Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  Dominic answered this. “You have any idea how many people regularly hop the Atlantic? Thousands, and the Bureau’s looking at all of them. It’ll take a long time to check out as many as a quarter of them. It’s like reading through a phone book eight hours a day. And for all we know, the bastard’s sending his CD-ROMs by FedEx or even regular mail. A mailbox is a great place to hide something.”

  Jerry Rounds’s laptop chimed, and he checked the screen. He read for a full minute, then said, “This complicates things.”

  “What?” Jack said.

  “We got an info dump from the Tripoli embassy thing. Ding inadvertently pocketed a flash drive from one of the tangos. The drive had a bunch of JPEG files on it.”

  “Pictures of the Emir’s bolt-hole?” Brian asked.

  “Not so lucky. The bad guys are upping their game. They’re using steganography.”

  “Come again?”

  “Steganography. Stego, for short. It’s a method of encryption-essentially, hiding a message inside an image.”

  “Like invisible ink.”

  “More or less, but it’s even older than that. In ancient Greece they used to shave a portion of a servant’s head, tattoo a message on the skull, then wait for the hair to grow back and send him through enemy lines. Here we’re talking about digital pictures, but the concept is the same. See, a digital image is nothing more than a whole bunch of colored dots.”

  “Pixels,” Chavez offered.

  “Right. Each pixel is assigned a number-a red, blue, and green value, usually ranging from zero to two fifty-five, depending on the intensity. Each of these are, in turn, stored in eight bits, starting at one twenty-eight and jumping down to one, halving as they go, so one twenty-eight to sixty-four to thirty-two, and so on. A difference in one or two or even four in the RGB value is imperceptible to the human eye-”

  “You’re losing me,” Brian said. “Bottom-line it.”

  “You’re essentially hiding characters inside a digital photo by slightly altering its pixels.”

  “How much information?”

  “Say, a six forty by four eighty image… half a million characters, give or take. A good-sized novel.”

  “Damn,” Chavez muttered.

  “That’s the hell of it, though,” Jack said. “If they’re using stego, they’re probably smart enough to keep the messages short. We’re talking about a dozen or so altered pixels in an image containing millions. It’s the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “So how hard is it to do the encoding?” Chavez asked. “Any way we can track it that way?”

  “Not likely. There are tons of shareware and freeware programs out there that can do it. Some are better than others, but it’s not a specialized thing. Doesn’t have to be, when only the sender and recipient have the decryption key.”

  “How about pulling the messages out? Can it be done? What’s that involve?”

  Rounds answered, “It’s essentially reverse-engineering each image-deconstructing it, figuring out which pixels have been altered and by what amount, then pulling out the message.”

  “This sounds right up the NSA’s alley,” Brian said. “Can we tap-”

  “No,” Rounds replied. “Love to, believe me, but intercepting their traffic is one thing. Trying to hack into their systems is another. Anyway, we might not need something that strong. Jack, are there commercial programs out there?”

  “Yeah, but whether they’ve got the horsepower we need, I don’t know. I’ll start looking around. If nothing else, we might be able to model our own program. I’ll check with Gavin.”

  “So the Tripoli thing,” Dominic asked. “I assume we’re thinking it was a URC op?”

  “Right. All of the tangos were from URC affiliate groups-half of them from a Benghazi cell, the other half a mixed bag.”

  “A pickup game,” Jack said. “From everything I’ve read, that’s pretty unusual for a URC job. Usually they’re keen on cell integrity. That’s got to mean something.”

  “Agreed,” Rounds said. “Let’s start a thread and see where it goes. Why did they break routine?”

  “And where are the other Benghazi members?” Brian added.

  “Right. Okay, back to the stego: Unless this is an aberration, we have to assume it’s standard URC practice and may have been for a long time, which makes our job a whole lot tougher. Every message board and website the URC has ever used or is currently using is a potential source now. We need to scour them for image files-JPEGs, GIFs, bitmaps, PNGs. Anything.”

  “Video?” This from Chavez.

  “Yeah, it can be done, but it’s harder. Some of the compression stuff can mess with image pixels. Better to concentrate on still images and screen caps for now. So we grab everything we can and start dissecting for embedded messages.”

  “We should make sure we have a benign IP base, in case anyone’s keeping track,” Jack suggested.

  “How about giving me that in English?” Brian said. “You know me, big dumb Marine.”

  “IP is Internet protocol-you know that string of numbers you see on your home network… like 67.165.216.132?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If we bombard these sites with the same IP and somebody’s watching, they’ll know they’re getting probed. I can have Gavin set us up on a random rotation so we’ll just look like regular visitors. Maybe even ghost them to other Islamic websites.”

  “Good,” Rounds said. “Okay, let’s keep going. What else? Toss it out there.”

  “Any way to check when pictures are posted on a website?” Dominic asked.

  “Maybe,” Jack replied. “Why?”

  “Match the post dates against e-mails, known operations, that kind of thing. Maybe a picture being posted prompts an e-mail, or vice versa. Maybe there’s a pattern we can start to build on.”

  Jack made a note. “Good idea.”

  “Let’s talk assumptions,” Chavez offered. “We’ve been assuming the Emir’s still somewhere in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When’s the last time he’s been confirmed there?”

  “A year ago,” Jack replied. “We’ve tossed that around, the idea of him having relocated or even changed his appearance, but there’s no evidence of it.”

  “Pretend there is. Why would he move?”

  “Either operational reasons or we were getting too close to his bolt-hole for comfort,” Rounds said.

  “Where would he go?”

  “My vote is Western Europe,” Dominic said.

  “Why?”

  “Borders, for one thing. A lot easier to move around.”

  The Schengen Agreement had seen to that, Jack knew, having standardized border controls and entry requirements among most EU nations, making travel between them almost as easy as moving between states in North America.

  “Don’t forget currency,” Brian added. “The euro’s accepted just about everywhere. It would make moving money and setting up house a whole lot easier.”

  “Assuming he hasn’t changed his appearance, it’d be a lot easier for him to blend in somewhere in the south, the Med-Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain…”

  “A whole lot of territory,” Brian observed.

  “So how do we triangulate?” Rounds said.

  “Follow the money,” Dominic offered.

  “Been doing that for a year; so has Langley,” Jack replied. “The URC’s financial structure makes the Knossos Labyrinth look like a place-mat maze at Denny’s.”

  “Nice obscure reference, cuz,” Brian said with a grin.

  “Sorry. Catholic education. The point is, without a corner to peel back, I think the financial angle is a nonstarter. At least by itself.”

  “Anybody modeled it?” Chavez asked. “Take what we know about their money handling, tie it to e-mail traffic and website announcements, and cross-reference those with incidents?”

  “Good question,” Rounds replied.

  “I’d be surprised if the NCTC and/or Langley hasn’t already tried that. If they’d had any luc
k, the guy would be in the bag.”

  “Maybe,” Rounds said, “but we haven’t tried it.”

  “If The Campus ain’t done it, it can’t be done?” Brian offered.

  “Exactly. Let’s assume they haven’t tried it. Or let’s assume they did try it but in the wrong way. What would it take to do it right?”

  “A custom-made software application,” Jack replied.

  “We’ve got the people and the money. Let’s explore it.”

  “Gavin’s gonna start hating us,” Dominic said with a smile.

  “Buy him a case of Cheetos and Mountain Dew,” Brian shot back. “He’ll be fine.”

  “How about we put some boots on the ground in Tripoli?” Dominic said, changing directions. “This embassy job didn’t happen in a vacuum. Let’s go down there and shake the tree. Maybe Benghazi, too.”

  Rounds considered this. “I’ll put it to Sam and Gerry.”

  They kicked the ball around for another hour before Rounds brought the meeting to a close. “Let’s break up and get to work. Meet again tomorrow morning.”

  Everyone filed out, save Jack, who’d rotated his chair to stare out the window.

  “I can see the gears turning,” Chavez said from the doorway.

  “Sorry… what?”

  “Same look your dad gets when his brain is on overdrive.”

  “Still playing what-if.”

  Ding pulled out a chair and sat down. “Shoot.”

  “The question we didn’t ask is why. If the Emir has left Pakistan or Afghanistan for points unknown, why? Why now? As far as we can tell, he hasn’t left the area for maybe four years. Were we getting too close to him, or was it something else?”

  “Such as?”

  “Don’t know. Just trying to think like him. If I had something cooking, a really big operation, I might be tempted to pull up stakes and find another bolt-hole, to make sure I didn’t get caught and give away the farm to interrogators.”

  “Risky move.”

  “Maybe, but maybe not as risky as sticking around the same place, knowing the odds were probably catching up to me. If you move and set up shop somewhere else, you not only stay free, but you’re also able to keep your hands in the pot.”

  Chavez was silent for a few moments. “You’ve got a good head, Jack.”

  “Thanks, but I kinda hope I’m wrong on this. If I’m not, something big may be coming down the road.”

  They’d managed to survive the storm, but it had been too close for comfort, the boat having been nearly battered to its breaking point. Four hours after they’d entered the squall, they broke through its western limits, finding themselves in calm water and blue skies again. Vitaliy and Vanya had spent the remainder of the day and part of the evening after they’d put ashore checking the boat for damage but finding nothing that would require them to return to port. And even if they had, Vitaliy wondered if Fred would have permitted it. His sacrifice of his man had been a shock to Vitaliy-not so much the decision itself but rather the lack of emotion it had evoked in Fred. These were serious, serious men.

  The lighthouse was their objective, though he still had no idea why anyone would want to go there. Situated atop Cape Morrasale on the Gulf of Baidaratzkaya, it wasn’t a particularly important navigation aid-not anymore, at least. There had once been a settlement here, probably a monitoring station for the nuclear tests on Novaya Zemlya, and some commercial fishermen had tried to make a go of it, but that had lasted only four seasons before the men and the boats had moved west to better grounds. The charts showed ten to twelve fathoms of water, and so there was little danger of running aground, and besides, most boats had Western-made GPS navigation to keep them in safe waters.

  His passengers were checking with their truck now, testing the engine and the A-crane. It should have offended him, what they planned to do, but he didn’t fish here, and nobody he knew did.

  He could just see the light, blinking away every eight seconds, just as the chart said it did. Once they reached their destination beach, the lighthouse would be less than a kilometer away, up a spiral switch-backed road that led to the top of the cliff. That was going to be the worst part, Vitaliy knew. No more than three meters across, the roads were barely wide enough to accommodate the GAZ.

  Why come here? he again wondered. The seas alone were daunting enough, but the journey by truck over this wasteland was a job for neither the fainthearted nor the irresolute. While it would take Fred and his men only ten minutes to reach the lighthouse, he’d told Vitaliy to expect they would be gone for the day, if not overnight. What could they be doing that would take so long? Vitaliy shrugged off the question; not his job to wonder. It was his job to drive the boat.

  Sea conditions looked glassy-flat, and the slapping of shore waves against the steel sides of his landing craft was hard to hear. On deck, his charter party was brewing up coffee on a small, gasoline-powered stove they’d brought with them.

  With a throaty rumble from the diesels, Vitaliy shifted the engines to reverse and increased the throttle, grinding away from the gravel beach. After a hundred meters, he turned the wheel to bring his boat about, and then consulted his gyrocompass before turning again, this time on a heading of zero-three-five.

  Vitaliy lifted his binoculars and swept the horizon. Not a thing in sight that God didn’t Himself put here, except for a buoy or two. The winter ice often swept them away or ground them into pulp, sending them to the bottom, and the Navy didn’t trouble itself to replace them as they should, because nobody came here in a deep-draft ship. Another indicator of just how far into the wildlands they were.

  Four hours later he opened the side window and called out, “Attention! Landing in five minutes.” He pointed to his watch and held five fingers out. He got a wave from Fred in reply. Two members of the party went to the truck to start the engine, while two others started throwing their duffel-bagged gear in the back.

  Peering through the window, his eye picked a spot to aim his boat for, and he came in at about five knots, enough to be properly beached but not so hard as to jam his bow hard on the stones.

  About fifty meters out he unconsciously braced for the impact and stopped his propeller. He hardly had to bother. The T-4 hit bottom, not too hard, and quickly came to a stop with the mild grinding sound of gravel on steel.

  “Set the anchor?” Vanya asked. There was a fair-sized one on the stern for hauling the boat loose of a sticky shore.

  “No. It’s low tide, isn’t it?” Vitaliy answered.

  They throttled the diesels down to idle, moved to the ramp-control lever, and bled the hydraulics. The ramp dropped under its own weight and crashed down on the beach. The beach gradient was fairly steep, it appeared. Hardly a splash of water when the ramp went down. One of the men climbed into the GAZ’s cab and pulled it forward, brake lights flashing as he navigated the ramp, then pulled onto the gravel, the chain waving off the end of the crane like the trunk of a circus elephant. The truck ground to a stop. Fred and the rest of the men walked down the ramp and onto the beach-save one, Vitaliy now saw, who stood at the top of the ramp.

  Vitaliy left the wheelhouse and walked forward. “You’re not taking this one?” he called to Fred.

  “He’ll stay behind to lend a hand if you need it.”

  “No need. We’ll manage.”

  In reply, Fred simply smiled and lifted his hand in a wave. “We’ll be back.”

  45

  CLARK TOOK IT AS a sign of his advancing age that he’d grown increasingly intolerant of air travel. The cramped seats, the bad food, the noise… The only thing that made it remotely tolerable were the Bose noisecanceling headphones and a horseshoe neck pillow he’d gotten for Christmas, and a few tablets of Ativan Sandy had given him for the trip. For his part, Chavez sat in the window seat, eyes closed as he listened to his iPod Nano. At least the seat between them was empty, which gave each of them a little more elbow room.

  After his discussion with Hendley and Granger, he’d found Ding,
brought him up to speed, then called Mary Pat’s cell and arranged to meet her at home later in the afternoon. At her urging, he arrived early and shot the breeze with Ed for an hour before she arrived. While Ed started dinner, Clark and Mary Pat retreated to the back deck with a pair of beers.

  Ignoring Hendley’s “tread carefully” warning, Clark laid his cards on the table. They’d known each other too long for anything less. Mary Pat didn’t bat an eye. “So Jack did it, huh? Always wondered if he’d gone through with it. Good for him. Well, they didn’t waste much time snatching you two up, did they? Who tapped you?”

  “Jimmy Hardesty, about ten minutes after Alden canned us. The thing is, Mary Pat, I think we’re working on the same puzzle. If you’re not okay with cross-decking whatever intel we dig up…”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “For starters, we’ll be breaking at least three federal laws. And be risking the wrath of the Aldens at Langley.”

  “If we can get this asshole-or even get a little closer to getting him-I’ll be fine with that.” Mary Pat took a sip of her beer, then glanced sideways at Clark. “Does this mean Hendley’s footing the bill?”

  Clark chuckled. “Call it a gesture of goodwill. So what’s it going to be? A onetime deal, or the beginning of a wonderful friendship?”

  “Share and share alike,” Mary Pat replied. “Bureaucracy be damned. If we have to put our heads together to get our man, so be it. Of course,” she added with a smile, “we’ll have to take credit, seeing as how you guys don’t exist and all.”

  Half a tablet of Ativan and a beer helped Clark pass the last five hours of the flight in a deep, untroubled sleep. As the plane’s wheels bumped and squelched on the Peshawar airport’s tarmac, he opened his eyes and looked around. Beside him, Chavez was stuffing his iPod and paperback into his carry-on.

  “Time to work, boss.”

  “Yep.”