The Genesis Plague (2010)

along the ridge. A watcher was skulking in the darkness. ‘We’ve got company.’

Hazo’s eyes shifted up to the mountaintop and panned slowly back and forth. He squinted when he thought he’d found the nearly indiscernible anomaly. ‘Yes. I see him.’

‘I don’t like this one bit,’ Jason said. ‘Let’s walk over here.’ With Hazo keeping pace beside him, Jason headed for the terrorists’ four abandoned pickup trucks, which the marines had parked in a neat row beside the road. When they’d reached the vehicles, Jason looked back to make sure no one was watching. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a long, tubular object.

‘I am sorry. I do not smoke,’ Hazo meekly replied.

Jason chuckled. ‘It’s not a cigar, Hazo. It’s a paint pen … a marker. Compliments of Israeli Intelligence.’ He uncapped it and began drawing a circle on the hood of the first Toyota.

Not seeing any ink coming out from the marker’s tip, Hazo was confused. ‘I don’t understand. It doesn’t do anything. I don’t see anything.’

‘Exactly. That’s the point. The ink is invisible to the naked eye,’ Jason explained. ‘But not to military satellites.’

‘Ah,’ Hazo said. ‘Very clever.’

‘Makes it very easy to track vehicle movements from the sky.’ He casually moved to the next pickup and scrawled an invisible star on its hood. ‘I’ve already got the serial numbers for all the military vehicles in Crawford’s platoon. Those can be tracked in-house by our agency using GPS, no problem. If, however, one of these trucks goes missing, they fall off the grid. Unless they’re marked.’ Another glance to the camp, and Jason stepped up to the third pickup. This time, he traced out a square. On the hood of the fourth pickup, he drew an invisible triangle. Capping the marker, he slipped it back inside his pocket. Then he pointed to each pickup in turn, saying, ‘Circle … star … square … triangle.’ He committed each pickup to memory - paint, model, distinguishing marks (like the blown-out windshield and blood-smeared cab of the pickup that had been the convoy’s lead vehicle).

‘Very good,’ Hazo said, impressed.

‘And since we’re on the topic of satellites …’ Jason pulled out his binoculars, activated the infrared, and discreetly spied Crawford’s position in the tent. The colonel was still on his call, pacing in small circles. ‘Who are you talking to, Crawford?’ Jason muttered to himself. He used the laser to calculate Crawford’s GPS grid. Then he flipped open his sat-com and put out a call of his own - one which Crawford certainly would not approve.

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‘Mack, it’s Yaeger. I need a big favour,’ Jason said. Thanks to the cloudless Iraqi sky, the sat-com’s reception was flawless. On the other end of the call, he could easily hear GSC’s star Communications and Remote Weapons Specialist crunching away on some potato chips.

‘Another favour?’ Mack ribbed him. ‘You’re very needy lately. Dare I say clingy?’

More crunching.

‘You sound like an angry girlfriend.’

‘You wish you were so lucky.’

Now some slurping.

‘You’re not my type, big fella.’

‘Yeah, I suppose. Too much back hair and you like ‘em smooth. I get it. Anyway … what can I do you for you this time? Fire some missiles up some Taliban’s asshole? Or do you need a Predator to deliver a care package to a Hezbollah Tupperware party? Name it. I’m yours.’

Scary thing was, Jason thought, the guy was willing and capable of either act. ‘Nothing that dramatic.’

‘Darn.’

‘Just wanted to test your IQ on satellite phone communications. Put your NSA skills to the test.’

As with most of the firm’s intellectual assets, Macgregor Evan Driscoll - MIT Summa Cum Laude graduate and part-time hacker - had been recruited from the Department of Defense’s most obscure branches known only by obscenely long acronyms. In 2002, he’d been instrumental in helping the NSA design a covert listening station inside AT&T’s San Francisco international telecommunications hub. The programme’s focus had been to monitor phone chatter and e-mails originating from Al-Qaeda safe houses in places like Riyadh and Yemen. But a whistleblower outed the programme for spying on domestic communications as well, exposing a myriad constitutional violations. This chapter of the Bush Administration’s unwarranted wiretapping programme promptly folded and its developers, including Mack, became victims of the political fallout. But Mack was quickly scooped up by GSC - a firm that used a much different playbook and embraced the frustrated, cavalier brainiacs who’d been disenfranchised by the tight monetary and operational constraints of government agencies.

‘What’ve you got for me?’ Mack asked.

‘I’ve got a guy here in Iraq who’s been making lots of calls, with the intent of undermining our mission. If I give you his coordinates, can you see if you can listen in on him?’

‘I’ll give it a go.’

Jason twice repeated the GPS data for Crawford’s current position. Then he heard Mack tapping away on a keyboard. He’d gone through this exercise many times in the past, so he knew Mack was linking in to the commercial satellite network to triangulate the signal.

‘Hum. Got the signal …’ More tapping. ‘Oh yeah, that’s gonna be a problem. Your caller’s not using a voice channel … and he’s transmitting in digital, not analogue. And it’s all bouncing through military satellites. Nice if you would just say that you want me to eavesdrop on the marines.’

‘Sorry about that,’ Jason said. ‘Can you crack the encryption?’

‘Four-thousand-ninety-six-bit RSA secure-key encryption?’ Mack cackled. ‘Don’t think so. That shit was invented because of guys like me. The number of possible key combinations borders on infinity. Would take decades for the world’s fastest supercomputers to crack that kind of encryption.’

‘All right,’ Jason said. There had to be another way. ‘So the caller and the person being called each have a key cipher, right?’

‘That’s right. Both phones use the same key encryption software to swap permissions.’

Jason thought it through. Two keys. Two sources. Encoded data packets being fed back and forth between two points with an ultra-tight digital handshake. Maybe he was approaching the problem from the wrong angle. ‘How about this: can you locate the second key?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Mack replied matter-of-factly. ‘May not do you any good if the person on the other end is mobile. ‘Cause once this call’s over, it’s a whole new ball game. New keys, new session—’

‘Humour me, Mack.’

‘All right.’

Jason listened to fifteen seconds of click-clacking accompanied by Mack’s heavy breathing.

‘Well hell-o-o-o-o …’ Mack sang in pleased revelation. ‘You just got very lucky, Yaeger.’

‘How’s that?’

‘This call’s being routed through a ground station in San Francisco. Jeez, it’s going through AT&T at Folsom Street. Same place I used to work …That’s fuckin’ rich …’ he said with some resentment. ‘Anyway, the satellite feed is routing through the Backbone network.’

‘So whoever he’s talking to is not using a mobile phone?’

‘Tell you in a second.’ Mack did some more tracing. ‘Nope. Definitely a landline. Still can’t tell you what they’re talking about. But I can tell you exactly where the other caller’s phone is plugged into a wall jack.’

‘That would be great.’

Now Mack was humming the Jeopardy! theme song to the rhythmic keyboard clicks. ‘And … got it.’ A pause. ‘Huh. I think your guy might be calling his bookie.’

‘Come again?’

‘Yeah, your marine is talking to someone in Vegas.’

‘Las Vegas? You sure about that?’

‘Yup. And it gets even weirder. Seems his bookie is an evangelist.’

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