The Cobra Identity Read online

The reaction at United was very much the same as at Atlantic. The following message was sent:

  Apostles of Islam. United airlines agrees to pay $100 million per your demand to protect our passengers, employees and property. It will take two days to make financial arrangements, so please submit your instructions for wire transfer on Monday as the international banking community does not work of Saturday. Monday is the next working day. In the future, contact Harold Levine, VP, General Council, United Airlines.

  That night one of United Airline’s Boeing 717 (S80) aircraft departing Dallas/Ft. Worth airport was struck in the port engine by a missile, but managed to land with damage, at Love Field. A flight attendant and two passengers in the rear seats were killed when the engine disintegrated. The plane was severely damaged, and might not fly again.

  That evening, another message was sent to United:

  “To the owner of United Airlines,

  Greetings again from the Apostles of Islam. You must think we are stupid. You will follow my time instruction, not yours. On Sunday, we will shoot down another United airplanes. We will do it again each day if you do not meet our demands. If you do not fly, we will wait until you do. Our demand is to deposit $100 millions of U.S. dollars in our bank account by wire transfer. I will give you the transfer information only ten minutes before you must send the money so nobody will try to hurt us. We are very serious as you see. You have until 1200 tomorrow to agree……”

  There was no immediate response from United.

  Ft. Meade

  News coverage was persistent surrounding the Atlanta crash. With another missile attack in Dallas, people were afraid to fly anywhere. This threatened to bring down the American economy unless the Government could protect passengers. Business travel slowed dramatically and vacations were cancelled. The airlines had no choice but to refund airfares. With more than one million workers affected, an economic disaster was possible.

  An Emergency Task Force office was established in the FBI headquarters building with several hundred people assigned, with one objective in mind -- capture the missiles and capture or kill the terrorists. Peter and Rachael were both assigned to help the team. Late Friday night, a plan was forming. Two of sixteen missiles had been fired, leaving fourteen. With distance and time, it wasn’t possible for the same group to have fired the missiles. The attacks had occurred at airports where major carriers share runways. For United, there were five choices, Atlantic, nine. There were other important but less symbolic airlines such as Delta and USAir, but the current threat was targeted at United.

  Early Saturday morning, Peter was lying semi-awake beside Rachael. His dreams had vacillated through the night between counterterrorist plans and her. Their romance had been difficult given the distance between them. Now that he was moving to Washington, they would be together. He rolled toward her in the darkness, smelling her body. Her breathing was low and even. She was sleeping soundly. With his left hand, he stroked her hair gently and was fascinated by how soft and fine it was. He didn’t want to disturb her and lay motionless, just enjoying her essence. Then the phone rang.

  Rachael stirred at the second ring then reached to the side table for her cellphone, her only phone, “Yes?”

  After a pause she said, “I’ll be there.”

  Without moving any other part of her body, she laid the phone down and seemed to sleep again. After about thirty seconds, she groaned and pushed the covers back, and after several more seconds, she moved her legs over the side and sat upright, slightly stooped. Peter said, “Umm, what’s the deal?”

  She turned to him, “I have to be at Ft. Meade in two hours, at (looking at her clock), oh God, seven o’clock! Some kind of security briefing.”

  Peter responded, “Okay, you go get ready and I’ll make you some coffee and toast. Sorry, tea and toast.”

  With her right hand, she caressed the side of his face in acknowledgement, “I liked you touching my hair.” Then she bent over and kissed him passionately.

  It only took her fifteen minutes to get dressed, which amazed Peter. He had the notion that women needed more time than men to get ready for the world each morning, but this wasn’t a normal morning. He brought her tea to the bathroom then went on to fix some toast and a small dish of yogurt. She emerged energetic and fresh looking in blue jeans and a Georgetown sweatshirt.

  Peter said, “Is that proper dress for the ‘puzzle palace’?” The Army’s Fort Meade in Maryland houses the world's most powerful and sophisticated electronic eavesdropping systems.

  “Hey, he wanted me there in my PJ’s, so this will do.” She smiled and pecked his cheek as she went to the front door.

  Peter kissed her saying, “See you later. I’ll get some groceries for dinner.” They both knew it was wishful thinking that they could have a normal evening together, but it was something both wanted.

  On the way out the door she said, “I love you.”

  She drove through the center of the capital area, which wouldn’t be wise any other day of the week, then up New York Avenue to Route 50, then on to I-295 north. Ft Meade was twenty miles northeast, towards Baltimore. The ride was uneventful, and she had twenty minutes to spare once she reached the main security gate. It took most of that time to clear through the security process and find the counterintelligence building.

  Rachael got to the meeting on time; a few others were late. About twenty people, most of whom she knew by sight, were assembled from various military and civilian agencies. Ben Coates was her coworker from the Defense Department. Ben had called her. The briefing began at 7:40. A man from NSA began the meeting by recounting the attacks on Atlantic and United airlines. Following these attacks, NSA analyzed Internet and telephone traffic before and after the attacks, and surrounding the ransom demands for possible leads to the terrorists.

  Intelligence officers at Fort Meade rely on supercomputers to analyze millions of messages and phone calls, checking keywords or word patterns. Internet messages are chopped up into small chunks called packets, and each element is reassembled at the recipient's end. These packets have headers that pick up the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address of all the computers passed through from its originating machine to its destination. All computers connected to the Internet have unique IP numbers. Intelligence officers program the supercomputers to capture packets of information that meet certain criteria. Captured data can be reassembled to read message contents.

  The purpose of this meeting was to disclose intelligence gathered at Ft. Meade. Voice communications were not helpful, but the Internet had some very high quality information. While they could only follow transmitted and received messages to a web page, the operatives in the United States had some specific information. The intelligence contained numerous email “hits” traceable to a single laptop. All of the messages were traced through wireless interfaces at Wi-Fi cafes. Starbucks located in Florida and Atlanta correlated to the timeframe when events occurred in these regions. An Army intelligence officer, Major Keys, revealed their most recent “intercepts.”

  He concluded, “In the last two days, we were able to trace a string of messages from Atlanta to South Carolina, then up to Boston. The most recent contacts have been from a store in Canton, Massachusetts, suburban Boston.”

  Boston was a major United Airlines international hub airport.

  Operation Persistent Veil

  With enormous risk to stockholders, United executives agreed to participate in a plan to trap the terrorists. This decision involved the most senior members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees agreeing to subsidize United for any long-term loss of earnings, if the plan failed. It required the President to issue an executive order, authorizing joint cooperation with military forces on the U.S. mainland, as required by the Posse Comitatus regulations, which restrict use of the military inside borders of the United States.

  Technically, the operation to capture the terrorists would fall under the Department of Homeland Security, but in reality, they
didn’t have the assets to do this alone with the missile systems involved. The department of defense agreed to provide the sophisticated tactical assets needed to operate against the terrorists in real time.

  Within the military, the most experienced counter-terrorist personnel were in the reserve structure, as a directorate under the National Guard Bureau. Peter Shields was head of this unit, which had only existed for a few days, and had no other staff members. He was called by General Simmons shortly after the briefing at Ft. Meade to begin formulating a plan to capture the terrorists and the missiles.

  Beginning Friday night, the DSP (Defense Support Program) satellite constellation was redirected by the Air Force to provide geosynchronous coverage over Boston. Massive computer power was switched from other uses at DoD , NSA, CIA, Secret Service, and FBI for video surveillance and image storage. The operation required “Tier One” coverage.

  The second tier coverage used medium altitude un-manned surveillance aircraft, flying in tight circles above Boston’s harbor and airport. Four “Shadow” drones and their ground-based pilots were dedicated to this mission flying in racetrack patterns over Boston at 1000 feet above the airspace designated for commercial flights. Air traffic controller workloads