“Yes, we are still on schedule. They are almost done fueling the planes. We are going to say some prayers and then take the antidote and start pumping the nerve agent into the insecticide tanks on the planes.”
Cody couldn't believe what he heard.
“Yes, we have more than enough antidote. There are bags of it here. I’m not even sure how much they sent, but it is a lot more than we need.”
The man talking on the phone listened for a minute and then replied, ”I’ll call you when we’re loaded and the planes are ready to take off.’”
He then hung up and walked over to his men.
Cody bumped his knee on an old rusty flat piece of metal lying under the table. He picked it up and thought, this is about the same size and weight as a laptop computer. Peering from under the table he realized all the men were turned away. I am so screwed if they see me, but I think I can pull this off. While watching the men he slowly reached up, felt the laptop case and pulled it off the table, removed the laptop from the case, replaced it with the flat piece of metal, then slowly put the case back on the table just like he found it. His hand reached up and grabbed two of the bags of needles, then planted a radio mike under the table. He looked in the bags and found about 20 needles. They won’t miss these he thought. They don’t even know how many they have. He stuffed them under his shirt and started crawling away from the table, holding the laptop just as the leader turned around.
The leader started walking back toward the table as his phone rang again and he held it up to his ear and turned around to observe the planes while he talked. Cody quickly scurried back under the table to avoid being discovered. The leader listened silently for a minute, hung up the phone, grabbed the laptop case and walked back to the other men.
Cody’s heart was beating like it was ready to come out of his chest and he started hyperventilating. Calm down he thought. He hasn’t seen me yet. The men started talking again and Cody crawled away as fast as he could without making noise. At a couple hundred feet away, he jumped to his feet and sprinted into the darkness. After a couple hundred yards he stopped and collapsed behind a bush panting and sweating profusely. He watched the men for a couple minutes and realized, no one noticed me.
John and Sarah watched the men for several minutes, and then John turned around and saw the video camera running on a tripod and no Cody.
“Hey. Where’s Cody. Oh crap. I don’t believe this. He’s playing Ninja and sneaking down there. This is serious. He could get hurt.”
“Do you really think he would do that?”
“I know he would. He thinks he’s indestructible.”
John and Sarah watched intently from the top of the hillside.
“Look I saw something move. The laptop case is gone. Now it’s back. It looks like a couple bags of needles just disappeared. I can’t believe he snuck down there. He’s only about 30 feet from them.”
Sarah said to John, “The way the lights are set and the boxes piled, they probably can’t see anything behind the tables. But if they hear him he’s toast.”
Sarah and John kept looking for more movement by the table, but everything was still.
The men finished refueling and rolled out the prayer rugs.
“Sarah, it looks like they’re praying now. I don’t think they’re drug runners, I think they’re terrorists. Where’s Cody? Keep looking. Look for movement in the shadows.”
Several minutes went by and John and Sarah could see nothing else.
Cody got back to the top of the ridge and snuck up behind John and Sarah.
“Boo.”
“Cody you idiot! You scared the crap out of me!”
“But I got the laptop, planted a mike and got two bags of needles. Not bad for 10 minutes.”
“Cody, you could have been killed if they saw you.”
“But they didn’t. The mike’s been running. Let’s see what they’re saying. They’re terrorists.”
John, Cody and Sarah listened intently.
“I don’t understand it. It’s some foreign language. Wait, I think that one guy is speaking English. Listen, it’s hard to hear him.”
A terrorist was holding a bag of needles speaking in English to the others.
“Remember we take the antidote when you are exposed. If you spill any nerve agent we take the shots immediately. We probably need to take them when we start pumping the nerve agent in any case. Does everyone know how to give a muscle shot?”
The John and Sarah looked at each other in disbelief as Cody nodded.
“They’re terrorists and they’re going to spray nerve agent. We need to call the authorities fast,” said John. “Cody did you get this on tape with the sound?”
Cody played back the tape and heard the sound with the video.
“Got it” said Cody, “Let’s get back to the ranch and call the authorities.”
John watched Cody climbing onto the ATV with Sarah. “I’ll get back faster with only one person on the ATV. Catch up to me at the house.”
John took off riding as fast as he could toward the ranch, while Cody and Sarah followed.
Chapter 30
Mary was nearing the end of her shift as a 911 operator. She was planning out the food she needed to buy on the drive home for her family picnic when the phone rang. I hope this is a quick one she thought, I’m almost out of here.
She said into the mike “9-1-1 how can I help you?”
John still breathless from riding hard to the ranch blurted out,
“We were out in the desert near Barstow and we saw some terrorists that are getting ready to attack.”
“Why do you think they were terrorists? Did you talk to them?”
“No we didn’t talk to them. We saw them getting ready to attack.”
“How did you know they were getting ready to attack?”
“They were loading planes with nerve gas.”
The 911 operator thought I can’t believe I have one of these late at night.
“How old are you?”
“How old am I! What does that have to do with anything?”
“Do you know it is a crime to file a false police report? You can get in a lot of trouble. Where are your parents?”
John said to himself, this is going nowhere.
“Look, I know what this sounds like, but we really did see men with planes out in the desert. They had crop dusting planes they were loading and we heard them talking about nerve agent and an antidote.”
“You haven’t been drinking have you? Where are your parents?”
“I know this is being recorded. I am filing a report that terrorists are getting ready to attack with nerve gas in planes. I have proof. Why don’t you transfer me to someone that’s willing to do something?”
Mary thought, why not, at least I don’t have to deal with it.
“I am transferring you to Homeland Security. I will stay on the line until you are connected.”
Nancy called on a direct line into the Los Angeles office of Homeland Security.
“Homeland Security.”
“This is 9-1-1. We have a man on the line that has observed a possible terrorism threat. We are turning him over to you. Go ahead sir and have a nice night.”
“This is Mr. West. Can I have your name sir and the type of threat?”
“I’m John Brown. We are in the desert near Barstow California and we saw a group of men loading nerve gas into crop duster planes.”
Why did I have to get one of these he thought as he listened to john’s youthful voice.
“There was more than one plane? How do you know it was nerve gas?
“They said it was. Look, I know what this sounds like. There were four crop dusting planes. They were refueling the planes in the middle of the night at a ranch. They had stainless steel tanks beside the planes holding some kind of liquid. They were talking about an antidote. They all looked Middle Eastern and they were kn
eeling on rugs and praying. We have this on video tape and have some audio. Do you really want to screw around with this? I know you are recording this.”
A new enthusiasm came into his voice. “You have this on tape? I need to see that tape.”
Sarah grabbed John.
“John, I’ll download it to YouTube. He can watch it from his office on YouTube.”
“Good idea, Sarah.”
John went back to the phone.
“OK, we are putting it on YouTube, you can watch it there. That will save time.”
“Give me the YouTube location. Stay on the line?”
I can’t believe I’m going to try to watch a terrorist threat on YouTube he thought. As Mr. West watched the video his eyes got big and his jaw dropped. He picked up the phone again.
“John. When and where did you shoot this?”
“About fifteen minutes ago, 10 miles east of Barstow, California.”
“And where are you now? Where are your parents?”
“We have a ranch with Internet and a land line a couple miles away from where we shot this. My parents got stuck when their car broke down and they are in Orange County.”
“John, did the terrorists see you?”
“No, I’m pretty sure they didn’t.”
“John, stay there. Stay on the line. I’m calling Washington and will be right back to you.”
All the kids were staring at John. He gave them the thumbs up.
“It looks like they are going to do something. He wants me to hold, they’re sending it to Washington.”
Jack West was trying to determine if he is being set up or this was a true threat. It seemed unbelievable that a threat of this magnitude would come in from a bunch of kids and the verification would be on YouTube. On the other hand if it was credible and he did nothing, looking incompetent doing his job will be the least of his worries. He called the Main Office for Homeland Security.
Chapter 31
Homeland Security has become a mammoth organization with all the resulting bureaucracy with directors and deputy directors all trying to keep as much power as possible and build their own kingdoms within the agency. The main problem was getting to the right person who had the authority to do something. It is somewhat different at night and on holidays. Everyone with much seniority is gone. This can work both ways. If someone just wants to play it safe and stall, it can take hours to get the wheels in motion. However if someone is in charge who wants to make a name for themselves, and is willing to take risks that they went too far, too fast, everything can fall into place quickly. Fortunately Sandra Collins was on duty. Tom Harris answered the phone when Jack West called the main office. He started explaining his story just as Tom watched Sandra walking by. He thought, she always wants something bigger, let her deal with this. He caught her eye as she walked past him and he waved her over.
His voice was intense. “You might want to take this. It’s the Los Angeles office. They have either a big fraud or a major incident.”
Sandra shrugged and thought why not. It’s been a boring night. At worst I’ll get to chew someone out. She grabbed a phone as he held up three fingers for line three.
“This is Deputy Director Sandra Collins. Who is this? What do you have?”
Jack thought, that was fast, right to a Deputy Director.
“This is Jack West. I have a threat that was just called in that is either an elaborate hoax or a major attack. Some kids videoed four crop duster planes being refueled in the desert outside Barstow, California less than a half hour ago. They downloaded the video onto YouTube to get it to us. From what we have seen so far they are talking about nerve gas and an antidote, but there is very little English they recorded. Can you pull the video off YouTube and have the language in it analyzed? If this is real, it is very bad and it is happening as we speak.”
“They put it on YouTube? Are you kidding me?”
“It was the fastest way to get it to us.”
“E-mail me the YouTube location. I can have our analysts listen to it immediately from their homes.”
Sandra yelled out to the seven agents present. “Everybody listen up! We have a possible major attack occurring in California! We need to analyze a video that was just shot outside Barstow California. Everybody on it! Ben get all the Middle Eastern Language experts on this from their homes. Wake them up now. I want answers in five minutes. The video location is now on your screens. It’s on YouTube. Don’t ask. Just do it.”
Everybody opened the YouTube location and started watching the video as Ben texted instructions to all the Middle East experts on their emergency cell phones. As Sandra watched the video she spotted the tail numbers on the four planes. She motioned Tom Harris. “Get the FAA on those tail numbers fast. I want the owner’s addresses and phone numbers, and where those planes are based. Get the local police to the airports. I want to know if those planes are where they should be or they are in the desert outside Barstow and I want to know now.”
“The FAA is closed for anything other than emergencies. This is going to take a while.”
“We don’t have a while. Use Polk.”
“Are you sure? Last time we did this, everybody got in trouble.”
“I’m sure. Get him now. It’s my responsibility.”
Chapter 32
Justin Polk’s home – Arlington Virginia
Justin Polk was a genius who had a love affair with computers since he was a young boy. His parents thought it was a good activity for him. By the time he was ten he learned to defeat all the parental controls so his parents had no idea of the sites he was on. By visiting hacker’s chat rooms he quickly learned the basic tricks and then started taking it further.
By the time he was 16 he had been on all the major government sites, usually undetected. He was content to fly below the radar, getting in and out undetected and staying inconspicuous. He found he could hack into financial sites, penetrate their security and transfer small amounts of money without it showing. Once the money was out of their system, he could bounce it around to several banks and have it end up in his account. The problem with most hackers, he thought, is they get greedy. As long as I deal with a small amount at a time, it's not worth tracing, the monitoring programs are set up to look for larger amounts. Up until the age of 23 he was a full time student with plenty of money and very happy. It was a stroke of luck by Homeland Security that they were working on a secure site and observed him come in. It seemed incredible that he could have gotten into one of their secure areas undetected. They decided to try to follow what he did in the hope of catching him.
He prowled around in the site long enough for them to trace him through all the proxy servers back to his home address. Even then they didn’t do anything immediately. They put monitoring equipment on his lines and decided to wait him out. The security consultants were amazed at his ability to get in and out of highly secure sites undetected. The more they saw, the more they realized they wanted him to work for them instead of sitting in jail.
The best part was when they got proof of him being in the Pentagon’s Defense area. Because of the high alert after 9/11, that could be considered treason. When they had the proof, they brought him in. They took four hours to lay out all their proof, then showed him the law and explained why it was treason and what the penalties were. Then they offered him a deal. He works for them and his computers would be monitored 24/7. He could hack all day long as long as they knew where he was. No more transferring money. They would pay him well. He had to report anyplace he had been, and all the information he got, especially from foreign governments. And when they needed his expertise, he was available immediately. In return he stayed out of prison and did what he wanted anyway. It was 3:00 a.m. when he got the call from Tom Harris.
“Polk, this is Harris, wake up!”
Justin heard Harris on the phone and looked over at the clock in disbelief. “
Why are you calling me at 3:00 a.m.? What can’t wait until morning?”
“Justin, get on your computer, hack into the FAA and get me the names and addresses of the owners of the planes with these tail numbers I am e-mailing you.”
A weary, bored voice said, “This can’t wait until morning?”
“We are under a terrorist attack, Justin. Move it! You know the deal.”
“Okay. Cool your jets. You didn’t say we were under attack.”
“How long will it take to hack into the FAA?”
“I leave their trap doors on my computer. About 45 seconds.”
Harris thought, This guy is amazing. I’m sure glad he is on our side now. I wonder how many more like him are out there.
Polk had the information within 2 minutes and e-mailed it to Harris.
“Did you get it?” Polk asked Harris.
“I got it. Four names and addresses.”
“Anything else or can I go back to sleep? By the way where is the attack?”
“At this point, California. If we think it’s spreading, we’ll contact you.”
“California’s a long way from here. I’m going back to bed.”
Chapter 33
Victor was talking on the phone to some of their Language experts. He motioned Deputy Director Collins over and said, “You need to hear this. I have a conference call running with three language analysts. I’m going to speaker phone.”
Deputy Director Collins said to the analysts, “Tell me where we’re at.”
The analysts responded, “Bottom line is, they are talking about a nerve agent attack spread by four crop dusting planes. They seem concerned for themselves but the leaders seem confident the antidote they have will work. They have an escape plan and the pilots think it will work. What we don’t have is any idea what the nerve agent is or where the planes are headed.”