Chase pulled on the chute’s maneuvering lines to line up with the runway centerline as he descended. With about one hundred feet to go, he began looking underneath his goggles, using the lights of the island and the faintest hint of a horizon to estimate how close he was to the surface.
The green image of the runway grew larger and larger as he tensed his body for impact. He pulled to start his flare, slowing his rate of descent at just the right moment to cushion his landing. He felt his boots hit the runway and began running and taking in the parachute as he came down.
Moments later, he had stuffed the chute back into its container and moved over to a spot about twenty yards to the north of the runway. He checked his watch. It had been thirty minutes since takeoff. He would have about four hours until the sun began to lighten the horizon. That meant three hours until his extraction.
He took out a handheld GPS map and checked his location. He was right where he wanted to be. About a thirty-minute hike to the north side of the island, where the large buildings that housed the bitcoin-mining computers were. He removed his wingsuit and gear and stuffed everything into the duffle bag. Underneath, he wore a white cotton tunic and beige pants. The kind of outfit that a local fisherman would wear. Out of his supply backpack, he took a thin grey wool hat that fit tightly over his head.
He threw his backpack over his shoulder and began walking. He gripped a silenced Beretta and four extra magazines of ammo in a belt underneath his tunic. An eight-inch WK II Defense Dagger was tucked into its Kydex sheath, strapped to his boot.
Chase took his time making his way over the sand-and-rock terrain. If he kept on this heading, he would avoid alerting any of the island’s civilian population that might have trouble sleeping.
To his right, at the far end of the runway, he could see evidence of the Iranian military. A few jeeps and a fuel truck sat next to an old Soviet-era jet. If that thing ever flew in combat, he wondered what would be a greater danger to the pilot — the enemy, or his own aircraft.
Ahead, Chase spotted two large concrete structures. There was a row of large generators and HVAC units that fed into the first building. They made a lot of noise, which should help him stay undetected.
Chase crouched down and took out a heavy set of thermal imaging binoculars from his pack. Looking through them, he noted that the heat signature from the first building was very strong. They had what must have been a hundred rows of servers in there, but Chase couldn’t see any signs of people in the large building.
Each of those computers was speeding through a mathematical calculation that would help unlock the next block chain of bitcoins. The more computing power these guys had, the more bitcoins they could unlock.
But why do this here? If what Gorji had said was true, and this operation was funded by Jinshan, why did the mine have to be here? This had been the subject of much discussion between him and Elliot. Gorji suggested that there was some mysterious link to the submarine cables running through the Gulf. They were still missing information.
Chase looked at his GPS and then back at his watch. He had time.
He took off his pack and set it in the dirt, then looked through the thermal binoculars again. Nothing. He lay in wait for almost an hour before he finally saw what he came for.
A figure left the first building and walked in his direction. No one else was in sight. Chase waited fifteen minutes as the lone man, who would be in plain sight if any security were to look that way, made his way towards him. Chase hoped to God that this was legit.
Finally, when the man was close enough to the rendezvous spot, Chase spoke. “Hello?”
“Hello?” a voice said in English. It was dark. Hard to see his face.
Chase stood up, still holding his weapon. “Are you here to meet someone?”
The man walked closer.
“Yes. I was told that you could help me. I was told to tell you that my name is Satoshi.”
At a secluded, rocky shoreline of Abu Musa, Chase and Satoshi listened as the buzz of an outboard motor grew louder. Chase saw the narrow twenty-foot fishing boat pull up to the dock. A skinny dark-skinned boy waved.
“What’s your name?” called Chase.
“Timmy.”
“Timmy, huh?”
“Mr. Elliot said you pay me first.”
Chase reached into his backpack and pulled out an envelope. He threw it to the kid. Timmy counted it. Five hundred US dollars. The kid said, “Okay, mister, you and your friend, get in the boat.”
They sat on wobbly plastic seats that faced backward, toward the driver of the boat. Timmy cranked up the power and the bow moved up out of the water, then settled back down. Chase remained on guard, eying Satoshi, who looked scared. He didn’t blame him.
The island of Abu Musa grew smaller behind them.
Chapter 11
“Thanks for coming. Please, have a seat.”
Chase thought Elliot’s tone was quite formal compared to the way they had been speaking to each other lately. Their relationship, while always professional, had grown more and more comfortable as Chase had proven his worth. Now, Elliot had the look of a father about to give his son a stern lecture.
“What’s wrong?” Chase said as he sat in the chair across from Elliot’s desk. They were in a small office in the same building as the Tactical Operations Center, on Al Dhafra Air Base. Chase had been working on the post-Abu Musa analysis for the past few weeks.
“I need to let you know something. It’s about Satoshi.”
“What is it?”
“He’s not really Satoshi.”
“I thought we had established that. No surprise. That’s not his real name, right?”
“You misunderstand. I have reason to believe that the man who you recovered from Abu Musa is not doing what he agreed to do.”
Chase’s eyes narrowed.
Elliot and his team had been working with Satoshi to remove any illicit code that had been placed in the Dubai Financial Exchange’s bitcoin interface by the Abu Musa operation. Interviews with Satoshi confirmed that Jinshan had indeed set up an elaborate operation to artificially control the value of the bitcoin-backed currency. He intended to accomplish this via malicious code and a unique hardware connection to the underwater communications cables.
Waleed and Elliot had set the operation up almost as soon as Satoshi had arrived in Dubai. Once Satoshi agreed to remove the malicious programs hidden in the Dubai Financial Exchange, Waleed and Elliot had gone to work on a joint operation to get Satoshi daily access to its computers. It had taken a lot of hard work, but they had executed it flawlessly.
Each day, Satoshi’s software fixes were uploaded to NSA laptops and taken to a building adjacent to the Dubai Financial Exchange. There, Elliot’s NSA contacts had helped set up a long-range Wi-Fi connection to the computers of several employees in the building. They infected these computers with a worm that allowed Satoshi to anonymously edit the trading programs. While their computers weren’t directly connected to any of the servers that handled the bitcoin-backed currency exchange, they didn’t need to be.
Each night, when the employees who used the infected computers had gone home, the NSA’s worm would start their computers up. It would send out electronic signals in any form that the host computer was capable of. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC. It would spread to other computers that were in range, forming a larger network of infected computers. Eventually, some of these computers became connected to external drives and hardware. On and on the spread of the virus went, until three weeks into the operation, they hit gold. One of the NSA-infected computers linked up to the trading server software. This triggered the network of computers to scan and transfer the information that Satoshi needed.