M0ngol’s thin lip curled as he copied the last piece of data. He started to close the window on the server and reached for his phone but abruptly stopped, his hand frozen on the mouse. Something had caught his eye as he was looking away, and he stared back at the screen carefully. The directory of computer files was sorted by date and time, along with several other columns of information.
What M0ngol noticed was that some of the log files had a slightly different time stamp than the rest. It was a very subtle difference few would have noticed.
After studying the screen, he opened a new window and brought up the server’s audit logs. He manually scrolled through the giant list. What he was searching for wasn’t there. All other audit activity was listed, except for the six time-stamped files he was looking for.
M0ngol slowly leaned back in his chair without taking his eyes off the screen. He knew exactly what he was looking at.
Deleting audit logs was easy. Much easier than trying to change a file’s time stamp. Doing that would require temporarily changing the server’s clock, which would create a huge ripple effect that could take hours to fix. Instead, the files were opened and closed at almost precisely the same time but twenty-four hours later. And it was done to make the time stamp difference as subtle as possible.
Someone else had been looking through the cell tower files.
Wil Borger was now typing feverishly on his keyboard. Manually finding a small medical building within a thousand-mile radius would take forever. He needed a faster way.
The new ARGUS satellite didn’t have the right path to give him an aerial view of Beijing. But there were two other satellites that did. He didn’t need a live feed like he could get from the ARGUS either. He just needed one with a good enough resolution, and both of these older birds could still read a T-shirt from space. More than strong enough to spot a car.
Of course, it was not as easy as it sounded. Even for Borger. He had to use a program like he did for the Forel that searched pixel by pixel. But this time, he had to tell it what it was looking for. More importantly, he needed it to look for the same pixel signature traveling the same direction and time for each of the days when Wei turned his phone off.
And now that Borger had the make and model of Wei’s car, finding it was at least theoretically possible. The question was how smart could he make his program and whether it would work in time. For this, he would have to commandeer more servers.
Hours later, after testing and launching his modified program, Borger looked at his watch and opened another can of Jolt. Clay had a while before he would even be close, which Borger hoped would give him enough time.
Until then, he needed to check up on his Brazilian friends and get Caesare some more intel.
He popped open the top of the can, and from the third monitor on his desk, watched the overhead flight path of the team’s C-12 Huron.
35
Steve Caesare had a serious problem. He moved forward to speak quietly to the pilots as he peered out through the cockpit’s front windshield. Even from fifty miles out, it was clearly visible. A fast moving thunderstorm headed northeast, over the western half of Colombia.
Unlike other weather patterns, thunderstorms were not something to be flown through. The combination of rising warm air and sinking cold created dangerous surprises, including air pockets that could drop an aircraft’s altitude by thousands of feet in just seconds. Flying around them was the only safe option.
Their problem was they didn’t have enough fuel for a significant deviation. After being denied to land and refuel in both Venezuela and Colombia, their situation was quickly growing into a serious problem.
If they did fly around it, the extra distance would use up far too much of the precious fuel they had left. And trying to fly through the storm would present a headwind and consumption drain almost as bad as going around it.
Caesare watched the copilot finish plotting the change before turning to look at him over his shoulder. It was too far. An outside route was out of the question unless they all wanted to be buried in Colombia.
Their only remaining option was a risky one — to cut inside and hope the storm’s trajectory didn’t change. In other words, to pray it continued moving along its current path. Because if it changed on them, all bets were off.
Caesare nodded and turned around, moving back down the narrow aisle to his seat.
DeeAnn sat across from him in a rear-facing seat with Dulce nestled against her chest. “Everything okay?”
“Sure,” Caesare said, smiling and winking at her. “I was just checking to see when the movie starts.” Worrying them at this point would serve no purpose.
DeeAnn frowned. The problem with Steve’s sense of humor was she couldn’t tell what was a joke and what was a diversion. She studied him as he sat back down, but his face gave nothing away.
On her lap, Dulce was watching Corso — his huge frame sitting diagonally across from them. When he turned away from the window, their eyes met and Dulce smiled widely, exposing nearly all of her teeth.
Corso seemed less than amused.
The small plane dropped suddenly, surprising everyone but Caesare, who glanced at DeeAnn. “You’re going to want to put your seatbelts on.”
She nodded and stood up, still holding Dulce. DeeAnn turned and placed the gorilla back into the seat. She then fastened the belt around Dulce’s small stomach and moved across the aisle to sit in the seat facing Corso. She fastened her own belt and looked back across the aisle where Dulce was now grinning at Caesare. Unlike Corso, Caesare was grinning back.
She watched them for a moment before glancing at Corso’s long face. “You don’t seem to like her very much.”
Corso turned his heavy gaze to her. “I didn’t join the Navy to babysit monkeys.”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“True. We’re bringing a monkey to find another monkey,” he replied sarcastically.
“Gorilla.”
Corso stared at her with a look of indifference.
“Don’t worry about him,” Anderson grinned from two seats back. “He’s always in a bad mood. Even when he sleeps.”
“And he’s still a kid,” Corso retorted, looking back out his window.
“Not according to the government.” Anderson was still grinning. “I’m old enough to kill the enemy but not old enough to drink. Makes perfect sense, right?”
DeeAnn smirked. She was beginning to understand how Alison had become so disillusioned with the government. She then heard the “click” of Juan’s seatbelt behind her.
So far, the flight had gone smoothly and what little turbulence they had experienced was mild. The bumps didn’t seem to bother Dulce much. They didn’t seem to be any bother at all to Tiewater, who could still be heard snoring from the rear of the plane.
She let herself relax, in spite of Corso. They would be on the ground in a couple hours. Perhaps the trip wouldn’t be as bad as she or Juan feared. It was unfortunate they had to take a longer route, but after Caesare had explained the political problems involved, it made sense.
Her only major concern now was how easy it would be to find Dexter after they reached the mountain. Lee and Juan had captured Dexter’s exact pitch from the data in her previous vest and were confident that, once close enough, they could identify him again. The question was how close did they need to get? The vest’s microphone was sensitive, but the sheer amount of noise the vest had to sift through for normal communication left her wondering how effective it was going to be. And they still had to get within range for which they were relying completely on Dulce’s instincts.