by B. Michaels
“Let’s hope the facial recognition software here works on facial features and not deep learning,” said Josh.
“If not, then you are wearing make-up for nothing,” replied Becca. “But it looks exquisite.”
Josh narrowed his eyes and scowled. “Is the makeup making me look like I’m smiling?”
Becca chuckled. “Actually, the makeup doesn’t. But the cotton balls do.” At least, they could make each other laugh in a high-stakes moment.
Deep learning based facial recognition software was much more accurate than the older type of software, which used calculations from facial measurements—like the distance between eyes—to identify people.
“Wouldn’t it be ironic if the deep learning algorithms that led us to the Ark, got us imprisoned before we could find it?” asked Josh.
“I had enough irony in English class,” replied Becca.
Minutes later the couple walked up to a female, Israeli border guard. The Canadians pulled out their passports. The guard asked them a few questions. “Sarah and Abraham, that’s kh-ute,” she said, stamping their passports and waving them through. The sound of the Hebrew guttural and the pounding stamp was music to their ears.
“That was all too easy,” said a relieved Josh.
Becca replied, “It must have been the makeup.”
Chapter 33 – The Dig
9:35 a.m., Monday, January 11, 2021 – Jerusalem, Israel
The Noble Sanctuary/ Temple Mount
Becca and Josh stepped off the tour bus. They brusquely walked through the barriers guarding the Wailing Wall plaza. The illicit adventurers wore long coats, hats, and scarves. Not only was it a chilly morning, but the couple knew that cameras, drones, and advanced facial recognition software ran in overdrive at this location.
They got lucky in Eilat. They didn’t want to press that luck on the most controversial piece of property on the face of the earth. After purposefully straggling behind their party, they ambled their way to mingle with other groups gathered in the plaza. Then they left altogether.
After a short downhill walk through the Jerusalem streets, they came to the property purchased by Jared Adler. The house gave all the appearances of a residence undergoing extensive remodeling. A dump truck and industrial-grade machinery were on site. Scaffolds encircled the three-story house. It was bigger than Becca expected.
“We’re looking for the construction foreman,” said Josh, to the first workman he encountered. The laborer wore a white hard-hat and looked Arab. He pointed to inside the house.
The couple entered the residence and found the foreman. He stood in a spacious living room. Detailed architecture plans were scattered across makeshift desks. Josh gave the construction boss the code word.
“Hi, Abraham. I’m Ismael Khalid.” The foreman extended his hand to Josh. “And you must be Sarah?” Ismael wore a black and white checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh, with a black band around the crown of his head.
“We’ve gotten a lot of work done in six weeks. I don’t know exactly what you guys are up to, but judging from the amount of dirt you’re moving and money you’re spending; it must be huge. You need to be careful. I served in the Mossad for many years.” Mossad was the Israeli CIA.
“The mining engineer is sharp. And I’m confident in the Professor. But, I wouldn’t trust any of the others. I haven’t caught them doing anything yet, but it’s a sixth sense I’ve developed after working 20 years as a katsa.” Katsa was Hebrew for ‘collections officer,’ the Mossad’s equivalent of a CIA field agent.
“Alright,” said Josh. “We’ll keep an eye on them.”
Ismael continued, “So far, the hardest part about this project has been making sure everything stays powered. We installed high-performance solar panels on the roof, so that’s helping a bit. Between the tunneling drones, lights, and the ventilation system; you need a lot of power in the hole.”
“We’re splitting it up between solar energy, the regular electric grid, and generators. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves. We also ran fiber down the entry shaft, so you’ll have high-speed Internet access down there.” Ismael led them into a first-floor lavatory, with an over-sized Jacuzzi tub. He shut the door behind them.
“Why’d you take us to the bathroom?” asked Becca.
“Watch,” said Ismael. The former Mossad agent rotated the bathtub faucet to the left. The twist activated a hydraulic system. The tub sprang up, until it stood vertically in the air. Ismael then whirled the tub 180 degrees. This allowed unimpeded access to an eight-foot-square, steel platform.
“Get on this deck and squat on all fours. When you’re comfortable, press this button. You’re going straight down for 30 feet. Then, you’ll find another platform. Step on it, and do the same thing. It’ll take you down to your bunker, or whatever it is you’re building down there.”
The couple did as Ismael said. Becca pushed the button. As the platform lowered, they passed wooden two-by-fours, which reinforced the vertical shaft. Electrical conduit, dim lights, and thick PVC pipe ran on the far end of the limestone shaft.
After a three story drop, Becca and Josh came to the second metal deck. The wall of the shaft enlarged. The couple scooted to the other platform and repeated the process. As they got closer to the bottom, sounds of machinery and an air hammer could be heard in the distance. Becca looked back to the old platform. Now, she could tell that they’d just exited an industrial scissor lift. They were on another. The explorers walked off the platform, as it came flush with a concrete slab floor.
“Ello Luv,” said Professor McMillan. “Welcome to the City of David.”
“Professor!” Becca rushed towards the tall Brit and embraced him. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, over the noise of the excavation.
“Crumbs! Unless I knew you were coming, I wouldn’t have recognized you. You have yourself quite a blonde bombshell of a girlfriend, there Josh.”
“You got that right Professor. I sing ‘O Canada’ nearly every morning,” said Josh, almost tripping over the rails as he shook McMillan’s hand. “That’s more rails than I expected.”
“Aye,” said the Professor. “How was your trip?”
“Aside from some anxious moments getting across the US border, we’re shocked at how easy it was. There were no incidents whatsoever,” answered Becca.
“That’s right brilliant. I’ve been here a little over eight days now. The others arrived some weeks ago.” McMillan pointed towards the tunnel apex. “This team has really knuckled under. They’re hard workers. The two tunnel-boring robots work side-by-side to dig the main excavation tunnel. Each robot expels dirt onto its minecart. That’s why there are two sets of tracks. The Mexican diggers take the earth from the minecarts and stuff it into these sacks. Loading and unloading dirt is the most manually intensive job down here.” The Professor pointed to the bags that resembled jumbo-sized potato sacks. “With the help of the blokes up top, we cram the sacks onto the scissor lifts.”
Becca inhaled deeply and examined the anteroom more carefully. It was almost the exact size of the storage unit in Brownsville. Steel pillars attached to metal girders reinforced the staging area’s roof, at intervals of every six feet. “The air down here is better than I expected—just a little musty. I’m glad we wore sweatshirts, but it’s not too cold.”
Three-by-three wooden supports and latticed mesh reinforced the bedrock walls of the staging room. The mesh reminded Becca of cargo nets. The main excavation tunnel was on the west side of the staging area. Electrical conduit and ventilation pipes, attached by C-clamps, hung from the top of the tunnel. They ran the length of the burrow and would grow, as the passageway lengthened.
“Y’all have made a lot of progress,” said Becca, impressed.
“Yup,” replied McMillan. He looked like a British version of Indiana Jones, with the hat and satchel. Maybe he did that
on purpose, thought Becca. Indiana did find the Ark.
The Professor pointed to the leading end of the tunnel. “You can thank El Minero, down there. He’s an extraordinarily talented mining engineer. He knows more about tunnels than I’ve ever forgotten. The bruv is a genius. Let me introduce you. But, put these on first.”
McMillan gave Becca and Josh protective mining helmets, with lights attached to the crown. They walked together toward the tunnel apex. Currently, the tunnel was a little over 10 feet long. The Professor tapped El Minero on the back. The mining engineer was short, pudgy, and clean cut. He possessed a happy, round face. The two excavators kept working. Becca now had a better view of the tunnel-boring robots.
They looked like miniature armored tanks, with egg-shaped bodies. Each robot had two, thick oval treads that they used to grip the earth and propel themselves forward. At the front of the robots, circular cutting heads spun into the rock. The cutting heads were specially designed to slice through limestone. The back of the robot expelled dirt and pulverized bedrock into the minecarts.
The boring robots created a tunnel that was five feet, by four and one-half feet. El Minero planned on reinforcing the shaft with wood, every 10 to 15 feet. One of the excavators extended the height of the tunnel’s crown by a foot, or so. He used an air hammer and pickax. Still, the Professor was in a constant stoop, as he moved through the tunnel. The other digger manipulated the dirt, minecarts, and potato sacks.
After introductions, El Minero said, “These robots are amazing. We’re a lot further after six weeks of excavation than I planned. This is my first time using robots. It’s much faster than a human excavator. And they don’t need siestas. El Jefe will love these automatas.”
“Why are you manually extending the height of the tunnel?” asked Becca.
“Juan is just making sure the tube is more stable, by angling it,” replied El Minero. “Each robot has three, self-guided probes that it deploys into the rock. They’re like large drill bits. They bore forward in a star configuration. As they burrow, the probes use onboard sensors to search for existing tunnels and artifacts.”
An Israeli, high-tech defense company developed the robot and probe platform. Israeli armed forces used them to locate Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza. Hamas used the subterranean passages to sneak into Israel and bypass border crossings, just like Becca and Josh in Brownsville.
“Where are the other diggers?” asked Josh.
“The Juans are sleeping up top. We switch them out every 12 hours,” said El Minero.
“They’re all named Juan?” asked Becca, puzzled.
“They are to you,” replied El Minero, with a smile. “The probes communicate with their host. Before they run out of charge, they reverse and re-attach themselves. Hopefully, the robots will quickly locate the old tunnel system.
“We’re digging down, at roughly a 10-degree angle, in case we hit groundwater. If you see any water, run to the lift and get out! I don’t like being so close to the Gihon Spring. With these robots, I estimate that we’ll be able to dig 20 feet per day. It’s twice as fast as manually digging. If we’re able to maintain that rate, we’ll be at your geo-marker in 45 to 60 days.”
After listening to a few more details, Becca excused herself and went back to the anteroom. She set up a folding table and chair set. The hacker used the table for her comms equipment and laptop. She connected the fiber-optic cable that Ismael had run down the excavation shaft, to a specially configured fiber router. Becca assembled the router herself and shipped it to Israel. She was afraid of secret backdoors in any routers she bought retail.
A half-hour later, Becca was securely communicating over a high-speed Internet connection. She checked the status of the A-Car. It was parked at a SuperNight Motel in Arizona, near the Grand Canyon.
*
Rahmati went to Persia for his weekly meeting with Javan.
“I can’t wait until we can meet in Babylon,” said Rahmati. “The Chinese are making great progress. The fiber should be complete in a few weeks or so. Then, we can start securely collaborating at 300,000 kilometers a second.”
Javan replied, “I agree, that’ll be a great day. Suleiman and Rodina are advancing extraordinarily. We own the military comms of the 5th and 6th Fleet. We were so focused on the benefits of cracking AES; we underestimated the benefits of breaking SHA. Not only does the SHA hack give us the ability to secretly modify log files, but we have all the SYSADMIN passwords. We’re superusers on every DoD and intelligence network. If we wanted, we could change the contents of documents without altering the digital signature. Or we could send fake emails. Or we could spoof the digital certificates of any software company to spread malware.”
Rahmati laughed. “Let’s keep those things in our back pocket. Each of those things might raise the visibility of our attack, if they were discovered. We want to keep Suleiman and Rodina a secret for as long as possible. But can you imagine, we have the ability to modify every classified document in the United States? Unbelievable!”
“Indeed. Just being a superuser lets us work through all the covert programs, without even worrying about AES or public key encryption. It’s a much faster way to get the information. We started with their TOP SECRET programs. Muhammad, we’re in possession of some shocking secrets. American’s would probably impeach the President if we disclosed some of these things.”
Now, Rahmati’s laugh bellowed through the whole office. “That’s just one more knife to use in a street-fight. Whatever we’re paying the Russian cryptographers, we should double it. We can only keep AVICENNA hidden for so long. The Americans may be cowboys, but they’re not dumb. They’ll guess that we have a quantum computer pretty quickly, after we implement the rest of our plan.”
“Yes,” said Javan. “It’s been very instructive reading about the NSA projects. It gives us deep insight into all their SIGINT capabilities. The sheer number of files is massive. We’ve worked only through half of them. Also, we’ve identified more Persians on the American and British payroll. We’re going to use them to plant disinformation, before we take them out. Muhammad, one of my analysts discovered an extremely interesting project. It’s called SWARM. I think you should take a look.”
Rahmati reviewed the file for a long time. “This is fascinating.”
Against numerous naysayers, Muhammad Rahmati had made substantial progress against Daesh in the past six weeks. Iraq was such a basket case since the American’s left 10 years ago, that most pundits predicted the Rahmati Effect would fade.
They prognosticated that the forces that had consumed all other Iraqi governments, would ultimately overcome Rahmati. Iraq would face renewed, centuries-old sectarian violence. The blood of Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds would run red in the streets—once again.
Rahmati couldn’t wait to prove the conventional wisdom wrong. Much of that wisdom came from countries that benefitted from a weak Iraq. They wanted its oil fields, or at least, better oil concessions.
Re-Baathification was indeed playing a critical role in Rahmati’s fight against the Caliphate. While not every Baathist joined Rahmati’s government, enough high ranking ones did. They provided crucial intelligence on Caliphate operations. It was a risky situation for Rahmati, since the Baathists were Sunni.
The Prime Minister was trusting significant responsibilities to former enemies. However, most of the Baathists cared more about power than they cared about religious doctrine. After 15 years, many Baathists were just thankful to walk the halls of power once more. Rahmati also effectively united with the Kurds with promises of support in their efforts to establish an independent state carved from Turkish territory.
Iraqi forces; aided by Shiite militias, Persian special forces, and Russian airpower had driven Daesh from the cities of Ramadi and Tikrit. Next, the Coalition was planning on waging an offensive in Mosul and Fallujah. Daesh forces were fleeing to the Syrian Desert,
Libya, or the Sinai. Others were melting away into Europe.
The world was in awe of Rahmati’s progress against the Caliphate.
Regaining control of Iraq’s oil was just as important as pushing Daesh out of populous Iraqi cities. Rahmati was expelling Daesh from Iraqi oil fields and stopping their oil tapping operations. The oil wells were returning to the exclusive control of Iraq. Daesh’s finances were in disarray.
With the oil fields coming under Iraqi control, Rahmati’s financial coffers were finally expanding. He closed a lucrative revenue splitting arrangement with the Kurds, also furthering their alliance. The oil production-rich town of Basra was quickly reestablishing itself as the crown jewel of Iraq. Rahmati sought new foreign investment in the oil fields, offering attractive oil concessions. Babylon’s construction was also proceeding rapidly. The Chinese knew how to build cities quickly.
Rahmati continued to leverage social media to further his personal brand and advance his ultra-popular message. He used A-Tube and Snapchat to detail the highlights of his strengthening government. The PM live-streamed and Snapchatted his walks in the streets of Baghdad, his interactions with Iraqi citizens, and Babylon’s progress. His social media team developed custom filters for Snapchat and generated memes for other social platforms. The filter that made everyone look like Rahmati went viral.
*
Responding to a text, General Shields hastily arrived at Defense Innovations. He stepped into the SWARM Op Center. “What’s going on?”
“As I’ve been tracking Josh Adler and Becca Roberts, I noticed some anomalies,” replied the SWARM analyst. He pointed to his computer monitor. “Look at this. They’re staying at a SuperNight Motel every evening, as they make their way across the country. I’ve been looking carefully at all the sensors from the A-Car, just to see if anything jumped out at me.
“It’s clear the car is driving autonomously across the US. So that’s the first thing I noticed. Wouldn’t they want to drive manually, at least some of the time? Their A-Car does have the steering wheel option.”
General Shields laughed. “Well, they are getting married. They’re probably just really enjoying each other’s company—in the back seat.”
