The Enemy Within

“No firm identification yet,” Rossini answered. “Two were clearly Caucasian. The other two could be either Hispanic or Middle Eastern in origin…”

“Some rabid, neo-Nazi group,” Thorn interrupted bitterly. “Those bastards were pros.”

“Uh-huh. Looks like our hunch was right,” the older man agreed. “Mike Flynn said pretty much the same thing. He’s having the bodies shipped to their D.C. lab for more detailed examination.”

Thorn nodded. The FBI’s forensics experts should be able to develop a fair amount of information about their dead terrorist John Does. Even if their fingerprints were not on file here or anywhere abroad, dental work and the evidence of old injuries or illnesses could provide useful clues as to their places of birth or prolonged residence. That level of forensics work would take time, however certainly days and probably weeks. He had been hoping the HRT raid would produce more immediate results. “Any documents or papers turn up?”

Rossini shrugged. “Several sets of false ID passports, driver’s licenses, even credit cards. All topnotch work.”

“Naturally.” Thorn started down the stairs leading to the Pentagon’s basement. “Nothing else, though?”

“Nothing on paper, Pete.” Rossini limped after him. “But the NSA’s still going over the laptop computer Helen found.”

“What?” Thorn stopped dead, narrowly avoiding a collision with the older man. “I thought that was destroyed. Flynn said one of the suspects blew it to hell with an AKM burst.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Rossini said. He explained. “Apparently a round clipped the hard drive, but the NSA techs think they may still be able to recover some of the data it contained. They’re working on it now.”

National Security Agency headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland

Greg Paige, a gangly, twenty-something computer specialist in the NSA’s T Group, finished readying the damaged hard drive sent over by the FBI for his data retrieval attempt. Not a particularly difficult job, he thought with a mild trace of contempt for the cyber-challenged. A portable computer’s hard disk was less than three inches wide and barely an inch thick. It was also buried inside a concealing case. Wrecking the information a portable contained by hitting a target that small was staking more on luck than most people realised. And in this case, the shooter had not been lucky.

One round had utterly mangled the machine’s floppy drive and internal modem. Another had torn a gaping hole in the computer’s battery. But a third bullet had only scored the outer casing of the hard disk itself. The drive’s bearings and heads were completely undamaged. Finding out what it contained required little more than transferring the assembly to another machine and running a simple diagnostics program.

Humming a made-up tune off-key, Paige finished making the last cable connections and hit the power switch. He swung back to his keyboard as the new machine’s monitor blinked on.

“Piece of chocolate cream cake,” the NSA specialist mumbled to himself. He quickly scrolled through the hard disk’s directory, ignoring standard listings for off-the-shelf commercial word processing, communications, and accounting programs. If he didn’t find anything else more intriguing, he could always go back through those hunting for signs someone had buried other, less innocent pieces of code inside them.

As he had expected, a few of the disk’s sectors were damaged rendered unreadable when the bullet clipped its casing but most were fine.

Paige stopped scrolling when he reached a program whose name he did not recognise: BABEL.EXE. He shook his head in disbelief. “Well, well, well… how very cute.”

Someone the FBI was interested in had a very dry sense of humor.

He probed deeper into the program, summoning up its inner workings. Line after line appeared on the screen an intricate interweaving of complex algorithms clearly intended to turn plain text into meaningless gibberish and back again. Paige smiled. Pay dirt.

To make absolutely sure he was right, he fed one of the pieces of E-mail intercepted from CompuNet into the sus peeled program. Seconds later, a complete, plain-text message flashed onto his screen.

Paige read through the translated E-mail once in surprise and then a second time in growing horror. Still staring at his monitor, he reached out for the phone on his desk and punched in an internal number. “This is Greg Paige with Group T. I need to speak to the deputy director. Right away!”

The Pentagon Rossini poked his head into Peter Thorn’s office.. “Pete? I think you’d better come see this.” The Maestro sounded strained.