moving into his sights. He was willing to stake his career on the belief that he and Rossini had found the communications network the terrorists were using to conduct their campaign.
CHAPTER 20
TRACKING
With its navigation lights blinking steadily, an Air Force C20 Gulfstream slid down out of the night sky onto a floodlit runway. Slowing, the aircraft rolled past the control tower and darkened hangar buildings and stopped near a group of vehicles at the far end of the field.
Without ceremony, Major General Sam Farrell emerged from the transport plane, followed by several members of his staff.
Colonel Peter Thorn stepped forward to meet him at the foot of the stairs and saluted.
The head of the JSOC snapped a return salute and shook hands with him.
“How’s it going, Pete?”
“Better, sir.”
Farrell nodded. “You have those encrypted messages ready to go?”
“Yes, sir.” Thorn handed him a computer diskette. “They’re all on that.”
The general handed the disk off to a young captain. “On your way, John. Download ‘em to Fort Meade on a secure line. You know the number.”
“Sir.” The captain headed toward one of the waiting cars.
Farrell turned back to Thorn. “After I got your fax, I got on the horn with the NSA’s deputy director of operations. His people are eager to see if they can crack these mystery messages of yours.”
Thorn nodded his understanding. The National Security Agency was responsible for cryptanalysts and codebreaking. Access to its trained experts and supercomputers was essential. From what Kettler had said, only the NSA had a chance at turning the gobbledygook on that diskette into readable text. If it contained anything worth reading, that is.
“This could still be just a blind alley, sir,” he warned quietly.
Farrell shook his head. “I doubt it.” The taller man put a hand on Thorn’s shoulder. “You’re one of my best officers, Pete. I trust your instincts and judgment. That’s why I’m here instead of still down at Pope. If you’re right, this damned situation could start breaking open fast. And I want to be in a position where I can talk some sense into the Chiefs if the balloon goes up.”
Paced by Thorn and his staff, the general strode toward the vehicles waiting to take him to the Pentagon. “You ready to take this discovery of yours to the FBI task force?”
“Yes, sir. I have an appointment with Mike Flynn early tomorrow.”
“Good.” Farrell lowered his voice. “Be persuasive, Pete. The Bureau’s bound to be pissed-off if they think we’re muscling in on their turf. Make it clear that we know this investigation is still in their bailiwick.”
“Understood, sir,” Thorn said, hoping he could pull that off. Diplomacy had never been his strong suit. “I’ll do my level best.”
General Amir Taleh listened with satisfaction to the brief assembled by his staff. Despite a natural caution that had served him so well for so long, he had to admit to himself that his intricately designed plan was working perfectly holding precisely to its preset schedule. The short video montage his officers had assembled from American news broadcasts summed up the situation in a few dramatic pictures.
Shots of burning buildings, troops moving in armored vehicles down city streets, and rows of bodies in makeshift morgues were telling evidence of his special operatives’ efficiency. In effect, the pictures of soldiers moving through civilian neighborhoods told the whole story. America’s police were no longer able to keep order without help from their National Guard. Soon, he thought coldly, even they would not be enough.
His gaze turned from the television screen to the small staff grouped in front of his desk. These men were his closest intimates the only men in Iran he trusted with full knowledge of his plans.
“Are you satisfied that we are ready to begin Phase IV of SCIMITAR?” Taleh asked quietly.
His question was largely a formality. The tight movement schedules needed to bring his forces into place at the proper moment required an intricate juggling of Iran’s transportation resources its trucks, trains, and ships. Unnecessary delay at this point might throw the whole operation out of kilter. Nonetheless, nothing could begin without Taleh’s express authorization. He had taken great pains to ensure that all the strands of military power ran through his hands and his hands alone.
His senior operations officer, an elderly, precise man, now deaf. “We are ready. Our meteorological reports also indicate a patch of bad weather coming in, which we may be able to use to our advantage.”
“Excellent,” Taleh replied. Their troop movements had all been timed to avoid American reconnaissance satellites as much as possible, but cloud cover would simplify matters. Truly, God was showing his favor to the Faithful.
His eyes sought out Farhad Kazemi in the back row and moved on. He knew that the young captain was increasingly worried about his personal security, but he was sure the internal opposition to his policies would fade once the full magnitude of his plan became clear to all. Victory always had a thousand fathers.
He made his decision.
“We are very close, brothers,” Taleh said firmly. “In a very short time the West will understand just how badly they have misjudged us.”
Gray, gloomy light seeped in through the windows in Special Agent Mike Flynn’s office. It was just after dawn.
The FBI agent stood silently, watching Thorn spread printouts of the still-encrypted messages across a long conference table filling one corner of the room. Without offering any comments of his own, he listened intently as the soldier described the suspicious pattern he discerned in the E-mail transmitted between London and users in the United States. Short messages from this mysterious “Magi” to a given user were usually followed within a day or two by a new terrorist outrage. And in every case, the same user sent a much longer post to Magi within twenty-four to thirty-six hours after each attack. To Thorn, the messages all slotted neatly into an identifiable chain of orders and after-action reports.
“I believe what we’re looking at are communications between a higher headquarters and a group of operational terrorist cells. I think that’s how they’ve been coordinating this campaign right under our noses. Basically, these bastards have been using our own high-technology and computer networks to run rings around us,” Thorn finished quietly.
Flynn stayed silent for several moments more. Finally, he looked up.
“Let me get this straight, Colonel. The NSA still can’t make heads or tails out of this stuff?” “No, sir,” Thorn admitted. “But they’ve only had the material for about eight hours. I understand their experts believe the program used to encrypt these messages is extraordinarily sophisticated far beyond anything available commercially. Like the Midwest Telephone virus, it appears to be purpose-built. That’s another reason I believe these intercepted communications are significant.”
“Maybe.” Flynn sounded dubious. “But for the moment, Colonel, your theory of a grand terrorist conspiracy hatched overseas basically rests on an operational pattern you claim to see in messages none of us can read.”
“Not entirely,” Thorn said stiffly. “What about the Bulgarian virus? Where would a bunch of racist fanatics get the kind of money and connections they’d need to buy something like that? And what about the practically identical language all these supposedly separate terrorist groups are using to claim responsibility for their attacks? Is that just a coincidence?”
Flynn heard him out impassively, just standing there with his arms crossed. “I’ve already talked to Agent
