Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, Africa
“It’s a hoax,” Michael said. His pronouncement was met with stony silence. The gentle rush of the air-conditioning filled the void.
The smooth skin of Shira’s forehead clenched into a frown. Don Riley pressed his lips together.
“Explain,” Don said.
Michael took a seat at his workstation and spun the chair around. “This server is an exit node for the Tor network,” he said. “They use it to upload new content to the commercial servers. Whoever is behind the Mahdi assumed that any entity with enough resources to break through the encryption would have preconceptions about who was behind the terrorist attacks. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is the perfect foil.”
Shira’s frown deepened, and her tone had an accusatory note. “I didn’t hear an explanation, Michael.”
Michael spun his chair around to face Shira. “This Iranian server is ancient and the software is way out of date. Someone boosted the hardware and made a Tor exit node. The only time they use it is when they upload a video, so no one would notice.”
“We’re back to square one?” Don asked.
Janet spoke this time. “Whoever’s running this is tech-savvy and well financed. They have access to the highest-quality encryption”—she shot a look at Shira—“stolen encryption in the world and they still go to great lengths to hide their identity. We can assume that when the Mahdi broadcasts they will use an IP-hopping program to shield their true identity.”
“How do you know that?” Shira challenged.
“Because that’s what we’d do,” Michael said.
“There has to be a way to track them down,” Don said.
“There’s only one way,” Janet replied.
“You’re going to track him when he’s broadcasting,” Shira said.
Michael nodded. “Exactly. Which is why you need to leave the Cerberus key with us.”
Shira shook her head. “That’s not going to happen,” she said. “You’re stuck with me for the duration, Michael.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Michael said, but he was smiling.
“I don’t like it.” Don was having none of it. “Your plan is to wait for another terrorist attack?”
Janet nodded. “That’s the best we’ve got, boss.”
Dre tapped a few keys and threw the contents of her monitor to the wall screen. “I set up a trap program that will let us know as soon as the Mahdi starts the next broadcast. We can immediately log into the Mahdi website and run a trace program to track them to the source, but our window will be incredibly short.”
Don scratched at the scruff on his chin. “We’ll have what? Two minutes, maybe three minutes?”
“We’ll have as long as it takes for the broadcast to upload,” Michael said. “They’ll probably leave the connection open long enough to make sure the file’s not corrupted.”
“We could be waiting here for weeks,” Don said to Shira. “Will Binya go along with this?”
Shira hesitated, the skin of her forehead again wrinkling into a frown.
“I don’t know that we have much of a choice,” she said. “We either turn over the Cerberus program to you or I stay here as one of the team until we figure out who’s behind this mess.”
“In that case,” Don said, “you can help with our next assignment.”
He used Janet’s workstation to call up a new file. A picture of a strikingly beautiful brown-skinned woman in her midthirties showed on the screen.
“This is Dr. Talia Tahir,” Don said. “Up until recently, she was a lead researcher at the World Health Organization, Cairo office. In fact, the doctor was in line to become the next head of the Eastern Med region.”
“And?” Janet asked.
“Dr. Tahir was killed in a plane crash while transferring virus samples from the Cairo office to the new WHO office in Brazzaville, Congo. One of those samples was a very specific strain of the Ebola virus.
“For those of you not up on your viruses, Ebola is a hemorrhagic disease, highly transmissible and extremely deadly.”
He tapped the keyboard again, and the picture changed to a large white tent in the middle of a ring of mud-brick homes. A person in biocontamination gear was exiting the tent.
“This is a Doctors Without Borders site in Melaba, Yemen. Three days ago, there was an Ebola outbreak in this village. There were one hundred and forty-seven people in the village, and as of right now one hundred and forty-five of those people are dead. There were three MSF first responders who have also contracted Ebola.”
Don paused. The only sound in the room was the whirr of the computer cooling fans. “The Ebola virus strain found in Melaba is a genetic match to the virus carried by Dr. Tahir, except for one thing. It’s a whole lot more lethal than the original.”
The team stared at Don.
“The working hypothesis is that we are looking at a bioweapons attack.”