Then again, General Rodgers doesn't seem to feel it, she told herself. If anything, he appeared invigorated. He sat with his back to her, facing a wall of monitors that displayed satellite views of the region as well as information that ranged from levels of microwave radiation to local smog and allergen levels. Large rises in microwave levels indicated an increase in cellular communications, which was often a forerunner to military activity in a region. A higher smog or pollen count told them what kind of efficiency levels they could expect from soldiers. Mary Rose had been astonished to learn from Op-Center's chief medical officer, Jerry Wheeler, that antihistamines weren't deeply stockpiled by many of the world's armies. However sophisticated a nation's weapons were, they'd be useless in the hands of itchy-eyed warriors.
No, General Rodgers didn't feel the exhaustion. Mary Rose could tell that he was happily immersed in studying his data. That was why they hadn't had a break since their early, fifteen-minute lunch. He was lost in this first glimpse at wars of the near future. Wars that wouldn't be fought between great armies, but by small bands against small bands, and by satellites against computers and communications centers. Enemies of tomorrow would not be battalions, but groups of terrorists who used chemical and biological weapons against civilian targets, killing and vanishing. Then it would be up to teams like the ROC crew to plan a swift and surgical response. Find a way to get as close to the enemy brain as possible and lobotomize it, using an elite unit like Op-Center's Striker or a missile hit or a booby-trapped car or telephone or electric shaver. Hope that with the head gone, the hands and feet would no longer function.
Unlike many "old soldiers" who longed for the old Ways, Mary Rose knew that the forty-something Rodgers relished this new challenge. He enjoyed new ideas and new ways almost as much as he enjoyed his bottomless supply of old aphorisms. As he'd told her with boyish enthusiasm when they'd settled into their seats early this morning, "Samuel Johnson once said, 'The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.' I'm looking forward to this, Mary Rose."
Getting Matt's OLM up and running took just over fifteen minutes. When she'd loaded it and run the diagnostics, Rodgers asked her to break into the Turkish Security Forces computer file. He wanted to learn more about Colonel Nejat Seden, the man who was being sent to work with them. He said that Seden was undoubtedly being sent to watch them as well, though Rodgers had expected that. That was how what he called the "watch out" worked. It was the nitrogen cycle of spying. Rodgers himself was watching the Turks as well as the Syrians; the Israelis were probably watching them both, while the CIA watched the Israelis. Rodgers said it was only fitting that the Turks would watch them.
But Mary Rose suspected that more than politics was behind his request. The general also liked to know the caliber of the individual with whom he'd be spending his time. Sitting beside him on the C-141A that had brought them to Turkey, she'd discovered one quality above all about General Mike Rodgers. He didn't enjoy being surrounded by people, even enemies, who weren't as committed to their jobs as he was to his.
Mary Rose wriggled uncomfortably in her seat as she typed commands into the computer. Because chairs with wheels made a familiar and distinctive sound, the seats in the ROC were bolted to the floor. As Op-Center's Yale-educated Chief Engineer Harlan Bellock had said during the design phase, "Casters would be a tip-off to snoops. It would be very odd to hear the sounds of office furniture coming from an archaeologist's van, you know."
Mary Rose understood. But that didn't make the aluminum chairs any more comfortable. She also felt sunlight-deprived in here, just as she did when she worked in her Op-Center cubicle. All of the windows in the back had been deeply darkened, and lead-lined walls separated the front section of the van from the rear, with only a narrow, doorless opening in the center. Stoll had insisted on that precaution because many modern spies were equipped with "detection kits" or "DeteKs." These portable receivers literally read the electromagnetic radiation that was emitted by the computer monitor and permitted the spies to monitor the screens from outside and from a distance.
Maybe I should have been a Striker, she thought. Drill, play sports, shoot, rockclimb, and swim at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Get some rays. Kick some derriere. But she had to admit she got a lot of sun on her days off, and she loved computers and cutting-edge technology. So stop complaining and do your programming, young lady.
The woman's long, fine brown hair was pulled back with a bow to keep it from tumbling onto the keyboard as she worked. Her hazel eyes were alert, her mouth tight as she modemed OLM to TSF headquarters in Ankara. There, like a perfect little spy, the OLM made room for itself by downloading a legitimate program to the ROC computer for storage.
"Attaboy," she said, her shoulders and thin lips relaxing slightly.
Rodgers chuckled. "It sounds as if you're coaxing one of your father's trotters and pacers."
Her father, William R. Mohalley, was a magazine publisher who owned several of the finest race horses on Long Island. He had always hoped that his only child would ride for him. But when Mary Rose reached a height of five feet seven at age sixteen, and kept on growing to five ten, that became unlikely. And she was just as happy. Horses were one of Mary Rose's passions. She had never wanted it to become work.
"I do feel like I'm racing," Mary Rose replied. "Matt and his German partners packed a lot of speed into this rig."
Assuming the borrowed file name, the On-Line Mole slipped into the system. Once there, OLM found the information, it wanted, copied and downloaded it, then shed its assumed skin and left. As it departed, the program it had temporarily replaced was returned: one bit of OLM would leave as one bit of the original program returned, so that no change in available memory was ever registered. The entire procedure took less than two minutes. If, during the course of the operation, someone went looking for the file OLM had temporarily "become," OLM would quickly restore the program and either impersonate a different file or put the downloading process on hold. The OLM was much more sophisticated than the "Brute Force" attack programs used by most hackers. Instead of randomly flinging passwords at a computer, which could take hours or days, the OLM went right to the "recycle bins" or "trash cans" to find discarded codes. Unobserved in the computer's dumpster, the OLM quickly sought and usually found recurring sets of sequential numbers that gave it a key to valid programs.
Nine percent of the time, nothing useful was located. When that happened, the OLM switched quickly to its "feed mode." Many people used birth dates or the names of favorite movies as codes, just as they did on personal license plates. The OLM rapidly fed in sequences including post-1970 years, which was when most computer-users were born; thousands of first names, including Elvis; and movie or TV titles and characters such as 2001, Star Trek, and 007. Nearly eight percent of the time, OLM found the correct sequence within five minutes. It resorted to "Brute Force" only when faced with the elusive one percent.
Mary Rose beamed as Colonel Seden's dossier appeared, pulled from the recycle bin. "Got it, General," she said.
Mike Rodgers slid to the left. It was a tight squeeze getting out of the chair, and there wasn't enough room for him to stand upright once he was on his feet. Rodgers stood, his head bent low as he leaned over Mary Rose's seat. His chin touched her hair and he withdrew quickly. She was sorry that he did. For a moment, Rodgers had been just a man and she'd been just a woman. It had been a surprising, very exciting moment. Mary Rose turned her attention to the dossier.