“No.”
“You’re to explain everything you’ve done in detail to Mr. Bozzone. And that’s it. Understood?”
“I guess.”
“That is not the right answer.” Massina rose from his desk, angry. “Do not engage these people,” he added. “Understood?”
“OK,” she said meekly.
Massina sensed that he had scared her, but he also realized she wouldn’t stay scared for very long. She was too curious, too adventurous, and she had grown up with a father who was both a spy and a borderline mobster. So when Bozzone came to ask how things went, Massina simply shrugged.
“She’ll stay off for a few days, maybe.”
“As long as she doesn’t use our computers,” said Bozzone.
“I’m not worried about the computers.”
“Neither group that tried tracking her was ISIS.”
“Not yet.”
Two different hacker outfits had tried to trace Borya and the system she was using, launching crude probes on the off-site servers used for the “public” internet computers. Bozzone’s people had, in turn, tracked them to Asian operations, where ISIS had no known connections.
“I’ll watch her,” said Bozzone, with the tone of an older brother being assigned to babysit a younger sibling. “We’ve locked out the sites and her chat functions.”
“I’m sure she’ll look for a way around them,” said Massina. “Keep her safe.”
“I’ll do my best. But—”
“No buts on this,” said Massina. “Make sure it happens.”
42
Chelsea studied the image from the Nightbird UAV circling above Palmyra. Flying at 15,000 feet, the aircraft was mapping every magnetic field in the ISIS-held city. Every motor, every current, was measured and recorded by the aircraft’s powerful sensors. Once the data was gathered, simple filters would identify different motor types, showing the likely locations of computers, for example, or air conditioners — both likely markers of high-ranking Daesh commanders.
“Which one of these is the prison?” asked Johansen, standing over her and trying to make sense of the splotch-covered map.
Chelsea zoomed out and overlaid the display on the afternoon’s satellite image.
“Here,” she said, pointing to a square at the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
“Nothing there?”
“One computer,” she told him, checking the data quickly.
“They’re not using it as a headquarters?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
The regime had emptied the prison some months before, then blown up most of the buildings with crude barrel bombs. But two buildings remained intact, and Johansen’s original intelligence had indicated it was being used as a headquarters.
“Doesn’t match what you’re looking for,” said Chelsea. “Unless Ghadab doesn’t use computers.”
“They all use computers,” insisted Johansen. “They’re pretty modern for people who want to send the world back to the Stone Ages. What about the school?”
Chelsea recentered the image, focusing on a two-story building on the western side of town now used as the operational headquarters of the local ISIS commander.
“Lots,” said Chelsea. “Twelve in the scan, and the bird isn’t done.”
“Good.”
They could blow up the school with the touch of a button — the Destiny drone was orbiting a short distance away. But it was at best a secondary target — unless Ghadab was inside.
“Here’s a site that wasn’t mapped,” said Chelsea, moving the image farther south. “It’s a house. There are at least twenty computers there, and three good-sized air conditioners. Look.”
“Is there an internet connection?”
“Can’t tell. But there’s a cable line. You can see where it goes underground.”
“Put it on the list to watch.”
“Already have.”
The UAV had found clusters of six or seven computers in three other buildings that had not been ID’d for surveillance by the CIA. Two were at small businesses on the western end of the city, closest to the ancient ruins. The last was within a hundred yards of the wall where Turk had been when he spooked the guards.
“There’s a bunker up here that you had marked as abandoned,” Chelsea added, showing him a location several miles north of the city. “Six computers there, printers. Everything on standby, though. The power profiles are low coming in, so I’m extrapolating.”
“Not being used?”
“No.”
“Put it on the list anyway.”
“Already did.”
“The list is getting pretty long,” said Johansen. “Sometimes I think we’d be better off leveling the whole city.”
While Chelsea was ferreting out potential targets, five three-man teams were crossing the desert south, preparing to plant a web of video and ELINT bugs around the city.
Two teams would enter the city on the western highway with commercial traffic after morning prayers; there were generally a half-dozen trucks entering at that time, and the guards tended to be blasé. The infiltrators were the best Arabic speakers in the group, and to a man, looked as if they’d been born in Syria. Their targets were buildings near the city boundary.
Two other teams would enter from the fields to the south, disguised as farmworkers going home for a noonday meal. Their targets were outside the main area of the city, less heavily traveled; they, too, were competent Arabic speakers, though two had papers identifying them as foreign workers as a cover for their looks.
The fifth team, which included Johnny Givens, would plant bugs in the most heavily trafficked and dangerous part of the city. Their mission was not only the riskiest, but it also had to be completed before the others: besides the bugs, they were planting boosters that were needed to transmit data from the other sensors. Without the boosters in place, the other bugs couldn’t be turned on. The mission was so risky it would be done by bots under cover of darkness.
They chose an abandoned archaeological dig at the city outskirts as their command post. Sitting on the lee side of a hill, the digs were seventy-five yards from a former Syrian army compound. That, too, was abandoned, except for a Daesh military commander and his family. En route to the main objectives, one of the bots would plant a bug to cover the home as well. Black-shirt patrols ran at roughly two-hour intervals around the city each night; the bots’ incursion and route was planned accordingly.
At some point in the war, a flight of Russian aircraft had launched a bombing raid against the city with spectacular results: they had managed to miss every one of their half-dozen targets. Most of their bombs had landed on vacant land near the excavations. Johnny and the others parked their truck in one of the craters, lugging their gear to a knoll at the edge of the archaeological site.
They launched a Hum. Christian trotted to a second hill on their eastern flank, commanding the roadway from the city; Turk and Johnny got the robots ready for their mission.
Nicknamed “koalas,” the bots had been preprogrammed with GPS and satellite data. About a fifth of the size of their namesakes, each unit had twelve legs, six on top and six on the bottom. The legs had three small toes with claws that could grip and enable them to climb — like actual koalas.
“How do you know if they’re right side up?” asked Turk.
“I don’t,” answered Johnny.
They had to wait through a lengthy startup routine. One of the units did not respond to the test. Johnny replaced it — he had two backups — then launched each unit individually with verbal commands. One after the other they marched off, kicking up a trail of dust.