Dark Coup (33 page)

“You should hear some of the other recordings,” Sanford said.  “In retrospect, I’m sure even the Colonel would look back and realize just how badly he was manipulated.  At the time, though, I’m sure it all seemed perfectly reasonable, every step of the way.”

“I wanted to believe,” West said and shook his head.  “That’s the worst part; I wanted to believe that what we were doing was right.”

“Stop,” Sanford said, and then reminded West of his rights.  Whether or not you agreed with Miranda, it was the right thing for
him
to do.

“I don’t want an attorney,” West said.  “There’s no defense, so it doesn’t matter.”

“I have to take care of some things,” Sanford said, “but I’ll be back later, hopefully today.  Don’t do anything stupid.”

West snorted and then sat down on his bunk.  “I think it’s a little late for that,” he said.

…

“I kind of did that already,” Sparky said, “didn’t I?”

“Not exactly,” Stewart said.  “You gave
us
a way to communicate relatively securely, but you have to know about it, to basically be invited into the system, and it really helps to be a HAM radio operator already.”

Sparky bit the inside of his cheek.  “So not just us,” he said.  “This is supposed to be for everyone?  Nationwide?”

“That’s the idea,” Stewart said with a nod.  We lost telephone, commercial radio, cell phone, and even satellite-phone service over a year ago.  We need something to take its place.”

…

“But that’s what you already did,” Tuttle said.

“That’s what
I
said,” Sparky replied.  “I’m completely tapped when it comes to ideas right now.”

“No,” Tuttle said and then repeated herself.  “I’m serious, that’s what you already built, and even then you didn’t reinvent the wheel.  You don’t need to do it
again
, just tweak it some, maybe, and make it a little more user friendly.”

Sparky tapped his lips with a finger as he thought about it.

“I’m
not
writing a Windows program,” he said finally, which got a laugh from Tuttle.

“Well,” she said, “that
would
be more user friendly.  You’re willing to disenfranchise eighty percent of the population?”

“Politics and religion aside,” Sparky said, “if I have to make something that the average person can use, it has to run on whatever hardware we can find.  Linux is going to be a whole lot less picky and resource intensive.”

Sparky was quiet for a few seconds and then continued.  “Maybe I could write it in Java,” he said.

“Yeah,” Tuttle replied, “like
that
wouldn’t be a resource hog!”

“Heh, yeah, point,” Sparky said.  “Would we actually need to encrypt traffic though?”

He answered his own question before Tuttle could reply.  “Yeah,” he said, “we do, or at least it should be an option.”

“Why,” Tuttle asked.

“Fourth Amendment,” Sparky said, “sort of.  People have the right of a reasonable expectation of privacy.  The encryption isn’t necessarily there to hide the contents of the message but because the contents are nobody else’s business.  The FCC rules for a HAM operators were, I think, intentionally written to be a little vague on the topic of encryption so that people would err on the side of caution.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tuttle said.  “I’ve argued that very thing more times than I care to count.  Technically, we could always use encryption as long as the
purpose
of the encryption wasn’t to obscure the meaning, but to prevent non-licensed access to the ‘network’.  As long as we were using an encryption mechanism that was publicly documented, we weren’t breaking the rules.”

“So that gives me a couple of ideas,” Sparky said.  “Implementing it large-scale like this, though, that’s going to be a
lot
of work.  I don’t know if I can do it, honestly.”

“Maybe not,” Tuttle said, “but
we
can.”

“You don’t need to get sucked into this,” Sparky said.

“So you just called me to complain,” Tuttle asked.

“No,” Sparky started, and then paused for a few seconds.  “Okay, that’s fair.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t welcome the help, and I really was out of ideas.  It hadn’t occurred to me to just keep using what we have and maybe make it easier to use.  I wasn’t trying to dump this on you, though.”

“You’re not,” Tuttle said.  “But if it makes you feel any better, I’m volunteering to help, and frankly, I’m intrigued.  It sounds like fun.”

Sparky snorted.  “You’re sick,” he said, “or we need to work on your definitions.”

“Meh,” Tuttle said, “guilty on both counts.”

…

“That seems a little extreme,” Stewart said, “don’t you think?  I mean, making people learn Morse Code?”

“With all due respect,” Sparky said.

“Which means none at all because I’m too stupid to see the nose on my face,” Stewart interrupted, “much less the glaring hole in what I just said?”

“With all due respect,” Sparky repeated, “if I thought having people learn Morse code was excessive, I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

Stewart frowned a little and Mallory quirked her mouth into the not-quite-smile people make when they’re trying not to laugh.

“Ok,” Stewart said, “fair point, but that’s not all there is to it, right?”

“No, Sergeant,” Sparky answered.  “It’s actually just a very small part of it, but it’s as important as having a phone that could send and receive text messages used to be in a disaster.  Morse is…tiny, and uses hardly any bandwidth compared to voice.  That’s why it was so popular with HAMs on the lower frequencies.”

“But to answer your question,” Sparky continued when he realized he was on the verge of geeking out and losing everyone in the room, “we’re suggesting that we simply extend the technology we’ve already deployed by making it a little easier to use.”

“We,” Mallory asked.

“Oops,”
Sparky thought and took a breath.

“Sergeant Tuttle and I,” he said.

“This would be the same Sergeant Tuttle,” Mallory began, “that found the setup at Fort Campbell?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Sparky said, “the same.  She and I…”

“She,” Stewart interrupted.  “As in a girl?”

“Technically, she’s a woman,” Sparky said, used to the jibes about him being a geek and never finding a girlfriend.  “There
are
female geeks after all–they’re just…rare.”

This time Mallory did laugh.  “Ok,” she said with a smile, “what’s the first step?  And it’s ok to get your geek on if you need to.”

“Power,” Sparky said, pointing to the table where he had his equipment set up.  “Every unit is going to need power.  We’ve scrounged a number of solar panels over the last year, but I’m sure there’re thousands more out there to be had.”

“But that’s only good during the day,” he continued.  “We’ll need at least one battery for each unit, and each one will need a charge controller.  If I had a fully stocked Radio Shack it would be pretty simple to make them.  As it is I have to disassemble anything and everything electronic that we don’t need to find some of the parts.  The biggest thing holding me back from making more is the IC, or integrated circuit.  It’s simple, and if I have to I can
build
an alternative, but I’d rather not because that just means more parts that I may or may not have, and would make the charge controller really big.”

“How big is it now,” Stewart asked.

“About one-and-a-half times the size of an old Altoids tin,” Sparky said.

“How big would it be if you can’t find all the parts you want,” Mallory asked.

“Have you ever seen the movie Back to the Future,” Sparky asked, referring to the giant replacement that the Professor had created out of vacuum tubes for the tiny, blown-out IC.  “Ok, not quite that big, but the whole reason for ICs is to make things smaller.  It would probably be about the size of an ammo can.”

“Why make the whole system available to everyone, encryption and all,” Stewart asked, and Mallory let Sparky answer, although she knew what he was going to say.

“The same reason we have encryption,” Sparky said.  “The same reason party lines replaced ‘Mable the Operator’ and individual phone lines eventually replaced party lines.  By its very nature, radio is a shared medium, but people want to have at least
some
semblance of privacy when they communicate.”

Stewart wanted to ask about allowing the military to have access to the private keys and certificates, but knew that was a path that none of them were willing to go down.

“Each unit will have the ability to create its own certificate, too,” Sparky said, almost as if he could read Stewart’s mind.  “Users will have to share their public key in the open, but that’s not a big deal.  It will take some educating for people to trust the system, but what ‘new’ technology doesn’t require that?”

“How long before you can start putting these together,” Mallory asked.

“Sergeant Tuttle is already working on building more radios,” Sparky said, “and trying to find laptops that we can use.  And they actually did have a Radio Shack down there that had its inventory…appropriated about nine months ago.  She’s making a charge controller for each radio she’s able to put together.”

“Then I think we have our communications system just about worked out,” Mallory said.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Remember how you said we can’t be making decisions for everyone without their input,” Joel asked as he approached Mallory.

Mallory was caught completely off guard, and almost shook her head to get her bearings.  “Uhm, yeah,” she said, vaguely recalling the conversation in question.

“We need to throw a party,” Joel said.

“Wait, what,” Mallory asked.  “What are you talking about, Joel?  Slow down.”

“Sorry,” Joel said, “but it’s just…”  Joel paused for a second and took a breath.

“We’ve been at this heightened state of alert,” he said, “on pins and needles almost since we got here, if you think about it.  It’s been one thing after another for a solid year and we barely remembered to celebrate Christmas for crying out loud!  We really haven’t been able to take any downtime, we’ve missed Independence Day…twice; we need to have that get together we talked about a month ago, but it needs to be a big bash–a
real
party.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you,” Mallory asked.

Joel shrugged.  “Kind of,” he said.  “Ok, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to do it.  People need the release.  We need to mix more with the folks from the farms we’re working with, and the horse ranch, and the dairy.  Did you know that some of those people haven’t been back to town or the base in almost six months?”

Mallory made a face, but nodded.

“Who do we invite,” she asked.

“Everybody,” Joel said, “why?”

“Are we including Eric and Kyle’s group in our group of towns,” Mallory continued.

Joel narrowed his eyes at Mallory.  “What do you mean ‘our group of towns’,” he asked.  “Do we have cliques of towns in America now?”

Mallory started to say something, but Joel didn’t let her interrupt.  “Cool towns and lame towns,” Joel said, “or maybe acceptable towns and those that we find unsatisfactory.”

“Okay,” Mallory said before Joel could continue, “okay, I get it.  Point made.”

“Earl’s group should be included too,” Joel said.

Mallory nodded.  “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s not me you need to apologize to,” Joel said.  “It’s going to be a party though, and a time of healing.  We’ve overcome a lot and we all need to recognize that.  I’ll get a committee together for the…festival.  We’ll come up with a name for it, pick a date, and get this thing going.”

…

“Long time no chat,” Eric said into the radio.

“Haven’t really had much to talk about,” Joel replied, “or the time, to be honest.  I’ve been meaning to find out how things are going with you all, though.”

“About as good as can be expected,” Eric said.  “Still living out of the trailers for now, but we’ve got some pretty good ideas going forward.”

“How’s the food situation,” Joel asked.

“Better than it was,” Eric said.  “We’ve finally got something to barter with, and it’s a doozey.”

“Well,” Joel said, “maybe you can tell me all about it in person in a couple of weeks.”

“Which is the real reason for your call,” Eric said with a chuckle.

“Yeah, I’ve never been good at small talk,” Joel said.  “Kinda figured you’d see through that, but I really have been meaning to check on you guys.”

“So,” Eric said, “what’s this about getting together in person?  Nothing was ever officially said, but Kyle and I figured we were pretty much persona-non-grata there at the base.”

“First of all,” Joel said, “this isn’t a military dictatorship; which is another thing you need to be brought up to speed on.  Secondly, I’m a grown man and I can choose who I associate with…as long as I have Rachael’s approval.  Lastly, I’m the Mayor, in case you forgot, and the
town
doesn’t have beef one with you guys, regardless of your relationship with anyone else.”

“Point,” Eric said.  “Sorry.  Speaking of which, I know you aren’t Mallory’s keeper but…”

“She has her moments,” Joel said, “but then again so do I.  We call each other out if we need it.  It isn’t going to be a problem for you and your whole group to show up.  We’re having a festival and you’re invited.”

“Well, I can’t speak for the whole group,” Eric said, “but I appreciate that.  Why the festival and why invite us, though?”

“Colonel Olsen has been arrested,” Joel said, “and is awaiting trial in Charleston.  There’s a little more to it, but that’s the important piece.  Equally important is the fact that those who were really pulling the strings, Olsen’s handlers, have been taken out of the picture; hopefully permanently.”

“Okay, that’s going to require an explanation,” Eric said.  “The fact that there even
were
handlers is news.”

“Yeah, I guess a lot’s happened since the last time we talked,” Joel said.  “And I’d really like you all to be here to discuss a few other things.”