Chapter 38
Mobi scanned the file Quiann had sent him, unsure what bothered him more: the pounding at the door or the high pitched whine of a drill coming from the back wall. Rand wanted him out of the alcove, that much was clear, but whichever way Mobi looked at it, the time for surrender had long past. Now all that mattered was making his last stand pay. Quiann’s file consisted of background on the Horten and a link to a feed consisting of two streaming codes: one in red and one in blue. The code in red was live data being transmitted up to the satellite from China’s Jiuquan South Launch Center. The blue data was the satellite’s response. So far Mobi hadn’t been able to discern a pattern in the streaming codes, but he had established three things.
Number one: the original Horten had been equipped with powerful radio transceivers to communicate with other aircraft of its type. Number two: apparently the Chinese were fine with this design because their satellite contained a modern, but extremely powerful transceiver as well. And number three: transmissions to and from the Chinese satellite were encrypted at the point of origin and then re-encrypted before being returned to the base. As far as Mobi was concerned the crux of the problem lay in this final point, namely dual encryption.
Dual encryption was a risky business, especially when you were dealing with something as far away as a satellite. If something were to go wrong, if a single line of code was buggy on the space side re-encryption protocol, control would lose contact. That this had apparently happened begged two questions: A — why had Quiann been so obtuse in launching a dual encryption protocol, and B — what the hell was Mobi going to do about it when he was stuck down on Earth with a drill buzzing in his ear?
Mobi had to assume that the answer to the first question was an insane desire for secrecy, but in terms of what he was going to do about it, that was more complicated. So far no pattern had emerged between the data streaming up to the satellite and that which it was returning. Without a pattern, Mobi had no way in, only the unwavering conviction that the alcove door would soon be breached. He decided to risk an instant message to Alvarez. “Called our friend,” Mobi typed. “You there?”
He hit send and waited. There was nothing. Only the whirring of the drill, punctuated by the syncopated thumping of what Mobi now suspected was a jack hammer. Then, the thumping stopped leaving only the drill. Mobi’s screen chimed in response.
“Closer than you think.”
“Where?” Mobi typed.
“Clear-code buried in data stream. Analyze.”
Clear-code buried in data stream? Mobi read it again. Alvarez obviously had new information. He started to type again, but was interrupted not by a message, but a muffled voice.
“Mobi?”
Mobi threw his head back at the sound of his name.
“Mobi, it’s me, Allison.”
The voice was coming from the outside the alcove.
“Deputy Director Alvarez?”
“It’s me you’ve got to worry about, Stearn,” Rand’s baritone commanded. “Now how about you get your ass out here, and we can get on with the show.”
“I am getting on with the show,” Mobi said. “I’m figuring out how to get that thing out of the sky without blowing plutonium from here to Korea.”
A pause.
“It’s too late for that. Our platform is locked on. We’re taking the Chinese bird out whether you crack the mystery of the flying foo dog or not.”
Except there was something about Rand’s response that told Mobi that it wasn’t too late. Perhaps it was Rand’s moment of hesitation or his surfeit of confidence, Mobi wasn’t sure, but something was up. It was Alvarez who spoke next.
“You might as well just come out, Mobi. It wouldn’t matter if that terminal in there was cat wired into every mainframe in the building. It’s still just a laptop, and they’d still haul you out. Even a secure 4-EVR structure gets breached eventually.”
Mobi listened, but what was she saying to him? A secure 4-EVR structure? What the hell was that? Some kind of brand name for a bank safe? And the cat wiring. If anything, Alvarez’s terminal was optically linked to the rest of the facility. Alvarez would know that. CAT wire was a residential standard. But secure forever? Mobi thought it through. Was it that simple? Was she telling Mobi that this little room he was in was secure FOREVER, or at least long enough? Then why bring up the cat wiring? CAT WIRED. Mobi broke it down to its alphanumeric. 22894733. Is that what she was telling him? It was worth a shot. Mobi logged out of the Operating System and keyed in 22894733 at the shell prompt.
Bingo.
Each of JPL’s servers showed below the prompt, each open to his inquiries, each ready for his instruction. Mobi got it now. He understood what Alvarez was telling him. He wasn’t locked in. They were locked out. Mobi controlled JPL’s systems. And the best thing was, Rand didn’t even know it.
Mobi’s screen chimed again. The message read, “Check outgoing data packets.”
“I’ll give you one more chance, Stearn,” Rand said through the door. “Open up, or we’re coming in guns blazing.”
But Mobi wasn’t listening. Not really. He had access to the servers now. Isolating the outgoing data was a simple process. There was the usual space-bound traffic in the log, and the stuff to other research institutions, and the traffic to China. But the China traffic was more than just his conversation with Quiann at the Launch Center; it was a series of encrypted packets sent directly to a separate location that looked to be in Beijing, Xiyuan to be precise. Xiyuan, Google quickly told him, was near Beijing’s Summer Palace. It was also the location of the headquarters of the Chinese Ministry of State Security — the country’s spy service. Mobi wasn’t sure what this meant, but he knew it was big. He was getting in deeper by the moment.
“Stearn,” Rand yelled through the door. “You can’t pull a paycheck in prison!”
“Like I’m in it for the money,” Mobi said. Then he fished a pair of earbuds off Alvarez’s desk and drowned out the racket with good old rock 'n' roll. Rand could huff and puff, but Mobi was the lone wolf in town. If anybody was going to have the last word about what went on above planet Earth tonight, it was him.
Chapter 39
A spark lit off the blade of his shovel as Michael thrust it into the rocky soil. He had been digging for less than five minutes and already he had hit a hard flat surface, maybe twenty inches below the grade. Now, instead of digging down, he began shoveling dirt to the side revealing that the surface he had hit was in fact an iron plate. Ted’s GPR unit had confirmed that the spot where he now stood had a hollow beneath it, but in reality the technology hadn’t been necessary. The contour map on the back of the blood stained disk had been engraved to scale, the swastika perfectly marking the spot.