One of the men held up his hand, and the truck lurched to a stop. Two more immediately exited the cab carrying rifles, while the first two grabbed theirs from inside the cargo area.
They were through the door in twelve seconds, easily disabling the alarm on the other side. Without a word, they moved smoothly and efficiently down the hall, quickly reaching the computer area.
There, all four stopped and stared into the dimly lit room, then looked at each other. Dozens of vertical server racks lined the entire wall, all firmly bolted into place.
But each one… was empty.
117
Will Borger shoved the gearshift into second, causing the truck’s giant engine to roar as the vehicle lurched, climbing the windy road of Highway 10. With a steep mountain on one side, the narrow shoulder completely fell off on the other. There was only darkness, dotted by the faint flickering lights of Puerto Rico’s western coastline. Ahead, the truck’s headlights illuminated the winding road, which only seemed to steepen the further they drove.
In the end, it was not Borger who figured out where to hide IMIS. It was Lee Kenwood, the twenty-five-year-old computer engineer sitting next to him in the passenger seat.
And even Borger had to admit, the solution was brilliant.
“So, kid,” he said, shifting gears again, “you study any astronomy?”
“Um, not too much,” Lee responded. “A little.”
The older Borger nodded. “You ever hear of the Drake Equation?”
Lee shook his head. “No.”
“It’s a logistical argument made by a guy named Frank Drake back in the sixties. An argument to realistically estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe.”
“That sounds interesting.”
Borger nodded, gripping the large steering wheel with both hands. “It is. The bottom line is that there’s predictably a lot of alien life out there. And a lot of it has probably been around for a while.”
“Makes sense.”
Borger grinned at his companion across the darkened cab. He liked this kid. “So then answer this — if there’s so damned many, why haven’t we seen any… until now?”
Lee thought about the question. “A lot of people think they have.”
“Maybe some. But most of ‘em are quacks,” Borger retorted. “Some events, like that Nome Alaska thing, may be true. But for the rest, there’s no definitive proof. No evidence. Except what we’ve just found. Any of that strike you as a little odd?”
“Uh…”
“What I’m saying is in all this time, and with all these civilizations out there, how can we have only been visited by one or two?”
“You mean the vaults.”
“Right. Two official footprints out of everything out there. To me, that means either they’re the only ones to have come here… or those are the only two we’ve found.”
Lee looked at Borger as he slowed and navigated a tight turn. “You think there’s more?”
“What I think,” he replied, “is that humans have been crawling all over this planet for an awfully long time. We can’t be the first ones to find something. I mean, look at those vaults. They’ve apparently been here since our ancestors were the same as Dulce’s. Could they really be the only things?”
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
“No, it doesn’t. The reason I’m bringing this up is because of what you were able to do not too long ago, having your IMIS system decipher some of those old hieroglyphs. The ones that helped us locate the first vault in Guyana.”
“Right. The Mayan symbols.”
“So,” Borger continued, “what if there are more finds out there, still hidden? And we just haven’t found them yet. And what if other discoveries were written down by people or cultures that were here a long time ago?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Borger motioned toward the back of the truck. “And if there are, maybe this computer system of yours can find them.”
Lee was now staring at Borger, fascinated. “I think it could.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. And there’s something else too.”
“What’s that?”
“Ancient writings are a good place to start. But there are a lot more secrets out there than that. Things not nearly as old.”
Lee raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I’m following.”
“What I mean is that there are all kinds of secrets in this world. Would you agree?”
“Of course.”
“And who has more secret data buried than anyone else?”
Lee thought for a minute. “The NSA?”
“Bingo.”
“You want to break into the NSA?”
Borger grinned. “Break-in is such a negative word. I was thinking more like… perusing.”
“You want to peruse the NSA’s data?”
“Well, it’s not that easy. The NSA’s data is encrypted.”
“Then I’m not following again.”
“What a lot of people don’t know is that for years the NSA has been in the business of collecting everything on the internet. Calls, text messages, emails, everything. And they’ve been doing it for a long time. Forty years almost.”
“Okay.”
“Like I said, it’s all encrypted. But here’s the thing— encryption, just like any technology, evolves. So what we have today is not what we had before. Computers, networks, cars, light bulbs, everything.”
“Including encryption algorithms,” added Lee.
“Exactly. The encryption these days is uncrackable.”
This time, Lee smiled. “But not the encryption used decades ago.”
“Right again,” Borger nodded. “Even the encryption used ten years ago is not nearly as strong.”
“So, a lot of the NSA’s data is not crackable,” Lee said.
“But an awful lot of it is.”
“And you want to know if IMIS can do it.”
“No,” Borger replied. “I want to know if IMIS can be taught to crack it.”
Lee was silent, staring out the windshield into the darkness as they drove. Borger shifted in his seat, waiting for Lee’s answer.
“Yes. I think it can. With enough computing power.”
Now Borger was the one smiling in the glow of the truck’s dashboard. “Have you heard of Hewlett Packard’s new computing platform called The Machine?”
“No.”
“It’s powerful. Really powerful.”
A wide grin spread across Lee’s face. After several minutes of silence, he looked at Borger. “So what’s the plan?”
“First off, we’d need some help.”
The international terminal at Puerto Rico’s Luiz Muñoz Marín Airport was busy. It wasn’t surprising for a Friday evening. Thousands of passengers were walking briskly to and from the dozens of gates in what could only be described as a controlled mob — trying either to make their flights or thankful to finally be off one.
One such person, twenty-something and wearing wrinkled clothes, looked up and down the wide corridors for signs pointing to baggage claim.
His straight, dark hair hung disheveled and down past matching eyebrows, stopping just short of his tired but youthful eyes. The young man patted his jacket to make sure the passport was still there and fell in behind a throng of people headed in the same direction.
The Chinese passport listed his real name as Yong Yang — a name that had been thoroughly scrubbed from China’s government records. But not by them, by Yang himself. In an attempt to save his own life.