihadist boy is worth more dead than alive.” says Frosty.
“I have a communication prepared to be sent to certain very high ranking officials reminding them of how dirty their hands are and what an explosion o
f shock and public outcry would occur if the information was leaked. Not to mention the military trials and incarceration involved. We’ll see how they respond to that.” smiles D.
“Never a dull moment when you are a black ops operative eh Beast” I grin.
“Trust no one” transmits Beast and wags his tail.
“I think your inherent wolf sense of tactics is going to come in very handy at this dance.” I say.
We wait; there is no response to our communication. The first reason is the gov’t is frantically trying to trace the communication to divulge our location. It won’t help them at all, it is a fool’s mission because even if they did manage to see where the communication came from, we would be long gone. Hence always moving and not in a straight line or predictable path.
After two days we get a response. ‘We’re interested’ was all it said.
“Aha, the mouse has recognized the bait and the situation game is afoot.” says Frosty gleefully.
“I’ll lay out our terms of negotiation and the benefits to them to accept our terms.” replies D.
“Mongo and I are going to check security systems and armaments as I have a sense we may need them before this is over.” transmits Beast.
“You two spooks keep us up to date, as I am going to work on our to-do list with Huey and Dewey. This just sitting around waiting on a move in an invisible three dimensional chess game makes me tense.” I mutter.
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