When he opened it, he nearly passed out.
Meet me @ Tuck’s Bar on W. Washington at 1900 about Anders
The others stared at the small slip of paper and frowned.Tanner opened the door to the conference room and walked inside to see a room surrounded by glass.Admiral Peters and General Billings were seated at one end of the table, several other young men and women beside them.
“Welcome to the Pentagon, gentlemen.Although I suspect this isn’t your first trip.”
No one said anything, still standing, looking through the glass walls at the hive of activity below.Massive screens covered the entire room, showing what each worker was busy with.Intercepting attempts at hacking, interfering in communications from drones, and following the trail of e-mails and text messages.
“Please take your seats,” said Admiral Peters.
“I’d rather go out there and speak to your team,” said Hiro.The young people in the room stared at Hiro, then back at the senior leaders.
“You can ask our team here anything you like,” said Admiral Peters.
“Do you have something to hide, Admiral?” asked AJ.
“Don’t fuck with me son.I can just as easily toss your ass out of here.Everything we do here is highly confidential.”
“And you’ll find that our security clearance is higher than Jamie, Arleigh, or Efram’s.”
The faces of the three young people blanched, slowly turning to look at the admiral and general.Their amused grins disappeared, looking at the hands of the four men, then attempting to see if they had any devices on their clothing.
“H-how did you know my name?” asked Jamie.
“That’s classified,” smirked Wyatt.
“Alright.Enough!Enough with the pissing match.We get it.You’ve got high clearance as well.What goes on here isn’t a game and we don’t treat it that way,” said Billings.
“Maybe not, but some of your colleagues in other departments do.They’re literally sitting at their desks playing games while they’re supposed to be investigating how people are getting into them.We’ve already proven that someone did come into your system via a gamer.
“Now, if you don’t give a shit about that and want to continue to allow that to happen, we can leave and ignore it.Not really our problem.But if you’re the men we believe you are, you’re going to want answers and they’re sitting in that room out there.Not in here,” said AJ.
Billings and Peters looked at one another and nodded.
“Take them inside,” said Peters.“They can have access to anything.It wouldn’t matter if I granted it or not, they’d take it.”AJ turned his computer toward the group.
An Excel spreadsheet showed every live, online computer within a hundred yards of him.Bands of color stretched from every computer to his screen.Green meant normal communication or work, checked by the algorithm.Someone was working in a document or form or communicating via e-mail, legitimate business.
Yellow bands showed those using outside software or websites and researching or shopping on non-approved sites.
But the red bands indicated that someone was open and vulnerable, in a completely unapproved site that somehow broke through the firewalls and security, allowing the world to enter into the systems of the Pentagon.
There were nine red bands.
CHAPTER NINE
“Who are they?Where are they?” asked the admiral.
“One of them is in this room,” said Wyatt.He stared at the young woman beside the general and she blushed, shaking her head.
“No.No, I’m not on any sites here.”
“Yes, you are.Your phone still has fifteen open windows and seven of those windows were wedding shops.Someone is looking for a new wedding dress.Size eight.”Wyatt stared at his own screen, then back up at the young woman.She was frantically closing the windows on her phone.
“What does it matter?That’s her personal phone,” said Billings.
“Her personal phone allows the bad guys to get close.If she sets her phone near the computer, they could, conceivably, link to an open arm of the work computer.”
