Alex was up at his usual early hour, and the cook was in the kitchen preparing coffee and toast for his customary breakfast. Ted Jeffers came into the dining room and sat down next to Alex.
“I was hoping I would wake up and find all this was just a bad dream,” Jeffers said.
“Unfortunately, this is all too real. We have to put an end to it,” Alex commented.
The two began discussing strategy over breakfast. How would the FBI be able to control the CIA? The agency was under the obvious influence of Don Cray, the Director, and Admiral Torrance. Alex suggested as he’d said before, to keep the most senior and loyal agents in DC. Those agents needed to be covert in their actions. Keep them transparent to Cray and Torrance.
“So, in essence our FBI guys need to be undercover for our team here?”
“Exactly.”
They needed a network of agents who could get close to the people involved and report on their activities. Jeffers added he knew his people would relish the chance to go undercover, but more importantly they would remain loyal to the U.S. and not to Torrance. Jeffers told Alex he would start immediately calling the key agents in DC. Afterwards he would call his field offices in all the major cities and setup a network of agents nationwide. Jeffers asked Alex about communications for the agents, did they have a secure way to contact him here at the base?
Alex mentioned Curt said he could setup a wireless network that could utilize the relay system through satellites. It would be hard to trace, since the calls would bounce from hub to hub throughout the U.S. In addition, Alex informed Jeffers Curt could also setup an online secured chat line with anyone that had a PC or a laptop, all he had to do was give them the download information and the passwords and they could talk freely with anyone on the system. Alex told Jeffers to get with Curt first thing and tell him how the agents perform their duties. What kind of access to telecommunications equipment they had available; Curt would come up with something for his agents.
Everybody was up and ready to go by eight a.m. and Alex mentioned it was ten on the east coast, and the people that had their country were already ahead of them by two hours. He wanted everyone in the residence up and ready to work by seven each morning. Elena and Andrade had arrived at seven and were eager and ready to take on any task Alex laid before them. Alex also mentioned to all in attendance that Admiral Torrance was giving a nationwide speech at eight Eastern Standard Time that evening, which was six Mountain Standard Time, and he wanted everyone present to witness the address.
Alex said he needed to make a call to Professor Kumar at Cal Tech, and afterwards at ten, he wanted a brainstorming session with Ted, Elena, Andrade, and Curt in his private office.
Alex dialed Professor Kumar’s number at Cal Tech.
“Professor Kumar speaking.”
“Professor Kumar, General Hanken.”
“General, thank you for returning my call, I don’t know where you stand in all of this—
“Professor Kumar, I am directly opposed to Admiral Torrance. I am personally leading the movement to unseat him and his conspirators from power, and restore democracy to this country.”
“I am so relieved to hear this. I hesitated to contact Admiral Torrance with this information.”
“What information?”
Professor Kumar explained that on the day of the takeover, there appeared a blip on their computer system and the screens went blank for a few seconds. When the system returned to normal, the space anomaly had disappeared. There was no trace of the asteroids they had been tracking for six months. It was like nothing ever happened.
It all hit Alex full force, the cover-up Torrance used. Why go to these extreme measures with all the survival facilities? He could understand the redeployment for control purposes. The Russians continuing their investigations, even after discovering the cover-up. The mysterious C-17 order coinciding with the operational test. There were so many signs that he had missed. My God, the President, the cabinet, the Congress, they were in essence hostages of the conspirators. Those facilities were not liberated by Alex, how could he have overlooked it? A hollow feeling hit the pit of his stomach, a glaring oversight on his part. All the praise that had been heaped upon him in the last two days seemed for naught.
“Professor Kumar did your mainframe keep a copy of all that happened the day of the takeover? In other words, can your people reconstruct the computer memory just before the blip and during the downtime?”
“Yes, we have a redundant system that kicks in and monitors the mainframe processing from a remote site in Utah. It’s part of our disaster recovery plan implemented years ago, and it has a nearly impenetrable firewall.”
“Where is the data recovery center located?”
“It is located at Brigham Young University, in their computer science building.”
“Okay, I will be sending an FBI agent and a Navy Seal to that location within the hour to retrieve those tapes. How do they get in?”
“I will call the center right now and alert them, what are their names?”
“FBI Agent William Evans and Lt. Commander Michael Morris of the Navy Seals.”
“Thank you General, I will call right now.”
Alex called Evans and Morris into his private office. He told them what he wanted them to do. They hurriedly left for the base airfield, while in route Morris alerted the air control center to have one of the jets prepped and ready to go with a pilot on board for immediate take off. Thirty minutes later they were in the air headed toward Provo. Alex called Curt into his office and told him of his conversation with Professor Kumar.
“Well, we may be able to find out what kind of sub routine program was running, and if we can do that, then we can narrow down who would have the sophistication to put this together,” Curt said.
“Wouldn’t it take a super hacker to get this into the Cal Tech mainframe and past all the firewalls they have?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, it would Dad, but I know most of the names of the best hackers in the world, and for that matter, Ted Jeffers has a list of those people I’m sure…for national security reasons alone.”
Jeffers, along with Elena and Andrade, arrived for the ten o’clock meeting.
Alex recounted his conversation with Professor Kumar and that agent Evans and Commander Morris were on their way to retrieve the tapes. Jeffers corroborated what Curt said about the FBI having an extensive list of known hackers worldwide. Elena offered that she had run into several well-known hackers in Europe during her various assignments, and most of them had huge ego’s they always signed their handiwork in some fashion. Curt jumped in and said she was right; they may be able to nail the guy or gal that way. Jeffers relayed a case several years earlier of just that fact. And the FBI had three guys on staff who did nothing but analyze invasive viruses and programs. Alex told Jeffers to get one or two of them, not all three, on a plane here as soon as possible. But be discreet about it, he didn’t want to alert Cray. It could tip them off as to what they were doing.
Alex asked Elena and Andrade if they had their passports and enough false identification with them to get them into Europe if necessary. Elena indicated that the suitcase with all their intelligence gear was still in
