"Panera Bread. Will this be for pickup?" he heard.
"I'm sorry. What the…I think…"
"Just messing with you, boss. What's up?" she said.
"Do you see the two walking up the stairs by my office?"
"The snake charmer and his cobra?"
"Don't worry. Admiral DeSantos will make sure she stays in her basket," he said.
"Good. Because if I run into her in the bathroom down here, I might not be able to restrain myself."
"She'll be using the second-floor bathroom."
"You better keep the ladies’ room down here clear for me. You don't want me wandering upstairs."
"She's under orders to steer clear of the task force personnel, and you're now under orders to stay away from her. Are we clear on that?" he said.
"Yes. Is that why you called, sir?"
"No. I need you to personally track her communications. I don't trust her any more than you do. You can tap into her communications node. I don't expect you to monitor her calls and emails live, but I want you to review them as soon as possible. She's not to pass operational information to Sanderson. If she violates that rule, she's out of here. I also want to know what she's telling the field team."
"Easy enough. I'll brief you as soon as I review any outgoing communications."
"Thank you, Dana. I'll be out on the floor in a few minutes," he said.
"Sir, I think the whole purpose of this communication system is to keep you in your office."
"Am I really that bad?"
"Better than Mendoza," she admitted.
"I presume he's standing right next to you?"
"Of course. I just texted him the context of our conversation. He looks confused. This is too much fun for me. Technology is like old guys' kryptonite. You should see him fumbling with his phone, while trying to interpret my veiled insults. How long are we going to be trapped in this room?"
"Too long. Now get back to work."
Callie Stewart walked along the second floor catwalk with Admiral DeSantos. Neither of them said a word until they had entered the Department of Defense's assigned office and closed the door. The office had been configured with two sparse inward facing workstations that occupied the rear half of the space. One of the workstations had been labeled with a placard reading "DIA," which she would share with DeSantos, and the other read "SOCOM." A small couch had been pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling window at the front, crowded against a small wire and glass end table. She stepped several feet into the crowded office and turned to the window, hoping the glass had been equipped with the same privacy feature as Sharpe's office.
"How was my performance?"
"Convincing. I think he expected more of a fight, but that would have given him a reason to boot you off the task force. I think you skirted the line appropriately with a few well-placed, sarcastic comments. I guarantee they'll be watching your calls closely."
"Our people have full access to their system, so they won't be able to spy on me unless I want them to," she said.
"Already?" he said, staring at her with a look of disbelief.
"I'm pretty sure Sanderson's people had full access even before we went into Sharpe's office."
"I probably don't want to know how you pulled that off."
One of her first acts of subterfuge upon arriving was a little sleight-of-hand trick. She knew about NCTC procedure better than most of the members of the task force, having spent plenty of time here in the course of her duties at Aegis Corporation. Of course, nobody assigned to Task Force Scorpion was aware of this, and any of the duty personnel assigned to NCTC would be strictly forbidden to mention it. She knew that the NCTC check-in technicians would kindly transfer all of her cell phone contacts to the "loaner" phone provided by NCTC. She also knew that this would be one of the last parts of the check-in process, which would provide her with the opportunity to pull her trick.
The cell phone she brought with her had been equipped with a sophisticated bar code scanner, which she used to scan her security pass card. Prior to surrendering the phone, she insisted on placing one call to her office, to give them her "loaner" cell phone number. She told NCTC personnel that her office colleagues might not answer a strange number and the task force couldn't afford to waste time squaring away the situation in the middle of this crisis. Everyone at NCTC knew what was at stake on the watch floor, so her request drew no attention from the technicians. Her call transmitted the security pass card's data to a Black Flag cyber-operations team that had set up shop within a small office in nearby Merrifield, Virginia. The team wasn't sure if this would be enough for them to hack into NCTC's system, so they had given her other options.
One of the "contacts" transferred from her phone to the NCTC "loaner" contained a designer virus engineered to access NCTC's computer network. The virus would install a backdoor into the system for the waiting cyber-ops team, while covering its own tracks with the latest generation rootkit software. Once the team had access to the system, they would download a more sophisticated and robust kernel-mode rootkit to conceal their direct access to the operating system. Since kernel-mode rootkits operated at the same security level as the operating system itself, they were difficult to detect and nearly impossible to remove without rebooting the entire system.
Activation of the virus had been simple. Before walking onto the watch floor with Admiral DeSantos, she placed a quick "check in" call to General Sanderson on her new phone, which was digitally routed through NCTC's computer system. Once her "loaner" phone started negotiating NCTC network protocols, the virus took off for its destination, and her job was done. She chatted with Sanderson for less than thirty seconds, which was twenty-nine seconds longer than necessary.
She had checked the contact list on her NCTC phone upon leaving Sharpe's office, noticing that the contact containing the virus had disappeared. The cyber team had told her that they would erase the contact once they had full access. At this point, she could place and receive calls on her phone, which would remain invisible to Sharpe's surveillance efforts. She could also access Sharpe's desktop, eavesdrop on his calls and "attend" all of his videoconferences. She wouldn't have to do any of this, of course, since Sanderson had over a dozen operatives tracking Task Force Scorpion from his own operations center at the headquarters lodge in Argentina.
At this point, her job was to maintain a semblance of legitimacy for Sanderson's organization. She'd push the envelope a few times, as would be expected by Sharpe's team, but overall she'd demonstrate respect for his ground rules. Ground rules that had been rendered meaningless by Sanderson's cyber-warfare operations, but would appear to remain intact.
"Sorry. Trade secret. And you never know when I might have to pay the DIA a little visit for Sanderson."
"I'll make sure we confiscate your cell phone before issuing a security badge."
"You saw that? Impressive."
"I'll be back later tonight with some dinner. The food here sucks, and I'd hate to think of you eating alone. I'm not even sure Colonel Hanson will want to be seen with you. Looks like he's made himself at home in one of the conference rooms."
"And you don't mind being seen with me?"
"Well, it's too late to save my reputation. I was seen escorting you into the building," he said.
"Poor you."
"Someone has to take the dirty jobs," he said.
"They really hate Sanderson that badly?" she said.
"With a passion. All they remember is what he did two years ago. Fucking over the FBI was bad enough, but that's not what everyone remembers. He made a huge mistake killing Derren McKie inside the Pentagon. McKie had sold him out to General Tierney, who in turn blew the lid on the Black Flag program, so I can understand the feeling of betrayal…but he had the man killed right inside the Pentagon. Pretty high profile to say the least.