The Polaris Protocol (25 page)

T
en minutes later I exited the Skylink at gate D12 and began to walk toward the end, to gate D6, where Hussein’s flight to Mexico City was berthed. I called Knuckles. “Status?”

“He’s next up. Coming out now.”

“Koko, Blood, you copy that?”

“This is Blood. Roger. We’ve entered the far side of terminal D, but we’ve got to walk the entire way to the gate.”

The D terminal joined the access walkway to the other terminals at gate D40, which was hell and gone from D6. “Roger all. Pick it up a bit.”

I stopped at D7 and took a seat, just another weary pilot hanging around. I got eyes on the bathroom at D6 to orient myself and hoped the timing worked out to use it. I really didn’t want to flex to another bathroom, but that wasn’t my call. It was Knuckles’s, and the digestive system of Hussein.

Knuckles came on. “He’s out of customs and walking back upstairs to the terminal. Ten minutes.”

I said, “Roger,” and felt the anticipation start to build.

Blood came on. “We’re ahead of him. We’ll be good. Want us to let him pass?”

“No. Keep coming, but you can slow it down.”

A minute later, and Knuckles was cursing. “ABS in place, I say again, ABS in place, but I got some of it on me. I
knew
that was going to happen.”

Oh boy, that’s not going to be fun.

“What did you do?”

“I went to swipe his arm, and right as I did, he turned my way to look at a monitor. He knocked the ChapStick into my hand. I’m moving out, away from him.”

“What gate?”

“Gate eighteen, I say again, gate eighteen.”

“Pike, this is Koko, we’re at sixteen. I can see Knuckles. Target’s got to be close. We’ll pick him up. We have the eye.”

“Roger all. Track him and execute as planned. Trigger when the ABS takes effect.”

Knuckles said, “I’ll bet I can do that for you.”

“You’d better hope not.”

I waited a bit, looking calm but fired up with a fight-or-flight response. I saw Knuckles first. He passed by me, no acknowledgment at all, and took a seat at D6, milling around with the people waiting to go to Mexico. A minute later, I saw the garbage bin come into view. I scanned the crowd and found Hussein. I tracked him with my eyes, watching him take a seat. He didn’t appear to be in any distress.

Hope that damn ABS stuff functions as advertised.

No more than thirty seconds later, Knuckles shot up and scurried to the bathroom.
Well, I guess it works.
Right behind him was Hussein.

Jennifer and Blood let them both get inside, then pulled the bin in front of the door, placing out little cones that said “Closed for Cleaning.” Blood went inside, then returned to the door, waiting.

A third party inside going to the bathroom.

Eventually, a Hispanic man and small boy exited, returning to gate D6. Blood disappeared again, then called. “Execute, execute. Come on, make it quick. This place smells like something died in here.”

I stood up and walked to the bathroom, dragging the two carry-ons. Blood pushed in the Rubbermaid and Jennifer stayed outside, holding a cleaning bucket and a mop, pulling security.

The stench hit me immediately, a green fog of unbearable odor. Then I heard the bowels being forcibly evacuated. It was so bad I didn’t think I could continue. Blood was on the other side of one of the stalls, his face scrunched up and pointing toward a door. I opened my carry-on and pulled out a Taser, locking zip ties, a screwdriver, and a syringe.

I handed Blood the screwdriver, and he placed it into the slot to unlock the bathroom stall. He nodded and I kicked it in, seeing Hussein doubled over on the toilet, farting and shitting his guts out.

I didn’t even need the Taser. He was so destroyed by the ABS he couldn’t have resisted if he wanted to, which made me wonder if Knuckles could still get on the plane.

He looked up in agony, and I said, “Wipe what you have.”

He doubled over and began another round.
Damn it.

We couldn’t sit here for an hour while he shit his brains out. We needed to go.
Note to self: Take into account the time for ABS to subside.

Blood said, “What are we going to do? We pull him now and he’s going to spray all over the place like a damn baby.”

I said, “Go through his bags. Get the boarding passes and get the Ghost ready to go. Knuckles, you alive?”

I heard a weak, “Yeah.”

“You going to make the flight?”

“I’ll make it. Just give me a minute.”

“Koko, how are we looking?”

“Okay from this end. Nobody’s approached.”

Blood had the Ghost out of the bin, and he looked green from the smell. I couldn’t imagine what he must have been thinking about this clown fest. Probably wondering how on earth we had managed to capture him.

I heard Knuckles flush, and he came out, sweating profusely and walking unsteadily. I said, “You okay?”

“No. Hell no.”

I couldn’t help it. A grin slipped out. He scowled and said, “You think this is fucking funny?”

I scrunched my lips together in a terse line, then said, “Well, yeah. Might be worthy of a new call sign. Perhaps ‘Ass Wipe.’”

He looked like he wanted to hit me and I held up my hands, saying, “Jennifer’s got the antidote. Get it from her bag before you go.”

He nodded and moved to the Ghost. He checked his ankles, seeing a green light on both GPS trackers. He said, “I’m your babysitter. You can call me Mr. Black. Don’t do anything stupid because I’m really not in the mood.”

The Ghost nodded. Blood said, “Found the boarding passes.”

He handed them to the Ghost, who checked to make sure the name was the same on his newly forged passport.

I said, “You guys go. We’ll give you a data dump when you land. Go to a restaurant inside the airport, before you leave the secure area, and call. We’ll feed you the next steps.”

The flight time was about two and a half hours, which was cutting it really close, but we had an entire Taskforce team in a safe house nearby who would complete the initial interrogation and exploitation of everything Hussein had with him. We would know before they landed what Hussein was supposed to do.

I turned back to Hussein, who was now sweating like Knuckles but ambulatory, realizing we weren’t there to help him. He made a half-assed attempt at escaping, trying to pull up his pants at the same time. I punched him in the head, knocking him to the floor of the stall, his pants falling back down to his ankles. I hit him with the syringe in his thigh and he went limp. We flex-tied his arms and legs, then dumped him into the Rubbermaid container, the stench wafting out as if it contained a dead animal.

T
he trunk of the car jerked open, and Booth squinted his eyes at the glare coming from the sun. When he could focus, he saw the crazy bald man standing above him, wearing a wig and holding a knife. He began to panic and the man said, “Stop. I’m cutting your bonds. It’s time to show the people that your protocol works.”

He relaxed, letting the man cut through the tape around his ankles and wrists. After it was complete, he was jerked out of the trunk. The man put his weird eyes on him and said, “Do exactly as I say, and you will live another day. Try to run, and I will make your death infinitely slow. There is nowhere I won’t find you. Understand?”

Booth nodded, afraid to speak.

“Bring your computer and whatever else you need. You are going to show a man how your system works.”

He gathered his things, including the two GPS devices, and followed behind his captor. He knew his last test would have caused a massive reaction at Schriever Air Force Base and was worried about doing another such test. He’d end up causing another blackout in the Northern Hemisphere, and that might potentially create an all-out push to find his protocol. It would still take some time, but he didn’t like the odds of discovery, especially since he was sure he would have to do it a third time, if only to instruct whoever was purchasing the protocol.

By the time they had left the walking promenade of Motolinía, he had the beginnings of an idea. His GPS would lock on to four different satellites to obtain a location, showing the man it functioned. All he needed to do at that point was demonstrate a discrepancy. What if he affected only the specific satellites the GPS was using? Then he wouldn’t harm the entire constellation. It would cause some disruption, as undoubtedly someone else was also using those four satellites, but there were thirty-five in the air, and other devices could switch seamlessly to another satellite. It wouldn’t cause a wholesale blackout. In fact, if he attacked only two of the four, he’d still get a shift in signal. The 2nd SOPS would see it, but it would be looked at as a signal anomaly instead of a catastrophe.

He spent the rest of the walk working out the specifics in his mind, figuring out how to attack only two satellites. He hadn’t designed the protocol that way, but he could use the data from the GPS to isolate them.

Still running the mechanics through his head, he didn’t notice his captor had stopped and bumped into his back. The man scowled, then opened the door to a restaurant called La Opera, waving him through. The room was covered in burnished wood that had the look of age, the ceiling ornately sculpted and the bar to the right fairly crowded with businesspeople. He was led to a table in the middle and presented to another man who could have been Mexican. Booth heard the name Farooq, and when the man spoke, Booth realized he was not from Mexico. Realized his POLARIS protocol was about to be turned over to America’s enemies.

The thought did not alter his calculations one bit, as his sole concern was survival. It was like passing a billboard right before slamming on the brakes to avoid an accident, something that registered and then was immediately forgotten.

He gave up the deception of using “Guy Fawkes” and stated his real name.

“A pleasure, Mr. Booth. Pelón here says that you can cause American drones to stop flying. I’d like to see that.”

Booth looked from his captor to Farooq, slightly confused. He said, “Yes, the POLARIS protocol will do that, but it’s not designed to affect drones. It affects the GPS constellation, which is what the drones use to operate. You know about GPS?”

Farooq said he did, and Booth gave a quick class on POLARIS, describing how it functioned. Farooq said, “So this works with all GPS devices? Bombs, ships, cruise missiles?”

“Yes. If it uses a GPS, it will become ineffective.”

Booth saw the gleam in Farooq’s eyes and knew he was doing something very, very wrong. But it was too late to worry about the repercussions. Way too late to wonder about making any money. Not if he wanted to continue living with the soles of his feet attached.

Farooq said, “Show me.”

“We need to be near a window. Can we change tables?”

They called a waiter and moved deeper into the restaurant, getting a high-backed wooden booth next to a window. The waiter pointed at the ceiling above them, where a hole was circled in paint. He said, “That’s Pancho Villa’s bullet hole. He ate here and shot the ceiling.”

Booth found the comment surreal. Twenty minutes ago he had been taped up in the trunk of a car, put there by a man he was convinced was insane. Now he was about to show another man who was undoubtedly a terrorist how to thwart one of the United States’ greatest technological advantages. And he was getting tourist tidbits from the waitstaff. The situation caused a nervous giggle to escape. The snigger died instantly when Pelón looked at him.

He set up his two GPSs in the windowsill, then showed Farooq the interface he had designed while they locked on.

Farooq said, “You must have Wi-Fi for this to work?”

“Yes. Well, you need to have Wi-Fi to load the settings.” He pointed toward a dial on a screen. “You can use this to delay the action. In other words, if I turned this dial, when I hit ‘send,’ the operation wouldn’t happen until the time I had set.”

Farooq nodded, and Booth said, “One thing about the time I forgot to mention. Not the time delay I was talking about, but the actual time of disruption. You need to be sure you set it to exactly what you want, because once it begins, you can’t turn it off. POLARIS is synced with the constellation itself, and the disruption also affects the program.”

Farooq said, “You will give me this computer? Is that what will happen?”

Booth said, “No, no. You need to bring another computer. This one is mine and has biometric safety features that only I can operate. It’s also got about four hundred different security tripwires. You try to mess with the program on this system, and you’ll end up formatting the hard drive, wiping out all traces of the protocol. I’ll have to transfer a clean copy of POLARIS to your own system.”

Booth heard the GPS chirp and quit talking. He tapped a few keys, received the almanac information, then the specific information of the satellites the GPS was tracking. He locked two of them into the interface, dialed up the timing offset, and said, “Watch the GPS on the right. The one with the car. See where the car is located?”

“Yes. Where we are now.”

“Watch what happens when I hit ‘send.’”

* * *

Captain Lisa Donnovan was the first to see the anomaly. As the Payload System Operator on duty in the control segment at Schriever, she was responsible for monitoring every signal in the entire GPS constellation. And she could not believe her bad luck.

Here we go again.

She had had the misfortune to be on duty for what was now being called the “blackout” the day before, and to say it had caused some consternation was an understatement. The echo went all the way to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with her trying to identify the problem while simultaneously answering questions thrown at her by a multitude of people.

She immediately notified the Mission Commander, who ordered a status from the other system operators on the floor. Like last time, the network and mechanical functioning of the satellites were fine. It was just the signal. Unlike last time, it was only two satellites.

She waited for the other satellites to start going crazy and relaxed when they didn’t. Her squadron commander appeared above her shoulder, firing questions. He didn’t remain long, and she knew why: He now had to report to higher, and she was glad it wasn’t her job.

The Mission Commander had the Satellite Vehicle Operator pull the two offending satellites and ordered them to try to replicate the event.

Everyone began working the issue, but like last time, they got nowhere. She felt like Chevy Chase in
Christmas Vacation
trying to get the lights on his house to work but unable to find the magic switch.

The damn things just decided to put out a bad signal.