Under Vanishing Skies (14 page)

I remembered looking at that thing and thinking that one hard landing was all that it would take to send those turbines crashing through the roof and into the fuselage. Those blades would chop up the passengers into salsa.

There had been several dozen helojumpers in the MDF fleet before the storm. Now there were only two. The carcasses of the others sat in a pile on the end of the runway, cannibalized to keep the remaining helojumpers in the air.

Helojumpers weren’t used to ferry tourists to their islands anymore because there weren’t any more tourists. The MDF used them for air patrols and to airlift the sick and injured from outlying islands to the clinic on Male. The only other exception was transportation for members of the Council of Thirteen. Another perk of the job, as Shannon would say. Some Council members abused this privilege, using the helojumpers as their own personal air limousines. I had never flown in one and I never planned to, but today changed that.  I had to get to Male and figure out how Jin planned to crack the encryption.

I turned my head as a wash of mist kicked up from the descending helojumper.  It came down first feet offshore and then switched to hovercraft mode. It hovered a few inches above the water and then skirted onto the beach. Before setting down, it turned itself around so that the beak-like cockpit pointed out to sea. I flinched as a set of transparent doors on the backside suddenly slid open.

Well…this was it. I ignored the primal instinct to run in the opposite direction.  Instead, I ran with my head down straight through the doors. They shut behind me. Glancing up, I saw the blades slicing the air and I quickly looked away. The cabin was empty, so I picked a seat close to the cockpit, buckled in, and then gave the pilot a thumbs up.

The blades came back to life. It sounded like the pilot had pushed the puree button. I closed my eyes and felt the vehicle pop up off the ground and then move forward. The whine of the electric engines increased and I felt the queasy sensation of lift. After a few minutes I figured we were safely in the air, so I opened my eyes. I was wrong. We were just taking off. I watched the water falling out from under me through the transparent floor. A wave of panic swept over me. I grabbed the armrests and squeezed, willing the machine to stay in the air. The fuselage pitched forward and we began to fly. I tightened my seatbelt as gravity pushed me back into my seat.

After a few minutes, I released the armrests and glanced down through the floor. We were a lot higher than I had expected. Spread out across the bluish green ocean, I saw hundreds of tiny islands that made up a tiny part of the Maldivian atoll. From up here, each island looked like a fried egg with a green yolk.

 
I needed something to keep my mind off flying, so I turned my attention to Jin’s data mat. After sliding the elastic band off, I gingerly unfolded it as if it were some kind of sacred artifact. I tapped the upper left corner and the screen came to life. Chinese script filled the screen. I double tapped in the lower left corner and selected English from the language menu. The script changed and a prompt asked for a password. I tried my password, but it didn’t work.

Now what?

I tried a few other words: the name of his wife, his son, his hometown. None of them worked.

Why the hell would Jin give me his data mat without giving me his password? Christ! Why did he bother putting a password on it at all? But I knew the answer. Jin was a stickler for the rules.

It didn’t matter what the rules were or whether they made sense, he followed them. And the rule was that all data mats with IICN administrative access must be password protected. Nobody enforced the rule. Hell, I didn’t have a password on my data mat. But a rule was a rule to Jin, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that his was locked down.

I smiled as I remembered how Rick and I had once taken a shortcut during a test of the IICN message system. We had disabled encryption on the servers so we could run through the test faster. Jin had found out and he wasn’t happy. He shouted at us like we were new recruits in boot camp, “You know better! Security is what?” We both knew the answer, but we had just stood there quietly. “Come on, what is security, gentlemen?” We looked at each other, knowing that he wouldn’t let us off until we completed the phrase that he had drilled into our heads. I grinned as I recalled how we had jumped to attention in a mocking acknowledgment of his military background and yelled, “Security is paramount, sir!”

That’s got to be it! I typed the word, “paramount” into the password field. The screen unlocked. 

I quickly scanned the folders and was amazed at how many documents he had stored on his data mat. This was going to take a while. I leaned forward and opened a couple of documents. It was mostly technical reference material. I also found some island maps, schematics for the communications towers, and operations instructions for the main communications center. But I didn’t see anything about the satellite or message decryption.

My ears popped and I looked out of the clear walls. My God! Whoever invented this thing clearly didn’t have a fear of heights.

The helojumper had begun its descent. I looked up towards the cockpit and saw the airport ahead of us. The airport was nothing more than a tiny island with a single blacktop runway that consumed it. There was only room enough for a small terminal next to the runway.

I was about to put the data mat away when I saw a folder labeled Communications Map. Jin had everything organized using a meticulous folder structure and file organization schema. This folder wasn’t in the right place.

I opened it, and found a spreadsheet and a link to an app. I opened the spreadsheet first.  It contained five columns of data: Sender ID, Recipient ID, Sender Location, Sender Date and Time, Recipient Location, and Recipient Date and Time.

The Sender and Recipient ID columns contained numbers that I easily recognized. They were User IDs, the ones we had created for IICN users. The location columns looked like they contained latitude and longitude information. I scrolled down the sheet. There were thousands of rows of data. This had to be the SIGINT data that Jin had talked about. As excited as I was to finally find something, it wasn’t enough to overcome the dread at having to figure out how it all fit together.

I closed the spreadsheet and clicked on the application link. It was a satellite image of the atoll. Scattered across the image were thousands of small dots, each color coded. I clicked the filter button and a drop-down list of User IDs appeared. I found my own and selected it. Then I set the date filter for the last two days. Most of the dots disappeared. Only a handful of light blue ones remained on the screen. They were positioned over Lohifushi and Male, but a few were over North Point and Eriyadoo. I zoomed in on Eriyadoo and clicked the dot. A small box appeared with the same data elements that I had seen in the spreadsheet.

It was the call I had made to the Air Operations Center an hour ago to arrange the flight.

He had really done it! The son of a bitch had hacked into a satellite and had developed an application that could track IICN messages in near-real time. A hundred questions popped into my head, but Jin wasn’t around to answer any of them.

The seatbelt saved me from hitting the ceiling when the helojumper landed. However the data mat flew out of my hands and on to the floor out of reach. I looked down and saw blacktop. Glancing up, I saw the twin turbines still slicing and dicing. I unbuckled my belt, picked up Jin’s data mat, and ran like hell out of the open back doors.

As I ran across the tarmac, I did some quick calculations in my head. The Council wasn’t scheduled to meet until after the holiday weekend. That gave me just under two days to dig into the data and discover Jin's plan to decrypt the messages.

Chapter 9

I glanced at my watch. It was five thirty, dinnertime. But for the practicing Muslims around the city it was Fajr, the last call to prayer for the day. I knew this because of the skull-shattering wail that emanated from the minaret speakers directly across from my hotel room. It was like an alarm clock from hell and it went off every few hours. God, how I wished there was a snooze button.

My stomach gurgled, reminding me that I had skipped lunch. I didn’t skip it on purpose, I just got lost in the maze that was Jin’s data mat and I forgot to eat. But even a rat needed food, even if it couldn’t find the cheese at the end of the maze. It was time to feed this rat. Maybe when I got back, I’d get lucky and find the cheese.

It had been ten hours since I landed on Male. I’d spent most of it here, trying to find some clue about how Jin had planned to decrypt those messages. All I had done was confirm that the spreadsheet was SIGINT data streaming down from the satellite. I didn’t know any more now than I did when I landed.

I leaned back in my chair and for the hundredth time today I cursed myself for leaving Jin and going to that Council meeting. Maybe I could have prevented his…no…I wasn’t going to go there again. I needed to focus on figuring out his plan. The answer had to be somewhere in that goddammed data mat. Why else would he leave it to me?

I got up and walked to the window. I opened it, leaned out, and took a deep breath of the salty air. Puffs of white fog billowed from my mouth as I exhaled. I shivered. Son of a bitch, it was cold. It had to be in the low fifties, maybe even the forties. As far as I could recall, the temperature had never dropped this much or this fast before.

The people on the streets didn't seem bothered by the cold. They were too busy reflecting. After all, today was the Day of Reflection. I had tried to block out the sounds of people yelling out the names of family and friends who died after the storm all morning. The ritual was intended to honor the memory of those who died. I didn’t need a special day to do that. I did it every fucking day of my life. It was a depressing tradition, but I knew that tomorrow would be worse.

Tomorrow was the Day of Joy, a celebration of life. The day culminated in a massive street party at night, kind of like Mardi Gras only no booze or tits. Still, things sometimes got a little crazy...at least by Male standards. There was music, singing, and dancing. My hotel room was in the heart of party central. Tomorrow was going to really suck.

I closed the window and looked around the room. My mind was wandering. I needed food to think straight. So I carefully folded up Jin’s data mat and tucked it into my back pocket. Then I headed out to find something to eat.

I opened the door and found Ahmed’s slimy cousin, Viyaja, standing in the doorway. His pungent odor bitch-slapped me. I involuntarily took a couple steps back. I wondered if he was allergic to coconut oil soap or if he was working on a new way to repel mosquitos.

“
Jesus Christ, Viyaja...you scared the shit out of me.”

He smiled. It seemed to cause him pain. 

“
Assalamu Aleikom
 , my friend. Peace be on you.” He gave up trying to smile. “I am sorry if I startled you, but I would like a word if you have the time.”

“
Actually, I’m on my way down to grab some dinner.” The sound of chanting from the street below filled the hallway. “And shouldn’t you be praying or something?”

His eyes narrowed.

“
I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you go and pray and I’ll go and eat. We can meet in the lobby in about an hour. Does that work for you?”

“
I am afraid this is urgent.”

I ignored my instinct to slam the door and I let him inside.

Viyaja stepped forward. 

“
I do not think you will find food downstairs until after sunset. It is a day of fasting or have you forgotten?”

My stomach growled in response. “I’m sure I can find something. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t participate in these rituals.”

He closed the door behind him. The invisible reeking cloud that surrounded him was now inside my room. I tried not to breathe through my nose. His stench was killing my appetite.

“
Okay,” I said, “make it quick.”

“
We think it is time that this childish squabble ends.”

“
What are you talking about?”

“
The list. Time is running out.”

“
Let’s talk about it on Tuesday. Okay? That’s what the Council meetings are for.”

“
No, my friend. The time for talk is over. We are prepared to take the necessary actions to ensure that the list is approved. We have been very patient with you and your friends, but our patience is wearing thin.”

I studied him for a second. He was skinny, probably malnourished as a kid, but the way that he carried himself told me that he could probably put up a good fight. If he kept going down this path, I guess I’d find out.