Nathan’s previous life didn’t seem any better. All the women he knew, and there were plenty, just wanted to be friends◦– not entirely what he had in mind for a lasting relationship. Instead, he buried himself in technology and many other absorbing interests.
“Let’s hope we don’t get many more of those F-18 flybys,” she said. “That really scared me.”
“Me too,” Nathan said, turning from his laptop to face her. “It would have been impressive to see though.”
“I don’t think you can actually see them coming at that speed,” she said. “You just hear them when it’s already too late.” She looked up from the article she was reading. “Who was it that originally broke the sound barrier?”
“Chuck Yeager in 1947.”
“I wonder if he’s still around?”
“If he is,” Nathan said. “He’d be in his nineties by now. Incredible achievement, considering what limited technology they had to work with in those days. No computers, just pencil and paper with slide-rules.”
“What did he fly? I doubt F-18s were available then.”
“A Bell XS-I,” Nathan answered. “It was named ‘Glamorous Glennis’ after his wife.”
“Nice. A touch of romanticism.” She could only imagine how rapidly air travel would have advanced if they’d had today’s tools and technologies available back then.
“What are you busy with?” she asked.
“I want Sven to send me that helicopter transmission the NSA intercepted from the Mojave,” he said.
“Ah, the one that sent the threat warning we weren’t meant to keep,” she said.
“Obviously, I won’t get it now, but we’ll have it first thing in the morning.”
“Knowing, Sven, he’ll still be awake hacking away on his home computer. Well, don’t spend too much time on that. I can think of a few better things we could be doing.” Emily smiled at him. “This is, after all a military base, so I expect you to be standing at full attention in the next ten minutes.”
Nathan laughed, “Give me five.”
Known on the dark web as Trinity, Sven was considered the foremost hacker on the planet. Only James, Nathan, Emily and James’s friend, Warren Ellison, knew his true identity.
Sven had created an application named Shred-It that allowed private emailing and texting between members of the SkyTech team. When a message, with optional attachment was sent, it was shredded into tiny pieces; each then stored on an independent anonymous server somewhere across the globe. The message, when received, was a collection of hyperlinks. A built-in macro gathered the various pieces in random order and assembled them before storing to the receiver’s hard-drive or device memory in its original context. The data on each anonymous server was subsequently deleted.
When the NSA intercepted one of these tiny meaningless packets, the source was always traced back to the same IP address; 127.0.0.1. This was Sven’s personal hallmark that his modest ego and keen sense of humour simply couldn’t resist. It was the internal ‘Local host’ Internet Protocol address of every single personal computer on the planet; roughly two billion. It drove the NSA’s cyber-geeks nuts.
The NSA ensured that no communication between departments like the CIA or FBI ever reached SkyTech for analysis. Nathan had done the same with the IBM’s job stream provided by the agency. No private communication between members of SkyTech ever invoked a potential threat notification. The SkyTech team could essentially communicate what they wanted without an alert going to the NSA.
The tampering that Nathan and Sven had done to the job stream was, of course, highly illegal, but neither regarded any of the government’s national security departments as entirely ethical. The job stream was instantly reset to its original state, if the IBM detected direct snooping of itself by the NSA or any other agency.
Sven had provided a similar feature on their personal phones. The only drawback was that caller and listener couldn’t talk concurrently. The voice message was shredded and sent only after a two second delay in speech was detected, and then reconstructed in cyberspace. A minor inconvenience, considering their discussions could be in complete privacy without the NSA’s prying ears also listening in.
Nathan reviewed what he was asking from Sven, and through Shred-It, sent the message. He also checked a few emails in his personal Inbox, but none required immediate attention. He set his laptop to standby mode, closed the lid and put it on his bedside table. Looking down at Emily, he was surprised to see that she was already fast asleep with the magazine lying open on her tummy. Nathan hadn’t realised just how exhausted he was himself; not surprising with all the new information they had absorbed today. He removed the magazine, kissed her tenderly on the lips, killed the lights and was asleep in less than a minute.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After a wholesome breakfast, Uri suggested that Nathan and Emily get what they needed from their room and walk across to the building he had pointed out last night.
“It’s Building-3A,” Uri said. “Once inside, ask for Gene Johnson. You’re expected, and he’ll direct you to where you need to go.”
“Thanks, Uri,” Emily said.
“One thing that I do need to emphasise,” Uri stressed. “You must wear your identification tags at all times, and they must be visible.”
Coming down for breakfast, both Emily and Nathan had forgotten their Level-2 security clearance badges upstairs.
Uri commissioned a vehicle which James and Obadiah were now busy loading with the equipment needed to locate the source of the encrypted transmission. A transmission that someone already knew the contents of, James thought with grave concern.
Within five minutes, they were on their way.
Lovinescu, Clark and Brown departed
The Controller read the message and cleared it.
With Uri behind the wheel, James in front and Obadiah taking up most of the back seat, they drove the Toyota Land Cruiser for several miles along a hard, gravel road. Along the way, James paid little heed to the clusters of intimidating signs pegged at random intervals into the dry earth.
WARNING◦– Restricted Area
WARNING◦– No Trespassing
WARNING◦– Military Installation
WARNING◦– Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Range
WARNING◦– No photography in this area
WARNING◦– Drones Prohibited
It had taken just over an hour to reach Highway-93 which they took south. Making better time, they linked with Interstate-15 and continued along the outskirts of Las Vegas to rejoin the Interstate further down. Once off Regional-164, the roads became non-existent, and although the pace was slow, the Toyota did a remarkable job negotiating the various hills and valleys. Within three hours of leaving Groom Lake, they were in the heart of the desolate Mojave Wastelands.
Uri, James and Obadiah stepped out of the climate-controlled vehicle into the sweltering heat of the desert. They were at the exact location where Groom Lake had pinpointed the transmission from the helicopter four days ago. The container with James’s electronics was hauled out and placed on the parched ground. While James unpacked the equipment, Uri set up a simple makeshift shelter that provided some welcomed shade. Obadiah hauled a well-stocked cooler off the back seat.