Khalid himself looked to be about twenty-eight and was an affable man, friendly and engaging. He asked a ton of questions about the United States, as if he were genuinely interested, and showed no sign of disliking our nationality. In fact, he'd invited us to his house for dinner after we were done tonight, which would make our development of his pattern of life incredibly easy.
He didn't appear to be some mastermind terrorist, but looks could be deceiving. I had noticed that he'd closely followed our plans to upgrade the surveillance systems. He probably thought it was perfect justice to be our POC, since he would have inside knowledge of how the desalinization plant was protected should he or his comrades be inclined to do anything to it. I'm sure he went home each night smugly laughing at how he had tricked the Americans into revealing protected secrets, not realizing that the joke was on him.
When we'd first arrived at the plant I figured it would be about a week just to track down Khalid' s location inside the task organization. My eyes almost popped out of my head when he was introduced, thinking we'd just burned the entire team. Luckily I'd left Kranz, Reaper, and Bull out of the first meeting, so he knew only Retro, Jesse, and myself.
While we were most definitely out of the mix for any follow.on surveillance, the partnership had proved more of a plus than a minus, as it allowed us access to his office and, after tonight's work, access to his house for dinner.
"How much longer?" I asked. "You promised a five-minute deal."
Retro said, "Yeah, well, I forgot that the password would be in Arabic. This thing is designed to go through statistical results based on the English alphabet. None of those are matching up. But no matter what language is used, it's all ones and zeroes in the end. It'll crack. It'll just take a little longer."
We'd convinced Khalid and the head of security that we need.ed to see the structure at night to determine ambient lighting for the emplacement of the cameras, as well as gaps that were currently not covered due to darkness obscuring the video feed. Jesse was currently out with Khalid and security, taking pictures of the potential camera locations, leaving Khalid' s computer open for us to data mine.
In truth, getting in there had been easier than getting approval for the operational act from the Oversight Council. Those hand.wringers seemed to think I was asking to assassinate the president of Yemen. Eventually, they'd relented.
I saw Jesse and Khalid on one of our temporary "test" cam.eras, which were actually security for tonight's operation. They were entering a stairwell on the first floor, which meant that they were headed back.
"You got about five minutes."
Retro said nothing, simply watched the screen. I turned back to the camera, seeing the group disappear from view. I heard "Yes!" and turned around.
Retro was stroking the keyboard. "I got it. But everything's in Arabic. I was hoping for at least the file names to be English." He disengaged his little brute-force cracking device and plugged in a cloning gadget to the USB port.
"What's that mean for time?" I asked
"Well, I can't do the entire hard drive. I'm scanning for encrypted files. It should also clone the system bios, capturing any passwords that have been saved."
He kept stroking the keyboard, grunting every once in a while. He said, "I got about forty encrypted files. Transferring now."
I heard distant footsteps in the hallway and looked at a mirror I had positioned in the crook of the door. I saw Jesse, which meant Khalid was on the way.
"Shut it down. Khalid' s thirty seconds out. We'll have to take what we have."
"Almost done."
The footsteps grew louder.
"Shut it down. They're outside the door."
"Hang on."
"Damn it, Retro."
I saw a shadow and blocked the doorway, smiling.
"We're almost done with the network assessment," I told them. "How did the stroll go?" Jesse picked up on the tension and said, "Fine. You want to come see the biggest problem area?"
"Yeah. As long as we're here."
Khalid said, "No, no. My wife has prepared dinner. Another time." He pushed past me into his office.
Chapter 10
I felt the adrenaline spike, flooding through my veins, and wait.ed to hear Khalid ask what the hell Retro was doing. I glanced at Jesse and said, "Block the door."
I entered the office to find Retro packing his bags and Khalid shutting down his computer. Nothing amiss at all. Retro glanced at me with a grin and said, "We going to follow you, Muhammad? I'm looking forward to some home cooking."
An hour and a half later, we were all stuffed and going into food comas. Khalid's wife had been the epitome of hospitality, and, truthfully, Khalid himself was growing on me. It probably wasn't the correct thing to think given my line of work, but I was glad this mission profile explicitly prevented us from harming him, as we didn't want to spike al-Qaeda about their compromise.
His wife brought out tea, and I felt my phone vibrate. I risked a surreptitious glance and saw a text that the GPS tracker was in place.
Retro had purchased international smart phones for all of us and had embedded an application that tracked each one. I'd given instructions to Kranz, Reaper, and Bull to wait until we were stationary, then to drive to our location and emplace a civilian tracker on Khalid's vehicle. It wouldn't transmit, but it would record every bit of movement that Khalid made for three weeks, including changes in elevation and temperature, and it was seamlessly integrated with Google Earth. The only bad thing was we would need to recover it to get the data, but when we did, we'd know everywhere he had gone. And would have our pat.tern of life with little work.
It was another Retro purchase, and it made me wonder what the hell the CIA was keeping hidden from us. If this could be bought open source, they had to have something that would do exponentially more.
I relaxed after reading the text, feeling the anxiety that had been a slow burn for the last two hours disappear. I saw Khalid answer his phone and turned my attention to his wife, taking a small cup of tea from her.
Khalid left the room, then returned in a few minutes with a sense of urgency and his laptop. "Mr. Logan, I'm sorry, but something has come up at the plant. I have to return to meet my boss."
"Something with security? Should I go?" I asked.
"No, no, it's just a mechanical error. I hope you enjoyed tonight." He motioned us toward the door. "I'm sorry to hear that, but I definitely enjoyed the meal. Thank you." We headed to the driveway and I smelled something rotten.
What does a CAD/CAM designer have to do with any mechanical issues?
The city of Aden was on a spit of land that jutted out of the coast of Yemen like the head of a golf club. The city was on the shaft of the club, which is where the desalinization plant was located, just southwest of the airport. Khalid lived on the top edge of the face of the club and should have followed us up the coast road before turning off to the plant.
Instead he turned south, heading into the heart of the peninsula, through a desolate area of desert. The only thing at the south end of the peninsula was an industrial zone and a bunch of shantytowns.
In the car with Retro and Jesse, I called the other part of the team. "Kranz, you got eyes on? You see that? We'll get the golden egg off tonight's data. He's going to meet someone."
"Yeah, I'm on it. Right behind him."
What?
"What do you mean you're behind him? Let him go. I say again, let him go. We'll get the data and analyze it later." "He's got a laptop with him, and he's on a road in the middle of nowhere. This is our chance." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I said to Retro, "Turn this thing around. Catch up to them." I keyed my radio again. "Kranz, back off."