The ray from the morning sunlight pierced the window. It was aimed directly at his face, nudging him awake. He pulled the comforter over his head and resumed his sleep for several minutes more before grudgingly rising out from under the bedcovers. He had had the best night’s sleep in weeks. He drove for five days before he reached the Signal Mountain Lodge, instead of the fourteen hours it would normally take to drive from Folsom to the Grand Teton National Forest. It was a straight shot on I-80, but he could not risk it. He took the back roads through backwater towns, into the backwoods and through national parks. Now, with a bit of time on his hands, he basked in a rare luxury. Although months away from the trigger date, he still needed to put the finishing touches on his next planned breach. He also bore in mind that as soon as he accomplished his mission, he needed to flee the country. He rolled over and grabbed the room service menu. He was suddenly famished.
“Yes, I’d like eggs benedict, hash browns—No mimosa. I will have a bottle of champagne. You can keep the orange juice—Also, I want a copy of the local newspaper, and the New York Times—Yes. That’s all.”
While he waited for breakfast, he sat up in bed and tossed another pillow behind his back. Then he opened his xPhad and began to tap away. Checking the map, he calculated the distance ahead of him, assuming he stayed off the major interstates. He estimated that in five days, he would arrive in St. Paul and breach that facility in accordance to plan. It had to be timed perfectly. He knew that three days after the breach the National Cyber Security Division would send in a member of their geek squad to investigate the source of the hacking. Without his trusted mole, he would now have to reenter the system and piggyback on their time. First, he would have to remove the hacking code and then install his creation—his backdoor code. All had to be done without having his activities traced by security at the installation. He also anticipated the techie on site would take at least four hours of probing, before announcing it was a blip in the system to the director of the control center.
His strategy was in place.
He had arranged for a late checkout, so when it was time to depart he would leave appearing in the same disguise as when he arrived. Now safely inside his car, he exchanged the cropped gray-haired wig and beard for the dark brown, shoulder-length hair, which he tied into a ponytail, and then attached a Van Dyke beard. After he switched the pair of silver-rimmed glasses with the pair of dark rounded frames, he swapped driver’s licenses in his wallet. He made one final inspection in the mirror, and then ventured out under a dark sky toward the back roads of Nevada heading east. In nine hours, he would arrive in Spearfish, South Dakota.