“SSD?” DeSantos asked.
Uzi said, “Solid State Disc drives. Flash memory. Safer and more stable than a regular hard drive, which is an electrical-mechanical device that’s destined to fail.”
DeSantos tilted his head back and looked at Uzi through the lower half of his glasses. “I knew that.”
“Yeah,” Uzi said. “Of course you did.”
“And yes, before you ask, I’ve also got cloud backup.” Meadows moved a few paces to his right, where an LCD monitor stood on a makeshift table that consisted of a plywood board resting on two beat-up sawhorses.
They followed Meadows and stopped behind him, then watched as he tapped at the keys. “After you left, I did some more digging on those large-caliber rounds.”
Uzi turned to DeSantos and explained what they had learned about the Russian SV-98 sniper rifle and the spent brass casing they’d recovered from the scene.
“I found an unusual residue on the inside of the casing.”
“How unusual?” Uzi asked.
“Unusual enough to be able to give you a specific location of manufacture. Like the former Eastern bloc. Czech Republic.”
DeSantos nodded. “That goes with the weapon. And begs the question of who these people are, who they’re affiliated with. This is all good stuff. We need to get this info over to the Agency, have them start working it up.”
“I’ll give it to Leila. She’s now on the M2TF, liaison to JTTF.”
DeSantos leaned back. “Is that right.”
“Don’t give me any shit. I had nothing to do with it. Shepard’s idea.”
“Uh huh.”
A series of long, shrill beeps emanated from across the oblong room. Meadows’s fingers played across the keyboard and a three-dimensional diagram filled the screen. He leaned closer to the monitor and studied it, as if trying to locate a small side street on a city map. He struck another key and the beeping stopped. “Sorry about that.”
“What was that?” Uzi asked.
“‘That’ was that.” He swiveled in his chair to indicate a ten-foot-long table on the other side of the room, barely visible behind one of the rows of shelving. “My crown jewel.”
“Part of your dabbling?” Uzi asked.
“I’ve got twenty-three patents already.”
DeSantos raised an eyebrow. “Any of them worth anything?”
“Not a dime. Yet. But I don’t do it for money, Mr. DeSantos, I do it for the challenge.”
“And what kind of a challenge is your crown jewel?” DeSantos asked.
“Come, I’ll show you.” He rose from his chair and led the way. He stopped in front of the long table. Old-fashioned vacuum tubes projected from wood and metal boards, which were crisscrossed several times with multicolored wires bundled at regular intervals with plastic lock-ties.
“What does it do?”
“It’s a new kind of sensor that can detect all kinds of nasty stuff.”
“‘Nasty stuff’?”
“Bombs, guns, knives, trigger mechanisms, you name it. If it can be made into a weapon, this thing will find it.”
“Even plastic resin or carbon fiber composites?” DeSantos asked.
“Yup.”
“Don’t we already have something like that?”
“Yes and no. We’ve got all kinds of fancy sensors, most of them developed after 9/11. But they can’t do all the things this can do. Most check for metal or metal alloys. Some sniff for explosive materials. Some can detect certain kinds of resin composites. But this thing can find it all. Along with the software I’m writing for it. Best yet, it’ll do it for a fraction of the price these companies are charging the government for their high-tech gizmos. With an off-the-shelf Intel chip, this thing’ll only run a couple hundred bucks, assuming it’s mass produced with economies of scale.”
“Yeah, but does it really work?” Uzi asked.
“Seeing is believing. Here, I’ll show you.”
DeSantos checked his watch. “We really should get this info over to Leila—”
Meadows turned to a shelf behind him and dug into a shoebox full of parts. “It’ll only take a couple of minutes. You gotta see this.”
Before DeSantos could object, Meadows was handing Uzi a tiny square of light gray plastic. “Hide this somewhere.”
Uzi did as instructed, dropping it into his left jacket pocket. Meadows lifted the screen of a nearby laptop and hit a button that woke it from sleep. He poked another key, then grabbed a thick, brushed stainless steel wand fitted with blue LEDs. “It’s all wireless,” he said proudly.
Meadows started at Uzi’s head and brought the wand down slowly. The device was silent, until the same shrill beep they had heard moments ago blared from a console on the table.
“Hmm,” Uzi said. “Impressive.”
But Meadows’s gaze was still directed at the wand. He continued to wave it over Uzi’s coat, two LEDs flashing blue, then three, then four. And then the wand began vibrating.
“Take it off for a sec,” Meadows said.
“This is all fun stuff, I’m sure,” DeSantos said, “but we really should go.”
But Meadows had already grabbed the collar of the coat and was peeling it off Uzi’s body.
“What’s the problem?” Uzi asked as he pulled his hand through the sleeve.
Meadows turned the jacket around and continued to wand the inside lining, watching the LED patterns change. “What have you got in here?”
“Just my phone.”
“No, it’s not your phone. See, this is your phone here.” He wanded the right pocket and the pitch of the alarm changed. “And this is the resin block I gave you.” Again, the sound changed. “Here,” Meadows said as he glanced over his shoulder at the laptop, “is something else.”
“Something else?”
Meadows pulled a Leatherman from his pocket and opened the knife.
“Whoa,” Uzi said, “wait a minute. What are you doing?”
Meadows sliced through the lining of the jacket, along the lower seam.
“Jesus, Tim, that jacket cost me five hundred bucks—”
“Here, look.” Meadows prodded and poked at the silk lining with his fingers and produced a plastic disc the size and thickness of a dime. He held it up between thumb and forefinger, then brought it close to the wand. The shrill beep sounded, the wand vibrated strongly, and the lights flickered and flashed as if it were a Geiger counter passing over uranium.
Uzi squinted at the small device. What the hell is that?
Meadows contorted his brow. “Jesus, Uzi, you didn’t tell me you had a spare phone battery in your pocket.” He put his index finger to his lips, then nodded across the room where his PC sat.
Clearly, Meadows felt the small device was a bug, and until he proved or disproved his theory, they had to operate as if it was. “My Nokia sometimes goes into roam and drains the battery in forty-five minutes,” Uzi said, hoping to make the conversation seem realistic. “Hasn’t happened in a while. Sorry. Forgot I had it in my pocket.” Why didn’t my own sensor pick up the bug?
Uzi and DeSantos watched as Meadows pulled a microscope from the shelf below the computer and plugged it into the PC’s USB port.
“Not a problem,” Meadows said. “But I told you this thing worked.”
“When do you apply for a patent?”
“Already applied for.” Meadows turned the knob on the microscope and an image appeared on the screen. “Takes a while to get a number. That’s why you always see ‘Patent Pending’ on products. But I think it’s too sensitive.” Meadows found the area of the device he was looking for, then pointed at the monitor. “I need to make some refinements in the design. Mind if I take down a few notes? Only take me a minute.”
“Go ahead,” DeSantos said, squinting at the hyper-enlarged image.
Uzi pulled out his smartphone and pressed a couple of buttons, then moved it over the device Meadows was examining. Nothing.
Meadows double-clicked the Word icon on his
desktop. He typed at the cursor:
This is a very sophisticated listening device. It contains no magnetic parts. Its components appear to be resin and gold. Nothing that would be detected by conventional sensing equipment.
Yeah, no kidding. Uzi moved in front of the keyboard and typed:
I’ll bring it by the lab in the morning. We can’t disable it or we’ll tip them off. Can you examine it without destroying it?
Meadows:
Yes.
Uzi leaned over the keyboard:
There could be others. Does the Bureau have anything that can detect these things?
DeSantos nudged Uzi aside and typed:
NSA’s got a handheld unit, the NX-590. I can make a call, have one waiting for us by the time we get there.
DeSantos rooted out his BlackBerry and moved off to the far corner of the room.
Meadows said, “Almost done with these notes. Give me another minute,” as he typed to Uzi:
I know that unit. Not as good as mine, but it can pick up gold and other weak metallic conductors.
Uzi tapped out:
We should let NSA take a crack at this thing, see what they can figure out.
He clapped Meadows on the back. “We’ve really gotta go, Tim. Always a pleasure.” Uzi winked. “If you find anything more on that ammo, let me know.”
Meadows removed the listening device from the microscope and handed it to Uzi, who dropped it into his intact jacket pocket.
“Wish I could’ve done more.”
“Hey,” Uzi said, “you earned yourself an appetizer.”
Meadows’s face brightened considerably. “Oysters?”
Uzi threw a protective hand over his wallet. “You’re killing me, Tim.”
Meadows indicated Uzi’s jacket pocket and said, “I think that may be someone else’s job.”
4:03 PM
93 hours 57 minutes remaining
The drive to Annapolis, Maryland, was strained. Uzi had removed his bugged coat and placed it in the rear compartment, then turned on the stereo and faded it to the back of the SUV as a cover.
“I’ve never been here,” Uzi said. “Tell me about the NSA. Behind the scenes stuff.” He turned onto the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and accelerated. Noting his partner’s questioning eyes, Uzi explained: “We’ve got at least another half hour to kill.”
“I signed a nondisclosure agreement.”
“Give me the abridged version. Nothing classified. Just some highlights and background.”
“Highlights and background.” DeSantos pursed his lips. “Don’t you know this stuff?”
“Probably some of it. But our agencies aren’t exactly best pals. Assume I’m a blank slate.”
“Okay. Let’s start in 1919.”
“We’re talking serious background here.”
“It was called The Cipher Bureau, or The Black Chamber, in those days. I think it was a one-room vault that held all the intelligence we had at the time, stuff we’d collected by cracking codes we intercepted from the Japanese and Russians. But the Chamber didn’t exist, at least not as far as the government was concerned. Know why?”
“Uh, because it was a secret?”
DeSantos chuckled. “You’re being a wiseass, boychick. But you’re close. The Cipher Bureau operated out of New York and was a front business for The Black Chamber’s real work, which was breaking codes. They were doing some great work until the secretary of state found out about it and shut it down because he didn’t believe in reading others’ letters and mail.”
“You’re joking.”
“No joke. The Chamber closed up shop. The data they’d collected was thrown into a vault and remained on ice until 1930 when the Army realized it needed an advantage over unfriendly governments. They asked their chief cryptanalyst, a guy named William Friedman, to build the Signal Intelligence Service with the help of three of his math teacher buddies. He hid the SIS, its employees, and its budget from everyone. And we were back in the spy business.”
DeSantos turned away. He seemed to be lost in thought, but then said, “Just like the Black Chamber was a closet, the NSA is literally the size of a city.” He turned the stereo up a bit more and leaned closer to Uzi. “Crypto City’s got 10 million square feet of offices, warehouses, factories, labs, schools, and apartments. Tens of thousands of people live and work there—and no one outside its walls knows what they do for a living or that the place even exists.”
“Tens of thousands?” Uzi had known it was a lot, but that was a number far exceeding even his highest guestimates.
“Bigger than the CIA and FBI. Combined, by a long shot. And growing.”
DeSantos continued his dissertation for another twenty minutes, until they arrived in Annapolis Junction. Uzi turned off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway onto a hidden exit ramp bounded by berms and dense foliage, then drove through the maze of barbed-wire fences, where yellow signs warned against taking photographs, making notes, or drawing sketches.
“Typical intelligence agency,” Uzi said. “A bit paranoid.”
“That’s like saying the US Army has a few guns.”
Uzi laughed. “Bet their surveillance cameras are better than ARM’s.”
“Trust me. You don’t want to find out.”
UZI PARKED NEAR Operations Building 1 and waited for DeSantos to complete his business. In the twenty minutes he sat there, three different guards approached, inspected his identification, then questioned his reason for being on-site.
When DeSantos mercifully returned, he said, “If they come up with anything, they’ll let us know.” DeSantos shut his door. “Actually, they’ll let me know.”
They left Crypto City and made their way to Uzi’s office at WFO. After parking in the underground garage, they took the elevator up to the third floor. While DeSantos used the restroom down the hall, Uzi did a complete sweep of his work area. Satisfied it was clean, he set the scanning device on his desk and reached for a toothpick.
“Nice digs,” DeSantos said, his neck craning around to take in all the wall hangings.
Uzi turned slowly, taking in the décor. “Guess it’s a work in progress.” Despite lithographs from noted American artists, there were only three personal items in the office: a framed photo of Dena, Maya, and himself standing among the ancient ruins of Beit She’an, south of the Sea of Galilee; a six-inch square Lucite block containing one of the first Pentium 4 chips to come off the Intel line bearing the inscription: “In recognition for a winning design, this is hereby presented to Lead Engineer Aaron Uziel, Intel Pentium 4 Willamette Development Team”; and a ratty, battle-worn canteen with a large bullet hole in the side, from Uzi’s required duty tour with the Israel Defense Forces.
DeSantos lifted the canteen from the bookshelf. It clattered like a baby’s rattle.
“Canteen from my Efod.” Noticing DeSantos’s confusion, Uzi said, “An Efod is an equipment vest.”
DeSantos shook it a bit, then held it up and looked through the hole. “What’s in it?”
“Syrian sniper’s bullet. That hollow piece of tin saved my life.”
DeSantos returned the canteen to the shelf. “I ever tell you you’ve got strange keepsakes?”
Uzi sunk down into his leather chair. “You’ve never been here?”
“Shit no,” DeSantos said. “We always meet somewhere. You’ve never been to my office either. It’s always a park or a restaurant or a car or something.”
Uzi, sucking on the toothpick, spread his arms wide. “Welcome to my humble office.”
“Humble?”
“For a peon task force head.”
“Oh, yes. A peon.” DeSantos said, using his fingers as quotation marks in the air. “Right. That’s why you have an office instead of a cubicle.”
“Well it ain’t because everyone here likes me.”
“I like you. Doesn’t that count?”
“I think that may work against me.”
DeSantos took a seat in front of Uzi’s desk. “Go to
hell.”
Uzi pushed aside the stacked messages on his desk and asked, “So...where are we?”
“Given what we found in your jacket,” DeSantos said, “maybe now’s the right time.”
“Right time for what?”
“May I?” He indicated the laptop Hoshi had been using, then sat down and logged on to the Pentagon’s Intelligence Support Agency database. He played the keys for a moment, then leaned back and turned the laptop so Uzi could see the screen.
“I had my buddy at NSA take some photos of the ARM compound.”
“Sat photos?”
“With those KH-12s,” DeSantos said, referring to the Strategic Response Reconnaissance Satellites. “The ones usually trained on Cuba. I had them rotate their axis a bit.”
Uzi’s brow rose. “No shit?”
“No shit. Had my guy do something like this a few months ago for Karen. Worked like a charm.”
Spying on US citizens was not a good road to travel. But when terrorism was suspected and lives were at stake, well... Uzi had struggled with that issue on many occasions. But each time information led to the preemption of an attack, and he knew it was the right call. But it still bothered him. He glanced at DeSantos. “And?”
“There are three buildings that pique my interest.” He struck a sequence of keys and a split screen of four images appeared. “Two sheds and a garage. With some unusual activity the night of the ninth. Trucks backing up to it making what I’d guess were deliveries.”
“Deliveries? What kind of trucks?”
“Trucks. Plain cab-over cargo deals.”
“So? Could’ve been delivering food. Or office supplies for the compound.”
DeSantos peered over the tops of his glasses at Uzi. “Yeah, right.”
“Wait a minute. The ninth. The hospital was bombed on the tenth.”
DeSantos elevated his eyebrows and tilted his head.
“But what would they need trucks for?”
“Don’t know. But we need to get onto the compound, take a look around those three buildings.”
Uzi lifted the phone. “I’ll get a warrant.”
DeSantos reached across the desk and disconnected the call. “Put that thing down.”
Hard Target Page 26
