that they had to fly without arousing suspicion, every mistaken capture was costly. On their last flight, Martin had recorded the data of a fax machine apparently belonging to a dentist; he suspected that colleagues would now refer to him as “the Periodontist” in derision.
Martin pointed to a magenta cluster at the right-hand side of the screen and made a circular motion with his index finger. The cluster zoomed into a white-lined box with a black legend at the edge — a twenty-megabyte hard drive, probably belonging to a laptop. Had they been transmitting, a tap in the middle of the cluster would have uploaded all of the magnetic patterns into the capture satellite above; from there it would have been beamed back to the U.S. for analysis. Within twelve or fifteen hours, depending on the shift, the contents of the drive would be available for detailed inspection.
Satisfied that he had the gear tuned as well as he could, Martin ordered the computer to display a sitrep map on the lower screen. The map, using GPS input and an extensive map library updated by daily satellite input, showed Dashik R7’s position on a simulated 3-D image as it approached the Iachin commercial complex, the small R and R facility west of Kargasok operated by Voyska PVO that was tonight’s target. Martin was neither privy to the intercept nor briefed on the precise significance of his target, but he would have been dull indeed not to know what the high-tech NSA sniffer was looking for. The Russians had lately been trying to perfect their long-range laser technology, creating a weapon that could conceivably replace conventional antiair and perhaps antisatellite missiles. Two complexes containing laser directors — the units that actually emitted the high-energy beam — either were being constructed or had been constructed east of the Urals. Not only had Martin seen them on the satellite images included in the flight briefs, but also their instructions included strict language to avoid those areas. The facility they were targeting was located about halfway between them; he assumed that the computers were connected by dedicated fiber-optic cable to the facilities and contained information about the tests. (Had the connection been more conventional, it could have been penetrated by easier means.)
The sitrep showed Dashik R7 over a wasteland about two minutes from the stretched elliptical cone where information could be swept into the net. Martin raised his head from the screen, a wave of relief flooding over him. It was downhill from here, just a matter of punching buttons.
“Shit,” said the copilot over the interphone. “Company.”
“Bogey at twenty thousand feet, coming right over us,” explained the pilot, his voice considerably calmer than the copilot’s. “MiG-29 radar active. No identifier.”
Martin ignored them, concentrating on the top video screen. He pointed to a bright red cluster in the left-hand quadrant. This belonged to a rather large disk array a few miles from their target area. It had the sort of profile he’d seen from units used by banks for financial records, but since their briefing hadn’t identified any large computer systems here — and the sitrep showed they were still over a largely unpopulated area — Martin decided it was worth starting the show a little early.
“Command: Transmit. Command: Configuration Normal One.”
The computer gave him a low tone to confirm that it had complied.
The copilot drowned it out. “That son of a bitch is targeting us!”
“Keep your diaper clean,” said the pilot. “He’s only going to hit us for a bribe. He’s alone. He’s obviously a pirate. Hail him. Tell him we’ll agree to terms. His squadron probably ran out of whore money — or jet fuel.”
“Nothing on the radio. He thinks we don’t know he’s here.”
“Hail him.”
Martin once more tried to ignore the conversation. Air pirates were rarely encountered by Dashik since they freely paid the protection fees in advance, but there were always new groups muscling in. Legitimate PVO units obtained quite a bit of “supplemental funding” through their Air Security fees; occasional freelancers got in the act for a few weeks or as long as they could get away with it. The agreement to make a certain credit card payment to a specific account upon landing generally precluded being diverted; if that didn’t work, naming a specific PVO general as their protector inevitably got the pirate to break off. Russia’s chaos had grown considerably over the past few months; the country’s economy, never strong, was once more teetering. Part of the problem had to do with an increase in military expenditures to develop new weapons and deal with insurgencies in the southern parts of the country, but Martin thought the country would have been far better off putting the money into things such as housing or even subsidizing agriculture.
Not that anyone would have been interested in his opinion.
The red clusters on the video screen pulsated as their contents were transmitted. A white dialogue box opened to their right, the computer sniffing a significant sequence. A run of hexadecimals shot across the screen; Martin tapped them to stop the flow of numbers, then pointed below the box.
“Command: Open Delphic Fox translator. Access: Compare.”
The computers took the intercepted sequence and examined them for signifiers that were used in the current Russian military telemetry and data storage. As smart as they were, Dashik’s onboard computers did not have the capacity — or time — to translate the information, let alone hunt for cipher keys or do anything to “break” an encryption. But that wasn’t the point. By identifying the way the information was organized, the system helped operators decide what to capture. Its significance was determined elsewhere.
FOX BLUE, VARIATION 13, declared the computer.
Martin had no idea what Fox Blue, Variation 13, was, only that it was on his list to capture. He directed the system to concentrate all of its energy on tapping the source rather than continuing to scan for others. He debated asking the satellite image library for a close-up of the target building, which looked like a small shed on the bottom screen. But the library wasn’t kept onboard, and requesting the information from SpyNet and having it beamed back down would narrow the transmit flow.
An overflow error appeared — clearly this was a very large storage system; the plane’s equipment couldn’t keep up with the data it was stealing.
“Slow to minimum speed,” Martin told the pilot. “We may have to circle back on this one. This is something interesting.”
“Impossible. Hold on—”
In the next second, Martin felt his stomach leave his body. The aircraft plummeted, twisting in the air on its left wing. As it slammed back in the opposite direction, the seat belt nearly severed his body. The computer sounded a high tone that meant it was losing its ability to reap magnetic signatures; the signal grew sharp and then was replaced by a hum — they were no longer collecting.
The copilot shouted so loudly Martin could hear him through the bulkhead.
“Missiles! Missiles! Jesus!”
The next thing Martin heard was a deep, low rattle that traveled through the floor and up into his seat. He felt cold grip his shoulders but had enough presence of mind to issue a command to the computer.
“Command: Contingency D. Authorization Alpha Moyshik Moyshik. Destruct. Cleo—”
Cleo was not part of command sequence; it was the name of his six-year-old daughter, whom he’d lost to his wife after their divorce five years ago. It was also the last word he spoke before a second missile struck Dashik R7—aka NSA Wave Three Magnetic Data Gatherer Asset 1—and ignited the fuel tank in the right wing. In the next second, the aircraft flared into a bright meteor in the dark Siberian night.
2
William Rubens pushed his hands slowly out from his sides as the two men in black ninja uniforms approached. Palms upward, he looked a little like an angel supplicating heaven; he waited patiently while one of them took a small device from his belt and waved it over Rubens’ body. About the size and shape of a flashlight, the device scanned Rubens’ clothes for circuits that might be used to defeat the next array of sensors, which were positioned in a narrow archway a few feet away. Satisfied that he carried nothing electronic, not even a watch, the ninjas nodded, and Rubens stepped forward through the detector.
The fact that Rubens had led the team that developed both the archway and the circuitry detectors did not exempt him from a thorough check, nor did the fact that, as the head of National Security Agency’s Combined Service Direct Operations Division — called simply Desk Three — Rubens was the number two man at the agency. If anything, it made the men work harder. The ninjas, as part of the NSA’s Security Division, ultimately worked for
