| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | In High Places |
| Date: | Thu, 6 Nov 1997 22:21:55 +0000 |
>>>>>[TO: All SIGA Staff
+++++begin trideo1
A large office area, crowded with desks, terminals, cyberdecks, and
other paraphernalia. Signs hang from the lattice ceiling over various
areas, identifying their function: OVERSEAS, DOMESTIC, CORPORATE,
IMAGERY, are the more visible ones.. Some wag has added HOT BEVERAGES,
FROZEN GOODS and PET FOOD to reinforce the Kwik-E-Mart flavour. The
furniture, the carpet and the faded paint on the walls all have the
indefinable feel of a government facility.
The timestamp reads 18:12, and the strip of sky visible through the
window is dark. The office could accomodate over a dozen people, but
only two are present: one a young woman, walking in with coffee, the
other a middle-aged man wearing a grey shirt embossed with broadhead
arrows and stamped with a number.
"Still here, Byrnes?" he asks, glancing up. "Your terminal's getting
noisy, someone's sending you love letters."
"I wish. You try dating when you can't spend more than a day or two away
from Mr Snappy." Byrnes drops into her chair under the IMAGERY sign,
taps the keys and her printer begins extruding sheets of paper.
"So, what you got? Yemen, still?"
"Yeah. NRO's Keyhole shots show nothing out of the ordinary for months.
Lynch found tank tracks, only a few weeks old, and plenty of HUMINT
saying there's activity. See?" Byrnes waves a photograph. "KH-14 shot,
two hours old, quarter-metre visual and half-metre infrared resolution.
Lots of rocks, scrub, some speckling around the villages... sheep or
goats, I think. No vehicles. Same as usual. So I bought some commercial
shots of the region, that's what I'm downloading."
"No vehicles at all in the area?"
"Not one, except one or two civilian vehicles per village. Not even...
waittaminute." Byrnes pauses. "Where's the Scarab? Lynch should be in
this frame, we should see his vehicle."
Price shrugs. "It's thermally masked, isn't it?"
"Sides, sure, so the Gomers can't spot you or zap you, but your waste
heat's got to go somewhere, and that somewhere's straight up. Thermal
masking makes you _easier_ to spot from right above." Byrnes is staring
intently at her screen, clicking through images, as she speaks.
"Didn't know that." Price comments.
"It doesn't usually matter." Byrnes saus. "Most of the customers aren't
worried about satellite observation... oh, shit."
"What?"
"I checked that tape Lynch sent us. I've got his position to an inch and
his timestamp to a microsecond, when he should be under a Keyhole pass.
Where he and the Scarab are, there's just rock. We're getting bad
imagery."
"Uh-oh..."
Byrnes leafs through the sheaf of pictures in her printer's out-tray,
then leaps to her feet. "Oh, SHIT!!!" she cries at the top of her voice,
before bolting out of the room at a sprint. Price looks baffled, then
shrugs and goes back to work.
+++++end trideo1
+++++begin trideo2
A smaller office: Coppinger's, and the Director is In. He looks up as
running feet approach, and Byrnes crashes through, clutching a handful
of printouts. She trips over the threshold and barely keeps her balance
as she staggers to a halt, sheets of paper flying.
"Elizabeth. You wanted to see me?" Coppinger asks.
"Sir. Yemen. Problem." Byrnes gasps breathlessly, picking up her dropped
photographs. "Big problem."
"Sit down. Get some coffee. Get your breath back." Coppinger closes the
file he'd been studying and replaces it on a shelf, pours two mugs from
the machine by his desk, hands one to Byrnes as she shuffles the
pictures into order.
"Okay, sir. You know Harrow hired a team to secure a big arms shipment
to the MidEast or North Africa? I think it's in Yemen, and we have a
serious compromise of the NRO's security." The woman says as she
recovers. "These are of the Yemen, twenty miles north of the Hawker
mining camps, Keyhole-14 shots from the NRO, three days ago. Empty rock,
right? These shots are from Imagery Incorporated, same area, same time."
"You'll need to interpret, but I see the difference already. What are
these highlights?"
"Pixel changes. Each pixel's a yard square. The Imagery Inc. birds take
shots at thirty-second intervals, I montaged them and highlighted
changes. These are moving objects, making thirty miles an hour here
before they slow for the turns. Lots of them, I make it over sixty."
Coppinger studies the picture carefully. "Is this a formation?"
"Yes, sir. I can animate the graphic for you, if you'll let me borrow
your terminal?" Byrnes calls up several files, and Coppinger watches
intently.
"That, to me, looks like a motor-rifle battalion breaking from line of
march to the assault, sir, with a follow-up element in trucks. Russian
tactical doctrine. The lead echelon is a tank company, most of this
group are APCs, and the follow-on force deploy from the trucks. The
trucks wheel back to begin shuttling ammo forward and wounded back." the
Director says after rerunning it twice.
"That's what the computers said, too, when I submitted it. Where'd you
learn that, sir?"
"Wargaming with Lynch. He wins the land battles, then I kick his butt in
Pacific Fleet to maintain Navy honour."
"I didn't know you were a wargamer."
"Neither did I, until I saw Lynch refighting the Battle of Kursk with
his daughter." Coppinger chuckles. "It appeals to the analytical side of
my nature. We decide what engagement we'll fight, I research it, and I
try to determine how it could have been better fought. Lynch just turns
up and acts as he sees fit, and usually wins. He's very good. Rusanov's
even better. So, someone's got that mechanised division, and they're
training to use it. How are they supplying it? That unit must eat
hundreds of tons of fuel a week."
"Don't know yet, sir. I'm pulling all the pictures I can get from
Imagery Incorporated, Ares, ZeoTech, and anyone else who'll sell sub-
metre shots. My guess would be air, but I don't know for sure." Byrnes
rises.
"And how did NRO miss this?" Coppinger asks. "How badly are they
compromised?"
"Depends, sir. Could be someone's doctoring what we're given, not what
they see?"
"No." Coppinger shakes his head. "Sorensen's section is handling this,
not just passing us raw images. We see what they see, the Walrus can be
trusted. The images are corrupted at source. What are these, old archive
shots?"
"Yes, sir. The shots are from six months ago, the timestamps have been
changed. So, someone with access to the NRO's system and archive. An
inside job to avoid the ice. Probably by someone who doesn't have full-
time access, the cargo handlers were worried about the Keyhole
satellites but didn't cover up for the commercial or foreign birds."
Byrnes rattles off the points. "That gives us a window to check the
access logs. Also, they didn't expect to be back and they only needed
six months at most."
"Precisely. It seems whoever did this was a little overconfident that we
wouldn't call on NRO, or take an interest in the Yemen. This is serious,
Byrnes, and you did good work. I'll see the Chairman first thing
tomorrow, he'll be unavailable now he's gone home. And we'd better alert
Lynch and Rusanov. Thank you. "
"Thank _you_, sir." The woman stands.
"Wait. Byrnes, would you like that explosive charge replaced by a
screamer unit?"
"Does the pope wear a tall hat, mister Director sir?" Byrnes looks
surprised and pleased.
"You've earned it with this, I'll raise the paperwork. Go home, relax,
and hit the imagery desk again at 0700 tomorrow rested and ready."
Coppinger is reaching for his phone as Byrnes leaves.
+++++end trideo2]<<<<<
-- Elizabeth Byrnes <22:17:42/11-06-58>
Cranial Explosions - R - Us
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency
