we go,” he said, passing his glasses to the group leader.
The other took a long look and nodded. “Navigator. Airport rental if I’ve ever seen one.”
He radioed base.
As the SUV approached, the men got a good look at the vehicle. It was new and covered with a fine layer of dust and sand. Woefully out of place in the harsh wilderness. Suddenly the SUV screeched to a stop at the fork in the rocky trails just a stone’s throw from Alpha-Bravo’s position.
“What’s he doing?” whispered the private.
“If he’s smart, he’s checking GPS for directions.” He motioned. “He doesn’t want to take the right fork. That’ll take him to the old abandoned prospecting mine two miles away, but if he stays the left course, he’ll continue his descent into the South Badger Valley.” He focused the glasses on the driver’s window, but the heavy tint obscured any view of the driver. “Come on, bud. Stay left.”
After a short pause, the tires spun back to life, and the Navigator veered left, bouncing deeper into the rocky wilderness.
The Echo team leader raised the walkie-talkie to his face. “He’ll be yours in fifteen to twenty.”
Chapter 9 Badger Valley 7:17 PM Pacific Standard Time
The militia sergeant stepped from the weather-beaten field trailer. He blew cigarette smoke into the still air, and then flicked the butt into the cooling sand. He inhaled deeply, and let his mind wander as he gazed at the hills, rock outcroppings and Joshua trees that dominated the landscape for as far as the eye could see. He watched the late afternoon shadows stretch across the parched desert terrain. The majestic White Range loomed in the distance.
They had pitched camp three days earlier, and their orders were to stay another day, maybe two. They’d wrapped up most of their military maneuvers a 24-hours ago, and the sergeant was getting fidgety; it was never wise to loiter in the same vicinity for too long. The minute he got word, he’d give the order to— something caught his attention—a brief metallic flickering in the distance to his right. There he is, thought the sergeant now focused on the eastern horizon.
He followed the black Navigator as it eased down the narrow gorge. It skidded to a stop ten yards from the remote field trailer. A pale man, looking more like an accountant than anything he could think of at the moment, and sporting khakis and a long-sleeve Polo, threw open the door and hopped out. He adjusted what looked like a silver Rolex . He turned, grabbed a large briefcase and shut the door.
The sergeant thought, you have got to be kidding. This is what’s been holding us up?
Finally, thought the pale man in khakis: A human being.
He waved off the dust that swirled in the Navigator’s wake, and began to make his way toward a large man in military fatigues. He stumbled once. The sergeant stepped from the edge of the trailer, and the pale man thought he detected a half-smirk.
“Afternoon,” said the sergeant. “I see you found us okay.”
So, this is the man who has to die before I leave this place. I wonder if he has any idea. “Nobody told me there’d be no road the last nine miles.”
The sergeant glanced back toward the horizon. “That’s what we call a road out here. Anyway, please give our best to Maestro.”
No, he has no idea. None at all.
There was a moment of awkward silence. The sergeant led the pale man to the trailer and grabbed the door handle. There was a sudden burst of gun fire coming from the base of a nearby ridge—rapid popping noises, followed by shouts. The pale man jumped and turned to see several soldiers scampering across the rugged terrain. They crouched and fired their AK-47s. After a moment, the men re-grouped and then moved ahead.
“Daily exercises,” explained the sergeant. “Don’t be alarmed. Come inside.”
Chapter 10 Badger Valley 7:29 PM Pacific Standard Time
The trailer was neat and tidy. There were several boxes lining the far wall. All had stacks of papers in them. Two large file cabinets occupied the opposite wall, along with a single laptop and printer. A low-humming air conditioning unit drooped from the far window, and a white banner hung from the opposite wall sporting words in large, black print: PLANNING-ORGANIZATION-DOCTRINE-LEADERSHIP-TRAINING-EQUIPMENT-CONCLUSION. It was the militia credo.
The sergeant motioned to a nearby box overflowing with drives and wires. “Forty-two internal drives, eleven flash drives and two-hundred and seventy CDs.”
“That’s everything?” asked the pale man, inspecting the IBM and Apple mainframes stacked next to the box of drives. From what he could see, the units were gutted and useless. Just as Maestro wanted. There would be no trace of their operation after today.
“Absolutely everything.” The sergeant added, “I’m assuming Maestro will want this stack of hardcopies for himself,” he finished, thrusting the stack of papers at him.
The pale man set down the briefcase, and sifted through the papers with a frown on his face. Why do I feel like a high school freshman attempting to translate my first Latin subtext?
At length the sergeant said, “Ever heard of packet sniffing?”
The sergeant lit a cigarette, and nodded to the stack of papers. “Three years ago, right after the election as a matter of fact, somebody representing Maestro found me and my men camped along the California-Oregon border. Said Maestro wanted to hire us to hack the Prescott email account. There was no particular rush, but Maestro wanted us to get back with him when we found something of value.”
Of course, the pale man knew all this. What he didn’t know was how it all worked—how it all came together. Though he had a flight to catch, it might not hurt to linger a few minutes and learn the specifics of packet sniffing.
“What you’re reading,” continued the sergeant, “are emails we intercepted from the first daughter.” The sergeant paused. “How can I put this in layman’s terms? Packet sniffing is like listening in on computer conversations much the way the FBI would wiretap a phone line. Get what I’m saying?”
“I’m with you so far.”
“But unlike telephone circuits computer networks are shared communication channels, so it would be far too expensive to dedicate local loops to the switch for each pair of communicating computers. The amount of loops required would be insane. Like trying to tap a million, separate phone lines simultaneously.”
“How do you get around that?”
“We set our machines to what’s known as the promiscuous mode, and capture all packets shooting across the circuit.” He exhaled. “That’s where the fun begins: the endless sorting of emails until we find what we’re looking for. Needle in a hay stack, if you will.”
“So, just how many emails did you sift through before you ran across Caitlin Prescott’s messages?”
“We camped out at that MCI server and captured tens of thousands of unrelated emails. Probably more. See, Intel first told
