“Hell no. I had a paltry sum compared to what I could have received if I’d kept the company several more years and taken it public before selling.”
Dan Horneman met Jerry Tollefson’s gaze for a few seconds, knowing what the response was going to be if he spoke in dollars. It was impossible for anyone with an average professional income to bridge the philosophical gap that separated their respective bank accounts. It was far more than numbers, it was a gulf measured in unfathomable terms of struggle and misunderstanding, and ultimately, it was always a case of ‘You have what I don’t, and I resent it!’”
“How paltry?” Jerry prompted. “Speak to me in numbers.”
“About $500 million.”
CHAPTER SIX
First class cabin, Pangia 10 (2000 Zulu)
Josh Begich was impressed with his own stealth. The smoking hot babe seated next to him in Seat 3A still wasn’t aware he’d been indulging in a delicious, clandestine view of her substantial cleavage.
Thank God for peripheral vision! he thought.
Josh riffled another series of keystrokes across the keyboard of his laptop computer to keep her attention diverted, smiling to himself when a map expanded impressively to fill the seventeen-inch screen and then zoomed in on what appeared to be a phosphorescent aircraft against a black void, presumably as seen from space.
“Is that us?” the girl asked, her eyes riveted on the image as wisps of clouds appeared to pass the depiction. She shifted in her first class seat and leaned in further toward him for a better view—his better view. Exactly what he’d planned.
“Yes, that’s us,” he answered. “It’s the infrared picture I’m pulling off one of our US spy satellites. I hacked into their datastream months ago and… as long as I don’t stay connected too long… they never know why their camera suddenly shifts to something else.”
“That… is… amazing,” she said, a giveaway tone of delectable awe in her voice. “I mean, it’s night, and we’re still visible!”
“Yep. That’s what you can do if you know these machines… and you have a Wi-Fi connection by satellite.” Josh glanced at the “satellite” image running in the three-minute loop he’d constructed. It was streaming from nothing more distant than his own hard drive, and in about thirty seconds it would start again with a slight jump, perhaps giving away his deception. But the girl was apparently buying it.
What is she, fifteen like me, or sixteen? But technologically dumb as a stump.
Josh pointed to the screen again. “This jet we’re on is full of computers. The whole world is now, and I can break into just about any of them.”
She sat back, the slight look of awe changing to a look of skepticism. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really!” Josh replied, feeling suddenly challenged.
“So, launch a missile from North Dakota for me,” she said. “You owe me for five minutes of eye-fucking my boobs!”
“Eye what?”
“It’s okay. I’m cool with it. Now, make good on your boasts. Show me something other than a pre-cooked loop.”
“Pre-cooked…”
“You’re busted, dude. I saw it repeat.”
“You know computers?”
She smiled a disturbing message of hidden sophistication and nodded, her eyes melting his as she sat enjoying his squirming response.
“You might say that.”
“How?”
“Hey, you’re the stud trying to wow the dumb blonde in the next seat, it’s my turn to be mysterious. So throw down, boy. Show me something real.”
Nonchalance was his thing—Joe Cool on ice—and he tried to regain that air of bravado as he shrugged his insubstantial shoulders and worked on looking slightly bored.
“Okay. I’ve got some pretty good moves.”
“Sweet. Show me.”
“It’ll take a few minutes to break into the processor I’m gonna commandeer.”
“Go for it, Rambo. We’ve got hours,” she replied with a smile. “But I’ll warn you… I don’t impress easy.”
“What did you say your name was?” he blurted, well aware she hadn’t offered it and angry with himself for yet another display of awkwardness in the presence of a pretty girl.
“Sara,” she replied, eyes meeting his again for a moment before he looked away in clandestine embarrassment and prepared to do battle with a vulnerable server unseen in the distance, a knight errant out to win the damsel.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NSA, Ft. Meade, Maryland (3:15 p.m. EST / 2015 Zulu)
“Seth! It’s not a primary signal; it’s an echo!”
Jenny had noted the unusual fact that Seth’s office door was closed at the same moment she thrust it open. It was immediately obvious that she’d interrupted a closed meeting.
Seth Zieglar’s back had been to the door, but he turned now, motioning to an unfamiliar man standing near Seth’s desk.
“And right on cue comes Ms. Reynolds, the analyst I was describing to you. Jenny, meet Will Bronson of Defense Intelligence.”
“DIA?” she asked, off balance.
“Yes,” Bronson said, coming forward to shake her hand. “We’re equally curious about this SIGINT… signals intelligence… you’ve found.”
“I know what SIGINT is,” she said a bit too defensively.
“Jenny has a tendency to enter like Seinfeld’s Kramer, Will, but other than that, she’s really quite competent,” Seth winked at her in a way she detested.
“I’m sorry to burst in,” she managed. “I was just, well, excited.”
“Sit!” Seth commanded, pulling up a third office chair for her. “Everyone, sit.”
Will Bronson waited for her to settle into a chair before doing the same. “So this is not primary flash traffic you found?” he asked.
She shook her head, watching Seth out of the corner of her eye. Bronson was easy on the eyes. Heavy dark hair, clean shaven, almost squarish face, and clearly mid-thirties in an impeccable dark blue business suit and what she judged to be a Jerry Garcia tie. She could date a guy like this, she thought—provided one ever asked her out. He had a genuine smile, too, but any Defense Intelligence operative so well turned out was too smooth to be overtly trusted, and she made a mental note to think before blurting.
“I thought it was coming up from somewhere west of the Irish coast, now I think I’m merely reading echoes of a downlinked satellite transmission. It’s still piggybacking on a legitimate signal, and whoever’s sending it is trying to hide it. But it may well be hemispheric in scope, or wider.”
“Then you’re looking for it in other areas of the globe I take it?” Bronson asked.
“Yes. It could be coming down from satellites all over the place, or just a couple. I’m not sure yet.”
“Show me everything you’ve got, if you will.”
Seth was nodding approval, and after all, she had called in DIA on Seth’s order. But as she began laying out the various papers and waveform tracings, she couldn’t shake the feeling that his question was more “tell me what you’ve discovered that you shouldn’t know” than an innocent search for new information.
After a fifteen-minute briefing, she couldn’t help herself.
“So, is this us? Did I catch something we’re doing… something I should totally forget? Do you have some little flashy thing that erases our short-term memories?”
Bronson chuckled as he glanced at Seth Zieglar, then returned a disturbingly intense gaze toward her. “I’m wearing a blue suit, Jenny… not black. And in a word, ‘no.’ We at DIA are equally puzzled and concerned. It’s not coming from our side, and I agree, it’s a programming order of some sort. That’s why I’d like to work with you, and my team at Boling Air Force Base to coordinate with us, depending on my interpretation. You okay with a team effort?”