to explain in great detail how they were all playing for the same team. The marines quickly herded the ambitious Iraqis into the Humvee and the patrol disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Jason pulled back the door flap and dipped inside the tent’s cool interior.
Provisions were stacked around its interior perimeter, leaving just enough room to accommodate three sleeping mats at nighttime (two men always remained awake and rotated watch duty). A section of the roof had been peeled back to let in some light. Crammed into a camping chair, Meat sat in front of a folding table that hosted his laptop and techno gear.
Jason swilled some water from his canteen and watched Meat tap away on the laptop’s keyboard. The guy looked like the ultimate terrorist, with his chequered headscarf, cocoa tan, bushy jet-black beard and eyebrows, and determined dark eyes searing with suppressed rage. But, unlike the jihadists who simmered on rigid interpretations of the Qur’an or gummy Middle East politics, Dennis Coombs struggled to reconcile an alcoholic mother, an absentee father, sibling rivalry, rural poverty and a fiancee’s serial infidelity. All of which had made him easy pickings for the marine recruiters’ notorious ‘poverty draft’.
‘Any luck?’ Jason asked.
‘Yeah, actually. The outside was cooked.’ He motioned with his head to the cracked-open plastic casing. ‘But the inside was raw.’ Pinched between tweezers, he held up the extracted circular, wafer-thin computer chip that was no bigger than the fingernail on his pinky. ‘Just like I prefer my steak cooked: black and blue.’
Jason smiled.
Next, Meat examined each side of the chip with a magnifying loop. ‘No stamps. Nothing. The data’s probably encrypted too. RSA or something similar, I’d bet.’
‘What do you think it was used for?’
‘It’s no library card, I’ll tell ya that. I’m thinking it’s an IPS chip.’
The Identity and Passport Service data chip, Jason recalled, was a smart card for biometric access systems - encrypted files containing a user’s retinal scan, fingerprints and other unique identifiers.
‘No worries, though,’ Meat said. ‘I’m sure we can crack it.’
Jason watched as Meat hooked a rectangular USB device, no bigger than a deck of playing cards, into his laptop - a hi-tech data reader developed by the NSA, which Meat commonly used to skim embedded information off passports.
Meat placed the chip on the reader’s flat surface.
The software interface launched on the laptop screen. It took only seconds before the chip reader identified the protocol, matched its key, and brought up the data.
‘That was fast,’ Jason said.
‘There’s good reason to be worried about cyber terrorism.’ Scrolling through the biometric data, what looked like a passport photo came up on the screen - the face of an attractive, thirty-something female. Meat whistled. ‘Yummy.’
Leaning in, Jason’s brow rumpled with confusion. ‘How can that be right?’ he said. The green-eyed brunette with a flawless complexion looked like a spokesmodel for Revlon. ‘That’s no Iraqi.’
‘Nope.’ Meat scrolled the data. ‘That’s Ms Brooke Thompson. Sorry, make that Professor Brooke Thompson. Female, as you can see … US citizen … Born April 19, 1975 … last clocked-in 15.02, May 2, 2003. No social security number, but her passport number’s here.’
‘What would she have been doing here?’ Jason aired his thoughts aloud.
‘And right after the Battle of Baghdad, in fact. This place was a battle zone back then.’
‘Transmit that data to the home office and ask them to send an agent immediately to find her and vet her.’
‘Got it.’
Jason waited for him to wrap up the call on his sat-com, then encrypt the data file and bounce it off a satellite to Global Security Corporation’s Washington DC headquarters.
‘Anything else?’ Meat asked.
Jason unclipped the binoculars from his neck strap, handed them to Meat.
Jason pulled back the door flap and dipped inside the tent’s cool interior.
Provisions were stacked around its interior perimeter, leaving just enough room to accommodate three sleeping mats at nighttime (two men always remained awake and rotated watch duty). A section of the roof had been peeled back to let in some light. Crammed into a camping chair, Meat sat in front of a folding table that hosted his laptop and techno gear.
Jason swilled some water from his canteen and watched Meat tap away on the laptop’s keyboard. The guy looked like the ultimate terrorist, with his chequered headscarf, cocoa tan, bushy jet-black beard and eyebrows, and determined dark eyes searing with suppressed rage. But, unlike the jihadists who simmered on rigid interpretations of the Qur’an or gummy Middle East politics, Dennis Coombs struggled to reconcile an alcoholic mother, an absentee father, sibling rivalry, rural poverty and a fiancee’s serial infidelity. All of which had made him easy pickings for the marine recruiters’ notorious ‘poverty draft’.
‘Any luck?’ Jason asked.
‘Yeah, actually. The outside was cooked.’ He motioned with his head to the cracked-open plastic casing. ‘But the inside was raw.’ Pinched between tweezers, he held up the extracted circular, wafer-thin computer chip that was no bigger than the fingernail on his pinky. ‘Just like I prefer my steak cooked: black and blue.’
Jason smiled.
Next, Meat examined each side of the chip with a magnifying loop. ‘No stamps. Nothing. The data’s probably encrypted too. RSA or something similar, I’d bet.’
‘What do you think it was used for?’
‘It’s no library card, I’ll tell ya that. I’m thinking it’s an IPS chip.’
The Identity and Passport Service data chip, Jason recalled, was a smart card for biometric access systems - encrypted files containing a user’s retinal scan, fingerprints and other unique identifiers.
‘No worries, though,’ Meat said. ‘I’m sure we can crack it.’
Jason watched as Meat hooked a rectangular USB device, no bigger than a deck of playing cards, into his laptop - a hi-tech data reader developed by the NSA, which Meat commonly used to skim embedded information off passports.
Meat placed the chip on the reader’s flat surface.
The software interface launched on the laptop screen. It took only seconds before the chip reader identified the protocol, matched its key, and brought up the data.
‘That was fast,’ Jason said.
‘There’s good reason to be worried about cyber terrorism.’ Scrolling through the biometric data, what looked like a passport photo came up on the screen - the face of an attractive, thirty-something female. Meat whistled. ‘Yummy.’
Leaning in, Jason’s brow rumpled with confusion. ‘How can that be right?’ he said. The green-eyed brunette with a flawless complexion looked like a spokesmodel for Revlon. ‘That’s no Iraqi.’
‘Nope.’ Meat scrolled the data. ‘That’s Ms Brooke Thompson. Sorry, make that Professor Brooke Thompson. Female, as you can see … US citizen … Born April 19, 1975 … last clocked-in 15.02, May 2, 2003. No social security number, but her passport number’s here.’
‘What would she have been doing here?’ Jason aired his thoughts aloud.
‘And right after the Battle of Baghdad, in fact. This place was a battle zone back then.’
‘Transmit that data to the home office and ask them to send an agent immediately to find her and vet her.’
‘Got it.’
Jason waited for him to wrap up the call on his sat-com, then encrypt the data file and bounce it off a satellite to Global Security Corporation’s Washington DC headquarters.
‘Anything else?’ Meat asked.
Jason unclipped the binoculars from his neck strap, handed them to Meat.
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