Blue Warrior (2 page)

2

CIOS Corporate Offices
Rockville, Maryland

1 May

S
he was there at the beginning, when the U.S. government first weaponized the Internet. In fact, she had loaded some of the first rounds into the cylinder and cocked the hammer.

Jasmine Bath was twenty-four years old when she earned her M.S. in computer science from UC Berkeley, one of the first recruits into the NSA’s Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) program. They started her at Fort Meade but moved her around, grooming her for bigger things. She was a software specialist but became familiar with hardware operations, too. She helped write some of the first coding for the NSA’s pervasive XKEYSCORE surveillance software before moving up into senior development positions within TAO’s aggressive counterintelligence ANT program. Her coding fingerprints were all over persistent software implants like JETPLOW (firewall firmware), HEADWATER (software backdoors), and SOMBERKNAVE (wireless Internet traffic rerouting). Those successes earned her multiple commendations and promotions, leading to training and supervisory positions in newly developed TAO sites in Hawaii, Texas, Colorado, and even the Dagger Complex in Germany.

That meant the vast resources of the NSA were entirely at her disposal. She now had access to TAO’s shadow networks of servers and
routers, used for covertly hijacking or herding unsuspecting Internet traffic through them. It was the Internet equivalent of the CIA opening up a cell phone store in Abbottabad and secretly selling supposedly untraceable burner phones to al-Qaeda terrorists.

With the help of the CIA, FBI, and other national security agencies, TAO also planted hardware and software bugs and malware in electronic devices manufactured around the globe—including memory chips, hard drives, motherboards and cell phone cameras, to name just a few—to gain access to their data.

TAO also remotely implanted software bugs and malware into network firewalls and security software programs, allowing the NSA to back-door more malware into, and harvest data out of, entire computer networks or individual computers, tablets, and phones. They even had their own manufacturing facilities, producing comprised keyboards, monitors, routers, and connector cables that secretly transmitted user data. The NSA also operated mirrored cell phone base stations that acted like legitimate cell phone towers, secretly capturing entire networks of cell phone users without their knowledge.

In short, nearly every kind of commercially produced electronic device had been compromised, infected, and harnessed to TAO purposes, allowing them to hear, see, or read virtually any data-capable device on the planet without the knowledge of either the users or manufacturers. Best of all, these devices, once installed, remained in place, continuously harvesting data for future NSA use—data that Bath still had access to as well.

But that wasn’t all.

The NSA and its sister agencies successfully compromised nearly every social networking site on the planet. They even penetrated the “Dark Web,” where criminal and terrorist activity supposedly occurred without public knowledge or government interference.

The NSA also created hundreds of fake jihadist, anarchist, and terrorist websites, blogs, and Twitter accounts in order to gather data from unsuspecting users, identify new suspects, compromise those individuals and organizations, and plant false data into hostile
communities. They operated cybercafés around the world, offering free Internet access to unsuspecting users, not unlike the CIA conduct of fake vaccination campaigns to harvest DNA data on terror suspects. Conservative politicians who supported intrusive surveillance activities never realized that certain security agencies had also created virtual “Honey Pot” websites in order to draw out the most extremist elements within Tea Party, nationalist, constitutionalist, and “prepper” circles.

Jasmine Bath had access to all of these fake portals as well.

With all of these weapons in hand, Jasmine Bath could find out just about anything about anybody, or plant credible false evidence against any person. That gave her the kind of power that state security agencies had sought since the time of the pharaohs but could only dream of.

And that’s when she quit.

Bath’s extensive experience and exposure gave her a big-picture overview of the NSA’s far-reaching capabilities and boundless resources. It also allowed her to secretly pocket a number of keys she would later use to pick her own locks at her former employer, which she would use to form her new company, CIOS. In effect, she used the NSA’s resources against them in order to exploit the NSA as her own spying agency. Who watches the watchers? Jasmine Bath does, she’d joke. She spied on the spies—or, more accurately, spied through the spies—without their even knowing it.

With her top-security clearances, impeccable credentials, and agency contacts, she acquired several legitimate NSA contracts for CIOS just hours after tendering her resignation. But the real money to be made had nothing to do with honest work. She knew her unparalleled ability to find or fake information on virtually anybody, anywhere, would pry open the deepest wallets in Washington.

She felt no guilt. She lost count of the number of “false flag” operations governments around the world—including her own—had used to start wars in the last forty years, or the lies told by politicians, bureaucrats, and advocacy groups to justify radically new domestic policy agendas. Venerable science journals and prestigious research institutions
were plagued with falsified data in the scramble for federal grants and venture-capital investments. Bath just wanted her piece of the pie.

All she lacked was the funding to launch the venture. But she didn’t have long to wait. A silent investor approached her and offered her unfettered control of her company. In exchange for no-strings-attached financing came his quid pro quo of no questions asked, and in turn, she was to be available when called upon, which would be both rare and remunerative.

The silent investor’s name, she would discover much later after proving herself to him, was startling. One of the true power brokers in Washington. His connections provided her with all the cover she would ever need should her formidable defenses ever fail. Owing to his preeminence in her corporate life, she always referred to him as The Angel.

3

Lake Massingir
Mozambique

1 May

P
earce scratched his beard with his free hand, wild and woolly the way he wore it back in the war, except now it was flecked with gray, just like his long black hair. The crow’s-feet around his eyes had deepened.

He reached into the bucket for another bottle of Sagres Preta, a local Portuguese dark lager, and worked the black cap off with a knife edge. He’d been drinking too much for the past few months, and his gut showed it. He never drank at work, only after hours, and never got too drunk. Just numb.

Mostly.

The locals told him bloody chicken livers were the next best thing to live bait if he wanted to catch one of the razor-toothed tiger fish lurking in the deep water, a hundred silvery pounds of thrashing mouth full of vicious teeth as long as sixteen-penny nails. They told him to keep the hooks small unless he wanted to catch one of the really big monsters, but then he’d have the fight of his life on his hands—literally.

He went with the big hooks.

The choppy water chucked against the hull of the small wooden boat. His fishing line hadn’t budged in hours in the gray water. Sunset wasn’t too far off. If something didn’t strike the bait soon, he’d start rowing back. He flexed his blistered hands. In this wind, he was in for a long haul back to shore.

He’d rejoin Johnny tomorrow, back in the park after Johnny finished up his training consultation with Sandra.

Troy took a sip of beer.

He thought about his old man a lot lately, a Vietnam vet killed by the war years after it ended. Wondered if the same fate awaited him.

Growing up, he and his dad had fought their own private little war, scratching out a living in the mountains of Wyoming. The old man would laugh at him now, for sure. Wasn’t he becoming all the things he said he hated about him?

Probably for the same reasons, too.

His dad didn’t talk much about the war. Didn’t have to. Wore it in his brooding face, the scars in his flesh. If he had regrets, he didn’t say. He just drank.

Pearce had no regrets. Was proud of his CIA combat service. In SAD/SOG, he engaged the enemy wherever he found them. Righteous kills, each one. But the War on Terror had taken too many of the people he cared about, sacrificed on the altar of political ambition. So he quit. He missed them all.

Especially Annie.

Pearce still loved his country but hated politics. He formed Pearce Systems because he could pick and choose his operations with a certain moral clarity. And it paid well. More important, deploying remotely piloted vehicles kept his friends out of harm’s way even when the bullets were flying.

So what was his problem?

He was an angry man. Always had been, bar brawling all the way back in high school. Stanford took some of the edge off. Practically civilized him. Then he joined the CIA. They honed his angry edge into a fine killing blade, but under control.

Maybe he was losing control.

His anger deepened the last few months, for sure. So had the depression. Didn’t make sense. His company had never been more prosperous, or done better work.

After last year, he focused Pearce Systems on the commercial uses of
drone technologies. More opportunities, more money. And little chance of his people getting killed. The South African delivery was a favor for an old friend, and probably the last military system he would ever deliver.

But bitter disappointment still ate at him. The United States had cut and run out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now both were sliding back into chaos and radicalism. Tens of thousands of brave Americans bled and died to free those nations, but the jihadi shits they fought remained, which meant they won.

His government had broken faith; now Pearce felt like he had lost his.

Serving President Myers last year rekindled it briefly. She was the one politician he could believe in, because she put the national interest ahead of her own. He trusted Myers completely. But she resigned, falling on her sword to keep the nation safe.

He and his team proudly fought the Mexican cartels and the Iranian terrorists. He was grateful Myers secured blanket immunity for them all after it was over. But he didn’t need a law degree to know that only criminals need immunity.

Heroes got medals, not pardons.

President Greyhill and Vice President Diele were in charge now. Exactly the kind of politicians he loathed.

He was done with it.

Pearce took a long pull on his beer. His line still didn’t budge. He hoped Johnny was having more luck than he was in trying to land his own pretty fish.

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park
Mozambique

Johnny Paloma pretended to stare at the solar-powered drone in Sandra Gallez’s hands, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of her face, confident and curious.

“Like this?” she asked. The Belgian beauty held the Silent Falcon’s carbon-fiber fuselage forward with one hand while the other supported
the tail structure. The six-bladed prop spun almost silently, but the electric motor threw enough torque into the blades even at this low speed to blow her dark, curly hair away from her cheeks. Working undercover in L.A., Johnny encountered plenty of hot women in the clubs and on the beaches. He even worked a few side jobs as a bodyguard for some of the best-looking women in film. But Sandra’s natural, unadorned beauty enthralled him.

“Yes, about forty-five degrees. Just like a Raven,” Johnny said. He held the Nintendo-style controller in his hands. The auto launch toggle was selected. This would automatically take the Silent Falcon to an altitude of five hundred feet and circle it until it received further commands. Onboard sensors and software avoided obstructions in its flight path or possible collisions with other aircraft.

“Now?”

“Now!” He laughed.

She threw it. Despite its seven-foot wingspan, the lightweight sUAS lifted effortlessly into the bright morning sky.

This portion of the park was mostly flat grassland, populated by a smattering of acacia trees. Perfect for small drone operations, especially landings by rookies. It was elephant country. Rhinos, too.

Sandra jogged back over to Johnny, standing behind the brand-new green Land Rover Defender utility wagon. The famous World Wildlife Alliance white rhino logo was painted on the hood and the rear door. Pearce Systems fitted out the wagon with all of the necessary drone operations gear. The talented young conservationist was in charge of the WWA’s most advanced research project.

“Now put the goggles on,” Johnny said.

Sandra picked up the wireless Fat Shark Dominator HD video goggles and slipped them over her eyes. They were lightweight but huge, like a telephone handset attached to her face. Of course, she couldn’t “see” out of them—they didn’t have any lenses. The Fat Shark was a video projection system—a wearable digital theater.

“Now take this.” Johnny handed her the flight controller.

“Fantastique!”

“Quite the view, eh?”

“Like a bird. I can see everything.”

Sandra’s entire field of view was filled with a perfect HD first-person video (FPV) image on the screen, which was also simultaneously recorded on a hard drive in the Rover. The forward-looking bird’s-eye POV through the spinning propeller was mesmerizing. She tapped another toggle and a real-time map of Limpopo Park appeared on her video screen. A blue dot indicated the GPS location of the Silent Falcon, and a red dot indicated the position of a recently GPS-tagged rhino, part of the last herd in Mozambique, about five kilometers away.

“Now rotate the camera,” he said. “The god’s-eye view is even cooler.” The Silent Falcon was equipped with a rotating gimbal that housed the optical and infrared cameras, along with a laser pointer.

“This is perfection, Johnny!” Sandra rotated the camera through its entire range of motion, like she’d done on simulated practice sessions before, but this was her first real-time flight with the Silent Falcon.

The WWA recently made arrangements with Mozambique’s Wildlife Department to take over rhino observation-and-research duties. The cash-strapped, ill-equipped bureaucracy had become rather lax in its conservation responsibilities in the last few years, particularly in regard to the endangered rhino population, now perilously small and reduced to just a dozen adults. The sad truth was that some of the poorly paid Mozambican park rangers were known in the past to have colluded with poachers to gather up the rhino horns so prized by wealthy Chinese for their supposed powers as aphrodisiacs and medicinals. But even the honest park police were increasingly tasked with counterterror duties, and wildlife considerations took a backseat to the new security priorities set in Maputo.

The quiet exchange of cash to the appropriate government ministers gave Sandra’s privately funded NGO the chance to get into the GLTP and begin monitoring the rhinos. Fortunately, poachers hadn’t been seen on the Mozambique side of the Limpopo in over a year, so the human threat to those magnificent animals wasn’t her main concern.

Tracking rhino migration patterns and feeding grounds was the
primary focus of Sandra’s research. Her dream was to introduce more rhinos into the local population and restore the herds that once roamed freely here.

The joy in her face at that moment was palpable, and Johnny had just handed her the high-tech key to her dream. He had no idea it was possible to be this happy for someone else.

Pearce Systems’ research director, Dr. Kirin Rao, selected the solar-powered sUAS because it had a fourteen-hour flight time and a nearly silent propulsion system, both features that made it a perfect platform for wildlife observation. Rao paired up the hand-launched surveillance drone to a control station and a video camera system with an editing suite installed in the cargo area of the oversize Land Rover, but the Silent Falcon could also be easily flown with the handheld controller that Pearce Systems provided. With detachable wings, the Silent Falcon could be quickly disassembled for transport, and just as easily reassembled in the field. Along with spare parts, extra batteries, a charging station, and all the other equipment needed to operate it, the solar-powered drone system was completely contained in the self-sufficient Land Rover. Dr. Rao hoped that this new unit would be the test bed for a whole range of new wildlife applications.

“Oh! Johnny! I see them!”

Johnny glanced into the back of the Land Rover. In the corner he’d stashed a small picnic basket with avocado and tomato sandwiches and a bottle of vintage Portuguese wine, and even a blanket, all courtesy of the hotel concierge. The river wasn’t far from here. It was going to be a damn good day. Maybe one of the best days of his life.