Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (39 page)

Jared was excited to show Josh the
newest results from the AI trading algorithm. “Josh, your AI is
particularly useful in trading oil and currencies.”

“
That’s awesome, Dad.
How’s the property acquisition going?”

“
It’s been a real
challenge. I’m working anonymously, through a real estate agent
recommended by a friend. My agent is representing that the buyers
are Arab.
He
’s made me promise that someone in my shell companies
be
Arab.

“
We’ve
identified
a couple of sellers, but the
price is exorbitant. They’re about one-fourth to one-third of a
mile from your geo-marker. So, there’d be a lot of digging.
There're
many
bidders for property in the
neighborhood. And o
f
course,
the Arabs want to keep the real
estate under their control.”

Josh
sighed in frustration. “Don’t worry,” said Jared,
“for the right price, someone will always sell.”

“
Mr. Adler,” said Becca,
“this is the list of items Professor McMillan wanted.”

“
How was the Professor?”
asked Jared, reviewing the inventory.

Josh replied, “He’ll be
able to go to Jerusalem right after the holidays. He won’t tell
anyone that he’s looking for the Ark. It’s bad enough that he’ll be
conducting a non-sanctioned
archeological
dig in Israel. It’s
highly illegal.”

“
The Professor is on
sabbatical all next
semester, so
he’ll have time,” added Becca. “
Our
archeological
expert seems dubious about the location, but
he
did educate
us about the site. The Professor doesn’t have a problem working
with El Jefe’s crew, as long as he’s in charge of locating the Ark.
We’re planning on leaving the country a few days after Christmas.
Did you talk to El Jefe?”

“
Yes, he’s
all on board
,”
replied Jared. “For his assistance, I waived his hedge fund
management fee of 2% of the
balance
and 30% of the profits. I
comped it for a year. He’s thrilled. It’s going to save him
millions of dollars. El Jefe will supply his best mining engineer,
and four of his most trusted workers to help with the tunnel
construction. I didn’t tell him what we’re looking
for,
and he
didn’t ask.

“
So with you two, the
Professor, and the Mexicans; the total
team number
will be eight. There
should be enough people that you can keep digging 24 hours a day.
I’m still working on lining up the remodeling crew. The Mexicans
are planning on arriving in early December, provided I close on the
property quickly enough.”

“
As you know, El Jefe has
some experience with digging secret tunnels. He said the first
goal
would
be to dig the excavation shaft down to 40 or 50 feet. Then,
they’ll build and reinforce a staging area. He advised
you guys
to stay
underground as much as possible. He says his mining engineer is
extremely skilled at hiding the entry for the tunnel.”

“
Eww!” screeched Becca.
“That makes me so claustrophobic!”

“
Yeah,” said Josh. “That
ventilation system better
be
rock
solid,
and we’ll need to dig a
proper
latrine.”

Jared said, “I’ve set up a
warehouse in Jerusalem to serve as storage for all the equipment.
Oh, and I got you these.” Jared handed Josh and Becca over-sized
envelopes, sealed by a drawstring. Both of them
untied
the
pouch
and
emptied its contents.

Out popped extremely
high-end, fake Canadian passports and a manila folder. The folder
contained pictures and their individual back stories. The pictures
were of Josh and Becca. But, they were professionally Photoshopped
to include Canadian landmarks. The passport photos were also
theirs,
but
looked slightly distorted. The passport names were
wholly
different. Written
on
Josh’s passport was the moniker, Abraham
Benjamin. He was a
Canadian
Jew
. Becca was named, Sarah
Boucher.

“
These are CIA quality
passports and back stories. Everything will check out as long, as
you correctly recite the details. Memorize them,” he said,
lingering on the word,
memorize
.

Josh looked at Becca’s passport.
“Really Dad…Abraham and Sarah?”

Jared laughed. “How could the Israelis
not let you into the country?”

“
Ok,” said Josh, “that
gives us eight weeks to keep working our plan. Becca will continue
to improve her disinformation campaign software. We planted seeds
that we’re engaged and celebrating with a cross country trip in a
new A-Car, after Christmas. I’ll try to add some
deep
learning
features to Becca’s disinformation program. And I can try to help
you make more
money,
while you lock down the property and the
equipment.”

“
On it,” replied
Jared.

“
Mr. Adler, how’s El
Jefe’s crew going to get into Israel?” asked Becca.

“
They’re all Jews. Their
story is that they’re all traveling to celebrate the Hanukah in the
Holy Land.”

*

At the Fort, intelligence from Tal
Azan trickled in throughout the morning. By the afternoon, the
scope and size of the victory became clear. Additionally, America
was going to the polls for a Presidential election. Despite
Dabiq-gate, President Thomas Goodson seemed destined for an easy
re-election. While the incident caused embarrassment, the nation
blamed Walt Black—not Goodson.

The POTUS’ quick firing of the DCIA
did much to quell the outrage. Black played the part of the good
soldier falling on the sword for his Commander and Chief. The
Administration also overemphasized the success of the retaliatory
air strikes for the contractor’s deaths. And a full-scale ground
war in Syria remained extremely unpopular with the
electorate.

America’s priorities in
2020 were continued prosperity and jobs, followed by security from
terrorists. After a sluggish start in 2016, the economy improved
each year, growing by nearly 3% last quarter. Consumers enjoyed
many economic benefits. I
nflation
and interest rates
were capped
.
Technology—especially driven by advancements in AI—was enhancing
productivity and quality of life. Oil prices were
low
due to US
fracking.
America was on track to
become energy independent
within the next
few years.
In
addition
, more electric cars were
being
produced, at reasonable
prices.
Solar power was also drastically
improving.

Goodson ran on the
relatively robust economy and also staked out
an attractive
immigration
position. Harkening his inner JFK, Goodson challenged America to
return to the moon by 2025, to prepare the way for Mars by 2029.
The ever
decreasing
cost of space flight also helped advance the
goal.

POTUS didn’t just want to
walk on the moon
anymore;
he wanted America to establish a colony of moon
bases to research many items. Foremost on this list was jump
starting the process of space solar power—SSP. Using a process
similar to how Flashcharge powered the Swarmbots, SSP would
convert
electricity into microwaves.

SSP
absorbed energy from solar
panels on the moon,
converted
it into microwaves, and then
beamed the energy to the US electric grid. Fracking wasn’t a long
term solution. And electric power consumption was doing nothing but
increasing—especially with the projected growth of the robotics
industry. Goodson hoped that SSP could augment US energy production
by mid-century.

The General loved the moon
challenge. Unbeknownst to the world, there were ulterior motives.
The President wanted to use the moon as
an essential
component of a
sophisticated
array of
telecommunications
and attack
satellites.

The military was looking
to space as a new frontier. It could play a
vital
role in reducing the
vulnerability of the US Navy. The
Navy,
especially its aircraft
carriers,
was
becoming more susceptible to inexpensive and powerful anti-ship
missiles.

Today, General
Shields was working from his NSA office suite. He monitored news of
the election and reports regarding Rahmati’s victory.
Shields was planning tomorrow’s hectic schedule
with Lin Liu.

“
If Rahmati uploads a
video of that battle to A-Tube, the Ayatollah better watch out.
We’re carefully watching Iranian SIGINT from both the population
and the Revolutionary Guards. Rahmati’s popularity is incredible.
Our assets in Iran confirm the SIGINT. If the Revolutionary Guards
does not quell demonstrators, we’re liable to see the Iranian
Revolution 2.0.”

“
What do you mean?”
replied Lin. “I thought the Revolutionary Guards reported to the
Ayatollah.”

“
Well, they do.
They
do
until
they
don’t. The Revolutionary Guards
are like a Wall Street bank, the Pentagon, and the defense industry
combined. And they
covet
the money the mullahs control. Our intel shows
that key members of the Revolutionary Guards, including their
commanding General—Farhad Javan—are very pro-Rahmati. They look at
Rahmati and see dollar signs.” The General laughed. “I mean,
Iranian Rials.”

“
Would that be good or
bad?”

“
We see it as an
improvement. But Rahmati’s popularity scares us. Since World War I,
we’ve played Muslims against Muslims. Rahmati is causing some
reassessments in the Administration. We all shudder at the thought
of what a unified Islamic community could accomplish.”

“
What does Rahmati think?”
asked Lin. “Will he betray the Ayatollah?”

“
That’s the
billion-dollar
question,” said the General, dramatically. “We don’t know
what he’s thinking, other than what he says on social media. The
Quds Force operates with a lot of
autonomy
. Revolutionary Guards
leadership gives them a wide latitude. That freedom
empowers
them to
use their best
judgment
to accomplish the mission. They only communicate
with Tehran via human couriers. And we haven’t been able to
intercept any of their human
messengers
. Recently, we’ve seen one
piece of SIGINT pop up
a number
of
times. It has our Persian analysts
buzzing. We think it’s a code word.”

“
What’s the code
word?”

“
AVICENNA,” replied
Shields

Lin thought about the word
for a moment. “Ahh, the ancient Persian doctor-scientist. Maybe
it’s a medical breakthrough? Or, more darkly,
perhaps
it’s a chemical
warfare agent?”

“
How’d you know that?
asked the General, amazed at the breadth of Lin’s mind.
“
Anyway
,
we’re a little concerned. I don’t buy this peace, prosperity,
and
daisies
act from Rahmati.”

“
I don’t know, I kind of
like him, especially his eyes. Changing the subject, how is Defense
Innovations going?”

“
Pretty well. I’ve picked
up
10
new
companies for next year’s class. We can down-select the most
promising for funding.
I’m
done
with Prosthetic Thought. Their
thought controller for VR is crap. But I renewed everyone else in
the Accelerator. Gecko Insurance loves their Gamification software.
The Gamer system is reducing costs substantially for network
monitoring. Flashcharge is
operating flawlessly for
the
Swarmbots.

“
And, Swarmbot has made
all the changes I’ve requested. We’re going to deploy the next 60,
4Gen Swarmbots to Caliphate controlled cities in Iraq and Syria.
Chris Fischer is already working on 5Gen.

“
We’ll run a split test
and see where we achieve the best results. 30 of the Swarmbots are
going to be controlled by Gamers over the Internet. We dumbed down
their
Fog of War
version, so it includes no classified information.
CYBERCOM volunteers will control the
other 30
, in the
second-floor
SCIF. They’ve already
completed the extension of the VR room in the SCIF, to accommodate
more CYBERCOM Gamers.