The Cyclops Initiative (6 page)

“Yeah, right,” the analyst sneered. “I can totally track them. They just went to enough trouble to make it interesting.”

FORT MEADE, MD: MARCH 21, 11:39

“The hijacker prevented us from doing this the easy way. And maybe if you were talking to anybody else, it would end there. But this is the NSA. We've been cracking codes since World War I.” Moulton turned around in his chair. “Whoever sent these commands, they thought they were anonymous. But you can't ever really be anonymous on the Internet.” He glanced from one to another of them with little grunts of frustration as if trying to decide who might understand what he said next. “You leave . . . fingerprints, I guess, is a good analogy. I can't get an IP address out of this code. But there's still a path to follow.” He turned back to his keyboard. “This is going to take a few minutes.”

“Take your time,” Holman told him. “Do it right.”

Moulton nodded over his keyboard. He opened up another program, one that looked to Chapel like a giant and very, very complicated spreadsheet. He entered a mathematical equation in a field at the top of the sheet and then opened yet another program that showed a map of the world.

“I'm going to query our network analyzer. This thing's like a packet sniffer on steroids.” He glanced around the room and then sighed. “Basically, um, I can't just trace the signal back to its source. But because of how the Internet works, I can find everywhere the signal passed through on its way to the Predator. All the servers it touched on its way. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack by examining every piece of hay for how long ago they were next to the needle. Then by knowing where those pieces of hay were, you can home in on where the needle
was,
even though it isn't there anymore.”

“If it works,” Wilkes said, “I don't really care how it works.”

The analyst nodded. He clicked his mouse, and up on the screen thousands of red dots appeared on the map, spread out pretty evenly. “These are all the servers the signal passed through. Somewhere in there is your hijacker.”

He clicked his mouse again and then pushed back from the workstation to watch the big screen with the rest of them. Up there, a huge number of the dots disappeared, leaving Africa and Australia completely bare.

Chapel knew he would never follow what was actually happening, so he just watched the map. It was almost hypnotic to watch the dots fall away. As more dots blinked out, the process slowed down dramatically. Long seconds would tick by before another one dropped off the map. But the program kept running. Chapel estimated they were down to only a few hundred at most. Then, suddenly, every dot disappeared from Europe and Asia, leaving only those in the United States.

“The signal came from inside the country,” Holman interpreted.

A chill ran down Chapel's spine. He remembered what Wilkes had said back in the car—­that this might be an inside job. His mouth was suddenly dry. “Are we looking at somebody military, or a civilian?” he asked.

Holman looked at him with wide eyes. “What are you suggesting?” she asked.

Chapel shook his head. “Nothing yet. Just—­Moulton. What do you think?”

“Hard to say—­the fact that they passed through so many servers so quickly makes me think it's military. Or at least they're using military-­grade software.”

“Let's not jump to conclusions yet,” Holman said.

The map changed to just show the United States. Then almost at once it changed again, to just show the northeastern corridor. One by one the dots kept going out. The map changed a third time to show the greater Washington, D.C., area, with red dots clustered around the Pentagon and Fort Belvoir.

Chapel took a deep breath. It looked like it was one of their own. The possibility had always been there. But at least now they knew, at least they could narrow down the list of possible culprits. And then Chapel could go and find the hijacker and put an end to this before things went too far. All right, that was acceptable. And he had to admit they couldn't have done it without the NSA.

“This,” Chapel said as the lights continued to go out, “is some pretty impressive hacking.”

“Excuse me?” Moulton said.

“You're quite the hacker,” Chapel said, smiling.

Moulton erupted out of his chair and jabbed a finger in Chapel's face. “You take that back.”

“What? Listen, I didn't mean—­”

“I am not a hacker,” Moulton insisted. “A hacker exploits weaknesses. They break into things. I'm using tools that were designed just for this purpose.”

“I didn't, uh—­hey, let's just—­”

Hollingshead cleared his throat, quite distinctly. “Gentlemen,” he said, “if you'll put this disagreement on hold, you might wish to look at the map.”

Chapel turned and looked at the screen. What he saw made him forget all about Moulton's outburst.

Only one dot remained on the map. It was on the Pentagon.

Everyone in the room held their breath. They knew what that had to mean. The hijacking was an inside job. It wasn't a debatable point anymore.

“Military, then,” Holman said, walking toward the map as if she wanted to see it more clearly. “Military. Or maybe a civilian contractor working for a military organization. Can we get any more details?”

“Sure,” Moulton said. He glared at Chapel one last time and then returned to his seat. He glanced at his monitor for a moment, then tapped a key and the view on the screen disappeared, replaced with a block of code that Chapel couldn't read. “Here we go. The IP address you requested. It doesn't look like the other one because this is an IPv6 address, which is . . . oh,” Moulton said. “Oh, this is—­this is a little, um—­”

“Delicate,” Holman said. “Rupert, I'm so sorry you had to find out like this, I assure you I had no idea—­”

She stopped talking because Hollingshead had lifted his hands for peace. He had his eyes closed, and he looked like he was fighting to control himself.

“It's us,” he said.

“What?” Chapel asked. “What are you saying?”

“That IP address is one reserved for use by the Defense Intelligence Agency,” Hollingshead said very quietly. “The hijacker is one of ours.”

Chapel was so stunned he had no idea what to say.

Wilkes didn't have the same problem. “Give me a name,” he said.

Moulton did something that cleared his screen and then brought up a page of text—­numbers and words, but none Chapel could make any sense out of. The IP address was highlighted in one cell near the middle of the sheet. There was no name associated with the address, just a sixteen-­digit number.

“That's a confidential employee identifier,” Holman said, pointing at the screen. “That's the number for an operative who can't be named, even in classified documents. Do you want me to look up who it belongs to?”

“No need,” Hollingshead said. “I recognize it. The person you've identified is known to me.” He opened his eyes. Blinked a few times. Then he looked at Chapel and Wilkes and took a deep breath. “No point in hiding things now. That's Angel's identifier. Angel is the hijacker.”

FORT MEADE, MD: MARCH 21, 12:18

“No,” Chapel said. “No. No way it's her. She wouldn't do this.”

“Son, I don't want to believe it either,” Hollingshead told him, reaching for his arm. “But we have to at least entertain the possibility—­”

Chapel brushed off the director's hand. “After all she's done for you. Everything she's done for her country. You won't even give her the benefit of the doubt?”

“That's exactly what I want to do,” Hollingshead said. He sighed deeply and looked around him. Every eye in the room was watching him. “We'll have to bring her in. Today.”

Chapel shook his head. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Hollingshead was going to arrest Angel just because the NSA claimed she was a traitor? It was unthinkable.

“She can tell us her side of the story,” Hollingshead went on.

“Somebody's framing her,” Chapel insisted.

It was Moulton who responded to that. “If they are, they're doing an incredible job of it. It took every resource we had to trace her. If this was a frame-­up, you'd think the false evidence would be easier to find.”

Chapel glared at the man. “You don't know her.”

“Looks like maybe you don't, either,” Moulton pointed out.

Chapel took a step toward him, ready to drag him out of his chair and beat the smug smile off the analyst's face. Before he could get there, however, Holman stepped in and cleared her throat.

Two decades, half of Chapel's life, had been spent learning to respect his superior officers. It had become just a reflex—­if a colonel cleared her throat, you shut up and listened to what she had to say.

“None of us likes this, Captain,” she told him. “None of us wants to believe the hijacker was one of us, a member of the intelligence community. And right now we don't have to. Until we have more information we don't have to make any decisions.”

“My analysis is sound,” Moulton insisted.

“Paul, be quiet,” Holman said. She looked over at Hollingshead. “How do you want to proceed?” she asked.

The director looked down at the floor. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Wilkes, go and get her. Head north. I'll send you the coordinates for her location once you're on the road.”

“What?” Chapel said.

Hollingshead looked up at him and those genial professorial eyes that twinkled so effectively behind his spectacles were gone. They'd been replaced by the eyes of a rear admiral of the navy, a man who had sent men knowingly to their deaths. A man who had never shirked from a hard decision. “Do you have something to say?”

Chapel bit down his first reaction. Tried desperately to get a handle on his feelings. “Sir. With all due respect. Angel and I have worked together for a very long time. Let me do this.”

“I'm afraid I can't allow it,” Hollingshead told him. “You and Angel have a . . . complicated relationship. No, son. You're the wrong man for the job.”

Holman coughed politely into her hand. “Should it really be anyone from DIA? There might be a conflict of interests here. Maybe we should contact FBI. They're trained for this sort of thing.”

“I appreciate your input,” Hollingshead told her. “But if I can't send Chapel to fetch her, I won't send a complete stranger, either. Wilkes is our man.” He turned to the marine. “Go on, son. Your country needs you to do this.”

Wilkes straightened up into a salute. “Sir, yes, sir,” he said. Then with one quick glance at Chapel he was gone, headed back to the elevator that was already waiting for him, its doors open.

Chapel whirled around, his breath catching in his throat. “You know—­you know what will happen once she's in custody!”

Hollingshead just stood there, no expression at all on his face.

“Goddamnit!” Chapel shouted. He grabbed one of the chairs away from its workstation and threw it across the room. In the cavernous space it failed to collide with anything. Instead it just slid across the ugly carpet, its wheels spinning pointlessly in the air.

FORT MEADE, MD: MARCH 21, 12:27

“Thank you,” Hollingshead said to Holman. “You've been most helpful.”

“It's what we're here for,” she said. Then a furrow crossed her brow. “Rupert, I am sorry. I didn't think we would find one of yours behind the hijacking.”

“How could you have?” the director responded. “One should never be sorry for telling the truth. Now. If you'll forgive me—­and I hope especially you'll forgive my rather overwrought agent here—­I think we'll be going. There's a great deal I need to do.”

“Yes, of course,” Holman said.

Chapel wanted to scream. He wanted to pick the chair up and start smashing screens. He wanted to do—­something, anything to make this not have happened at all. But in the end, all he could do was take his place behind Hollingshead as they started toward the elevator bank.

“Oh, Rupert,” Holman said just before their elevator arrived. “You know I'll have to contact the secretary of defense about this, right?”

“I'll call him myself,” Hollingshead told her.

She started to say something else, but then she seemed to think better of it. Instead she just nodded and watched them go.

In the elevator neither of them spoke. The silence continued as they made their way through the Visitor Control Center and back out into the parking lot. Wilkes had taken the car, so Hollingshead made a quick call to request transport. While they waited for it to arrive the director fiddled with something in his pocket. Chapel did what he could to contain himself.

In the end it didn't work. “She won't get a trial,” he said, barely whispering.

“I'll make sure she's treated fairly,” Hollingshead replied. “It's out of your hands, son. Let this go.”

“Let it go? Are you kidding me?”

Hollingshead's eyes flashed for a moment. “I am not in the habit of doing so.”

Chapel wouldn't be warned off. He didn't even care if the NSA was listening to every word he said. “They'll take her to Guantánamo. Or someplace worse! They'll interrogate her, over and over, until she cracks and confesses to something she didn't do. They'll make her a scapegoat and no one will care that the real hijacker got away with attacking us, and—­”

“Captain Chapel,” Hollingshead said, and his voice cracked like thunder. “I've given you your orders. Are you questioning my command?”

Chapel could feel his heart beating in his chest like artillery fire finding its range. Every bit of his training and discipline begged him to shut up, but his head roared with anger. “She's a hero. She's saved my life countless times. If you treat her like this—­”