The Pandora Deception--A Novel

by David Bruns

  “That’s the CLU,” the driver shouted.

  “Barracks,” Don translated.

  To Dre’s eye, Camp Lemonnier seemed to be constructed entirely from shipping containers. People lived in shipping containers stacked on top of one another like LEGO buildings. Shipping containers were smashed together to make bigger rooms like the mess hall and the commissary.

  They passed through a second level of base security, where they all had to show their IDs, before the van finally stopped in front of another building made from combined shipping containers.

  The enlisted driver rushed to open the door for them. “Welcome to the Combined/Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Horn of Africa,” he said in a near shout. He offered a military shorthand for the acronym that made no sense to Dre. “We’ve set you up in this facility.”

  A pair of hard-eyed, well-armed soldiers checked their IDs again in the lobby as they signed in. Dre saw one of the soldier’s eyebrows tick up at Shira’s Mossad ID, but he cleared her after checking the access list.

  Finally, they were led to a familiar sight: a tactical operations center, or TOC, filled with dozens of multiscreen workstations. As this was a “combined” joint task force, the flags and uniforms of other nations showed prominently in the room. United Kingdom, France, Canada.

  Their enlisted guide led the group to a smaller, enclosed space just off the TOC that held three computer workstations, a wall screen, and secure phones.

  “It’s a temporary SCIF, sir. Per your orders,” he said to Don. He eyed Shira again. “Once the door is engaged, it’s isolated from the rest of the facility. You’ve got a direct, secure connection back to DC. All the accesses you asked for are ready to go.”

  Dre, Janet, and Michael each dropped their bags and selected a workstation. Shira looked like a fish out of water watching them, but the agreement between Don and Binya was that she was there as an observer—and to give them the key to the Mahdi website encryption.

  “Well?” Janet asked Don.

  “No time like the present,” Don replied. “Let’s see who’s behind the Mahdi’s mask.”

  Dre found the Mahdi page on the unclassified internet connection and went to the maintenance access login. Her cursor blinked in the empty box. She looked back at Shira. “You’re up.”

  Shira removed a thumb drive from a lanyard around her neck. The block lettering on the side of the thumb drive read CERBERUS.

  She smiled faintly. “We named the program after the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.” Her voice turned bitter. “Now that someone sold us out, it’s more like a yapping lapdog.”

  The room was silent as Dre inserted the thumb drive into the workstation. The machine recognized the incoming program.

  “Here goes nothing.” She hit the Enter key.

  For a full ten seconds, nothing happened. Dre heard Shira’s feet scuff against the floor as she shifted her weight from foot to foot.

  “It’s a query and response program,” said Shira, her voice at a whisper, “based on millions of quantum-state possibilities. The host computer offers the incoming program a problem to solve. If it solves it, they move to the next level. Each level unlocks a new quantum state. If the query fails to achieve a level, it’s locked out.”

  “Like a video game,” Michael said. “Brilliant.”

  “Thank you,” Shira whispered back.

  Dre’s screen cleared. Her cursor blinked in the upper left-hand corner of the blank screen.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  The rest of the crew crowded around her workstation. “Let’s see what we’ve got,” Don said.

  Dre queried the IP address of the server and got a dotted decimal string in reply.

  “They’re using a reverse proxy setup from a server based in the Netherlands. That routes to four different servers … all of them commercial providers, except for this one.” Dre highlighted an IP address.

  “Look up that address,” Don said to Michael.

  “Don’t bother.” Shira’s voice cut through the tension in the room. “I recognize it. It belongs to Iran. That’s an IP address for the cyber wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” She extracted the Cerberus thumb drive from Dre’s workstation. “This is our worst fear. I need to let Binya know.” She left the room.

  Don blew out a breath. “If the IRGC has access to Israeli encryption that we can’t crack … I better let Washington know.” Don left the room.

  Dre stared at the screen. The Iranians were behind the Mahdi. It made perfect sense. They wanted to stir up trouble in the Sunni world, get faction fighting against faction for the scarce water of the Nile River. But it also felt too … predictable.

  Why steal the toughest encryption in the world and then point the website right back to your home server?

  When Dre looked up, she saw Michael and Janet watching her.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Janet asked.

  “This is too easy?” Dre said.

  “I feel like I’m a hammer searching for a nail,” Michael chimed in.

  “I agree,” Janet said. “Let’s go to work.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, Africa

  “It’s a hoax,” Michael said. His pronouncement was met with stony silence. The gentle rush of the air-conditioning filled the void.

  The smooth skin of Shira’s forehead clenched into a frown. Don Riley pressed his lips together.

  “Explain,” Don said.

  Michael took a seat at his workstation and spun the chair around. “This server is an exit node for the Tor network,” he said. “They use it to upload new content to the commercial servers. Whoever is behind the Mahdi assumed that any entity with enough resources to break through the encryption would have preconceptions about who was behind the terrorist attacks. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is the perfect foil.”

  Shira’s frown deepened, and her tone had an accusatory note. “I didn’t hear an explanation, Michael.”

  Michael spun his chair around to face Shira. “This Iranian server is ancient and the software is way out of date. Someone boosted the hardware and made a Tor exit node. The only time they use it is when they upload a video, so no one would notice.”

  “We’re back to square one?” Don asked.

  Janet spoke this time. “Whoever’s running this is tech-savvy and well financed. They have access to the highest-quality encryption”—she shot a look at Shira—“stolen encryption in the world and they still go to great lengths to hide their identity. We can assume that when the Mahdi broadcasts they will use an IP-hopping program to shield their true identity.”

  “How do you know that?” Shira challenged.

  “Because that’s what we’d do,” Michael said.

  “There has to be a way to track them down,” Don said.

  “There’s only one way,” Janet replied.

  “You’re going to track him when he’s broadcasting,” Shira said.

  Michael nodded. “Exactly. Which is why you need to leave the Cerberus key with us.”

  Shira shook her head. “That’s not going to happen,” she said. “You’re stuck with me for the duration, Michael.”

  “I’ll deal with it,” Michael said, but he was smiling.

  “I don’t like it.” Don was having none of it. “Your plan is to wait for another terrorist attack?”

  Janet nodded. “That’s the best we’ve got, boss.”

  Dre tapped a few keys and threw the contents of her monitor to the wall screen. “I set up a trap program that will let us know as soon as the Mahdi starts the next broadcast. We can immediately log into the Mahdi website and run a trace program to track them to the source, but our window will be incredibly short.”

  Don scratched at the scruff on his chin. “We’ll have what? Two minutes, maybe three minutes?”

  “We’ll have as long as it takes for the broadcast to upload,” Michael said. “They’ll probably leave the connection open l
ong enough to make sure the file’s not corrupted.”

  “We could be waiting here for weeks,” Don said to Shira. “Will Binya go along with this?”

  Shira hesitated, the skin of her forehead again wrinkling into a frown.

  “I don’t know that we have much of a choice,” she said. “We either turn over the Cerberus program to you or I stay here as one of the team until we figure out who’s behind this mess.”

  “In that case,” Don said, “you can help with our next assignment.”

  He used Janet’s workstation to call up a new file. A picture of a strikingly beautiful brown-skinned woman in her midthirties showed on the screen.

  “This is Dr. Talia Tahir,” Don said. “Up until recently, she was a lead researcher at the World Health Organization, Cairo office. In fact, the doctor was in line to become the next head of the Eastern Med region.”

  “And?” Janet asked.

  “Dr. Tahir was killed in a plane crash while transferring virus samples from the Cairo office to the new WHO office in Brazzaville, Congo. One of those samples was a very specific strain of the Ebola virus.

  “For those of you not up on your viruses, Ebola is a hemorrhagic disease, highly transmissible and extremely deadly.”

  He tapped the keyboard again, and the picture changed to a large white tent in the middle of a ring of mud-brick homes. A person in biocontamination gear was exiting the tent.

  “This is a Doctors Without Borders site in Melaba, Yemen. Three days ago, there was an Ebola outbreak in this village. There were one hundred and forty-seven people in the village, and as of right now one hundred and forty-five of those people are dead. There were three MSF first responders who have also contracted Ebola.”

  Don paused. The only sound in the room was the whirr of the computer cooling fans. “The Ebola virus strain found in Melaba is a genetic match to the virus carried by Dr. Tahir, except for one thing. It’s a whole lot more lethal than the original.”

  The team stared at Don.

  “The working hypothesis is that we are looking at a bioweapons attack.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Khartoum, Sudan

  The Al-Mogran Supercity, a vast glass-and-steel enclave of modernity, rose up next to the confluence of the Blue and White Nile Rivers. Rachel took the glass elevator up to the sixteenth floor and found the room where the interview for the private security job was to take place.

  When she opened the door to the office, she found five other interview candidates inside, all men. She scanned her competition. Two of the men were big with heavy Germanic features, both of them well over a hundred kilograms, with expensive, tailored suits that molded to their brawny upper bodies.

  They sat together and seemed to know each other. Rachel mentally dubbed them Hans and Frans. These were men who provided private security for people who wanted the world to know they had private security. Intimidation and brute force were their go-to tools.

  A third man, equally as large, sat next to Hans and Frans. He had a shaved head with snow-white skin and chiseled Nordic features. His stunning good looks were spoiled by a smirk when he saw Rachel enter the room. She would call him Thor.

  She crossed to where a receptionist in traditional Muslim dress sat behind a desk and waited until the young woman looked up.

  “You must be Zula Bekele,” the young woman said in a stage whisper. She handed Rachel a single sheet of paper. “You will need to sign this, please.”

  It was a standard nondisclosure agreement that lasted for the duration of the interview only. Rachel signed it without bothering to read it and handed it back.

  Facing the three giants were two other men, with an empty chair between them. One was tall and lean, well over six feet tall, with huge hands. He wore his hair long and ragged, like a schoolkid. He smiled at her, patting the seat next to him. “You can sit here, ma’am,” he said. His accent suggested he was an American. She would call him Stretch.

  Rachel took the open seat and checked out the final man in the room using her peripheral vision. He was small and wiry, only an inch or two taller than Rachel herself, and they probably weighed in within five kilos of each other.

  He held out his hand in greeting. “Name’s Danny. You?”

  Rachel detected an Irish lilt in his voice. His skin was dark, but not as dark as her own. Another candidate with a mixed heritage. Some other company had read Manzul’s file and was trying to gain an edge. Danny’s grip was firm and self-assured.

  “Zula,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise.” Danny had an infectious smile that shone even under the glaring gazes of Hans and Frans.

  They didn’t have long to wait. The secretary’s phone buzzed and she answered it. “Yes, Mr. Manzul,” she said, and stood. “If you would all follow me, please.”

  Hans and Frans exchanged glances. They were all going in together?

  Rachel saw immediately that the interview was not going to be quite what she had expected. A boardroom that looked out over the city and the Blue Nile had been emptied of furniture, and the floor was covered with sparring mats.

  A man in an open-necked blue Oxford shirt and no suit jacket waited by the window, admiring the view. He stood in his bare feet.

  When Manzul turned to greet the group, Rachel met those eyes again and for a split second the mission left her mind. His eyes traveled over the group then locked on her.

  “One of these things is not like the others, I see,” he said with a laugh.

  Hans and Frans snickered. Rachel felt herself blush.

  “My name is JP Manzul,” he said. “Chief executive officer of a high-tech company here in Khartoum. Recently, I was on assignment and someone attacked me. I managed to ward them off—I have some training myself—but my partner would feel safer if I had personal security with me at all times.” His eyes seemed to linger on Rachel for a few seconds longer than was necessary. Rachel felt her stomach clench in response.

  “You’ve all been highly recommended by your respective companies. I have no doubt you are all well qualified, so I thought we would make this interview more interesting.” He pointed to Hans. “You. You will fight me.”

  Hans looked at Frans, then back at Jean-Pierre.

  “You want me to fight you?” Hans tapped his barrel chest.

  JP took a fighting stance. “If you beat me you get the job,” he said with a grin.

  Hans doffed his suit jacket and slipped out of his shoes, stepping confidently onto the mat. When JP attacked, it was a blur of speed that surprised even Rachel.

  Hans took a shot to the throat and ate mat within the first second. JP let Hans get to his feet. The big man wiped the trickle of blood from his lip and raised his hands. “Let’s go, old man.”

  JP attacked again, this time from the other side. An ambidextrous fighter, another wrinkle that Rachel—and Hans—hadn’t seen coming. Hans took a shot to the head, but still managed to grasp Manzul’s arm. JP only used the grip as leverage. He spun and clocked Hans on the point of his chin with an elbow.

  Hans’s grip loosened and JP slipped behind him. After a few seconds in a choke hold, Hans tapped out. Manzul helped the big man to his feet.

  “You don’t need personal security, old man. You need a leash,” Hans said as he picked up his jacket and shoes.

  JP retrieved a bottle of water from the small table next to the door. He took a sip, then pointed at Frans and Thor. “You two. Show me what you’ve got.”

  Instead of watching the fight, Rachel watched JP as he assessed the fighters. His jaw clenched as the two big men clashed. She could tell what he was thinking. Both of them were strong fighters, but they relied on their strength rather than find a winning strategy against a similarly sized opponent. After a few minutes, JP stopped them.

  “Thank you very much, gentlemen.” He pointed at Frans. “You can go.”

  He sipped his water, considering the three remaining fighters. Finally, he pointed to Rachel. “You”—he pointed at S
tretch—“and you. Go.”

  Rachel stepped onto the mat flexing the balls of her bare feet on the spongy surface. The American took his time, watching her, assessing.

  He had a very long reach. Rachel needed to either stay away from him or drive inside and try to finish him fast. They circled a few times, sparring, getting the sense of each other’s style.

  He stung her on the cheek with a jab and moved in, but she spun away before he could wrap her up. The circling continued. She was lighter and faster. Rachel could outlast him, but JP struck her as a man impatient for results.

  If she wanted to impress him, she needed to do something bold—and quickly.

  Rachel allowed Stretch to cut down the mat, working her into the corner next to the windows. She saw a smile tease his lips. He thought he had her. Any second now, Stretch would make his move.

  There was a curtain rod over her head used to support the heavy drapes that could be pulled across the glass to block out the bright sunlight. This had to be timed perfectly.

  Stretch’s shoulders twitched.

  Now.

  Rachel launched herself up, grabbing the bar with both hands and pulling her knees up as hard as she could. His hands found air where her body had been and her knees slammed into his chin with all the strength she had.

  He stood to his full height, then toppled over. Rachel was on his back in a flash, a choke hold in place.

  “That’s enough,” JP’s voice cut through the pounding pulse in her ears.

  Rachel released Stretch and rolled onto the mat, breathing hard. Stretch’s foot lashed out and caught her in the side just below the rib cage.

  JP was on Stretch in the space of a breath, putting the younger man into a rear wristlock.

  “Get out. You’re done,” JP barked. He released Stretch, then held out a hand to help Rachel up. His eyes locked with hers and she felt her stomach do a little flip-flop. What the hell was the matter with her?

  “I’m sorry about that,” JP said, his voice kind. “Very unprofessional of him.”

  Rachel took her time getting back to the edge of the mat, stretching to relieve the stitch in her side. They were down to three now. She’d get a rest while the other two had it out.