The Soldier

At one time the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida was a sprawling complex of more than 2 million square feet that hosted trade shows and conventions of every imaginable type. Now it stood in stark reflection of the general deterioration throughout the United States. Most of the facility was unusable, windows broken out, doors hanging permanently open on hinges that had long ago rusted into immobility.

But the building still had a few areas that were of use to what passed for the United States government. The southern wing of the structure had been converted into a communications facility with rows and rows of computers monitored by men and women who considered themselves extremely fortunate just to be able to find any kind of work.

James Larson sat at a computer station in what was known as The Pit, a vast room filled with nearly 100 identical workstations. Larson was 32, muscular light-brown skin almost the color of the coffee in the mug that was ever present on his desk. His head was clean shaved, yet he sported a mustache and goatee.

Larson was a monitor, one of dozens working the 3-11 p.m. shift in The Pit. Their job was literally to do nothing but sit and stare at the computer screens looking for any indication of trouble or an intrusion somewhere in the vast computer/communications network of the Federal government.

What made James different from the others was his skill with computers. Using some old books he had found, James had taught himself how to write computer code, and passed his time on duty engaged in the programmer’s version of doodling – writing random bits of code in a window while he kept on eye on the monitoring readouts in the main part of the screen.

His supervisor had seen him at it once, but James had managed to convince him that it didn’t interfere with his ability to monitor his share of the ’Net. Plus, James had promised a nice bit of “compensation” if any of his code caught the attention of someone who could spring him from The Pit and put him to work on the real projects. Maybe one of those top-secret programs that seemed to have the real computer engineers all tied up in knots all the time when James saw them in the cafeteria.

James was just about to begin compiling his most recent bit of programming when a momentary spike on the network power level caught his attention. It was so brief he almost attributed to just a jump on his computer’s monitor caused by a power surge, an event not uncommon given the famous unreliability of the electric grid in recent years. James saved and closed his code and turned his full attention to the display on his computer. He inputted a command that would cause the system to refresh its display a little faster than normal, to try and see if he could duplicate the spike, but the readouts were all now perfectly within normal parameters. But something in his gut told him what he had seen was something more than just an anomaly caused by an unreliable electric supply. So he sat, watched and waited.

“OK, I’m in,” Caitlin said as she sat in front of her laptop in the old relay building.

“Any problems,” Logan asked.

“Not that I can tell, looked like as smooth an entry as I’ve been able to pull off in quite some time.”

“Really,” Kelley said. “And just how many ‘smooth entries’ have you been involved with, Ms. Anderson.”

“More than I can count,” she replied, not giving any indication that she had picked up on his less-than-subtle attempt at humor. “Now, be quiet. I have to concentrate.”

Caitlin’s hands seemed to fly across the keyboard as a small bead of sweat formed on her forehead.

“Done,” she finally said after about 15 minutes of typing.

“And exactly what have you done?” asked Kelley, who had been watching her with fascination.

“Well, I quite literally set my own wee search engine running in the background of your government’s network.”

“Like you did before, on the uplink”

“No, not exactly. Those were individual spiders. This time, well, it’s like I set out thousands of them. And my spiders are virtually invisible to anyone. You’d have to know they were there in order to be able to find them.”

“You sure about that, Ms. Anderson?”

Caitlin turned to face the man who had spoken, another of Kelley’s lieutenants who she did not know.

“Pretty damned sure. If they finger us, it’s all of our lives at risk, and I certainly don’t make a regular habit of putting my life at risk.”

“Well, I just hope you’re right,” he said.

As the man walked off, Logan walked over to where Caitlin stood next to her laptop.

“Are you sure?”

“You picked me, you’re going to have to trust me,” Caitlin said and she started to turn and walk away, but Logan reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her close so he could continue in a low whisper so no one else could hear.

“It’s not a question of trust, it’s about considering all the possible outcomes of a situation. You think you’re search is foolproof, in my experience, nothing is foolproof. Can you say with 100 percent certainty that you won’t be discovered?”

Caitlin pulled her arm free and glared into Logan’s eyes. It occurred to Logan that he was still standing.

“There is virtually no chance . . .

“I don’t want virtually, I want to know 100 percent,” Logan said, cutting her off. “Not 99.8, not 99.9 but 100 percent certain your spiders won’t be fingered before they find the information we need.”

Caitlin’s eyes dropped to the laptop.

“Nothing is 100 percent,” she finally admitted. “As good as I am, as good as anybody is, there’s always a minute chance that someone could stumble onto them.”

“Well, if that’s the case, is there any way you can “train” your spiders to at least give us a heads up if they’re tagged? So we can get the hell out of here before anyone comes looking for us?”

“Aye,” Caitlin said, nodding. “That I can do.”

She sat back down at her computer and began typing.

“If any of the spiders is discovered it will send a message back, not unlike any other bit of information it finds. But I’ve programmed them to piggyback a warning, so, hopefully it can let us know we’ve been discovered without letting the Feds know that we know.”

“So, have your spiders turned up anything useful yet?” Logan asked.

“Not a damned thing.”

Caitlin and Logan sat on a folding chairs around a campfire. Logan and Kelley had decided it would be better to camp out at the relay station to keep an eye on things rather than leave the laptop unattended while it scoured the American ’Net.

“I know they’re working normally, because I keep getting reports back, but they don’t contain anything useful. Either the Americans have come up with new firewalls that even my spiders can’t get around or…”

“Or?” Logan prompted.

“Or there just isn’t anything to find, which makes our task quite the sticky wicket, then, doesn’t it?”

Caitlin looked at Logan.

“It does indeed. This scheme of yours just won’t work if we have to find a rocket and get it ready to launch ourselves. That would be damned near impossible.”

“It would make our task quite a bit more difficult.”

“Have you always been such a master of understatement?”

“Pretty much,” Logan said as he sipped a cup of coffee. “You know, I would really prefer some tea, but the Americans just don’t seem to have the taste for it, so they don’t bother looking for it when they go on their little raids. Do you think if I made a request they would try to accommodate me?”

“I wouldn’t,” Caitlin said. “Remember what happened in Boston the last time England tried to insist on Americans drinking tea.”

“Oh, right,” Logan said with a chuckle.

“This is getting really annoying.”

“What is, Jimmy?”

“I think we have, that is, oh crap, I’m just not sure.”

Victor Davis rolled his chair over so he could see James’ monitor.

“What have you got?”

“I’ve got nothing, and that’s the problem.”

“OK, meaning?”

“I think there’s an intruder in the system, but whoever it is, is very, very good.”

“Did you report it?”

“Are you kidding, there’s nothing to report. No definite hits on the intrusion protocols, only a little power surge three days ago.”

“You should still tell someone,” Victor said.

“Right. Last time I told someone I nearly got my butt kicked all the way down to the graveyard shift because I didn’t have any hard evidence. ‘Don’t tell me what your gut says, show me had data from the infiltration subroutines.’”

Victor stifled a laugh.

“Not bad. Even Jacobson’s mother would be fooled if you did that on the phone.”

Vic was referring to Gerard Jacobson, the boss the monitors often called the Pit Viper, although never to his face.

“Anyway, you should tell him.”

“When I have something definite, I will,” James said. “But like I said, if there is someone out there, they’re good. And it’s not going to be easy to tag them.”

“Well, if anyone can, it’ll be you,” Victor said as he slid his chair back to his own work station.

“I hope so,” James said.