Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (48 page)

“
We’ve gotten a lot of
work
done
in six weeks. I don’t know
exactly
what you guys are up to, but
judging from the amount of dirt you’re moving and money
you’re
spending; it
must be huge. You need to be careful. I served in
the Mossad for many years.” Mossad was the Israeli CIA.

“
The
mining
engineer is sharp.
And I’m confident in the Professor. But, I wouldn’t trust any of
the others. I haven’t caught them doing anything yet, but it’s a
sixth sense I’ve developed after working 20 years as a
katsa
.” Katsa
was Hebrew for ‘collections officer,’ the Mossad’s equivalent of a
CIA field agent.

“
Alright,” said Josh.
“We’ll keep an eye on them.”

Ismael continued, “So far,
the hardest part
about
this project has been making sure
everything
stays
powered
. We installed high-performance
solar panels on the
roof,
so that’s helping a bit. Between the tunneling
drones, lights, and the ventilation system; you need a lot of power
in the hole.”

“
We’re splitting it up
between solar
energy
, the
regular
electric grid, and
generators. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.
We also ran fiber down
the entry
shaft,
so you’ll have high-speed Internet
access down there.” Ismael led them into a first-floor lavatory,
with an over-sized Jacuzzi tub. He shut the door behind
them.

“
Why’d you take us to
the
bathroom
?” asked Becca.

“
Watch,” said Ismael. The
former Mossad agent rotated the bathtub faucet to the left. The
twist activated a hydraulic system. The tub sprang
up,
until it
stood vertically in the air. Ismael then whirled the tub 180
degrees.
This allowed
unimpeded access to an
eight-foot-square
, steel
platform.

“
Get on this deck and
squat on all fours. When you’re comfortable, press this button.
You’re going straight down for 30 feet. Then, you’ll find another
platform. Step on it, and do the same thing. It’ll take you down to
your bunker, or whatever it is you’re building down
there.”

The couple did as Ismael
said. Becca pushed the button. As the platform lowered, they passed
wooden two-by-fours,
which
reinforced
the vertical shaft. Electrical
conduit, dim lights, and thick PVC pipe ran on the far end of
the
limestone
shaft.

After a three story drop,
Becca and Josh came to the second metal deck. The wall of
the
shaft
enlarged. The couple scooted to the other platform and
repeated the process. As they got closer to the bottom, sounds of
machinery and an air hammer could be heard in the distance. Becca
looked back to the old platform. Now, she could tell that they’d
just exited an industrial scissor lift. They were on another. The
explorers walked off the platform, as it came flush with a concrete
slab floor.

“
Ello
Luv
,” said Professor
McMillan. “Welcome to the City of David.”

“
Professor!” Becca rushed
towards the tall Brit and embraced him. “I’m so glad to see you,”
she said, over the noise of the excavation.

“
Crumbs
! Unless I knew you were coming, I wouldn’t have recognized
you. You have yourself quite a blonde bombshell of a girlfriend,
there Josh.”

“
You got that right
Professor. I sing ‘O Canada’ nearly every morning,” said
Josh,
almost
tripping over the rails as he shook McMillan’s hand. “That’s
more rails than I expected.”

“
Aye
,” said the Professor. “How was your trip?”

“
Aside from some anxious
moments getting across the US border, we’re shocked at how easy it
was. There were no incidents whatsoever,” answered
Becca.

“
That’s right
brilliant
. I’ve been
here a little over eight days now. The others arrived some weeks
ago.” McMillan pointed towards the tunnel
apex.
“This team has
really
knuckled under
. They’re hard workers.
The t
wo tunnel-boring robots work
side-by-side to dig the main
excavation
tunnel. Each robot expels dirt onto its minecart. That’s why
there are
two
sets of tracks. The Mexican diggers take the earth from the
minecarts and stuff it into these sacks. Loading and unloading dirt
is the most manually intensive job down here.” The Professor
pointed to the bags that resembled jumbo-sized potato sacks. “With
the help of the
blokes
up top, we cram the
sacks
onto the scissor
lifts.”

Becca inhaled deeply and
examined the anteroom more
carefully
. It was almost the exact size
of the storage unit in Brownsville. Steel pillars attached to metal
girders reinforced the staging area’s roof, at intervals of every
six feet. “The air down here is better than I expected—just a
little musty. I’m glad we wore sweatshirts, but it’s not too
cold.”

Three-by-three wooden
supports and latticed mesh reinforced the
bedrock walls of the staging room. The mesh
reminded Becca of cargo nets.
The main excavation
tunnel
was on the west side of the
staging area.
Electrical conduit and
ventilation pipes, attached by C-clamps, hung from the top of
the
tunnel
. They ran the length of the
burrow
and
would
grow, as the passageway
lengthened.

“
Y’all have made a lot of
progress
,
” said Becca, impressed.

“
Yup
,” replied McMillan. He looked like
a British
version of Indiana
Jones, with the hat and satchel.
Maybe
he
did that on purpose,
thought
Becca.
Indiana did find the
Ark
.

The Professor pointed to
the leading end of the tunnel. “You can thank El Minero, down
there. He’s
an
extraordinarily
talented mining engineer.
He knows more about tunnels than I’ve ever forgotten. The
bruv
is a genius. Let me
introduce you. But, put these on first.”

McMillan gave Becca and
Josh protective mining helmets, with lights attached to the crown.
They walked together toward the tunnel apex.
Currently,
the tunnel was a
little over 10 feet long. The Professor tapped El Minero on the
back. The mining engineer was short, pudgy, and clean cut.
He
possessed
a
happy, round
face. The two excavators kept working. Becca now
had a better view of the tunnel-boring robots.

They looked like miniature
armored tanks, with
egg-shaped
bodies. Each robot had two,
think oval
treads that
they used to grip the earth and propel themselves
forward. At the front of the robots, circular cutting heads spun
into the
rock
. The cutting heads were specially designed to slice through
limestone. The back of the
robot
expelled dirt and pulverized
bedrock
into
the minecarts.

T
he
boring
robots created a tunnel that was
five feet, by four and one-half feet. El Minero planned on
reinforcing the
shaft
with wood, every 10 to 15 feet. One of the
excavators extended the height of the tunnel’s crown by
a foot, or so.
He used an air hammer and
pickax. Still, the Professor was in a constant stoop, as he
moved through the tunnel
. The other
digger
manipulated the dirt, minecarts, and potato sacks.

After
introductions,
El Minero
said, “These robots are amazing. We’re a lot further after six
weeks of
excavation than
I planned.
This
is
my first time using robots. It’s much
faster than a human excavator. And they don’t need
siestas
. El Jefe will
love these
automatas
.”

“
Why are you manually
extending the height of the tunnel?” asked Becca.

“
Juan is just making sure
the
tube
is more
stable,
by angling
it,
” replied El Minero. “Each robot has
three, self-guided probes that it deploys into the rock. They’re
like large drill bits. They bore forward in a star configuration.
As they burrow, the probes use onboard sensors to search for
existing tunnels and artifacts.”

An Israeli, high-tech
defense company developed
the
robot and probe platform. Israeli
armed forces used them to locate Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza. Hamas used
the subterranean passages to sneak into Israel and bypass border
crossings, just like Becca and Josh in Brownsville.

“
Where are the other
diggers?” asked Josh.

“
The Juans are
sleeping
up
top. We switch them out every 12
hours,
” said El Minero.

“
They’re all named Juan?”
asked Becca, puzzled.

“
They are to you,” replied
El Minero, with a smile. “The probes communicate with their host.
Before they run out of
charge,
they reverse and re-attach
themselves. Hopefully, the robots will quickly locate the old
tunnel system.

“
We’re digging down, at
roughly a
10-degree
angle, in case we hit groundwater. If you see any
water, run to the lift and get out! I don’t like being so close to
the Gihon Spring. With these robots, I estimate that we’ll be able
to dig 20 feet per day. It’s twice as fast as manually digging. If
we’re able to maintain that rate, we’ll be at your geo-marker in 45
to 60 days.”

After listening to a few
more details, Becca excused herself and went back to the anteroom.
She set up a folding table and chair set. The hacker used the table
for her comms equipment and laptop. She connected the
fiber-optic
cable
that Ismael
had
run down the excavation shaft, to a specially configured fiber
router. Becca assembled the router herself and shipped it to
Israel. She was afraid of secret backdoors in any routers she
bought retail.

A half-hour later, Becca
was securely communicating over a high-speed Internet
connection
. She
checked the status of the A-Car. It was parked at a SuperNight
Motel in Arizona, near the Grand Canyon.

*

Rahmati went to Persia for his weekly
meeting with Javan.

“
I can’t wait until we can
meet in Babylon,” said Rahmati. “The Chinese are making great
progress. The fiber should be complete in a few weeks or so. Then,
we can start securely collaborating at 300,000 kilometers a
second.”

Javan replied,
“I agree
,
that’ll be a
great
day. Suleiman and Rodina are advancing
extraordinarily. We own the military
comms
of the 5
^th
and
6
^th
Fleet. We were so focused on the benefits of
cracking
AES; we underestimated the benefits of breaking SHA. Not only
does the SHA hack give us the ability to secretly modify log files,
but we have all the SYSADMIN passwords. We’re superusers on every
DoD and intelligence network. If we wanted, we could change the
contents of documents without altering the digital signature. Or we
could send fake emails. Or we could spoof the digital certificates
of any software company to spread malware.”

Rahmati laughed.
“Let’s keep those things in our back pocket. Each of those things
might raise the visibility of our attack, if they were
discovered.
We want to keep Suleiman and
Rodina a secret for as long as possible
. But can you imagine, we have the ability to modify every
classified document in the United States? Unbelievable!”

“
Indeed. Just
being a superuser lets us work through all the covert programs,
without even worrying about AES or public key encryption. It’s a
much faster way to get the information. We started
with their TOP SECRET programs. Muhammad, we’re
in possession of some shocking secrets. American’s would probably
impeach the President if we disclosed some of these
things.”