Triple Threat by H. L. Wegley Read Free Book Online

you how to run my software. We need to target the people funding Boko Haram, especially the shooter’s trip to the USA. If you follow the money, you find, as Granddad always says, the big kahuna.”
    “Do you know enough to tell me who or what to target?”
    “Don’t worry about that. What you need to worry about is how to operate my software so you can’t be traced. That’s where we’ll start today.”
    “What if I mess up and they—”
    “I won’t give you the chance to do that.”
    “But what about you, Kate?”
    “Like I said, I won’t let you get the chance to do that.”
    So she was going to protect him. But who would protect Kate, the scary woman who seemed to thrive on taking chances?
    I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me…once I figure out what it is.
     
    ****
     
    Kate studied Josh’s face. It looked like he understood her instructions on running her software, but she would run it by him one more time. “At the UNIX command line enter collaborate dash F, and then the parameters I showed you. When it’s done, spool the output file to the printer.”
    Why did Josh have that squinting frown on his face? He wasn’t going to back out, was he?
    “Kate, you’ve got to be running this program against a huge Internet traffic database. You haven’t told me where you get that much real-time Internet traffic data.”
    So that’s his problem. He thinks this might be illegal.
    “It’s not real-time data, Josh. There are several delays.”
    “But I thought only groups like NSA, the CIA, and—”
    “You’re correct for the most part. But if you know where all the real-time monitors are, and where people send that data, you can sniff and filter out what you need. The data’s not classified or encrypted so—”
    “Sniff it?” Josh’s voice rose. “Wouldn’t that be like sticking your nose in NASA’s supersonic wind tunnel and trying to take a breath?”
    “Josh, it’s not like I can walk into NSA headquarters and ask for database access.” She smiled. “I do my best at scrounging data. I manage.”
    Josh shook his head. He was either unconvinced or unsatisfied.
    She stuck a thumb out toward the server room. “Why do you suppose our biggest UNIX server in the lab is busy most of the time?”
    “You mean you’re collecting this stuff, continuously?”
    “Yes. Well, since I started work on my dissertation I’ve kept the server really busy. Of course, in my hodgepodge of collected data streams things frequently break. I lose some data. But since I’m only working with packets, I catch enough over a period of time to see the origins and destinations of the traffic.”
    Josh looked at her with a wary expression in his eyes.
    “Look, Mom gave me a lot of information about who collects what on the Internet backbone. That’s not classified, neither the information, nor the data. It’s legal, just difficult to do on a shoestring budget. Changing the subject…remember the big event I thought was being planned?”
    “Yeah. Got any ideas about what and when?”
    “It’s not immediate, but soon. However, I don’t have a handle on the scope of it. That’s where you and I have some work to do.”
    “This doesn’t sound like work on a PhD dissertation, Kate. It sounds like spying, cyber-espionage.”
    “Are you losing interest?”
    “No.” He gave her a sly grin.
    “Would you like to work for the FBI, NSA, CIA, or ugh…the DHS, someday?”
    “I’d certainly consider it. But I would like that sheepskin with those three letters on it first.”
    “You’ll get your degree. But you’re going to get some experience here that’s worth a whole lot more than the degree to the organizations I just mentioned.”
    “Kate Brandt, you are one beautiful, scary woman.”
    “I’ll take that as a compliment. Let’s hope we’re both scary to some terrorists plotting who knows what. Come on, I’ll get you started on a list of IP addresses. You just run the software like I showed you, print