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Chapter One
“Whoa, thought it was a nightmare,
Building D-1776 was an anonymous, androgynous, anatomically bland building nestled within the windowed gray slabs of commercial buildings where midtown and downtown Manhattan begin to blur. It was intentionally chosen for its subtle demeanor, if a building can be known for such, for the truly powerful avoid detection, refract from the spotlight, and never, ever call attention to themselves. Building D, as the elite few who worked there called it, was a government building, made of stone, metal, and glass, reaching twenty stories high, but a place where fewer than a dozen people either came or went beyond the underground floor. Less than that outside of its walls even knew of its existence. Building D, and the technology which lay fertile within its walls, was borne only a few years after the horrors of September 11th, 2001. After the frustration of Bin Laden at large and national security at stake, an echelon few decided that modern threats required modern answers, even at the expense of personal privacy. But as with all things deep in the governmental schematic, those in charge worked on the assumption that what the people didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Some people did know, of course, those who had to operate within those anonymous walls keeping the eyes in the skies, and always the secret on their minds. Much of this great responsibility lay on the shoulders of one man, NSA Special Agent Elliot Cole. Six months shy of his 50th birthday; he drove into Manhattan from his South Orange, New Jersey home like every morning, alone, the sound of his Chevy’s motor humming a familiar chorus in his ears. The sun, still low behind the variegated horizon of the Jersey suburbs, was already bright across the awakening day. He was driving east, through the Lincoln Tunnel, the cab of his SUV filled out by Credence Clearwater Revival blasting out one of his favorite songs. “Better run through the jungle,
Coming to a halt in traffic, Elliot looked over at the driver pulled up next to him. The man sat comfortably in a Toyota Tercel the color of steel, his right hand tapping his steering wheel to an unheard tune. “What would this man do if he found out every move he made was being watched?” Elliot put the forbidden questions out of his head. He looked at the Mickey Mouse watch strapped to his left arm, staring into it as he gently brushed the face of the antique with his right. It was a gift from his father, the only relic from his past, and it soothed him often in times of doubt. The traffic pulled into motion again. Driving through, Elliot nursed his distraction by turning up the volume on his CD player. The craving for a cigarette swept into him, and, as he did every morning, Elliot regretted quitting last spring. Over on the mountain
Even at his peak, Elliot always tried to keep his habit down to three packs a week. It was Lisa who prodded him to show a better example to their son, Matt. The thought reminded him of the tickets tucked neatly in his glove compartment. Two fifty yard line seats for tonight’s Giants vs. Jets game tonight. His son loved football and played well on his high school’s varsity team, if not so well with fellow classmates during classes. Elliot always felt a pinch of guilt when work within Building D often meant late nights away from his family, tonight he was determined to make it home on time. Right now he’d kill for a few puffs of a cigarette. In quitting he surrendered the only legal chemical release he was allowed beside alcohol, which he never latched onto in the first place. When he craved a cigarette most was at work when his word passed judgment on somebody else’s life. At those moments the soothing of the cigarette came in the process, the actually drawing in, savoring, and final long release of the smoked tobacco, that allowed him to let go of his anxieties; the tribulations in his mind that he always, until most recently, had been able to keep anchored at the bay of his loyal mind. Since quitting, his only area of refuge was the occasional jaunt on Steve’s 31-foot Sea Ray Cuddy off the southern New Jersey coast. NSA Special Agent Steve Meyer was his partner and friend within the secret walls of Building D. He was thirty-eight years old, dedicating sixteen of those to the federal government since he first joined the intelligence community at the end of the first Gulf War. Equally as talented as Elliot, if not as experienced only because his relative youth cost him a few missed opportunities to advance via the various American Military operations that often prove so lucrative to many a government career. He was a Gulf War II veteran, worked field intelligence for the CIA in its hunt for Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Even then, as a novice agent within the chambers of the CIA’s elite intelligence network, Steve was a master at what he did; namely surveillance, on person, place, crusader, corporation, entity, or enigma that the CIA had taken an interest in. He even surveilled the complicated underworld of subversive ideas, when the need arose for the government to keep tabs on suspect factions or divergent groups. Steve Meyer was known for asking few questions of his superiors, expecting no special attention in return for his performance, and delivering the de facto el superior on every assignment. He was single, intelligent, and willing to give up a personal life in the name of The Code: God, Country, and National Security. He moved quickly through the ranks of men with no names. It was a combination of his skill and personal attributes that landed him in Building D, sharing an office with Elliot Cole. Special Agent Cole was a legend in the secret ranks of the Special Operations Covert Intelligence community and a crucial player of the ‘Main Five’. Even though every member of this elite operational force had sworn an oath to The Code, disallowing family ties, Elliot’s proven skills made him the exception to the rule, and he was brought in despite already having a wife and child. Moving across three lanes of moderate traffic one slot at a time, Elliot pulled into the underground parking structure of Building D. The garage was drawn off of the main street in a steep, sweeping concrete drive. Immediately off the street stood a four-foot tall, six inch thick, solid steel yellow gate. Encased in ten inches of reinforced concrete, the guard’s booth to the left was a small utilitarian structure able to accommodate two men, though a single Military Police Officer usually occupied the narrow room. The guards of Building D were always older than the Military average elsewhere, had to be to get the Building D detail. No one under the rank of Lieutenant, without a proven record of combat ability, made it anywhere near the property. Lt. Joseph Sentini had stood out front of this mysterious building for the last ten months and yet hadn’t a clue to what type of government business went on inside. He knew better than to ask. Of the comings and goings there were very few men, and never any appointments scheduled. The building bore no official signs stating its name or purpose. Even the security staff, all decorated military men, wore generic navy blue uniforms, belittling the fact that they were armed with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and carbon-fiber .45 caliber pistols. No one wore a name tag, only a single laminated ID card with a number and bar code. His was 226. The bar codes were supposed to match his DNA, but how it was verified he had no idea. Aside from the concrete security booth and the hydraulic yellow gate, Building D looked like any other run down building littered throughout Manhattan. Lt. Sentini knew the gate was touted as able to withstand impact from a speeding 18-wheeler, but he also knew the Ryder truck that tore away half of the Alfred P.Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was parked on the curb out front. Being happily married with two daughters budding into their teenage years, the Lieutenant appreciated the relative safety of guarding an obscure federal structure. Elliot pulled up to him everyday and yet neither man ever spoke outside the limits of their strict exchange. His eyes were a dull, cobalt blue. He had a hard jaw, something akin to what a professional wrestler might adorn, but his manner was softer, not unprofessional, but familiar as it were with their daily morning routine. He leaned in just outside of grabbing range. Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
Elliot muted the final verse to “Bad Moon Rising”. “ID, sir.” Nothing changed; Elliot flashed the same identification card to the same MP. More than twenty years in government service, flashing one laminated ID card or another, and still Elliot hoped for the occasional change from the regimented details. Never to avail. The guard inspected the ID. Similar to his own it bore only the obscure number 4 over a short bar code. The guard spoke with simultaneous recognition and caution. “Section.” His voice remained direct. “Fourth floor.” Elliot responded out of habit, reflecting on the irony that this man would always guard a building that he would never- could never enter beyond the parking garage. Nodding, the sentry stepped back and motioned for someone unseen to lower the yellow barrier. Pulling into his reserved space, Elliot killed the engine and looked up into the concrete wall above the hood of his truck; he stared at the small black lens. It was no larger than an espresso cup, within it a sensor that scanned the vehicle for a microchip planted somewhere within. The chip authorized the vehicle, and if removed would register a “stolen” code that, should a different vehicle drive it in to the garage the unlucky driver wouldn’t know what hit him. The chip also served as a tracking device should the vehicle’s whereabouts become pertinent. The tapping on his window startled him. “Hey, you gonna ditty-bob in there all morning?” It was Steve. Elliot removed his keys and stepped out of the vehicle. “Hey.” “What’s happening, brother?” “Just taking in the last few notes.” Elliot gave Steve a fast wink, both knowing that every sound and movement was monitored as soon as they were within 18 feet of the building’s perimeter. Walking toward the elevators, Elliot ran his fingers through his salty black hair. The twelve years that he had over Steve begun to look like twenty compared to Steve’s full dark brown mane. Both men were of the same height, but in the cowboy boots that Steve always wore he stood an inch over Elliot’s six two. When they reached the elevator two more sentries greeted them. Of the two, one stood at attention while the other brought his AR-15 assault rifle up to his chest. Both stepped in front of the polished steel of the elevator door. “Your tag, sir.” The guard at attention spoke directly at Elliot’s eyes, almost as if he were looking through them. Elliot looked down and noticed that he forgot to clip his card to the outside of his Navy Blue blazer. He did so quickly as Steve tried to entertain the guards. “This guy gets laid one night out of the week and the next day he can’t remember his own name.” Neither soldier appeared amused. “Thank you, sir,” the sentries stepped aside as an unseen laser scanned both men from above and, recognizing their genetic fingerprints, slid open the thick doors. “After you.” Steve swayed out an arm. “No, no,” Elliot mimicked, “After you.” They stepped in and the doors slid closed. “Are we still fishing Saturday?” Steve said. “Sure, if the shit don’t hit the fan again.” Upstairs, both men went through an additional thermal body scan and briefcase inspection separately, as was procedure, and didn’t meet up again until they entered their shared office from opposite ends of the room. “What’s on the agenda this morning?” Elliot surmised the stack of manila folders on his desk. “A bombing in Georgia. A dead cop in Tacoma,” the files were listed by incident, and it was Elliot’s job to process them separately in order to find out what really happened in the case of unsolved federal crimes. From there the investigation would be transferred across the desk to Steve for them both to decide what course of action should be taken, and then order it done. Terms like investigation were dubious within the workings of Building D, as their use is usually used in reverence to the rule of law. Within D, as will be seen, neither the rule of law nor the walls of any court room apply. The files on Elliot’s desk are handed down from Special Operational Commander Jack Warner, an administrative agent who answered directly to a man known only as “The Major”, the superior officer whose identity is left secret for reasons of security. No one of the “Main Five”, as the group in D is called, has ever seen him, and only Jack speaks to him via telephone on a sporadic basis. Mostly orders and incidents to be looked into come down in the form of temporary electronic mail that exists only long enough to be printed once automatically. Then they are sorted through to deem level of importance, red tags are of vital importance, while white the least so, yellow and orange the two stages in between, and then passed on in person to Elliot’s desk. Elliot opened the folder marked with the bright red tag titled “Church in Cordele” and read through quickly. Four people had died in this latest bombing of a Baptist church. No suspects out of the ordinary were seen at any point up to detonation, and the bomb itself was completely self-destructing. What made the case important to the NSA were the minute traces of a classified form of Plastik found in the vestibule of the church. The explosive is so highly evolved that few outside of the upper echelons of the military even know it exists. Its chance discovery was made because one of the victims,William P.H.Murray, happened to be the youngest son of Senator P.H. Murray of Georgia, the most senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In response to the bombing, the Senator demanded the use of every known technology to find and arrest the people responsible. That decree brought the U.S. Military’s top bomb unit out to the scene geared with the technology to detect such a rare explosive. Seven weeks into the investigation still no progress was made, so naturally it ended up on Elliot’s desk. But his investigation would never be brought out in a court of law. No, their job within Building D was to find out who had access to the explosives, not why they were used on the Church. The next step would be to find them and the hole they used to slip the Plastik out of its top secret home, and seal up everything tightly, quietly, and completely. That job would be done by what were affectionately known as Shadow Teams within Building D. Shadow Teams were elite clusters of trained, experienced, unidentifiable agents who would never even know most of their target other than what they looked like and where to find them. It was really quite an operation considering the fact that no more than fifteen people in the entire world knew of the floating technology at its epicenter. A technology that scanned the earth from an array of dozens of satellites floating quietly just above the earth’s outer limits called THOMASS. THOMASS was an anagram for Thermal Overhead Mapping And Surveillance System. The satellite array had been put in place gradually over the first half of the first decade of the new Millennium. A rudimentary form of the technology, implemented by the Bush Administration, was initially designed to monitor rouge countries attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction. During its construction the technology blossomed and the few ranking individuals who knew of its existence soon realized that its penetrating thermal imaging coupled with its digital record capabilities could be used for all sorts of interesting and creative viewing. Funding to expand the system was a problem if they were to keep it secret, but in the wake of 9/11 and the resulting War on Terror, Congress did two things it justified as “temporary necessity” to win back a sense of public safety, it simultaneously raised the level of operational secrecy in the NSA while quadrupling its budget. The public demanded to feel secure, and there was a desperate rush to put the operational tools in place capable of winning the war. The NSA was given a blank check and an underground subway of secrecy called “National Security” to travel in. To be fair, the secret Congressional budget committee that approved THOMASS was led to believe they were replacing an array of outdated spy satellites already in orbit, and had no intention of funding what would become an autonomous Federal Agency even the White House could claim reasonable deniability of. Soon that small band of spy satellites over select regions originally envisioned by the Bush Administration ballooned into an array of thermal telescopes. Using a state-of-the-art gyrokenetic propulsion system, each satellite orbits in a fixed pattern, digitally scanning every square foot of the earth’s crust under its eye. The entire system, the most extensive and expensive in the nation’s “unknown” history, took only three years to be fully deployed, its computer technology quietly catching up to hardware production just in time for Switch Day, the day when the entire world began to be systematically recorded through thermal imaging satellites, second by second, action by action. “We got one here that needs to be processed A.S.A.P.” Elliot handed the folder across the desk to Steve. He grabbed it without removing his eyes from his monitor. “What’s up?” Steve flipped through the file. “This looks hot.” He agreed as he read, “I’ll get Eyes on it right away. What else you got?” “I haven’t gone through them all yet, but that’s the only ‘redtag’. Elliot stood up and buttoned his blazer once. “Come on, I’ll go with you.” Both men were silent as they walked down the cold blue hallway. The doors around them betrayed no sign of life, their only attribute single black biometric scanners similar to the ones that operated the elevator. The pervasive feeling of cameras recording their every step was everywhere, only none were visible. Upon reaching the door at the end of the hall, they waited as the scanners behind the black orbs sprayed them with lasers, looking for the familiar and the authorized. An unseen speaker belted out its request, “Purpose.” “File investigation.” The baby blue door, free of any hinges or doorknob, slid with a slice upward and both men walked into the darkness. Inside they faced a thick glass barrier separating them from Team Member # 4, Simon “Eyes” Fitzgerald. Simon was a former IBM whiz who traded in his clock punching days after an incentive from an NSA recruiter. He spent the next few years learning the ropes somewhere in what he thought looked like Virginia, then was transferred into New York to become what could be argued as one of the most powerful men in the world. He spun around in his black swivel chair to face his visitors, always eager for company. “What’s shakin’ today guys?” he said excitedly as he punched
in the seven digit code allowing both men entry. The lock and vacuum released, the air hissed as the glass barrier slid away and they entered the Monitor Room. Once inside, the glass door slid closed and the auto-lock and vacuum resumed full strength. The only three non-technical pieces of furniture in the room were three chairs; the most comfortable of which was occupied by Simon, who sat in a fully contoured black Herman Miller mesh swivel with a keyboard affixed to the right arm. The other two chairs were standard office chairs, hard, and uncomfortable. The air in the room, always in a vacuum, was stale and dry. Beside the glass wall from where they entered, the three other walls were covered with flat screen monitors and radio equipment from the floor to the ceiling. All of the monitors displayed a different hemispherical section of the earth, one for each of the satellites that circumnavigated the earth, each labeled by the district in which it covered. A digital clock ticked off time across the bottom of each screen to the last nanosecond. Everything else, the floor and the ceiling, even the desktop, was painted midnight metallic blue. On the desk in front of Simon, there was a coffee mug, the inscription Welcome to Roswell, New Mexico: UFO Capitol of the World loudly marking one of his few vacations. Next to the mug was an unusual looking keyboard that only had twenty-six keys: ten numbered zero through nine, and the rest labeled TH1 through TH 16 respectively. For security purposes, no one outside of Simon, Darryl (Simon’s night time counterpart), and The Major knew how to work the entire system. “We need to see Georgia, June 29th through July 3rd.” Elliot said, sparking Simon into action. Elliot tried not to watch as Simon rolled his chair over to the black computer labeled Resources. Elliot had seen this procedure before, but if anyone behind those cameras noticed him watching any certain moves especially closely, he knew he would be out of a job and out of a life quicker than it would take to drive through an empty Lincoln Tunnel. At the computer, Simon punched his way into a digital system that controlled a massive digital library. This digital library held every minute of action, the world over, since Switch Day. When the computer received all of its commands it brought up a clear digital image of the southern United States from about twenty miles in the sky. The date and time were sat firmly across the bottom of the screen. Simon looked down into the file, and upon finding the geographic location of the church, he cross-referenced the information with a set of codes found at another small monitor to his right. Using these new codes that corresponded with the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates of the church, he brought up a digitally reproduced image from almost 600 feet. It was a Sunday and the moving image showed a steady stream of people gathered around the small church. The viewer could clearly see the pastor standing out front in conversation with a few of the women of the parish. As mass was about to begin, the three of them quietly watched as that same pastor called his parishioners into the white church. The system was so accurate Elliot could see that the gray roof of the church needed to be re-shingled. “Set it on skim, Eyes, I need to watch this for awhile.” Elliot said as he pulled up his chair to the monitor. He knew how to operate the basic functions of the replay from doing so too many times, but protocol demanded that Simon take them through the first few steps. Simon punched the yellow key with the double right arrow printed on it. The image began to move at four time’s actual occurrence, condensing the entire day to only 6 hours. Under the monitor was a small data screen that displayed the amount of time needed to watch all of the recorded material. The file brought up represented all time between 7 am on the 29th through midnight on the 3rd, the screen read: Total view time: Actual: 113 hours / Condensed 28.25 hours. This was too much time so Elliot decided to narrow down the search. “Give me only the times when the sensor picks up human movement in and around the church.” Simon responded accordingly, again pounding quickly into the blackened keyboard, characterized only by an exclusive form of the Braille language, specifically invented for the THOMASS system. After about 30 seconds, the computer had condensed the images to only those times when it could detect a human presence. The system was so acute, that it could distinguish the difference between human and animal circulatory systems, and label the type of species scanned. When Simon punched the enter key, the small data screen under the monitor read: Total view time: Actual: 50 hours / Condensed: 12.5 hours; still too much time to sift through. “Give me only those times when there are less than four people detected around the building.” Elliot said without diverting his attention from the screen. Steve stood behind him quietly reading the rest of the file at hand. Upon redefining the search, the data screen read: Actual: 5 hours / Condensed: 1.25. Elliot pulled his chair up closer. “OK, this is what I need, play it, I can do the rest.” Simon hit the play key and rolled back over to his desk. Elliot, familiar with the controls, went to work. Steve, still behind him reading, spoke to no one in particular, “I am going to go back to my desk and look over the rest of those files. Call me if you find anything.” Simon looked back into the wake of Steve’s absence, as if to prove he was gone, then leaned into Elliot with a blank paper in his hand, “Before you get into that, read this,” he said, and handed Elliot a sheet of paper with faint markings upon its face. Elliot wasn’t sure it was marked at all until he could read the water colored message within the grains. Simon had developed the unique form of printing with a laptop-sized device that was originally designed to print watermarks into fake passports. He obtained the machine from a friend working in Intelligence. The highly classified gift was a symbol of gratitude for a technical favor Simon gave the agent allowing him to tap into electronic safes and spy on the foreign accounts of suspected drug dealers. The trade was secret, as was the friendship, but that didn’t stop Simon from altering his new toy to print messages that he didn’t want the ever-present cameras in the M.R. to read. Holding the sheet above a soft yellow light placed under the page, Elliot read silently: “This is probably no biggy, but I’ve been finding weird evidence someone is tampering with THOMASS files.” The note’s implication sent a shiver down Elliot spine. “Don’t worry about anything, probably just a few glitches in the system. I only wanted you to know.” “You going to do anything about it?” Elliot asked aloud. Simon shook his head. “Nothing to do about nothing, just keeping busy here.” Simon smiled, took the paper from Elliot, and leaned back toward his control pad. He slipped the paper into a slot labeled ‘shredder’ by his left knee. The shedder actually did not shred at all; instead it disintegrated the page with an onslaught of ultra high frequency sound that bombarded the pulp to oblivion. The implications of such a discovery would mean death for everyone in the Main Five. Knowing this, Elliot trusted Simon would keep any findings from being discovered and quelled the rush of any building worry within his mind. For the next hour, Elliot poured over the digital video from above the church. The images appear in full color. The satellites used thermal technology to cut through obstructions like ceilings, walls, floors, forest canopies, etc. These interior images falter a bit because the supercomputer processing the information filled in where the heat sensors fall short. Because important evidence might be lost should the computer simply “paint” its own scene, very limited changes were made once the thermals were engaged. Sitting there in the M.R., Elliot looked down upon rural Georgia. As the condensed time passed, the file replayed the church’s pastor unlocking the doors every morning at 7am to allow morning prayers for three or four people. The pastor remained inside while a flux of people came and went until about 3pm, when he too finally left for the day. Sunday of course was busier, when the pastor came at 6am and left at 4pm. But most of this was discarded in the search, as there were too many people present for any bomber to successfully plant a bomb unnoticed within the vestibule of the church. By the time the replay reached Wednesday morning, Elliot’s eyes burned from watching the sped up motion of time on the 21-inch plasma flat-screen. When he paused the image and looked over to Simon, it looked as if the room was moving in slow motion. “Find anything?” Eyes knew he wasn’t supposed to ask, but he did anyway, more to put a break in his day than to find out the answers. Elliot did not respond to his inquiry. “How have you been, Simon?” Elliot always used his real name when they weren’t discussing a current file. “I’m good, keeping busy, you know.” An “operator” like Simon was not allowed much freedom in the way of travel and acquaintances. In retribution for their commitment to the job (and to eliminate the possibility of having him become an uncontrollable liability at the hands of a technology that shredded some of the most fundamental elements of the United States Constitution), both men at the helm of THOMASS’ controls, Simon and Darryl, were paid exceedingly well and were allowed almost anything they requested. Anything, except of course, a life of their own. Elliot wondered how much it took Simon to keep from wanting a life of his own. He was lucky to be the only team member to have had a family before being assigned this assignment. The deal was that you remained as you were when you signed on; married, better stay happy. Single, better stay lonely because no one was allowed to bring new people into the ring. Getting back to the monitor, Elliot depressed the play button and began again. Wednesday started out sooner than the predictable 7am though, as the early morning light cast long shadows in every direction of the church. The digital clock on the screen read: 05:13:49:016. The system, designed to begin the image 30 seconds before the selected time frame, showed only the roof of a quiet church. He knew he found his mark as two men, dressed entirely in camouflage fatigues, emerged from the dense forest surrounding the church. Elliot let the image play out in real time as the two men professionally encircled the church separately, meeting again at a side window. Within seconds one of the men managed to open the office window, propping it up with an object too small to recognize from the altitude selected, both men slipped smoothly into the building. Now, in standard mode, the men were shielded from Elliot’s view. “Eyes, I need you to kick in the thermals.” Obliging, Simon rolled over to the keyboard and began adjusting the image’s preferences. “How many levels do you need?” Simon’s eyes never left the screen, while Elliot began looking for the blue prints to the church enclosed within the manila folder. “One, it’s only a two storey building with a storage room built above the vestibule and office.” Levels referred to volumes of space, not architectural stories. The gray roof slowly disintegrated into digital memory to the command of clicking keys, and left only the sight of cardboard boxes neatly stacked against one wall. In the corner he noticed a clothes rack half filled with a thick streak of white alter boy smocks. Clicking the same keys again, Simon eliminated that floor to expose two figures dressed in camouflage, frozen in digital time as the computer waited for the command to continue. The two men were still in the office, making their way to the door. “Is this a good altitude?” Simon asked. “No, bring it in to twenty feet, I want them to feel my breath on their necks.” Simon did so and Elliot felt as if he were the eye of God Himself, looking in on His children as they did their misdeeds. “OK, play it.” Simon tapped the play button and again the silent men moved into action. The man in the rear, who from this distance was obviously wider and taller than the suspect who seemed to be leading the operation, slipped off a back pack and laid it on the desk. The shorter one, moving with an unquestionable familiarity to this type of mission, moved to and through the open office door that led into the vestibule. Keeping his eyes on the one at the desk, Elliot watched as he slipped out a small light colored container. The silence was dreamlike as the men worked their destruction under THOMASS’s unsettling omnipresence. Images were easy to record from twenty miles high; sound was another problem, but Elliot knew that it was only a matter of time before technology had that part figured out as well. The tall perpetrator moved into the vestibule and affixed the blue object under the eastern wall, behind which sat most of the congregation when services were being performed. According to the blueprint it was the location of a major structural support. These men weren’t looking to make a statement; they were looking to level the place. The Plastik affixed, both men retreated the way they had come in, and left the church looking the way they found it, even careful enough to check the windowpane for any marks possibly left from propping open the window. Pulling the “eye” back up to fifty feet, Elliot watched the two perpetrators step back into the cover of the Georgia pines. Only this time, with the thermal imaging engaged, they simply walked exposed until out of the tight frame. Elliot froze the image and rubbed his eyes. For the next few hours, at most a week, Elliot knew exactly what needed to be done. First, he would digitally ‘tag’ the suspects, allowing the computer to follow them everywhere they went as long as they physically exist. He can also ask the computer to bring up every image of the ‘tagged’ individuals on record. Then he merely had to ‘follow’ them long enough to finds out their associates, their contacts, possibly even their motives (although this was not in the mission statement), and ultimately their source of the Plastik. All of this would take time, but in no more than ten days by Elliot’s estimate, using the refining abilities of THOMASS, he would place a call to the Eighth Floor. ‘The Eighth Floor’ was just a term they used regarding calls made on case files. The calls themselves could have gone to India for all they knew, for the Main Five was denied access to any floor other than the fifth. His call, wherever it really went, would set it motion a series of calls, and perhaps even a meeting to exchange pictures, identities, and locations of the targets. A elite group of classified personal dubbed a ‘Shadow Team’ would be put together through electronic mail, secure phone calls, and covert drop-offs. The entire process would involve perhaps a dozen people, and yet none of them on any side of the set up would know the entire picture of who, why, or how this all came together. As Elliot ran the all-too-common scenario in his head, he figured that the two men he watched from above, like a secret hawk spying on it’s prey, would be dead by the end of the month. Protocol dictated that red-tagged files like the church bombing be handled immediately. Part of this process was an initial report submitted within 24 hours detailing probable sources, leads, and most efficient courses of action, and that meant working late. Damn, Elliot thought, tonight’s game. Don’t forget to call home this time, he reminded himself, then, swallowing hard, he looked back to the main screen and released the past from its pause.
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