DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (29 page)

“Are you worried about me?” Chana said into his broad chest.

“Of course I am.”

“You have plenty to worry about, Albert. Don’t add me to your long and heavy list.”

“Please be careful.”

“I will be.”

“I want to see you again.”

Chana closed her eyes and pressed harder into him. “Then I will be extremely and ridiculously careful.”

Chana Bauman was fifty-five but inside her, a fifteen year-old danced with anticipation. She could hardly resist the urge to make the call on her unsecure cell phone. She forced herself to wait, and once back at the embassy she called Tel Aviv.

“I need a team, the best we have in D.C., by which I mean seasoned and fully operational, and I need them in no more than 6 hours. I need a charter flight to Denver, also departing in 6 hours from Dulles or National. And before we engage in silly, unproductive arguments, my next call will be to the prime minister, and the next one after that to the secretary of defense. I am going on this operation, and there’s no other way about it.”

She hung up and called the prime minister, followed by the secretary of defense. Within the hour, she had confirmation that a team from New York, about to leave for Israel after completing a surveillance mission, had been rerouted her way. Chana received assurances that this was one of the best teams Mossad had its disposal, no doubt about it, especially since two of its members were top notch, previously in different teams, but brought together intentionally for the New York mission, which by the way had been very sensitive, complex, and a tremendous, unqualified success.

Chana’s heart swelled hearing those comments, then deflated when after asking, she was told the years of their graduating classes. None of them had more than five years of field experience.

So young. Where had all the veterans gone? Manning desks or sunning themselves on Mediterranean beaches, she told herself.

Afterwards, she reposed in her bedroom couch, smiled and shed some tears. For a few days, and perhaps a bit longer, she’d be young again. Life would mean something again.  Vibrancy and purpose would color her life once more before the black malignancy inside her had its full and final sway.

Chapter 39

On the plane ride from Long Beach, California, Saleh Fayez and his ten young brothers had one by one undergone interviews in the back of the plane. The thinner man, the one who called himself Masoud, conducted all interviews, each lasting no more than 10 minutes. Two of the young brothers, including Fayez’s roommate at UCLA, were called back for a second round of questioning. When they arrived at their destination two and a half hours after leaving Long Beach Airport, Fayez learned that his roommate and the other brother who had been called back would be flying to a different location to execute another part of the mission.

Fayez was beginning to get a bit nervous. He didn’t know their current location, and the two older brothers in white wouldn't tell them. They only received instructions to board three identical gray Suburbans, and while it was still dark around them, they drove off in a direction he could not discern to arrive at large building a few hours later.

As best Fayez could tell, because day was difficult to discern from night in his current location, all this had happened the previous night, and judging from the dropping temperature, night was now falling again. Outside his room, which felt like a cell, and which he refused to think of as such, he could hear voices. At one point, he heard an argument, though he could not tell from whom or about what. He feared all wasn’t going well.

Fayez told himself that Allah would bless them. Allah would make his will known and bring it into effect.

To further still his mind with something certain, Fayez reworked the numbers. There were still seven older brothers, and he knew that was a good number. With eight younger brothers left, he searched his memory.  He remembered eight angels carrying the holy throne of Allah, and eight was also the number of bits in a byte. At one point, while Brother Spencer worked on his laptop, Fayez heard him mutter “two hundred and fifty-six nodes.” Fayez now knew how it all connected, since two to the eight power equals two hundred and fifty-six. Fayez felt better now. He liked the number 8 better than 10, much better.

The two younger brothers selected for a special mission arrived in New York, JFK Airport shortly before 6 PM Eastern, over 24 hours after they had met the other brothers in Long Beach Airport. They were inconspicuously ushered away from the Lear Jet, and deposited at one of the terminals, in the outbound transportation area. There, they boarded a taxi, and with nothing but the clothes they wore, one laptop computer each, and enough cash to pay the cab fare plus a little extra for a meal that evening, they requested to be taken to Wall Street in Manhattan.

They arrived there at 7:30 PM and as instructed, found a local café with free Wi-Fi, near the N.Y. Stock Exchange.

After avoiding sandwiches with ham by ordering a veggie wrap and some coffee, they began to probe. They went after the most secured Wi-Fi connections first, figuring those would hold the greatest potential of being important. Eventually, they identified two connections with lead-ins into the exchange floor computers.

At this point, they stopped all work and they turned off their laptop computers. As the hour approached when the café would close, the two brothers embraced without saying a word and went their separate ways. They planned to return tomorrow, 30 minutes before the opening bell to complete their mission.

On the way to Dulles, Chana received a call from a member of the president’s team sympathetic to her cause. “Do you have the secure code for me, darling?” she asked. He said it, and she hung up, entered it into her phone, added fourteen additional pre-agreed digits, followed by the phone number of her source.

“I have current GPS coordinates for your girl,” the muffled voice said.

“Please don’t tease me.”

He replied by spelling out the coordinates. She repeated them back, and he said, “Correct. She’s moving to theater by midnight. Same theater where you’re headed.”

After she hung up, Chana looked up the coordinates. California, High Sierras, Mammoth Lakes area. She couldn’t get there from her current location on time, much less get the resources she would need to execute an extraction. Just as well. That would break her agreement with Albert. She’d rather avoid that by using an alternative that didn’t blow back to her. She thought of the only option she had.

This would be technically outside her agreed operational parameters, but she would have plausible deniability. She dialed the phone to her San Francisco resource. Again, she used a secure, encrypted voice link.

“Tom,” she said when her enterprising American associate answered. “I have a challenging project for you.”

After she gave him the coordinates and outlined the job, he said, “I have assets online and ready to deploy, but it’s going to cost you.”

“Going thrice, sold. Send me the bill,” she said and hung up.

Chana didn’t like to use hired help, but sometimes they came through, especially in the U.S. where she had to remain invisible. If they failed, she would be waiting to catch Sasha on the other side. If they succeeded, she was done and would not need to deal with whatever little mess the Americans were about to face around their nuclear missile installations.

Chana and her 5 man team departed from Dulles International Airport at 6:15 PM Eastern. Their flight plan would take them to Denver, Colorado, but Chana had instructed the pilot to broadcast a flight plan change as they passed Denver to continue on to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The total flight time was estimated at four hours and forty-five minutes. During the first hour of the flight, Chana discussed the operational parameters and the objective.

“We are not to participate in events about to transpire in this area,” Chana said. “My guess is that if we focus on Francis E. Warren Air Force Base and radiate from there, we’ll eventually stumble upon our actors.”

“The area of missile silos is rather large,” agent Barak mentioned.

“I don’t think they’ll be there, or if they are, it will become evident where based on electrical disruptions or other disturbances,” Chana said. “Remember, we only have to find
her
.” She flashed Sasha’s photo again. “The others we don’t care about.”

“Including the terrorists?”

“That’s not our concern, Barak. Our hosts will sweep them up. If you think you’ve spotted them, flow information through me. I will make the contact if I deem it necessary. Unless it’s an emergency, I probably will not. We’re to be invisible.”

“How will we know when things are happening? Or when the event is over? What signs do we look for?”

“Just observe,” Chana said. “We’ll drive around in our separate cars and observe. Make sure you are fully fueled up as much as you can. I hear that gasoline stations may become inoperable under certain scenarios. As for what to look for, I was led to understand that it will be unmistakable.”

Brother Spencer, a.k.a. Julian felt like a slave. He’d been busting tail retrofitting hovercrafts, some of which failed upon test, requiring either bringing in additional crafts, or re-starting the work on failed crafts. Fortunately, brothers Davood and Masoud had thought ahead and procured 300 of these things.

“Three to go,” Brother Spencer said to Masoud when the slave-driver came by to see how things were going.

“It appears unrealistic we will be ready to proceed tomorrow?” Masoud said.

“That was always the case,” Brother Spencer replied. “We need time to test, man. And to get these kids—” He stopped short, remembering an earlier admonition. “Excuse me, we need to give our younger brothers some time to practice.”

“This has taken longer than we wished.”

“Well, the help you gave me thrashed at least seven units. And I mean thrashed, so I decided better just to go at it alone.”

“You have damaged two units yourself.”