Free Fall

Fifty-Two

Linthicum, Maryland

Down a labyrinth of corridors within the secured confines of the Defense Cyber Crime Center, Keith Dorling pursued his prey.

For the past few days he’d been struggling to identify the source of the potential threat arising from the Zarathustra emails.

The sophistication and artistry employed by the sender to cloak and preserve their anonymity was astounding. Dorling had followed the mazelike trail to servers around the globe.

His pulse raced when the path took a troubling turn to the Shanghai headquarters of the Chinese military’s infamous Unit 68416. Dorling had feared the sender would be linked to signals intelligence, that the origin was a hostile action by a foreign government.

But he kept digging and soon he’d discovered China was merely a decoy; the trail bounced off satellites to domains used to control malware in Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Now he saw that the sender had become complacent.

Didn’t think anyone would last this long on your tail, did you?

His target’s attempt to keep their identity secret had unraveled. After the trail left Dubai, Dorling tracked it with ease to Libya, then Bermuda, and finally…

“Bingo!”

He reached for his phone and called FBI Special Agent Ron Sanchez with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, who answered on the first ring.

“Sanchez?”

“Ron, Dorling at DC3. I’ve got Zarathustra and an IP address. It’s here in the US. You better move fast to get warrants.”