Rogue Element Read Free Page A

secretary. Thirty years later, she was still hooked on the thrill her work gave her, because that was her life.
    The contained underground complex Ruth Styles had joined as a young woman in 1970 had its entrance in the middle of a pineapple plantation. But it had grown like a living thing over time, adding appendages as the world became ever more complicated. There were now several towering wings above ground but, iceberg-like, that was nothing compared to the sprawling mass hidden below. It was certainly different from the old days. Now the pineapple plantation was gone, replaced by the ubiquitous car park.
    The once ultra top-secret NSA had well and truly come in from the cold. It now even had its own website. The extent of the agency, the reach and impact of its power, astonishing even in the old days, was truly mind-blowing now.
    Ruth’s job in this world, while essential, was relatively simple. Despite the considerable advances in technology, the agency still relied on people to process the enormous volume of information that flooded in every minute of every day. This information was then passed to people – hopefully the correct ones – located at appropriate NSA nodes around the world, to analyse and act on.
    Ruth had the eye or the nose, or whatever one chose to call it, for the job. She seemed to know , even when there were no apparent clues, when a signal was imperative and when it wasn’t. Even some of the most innocuous signals could have far-reaching impact. Without people like Ruth, the NSA’s multi-billion dollar infrastructure would beworthless. She knew it and, more importantly, so did everyone else.
    Self-congratulation was far from her mind, though, when the B2-classified field opened automatically on her Hewlet Packard screen. A Watchdog installed in computer system CS982/Ind. was alerting the system. An intruder had been found.
    Watchdogs were highly secret weapons in the war against computer hackers. It was a benign virus that followed intruders over the Internet, leaving snips of code at every switch the call passed through; in effect, just like a dog marking territory. The code snips thus became a trail that led to the hacker’s point of origin. A hacker’s computer could be plugged into a phone line in a country on the other side of the world. Alternatively, the break-in could originate in a house down the street and the call routed through half a dozen different countries. This subterfuge was useless when a Watchdog was on the trail.
    Ruth had no idea where system CS982/Ind. resided, nor did she care. What she did care about was passing the information on quickly to the appropriate echelon, which in this instance, the B2 code told her, were both the owners of the system cracked and COMPSTOMP, the new super-secret group within the NSA established to counter computer terrorism. They could probably catch the computer terrorist in the act, Ruth observed, because this intrusion was happening now, in real time.
    Ruth efficiently tapped the forwarding codes in the box provided and keyed enter. The slip disappeared from her screen, on its way to the appropriate analysts. There, she smiled. Another blow to the forces of darkness.

Sulawesi, 2015 Zulu, Tuesday, 28 April
    Captain Radit ‘Raptor’ Jatawaman was scrambled from Hasanuddin Air Force Base outside Mkassar, Sulawesi, one of the Indonesian air force’s largest installations. Despite the early start, he was out of bed and into his flying suit before he realised it, his brain lagging behind his body. He was summoned to the briefing room and given the details of the mission he was about to fly by a high-ranking officer who was a stranger to him. The objective shocked him but he somehow managed to keep the surprise out of his face. Timing was tight. He grabbed his helmet from flight stores and ran to his Lockheed Martin F-16A, parked on the apron.
    Ground engineers surrounded the aircraft. Ordnance officers checked that the AIM-9L sidewinder