Stan saw the data come in from Burma, and he scrolled through the data on his computer screen. The usual data collection ranged from business calls, to television shows, to firefighting and police radios transmissions. He checked out the radar feeds, but nothing caught his eye. Stan went page by page on the displayed data, checking out the maps, commercial traffic, and cell towers. Then, something made him stop, and stare.
He made a wrinkled-up face. “Weird. What the heck are these signatures?” he said out loud to himself. “Never saw these before.”
Stan, and the advanced software program that sifted through large amounts of data, had discovered a few unique items. The acoustical signature discovered by DroneShield was not in the database, which was rare. The second item the software program found was a unique cell phone number, which by itself was not unusual, but combined with the data Stan found, made it very unique. The special Orion that Earl Brooks and his 11 person crew was flying had the ability to pretend to be a cell tower, therefore rerouting all the calls in the vicinity, through the aircraft. This well-known technology, called StingRay, was how the DEA and FBI were catching bad guys back in the states. The DIA could do it, too, and was able to grab actual cell phone numbers, their phone and text lists, and the phone’s geographic locations.
Stan also checked out the EO and FLIR images, and was fascinated by something. He was able to capture what he thought was the signature of an aircraft with unusual skin and engine exhaust temperatures, but could not make it out due to the distance. How could this be… 600 degree skin temperature? Not too shabby, he thought, but the combination of all these strange things had him perplexed.
Stan pulled up a digital map of China that overlaid the thousands of phones that were intercepted. He could see nearly everything about the phone, but more importantly, which towers were transmitting the signals. What caught Stan’s eye was that one cell phone was jumping around from cell tower to cell tower at alarming speed. At one point, the time/date stamp had a specific phone signal at a location in the Shandan and Zhangye area of China, and minutes later the phone was connected to the tower in Dehong, way, way in the south. Hundreds of miles to the south. Then again, just minutes later, the same phone was detected in Kunming, then Chongqing, Hebi, then along the Mongolia border, and remained in Shandan again. Impossible distances. The distances between the towers were obscene, ranging into the hundreds, and at one point, over a thousand miles from each other. In each city, the cell towers would ping the cell phone, and register the time.
This is absolutely bizarre he’d thought. How could a cell phone travel to all those places, thousands of miles apart, so fast? He thought about it, downloaded the contents of the phone and its numbers, and wrote up a report for the Joint Intelligence, known as the J2, database. This is for someone at Headquarters to sweat over, Stan thought to himself.
“Yo, we need to do some work, kids,” Mark told the team. In the small meeting room with no windows was a rectangular table that sat six, along with a white board with some dry erase markers.
Mark stood to write down tasks for the team, only to find no ink in two of the markers. He dumped the black and green markers in the small trash can, then walked over to the phone.
“Where is Emily, already?” Robert asked out loud, full knowing she was still back in the cubicle area.
Emily was hanging up the office phone when she decided to take a peek at some of the intelligence reports on her computer before heading to the team meeting. She looked at the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff agenda, status of US and UK forces, the recent open contracts signed by the different countries, U.S. Congress and Political News, and some cyber reports. Lastly, she scrolled down to U.S. aircraft reporting by date, searching by geographic location at reports filed by aircrews from around the world.
Her eyes opened as wide as saucers. “Oh boy,” she said quietly.
Emily had spotted and read a RIVET JOINT report, taken about 14 hours ago. She read the script about the Chinese pilot’s dialogue, and the analysis from the collectors about how they usually had a radar signature from what type of aircraft it was. This report mentioned specifically that no aircraft was identified because it had no radar signature.
“No signature?” Emily blurted, “What… it has to have one. Unless. Unless…”
She hit print and took the job off the printer. Emily ran down the hall to the meeting room, only to find Robert sitting there and Mark on the speaker phone.
“… yup… yup… okay. Yeah. What about the flashes your guys saw in the beginning?” Mark was asking the person on the other end of the phone.
Emily was jumping up and down. “Hang up, hang up, hurry up,” she kept whispering to both Robert and Mark.
“Understand, Jeff. Just wanted to understand those initial flashes. Thank your guy, Sox, for me, too.” Mark told him. “Right. Got it and take care.”
Emily figured he was on the phone with Buckley AFB from when they originally detected the flashes from the SBIRS satellite.
“Okay, man. Thanks again. Rock on,” Mark told him, and hung up.
“What are you, in the 1960’s? Rock on?” Robert said.
“LOOK! Everyone shut it!” Emily commanded.
The men looked at her, obeyed immediately, and quieted down.
“Hush. I just read a report from the 82nd Reconnaissance Squadron from Kadena. A RIVET JOINT crew that was doing collection on China a few hours ago, flying off North Korea over the water. They intercepted a Chinese flight crew putting down their gear.”
“So what?” exclaimed Robert.
“Shut up and listen. When they scanned the area with radar to get a signature, nothing was there,” Emily said excitedly.
“No radar signature?” Robert asked.
“No radar signature? NO RADAR SIGNATURE!” Mark repeated loudly.
“Whoo-hoo. That’s our girl!” Mark yelled out, ecstatic with joy.
Emily looked quickly at her watch to see what time it was, and saw it was getting late.
“Oh, brother. Look at the time! I’ve got to run home, then to the airport. Are you guys okay without me? Wait, why am I asking? Don’t call me. You two CAN handle this without me.”
“We promise we won’t call you. Really. Unless we do another report scrub and find something blazing-hot,” Mark told her.
“Yup. Blistering hot,” Robert added.
“No. No. No way. Don’t call me. Please don’t call. I’m picking up someone at the airport and have a big weekend planned,” Emily shared, and then departed DIA Headquarters for home, then Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington.
Bullocks… I know they are going to call me, she said under her breath.
“Ah… yes, ah, Senator, I meet with my staff all the time,” replied the Deputy.